The biting wind thundered in Kedryn’s ears as he soared through the heavens, rising and falling on unseen currents of air as a war as old as the Overseer himself played out before him. Streams of celestial radiance speared through the darkening storm below, illuminating the beauty of Veil one moment, then concealing it the next as battle fronts moved like shifting sands.
In those narrow spaces between the two is where he danced, skimming the borders of both light and shadow with the ease of one who was born free.
On a whim, Kedryn dove past the battles toward the earth, the thrill of it all burning through his veins like a perpetual river of unbridled joy. As he plunged toward the ground at speeds that defied the heavens themselves, the long reach of the mountain's wintery embrace beckoned him to once again soar amongst its snow capped peaks..
He laughed out loud, his voice pure and free as he weaved in and out of narrow canyons, up cliff faces, and over peaks so high stars could be seen hovering in the ever-fading sky. It was chaotic. Reckless. Yet, not once did he feel the hesitation of fear or indecisiveness of doubt. How could he? The sky was his.
Kedryn took a moment to look beyond the sky, back to where he had danced between the pillars of light and storms of darkness. Here he bore witness to the ongoing calamities with the other timeless like him; the mountains, the sky, the land, they all stood separate, mere bystanders to a symphony of chaos and order.
In a flash, Kedryn resumed his directionless flight through the mountainous terrain until it too vanished, revealing a vast forest spreading from horizon to horizon. The trees sang to him, their weighty music drawing him in as inexorably as the flame did the moth. A pull that he didn’t fight in the least. Why deny it? The promised power from the wood was as much a part of him as the whispered music of the sky.
Kedryn brushed the tops of the trees with unseen wings, listening to the forest’s melody until the songs of sky and woodland rang within himself in such harmony that his soul quivered with anticipation.
He was close, so very close. He could feel it. The trees and wind were pulling him toward something pure. Something hidden. And it was his. All he had to do was…
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A loud crash jolted Kedryn from his dream, an involuntary cry of alarm escaping his cracked lips.
“Sorry ‘bout that,'' a gray bearded dwarf said, chuckling at Kedryn’s less than manly scream. “You keep right on sleepin, yer high and mightiness. We’ll be rightin the walls afore too long.”
Heart racing, Kedryn grumbled something unintelligible as he worked to separate himself from the dream. It had been so real. Flying between pillars of light and storms of darkness while listening to the melodies of the sky and trees…
Kedryn wrapped his threadbare blanket tighter around him, struggling to hold onto the feeling of flight as it slowly faded.
The dwarf snorted out a laugh before rolling the massive stone off the dais, joining the other work parties dedicated to rebuilding the walls as best they could to shield them from the elements.
Knowing he wasn’t going to get back to sleep any time soon, Kedryn pushed himself to his feet, ignoring the throbbing aches of his frozen limbs.
It was cold. Far colder than it had any right to be. His ears stung from the exposure, and he had to stamp his feet to make sure they were still attached before stumbling to the nearest heat source.
Despite the freezing weather, Kedryn’s spirits were as high as they had ever been.
Craning his neck, he gazed in wonder at the night sky through a gap in the ceiling. Foreign stars, like a sea of endless diamonds, were surpassed in beauty only by the light of the moons.
Moons. As in plural. Two to be exact. The smaller one hung in the air like a sphere of cracked, azure glass while the larger loomed so close it looked as if it would fall right out of the sky.
According to Croon, there was a third moon that reflected the color of blood and stirred up everything evil in the world when it rose without the others. Kedryn couldn't wait to see it!
A grin slowly spread across his pale face as he took in the unfamiliar heavens. He, Kedryn, was living out the adventure he had always longed for!
Of course, he had always thought he would be the party leader. Navigating his group of heroes through life and death situations, saving princesses and towns folk alike, and delving dungeons to find strange artifacts of world changing power.
That was then. He had changed a great deal in the few short days they had been on Veil. Through trial and error, and he was man enough to admit his errors, he finally had his team's trust.
As he pondered the past few days while taking in the majesty of the heavens, Kedryn realized the change in him went much deeper. While it was important that his team had come to trust him, he was coming to rely on his team.
While that revelation seemed like it should have been common sense, he had never had the opportunity to develop that particular trait. His family, while influential and well to do, was defunct. His only friends were those he met on online gaming platforms as his prep school was mostly a bunch of insufferable jocks. Even his squads in basic and advanced training had labeled him an ‘acquired taste.’
No, he had never really learned how to trust to the level he was experiencing now. For the first time in his life, Kedryn felt… welcome.
As he pondered, Kedryn found his gaze wandering like so many times before to Riya. She laid at the base of the throne where Captain Glade slept, fast asleep within a pile of half-rotted blankets.
He smiled, genuinely appreciating the girl’s tenacity as she refused to leave the Captain’s side, her sole focus being that of keeping her charge alive… And judging by the waning flames that highlighted her beautiful, sun-kissed face, she had neglected everything else, like adding fuel to their fire.
Shaking his head, Kedryn quietly placed more wood on the dying embers and used a bit of mana to get the fire going again.
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A rumble broke the stillness of the night, forcing Kedryn to look back at his elf companion in shock.
Was Riya… snoring?
Another rumble washed over him as his mind reeled. Elves were supposed to be the epitome of perfection - grace and elegance personified. They didn’t snore! It was like learning that King Aruthur had an acne problem, or that Beyonce had a hair lip. It was unthinkable!
Yet, here he was, staring at the most beautiful person he had ever seen, an elf straight out of his most far-flung fantasies - and she was snoring.
Of everything he had experienced, this moment of perfect imperfection woke Kedryn to the fact that this was… real.
“Ye know, lad,” Krazzik said, startling Kedryn with a slap to the back. “If ye stare any harder at the poor lass, yer eyes’ll pop out!”
The dwarf boomed with laughter, whether from the terrible joke or because Kedryn nearly fell over from the heavy blow. What little he knew of the dwarven chief it was likely both.
“Quiet!” he hissed, “Do you want to wake her?”
“Lad, if’n she can sleep through this racket, then me laughing ain’t gonna wake her,” Krazzik chuckled, using his stub of an arm to point out the scope of work being done.
Dwarves were everywhere, stacking rubble against the larger gaps in the walls or bringing in wood to feed the multiple fires surrounding the hall. Even Dabbin had joined in, laughing as he threw what remained of the Golem on top of the growing piles.
Krazzik was right. If the dwarven orchestra of mayhem hadn’t woken her, then a little bit of laughter wouldn’t either.
“I’ve been meaning to ask you something,” Kedryn finally said, turning his attention back to Krazzik. “Bragden mentioned you took down the Golem because you hunted earth-kin. Can you elaborate?”
“Now that be a great question! I have a few stories ‘bout earth-kin that would make ye fill yer shorts and go running to yer Mam!” Krazzik boomed with a wide smile. “There was this one-time Bragden and me found a vein o’ sunstone that was guarded by no less than five o’ the buggers! Naturally, we weren’t goin to just leave…”
“What’s sunstone?” Kedryn interrupted, his curiosity getting the better of him.
“Don’t ye know it be bad luck interruptin a story?” Krazzik asked with a glare.
“Sorry,” Kedryn sighed.
“Doesn’t even know what sunstone is,” Krazzik muttered. “Right then. Sunstone be one o’ the more sought after o’ elemental metals. It be stronger and lighter than steel if forged right and proper, but doesn’t require an enchanter to unlock its abilities. And it be as rare, if not rarer, than shadow steel,” Krazzik said, his eyes gleaming. “It’s also why there were more’n six earth-kin guardin the vein.”
“I thought you said there were five?”
“Bah! I never counted. Anyway, Bragden and I fought through the whole mess o’ kin afore they could wolf down the sunstone…”
“The earth-kin eat metal? That’s incredible!”
“What did I tell ye ‘bout interruptin? And yes, we had to stop them from eating the ore. What else would ye expect from earth-kin? Right nasty things they are. The natural ones anyway. All earth-kin and Golems be as dumb as the rocks they’re formed from. But the ones that be found in the wild are a different breed altogether. Tougher by an order o’ magnitude to be sure but can’t figure out their left from their right if’n ye know what I mean. The trick is ye got to put ‘em on their backs by discombobulating the gits. After that, their easier to kill than a tuber rat in a barrel o’ water!”
Kedryn felt like he was going to burst from the number of questions he wanted to ask, but before he could narrow the massive list down to a manageable level, Krazzik asked a question of his own.
“How’s yer Captain doin?” Krazzik asked in a more subdued tone.
Kedryn had been avoiding looking in Captain Glades' general direction since waking up. To say he was in bad shape was an understatement. The Captain’s face and torso looked more like a tenderized piece of meat than his usual stoic self. Then there was the swollen mass that was his arm.
The scene was a stark reminder that while he was currently living his grandest dream, circumstances could easily turn Kedryn’s paradise into a nightmare.
“You’re bonded to him. Can’t you just pull up his status page?” Kedryn asked.
“Only what he’s allowing me to see,” Krazzik said with a shrug.
Kedryn looked at him in surprise. He had access before, what had changed?
“I see the question forming in yer eyes, lad, and while I normally wouldn’t be sharin this, ye likely need to learn ‘bout it sooner than later. There be varying levels and types o’ bonds, and afore ye go askin,” he said, shaking a sausage sized finger his way, “I don’t know even half o’ them. You’d have to ask Croon and suffer through a thousand and one off tune, half made up songs afore ye learned anything o’ value. All I know is the blood bond be based on trust. The higher the trust, the more powerful the bond.”
It never occurred to Kedryn there were different types of bonds, let alone varying rules governing them. If that were the case, what exactly would help make his bond with Glade stronger and what benefits could that provide?
Thoughts of gaining the Willpower attribute raced through his mind.
“What happened to your previous access?” Kedryn finally asked.
“Trust be hard to earn, lad. But easy enough to lose. The short of it is, when I accepted the compatibility request on Glade’s behalf without his permission, me trust ranking with him dropped. Now I need to build that trust with him again.”
“I’m… sorry about that,” Kedryn began slowly, processing the information. He would have to remember to look up trust rankings later. “I’m assuming you haven’t seen any of his notifications since you lost access?”
Krazzik nodded once, not deigning to share anything further.
“To answer your question, he’s not doing well. He still has some internal injuries that Riya can’t fix with her current level of magic,” Kedryn said, pulling up Captain Glades stats. Riya had healed some of the external damage, but it was taking everything she had to keep the internal bleeding from worsening. “He’s now losing closer to 50 HP an hour.”
As if hearing their conversation, Riya stirred from her sleep. Oblivious to anyone around her, the elf stumbled to Glade’s side, spilling whatever healing energies she could into him before collapsing back onto her pile of blankets.
Without a word, Kedryn walked over and pulled the blankets over his friend. She was already snoring.
“At this rate, we’ll need to worry about two o’ ye with torn mana channels,” Krazzik grumbled.
Kedryn didn’t pay him any attention, his eyes transfixed on Riya. Yes, she was stunning. But what made him truly in awe was her absolute devotion in keeping Captain Glade alive. He had never witnessed that level of loyalty, even from his own family.
Fortunately for all of them, the Captain’s mana poisoning hadn’t returned. Kedryn knew all about Captain Glade’s relationship with the egg, but hadn’t shared it with anyone. Up until a moment ago, he thought Krazzik knew about it as well.
The egg was still siphoning off the excess mana the Captain was generating, but Kedryn knew it wouldn’t be enough. Not since the egg had sacrificed its own wellbeing to save Glade’s life. But the real question he had eating away at his thoughts was why? Why had it saved Glade?
He could understand why Riya had such loyalty, but how had the Captain engendered the same level of loyalty with the egg?
Another thought crossed his mind. Was he capable of showing the same level of loyalty to his commanding officer?
Kedryn’s mind came back to his previous thoughts on trust. His team trusted him, and he trusted his team. Was it that simple? Or did building trust require him to do more?
Not knowing if it was a good idea, Kedryn checked his own mana levels. He wasn’t in the best of shape, but maybe…
“Lad,” Krazzik said, breaking Kedryn’s train of thought. “I know that look ye got in yer eyes. Normally, I’d mind me own business, but seein as yer new to Veil, I’ll give ye a sound warning. Ye don’t want to go and poke that scorpion's nest, I can tell ye that.”
Kedryn blinked back his surprise. How had Krazzik known what he was about to do with the egg?
The dwarven chief chuckled.
“Don’t ye worry ‘bout it, lad. I have eye’s just as ye do, but know when not to look. Our Riya be a rare one, that’s fer damn sure. Could do with a bit o’ a beard though. Maybe wider in the hips. An she’s too tall for my liking. Then again, I’ve yet to meet any lasses who can match the raw beauty of a good dwarf woman!”
“It's not what you think,” Kedryn began, waving his hands wildly in front of him.
“Like I said, lad, don’t ye worry ‘bout it. Just keep in mind, Riya here be a treeless. Hands off, if ye know what’s good for ye.”