Kalie Rana

The room I had been given was relatively spare for a room anticipating a princess. Again, I was sure that it was my perceived naivety that they were banking on. Honestly, if it was me who was trying to pull a honey pot on a young princess, I would’ve made a point to really go for broke when it comes to the furnishings in her room. A bed—a nice one of course—was the central feature of the room. Maria’s attendant’s room was across the hallway so there was at least that. But other than the bed, there was a wash basin, a small closet, and a tea table. Nothing was overly nice, but it all had the same Scuttleview charm, gilded but old.

Laying down for the night, I tried to file away all the news of the day. All the conversations, all the competing houses, and lands. The games of nobles all vying for only god knows what. There was no way that I’d be able to keep it all straight. A large part of me just wished that I could say screw it, turn back toward Cerith, and take Lux back along with me.

Good lord, where the hell did that thought come from? Is that what I want? To just run off with Lux? When the hell did that happen?

He has been the one I’ve been closest too since we left Cerith, so maybe that's a little presumptuous, but at the same time, he's not going anywhere is he?

That’s a mighty fine assumption, that he would be interested in doing that. Not to mention the effects that doing something like that would have on Cerith.

There’s no way that I could do that to those people. My people. No man, regardless of their power over my heart, is worth Cerith.

There was no choice, I needed to keep playing their games, and put up with the whims and whills of the White Raven and his Ravencourt.

Maybe, given enough time, I could take Lux on as some sort of official consort’s consort? Is that something they do? We could on Cerith, if I wanted to.

At least on Cerith it was relatively easy, if not a bit despotic. The king was the ruler of the people, seeing to it that they were taken care of while simultaneously being taken care of by their taxes. While the Petrel was the true ruler of both the people and the island itself. Under father’s rule, and if I’m being honest, the rule of those before him, Cerith had been in a decline for a long time, I had come to discover. The problem was relations with the empire of Holaira were just shy of direct hostilities, a cold war of sorts had occurred, with the Petrel acting as a nuclear deterrent while the absolute size of the Holarian military acted in opposition. But, in that analogy, Cerith was the waning and failing USSR, with starvation and shortages just on the horizon, while all the empire had to do was sit back and watch it crumble.

Well, jokes on them, I guess.

While I planned my next few moves—not knowing what kind of hornets nest I’d be walking into in Corvus—I drifted off to sleep somewhere along the line.

While it wasn’t entirely impossible to feel something as it passed through the immaterium, usually, it was more of a presumed perception, like anticipating contact without the contact ever occurring. More commonly, you’d feel the effect that such movement would have on the prime plane, like a gust of wind, or the lapping of waves. But, I awoke to the entirely uncommon physical sensation of feeling something touch me as it passed by my face. Opening my eyes, I searched around the room, before I took to focusing on the immaterium. Doing that, I finally found what had woken me up. While I slept, my room had become filled, almost to the brim, by nature spirits. Like the one I had seen on the boat, and those that floated aimlessly about Scuttleview’s harbor. With the small forest that surrounded the Lord’s manor, it wouldn’t have been so surprising to see at least a few spirits making their way into and out of the manor through their natural movements.

However, the amount of spirits inside of this one room was more than I had ever seen at one time, ever. The only place that was anywhere as close was inside Grandmother’s bed room which sat at the top of a natural mana geyser. As I considered the whys and hows of the glut of spirits, I pressed my perception through the walls and could sense similar amounts of spirits permeating the rest of the manor as well.

If this was the normal schedule that these spirits kept, I would imagine that the folks who stayed in the Lord’s manor always got a great night’s sleep. As, the effects of drowning in spirits was the same as being in a room without mana at all, draining.

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At least for those unprepared.

I only had a moment to worry about the effects on Maria or Lux, before I noticed something else. The spirits themselves—at least the ones outside of my room and the other rooms with outside facing windows—had begun to move through the manor towards a place nearby the guest apartments. This, unlike a glut of spirits finding their way into the manor, was not natural.

Or more exactly, it could not be natural. Walking closer to the door of my room, I finally heard the cause of the ruckus in the immaterium.

There was someone singing.

Their voice was low, and the words and tone of their song was unfamiliar. Of course, since it was the song of a nature majin.

With a soft hum, I brought the air away from the door hinges, silencing them as I slowly opened the door. As I did so, the spirits in my room violently rushed past me, into the hall, and toward the majin. A soft gasp escaped my mouth, momentarily releasing the vacuum I had created.

Well, I’m screwed.

Regardless of what the majin’s intentions were, they couldn’t have possibly been good, and now that there was a big glowing—ish—sign that I was here, it was no time until they’d know I was here.

But after a few seconds, and their quiet song continued, I peeked out the door.

While nobody was directly outside of my room or anything, it was still shocking. In the immaterium, the spirits that I released were just a drop in the bucket of spirits. Sticking my head clear of the vacuum, I watched as the spirits streamed down the hallway toward the majin at the end of the hallway disappearing as they met the woman.

Recalling the vacuum to the door, I closed it quietly.

Since she didn’t move once I came outside, it’s obvious whatever spell she’s working on was insanely powerful. Or, it was dark enough that she didn’t even notice.

Quivoq was an accomplished but gentle man. As a majin, he was terrifyingly powerful in the way that he could command the cold rocks and rocky dirt to life on Cerith. But, it was that same power that he himself was almost afraid of. There were spells in the repertoire of a nature majin that were not used by a man of his disposition.Because, while a nature majin had affinity with life in most of its forms, it also had an affinity with death. And something told me, that the nature witch outside of the thin door I was pressed against, was not one limited by that same disposition.

Thinking quickly, I walked over to the window of my room. The window, unlike the one in my room in Cerith, actually opened, but doing so, I sensed the flow of nature spirits into the room from outside.

Jesus, how much power do you need?

I tried not to think too hard about what was going on, rather, I focused on what I needed to do. Hark would have been the best option, but I had no clue where he was, let alone, how I would contact him. With Maria in the room across the hall from me—and directly in the line of sight of the majin—she wasn’t able to do me any help. That left me with one real choice, and it wasn’t one that I wanted to use.

Lux.

At first, all it took was a low hum for me to extend my mana beyond my fingers, small wisps of air wrapping around them, giving the tendrils just the oomph they needed to open the window beside mine. With that done, I pressed my voice as high as I dared, forming a tunnel of air leading from my mouth into Lux’s room beside mine.

“Lux!” I spoke into the tube. The sound of my own voice causing the hairs on the back of my neck to stand sharp. “Lux, are you awake?”

“I am?” His response was far more of a question than an answer, “what’s going on? How am I hearing you right now?”

“We don’t have time. There’s someone in the hall.”

“An assassin?”

“I don’t know, a nature majin though.”

“A majin?” Lux’s words were ice cold. “What are they doing?”

“I don’t know. A spell, I don’t know what it’s for, but we don’t have much time, they are gathering a lot of spirits.”

“Okay, I’ll be ready in a moment. You stay in your room, I’ll handle this.”

“What? No! Have you lost your mind? There’s no way that I’ll let you face this alone.”

“It is my responsibility to take care of you. I’ll be fine. Stay in your room.”

“Lux wait, let me help you!” But there was no response. Instead, I heard the faint creak of his door reverberating down the tube.

The goddamned idiot! Jesus, or Leona, someone, just help the dumbass get a clue!

Despite my prayer, there was no time to waste. If the gods weren’t going to help him, then I would.

Not a moment later, my concern was warranted, as the deluge of spirits entering the manor doubled again, I could finally hear the song of our would be assassin through the door. A woman’s voice commanded the spirits, and with her words finally ringing loudly, I knew that there was little time left. Running to the door, I forgot all attempts to be quiet, and burst into the hallway.