A Mos fell.

On a snowy ground.

Where blooms the flowers,

Of an uprooted tree.

A year has passed.

Under the Air of Seasons.

The horizon darkens,

The light fades,

Then the sun smiles,

Charcoal clouds appear.

A year has passed.

Under the Air of Seasons.

A Year has passed.

Under the Air of Seasons.

Air of Seasons, unknown bard.

          Nay woke up in the middle of the night. She felt the old man’s Rreico, he was awake, and the Rreico of Carle, still asleep inside the wooden house. She had no desire to face Vestigio right now and preferred to eat and drink something first. After a quick meal, she started doing warmups. She took her dagger and her sword and started to run. She used the opportunity to go and explore the surroundings. Once inside the forest, she avoided the Rreicos of the creatures or strange things she had no knowledge of. She did not want to meet new animal species in the dark. The forest was in almost pitch blackness, the stars having a hard time penetrating the heavy foliage of the multiple palm trees and tall ferns. She could not see much and quickly decided to go back to the camp. Once there, she began her daily exercises.

One hour later, Carle left the house.

“Good morning Nay.”

“I think it’s still good night, the sun will only be rising in one hour or two.”

“Slept well?”

“Yes, and you?”

“The Master is currently getting himself drunk. He woke me up.” Declared Carle with an uncertain expression.

Nay grimaced. “I see.”

The boy watched Nay train. After a few minutes, he spoke again.

“Could you teach me?”

Nay stopped. “Teach you what?” She asked.

“Not to kill or something like that…” He added immediately. “Simply…after my trip with you, I realize how weak I am and… Well I’d like to be more masculine.”

“And so, you ask a girl to help you?”

“Oh, come on.” He responded to her teasing smile.

Nay thought about it for a few moments. “I came here to learn from Vestigio, and I won’t be able to give you much time, If he agrees to help me. I have my doubts he will, but in any case, if you want to join me in my regular routine, you are welcome to.”

The teenager nodded. “Thanks Nay.”

“Well, no reason not to start now! Run some laps around the house, then I’ll show you some stretching positions and techniques to gain strength and endurance.”

The young boy looked for a way out. “Erm…Now? I have to admit that after yesterday’s forced march, I’m…”

“Either you start now, or I don’t help you. If your resolution fails at the first step, I see no reason to waste my time.”

He frowned. “But…I’ve only got robes, I can’t…”

“Don’t try that with me. Go put on some loose clothes, I know you have some.”

“Suddenly, I feel regret.”

“Are you going to complain any longer?”

“No, no, I’m going.”

Nay continued her training while stopping from time to time to take care of the boy.

One other hour passed, and Nay was doing up to down strikes repeatedly with her sword. Tirelessly. In the meantime, Carle was on his back, lying down next to the since long extinguished campfire, desperately trying to catch his breath.

The sun was rising, and Nay suddenly had a bad feeling. It came to fruition immediately, as, in a true parody of drunkenness, Vestigio got out of his house.

He stumbled around, getting closer to them while almost falling a few times, his attention solely focused on Nay.

“Who’re you? Firante? Get out of my home, I will p..” Carle grimaced when he heard the rest of the sentence. The swearing of the old man was crude and disgusting.

Nay did not react. The old man acted like he had not met her before, being as aggressive as during their first meeting. He was not nearly as dangerous though. When he advanced to hit her, she simply sidestepped and tripped him. He fell face first in his vegetable garden. He did not even try to get back on his feet. He had fallen asleep.

“Biach” She said. “Carle, help me get him up, his head is in the ground, he’ll suffocate.”

“Did we really go all this way to find…this?” The boy commented while coming closer.

Nay sighed. “I’m asking myself the same thing. Maybe he changed too much since Marke left? My dad thought he could help me, and I believed him, but I’m not so sure anymore.”

She and Carle picked him up and brought him back inside. Nay entered first.

She almost let the unconscious old man in her arms fall out of surprise.

“But…It’s clean? It’s…nice?” She exclaimed out loud.

“Yeah, I had the same reaction. I saw him clean up some time yesterday. When he felt weird.”

Nay examined the orange curtains, harmoniously coexisting with the green carpet, as well as the furniture, all in pristine shape and in a beautiful pale red wood that spoke of a woman’s touch. The room was absurdly colourful.

“Is he married?” She asked.

“I don’t think so.” Carle responded. “He only has a simple bed, I’m on a mattress in some sort of boat in the storage room.” He pointed towards a door at the back right of the room.

“Am I to believe he’s a Teller, a Master Legio AND an interior decorator?”

“Well…Everyone has a hobby, right?” Carle did not seem convinced by his own explanation. “In any case, he’s heavy, can we go? His room is that way.”

Nay followed Carle, while trying not to trip on a little stool with a green cushion on top.

Vestigio’s room was in the same style as the living room, and just like the boy had said, Vestigio had a single bed. The only thing out of place was the three emptied bottles of Grive wine on the desk in the corner of the room. Piles of well classified newspapers took away most of the remaining space.

Carle, out of breath again, gave out a breath of relief after dropping the old man in his bed.

“Urgh. Had I known; I would have waited tomorrow to start my work out.”

Nay started to answer but was interrupted by a loud snore.

They exited the house and closed the doors behind them.

“What a disaster. Yesterday I still believed that he would save me, but here and now, I don’t know anymore.” Carle admitted.

Nay stayed silent. She had no idea how to cheer him up, as she herself felt the same sorrow.

“I’ll stay one week.” She decided. “I’ll be hunting and with the vegetable garden, we should be able to stay here without starving out our host. I’ll also ask the one resupplying him to show me the way to Makaka. I need to know what is happening in Gite.”

Carle nodded. “I suppose I need a job. I’ll need gold.”

“That too. Let us see how he behaves for one week, and if he can help the both of us in any way. If he really is just a crazy old hermit able to snap necks barehanded, we’ll leave.”

“All right. What about you? Where will you be going afterwards?”

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“I will go to Leïn.”

The young boy seemed worried. “Oh. Yes, I suppose we must part ways.”

“Carle…I don’t know what is going on in your head, but it is better that way. It’s a bad idea to be around me.”

“Yaeda’s Biach that is not true!”

“People around me die Carle, I don’t want to be responsible for your death.”

“Don’t worry. It would never be your fault.”

His sombre look disturbed her slightly.

“Hey…want to talk about it?”

“No. You should not worry about me, I’m not normal.”

“So?”

“With my body…” He stopped talking.

“That’s only the outside, in no way does it show the inside. And look, you’ll grow some muscles, it’ll be better.” Nay’s words sounded empty; the boy was lost in his dark thoughts.

He did not answer, but his stomach began gurgling loudly.

Nay laughed softly. “Time for breakfast then.”

He smiled. “Yeah, sorry, I don’t know why I told you all that. I’ll start the fire.”

“Thanks, I’ll try to find you something good to eat, but I’ll have to experiment, I’m not exactly familiar with things growing around here. My own breakfast wasn’t a success.”

“Erm, I have no worries about taste, but are you certain you won’t poison us?”

“If I have no idea what it is, I won’t use it. Maybe Vestigio is also a botanical expert? Maybe he’ll teach me?”

“I think you expect a bit too much from someone currently drunk in his bed at eight in the morning.”

Nay simply nodded, then got up and left to go hunt.

The next few days brought their share of weirdness. After a day where Vestigio only slept, he spent the next day on a chair outside looking at the oasis. His Rreico was once again, completely different than before. He did not speak but smiled when Nay brought him something to drink and to eat. When she tried to talk to him, he only watched, his expression unchanging.

“I don’t understand.” Nay said to Carle later.

The young boy did not answer her either, because he was trying to catch his breath after running around the house ten times.

The next day, Nay discovered another of those new Rreicos. She knew it was not a technique, it truly felt like Vestigio had become someone else. This time, the image of a woman struck Nay in the rhythm of life. Because it felt feminine, the old man’s body and demeanour was strangely out of place.

The day had begun with a confused Nay waking up in her tent with a pastry and a glass of Yaeda Milk put just outside her door. After enjoying the gift, she decided to enter the house, and saw Vestigio cleaning up inside.

“Oh, hi.” Said the old man in a timid voice.

This was when Nay understood something magical in nature was happening with the old man.

“Hello?” She answered.

She was given a smile, and the “man” continued his work.

“Doesn’t my presence here bother you?” Nay knew that, two days prior, she would have been attacked by him if she had dared enter his house.

“Oh no, not at all. I am here alone, and it has been ages since I had the company of a woman. Here sit down.”

Nay obeyed and sat down around the table. The tablecloth was floral, and of the same orange colour as the curtains.

“You’ll need to give me some kind of explanation.” Said the young Legio.

Vestigio, bashfully, pushed a strand of red hair back behind his ears.

“I…I’m not exactly the right person for that. I don’t understand much myself. Sage Jormun will be the better one to answer you, if he shows himself.”

“Who are you?”

The “man” put down the bucket and towel in his right hand on the ground and sat in front of her.

“A long, long time ago, I was simply Magdalena. Now, I am also the Sage Jormun, Vestigio, and the mute.”

“What about the Genuine?” Nay remembered.

“Oh, it is one of Vestigio’s and Sage Jormun’s nickname back in the day.”

“You really can’t explain anything to me?”

“Shhh, speak softly, the boy is still sleeping…What sadness he harbours inside. I would like to be there more often to help him. Body growing differently than the mind is such a hard tragedy to avoid. I’m afraid it is too late for him.”

Nay stopped talking, taken aback by this familiar idea she had heard uttered about herself in the past.

“Do you want some more milk?” Asked the “man”.

“No thank you, what you prepared for me before was perfect. The best meal I’ve had since a long time.”

“Oh no, I remember what you made me yesterday, you are far too humble. You may use my kitchen whenever you so desire, I’m certain you’ll make much better things than I can.”

“But…yesterday…that wasn’t you?”

“No, but once I wake up, I remember everything.”

Nay’s eyebrows rose.

“Is that specific to you, or…?”

Magdalena thought about it.

“I don’t think so. It most definitely is also the case with Ves and Sage Jormun, but with the Mute, it’s hard to say.”

“I think I understand. Are you…inhabited? By multiple spirits?”

“No. Vestigio, the Mute and I have lived separately before. Ves…I have the knowledge, but not the understanding… he met Sage Jormun, and gave his body to him. Then, they saved us.”

“Saved?”

“Sorry. I don’t want to say more, I’m too bad at explaining. I know that Sage Jormun will want to talk to you, and if he does, he’ll answer so much better than I can.”

Nay nodded. Finally, things were getting a bit clearer. “When exactly? The day before yesterday was Vestigio, yesterday was the Mute, and today is you? So tomorrow…”

“No, it doesn’t work like that, unfortunately. I…I am very old, so much so that even with the powers we have…our spirit is…I’m the one the most spared of the effect of time, because the three others protect me from it. Soon though, even me…”

Nay heard the inevitability in her words, even though she did not really understand what the man meant by it. Still, Magdalena had said that not with fear nor sadness, but almost joy, as if she was talking about an old friend.

The “man” continued.

“I need to apologize about Vestigio’s behaviour. He is the one shielding us the most from the passage of time, but that is not an excuse. In another time, he would have forgiven you, and welcomed you as his granddaughter, whatever your origins. But now he…he can’t. Still, I believe he will help you, if you give him time. Despite everything, he is still the man who saved me, without ever asking anything in return. He is fundamentally good. As for Sage Jormun, his appearances have a price. I think he will only come when you are ready to accept his answers.”

Nay sighed. “Time is the only thing I don’t have. My friends are in mortal danger, my family is at the capital, on their own, I don’t even know if they heard about my dad’s death, if they’ll ever forgive me, and…” She stopped talking, Magalena’s hand was on her shoulder, comforting her.

“It’s going to be all right.”

Nay nodded, unable to respond.

She left shortly after. As she had nothing else to do, she decided to explore the oasis again. During the day, the woods and the body of water almost as big as a lake were peaceful. Her only noteworthy discovery was a hole in the ground, almost three feet wide and six feet deep, with sand covering the bottom blown inside by the wind. It was not far from the edge of the forest. She found big feathers inside, like the one she had found three days prior, traces of struggle and animal blood of unknown origin.

When she came back, she found Carle sitting on a large palm tree trunk laying on its side: their makeshift bench next to the campfire.

She sat down next to him and after saying hello, Nay told him about her conversation with the feminine alter ego.

“It sounds like what I saw two days ago. Some sort of split personality?” He said once the Legio finished her story.

“I have no idea what that means.” Nay admitted without shame.

“Some sort of mental sickness, I think.”

“Ah, I more or less asked him about that, but no, it felt something magical in nature. A miracle I mean.”

Carle smiled. “Don’t worry about that, the Order of Tellers of Truth are the only priests to consider magic and miracles as the same thing. We do not like to lie, after all.”

Nay laughed. “Seems logical.”

The young boy’s expression became dark. “When I woke up, it wasn’t the housewife version I saw though, but the violent one.”

Nay nodded. She already knew that; the Rreico was unmistakable.

“Good, I need to talk to him, and so do you.” They then waited for Vestigio to exit his house.

Fortunately, when he did leave the house, he was not drunk. Still wearing his green robe, he stopped to look at them when he noticed them in the garden.

“Wha? Who are you?” He asked.

Nay grimaced. It seemed that his previous confusion was not entirely the result of alcohol, and she understood what Magdalena meant about the price they had to pay a bit more.

“I am Nay, Marke’s adoptive daughter, and this is Carle, Teller of Truth in apprenticeship.” She clenched her teeth, now expecting to be attacked for the third time.

He did not. “Oh, I, yes, the Firante and the boy in a girl’s body. Yes, of course.”

He approached them slowly. “What are you still doing here?”

Carle cleared his throat. “We came here to ask you for help, Sage Jormun.”

The old man shook his head, but Nay did not know if he understood what the young boy told him, or if he was just faking it to seem less diminished.

“I need you to teach me how to kill an Angel.” Nay announced. “And Carle needs your guidance.”

“Yes, yes. Yes. No. I cannot aid Carle, he is the only one that can, and he will not do it. Sage Jormun could guide him and lighten his burden, but I can’t. And I refuse to help a Firante.”

Nay sighed, then tried again. “Master Vestigio, this Angel kills haphazardly, anything and everyone that stands in its way. It must be stopped. You told the stories to my father and to …another student. Is there nothing you could teach me?”

“Another student?” Suddenly, the old man’s anger was rekindled. “Him. If he knows what is coming, he’ll have time to prepare, and he could win against it.”

“Redrick could beat an Angel?” Nay exclaimed. She immediately realised she had made a mistake. “Sorry, I didn’t…”

“HIM!” The old man stood up, and in a terrifying display of strength, crushed the part of the tree trunk Nay was sitting on to smithereens. She had dodged the hit just in time. Carle shrieked in surprise before trying to intervene.

“By Lebe, master! Please stop!”

The old man barely looked at him, but Nay, alerted by the Rreico, jumped on the young boy. She stumbled with him on the ground and crushed him quite unceremoniously under her weight.

“Wah!” Carle shouted. He could not have seen it, but Vestigio’s slap had barely missed his face. The strength of the strike would most likely have broken his neck.

Nay was already back on her feet. “Get back Carle!” She commanded, shielding him with her body.

But the master Legio was not attacking, he was staring at her with a disdainful gaze, unmoving.

“You want my help? I have nothing to give, Firante! But all right then, let us speak! Show me what Marke taught you!”

Nay watched Carle get away, then focused back on the old man.

She unsheathed her dagger and sword.

“No, no, no. We talk with fists today!”

Nay smirked. “I see.” She put her blades back in their scabbards, undid her belt and let it fall on the ground. “I should have guessed.”

Vestigio stepped forward once, his feet crushing the ground underneath, and his fist wanting to do the same to her face. She sidestepped while blocking the attack with her opened hand.

“What should you have guessed, Firante!?” He spat out.

“That you are like Marke. No way of having a meaningful talk with you without fighting.”

She took a step back before his kick even began, so he stopped his movement mid-way. “A Legio doesn’t fight. He goes beyond.” Said Vestigio.

Nay smiled. “The only rival you should ever have is yourself.”

Vestigio’s right punch went for her chin, while his left punch went for her solar plexus. Nay immediately recognised the technique as a Jarulavien one and dodged it like she did with the old man’s first strike: She sidestepped and blocked with her palms.

“Your rhythm is nowhere near as calm as my father’s.” Nay had said that calmly, with no animosity.

The old man got angrier. “No, I am not capable of that anymore, the chaotic nature of my old age strips me of that control. In the past, you would be on the ground already.”

“Without a doubt.” Nay was convinced of that as well. He continued his assault.

He put his hands on the ground, and in a move like the one Nay had used to knock out the Carradin colossus, his right foot flew straight towards her head. Once again, Nay dodged by sidestepping.

“Are you mocking me?” Vestigio asked.

“No, I just don’t want to hurt you anymore than I already did. After our first fight four days ago, you stopped using your left arm. And your last strike towards my torso was way slower than the one aimed at my head.”

The old man sighed. “See? I have nothing to teach you. Continue training and fighting, and you’ll get better naturally, maybe even to the point of you beating an Angel.”

“Yes, but I am a God-Touched, and you could help me control…”

“No.”

“I cannot wait years! I cannot wait to become as good as the Commandare, if I will ever reach that level! An Angel is chasing me!”

“And she chases you because you used your magic. You don’t understand. You are not God-Touched. I cannot help you.” Vestigio refusal was blunt and rooted. Behind his anger, Nay also felt something else: the truth. He would not teach her.

“But then…I came here for nothing…I…”

The master Legio grimaced. “As much as I hate saying it. I can help you with something else. But not me.”

Nay raised her head. “Your alter ego? Sage Jormun.”

Vestigio nodded.

“So I am to wait for the apparition of something or someone I don’t even understand? All that while my friends get murdered, a city gets slaughtered, and my family suffers?”

“If you don’t want my advice, leave. What do I care about your misfortune?”

Nay’s anger rose. “I see. I shall do as I originally thought then. I will leave in four days.”

He shrugged his shoulders and turned around.

“Carle?” She continued.

The young boy had taken refuge behind the tent and was looking at the scene with only parts of his head and his eyes poking out.

“Yes?”

“You OK?”

“I should be the one asking that to you. Are we good? Is he calm?”

Nay looked at the back of the grumbling old man, walking towards the almost lake, with no interest in them anymore. “He’s not. But he knows he can’t beat me in his current state. He won’t attack me anymore. Well, except if he forgets who I am again tomorrow…” Nay sighed: “Did you understand what he said?”

“Same as you, I think. But I’ll stay, even if Sage Jormun doesn’t wake in a week. I have no other hope.”

“I understand.” Said Nay.

The young boy had a last look towards Vestigio, then gave Nay a weird look. She saw him and stared back.

“What is it?”

“Want to play Comptoy?” He asked.