Seris Vritra

I strode through the makeshift barrack created for me and my council, moving for an empty room. Outwardly, I was a picture of perfect poise. I displayed everything required of a Scythe: perfect grace and cool, powerful indifference. My mask of apathy was a weapon to be wielded as I saw fit, striking at any who stepped out of line.

But within? I was tense; taut as a wyvern-hide bow. Cylrit had contacted me swiftly, as expected. I knew Retainer Uto had been planning an ambush of Arthur Leywin in concert with Councilor Rahdeas. I’d volunteered my eventual assistance to the Councilor myself, ordering him not to inform Commander Uto of my interference.

I will enjoy snapping Uto’s horns from his head, I thought absently, suppressing a ravenous smile. The man had been a nagging thorn in my side for far too long, his crass nature and obvious mouthpiece for Dragoth’s inner thoughts wearing away at my patience. Too long have I withheld from breaking that beast.

I buried that vindictive surge. I had more important reasons for what I was about to do. Lance Godspell, above all others, needed to survive for the eventual storm. It would not be just Alacrya caught between the gazes of Kezess and Agrona, but Dicathen as well. And they could not be left without their figures of power.

As my feet carried me forward, I thought of the first time I’d seen the boy, Arthur Leywin, as he spied my entrance onto this continent. I hadn’t been able to sense his mana signature, masked as it was by whatever art he used to hide it. But I hadn’t needed to.

For that barest instant, I’d sensed how the ambient mana itself seemed to move with the reincarnated man, accommodating his every breath. The air and fire and earth and water bowed to his will, the world seeming to show me his importance for a split instant. Here was a mage whose presence demanded the attention of even the mana itself.

And it was not me alone who sensed Lance Godspell’s intrusion. Toren Daen had focused with singular intensity on his location as well, then spoke nothing of what he must have perceived in the aftermath.

Lord Daen himself marched behind me, adorned in his bronze armor and mask and dressed for battle. The look of surprise on his face when I’d ordered his presence with me during the ambush had been something worth remembering, but that wasn’t why I took him with me.

I will have to prepare more puzzles in the off chance Toren manages to solve the one I gifted him for his birthday, I thought. That was one of the greatest lessons I’d learned from Agrona Vritra: make plans for any eventuality, no matter how unlikely. I fondly remembered the fiery glint in the young musician’s eyes as he dared me to find a puzzle he couldn’t solve. That challenge was a mistake, Lord Daen. I hope your mind won’t give out on me so quickly.

But for all of Toren’s intellect, he was only human. The young man was entirely correct in his earlier assertion that I had no place in his rooms or knocking on his door. I was a Scythe, after all, and he but a pawn on my board. But Toren was more inclined to try and backtrack over his blunders rather than address their verity.

A useful thing to exploit, the emotions of young men.

Toren was a wildcard, certainly. But even as a wildcard, he had patterns. Such as whenever he was alone, or felt comfortable, his tongue and mannerisms would loosen remarkably.

I will have to send inquiries to Scythe Nico on what, precisely, poker is, I thought as my feet carried me onward. A game of chance and cards, certainly, but if it was region-specific on Earth, or bore some other significance…

Sovereign’s Quarrel was a game reserved solely for the upper class and well-to-do. There was a chance that ‘poker’ could be similarly divided along lines of class and wealth.

I could divine far more of Toren’s otherworld knowledge through simple paths such as that. I had no doubt within my mind that the young mage had been intentionally goading me as he vaunted his “vast experiences.”

I restrained a creeping smirk at that understanding. It was so very foolish of him to think himself safe after so openly taunting me.

But I buried the vindictive smirk beneath the cold mask of a Scythe right alongside my whispering thoughts. As I glided into one of the rooms of my make-do estate, I spotted the man I was looking for.

Wolfrum Redwater, wearing his illusory mask of Xander, stood at attention by the teleportation gate. I’d found the boy with Vritra blood early on, nurturing his talents in secret as Renea Shorn first, before eventually revealing my true identity many years later.

When his Vritra blood manifests, he will be an invaluable ally, I thought, striding forward. Though not yet.

I had found many whose blood had yet to manifest. I had even made a habit of it. So that I could give them the choice I never had.

“Xander,” I said coolly, looking at the empty room, “I will be gone for a short while. You are to maintain the standard operation of our forces until I return.”

Wolfrum bowed low. “Understood, Scythe Seris,” he said reverently. “But… if I may, what calls you away from our operations here?”

I chanced the young man a glance, feeling my brow wrinkle slightly. “It is not of your concern, Xander,” I said coolly. He averted his eyes at my quiet rebuke, then rushed off to fulfill my orders. The tap of his shoes on stone receded into the distance as I stared at the empty room.

“Hey, Seris?” Toren asked from behind me, his lack of decorum glaringly apparent. I turned to look at the young man, who suddenly seemed unsure. “Are we going to fly out of here? Because I can’t exactly, well…”

I blinked, then suppressed another smile as I connected the dots of his suspicions. If we were to fly out of this cavern all the way to Sapin’s northern border, then I would certainly have to carry the young mage for several hours straight at the minimum. He wasn’t yet of the white core, after all, and couldn’t fly himself.

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“Luckily for you, Lord Daen, that is not the case,” I said. “I have been granted possession of a long-distance tempus warp by our High Sovereign for use only during emergencies due to its proximity to degradation.”

“Huh,” Toren muttered, sounding genuinely surprised. “I didn’t actually think of that, to be honest. It makes sense, though.”

I withdrew the aforementioned artifact from my dimension ring, holding the anvil-shaped item as I faced the wall. I funneled mana into the device, feeling as the energy drew on my deep reserves. With a bare effort of will, I directed the activation to the stone in front of me. Slowly, a small portal fuzzed into existence in front of me, the other end leading exactly where my mind’s eye was directed.

So powerful a device, I thought, And so few are its uses. A shame how quickly the works of our ancestors wear away under our greedy hands.

I held the tempus warp in my hands, banishing my slight melancholy. I had a mission to complete, and every extemporaneous thought risked derailing an otherwise steady hand.

“Stay close behind me and suppress your mana signature,” I commanded Lord Daen, my focus heavy on the portal in front of me. “We cannot afford detection.”

Without waiting for my companion’s affirmation, I stepped through the portal. The transition was seamless as always, leaving me standing in a dusty room. Above me, old timbers creaked and groaned, each unseen to for what must have been an age. A table with chairs stacked on top sat not far away.

Toren stepped through the portal a moment later. He did a slow rotation of the room, his soulful orange eyes inspecting every surface. “This place looks like it hasn’t been touched in a century,” he said, skeptically eying the supports. “Are you sure it won’t collapse on us?”

“We are currently in an abandoned house on the far outskirts of a town called Ashber,” I said coolly, striding forward. “Not far away, Commander Uto prepares an ambush for Lance Godspell with Lance Balrog.” I tilted my head, turning to face the young musician behind me as he followed mutely. “We will be on standby, ready to intervene in case of unforeseen circumstances.”

Toren’s mouth settled into a thin line of distaste at the mention of Uto. “I understand,” he said stiffly.

I walked outside of the dilapidated house–a shack, really–and immediately felt the biting cold air of winter on my skin. In Alacrya, it was the start of summertime. Dicathen was located on the northern hemisphere, however, flipping their relative seasons. I layered myself in a sheen of protective mana, blocking out that chill.

But even here, spring shall eventually come, I thought, quietly yearning for the season of growth. I need only wait. Even the coldest winters pass.

We were on the outskirts of a forest, not far away from the underground bunker Olfred Warend–codename Lance Balrog–had created for our soldiers.

“The dawn is here,” I heard Toren say behind me, quiet awe in his words. “It feels so good to be under the sky again.”

Indeed, the rising morning sun cast the forest around us in a turbulent mixture of shadow and light as the far-off star crested the Grand Mountains, seeming to balance on the near tips for a moment. I allowed myself a small bit of relaxation, drinking in the sight.

But the turbulent auras that crashed through the glade banished my brief moment of relaxation. Retainer Uto’s dark, compressing squeeze was familiar to me. But the dominating presence that was awash with a dozen different flavors of power was not.

They must have been several hundred feet away. I could feel the presence of a third power there, too, no doubt Arthur Leywin’s dragon bond.

And I knew with immediate certainty that Lance Godspell would lose this fight.

“They’re fighting already,” Toren breathed, his eyes narrowing into pinpricks as he stared off into the distance. He looked back at me uncertainly, seeming to expect something. “Is this… to expectation?”

An especially large burst of mana shook the earth, a draconic roar echoing through the air that caused every bird nearby to scatter in waves. A wave of wind fluttered against my dress as it pushed through the trees, causing my silver-lavender hair to flutter. That roar shifted into one of furious pain as Uto’s mana flared.

Toren took a few steps forward, his eyes utterly focused on the distant fight. That same pinpoint attention he’d shown Nico seemed to overtake him once again, perhaps even more narrowly. And in doing so, he fed into one of the reasons I had brought him here in the first place.

I exhaled a breath, feeling my heartbeat rise even further as I inspected Toren. From my talk with Nico Sever not a week past, I’d put together what should have been an impossible puzzle of the young man. Coffee, skyscrapers, and phoenixes all slotted into a resounding conclusion to so many of the mysteries Toren displayed.

He told me he lay dying in the forest when he was granted the power of his Phoenix Will, I thought, watching as Toren focused on the other reincarnate of this world. But… what if he truly did die? What if the true Toren Daen died, and another took his place? One from a world beyond ours?

It wasn’t a perfect theory. If this were the truth, I still could not definitively explain how Toren fit so well into our culture or why he pursued the Joans with such a vengeance. But from how he focused on both reincarnates, I felt a certainty deep in my mana core that he knew of them. By sight or by sense, Spellsong of Fiachra knew Nico Sever and Arthur Leywin were not all they appeared.

Toren’s head suddenly turned toward me, his brow rising and his mouth opening slightly. He seemed to belatedly recognize how single-tracked his focus had been, intentionally smoothing over his features.

He was getting better at that. Better at masking his emotions, ever since the summit with the High Sovereign.

I settled my heartbeat in my chest, the sensation one I experienced whenever I grew close to the end of a puzzle. I reined in the mana of mine that had begun to ever-so-slightly leak past my iron control and veiling artifact.

Toren could sense the intricacies of emotion through his magic. That much I had long ago deduced. After all, one of my closest jailors was the greatest magical empath I had ever met. It might not match up to Sovereign Orlaeth’s probing touch, but my cloaking artifact did protect me from Toren’s eyes. So he would not know my deepest thoughts.

But sometimes I slipped. I allowed myself to grasp onto a feeling that was too deep and too real; wrenching away every mask I laid in place. And this young man seemed to make it a habit of his to pull those veils aside, uncaring of the scars they revealed beneath.

I forced those thoughts away. My will was iron forged in the pits of Taegrin Caelum, and it wouldn’t falter simply because of this man’s gaze.

“Beneath our feet, there is another battle being waged,” I said sharply. “It seems Lance Olfred is engaged in combat with another white core mage, likely a Lance as well.”

Were Toren not here, I would have been forced to choose between rescuing Arthur Leywin from Uto’s gnarled grip and sparing an ally deep in the earth below.

And I’d expected something like this when I’d allowed Lance Godspell to leave my cavern in Darv alive. The boy was reportedly quite close with the elven royal family, Commander Virion Eralith in particular, meaning he had input and political sway that would allow him to circumvent the normal Council. I had suspected the reincarnate walking into Uto’s ambush was a deliberate decision, and considering the second battle I sensed far below us, it seemed Councilor Rahdeas was soon to be a prisoner.

But now I need not choose. I had confidence that Toren was more than a match for any of the Lances, and I could ensure the survival of a critical dwarven ally. The board continued to shift, and just as the High Sovereign had taught me, I needed to prepare for any eventuality.

“And your task is to ensure Lance Olfred’s continued survival against whatever force dogs his steps, since it appears his betrayal has been discovered,” I said at last.