“Their camp is up near the top of the mountain?” Myraden asked. “You are sure about this?”

“That’s what I saw in the Saltspray warrior’s memories.” Pirin led the way, pushing through the undergrowth with Gray right behind him. “It’d make sense if their camp was near the top of the mountain. When Nomad showed me his map, the only visible entrance was near the summit. If we find their camp, we’ll find an entrance.”

Pirin and Myraden had been trekking through the wilderness since the sun had risen, climbing towards the top of the mountain. Their Familiars walked behind them, and Pirin had formed his Reyad early with Gray, giving himself a few minutes to rest before beginning to walk.

Sweat already beaded under his mask, disrupting the runes and making his connection with Gray scratchy at times. He had been hoping it would’ve been slightly cooler in the morning, but on an island like this, there seemed to be no such thing as cool.

He was tempted to say that he’d never felt any place so warm in his life, but he stopped himself. He couldn’t remember visiting any place so warm.

One day, when he had better control of the Memory Chain, he’d know for sure.

“An entrance to what?” Myraden asked, wiping the sweat from her brow with the back of her hand. If Pirin thought he wasn’t handling the heat well, he was afraid to think what it was like for her—supposedly, Northern Sprites were built for the cold, frozen tundras of Ískan.

“I dunno what it’s called, actually,” Pirin said. “Nomad called it a temple, but from that patchwork of tunnels, it seems more like a dungeon.”

“If it is a dungeon, what is it imprisoning?”

Pirin had no answer for her, so he only shrugged.

Halfway through the day, the ground began to shudder. The dirt shifted beneath their feet, and Pirin dropped to his hands and knees to stay stable. They had been walking up a nearly forty-five degree incline. When the dirt shifted, they began to lose their footing and slip. Despite his low stance, Pirin started to slide backwards down the slope.

He shifted to the side, clutching onto a tree trunk to keep from sliding all the way back down the hill. Gray chirped and fluttered up in fright. At Myraden’s command, Kythen hooked his horns around a fallen log. Myraden herself clutched onto a crumbling sandstone pillar that looked like it had just risen out of the ground days ago.

This is the first tremor we’ve ever felt, Gray commented. Right? We would have noticed even if we were sleeping, right?

“Either it’s been worse on this side of the island,” Pirin said, his teeth chattering, “or the tremors aren’t happening as often anymore.”

I hope it’s the second one! For your sake, really. Humans are pretty feeble, now that I think about it…not being able to fly. Don’t you wish you were a bird?

“...No, not really, Gray.”

After a few minutes of clinging on to the tree, the tremors stopped, and they continued up the slope.

“Do you know how far up the mountain the camp is?” Myraden inquired, continuing her string of questions.

“It was in a bit of a crag, surrounded on all sides by rocks and such. I could see the summit…maybe a quarter-day’s climb.”

“Which side of the mountain?”

“No idea. The sun was behind us, but I couldn’t tell if it was morning or evening.”

“That is helpful…”

“It…is?” Pirin tilted his head. “You know, I kinda thought it was pretty vague…”

“That was sarcasm.”

“If you’re going to be sarcastic, then you at least have to have a little inflection in your voice…” Pirin complained. “Otherwise, it’s impossible to tell.”

“Low Speech is not my first language.”

“I know, I know,” Pirin said. “Sorry. Look, we need to find out where the camp is. I bet we’ll stumble across a patrol or sentries soon enough. Instead of killing ‘em, I’ll need to look inside their heads.” He glanced back at their Familiars, trailing behind at a distance. “That goes for you too, Gray. You heard that, right?”

Hm? Oh, yes, I heard that!

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“Kythen won’t understand if I tell him anything, will he?” Pirin asked Myraden.

“He might get bits and pieces if you speak Íshkaben,” Myraden said. “I have been teaching him to recognize it without needing to use my Reyad to carry the intent across. But he will not understand Low Speech.”

“Íshkaben?”

She scrunched her eyebrows, and a mix of sadness and confusion crossed her face. “You lost that much—that many memories?”

Pirin pressed his lips together. “I…lost a lot. But there’s a lot that just feels locked away. Like it was once there, and it’s a part of me, but the moment I try to reach in and examine it, to use them, they slip away.”

“What do you remember?”

“Only broad swaths. I was born on Kerstel. Somehow, I made it to Sirdia, and I’ve been sitting on the throne for a—” His cheeks reddened, followed by a pang of sorrow.

Oh, what? Gray’s voice rang out in his head. She is kinda pretty, isn’t she? For a human. Or…sprite. Well, I suppose some human forms are somewhat elegant.

Pirin rolled his eyes. It wasn’t that. He just couldn’t remember how long he’d been a king. He settled on: “A little while. But I’m not king by blood, I know that much.”

“The line ended,” Myraden remarked plainly and bitterly.

“Apparently, I was chosen by the Eane.” He didn’t like the sound of that—too self gratifying—so he added, “Probably chose wrong.” An Embercore wasn’t the best choice for a king.

“Regardless, you are the elf with black hair, and you have the Memory Chain—no one else.” She crossed her arms. “You have the potential to become a wizard who can rock the foundations of the earth. You and only you. I cannot allow you to put that power to waste. Not when you could be wielding it against the Dominion.”

“Got a grudge against them?”

“And you do not?” She shook her head. “You have power, and we need it.”

“I don’t plan on giving up, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

They walked (or climbed) for another half hour, the only breaks coming when Gray pestered Pirin about Myraden.

“Do you remember who taught you to use that sword?” Myraden asked after a little while.

“I don’t.”

“You should start trying,” she grumbled.

“Do you know?” Pirin raised his eyebrows. He couldn’t resist the prospect of hearing a little more about his past—and without having to use the Memory Chain to do it. “Was it someone important? Do—”

“I know,” she stated. “It was a man named Kalénier. But you will need to remember that yourself.”

“Why?”

“You cannot cultivate a Reign over a weapon without first having a deep, lasting connection with it.” She tapped the loose shaft of her spear, which she had tied around her waist. “I have had this weapon ever since my father passed it to me, and I have not managed to form a Reign. Most wizards only start cultivating it once they get past the Blaze stage and form a runebond.”

“I’ll—” Pirin cleared his throat. “I’ll pretend to know what that means.” He was about to ask her what all the different stages of magic ahead were when he spotted a shifting shadow in the trees in front of them. “In front of us.”

Myraden whispered something to Kythen, and the bloodhorn ducked down, burying his vibrant red horns in the dirt. Gray stopped moving, and that was all she needed to blend in with the land. Pirin and Myraden ducked behind a log to stay out of sight.

“A sentry?” Pirin asked. He lifted his head above the log just a sliver—enough that he could see the shadow’s details. It was humanoid, and it was wearing a white robe just like the two Saltspray warriors they had encountered the previous night.

It was a broad-shouldered man with long black hair, and he wore his weapons: brass knuckles embedded with salt crystals.

“I’ll look inside his mind, if I can, and try to—”

“Do not tell me,” Myraden whispered. “Just do it.”

Pirin picked up a twig and tossed it upwards. It hit one of the broad fronds above, clacking and rustling. The sentry whirled towards them, his gaze high up. If he was focussed on the trees above, he wouldn’t be looking down at Pirin or Myraden.

But now, Pirin had a direct line to the man’s eyes.

With his hand outstretched, but still hidden behind the log, Pirin began the Whisper Hitch. He penetrated the man’s mind and gathered up the man’s present thoughts—and more importantly, his memories.

Since Pirin already had an idea what the camp looked like, he flooded his Essence with thoughts of that, rather than words or phrases. It would blend easier.

At first, the sentry’s mind resisted. But the man wasn’t paying too close attention, and his mind was hardly primed to resist a subtle mental probe.

After a few cycles, the sentry’s mind began to respond. First, it filled in a few more details of the camp. It placed them in a crevice again, but turned the tents from white blurs to proper tarps with the Saltspray sect sigil on them, and it added campfires. At the very end of the crevice, a doorway led into the mountain.

“But where is the camp…” Pirin whispered, shutting his eyes and pushing the thought over to the man. He tapped his foot inside his boot. Slowly, the man’s recollection of the camp broadened, providing Pirin an image of the surrounding forest. Pirin looked to the left, hoping that the vague feeling might prompt the man’s memories to do the same.

It took a few attempts, but after a few seconds, the memories shifted, providing Pirin a view away from the mountain. Pirin could see the north shore of Dulfer’s Reach framed between a pair of especially tall trees—they looked like pines, except instead of boughs with needles, they had long fronds.

North side of the mountain. Look for two much taller trees. That should be enough to go on.

He pulled his hand back and ducked down, then stopped cycling and cut off the technique. “I’ve got a good picture, now,” Pirin said. “Let him move along, and we can keep going.”