Pirin turned around in a circle, eyes glued wide open.
Or…as best as he could tell, he turned. A cave of shadowy black mist swirled around him. He looked down, trying to find the wooden boards of the floor, but instead, there were only pale sandstone bricks.
When he looked back up, a crowd now surrounded him. Elves crowded together, shouting and cheering. A light dusting of snow fluttered down over the crowd, and their breath turned to mist. He was back in Sirdia?
No. Just an illusion. Break it.
But it felt just real enough. The crowd had the dirty garments of the common elves, and they all looked tired. Past the first ranks, they just turned into silhouettes, but they still cheered and hollered.
Pirin gulped. They stood in the plaza outside the royal palace in Northvel. Everyone was looking up at a podium on the other side.
The Nightmare was trying to trap him in his fears? Any moment, an ostal lord in Dominion colours would rise up on the podium and announce that Sirdia had fallen, that they had wrestled the land from a weak king, and they would rule it with an iron fist. The people were cheering because they had hated him.
But instead, a copy of Pirin stepped up onto the podium. He wore a military coat with glass award rings on the breast pocket, and a pristine fur cloak rolled off his shoulders. Two blue banners unfurled behind him.
His reflection was older. Scars ran down its face, and its black hair was shorter. It raised its voice and shouted out an angry, passionate speech to the crowd. It spoke with a practiced charisma, telling half-truths or straight-out lies, playing to their fears and insecurities, and promising the world to them.
An older Chancellor Ivescent stood to the left of the apparition, and there was no one behind him. Pirin knew well enough: the court had been dissolved, the Representatives of the Common were gone, and the lords had no sway. His rule was absolute.
And the elves in the crowd just clapped and cheered.
When Pirin’s reflection finished its speech, it raised a fist in salute. The entire crowd copied him. “Hail!” they chanted. “Hail to the Emberking!”
Pirin fell to his knees, hiding in the crowd. His hands trembled.
There was a reason his enemies were terrified of him. He could twist their minds and actions, and he could break their souls with a single push. He could see their memories and estimate their futures. Soon, everyone in the world would be terrified of him. He would force them to love him.
“Pirin!” came a voice from behind.
He whirled around. He didn’t recognize the voice, but it spoke with the same thick accent Myraden did. But it was a man’s voice.
Kythen prowled through the crowd of illusions, pushing the elves apart. His black eyes drilled into Pirin’s chest, his blood-red horns glistened, and his white fur blew in the wind. Every second, the illusion was getting more and more real.
“What…” said the real Pirin—not the dictatorial reflection.
“You are in an illusion!” Kythen snapped. “And I am in your dreams. You must snap out of it. The Nightmare is feeding on you!”
“How…are you here?” Pirin rubbed his head. He felt lightheaded again.
“It is a dream. It is not real. It does not affect the Familiars unless we enter the illusions of our own master. Gray is helping Myraden, but you are in the greatest danger. The Nightmare is right on top of you. It is trying to crack your soul and gain access to your Essence channels.”
Pirin ran over to the bloodhorn and walked a circle around the horse-sized goat. Everything about him was real.
“Pirin, listen to me,” Kythen said. “You only saw a potential future. It does not have to be that way. You do not have to be a cruel, manipulative king. You can use your abilities to help, and you can use them noblely.”
He opened his mouth, about to glance back at his reflection on the podium, but Kythen bleated sharply, drawing his attention back.
“Do you know why the wizards of Ískan are called Cursebearers?”
“Thin blood? Sometimes advancements are unpleasant?”
Kythen shook his head and his beard wiggled. “Because they were the lords of that land, overseeing the bare tundra and the few people who scratched out a living on it. They ruled not because they wanted to, but because they had to. They received little thanks and little recognition, and they often had to make difficult choices. It is hard to be a virtuous nobleman, but it was expected of them—it was their curse.”
Pirin nodded. He had embarked on this quest to become a good king, at least partially. It was up to him how it ended. He shut his eyes. “I will be good,” he breathed.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
When he opened his eyes, he was laying on his back on the wooden floor of the keep’s entrance. He exhaled a purple mist out his mouth, and the rest of the Nightmare’s aura technique blasted away from his body. Kythen stood just behind, a hoof on Pirin’s shoulder, and Gray loomed over Myraden, shielding her like a hawk mantling its meal.
But the Nightmare stood over Pirin. Its shifting, shadow-made claws dug into his shoulders, but it stared right into his head, and seemingly straight through to his soul. It wanted the treat inside, to feed on what made Pirin Pirin.
But it was physically weak. It put all its strength into an illusory attack, then fed on its incapacitated victims.
Recognizing that he was awake, it snapped at him with its teeth, but he wrenched his head to the side, then drove a Shattered Palm into its chest. He flung the technique as hard as he could, and an enormous blue palm the size of his body erupted out. It shattered the Nightmare’s form and sent wisps of the shadow wraith crawling back into the cage it had come from. They broke apart.
He and Kythen leapt up, then chased the wisps, dispersing them with kicks and stomps so they wouldn’t ever reform.
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Sleet and heavy rain thrashed Myraden, soaking her coat and holding her down. She knelt at the top of a ridge, and there was nothing she could do but watch.
The Dominion started taking Sirdia seriously. A strong-willed Emperor was crushing them. A thin line of wizards in white cloaks and thin chainmail marched across a field, hacking apart elven soldiers and staining the ground with their blood.
At the head of the army stood the Red Hand.
She swallowed, remembering her last fight with Khara. The seafolk woman hadn’t been lying—Myraden had trained under the Hand as a disciple as well. It was an infiltration, simple spywork, but whether she liked it or not, the Hand had been her first teacher. She had whispers of him inside her.
Don’t fight your Familiar. The Hand had told her that. It hadn’t seemed like such horrible advice at the time, but coming from him? He was the enforcer of the Emperor. He had killed countless sprites just like her.
His red-gloved hand flashed through the gloomy air. With each swipe, one of his enemies fell.
“Myra!” someone squawked behind her.
She whirled around. An enormous sparrow stepped into her vision, plodding through the grass and slush.
“...Gray?” Myraden asked.
“Come on!” the gnatsnapper said. “It’s an illusion. The Nightmare is doing this to you!”
“How are you here?”
“How am I here?” Gray tilted her head for a few seconds, then shook out her wings and said, “According to Pirin, the Nightmare has a complex toxin of manifested Essence that can poison a user’s mind. Once it takes hold, just touching them is enough to draw them into the illusion.”
Myraden blinked. Illusion…
She slapped the side of her head.
“You need to fight it,” Gray said. “It’s not real. Wake up.”
“What if the Dominion comes? We will burn…”
“That’s why we’re advancing, right? We’re already taking Flares and slapping them around. Imagine what we can do when we make it to Wildflame!”
The bird was just as hopeful as Pirin. Maybe naïve, too, but Myraden couldn’t fault the assessment. The illusion began to crumble. The rain didn’t weigh her down as much, and the sky didn’t seem as dark.
Myraden shut her eyes. “I will not let the Dominion destroy the rest of my people…”
“That’s it!”
“I will protect us…”
When she opened her eyes, the illusion peeled away, and she found herself laying on her back on the wooden floor of the keep. She coughed a wisp of purple smoke out her mouth then sat upright.
“You’re alright?” Pirin asked, standing beside her.
“I am fine.”
He cast her a skeptical look, but he took a few steps back and pulled the outer gates of the keep shut while Kythen dragged the unconscious guard inside. “Someone will notice soon. We need to move quickly.”
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Pirin, Myraden, and the Familiars ran up to the second level of the keep. They split up, hunting for the wild treasures they each needed individually. Pirin stayed with Gray this time, and Myraden went with Kythen.
On the second level, they found a long hallway lined with storage chambers. Inside each chamber were mounds of wild-treasures. They radiated different auras, each like they harnessed Reign of an aspect of the world itself. Wild-treasure twigs reigned over wood and trees, bricks reigned over stone, a speck of an animal’s blood reigned over flesh. They waited behind rune-scripted portcullises, contained in environments perfect for maintaining their quality.
Every wizard needed a wild-treasure of some sort to begin the process of reforging their body (once they reached the halfway mark of the Flare stage), and it determined the type of body they’d earn for themselves. But from there, the process for most Flares was a slow integration of Essence and binding the purpose of their enhanced body to their flesh.
Pirin planned to use as many wild treasures as he could get his hands on to rush the second half of the Flare stage. It’d be uncomfortable, and if his will broke, it would leave him as a spiritual cripple.
But really, what was new?
He cracked his knuckles. None of the treasures on the second floor were what he needed, so he moved to the third floor, keeping an eye out for guards. As he ran, he practiced his cycling pattern to push Essence out into his muscles and prepare them for the reforging process.
Judging just by how loose and energized his muscles felt, he figured he was about halfway to the midpoint. He took a swig of elixir from his void pendant—he still needed to maintain an Essence base while preparing his body.
Soon. Soon, the reforging process would begin. His hands jittered, and his stomach churned with anticipation.
But the third floor was just as packed. Cells lined every wall, hoarding more wild-treasures.
It would be a long day of searching.