The Red Hand approached the Aremir estate from the east, riding on horseback and riding fast. They had been pushing their mounts to the limit for the past few days, and the horses were minutes away from collapsing beneath them.
It was late afternoon when they reached the estate. A band of lights glittered on the horizon, and a few columns of smoke rose into the air. Chimneys or braziers, most likely, though if the heir was here and causing problems, it could very well be burning buildings and the aftermath of fighting.
“Are you sure he’s here?” Khara asked.
The Hand looked up at the sky. The steppehawk had been circling aimlessly above the estate for a few minutes, now. It had found its target.
“I am certain,” the Hand said. “Remember: be calm.”
“He took Nael from me. I will take someone he loves from him.” Khara reached for the sword at her hip. “Simple.”
The Red Hand hung his head. He didn’t expect it.
A single feeling permeated his bones: he was tired. So tired.
“We have a job to do. We have a head to take.” The Hand snapped his horse’s reins and guided it toward the outer wall of the estate.
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On the fourth floor, Pirin found a trio of Aremir family workers. They were mortals, and they only wore simple tunics in the family’s colours. They were touching up the runes on one of the treasure-containing portcullises.
Not here, not here, not here…are we there yet? Have you found anything? Gray’s voice came through the Reyad even stronger now that he put the mask on—after facing the Nightmare, he figured he might want better techniques for dispersing airborne toxins, and his gnatsnapper techniques were best for that.
Pirin was going to ignore the workers at first, and he hoped that (being mortals of the Aremir estate) they would give him the same courtesy, until he realized that they were standing in front of the cell he needed to get into.
Clouds filled the cell. They were pale green, having absorbed the auras of the prairie, but the rest were white from pure wind auras. It would build the exact enhanced body he needed, and the prairie auras would blend perfectly with Gray’s embedded plant-dragon wraith.
There were four workers. They all snapped to attention at the sight of Pirin. They probably expected him to be their supervisor—or whatever the Aremirs called the overseers—but after a few seconds, they began to glance at each other skeptically. After all, he was still wearing beach-party attire. Embroidered shorts, open gossamer shirt. In their eyes, he was probably a flaky nobleman partygoer who had gotten lost.
We shall not suffer such offense! Gray chirped inside his head, and Pirin couldn’t tell if she was being sarcastic or not. Blast them! Do something cool!
One of the workers held out an engraving needle. “Apologies, sir, but—”
Before he could finish, Pirin used a Winged Fist. The workers were twenty feet away, but his technique launched out fast enough to reach them. Up close, such a fast pulse of wind might have shattered a mortal man’s bones, but with distance and time for it to dissipate, it only hit them with a pulse strong enough to knock them unconscious. They collapsed a few feet away from the portcullis’ opening.
Pirin ran up to it, but there was no sense in opening it and potentially releasing the wild-treasures from their environment until he could use them.
He wasn’t at the halfway point of Flare yet. He needed to cycle more, and if he wanted to make the process faster, he knew exactly what to do.
Exactly what to do? Uh…I don’t!
Pirin blinked slowly. “Gray. You read my mind enough to get that thought, but you couldn’t read my mind to see my plan?”
Audibly, she let out a low rumble. You know, you make a good point…
Pirin chuckled under his breath and sat down. He leaned against the wall to support his back, then activated the Memory Chain.
It would boost the effectiveness of any of his cycling techniques while he used it, and that had to go for Nomad’s technique of pushing Essence out into his muscles.
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Lord One left his palace precisely four hours after noon. Four hours after he was supposed to meet with Lady Neria, four hours late.
There were advisors and heirs to attend to, finances to discuss, and a Familiar to care for.
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For the entire time span, Nomad ensured that no messengers reached his brother. He stopped the low Catch-stage riders and knocked them unconscious, then tied them in place in dark alcoves and shadows. They were coming from two directions now—from the keep-store of the wild-treasures, and from the elixir storage room.
When Lord One finally mounted his Familiar (a speckled stallion which Nomad had previously sworn to bond with, many decades ago) and rode off across the estate to meet the Lady Neria, Nomad exhaled a sigh of relief, but he couldn’t let up. He followed his brother, maintaining an aura of spiritual disruption and murkiness.
A pair of presences emerged at the edge of Nomad’s senses. They were entering the estate from the north.
He’d recognize the presence of his former disciple well. For a mortal man, the Red Hand cast a long shadow.
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Myraden found the wild treasures she needed on the fifth and final floor of the keep. On the stairway up, she and Kythen bumped into a Flare-stage overseer who hadn’t undergone his full-body transformation yet.
With a whip of her spear and a smack of Kythen’s hooves, they knocked the man out. He collapsed in an instant with a welt on his head.
They ran down the hallways, hunting for anything compatible with their aspects. Nomad had given them a list of options he thought best suited them, but she had one in mind above all else. If she could find any sort of silk, it would be perfect for her Bloodline Talent.
You might have to settle for something else, Kythen told her.
Myraden sighed. New Ískan silk hadn’t been woven for at least a decade now, and it was getting rarer by the second. But the Cursebearers of her family had always forged a Silkshaped body.
She ran a full loop of the keep’s upper floor, and like the other floors, she found no Ískan silk here.
But there was a treasure that caught her eye: a ten-foot long length of blood-red silk from south of the Stormwall. It wasn’t Ískan silk, and it didn’t respond to her Essence like her spear did, but something had happened to it, imbuing it with such a great auric importance and a miniature Reign of its own.
It hovered in the air behind the gate of a portcullis, begging her to use it.
Something like this had to be thousands of years old—from before the South fell and the Stormwall was raised.
She could modify the Silkshaped body to suit this new treasure. But first, she needed to reach the halfway point of the Flare stage.
The cycling pattern that Nomad tried to teach her didn’t come as easily as others had, but after a few weeks of practice, she had gotten it down. Now it was time to use it. She pushed whispers of ruby bloodhorn Essence out into her muscles, feeding them, loosening them, and preparing to reforge them.
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Pirin latched onto his memories of Myraden and pulled them out of the Chain. He hadn’t meant to at first, but it was on his mind. After a few minutes, he forced them consciously, focussing on the feelings he encountered around her. The Chain showed him dull moments of walking through forests, then of sparring with her and learning to fight.
Wherever Kal went, so did she. She was one of the reformed mercenary’s protégées, and thus, she appeared in many of his memories.
She had told Pirin about the burning of Ískan and the death of her father, and a great many other things that he’d made her repeat to him already.
Months worth of time spent together flooded back into his mind. It never felt terribly important, but when he looked back on it, he saw how much he had lost. So many memories had fled his mind. But she must’ve remembered most of them.
But there were months of memories to recover, and even then, he doubted he’d get them all. They filled a pit in his mind, but there was something different about them.
Maybe she was right. He’d changed since he’d made those memories.
He spent another half-hour cycling, the Chain doubling his effectiveness. He used another handful of elixir to provide high-powered spiritual energy to his body, and he pushed that directly into his muscles. It burned and stung, but the spiritual pain was minor compared to using the Shattered Palm or the Fracturenet.
When he consumed the handful of elixir, he knew he was ready.
He stood up and spun a cog beside the portcullis with the cloud treasures. The portcullis rose, climbing up into the ceiling, but he stood ready. He held his hands out, ready to accept the wild-treasure and draw it inside his body.
Nomad had given Pirin a few options for enhanced bodies to take that would help him based on his strengths and Path. The Glass-Sweep Enforcing was common for wizards that focussed on offensive techniques, for helping their body better resist spiritual strain and helping their muscles cope with arcane abuse. But Pirin had trained himself. He was an Embercore. He could cope with that already.
The Woodforged body was a simple one, but it would be compatible with Gray’s dragon side and might help him exploit her abilities better. It focussed on durability and flexibility. He didn’t want to learn or modify his techniques, though, and durability didn’t matter if he didn’t get hit. It wasn’t the most ideal.
That left only the Cloudborn Brace. It was an all-around enhancement for most things—strength, durability, strain resistance—but it had a focus on speed and agility. It’d make him lighter and faster, not to mention enhance his impulses and reaction speeds. It was the body he had hoped the most for.
But Pirin didn’t have just cloud treasures. The cloud wisps were tainted with the aura of a vast prairie. He would attune himself better to the auras of the winds and rushing air that washed over the fields, and with the slight lean towards a plant, he would make himself more compatible with Gray’s Essence than ever before without compromising his techniques.
We’ve gotta come up with a name for it, then, said Gray as the portcullis neared the top. Cloud…cloud something. Broadcloud? Fields are broad. The Elven Continent is broad, and you’re the king there.
Pirin chuckled and tsked. “That was quite the leap.”
But is it a bad name?
“Not at all.”
The portcullis let out a clang when it hit the top. Pirin kicked a lever in place, locking the wheel and preventing the gate from slamming shut.
The cloudy wild-treasures rushed toward him. He braced himself. He had to draw them in. They weren’t proper matter anymore; they were something more ethereal—the Eane had done that to them. It had altered them and made them more magical.
He shut his eyes and focussed on the mist of the clouds trying to escape the containment. He willed them to enter his channels and join his Essence, becoming a part of him.
A surge of power shot through his core and a pang of spiritual energy ran through his muscles, sending spears of pain out into his body. His muscles liquified, and the reforging began.