For a few minutes, Alyus negotiated a price for their stay. Finally, he settled on two silver Dominion coins. Pirin only paid attention to the conversation in snippets. Although Laurill had pulled her sleeves down to her wrists and wrapped her cowl around her neck, he couldn’t remove the image of the embedded leaves from his mind.

As soon as she accepted the coins, she turned to a potted plant. She’d hidden a pouch among its leaves (green leaves, despite the winter), and that was where she put her new earnings.

To hide the pouch again, she held out her hand and breathed deeply. After a second, she pulled her hand back and hissed in pain. She tried again, to the same result. On the fifth try, however, the leaves moved. They enclosed the pouch, hiding it from prying eyes.

Pirin bit his lip. Laurill, an Embercore. Born with a Bloodline Talent, but unable to form a Reyad. By the looks of it, that hadn’t stopped her from trying. She’d done something, tried to fix it, and it had caused her talent—whatever those leaves were—to leak all around her body.

From her state, he supposed she’d failed so many times that she could barely walk. He couldn’t yet scan her spirit, but if he could, he suspected he’d see cracked and leaking Essence channels. Every step must have been agony.

Once she poured the tea, they made small talk. Alyus was cagey with his responses, and so was Laurill. Brealtod hissed once in a while, but Laurill could understand him—at least, she always replied to his hisses. How long had she known the two smugglers?

After a half-hour, she said, “Now, if you want to get the old Featherflight restocked, you’d best get started before sundown. It’s a decent walk back and forth from Vēl Kattaer. And the woods have been teeming with bears. At least two have claimed territory here.”

Brealtod lifted the repeating crossbow, and it rattled.

“Wraith-bears, I should say,” Laurill told them. “Their Essence is what keeps me going, on the odd chance I can catch one. Usually, they bite their way out of the traps, and my herbal talents don't exactly prime me for bear hunting.”

Pirin raised his eyebrows. Some beasts to deal with. Fun.

“If you live, you can come back and sleep here,” she said.

Standing up, Alyus nodded and said, “We’ll stay out of trouble, Laurill. Thank you.”

Pirin tried to stand up too, but before he could, Laurill laid a hand on his shoulder. If he wanted, he could push through her grip easily, but he didn’t want to. “Yes?”

“Think carefully about your destiny, boy,” she whispered. “An Embercore is a fickle thing, and unless you’re willing to face the consequences, don’t go hunting for power. If you fail to fix it too many times…”

“I won’t fail,” Pirin replied. “We could help you, too. We could try to—”

“I am beyond help, boy. Remember that before you choose wrong. You are not the only one of your kind. This continent has a curse, I say; there are no new wizards, save for a few scattered Embercores in the shadows. What makes you different?”

With that, Laurill lifted her hand and allowed Pirin to stand. The two smugglers had already stepped outside, and Pirin raced after them, nearly falling through one of Laurill’s traps as he left the hut.

Brealtod and Alyus had lowered the cargo platform. Gray hopped off it, landing steadily on her feet, and she ran over to Pirin, nuzzling him with her head. He hugged back, but he couldn’t shake the sickening feeling in his limbs.

He crossed his arms and inhaled sharply. He needed to be more than just an elf with black hair. He needed to be a wizard-king.

He was different because he needed to be different.

He hugged Gray tighter, then said, “I promise you, I promise you I’ll finish this bond. I’ll forge you into a Familiar yet.”

Gray squawked, then trilled softly.

“Now, can your bird here pull a little extra?” Alyus inquired. He had hauled a cart off the edge of the cargo elevator and dragged it through the light snow layer. “If we hook the cart up to her, we can make it in one load.”

Gray wasn’t a horse, but Pirin figured that if she could fly with a rider, she could pull a cart on the ground easily enough. He said, “Be gentle, and don’t fill it too full. Her leg and wing have just healed. No need to push it.”

He didn’t know why he knew that—he couldn’t tell just from looking—but he figured it was the healer’s instinct kicking in again. With it came a faint memory: sitting in a hovel, staring at anatomy charts and copying books. Not exactly a kingly task.

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He blinked and shook his head, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t cling on to the memory.

By the time Pirin opened his eyes again, Alyus and Brealtod had managed to hook the cart to Gray’s saddle. No matter how hard they tried, she didn’t seem willing to follow them. As soon as Pirin caught up, however, she chased after them right away. The cart’s wheels squeaked and the wood creaked, and there would be no hiding from anything in the woods.

“Staying out of trouble?” he whispered.

“We can grease the bearings in town,” Alyus said.

“We have to make it there in one piece, first.” Pirin put a hand on the hilt of his sword. As they walked, he ran his finger along the sword’s pommel, searching its grooves and scratches with his nail.

It was difficult to tell if the sun was setting or not. The canopy overhead was so thick that the sunlight barely reached through at the best of times, let alone in the winter, when the sun was always low on the horizon. Stray beams still filtered through, catching in the fading city-smoke and glittering ice in the air.

Pirin watched the shadows. After a few minutes, he spotted a glimmer of blue Essence in the air, forming a trail in the woods to their left. Then, a shadow slithered past just in front of it. The chances of it being a wraith-bear? Quite high.

He tugged his sword out of its sheath, but he didn’t suppose it would do much here, either. If he understood right, a wraith-bear was similar to a karebain—how else would Laurill have gathered Essence from them?

“Any idea why they’re called wraith-bears?” Pirin asked.

First, Alyus shrugged, then Brealtod let out a chain of hisses and growls. Alyus translated, “ ‘Cause they’re bound to a snow wraith, I guess. Kinda like the mistfalcons and lightning wraiths.”

Pirin nodded, then tilted his head to the left. “There’s one in the woods.” As soon as he said it, he narrowed his eyes. It emerged from the woods, much closer. It was the shape of a bear, the size of a grizzly, but a thick layer of snow clung to its fur, covering it in white, icy crystals. It bore a pair of crescent horns atop its head. Much like the karebain, manabulbs hung off the horns.

After a few seconds, it dipped behind the trees. It was stalking them.

“I’ll lead it off,” Pirin said. If it attacked them all, there was no telling whether it would hurt Gray or not, and neither Alyus nor Brealtod were equipped to deal with a creature like a wraith-bear.

He placed a hand on Gray’s back. “Go with them. Follow. Please. I’ll be right back.”

“If we don’t see you soon, we’ll meet you back at the Featherflight,” Alyus told him. “Don’t get yourself killed, here, elfy. It’d be a pretty terrible place to go.”

Pirin tried to smile. He didn’t plan on dying—he’d gather the manabulbs, deal with the wraith-bear, and be on his way.

Holding his sword up to the rays of fading sunlight, Pirin deflected the light off the fuller and deep into the woods. He had to make himself the biggest, most attractive target. Stepping off the path, he entered the woods.

He followed the trail of Essence, holding his sword and straining his eyes. The wraith-bear was a predator and a brute, and though it was camouflaged, it had no need to hide. If it was here, he’d see it.

When he reflected his sword’s light a thick patch of trees, the wraith-bear remerged.

“Well, you got what you asked for,” Pirin muttered to himself. “Same strategy as the karebain, then? Put it to sleep.” He held out his arm. His muscles tensed. He cycled his Essence, more confident in his breathing pattern, and he had more of it to work with. If he hit the center of the bear’s mind, he could put it to sleep for longer.

He locked onto one of the bear’s deep black eyes, then began to gather its mind using his Essence.

But this time, he had no bush to hide in. When, inevitably, his Essence fought back, sparking blue on his fingertips, he had no defence. The wraith-bear bounded towards him. It smashed through a dead bush and a low-hanging branch covered in red leaves, then, with its mouth open, it lunged at Pirin.

He dove to the side and slashed at the bear’s paw with his sword. The tip barely cut through its pad, but it still howled in pain.

Pirin flourished his sword. He held out his hand and swept the blade in front of him, keeping the beast at bay as he tried (and failed) to form a grey orb of its mind or hold it long enough to knock it out.

He swiped at its chest as it leapt back, dislodging particles of snow from the brown fur. But right away, the snow leapt right back into place as if drawn by a magnet. The bear slashed back at him. Its claws struck his sword fast and hard enough to fling it out of his grasp. It tumbled away into the forest.

Pirin took a step back, then another, and another. But he couldn’t outrun a bear. It pounced, jaw wide and claws glistening. Pirin fell to his back before it landed, then rolled out of the way. His back collided with a tree trunk, knocking the air out of his lungs, but it was better than letting the bear rip his throat out.

There was no time to think, only to react. He reached out and, as quickly as he could, formed up the bear’s mind in his hand. Any second, his magic could rebel on him, and it’d be over. Instead of a precise bolt of Essence to the center of its mind, he conjured a spiritual battering ram and smashed the orb.

The bear stopped. It didn’t just collapse. Its eyes rolled back and it staggered around in a circle, howling and growling aimlessly. It didn’t sound in anger or pain…just incredibly confused and lost. It didn’t focus on anything or anyone in particular, and it didn’t even seem to remember that it was a bear. It didn’t even slash at the air.

The snow clinging to its fur, however, hadn’t been pacified. It poured off the bear’s fur and gathered on the ground in front of him. The little wraith began with a loose core of glowing Essence, which the snow soon engulfed.

He’d never seen a wraith form from nothing before, and certainly not like this—as a parasite freed from its host. But he had also never encountered a friendly Wraith, and now was no exception.

With a single Shattered Palm, he dispelled the small snowy creature. It scattered into the air, never to be seen again.

Pirin picked up his sword and returned to the bear. It still staggered around, incapacitated and completely out of sorts, and Pirin put it out of its misery with a quick slash across its throat. It collapsed to a heap.

Even without the wraith, it was a spirit beast—the horns weren’t natural on a bear, and it gathered energy into manabulbs.

They would make a fine reward. He bent down and started sawing them off.