The Low-Wight of Bâllenmarch sat on an enormous litter. But she herself only took up a quarter of the platform, curled up in a cloak of shadowy spines and quills. Everything about her was made of black, shadowy Essence. She had no features, except for a pair of arms with pale skeletal hands, and a white mask with two empty eye-holes.
Pirin didn’t know what to do, so he knelt on the cold stone floor of her hall, as he might address a king or queen. He bowed his head and stared at the dark flagstones, watching the moisture glitter on them as if it might give him some sort of extra courage. The wight exerted a spiritual pressure on his core so strong that he feared he might be pushed back if he got any closer to the litter.
Pirin swallowed. He gripped his stolen flight helmet tighter under his arm.
“You may rise, Sailmaker,” said the wight. She spread her arms, and in a soft, hissing voice that grated like shattering glass and a screeching bird all at once, she asked, “How did you, an Embercore, beat my best racers?”
Pirin climbed to his feet and looked around. His audience, the wight’s advisors and servants, all looked at him, eagerly awaiting an answer. “I apologize, madam, for my bluntness. However, your racers are used to only plowing their way through the air, relying on strength alone. They have no real endurance, perseverance, or…willingness to take a course slightly different than normal.”
“And you do?”
Pirin winced, suddenly realizing how self-congratulatory his statement sounded. “My experience does not come from mastering a Familiar, madam, it comes from making a true, real connection with an animal. That experience allowed me to best your—”
“Quiet,” she sizzled. Her head snapped towards the Aerdian guards waiting in the doorway—they must not have known about the wizards. “You may have your reward. And…you are welcome to return any time you wish, so long as you put up a good show.” He heard the subtext loud and clear: he’d driven lots of bets to go sour, and that made good money for the house. But, just like alcohol, gambling was illegal in Aerdia.
“Th—thank you,” Pirin breathed. He patted his chest and pinched his own arm, just to be certain that he wasn’t being tricked by an illusion. Everything was normal.
“My servants will show you to the treasure—”
“Where is he?” a distant voice demanded. “Where is the Embercore?”
Pirin whipped around, his coat fluttering. Garrosen Tereau stood in the doorway. The man breathed heavily.
“He cheated! He must have! All our best pilots couldn’t outrun him! He must have taken a shortcut, or—”
The wight raised a skeletal hand. “Silence, man-filth. He was observed, and we determine that he took no shortcuts and used no illegal substances or—”
“But he’s an Ember—” Garrosen cut himself off, stopped for a second, then spat, “He’s an Embercore! Almost a wizard, and more powerful than any of us!”
That, of course, was a lie—Pirin wasn’t more powerful. But if no one knew Garrosen was a wizard…
“There is no evidence for that, pilot,” the wight snapped. “Remove yourself from my sight before you suffer the consequences of speaking down to me. Your honour is already stained. Do not make it worse.”
Garrosen opened his mouth once, shut it, then opened it again as he turned away. He pointed at Pirin. “If I see you again, you’re dead. Dead—I mean it.” Then, he stormed away, back down the staircase.
“Didn’t plan on coming back here,” Pirin muttered. He sighed, then looked up at the wight.
“Go with my servants, if you please.” She motioned with one of her bony fingers and called a pair of elven servants in black robes over. They both bowed their heads to Pirin, then marched off down one of the hallways that led away from the wings of the hall.
Pirin ran to catch up with them, ducking his head under one of the black banners of the wight’s hall and dodging an unlit candelabra. They walked down to the end of the hallway, where a chamber had been carved into the stone walls of the canyon. A pair of elves guarded it, wearing mismatched steels and leather, and a white sigil had been painted on their shoulders. It looked like the wight’s own mask.
The guards bowed their heads to the servants and to Pirin. One of the servants held up a finger and said, “One item. Only one, no matter how big or small. Then you’d best leave, before the Low-Wight gets fed up with you, too.”
Pirin nodded. He needed something made of Umberstone, and that was it. He stuffed his hands into his coat pocket and marched into the treasure room. It was a cavern as large as the wight’s hall, if not larger, and it was filled to the brim with gold, ambersteel, and silver trinkets. A lantern hung from the roof, its light flickering off every coin, every chalice, and every ceremonial sword. Pirin’s eyes widened. There was no organization whatsoever, and he had no idea where to even start searching.
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Instead of letting panic take hold, he picked an arbitrary point to start searching—the center of the room. He waded into the hoard of treasure, pushing aside coins and nuggets with his boot. Any one of these treasures would make a man rich for the rest of his life.
Pirin dipped his hands into the piles of gold, sifting back and forth through them. He spread the trinkets as wide as he could, revealing the most area.
Umberstone, umberstone, umberstone…he didn’t know exactly what it looked like, but from its name, he guessed it was dark.
A needle of hope shot through him when he found a stained black disk, until he scratched the surface, revealing the gold beneath the patina.
For nearly a half hour, he searched. The servants behind him cleared their throats and grumbled, but they didn’t say anything.
Finally, in the back corner of the room, he unearthed a small box. Something about it, the plain wood and embossed golden swirls, reeked of special.
He cracked the box open. A puff of dust coughed out, nearly choking him. When it cleared, he almost thought the box was empty. But, laying at the bottom, was a small oval of stone the exact same shade as a shadow—like burnt bark. It was pure, smooth stone.
Pirin picked it up. It was a mask, large enough to cover his entire face. On the front, it had light blue markings that glowed like they’d been painted with lumawhale oil. For all he knew, they had. They surrounded a single eye slit and traced a triangle down to the bottom of the mask.
He tried scratching the stone with his fingernail. It felt like glass, but sturdier, and it gave a deep, soft chime, like a bell ringing at the bottom of a deep cavern. It was Umberstone. He placed it back in the box and carried it back to the servants. “This.”
“This?” one of them asked in a hushed voice. He leaned closer. “Are you sure? You could sell a chalice for ten times as much.”
They must not have known what it was.
“I’m sure,” Pirin said.
The servants exchanged a glance, then shrugged. “Very well,” one said. “Let’s get you back to your ship, then. Or wherever you came from.”
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Pirin sprinted back aboard the Featherflight with the mask in hand. He met Brealtod and Alyus in the gondola. Both of them beamed a little when they saw him, but Alyus quickly wiped the smile from his face. Quietly, he said, “We got your ‘snapper back in the hold, safe and sound. Did you get what you needed?”
Pirin set the box down on the table and cracked it open. “An Umberstone mask. It should do the trick, if I just carve a bunch of runes onto its back…”
“That’s your plan?” Alyus complained. “Carve a bunch of runes onto its back? We came all this way for a treasure, and you’ll do that?”
“Well…” Pirin sighed. “I’ll do some reading.”
“As if you haven’t done enough of that.”
Pirin turned away, then placed his hands on one of the shelves. “And what do you want me to do, hm?”
“I don’t want you to waste this opportunity,” Alyus said. He stepped forward and grabbed Pirin’s arm. “You could…go, live free, and do whatever you want. I was kinda hoping you’d take some fancy gem and make yourself wealthy. You could go hide in the woods somewhere, free of worry. You don’t have to be exceptional.”
“But what if I want to be?” Pirin snapped. “What if I want to be something more? I could do it. I have a way forward, and I don’t want to look back.”
Alyus took a single step closer, then laid a hand on Pirin’s shoulder. “It’s not meant to be an interrogation, elfy.”
Pirin tried to smile. It felt awkward. “Besides, I thought you were just here for the silver. Not for me.”
Alyus didn’t respond for a few seconds. Then, he grumbled, “So…where are we off to next? And yes, I’ll need payment.”
“Fine.” Pirin pursed his lips. He had the mask, now he needed to bind Ichor to his and Gray’s blood. Where, where, where could get Ichor without somehow mining for it himself? He walked over to Alyus’s maps and scanned them. “I need Ichor, and probably a lot of it.”
“Shrines often have Ichor springs under them,” Alyus told him. “Problem is, those shrines are also well-guarded.” He walked over to Pirin’s side and pointed to three locations on the map of Sirdia.
“By the Dominion? Or Aerdians?” Pirin asked.
“By some of the most powerful wraiths this continent has to offer. Each shrine has one. Their sole purpose is to guard the ichor spring, and they haven’t let anyone in yet.”
Pirin set his finger on the map, where Alyus had pointed. He inhaled sharply, and an idea passed through his mind. “Wraiths have cores, right? Just like wizards do?” It was a rhetorical question; he had seen that they did. “I don’t need to kill it. I need to attach it to Gray, somehow, combining them, and grant her the wraith’s core.”
“That’s a big ask. You thought it was hard to attach a lightning wraith to a mistfalcon or a snow wraith to a bear? Their cores weren’t even powerful.”
Pirin exhaled in annoyance. “Sure, but the more powerful the wraith, the more powerful the core. If I can strip the spirit of all its individuality—rip out all its memories and mental faculties—I can firmly bind it to Gray. She’d stay the same, except a little stronger, and she’d have a core that I could form a Reyad with.”
“It…” Alyus shook his head. “I won’t say it sounds wise, ‘cause it doesn’t. It sounds like suicide. But you keep paying me, I’ll keep taking you where you want.”
“If you say so. Unless you have a better idea?”
“Not a single one,” Alyus said. “Get ready to lift off, then. I’ll need all hands.”