Over the next few days, Pirin built a routine.

He woke up at the same time every day, when Brealtod and Alyus released the Featherflight from its nighttime grapples and unfurled the sails. He tried to help as best as he could, but often, he only got in the way, so he resorted to helping prepare breakfast. The two smugglers had a cupboard full of spices and seasoning, yet they couldn’t even be bothered to put a sprinkle of synnamin spice into their oatmeal. Pirin always snuck some in, and neither Alyus nor Brealtod seemed to mind.

Then, Pirin would head to the cargo hold. While sitting in Gray’s nest with her, he read the Sparrow Path manual.

It described three new cycling techniques that mimicked the breath patterns of sparrows. One was for integrating new Essence into the body after an infusion, one was for using techniques in the heat of battle, and one was for absorbing the Eane directly into his body and converting it into Essence—which he wouldn’t be able to do until he did form a Reyad. For the moment, he switched to the cycling technique that would allow him to better use magic in a battle, for the sake of practice.

The manual’s author, Pirin learned, had needed to carve a special rune on the bowl of Ichor when she had formed her Reyad initially. Since sparrows weren’t predisposed to forming Reyads, the wizard had needed something extra to form the bond.

As if Pirin hadn’t been having enough trouble already. He sighed, and for a moment, he wondered if he should just find a different animal to form a Reyad with. But he shot the thought down immediately. He had come this far with Gray, and he could go the last distance.

He found a strip of tattered cloth tucked into the book, about a quarter of the way through. It had painted lines of detailed runes, and flame-aspect Essence permanently Manifested into them for fuel.

A Smoke cloth.

When he set the end of the cloth on fire, it began to simmer. The edges browned and burned slowly, coughing smoke up into the air. The haze condensed into a three-dimensional image of someone carving runes on a bowl.

Pirin’s eyes widened. These were the runes the wizard used to help herself bond with the sparrow!

And so, for the next two days, Pirin worked painstakingly to copy them. First, he practiced on a simple slab of slate. Over and over, he carved the Núm rune, for together. Then he paired it with Khallz, which stood for string, and Uz-nul for Strength. The combination had to be precise. For every three Núm runes, he could only carve one of the others. He linked them into vertical lines with a simple dash between them.

The Smoke displayed what would happen if the combination of runes was wrong. The bowl would shatter and explode, and the Ichor would be ruined.

Pirin didn’t have anything to replace the Umberstone mask with. There were no second chances.

His chisel was a spare titanwood pin from the Featherflight’s cargo hold. If titanwood was strong enough to build airships (and seafaring warships, he reminded himself) out of, it was strong enough to etch stone.

Once Pirin was confident he could replicate the runes lines that the wizard had been carving in the Smoke, he moved to the umberstone mask. All over its back surface, he carved rune after rune. They formed neat lines, like icicles trickling down from the top of the mask.

On the third day, almost seconds after he finished covering the back of the mask in runes, Alyus descended into the cargo hold. He said, “We’re nearly there. Might wanna make your way to the gondola.”

Pirin nodded. He stood up and patted Gray on the head, then followed Alyus back through the airship.

Once they were in the gondola, Pirin took in the view of the new landscape. Low hills flowed wherever he looked, covered in bare trees and sliced apart by a river. A hamlet clung to the horizon to the north, and a motte-and-bailey keep stood to the east. Just below, there were a few small and empty farm fields, thawing in the morning sun.

“We’re not going to be able to get you all that close to the shrine,” said Alyus. He pointed at the river, and with his finger, he traced it along. It descended into a deep valley. They might be able to fit the Featherflight into it, but one gust of wind would slam the airship against the tree-covered slopes, tearing the envelope and gasbags open. “The shrine entrance is somewhere in that valley.”

They set the Featherflight down in an abandoned quarry and fastened it down with mooring lines and grapples. Brealtod helped them retrieve a small rowboat from the cargo hold (“In case we go down over an ocean,” Alyus had explained), then stayed behind to watch over the ship while Pirin and Alyus rowed off down the river with Gray in tow. Pirin tucked his mask into his haversack, then patted it gently.

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For a few minutes, they rowed across the flat, still section of the river. The deeper valley fast approached, and Pirin kept his eyes on the water. The river only had ice at the edges, and it was already starting to break off.

“So, have any more memories?” Alyus asked. He sat at the back of the rowboat, steering.

Pirin glanced over his shoulder. “Hm?”

“You’re staring blankly at the ice again. Thought you might be remembering something.”

“Just thinking of home. Well, Sirdia.” Pirin grimaced, recalling the island in his dreams. “Though, I don’t think Sirdia is really where I came from. It’s just…the place that adopted me.” It was a nice place, a wonderful place worth protecting, but it wasn’t where he’d grown up.

“Nevermind me, then.”

Pirin knew what came next—awkward silence—and he wasn’t interested in that. He told Alyus about the one dream he had had, where he walked home after gathering herbs and met Mr. Regos.

“Sounds like Kerstel,” Alyus remarked.

“Kerstel?”

“Small island to the west of the Elven Continent? Steep rocky shore, broad plateaus atop it. Just like you described it.” Alyus chuckled. “It used to be a handy smuggling port for getting mead in and out of Aerdia. Not much elven oversight. But the Dominion really tightened their grasp on that place a few years ago. It is firmly under their rule, now, not just a vassal like Aerdia. So don’t think about going there.”

Pirin nodded slowly. Kerstel. That was where he was from.

“Nobody important ever came from there. Not ‘til you, I suppose.” The ostal dipped his oar into the water, navigating them around a larger chunk of ice that had broken free. On the shore, a pair of normal-sized geese squawked at them. “Hey, keep your eyes up. Look for the shrine entrance.”

“Y—yes.” Pirin kept scanning the valley edges, looking up and down for any sign of a temple at all.

“You really think you can save this place? You probably weren’t even born here.”

“I can’t do anything if I don’t fix this Embercore,” Pirin said placatingly. They thought he was supposed to unite the continent, but first, he needed the strength to save his people, adopted or not.

They rowed down the river for another few minutes, dodging ice and watching the trees. When Pirin first saw a ruined half-arch, he almost ignored it. It didn’t look much different than a thick, withered tree, except it had no branches. But the structure had individual beige bricks, old mortar binding them together.

“There,” he said, pointing at the crumbling arch. “We’re close, at least.”

As they rowed, they passed by another set of arches. Some were complete and free-standing, marking out a path along the shore. They were almost perfectly round when they were complete, but very few were complete anymore.

“The elves didn’t build something this old, did they?” Pirin asked.

“No idea who built it.” Alyus navigated the boat closer to the shore, giving Pirin a better view of the ruins. “I’m not going in there with you. Just you and the bird, eh?”

Pirin smiled softly. He looked up ahead, where the ruins of a great bridge had once bridged the valley, overlooking the river. Only a pillar or two, wide enough to fit the keep of a small castle, remained. “If you’d be kind enough to wait, then?”

“ ‘Course. Can’t wring any more silver out of you if I don’t wait. Just not inclined to get torn to shreds by an enormous, pissed off wraith—what good is all that silver if I can’t use it?”

Pirin rolled his eyes. “You’re sure that’s all you’re here for?”

“Clear as mud.”

“That doesn’t mean what—”

“It means exactly what I mean.” Pushing with the oar, Alyus bumped them up against the base of one of the abandoned support pillars. He cast a rope around it, then pulled it tight so the rowboat clung flush to the pillar—and with the ice.

Pirin scrunched his eyebrows. “Alright, then…I’ll leave you here.”

“Come back in one piece, elfy.”

“I’ll try.” Pirin stepped off the rowboat and onto the sheet of river ice. After testing it for a few seconds, he deemed it suitable to hold up his weight. It didn’t crack. He dashed across onto the smooth riverbank, then beckoned for Gray to follow. She scampered across the ice and hopped to Pirin’s side. “Ready?”

She chirped softly. It was close enough.

They walked up the riverbank to the steep valley wall. It wasn’t unscalable, but there was a reason that the path took a gentle, winding route. It was barely visible beneath the snow and the glistening hoarfrost, but Pirin also had the ruined arches to guide him.

Together, he and Gray followed the trail as it wound up the side of the valley. They crossed back and forth towards the upper edge of the valley. Pirin suspected that, in the summer, it would have been much harder to traverse. Plant’s would’ve overgrown the trail, save for maybe a small path, and the branches of the nearby trees would have hung heavy in his face. Now, he just had to deal with the fluffy frost dusting off the branches.

It was hardly a distraction—not enough to break his concentration on his new breathing pattern. He glanced at Gray, and tried to inhale in tandem with her. She wasn’t cycling, though, and her breaths would never link up with his.

Instead, he prepared himself for battle with fast breaths, and he pushed his Essence around in a short loop near his core. At any moment, he could try a technique, whether it was looking inside someone’s mind or blasting outwards with a Shattered Palm.

By the time they reached the last archway, Pirin had almost started charging a Shattered Palm. He shook his hand quickly to dispel it, then blinked and refocussed his mind. Ahead lay an entrance in the side of the valley, a steep doorway of sandstone. Two columns supported either side of it, and icicles blocked the entryway. Pure darkness lay beyond.

Pirin drew his sword and bashed the icicles away, then ducked under them and stepped into the temple.