Before Pirin could ask Hir Venias for clarification, the vision crumbled.

Pirn tried calling out, but the spirit of the elven king faded away into mist. His hall disintegrated, and clouds washed across the starry sky. Again, they formed up in front of his face. In a few seconds, they dispersed, leaving only darkness.

Normal darkness; the darkness of Pirin’s eyelids. He clenched his fists. It took everything he had to blink his eyes open, but he did. The golden light had faded. Black specks whirled before his eyes, but he could see again.

If it took everything he had to open his eyes…standing up felt impossible, yet he forced his muscles to listen. He couldn’t feel the Ichor swirling in his blood anymore. He imagined the red liquid tinged with a slight gold, and that was all.

He glanced around, shaking out his limp legs. Slowly, strength returned to his body, and when he opened and closed his fingers, they only tingled.

For just a moment, he hoped that somehow, he’d been successful. That he’d managed to form a proper Reyad after all, and this would be the end. He wouldn’t need a crutch, or anything temporary.

But when he looked at Gray, he felt nothing. Sure, it’d take about a week after giving her a core and Ichor for her to gain her own intelligence, but with a proper Reyad bond, he’d have felt something…

Well, he was used to having nothing. It didn’t dispel the disappointment. He’d have to manage everything the hard way.

The time for experimentation could come later. He had to get out of this cavern before it collapsed on him.

By now, Gray was able to stand. She shook her wings, and the interwoven leaves and vines didn’t fall off. For a moment, she preened her feathers, as if trying to pick the wraith out. After a few seconds and failed attempts, she must have realized that they were part of her now. She gave a sad chirp, and Pirin’s heart sank.

“I’m sorry…” he whispered. “It wasn’t supposed to go like that.” He looked up at her eyes. They stayed black, beady, and bird-like, but he knew that whispers of the dragon’s shattered will were lurking deep inside her mind. “I didn’t mean for it to happen this way. I didn’t mean for you to—”

“I must commend your ingenuity,” came a voice from far down the tunnel. “But you will go no further.”

Pirin turned about, hunting for the source of the voice. A shadow of a man came waltzing through the raining debris, dodging falling stones and crumbling pillars. He had a single red glove.

Pirin groaned. “No…”

The Red Hand’s two disciples waded through the debris behind him, but they were less careful or agile. They used magical techniques to knock aside the falling debris or shield themselves, though Pirin couldn’t identify any of the techniques—he only picked out flashes of light.

“If you’re worried about the shrine…I, uh, I was just about to leave!” Pirin called back. He leaned closer to Gray and whispered, “Ready to fly? We need to get out of here.”

Just in case, Pirin reached for his sword, but it wasn’t in its sheath. He looked around. The moment the Ichor had shot through his body, he’d dropped it.

He bent down and snatched it up—not that he’d be able to do much against the Red Hand with it, especially in his current state.

No, they needed to fly away.

He looked at Gray. She panted, and when she moved her wings, she barely seemed capable of moving them fast enough to fly.

But Pirin had ways around that. He wasn’t the one flying; it didn’t matter how many exhausted thoughts he absorbed.

With effort, he climbed into Gray’s saddle and gripped her nape with his sword hand—he could hold the feathers and the blade at the same time if he needed. Then, he began to cycle his Essence. As he cycled, Gray’s new core tugged on his. It was just beneath him, available and untethered to any other wizard.

The Essence wanted to leave his body, to travel between him and a bonded animal, and so he let it. He included Gray in the loop. Essence passed between them through invisible channels. It hadn’t manifested as a technique, so it stayed invisible. Suddenly, everything straightened out. His Essence channels smoothed and cleared, and his body felt ten times more capable.

When he gathered up an imitation of Gray’s mind in the palm of his other hand, it…it just worked. First try, no failures, no biting pain. When he cycled his Essence and held the technique, it didn’t threaten to implode or rip his hand off or stab thousands of tiny needles into his skin or destroy his mind. The runes on the mask heated up slightly, shouldering the burden.

But it was stable.

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Pirin set to work immediately. He reached into the depths of his own mind and drew out the least exhausted thoughts he could find. He donated them to Gray.

He tightened his legs around the saddle, and after a moment of hesitation, she began running. She wove around fallen debris and leapt over what she couldn’t dodge.

The Red Hand sprinted forwards, leaping over stones and rocks. He drew his sword, but he was too slow. The air rushed around Pirin, and he set his elbows down on Gray’s back. She flapped and lifted off.

“You have nowhere to run!” the Hand shouted.

Pirin looked up. The roof around one of the skylights had shattered, and he had a clear shot through it. Gray shot over the two wizards’ heads. The seafolk woman punched a fallen pillar with such force that it exploded, throwing debris up into the air. The stone shrapnel would have shredded Pirin had he not pulled Gray to the side.

The satyr reached up and swept his arm through the air, unleashing a claw of glimmering blue Essence in the air—an Assault technique. It scratched his chest and sliced off a lock of his hair, but he pushed Gray down before the rest of the griffin-Path technique could slice him to pieces.

The Hand’s disciples bounded through the rubble and the collapsing cavern after him, but even their Flare-stage bodies couldn’t carry them high enough to reach him and Gray.

Panting, Pirin pulled Gray up through the shattered skylight. She had to tuck her wings in to fit through, but she did fit.

They shot up into the sky, breaching the tree-line. But as soon as they burst into the open air, Pirin fed the last dregs of his unfatigued thoughts into Gray’s mind. Drenched in sweat and panting, Pirin cut off the technique. It took all his willpower just to maintain any sort of breathing pattern. Already, his blood was slipping out of synchronization with his Essence.

Gray stopped flapping and tumbled back down into the forest. Pirin crashed through the branches of a tree and tumbled through the light snow. They rolled down the hill, then down onto the gravel shores of the river.

Pirin’s head whipped back and forth. He scanned up and down the shore, searching for the rowboat.

Alyus’s rowboat remained further down the river, but the ostal was nowhere to be seen. Pirin pulled himself along the shore with his arms. He made it a foot before everything went dark.

image [https://static.wixstatic.com/media/f3a882_5e221995337243e6a7d4250b55d3aeea~mv2.png/v1/fill/w_280,h_232,al_c,lg_1,q_85,enc_auto/embercore%20sigil.png]

Pirin’s heart beat as fast as it could, until it ached and wouldn’t beat anymore. The ethereal wind blew through his soul, but he contained it, sharpened it, and forced it to his will.

When he drove it through the invisible keyhole, it listened. A vision seared into his mind.

He staggered along the shore of Kerstel, back to Mr. Regos’ hovel in Darekshore—

Darekshore, that was the village’s name…Darekshore, the peaceful village where I was born…sheltered entirely from the plights of the outside world.

—and pushed open the door. He staggered into the building he had called home for his whole life. The healer’s hovel.

He didn’t take a seat. He slumped against the wall, panting and staring across the room. His skin was cold and clammy, and his eyes were pinned wide open.

Mr. Regos marched into the hovel after Pirin, hauling a heavy pack of equipment on his shoulder. He plunked it down on the floor, and the tools all clanked and clattered. The blood-soaked blade of a bone saw peered through the pack’s opening, and calipers dripped with scarlet liquid. Pirin retched, then looked away.

“Pull yourself together, boy,” Mr. Regos snapped. “It’s not the last fishin’ accident you’ll have to tend to, and you won’t always have me by your side when you’re patchin’ em up. I didn’t take you in and stuff food down your throat for fourteen years just to have you turn out as a limp-spine elfling who can’t handle a little blood.”

“He…he died…” Pirin breathed.

“One of ‘em, yeah,” Mr. Regos said, walking around to the other side of the desk. He picked up a slip of parchment and scrawled down a set of notes—mumbling to himself about the herbs he’d need to replace. “And we saved the other two. Had it not been for us, there’d be two less fishermen in Darekshore today.”

The next few minutes passed in a blur. Pirin didn’t stand up, but he couldn’t recall what else he did. Apparently, even the Memory Chain couldn’t replace memories that were never fully conceived at the time.

Finally, Mr. Regos returned—this time, with a much softer expression. “I remember the first time someone in my care died, boy. An old man with Springcough, he was, and no matter how many herbs me and my master gave him, he didn’t get better. Then, one night, he passed in his sleep. Sure enough, I was broken up over it just like you. I doesn’t get any better, but it does fade.”

Pirin didn’t say anything for a few seconds. “What made you want to be a Healer, Mr. Regos?”

“I wanted to help people, simple as,” the old half-dwarf answered. “Same reason I took you in as an infant, when your mother dropped you at my doorstep. A little elf with black hair, an odd anomaly.”

And, being so far removed from the sight of the rest of the world, Pirin’s mysterious black hair would surely have been seen as an anomaly, and nothing more. There were none on Kerstel educated in the lore of elves.

Pirin could tell if it was instinct that led him to that conclusion, a remainder of the memories he did have, or an effect of the Memory Chain—or better yet, a combination of all three.

“Funny enough, that’s the healer’s duty I swore—to help people, no matter what.” Mr. Regos smiled a little, then handed Pirin a cup of warm tea. “Drink up, boy. Take the day off. And remember—you did a good thing today, even if you couldn’t save them all.”

Pirin whispered, “I think I can finish copying that manuscript, if you—”

“Take the day off. I don’t need that one. It just has old techniques for people with healing Talents, and we’ve got nothing of the sort. We don’t need to copy it right away.”

Pirin leaned his head back against the wooden wall behind him. In the memory, a faint feeling stirred in the deepest reaches of his gut. Helping people, it was the healer’s duty. But if he stayed stuck on Kerstel his whole life…he’d never amount to much.

There were so many people out there, so many lives.

He needed something more.