“This is as far as we’ll go,” Alyus said.

Pirin hadn’t expected to arrive in Greanewash so soon, but the wind had been behind them, and it had carried them all the way to the city limits. There were no walls around the outskirts. One moment, a thin forest carpeted the land, and the next, a sprawling city spread out in front of him as far as he could see.

Alyus and Brealtod furled the Featherflight’s sails and hooked the ship on the trees of the forest just outside city limits, then dropped the rope ladder and lowered the cargo elevator. Pirin climbed down.

He couldn’t see the coast yet, but they had to be close. Warm wind was blowing inland, and the snow was melting. Sprouts of grass peered out from the mucky ground, and the trees were budding.

They had stopped the airship just above a road of packed mud at the edge of the city. It seemed like a well-trodden trail, and it was certainly wide enough to carry wagons and carriages. If it wasn’t so early in the morning, Pirin suspected he’d have seen a lot more travellers. But the sun was just barely peeking over the horizon.

He walked to the cargo platform and roused Gray. Today marked a week since she had adopted the wraith’s core, and it was the first time he had seen her since. Her feathers were the same as he’d last seen—with leaves and twigs and vines intertwined. But now, along her spine, a line of red blossoms sprouted, just like the wraith.

When Pirin approached, recognition immediately lit up in her beady eyes. She gazed at him with the intellectual curiosity of a philosopher, not of a simple gnatsnapper. Holding out his hand, he said, “Hello, Gray.”

She chirped softly, then jumped down off the cargo platform.

“We’ve gotta make the rest of the journey on foot, now, until we reach the port,” Pirin said. Something told him she couldn’t understand him still, not yet. But…he was supposed to be able to speak with a Familiar. All wizards were supposed to talk with their Familiar.

He raised his hand to his face. His mask was still on, and it still glowed with the faint warmth of active runes. He’d put it on a half-hour before they arrived.

“Let’s go,” he told Gray, then turned down the road and began to walk toward the city.

Alyus clung to the rope ladder dangling from the Featherflight’s gondola. He looked directly at Pirin and said, “I’m not an authority on courage…or even doing the right thing, so it’s probably for the best if you don’t listen to me.”

Pirin expected Alyus to add ‘but’ to his sentence at any time. The ostal said nothing else.

“Improving my magic…it’ll help people,” Pirin said. “I promise.”

“Goodbye, Pirin,” Alyus said with a small smile. “And thanks for all the silver.”

As Pirin and Gray walked past, Pirin cast Alyus one more somber look. “I thought there was more to it than that. I hoped there was more to it than that.”

Alyus shook his head and began to climb back up the ladder. Pirin and Gray walked away.

Once the airship was out of sight and the shadows of the early morning forest enveloped them, Pirin strained his eyes. Ahead, through the winding branches and budding leaves of the forest, the city of Greanewash stood.

It was bigger than anything he had seen before—even bigger than Northvel.There were a few remnants of typical Aerdian architecture, but most of the structures were either plain stone or wattle and daub. Thatched roofs outnumbered the traditional elven shingles, and a smokey haze shaded entire swathes of the city. Some of the buildings were so tall that they blocked sunlight from reaching the streets, and glowing lumawhale signs illuminated what the sun couldn’t.

Pirin paused at the top of a hill. Greanewash clung to the tip of a peninsula, and all along the convex coast, ships waited. The harbour had been dredged deep enough that even the largest of cargo haulers could sail directly into port.

The ships were massive, too. He could walk two hundred paces down the length of their titanwood hulls. Wooden gantry cranes the size of castles packed barrels and crates into the ships, and their crews worked to unfurl their triangular sails and get the behemoths mobile again.

“Well…we have to find our northern sprite friend,” Pirin said to Gray. “We’d better keep moving. You don’t remember her, do you? Did you ever meet her?”

Gray tilted her head inquisitively.

“Still can’t understand me, I guess…”

As they walked, the forest thinned out, and they entered the city outskirts. Pirin tugged on his hood, making sure it was all the way up. He glanced back at Gray. “How about now? Can you hear me?”

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Familiars, according to the sparrow Path manual, were supposed to communicate through a mental link—the wizard, Pirin, would speak to the Familiar, and the Familiar would return the favour by speaking inside the wizard’s mind.

Pirin almost tried to peer inside Gray’s mind using his magical techniques. But all wizards could communicate with their Familiars somehow, and they didn’t need elf king’s Bloodline Talent to do it.

Pirin tightened his fists. He looked at Gray as they walked, locked eyes with her, and asked, “Can you hear me, Gray? Can you understand me?”

Nothing. Pirin glanced down at his haversack, where the Path manual rested. He pulled it out and skimmed its pages as they walked, hoping for a clue. Every few steps, he looked up to make sure he wasn’t about to crash into anyone.

But the manual was above what little knowledge he did have. It expected him to know how to communicate with a Familiar—or to have a teacher who did. There was only a little note at the bottom of a page: To communicate with your bonded Sparrow, you will need to speak your birth-tongue.

Not very helpful. From all of Pirin’s memories of Kerstel, he had been raised using Low-Speech, the most common language in the world. That wasn’t the issue.

But if his birth-tongue was required to speak with his Familiar, it had to be for a reason. It wasn’t because Gray could actually understand the language…

He whispered, “It’s because you understand the intent of the words, not the words themselves.”

After snapping the book shut, he stuffed it back into his haversack. He looked back at Gray and increased the pace of his cycling. She didn’t match his breathing pattern yet, but that didn’t stop him from pushing the Essence out toward her and guiding it through her Essence channels with his own effort.

As soon as he had a stable circuit with Gray’s core, he tried speaking again. This time, he put all his effort into the words, concentrating his mind on each syllable and what it meant. When he exhaled, he pushed his intent out towards Gray.

He said, “Hello, Gray. Can you hear me now?”

A few seconds of silence passed between them, but then, Pirin felt a shiver run through his body. Ice ran down his spine and the back of his skull tingled. A feminine voice rattled through his skull.

Hello, Pirin.

Pirin stopped.

At first, the voice bounced around inside his skull unsteadily, and it was soft to begin with, softer than an elf walking on carpet. But he heard it nonetheless, and he knew it was Gray’s voice. It had the trilling, low- to high-pitch of a gnatsnapper’s call, and was unmistakably hers.

Pirin blinked quickly, barely holding back tears of joy. He bounded closer to Gray and wrapped his arms around her neck. He could barely concentrate on his words, but beneath his pounding heart and rapid, forceful breathing pattern, he managed to say, “I’m sorry, Gray, I’m sorry.” He pushed the words towards her, his chest tight and his hands sweaty. “I didn’t mean for a wraith to get blended with your mind, and I didn’t mean—”

I understand, Pirin, Gray said.

“But—”

Without you, I wouldn’t have a mind. I couldn’t speak with you. She paused, then twitched and let out a soft chip that he could hear. A dragon wraith stuck in my mind is a small price to pay for…thoughts.

After a few seconds, Pirin released his embrace and took a step back. He continued walking along the road. They passed through the outskirts of Greanewash. The buildings here clung together, as if huddling for warmth. They passed a small blacksmith, then a bunch of hovels.

Worse, people started to crowd the path. Elves and men were the most common, but there were a few ostal as well—and Dominion soldiers in their shiny silver armour. Had any of them been told to look out for a traveller with a grey gnatsnapper? Were any of them even paying attention to him?

Here, the elves were less skittish of him. It was a port city, after all; they must have been used to seeing unusual travellers from distant lands. No one tried talking to him, and he didn’t mind that. Except when they decided to stare at him.

He looked back at Gray, and he asked, “Is the wraith still in there with you? Is it still a problem?” He made sure to keep his voice quiet, which was hard when he had to concentrate and speak so forcefully, with intent behind every word.

It’s still here. It is deep in the back of my mind, or locked in my core. I don’t really know. But if my focus starts to slip, it starts bubbling up...

“What would it take for you to lose focus completely?”

I don’t know. I haven’t tried yet.

He nodded slowly, then asked the next question that had been nagging at him over the past week. “Can you help me cycle my—our—Essence? If you match my breathing pattern, we should be able to work together to draw in the Eane and purify it, much faster than I could on my own.”

Give me a moment to match you, and I’ll do my best! she chirped cheerfully.

And so Pirin kept walking. A few minutes passed, and he could safely say the city outskirts had ended. The mud trail became cobblestone, and the buildings grew taller. Horses and oxen trotted down the streets, and platoons of Aerdian and Dominion soldiers patrolled confidently. If he took one wrong step, a rogue wagon would crush him, so he kept to the edges of the street and stayed as vigilant as he could be.

Finally, when they rounded a crowded corner, Gray said, Alright, I think I’ve got it. Got it? Is that the right…way of saying it? Got it, got it…hm, odd phrasing, I suppose, but now that I think hard on it—oh, yes, yes! I can do it!

Pirin concentrated on his breathing technique. It was the proper method to gather Essence from the ambient auras of the world (according to the Path manual, at least). The air rolled in through his lungs and the invisible Eane diffused into his Essence channels, then spread out through his body. When the Essence returned to his core for a second time, it passed invisibly through the air towards Gray. It shot around her body as well.

Every loop, the Eane purified, becoming Essence. The impurities in the energy flew back into his lungs, and when he exhaled, they left his body.

“That’s it,” he whispered, then placed a hand on Gray’s back. “We did it.”

She chirped and trilled, and this time, Pirin knew she understood what he had said.

“Now…we have a sprite to find.”