Lady Clase halted for a second, but a second only. With an enraged shout, she sprinted towards Pirin, wrist-blade shimmering.

Pirin pulled his hand back, ready to unleash a Shattered Palm—it was the best defense he could muster at the moment, though he doubted it would help him for long. He thrust his hand out, but before the technique could activate, a dark blur passed between him and Lady Clase. Something disrupted his Essence blast.

But Pirin knew better than to fear. He had heard Nomad’s voice and proclamation.

The blur halted in front of Pirin, forming a dark wall between him and Clase. It was Nomad, wearing his heavy cloak and chainmail. Instead of using his flute-staff as a walking stick, he held it like a cane. His racoon-cat clung to his shoulder.

“It’s over, Clase,” Nomad said. “Pirin has proven his capabilities where your nephew could not. Pirin will come with me, and I reckon he’ll come more than willingly.”

Warily, Pirin prepared another Shattered Palm. He figured his channels had one more in them before they were too strained to use. Gray stood behind him, fluffing out her feathers to make herself look bigger. If Lady Clase tried to attack them, they’d be ready.

But he also realized how threatening that looked. “I’ll come with you, Nomad,” Pirin said. “Willingly, of course.”

“I expected no less!” Nomad said. Then, he looked back at Pirin and whispered, “I will, likely, need to borrow your airship and crew…”

“He killed my nephew!” Lady Clase shouted. “Varrus was beaten, and your new apprentice killed him!”

“You twist the fight’s outcome in your favour,” Nomad said, his voice suddenly turning cold. “Even if Pirin had not offered Varrus mercy, he would have been justified in delivering a killing blow. Your nephew rejected Pirin’s mercy.”

“H—how!” Lady Clase spat. She stepped to the side, circling around Nomad and giving herself a straight shot to Pirin. “How did this cripple defeat my nephew! He must have cheated! He…he…”

Nomad lifted his fingers from his staff and began to tap them one by one, as if counting reasons. “Discipline to form a proper foundation, ability to advance under pressure, a proper Reign link with a chosen weapon…shall I keep going?”

With a shout, Lady Clase charged toward Pirin, raising her blades and poising to strike. Pirin took a step back. Was she actually going to—

The moment she passed Nomad, the man’s arm snapped up, holding his staff in one hand. It turned to a blur, and Pirin didn’t see any evidence of Essence-shielding or enhancement.

Maybe Nomad didn’t need that.

His staff struck Clase in the forehead with such force that she flipped over onto her back and landed in a puff of dust. Spinning the staff around, he pointed it at her chest. “Stay down. I didn’t come here to kill you, and I don’t think you came here to die.”

Lady Clase’s eyes flicked back and forth between Pirin and the powerful wizard in front of her. “You can’t be that strong.”

Nomad pulled his staff back a few inches. Without so much as a twitch, he released his core.

He had been veiling himself this whole time.

His core radiated force strong enough to push Pirin to his knees. Pirin’s foundation Timbers swayed, and it felt like the entire surface of his core was being blasted away like sand whisking over a desert.

Gray fluttered her wings to stay in one place. Lady Clase stayed standing, but even she seemed weighed down by the weight of Nomad’s spirit. “Wildflame…” she gasped. “Realm of the Unbound.”

“Unbound indeed,” Nomad said, casually walking around to the other side of her. “You might have heard of me. Castte Aremir of Plainspar? Does the name ring a bell?”

Lady Clase tried to dip down and bow, but Nomad put his staff under her chin and lifted up, keeping her on her feet. She scowled. “A family head of one of the Four Bloodlines…”

“Almost.” Nomad raised a finger, then glanced back at Pirin. “For the boy’s benefit, why don’t you tell him why I might be known as Nomad, a ranger-mage, wandering to the east of the mainland and fishing for scraps in the Adryss ocean?”

Lady Clase gulped. “I—I—”

“Don’t stutter, or he might think you’re lying.”

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

Pirin tried to open his mouth and speak, but the weight of Nomad’s spirit was still too great, and it took all his effort just to stay in one place.

“Aremir family politics? I don’t know, Lord Unbound…”

Nomad scowled, then whipped back around and struck Lady Clase in the chest with an open palm. It wasn’t a hard strike, but Nomad had moved quickly, and he struck with such intensity that Clase flew back across the crystal sand until she smashed into the base of the central spire.

“If she didn’t have an enhanced body, that would have killed her,” Nomad said plainly, veiling his core and turning back to Pirin. “But she will live.”

Pirin inched back to his feet, panting. He wasn’t about to advocate for mercilessness, but this was Clase they were speaking about, who had done enough to warrant some justice. “She might want revenge?”

Nomad shrugged. “Does a mountain lion worry about the rabbit who follows it?”

“No…”

“Precisely. If she follows us, which I find unlikely, I will destroy her.” Nomad spun his flute back around to a staff, then marched away. He made a line straight for the vent Pirin had entered through. “Her clan used to be a vassal of an Unbound Lord. She should be warier.”

Pirin glanced at Gray. He didn’t have his Reyad active, and he doubted he could spend the effort and will to activate it again without passing out. Just to make sure, he patted himself down. Path manual, mask, some of the stolen treasures from the control room, sleeping crystal fox, Nynhar, and of course, Gray.

Then he chased after Nomad. “Sir, if you don’t mind me asking, who are you? And what are the Unbound Lords?”

“Eight Kingdoms, Four Unbound Lords, one true Emperor. It has always been the scheme of the Dominion. Delegate, delegate, delegate. The Emperor is not a mage, so he employs his four loyal wizard families to keep the wizards of his lands in line, and his mortal armies handle the rest.”

Pirin tilted his head. “No wizard-kings?”

“Before the Dominion conquered most of the North, the Eight Kingdoms were ruled by independent wizard-kings, yes,” Nomad said. “Even the land of Ostanor, from which the Dominion hails from. But even power-hungry mortal advisors are quite the force to be reckoned with when they form a soul-pact with four of the strongest non-ruling bloodlines—wizards who reached the Realm of the Unbound Flame, and took the title ‘Unbound Lord’.”

Pirin scrunched his eyebrows. He had always assumed the Emperor of the Dominion was an immortal wizard, ruling through sheer power and fear alone. “So…the first Emperor was just an advisor who managed to take power over the kingdom of…Ostanor, I suppose?”

“That is the tale as I know it,” Nomad said, increasing his pace. “The Four Unbound Lords did the bidding of the mortal Emperors in exchange for a wealth of elixirs and other advancement resources, and over the centuries, they grew the Ostanor Dominion to the furthest corners of the Mainland, conquering seven of the eight kingdoms. All but the old elven kingdom, Khirdia.” He pointed up to the culvert, and after a short pause, he added, “We do need to leave sooner than later, though. Fly up. I will meet you outside the hatch.”

“We’re…leaving the way we came?” Pirin asked.

“Almost. I believe I have a faster route out, one which you and your bird can take.”

“I was half expecting you to have come in the way I came and lock yourself in here,” Pirin said, climbing up into Gray’s saddle.

Nomad pressed his lips together for a moment and scratched the back of his head. “You would be half-correct. Or, a quarter correct, if you were half-expecting. I did follow you in the way you came.”

“How did Lady Clase and her nephew make it?”

Nomad reached up to his shoulder and ran a hand down his cat’s back. “You cleared the way from them quite nicely, and their Path is well-suited for climbing. Those beaver-blades—by the Eane, that’s weird to say—cling to the walls here very well. But, to tell you the truth, I was watching you the closest.” He waved his hand up towards the hatch. “Now go. I can explain more once we’re out of this chamber.”

Pirin flew Gray up to the short tunnel they had entered through. He dismounted at the tunnel entrance and walked back to the hatch. He had been expecting to find it sealed shut, but the entire door had been shattered. That was probably the doing of Lady Clase.

Pirin jumped back down to the main, crystal-filled culvert. A moment later, and with a faint whoosh, Nomad appeared behind him.

“That was fast…” Pirin muttered.

“Don’t bother muttering, boy,” Nomad said. “If I choose to, I can hear the fish swimming in the ocean above.”

Pirin swallowed. “Sorry, sir.” He took a few steps back, until he was side-by-side with Gray. “So…you’re an Unbound Lord? Why are you training me? You know who I am, right? Oh, how could you not…?”

Nomad chuckled. “There are more than four wizards in the realm of the Unbound Flame. As firstborn of the Aremir head family, I was almost an Unbound Lord. But the Path of the Prairie Gap requires a horse Familiar, and when it came time to form my Reyad, the overseers made a mistake. I ended up with this little guy.” He reached up and stroked his racoon-cat’s head. “I was cast out of the family, and subsequently, I never swore allegiance to the Emperor. I have a great many sins to atone for, and there are a great many imbalances to set right. Training the last Wizard-King is a step closer to redemption.”

“The…last?”

Nomad snorted. “You didn’t think the Dominion left the other seven wizard-kings alive after their conquest, did you? The Unbound Lords of yore made short work of them. There are seven mortal governor-kings on the conquered thrones—Aerdia included.”

Pirin nodded slowly, trying to take in everything Nomad had just told him. “I…I don’t know where to go from here.”

“We will advance you higher and more powerful than you could ever imagine. I have many plans, and I will guide you.” Nomad lifted his staff. “The first being how to get out of here. If I’m not mistaken, there should be a vent shaft directly above us.”

“The Red Hand will be guarding the entrance,” Pirin said.

“Yes, him…” Nomad said with a wince. “It is, with great pleasure, that I can announce we will be travelling around him. This shaft will lead us directly to the surface!”