Myraden dropped a handful of black ash at the Red Hand’s feet, then looked him in the eyes. “I could not get its head. This will have to do.”

“I was watching.”

She exhaled sharply, and a sense of irritation poured over from Kythen. “Then why did you ask for evidence?”

“I was curious if you had manifested much Reign yet. If you had, you would’ve severed its head.”

She leaned on the blackened wall of the building behind her and crossed her arms over her stomach. “Spear Reign is for piercing and jabbing; sword Reign is for cutting.”

“Do you wield just a spear? Your father used that weapon, and every Leursyn Cursebearer before you has wielded it to some degree. It’s where your bloodline comes from.” He narrowed his eyes. “Is it just a spear?”

Myraden gulped. “...No.” Before she could manage to look sheepish, she set off down the road, heading back toward the city. “It is also a rope-dart.” Kythen trotted along behind her, nuzzling her shoulder encouragingly.

“Literal, I suppose.” The Red Hand followed her. “Regardless, you did most of what I asked. I will help you advance to Wildflame.”

She wasn’t sure how to respond. A simple ‘thank you’ felt too informal, and not enough for the gravity of his decision. But she couldn’t seem too sycophantic, either—this was the Red Hand she was dealing with. The Red Hand of the Emperor, the rebellious Seissen lord who’d turned against Ískan and his own people, who’d doomed her home.

He wasn’t getting a ‘thank you” out of her.

So she ended up saying, “Good.”

Once they left the damaged ruins of the central city, Myraden asked, “Where do you suggest we go, then, Hand?”

“To an inn. We can discuss your next steps there.”

After a few minutes of trekking through the city streets, they approached a three-storey building with wood walls, lattice windows, and wrap-around black eaves that swooped upward in the corners. Horsehead ornaments hung over every window, and a sign hung over the main street, reading, The Last Pony Inn.

The Hand barged inside, pushing open a sliding door, and Myraden and Kythen followed. At first, she worried that Kythen wouldn’t be allowed inside, but he fit through the doors and no one stopped him.

This was still half Plainspar. The horsemasters never left their companions outside in the rain.

They approached a clerk at the desk, and the Hand said, “One room. Two guests and…a horse equivalent.”

“Your pay?” asked the clerk, a male southern sprite in a pristine doublet. His horse ears flicked, and he tapped his a clipboard with a quill.

Myraden reached into the pocket of her trousers and produced a few silver Dominion coins she’d acquired on her journey to Rasis Nureans-Ost. “How much?” she asked. Suddenly, she wished she’d pulled a hood over her antlers.

Now that she’d advanced to Blaze, they were locked in place, never growing and never falling out, but the red crystal substance they’d transformed into—same as the bloodhorn’s horns—stood out. And that was as if her runebond tattoos didn’t already mark her as a wizard.

But, then again, if they knew she was a wizard, they were less likely to bother her about being a rebellious northern sprite.

“Three Chains for the night,” said the clerk. He held out his hand expectantly.

Myraden retrieved three silver coins and plopped them in the man’s hand like they were hot and she wanted to get rid of them.

“Thank you. He plucked a key off the wall behind him and handed it to the Hand, then said, “Third floor, sir and madame. Room four. Would you allow us to keep your…beast in the horse stable?”

Myraden glanced at Kythen. I can hold my own for a night, Kythen said inside her mind, and she nodded, accepting his wish and the clerk’s offer.

The clerk set a hand on the side of Kythen’s muzzle, awfully gently for a man of his stature, and led the bloodhorn across the first floor of the inn, to the interior stable entrance. Through the stable doorway, she spotted at least three more horses pawing at the straw littering the ground or munching on hay in troughs.

The Hand took the key and stalked away, and Myraden followed him. They took two flights of creaking wooden stairs up, then followed a hallway to their room. When the Hand unlocked it, the door slid open, revealing a cramped interior with a single window overlooking the street below. There were two small cots, a table, unlit candles and paper lanterns, and a dresser with nothing inside.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Myraden marched over to the bed closest to the door and dropped down, then peeled off her cuirass. “Your name was once Lord Kovar, correct?”

“Correct.”

“Seeing as you’re no longer truly the Hand, should I call you that?” She tugged at the bottom of her sleeveless gambeson. It’d always been too small for her, but over the past few months, it’d gotten more and more shredded, and where her chest-wrap didn’t cover, runic tattoos shone through. She smoothed it down. There was no point in fixing it now; all it did was provide comfort, and she didn’t need any extra layers for heat.

“You can call me whatever you want,” the Hand stated. “So long as I know it’s me you’re referring to.”

“Then I will keep calling you Hand.” It was all she’d ever known him as.

She shut her eyes. She remembered standing there, right after she’d taken her Ichor and formed a Reyad bond, staring at him and saying nothing.

It’d been a cold night, snow was fluttering around, and the orange glow of open flames poured across a small town square. Dominion soldiers in silver armour lined the roads, and she approached a vat of Ichor. The soldiers delivered her a cup, and she down the entire elixir in a single gulp.

It had been the single most painful experience of her life. Golden lightning seared her veins and channels, her eyes burned, and golden light spilled out her throat. Fire swirled in her mind and spilled down her spine, reducing her nerves to flour in a grindstone. And to think that Pirin had done the same almost every single time he wanted to form his Reyad with Gray. Unimaginable what lengths he’d gone to.

Kythen—back then, a simple bloodhorn without a name—had approached her, then bowed his head. A golden sheen poured over his eyes as well, and the bond was complete.

The Red Hand had watched it all. He must’ve known, in that moment, that he had a new apprentice.

Her mind skipped forward a few months—well after the Reyad-forming ceremony—and she was racing through an Aerdian forest, escaping the Hand and his other disciples. They’d found out who she was. She clutched her shoulder, holding a blood-spouting wound. Each root caused her to trip and stumble, each branch threatened to gouge out her eyes.

But Kythen was right behind her. Always there.

She shook her eyes and wrested her mind back to the present, then faced the Red Hand. He stood at their room’s window, looking down over the city. Outside, a patrol of Dominion soldiers cleared the streets, enforcing a curfew and beating anyone who resisted. Drunks staggered out of their way, bold about their alcohol consumption despite the ban across Dominion-held lands.

“No one cares,” said the Hand softly. “They’re on the brink of oblivion.”

Myraden exhaled. “They are just complacent. There is a rot, but it is not yet complete. The Dominion will not collapse if we do not destroy Lady Neria and her Unbound Lords. I must advance to Wildflame. What do I need to do?”

The Hand turned around. “Do you know about your Inner Gates?”

“Vaguely.” She reached up and curled her hair around her finger. “I was instructed on all the stages in my childhood, then Ískan burned.”

“Do you still blame me?”

“You still lured the sprites in with your rebellion.” She paused. “I have no choice but to work with you. There is no time, and I cannot afford to seek out another teacher. I will hold back my disdain.”

“Good.” The Hand walked back across the room, tapping the floor with his sheathed sword as he walked. “Then I will instruct you. The gap between Blaze and Wildflame is a wide river to cross. The revelations are the bridge.”

“Revelations? I thought there was only one?”

“There is a major Eane Revelation at the end of the road, about your Path, to understand your nature and condense the profundity of it. It is the trigger to complete advancement. But along the way, there are three minor revelations. The Spirit Revelation, which encapsulates the two lowest Gates, the Heart Revelation, which opens the three middle Gates, and the Soul Revelation, which opens the two uppermost gates.”

“What…closed them? Why are they closed?”

“Closed?” The Hand shook his head. “Not closed. Clogged. If they were closed, you’d cease to function. As a Blaze, your channel system has become infinitely more physical than ever before, and your body relies on it to move.”

“Why are they clogged, then?” she asked.

“Over your life, you have experienced hardships, trials, and tribulations, and your soul clings to them. Your willpower comes from your soul, and when you push Essence with it, some fill your channels. It happens to everyone. Their will begins to subconsciously work against them. You have now reached a point where you cannot advance any higher without clearing your Inner Gates.”

“And once I do? Will they not clog again?”

“They would,” the Hand said, raising a finger, “if you did not have your Eane Revelation to tie it all off. That will resonate all along your Center-Rhun channel, you will ingest a slice of the Eane itself, and you will advance—with the Inner Gates permanently unclogged.”

“Alright.” Myraden was hesitant to pull off her boots, but she didn’t want to slip under the sheets with them on. She’d get dirt, mud, and demonling guts in the bed. “So, what must I do? How?”

“I will explain along the way.”

Myraden stared at him. He still wasn’t giving her all the information.

“We are going to Ískan next. There’s no better place to open your Inner Gates than the land you grew up in, the land that informed your entire existence.”

She swallowed. She hadn’t set foot in Ískan since the day she’d left, since the Burning, and she desperately wanted to keep away from its ash-riddled corpse.

But there was no other choice.

She laid down on her back and waited, saying nothing more. The Hand took the other bed and laid on his back as well. Neither of them fell into a rhythmic, sleeping trance. As often as she caught him shifting to cast her a suspicious side-eye, she did the same. He held his sword protectively over his chest, and she kept her spear in-hand.

When the sun finally rose, she found herself thankful. Swinging her legs over the side of the bed, she rammed her feet back into her boots, then stood upright.

It was time to go home.