Orin messed up.

After living for six hundred years and spending most of it unchallenged, he had forgotten what real danger felt like. No matter how thoroughly one believes they’ve covered their bases, it is inevitable that something unaccounted for will arrive—time reveals cracks like water in a vase. On this occasion, it was an enemy that refused to die or let him escape. The archmage had a way to defeat her, but while he weakened and under a wary foe, it was impossible to pull off.

That is, unless he had some help.

A few marbles arced down, barely perceptible to the naked eye. To Cyg, they were like streaking comets plummeting from the sky, leaving a trail of blazing mana. The air wobbled and bent, superheating and intercepting them in a flash of pure energy. Scattered, airborne contents rained down. Underneath Orin, Cyg, and Alicia, the earth was scooped out and the land surrounding melted into a river, carrying them through the forest.

“Hold steady!” the archmage said, grabbing the two by the arms so they would not fall.

Cyg said, “You have a plan, right? Please tell me you have a plan!”

He crouched, his hand peeling layers of dirt underneath him and transforming them into scrolls. “I do. I was so surprised by how well you’ve done that I almost thought I hadn’t needed to step in—”

Alicia cut in, “We’re flattered, but please get to the point!”

“The circle—you almost had it. Because we stranded her inside her domain, it acted like a beacon in the Sea, and by hiding away in a pocket dimension, she was able to locate and destroy the runes that were trapping her and ultimately return.”

“What did I get wrong? What do we have to do?!” the apprentice asked under the roar of explosions and churning of soil. She was terribly distracted by their method of movement—it was unsteady yet fast, each bump making her and Cyg think they’ll be thrown off.

“Instead of using me as the mana source, you must use the witch’s.”

Hijack her mana. Drain the entire domain. Leave her with nothing. Only then would she enter the Outer Sea without recourse. Yet, such a feat must require her permission, otherwise—

“We need her true name...!?”

“It’ll be fine. The soul mage here has already figured it out, no?”

Cyg scowled. “What are you talking about? I don’t even have my own key, how am I supposed to...” He began with conviction, and as he spoke, it cracked under scrutiny. “...Maybe.”

Alicia shouted, “What about the runes? How are we going to build it and place it at the center of her domain?”

“That, I’ll leave to you.” He handed over what he was working on the entire time—three parchment papers of cleanly labeled diagrams, written by transmuting precise shapes and characters onto it with differently colored materials. “Someone has to buy time, and it looks like the task falls onto me.”

He took a step back, and the platform they stood on split in opposite directions. The archmage disappeared into the forest, leaving behind a trail of destruction, and through the canopy and in the sky the two could see space vaporizing as he shot out of the air marble after marble. One of them released a hill’s worth of heavy stone, and as they fell, they touched his mana and became water, harmlessly falling. After watching countless loops, Orin had learned all of the witch’s tricks and secrets.

Cyg and Alicia came to a stop as the ground stopped liquefying, and they exchanged glances before the thief took the apprentice onto his back and began running. He palmed a gemstone from a sack, all the while he held her legs as she read the scrolls over his shoulder.

“This is insane,” she hissed, “How can we do this!?”

“Do you think he’s just using us as a scapegoat so he can escape?”

“He wouldn’t... right? No, there’s no time for these sorts of thoughts!” Alicia hammered and carved the trees they passed, pulling bark into wide strips and scribbling runes down. The scrolls the archmage gave laid bare the full circle—much of it aligned with her theory, speeding up the process, but there were parts that gave her pause. Unintuitive and messy, they were hacked-together scribbles of a man who arrived at his goal with plenty of guesswork.

“I need your domain!” Cyg commanded as he crouched. He sent the gem as far as he could and swapped them both, allowing Alicia to experience the ride for the first time. She clenched her teeth at being gnawed alive by the other world, but it was a small cost for not being in the path of the marble that burst behind them, jagged stone spewing out along with contents of a lake.

Afar, a stretch of flesh swept down onto the forest. The behemoth took every single blast the archmage sent and healed through it, working out what was effective against him.

As Alicia spun a ball of runes, she asked, “Cyg, what are you going to do about the key?”

“I don’t know...!” he replied, wheezing. “Teleport, again...!”

He did another swap, but not as far this time. The marble this time released glowing hot lava mid-flight, igniting all the greenery around by proximity. Everything it directly touched exploded as moisture immediately vaporized, giving them a vivid peek into what would’ve happened if they stayed still. Yet, he had to slow down to catch his breath, even with water covering more and more of the forest and making the ground impossible to traverse.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

For ten whole minutes, they fled, their dodges growing narrower and narrower each time, yet also more infrequent. The battle in the background could always be heard if not seen. The witch attempted to box in the archmage by replacing the landscape with bone, but he carved through it in giant spheres, seemingly pulling from an endless mana supply of his own. But, Merry could see, that each time he did so his soul seemed to wear down further and further as he slipped through the veil and back.

“Cyg, I need the key...!” Alicia said, slowing down as she wrapped one last piece of bark over the ball. It was the size of one’s head but had countless layers, each just thick enough that there would be no leakage or interference. It was a condensed masterwork.

They stopped, Cyg panting as he realized the archmage had Merry’s full attention right now. “Wait, Alicia...” He shook his head as he tried to find the right words. “I need to know something.”

She noticed his concern, the way his urgency seemed to be different than hers, and she chose to slow down her racing thoughts to match his pace. “What is it?”

“...Do you think Merry is a good person?” He reached out with his soul to Alicia’s, touching her as one might line up one’s hand with another.

Alicia pursed her lips. “Where is this coming from?”

“After this past year, despite all this time spent, it feels like I barely know her. That would make sense, right? The only person you’d truly understand is yourself,” Cyg said, watching the archmage and the witch fight. “I wonder how much I really do know about her, how much of herself she’s never shown us. Even after all this time, I barely know anything about who was it that previously stayed in the guest room.”

“The previous apprentice?”

“Yeah. Merry told me she let him go, only to be betrayed.”

She let out a sigh. “That explains a number of things.”

If he had her level of power, would he act the same? Cyg knew the first thing he would do would be to throw the baron into a dungeon and figure out the rest later, and the ease with which the thought arrived was disconcerting. He’d even kill if it meant Griff would live. Even now, he was trying to trample over Merry’s life for Alicia’s. If it came down to his loved ones at the slum, there was no telling what he wouldn’t do.

When Cyg entered the witch’s room that one time, the only time, he saw a portrait of someone, a person she never mentioned. Maybe it was family, maybe it was her mentor, maybe it could’ve been anyone. Given her obsession with curing the plague, he couldn’t help but connect the only dots given.

Just as how Merry could see Cyg, he could see into her. Each time they fought, when their souls collided, he saw the never-ending scars that made up who she was. The texture of her soul was far more familiar than he’d ever expected and he wondered—what if this was done out of love, haunted by a what-if she could never fulfill?

“I might just be lying to myself, since the only thing I know is what I’d seen,” he said, relaying the sensation to Alicia, “But I’d like it to be true; I’d like to believe.”

The apprentice traced over the answer he arrived at and formed it into words. Line by line, arc by arc, a name was drawn out at the center of the circle. Alicia got off his back, noticing they were still safe. She placed the wooden sphere down onto the ground. “When you asked if she was a good person, are you thinking of doing what I believe you are?”

He felt his mouth dry. But, he would never lie to her, not now. “...Yes.”

Alicia took his hands. “I want to believe too.”

“...Even if we can never know?” Merry’s inner thoughts, intentions, and goodwill.

“Even so.” Her spitefulness, desperation, and blindness.

“Even if we are to be punished in a thousand other worlds?”

“Would that be a terrible thing to say? That by only intuition, I’m willing to sacrifice a thousand versions of us when I could not bear to hurt another bystander? But, I have faith,” Alicia answered, “I want to believe the years I’ve spent with her were not a lie, that all of her kind words were made earnestly.”

He noted, “Her mean words were earnest too.”

Alicia laughed. “True.”

“Still...” Cyg let go, taking out the puzzle cube he couldn’t help but take. He then unlocked it and placed it into Alicia’s hands. The apprentice took the scrolls and reduced their size as much as possible, just barely able to stuff them inside when she was done, and she helped him write a little message on top before it was sealed.

While he held the cube and sphere, Alicia climbed onto his back, holding tight. “Do you think she can make it happen?”

“He wrote it was theoretically possible. Who better but a soul mage and her all-powerful domain to make it happen?”

“Right,” she replied. Alicia tapped the ball and rewrote it a little, handing the controls over to Cyg instead of Orin.

The thief began running again, shooting off his mana in the general direction of the house. Here, where the forest is still relatively unperturbed, the lanterns are all still so familiar. The grid they once drew mapped the area, steering him toward the center. What he was looking for allowed plenty of room for error.

Merry caught on and sent more marbles their way, trying to catch and stamp out the intrusion, but he had fought it off countless times before. Cyg and Alicia dodged two more attacks before his mana made it, hitting stone at first but soon finding the sand that used to hide the old circle. The gemstone was swapped into place, and it swelled for the follow-up, replacing it with the sphere. Before the witch could destroy it again, Cyg delivered the puzzle cube and activated everything.

Like a ferocious current, the Sea seemed to be swallowed up by a single point. The edges of Merry’s domain flickered before crumbling, ripped into the vortex as the abomination and the little figure at the top disappeared. Space bent as her magic tried to pry open the veil, both sides sent into great upheaval. Everyone tumbled as reality screeched and howled, seemingly on the verge of shattering.

Then, he performed the second swap, his consciousness pulled into the spell circle. His spatial Aspect activated on a scale he could barely comprehend, as if given a bird’s eye view over the Sea. Lighthouses cut through the fog, their signals emblazoned in even intervals endlessly in every direction. It only took him a glance to find it—the loop near the beginning that he could not remember, and he exchanged their places, dragging Merry into his old body and pulling another version himself to this world.

Trees and undergrowth shook before settling back into place; mounds of dirt and stone rolled until they were even; newly-formed rivers and ponds connected and spilled southward toward the ocean. Birds flitted about and perched themselves on the highest branches, and a basilisk pushed out of the small cave-in to feel the sunlight again. The “Cyg” from a year ago drifted until it found a familiar body, instinctively merging. On the ground, an ankle-deep tide had reached the two, and they scrambled back up before they were any further soaked.

At first, Cyg and Alicia looked at each other, unable to utter a word, unwilling to speak too soon again, but the minutes passed and the truth was evidently etched. Incredulous cheering broke out, and they threw themselves into a long hug. After spending seemingly an eternity here, they didn’t know what to do after. But, they more they talked about it, the easier it became to find their next steps, finally freed from the forest.

And somewhere out there, in a space tucked away in the corner of nowhere, a little puzzle box was cracked open, its contents spilling out along with a single sentence:

“Consider my oath fulfilled.”