“I know you explained it a few days ago…” I said, my words muffled by the book I was resting on. “...but this is almost incomprehensible.”

I turned my head to my right, where Gideon was hard at work flipping through pages.

Although transmutation had been classified as a branch of thaumaturgy back on Earth, here in Elyss it was counted more along the lines of an occult practice, though one that had demonstrative effects. The twin books we found hadn’t helped fix that notion in the slightest. In fact, after reading the first half of the one in front of me, I was even starting to believe that the whole art was a scam, insane, or worse. And that was for someone who’d literally done transmutation back on Earth.

“‘Summon forth the soul of the people in your acane construction, and transfuse their essence’?” I rolled my eyes. “If I hadn’t already done it, I would have absolutely no idea what that meant. Even now it’s a little difficult to understand.”

The main benefit is in the index of folklore. Gideon thought without facing me. And in the advanced ritual preparations. I only knew the generalities back on Earth, so almost all of that is still useful.

“If only you didn’t have to sift through so much worthless crap to find it.” I blew some hair out of my face. “Somehow I don’t think a chapter about the local cooking recipes of the dwarves of Oh Durin was really all that necessary.”

Nonsense. That was invaluable context for the later chapter explaining how the sense of taste affects regional rituals. Gideon sighed. Why don’t you go practice casting if it’s so uninteresting? Only one of us needs to know the actual mechanics behind this.

I lifted an arm and pointed a finger at him, stopping just an inch away from his snout.

“Spatal.”

With a slight rush of wind, a small handful of snowflakes apperated at the end of my finger and floated down softly onto his unimpressed face.

You’re not already mana-drunk, are you?

“It’d be easier to build resistance with some bigger spells.” I complained. “Just dumping snow out the window is sooo boring.”

Is that a yes?

“Oh course not.” I raised my head and yawned. Outside, I could see the gentle glow of the moons slowly overcoming the glyphs. “It’s just…”

The starfield visible from the capital wasn’t as fabulous as they’d normally were, even weaker tonight than some states I’d visited back in America. The main constellations: the green spear of the Haliborne, the Pale Phoenix, and the four pointed Hearthstars were all bright in the sky, but everything else was dim or invisible. Either victims of the glyph light pollution or some evil omen, I didn't know, but it instilled a homesickness for my own stars and skies.

You think it’s taking too long? Gideon asked. Didn’t you want to stay a bit longer, to help Andril?

“I want to. It’d be a shame to leave without seeing it through.” I said. “But it’s looking to be a longer investigation than I thought it’d be. And increasingly dangerous.”

Originally, I’d expected this whole affair to be over within a raid or two, maybe culminating in some big arrest, but from my point of view almost no progress had been made. Yes, we’d identified Lord Agos, and yes we were pretty sure the Temoif were the culprit, but with the inability to act on those hunches…

That's what happens when you work with the government. Gideon turned back to his book. You have to make it all legal.

“Being a vigilante had much less red tape.” I complained. “But it’s not just the stuff with Andril either. The academy looms ever closer, not even to mention those dreams I’ve been having.”

Dreams? Has that flaming man come back again?

“He never left.”

The dream after I’d gotten back with the books yesterday had been exceptionally alarming, with the fiery figure appearing to stand at the precipice of a nearby peak, noticeably closer than he’d been in previous visions. I’d woken up with a new worry then: that the man would just keep getting closer and closer, until one night I’d go to sleep just to have him staring at me from feet away.

I didn’t want to think about what would happen when he caught up.

That has to be some sort of demon or ghost. I have to wonder why it latched onto you and not me though. Maybe your soul’s extra spicy looking or something.

“Should I be honoured?”

Probably not. Gideon admitted. Do you think Hans could help? We might be able to convince Marcolo to let us go during the day.

I thought about it seriously for a moment. The church didn’t have all those paladin teams for nothing after all. They might even know what was up with it. But one more worry plagued me about that option that prevented me from going to them: that they might suggest it was attached to my soul.

Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

Back on Earth, neither of us had ever messed with the soul or any of the dangerous magic involved with it. It was probably the only lore the grimoire directly advised against messing with after all. There was a simple reason for that, which was that it was easy to mess up, and messing up while poking around with your soul wasn’t something you wanted to happen. So if they predicted that the thing really was attached to my soul, they might decide the only option was to fix it with some handy-dandy soul magic.

And while I knew pretty much nothing about it, I was worried that a soul from a different world dangling on might be a little too noticeable.

“I’ll think about it. ” I said. “What’s the timeline on the transmutation? Should it take too long?”

Actually. Gideon looked up with a draconic grin. I think I could try it right now.

…

And finally, we drop the bulkberry rind into the pot…

I was lying on my stomach on the bed as I watched him drop the scrap of yellow fruit into the small fist-sized pot, which bubbled and frothed like a twirling maelstrom. As it plopped onto the surface and sunk beneath, both of us watched the pot carefully, and I scooted a few inches back. After a couple seconds of agonising silence, the bubbling slowed and Gideon’s wingtips lifted slightly, only for the water to immediately burst into the air as if propelled by a stick of dynamite, sizzling into nothing as it rained upon the drake.

I made another mark in the notebook, bringing the total up to sixteen.

“And with that, we’ve gone through all the types of berries in the capital.” I yawned. “Might have to call it a night. We have another meeting with the Andril gang early tomorrow.”

Gideon didn’t respond, instead bashing the pot over with his tail, it’s contents entirely converted to warm air. It clattered to the ground unharmed, and the heating stone underneath dimmed as the air touched it.

It shouldn’t be this hard. He clawed at the ground, scrapping the planking. One of those should’ve succeeded.

I sighed. To be honest, this result wasn’t completely unexpected to me, nor should it have been to him. Transmutation depended on the surrounding populace’s conceptions of the desired object, and Verol… didn’t have any conceptions surrounding the lemon. There was nothing they could think of rather, for it quite simply didn’t exist in this world.

“Maybe we just need to go somewhere far off.” I said. “Maybe they’re actually affecting it.”

And that’s the worst case scenario. Gideon said. Because Verol is one of the more populated places on Elyss.

“This is populated?” I glanced towards the mist filled valleys outside, only one town visible outside the city. “Surely we could just go into the mountains. Or into a forest or something. We only need forty miles or so.”

Gideon growled in irritation.

And that’s the thing, isn’t it? The entire mountain range is decentralised as hell. Farmers and incredibly small villages dot the entire length. And the valleys are worse. Apparently farmsteaders are set up all throughout this region. We’d be hard pressed to find a free thirty miles, let alone forty.

“It’s that bad?” I rolled onto my back and stared at the ceiling. “We’ll just have to find the Siberia of this world then. Or an ocean.”

There was one ocean that Saphry’s memories had shown me, and that was the ‘Mirrorguine’ south of Brepoli, far to the south. It was certainly a trip of many weeks, one that we couldn’t exactly leave on lightly. Or without supplies. So it was easier said than done.

No, even then we’d have to get all the materials out there. Gideon slumped down on the floor. At this point I don’t know if we’ll ever get home.

Frowning, I slid off the bed and sat down beside the diminutive drake, petting his spine.

“Come on now. It’s only been a couple hours of testing! It’s hardly the end of the world.” As I comforted him, the memory of our last Earthly transmutation popped into my mind. “Wait a minute? What about catalyst transmutation? Wasn’t that a way to get anything we needed?”

The one with gold? Gideon raised his head, pondering. We are nobility, now that I think of it. That’d be much easier than trying to guess what these yokels think.

“Exactly! [Gold]!” I jumped up with the drake and did a little spin. “That’s it!”

How could we forget about something so simple? There was no need to bother with all this psychological crap anyway! Anything could be solved with the power of money.

Gideon frowned.

Why did you say it like that?

I slowed and plopped down onto the bed.

“What’da mean?”

Gold. Gideon thought. You said it in English.

“That? Oh that’s just because…” I faltered as I racked my mind for the Veroline equivalent. “Because… I can’t remember the word for it. Huh.”

Had Saphry really never learned the name of such a basic element? Did the people of this world just not mine very much? No, after seeing that staircase under the church there was no way they didn’t… Then why didn’t I know the word?

“Eh, do you know the word?” I asked. “I’m still drawing a blank.”

Gideon was silent for a moment, the gears in his brain almost visibly turning.

Not in Veroline. He finally admitted. But in dwarven.

“Dwarven?” I sighed in relief. “That’s fine I guess.”

If some cosmic fuck up had really led to this planet not having an ounce of gold upon it, I might’ve just given up right there. Because at that point, it was God himself binding me to this planet, not luck or coincidence, and [fuck] me if I was going to go against that.

It might not be. Gideon said. They call it ‘Ureif’, which I guess is translated as ‘skysheet’ or ‘heavenstone’. Silst’s never seen it before.

“Really? That sounds… strangely celestial. Especially for something you have to bring out of the ground. Do you know why they call it that?”

Internally, I could already see where this was going. I could almost physically see an invisible quest objective get updated in the back of my mind, almost hearing the jingle.

Well, the dwarves do live at the tops of mountains. Gideon said. But I have no idea. We’ll have to find out.

“It couldn’t hurt to ask around.” I said. “I’m sure the librarian… well I’m sure I could get Auro to ask the librarian about it. If Silst knew about it I’m sure it won’t be too hard to find. I mean, this city seems to use silver for everything, is [gold] really that different?”

It could be. If they don’t even have a word for it, it might just be extremely rare. Which might put up right back on the psychological transmutation train again.

“They might just use the dwarven word for some reason.” I pointed out. “But yeah, you could be right. We’ll always have the dumb method to fall back on.”

I suppose.

We laid around in silence for a minute, wondering over what this would actually take. Outside, the lantern lights lining the streets had fully woken up, turning the city into an ethereal blue.

“You know, it could be a lot worse.” I said. “Imagine if we had come in as a couple peasants. Or as two animals.”

A dragon is not an ‘animal’. Gideon sniffed. They are just as intelligent, if not more so, than humans.

“I didn’t say they weren’t.”

But I suppose that’s an interesting question. Imagine we did come in as two peasants. Would we still care about keeping their lives in order as we have with Saphry and Silst?

I tilted my head.

“Why wouldn’t we? I don’t see how…”

Think about it. Being low class would mean we wouldn’t have the resources we have now, not the connections or the money. And if we weren’t in the capital, we might not even have access to the library. We’d be in some backwater farming village with nothing resembling an alchemy station in sight. Would we really care about preserving their previous lives if they were much more inconvenient?

I almost immediately opened my mouth to argue only to find that I couldn’t. We had already talked about just ditching the academy, and that wasn’t even that bad in the grand scheme of things. I couldn’t see us hanging around a rural village any longer than it took to gather supplies.

“Maybe not.” I admitted. “You should always look to yourself first, after all.”

Exactly. In that sense, it’s almost preferable to come in as two animals than as two humans. We just got lucky that Saphry and Silst had nothing going on to mess up. Our consciousness is just a delusion borne of privilege and lies.

“Well when you say it like that it makes me feel evil.” I said. “It’s not really like we had a choice in the matter. Is it somehow wrong to work with what you have?”

It wasn’t like we had chosen to come here and disrupt someone’s life, so was it really our fault if we had to take some liberties to get home? A person’s first loyalty should be to themselves, to family, and then to friends, and only then to complete strangers, though it sounded callous. And if we took the only care we could while we got back, weren’t we still the good guys here?

Perhaps not, but it is interesting to think about.

I turned away from him and hugged the pillow in front of me.

“It’s depressing to think about. I think you’ve been reading too many books with morally ambiguous plots. And I’m tired of thinking about things we can’t change.”

We should be getting some rest, anyway. Gideon agreed. We need to be wide awake for the meeting tomorrow.