The man who must have been Pyraz jolted. A noise halfway between a growl and a gasp left his lips. He pulled his arms to the sides and tugged at the intravenous needles embedded in his skin and blue liquid dripped from his wounds, swirling, mixed red with blood, trailing onto the table below. Then he grabbed at the grating of the shroud overhead. His biceps flexed. Like climbing a ladder without legs he pulled himself one rung at a time toward Eris. She and Rook cleared backward to the edge of the platform. When Aletheia saw their pet dog as he really was she fell silent, her eyes dried. She withdrew into herself.
Pyraz stopped at the table’s edge. Sitting upright. For a moment his palms found his face and long, messy hair fell down around his ears. He breathed deeply. Eris could hardly imagine anything more traumatizing than having one’s form reconfigured while awake. She saw no manaburns across the man’s dark skin, no rashes, no signs of spellsickness, but every hint disorientation, confusion, an inability to control his muscles and breath.
“Pyraz?” Rook said.
Pyraz’s hands fell to his side, where they clutched the table. With his arms out of the way his upright figure was revealed to Eris. As a dog he had seemed unextraordinary. A mutt. No markings or injuries or scars that she ever noticed. As a man he was quite different. She noticed already the damage to his skin, the scarification on his cheeks, down his neck, over his shoulders; now she saw the horrific disfigurement across his torso. He looked like a field of battle pockmarked by artillery mages, although he was still strong and well-muscled. Eris had at first found his physique impressive but now, regarding him in nakedness, she was revolted. A scar here and there to run the fingers over—that was nothing to protest. Rook fit that profile well. But Pyraz looked more living dead than living human. Burns, cuts, stabs; many stabs, more than should be survivable.
And tattoos with Manastone ink. At least, that was what they appeared to be, up and down his arms, in swirling shapes across his chest and down to his thighs. Symbols across his flesh which glowed blue and red.
He looked to Rook. His mouth opened and a breath of air escaped but his lips seemed unable to form the words to speak.
His hair whipped to the side, eyes to Eris. He frowned to see her. She felt persecuted in that moment, and quite unlike herself she took another step backward. Yet soon enough he looked away, now toward Aletheia; there his expression softened. The girl stared back at him in reverence.
His chin drew closed. Then it opened again, as he made some noise, a grunt, but frowned again.
“You can still understand Kathar?” Rook said.
Pyraz nodded.
“But you can’t speak it?”
His mouth opened. Shut. A frown. For a long time after he closed his eyes, sighing, shaking his head. Then there came the eruption of sound from his chest—words in Regal: “I know the sounds, but not how to form them.”
Eris and Aletheia both jumped to hear his voice. It was not so deep as they might have expected. The accent couldn’t be determined, but then neither could the language itself, at first. Regal was known by magicians as the language of the Old Kingdom and all its esoteries, an ancient and arcane tongue, spoken by few humans beyond the Tower of Pyrthos and its exclaves and, even then, mostly read. A different dialect was more commonly known as Elvish, though in truth the languages were identical.
Yet even as Eris understood Pyraz, the words he used were neither Elvish nor Old Regal. His pronunciation followed rules she did not recognize and it took her a moment to translate in her head. That was when the gravity of their discovery settled. Not only that they had found Pyraz in that Spire, but that they had successfully transformed him back into human form—they were speaking to a man born before the Fall, over a thousand years ago, and his very speech was a reminder of that fact.
“He says he indeed understands Kathar but cannot speak it himself,” Eris stepped in to translate. She looked him over again. “No doubt a consequence of having a snout.”
Pyraz’s glare returned to Eris.
She took off her cloak and handed it to him. “There is a girl here,” she said. “You had best make yourself decent.”
He covered himself around the waist, standing. For a moment he wobbled, but just a moment. When he was steady he regarded Rook and Eris. He looked very strong in the arms, but he was lithe in the torso, and not much taller than Eris.
“You are a girl,” he said.
By now Eris had folded her arms, as was her fashion, and was smiling at Pyraz as she imagined a profitable future together, so that by the time she had understood his words their meaning collapsed down onto her like an anvil.
“What did you say?” she replied in Regal.
“All of you. All three. You are children.”
She felt herself blush. Heartrate elevating, anger coming in. Eris had not been a child in many years. She went to retort when Rook stepped in.
“What is he saying?”
“He says—we look young,” Aletheia said.
He nodded. “You seemed older from the ground. I hadn’t realized…”
Pyraz himself was much older than Eris had expected, perhaps forty, though he looked bad for his age. “It was I who transformed you,” Eris said, now irritated, “you might show more gratitude.”
He fell silent. A wave of nausea overcame him. The party watched on as he rested against the operating table’s shroud. For a moment he glanced around the laboratory. He traced a finger along the tattoo on his left arm, down to the wrist. Then he looked to the ceiling, took a long breath, and he shuddered.
“We must be at the heart of the aether,” he said. “I have never tasted so much mana.”
“We are in a backwater swamp,” Eris said. “You will taste such mana anywhere this high up, including the Spire we found you on.”
Rook found a spare shirt in his pack and gave it to Pyraz. “We’re still in search of some way out. We’ll have time to discuss everything on our way back.”
“The scarshades are in our way,” Aletheia said.
“I will levitate us down to the Keep’s bailey from the Prince’s Office,” Eris said. “We should check the libraries once more for any secrets, then depart. If that is agreeable.”
She glanced to Pyraz. Another long silence as he took in the air. At length he said, “Do you know what it’s like to be a hound?”
“Is this a rhetorical question?”
“You smell…very different.” He glanced between them again.
“‘Smell?’” Eris repeated.
He nodded. “But that’s not all. The moment you set me free from my chamber I felt loyalty to you that was undying.”
“That is why we kept you and did not put you down when times became hard,” Eris said.
“It’s gone now. Now I see only a girl.”
Eris sputtered. “Were you not there to behold when I banished Lord Arqa? Did you not see me tear open the sky? And what of when I fed you rats Polymorphed into mice, hm? Or—and you still have not answered—when I led our party here to transform you back into a man? Were these the deeds of a ‘girl?’”
Pyraz nodded. “Yes.”
“Yes!?” Eris could hardly believe the answer.
Aletheia giggled. Rook looked more nervous at the hostilities.
“You wield raw power but know few spells,” Pyraz said, “and unlike Aletheia you have not studied the arts of a warrior.”
“I have never claimed to be a warrior,” Eris said.
“But are you a Magister?”
She stared at him. “Of course not. Are you?”
“No,” he said. “I am a Hypaspist.”
Eris stared at him. The Hypaspistai were the Regizar’s personal guards—his shieldbearers and most elite infantry, comprised entirely of manaseared battlemages. Robur had been right; this man was a magician.
“And what great magic can a Hypaspist conjure, which might put me to shame?” she said.
Pyraz extended his arm. He pinched his fingers together and from his hand fell sparks of blue light. He traced them in an arc, past Rook, then Eris, then Aletheia, and everywhere his fingers went a luminescent halo cut through the air, hanging like a burnt spot in the eye after staring at the sun. When the arc was completed it expanded outward, until the halo rested behind and above each party member’s head.
“What is he doing?” Rook said.
“I do not—” Eris started.
Pyraz’s hand closed. Just then, from the halo, extended a curtain of pure white, blinding, down to the floor. All were enveloped. The earth shook underfoot and there was a noise like the humming of ten thousand cicadas, whining and wailing as the white curtain shimmered, until it dimmed and retreated and the blue halo vanished, and when all was gone, they found themselves standing in the thick, hot, humid jungle of Telmos, feet before the outer wall of the Magister’s Keep.
Aletheia screamed. Rook toppled to the ground. Eris nearly vomited, the world spinning around her. She had never felt so dizzy in her life.
Minutes later, when all was still and the green stabilized around her, Pyraz adjusted the cloak around his waist.
“Levitation is not real magic,” he said.
Eris steadied herself against a tree. “You idiot! We were not finished in their libraries—”
“You were right,” he said, “it’s different here. I can hardly—but nothing like it was.” He looked at Eris. “I was finished.”
“There were books I wanted to recover!”
“No.” He shook his head. “You don’t care about the people of Telmos.”
She hesitated to be so accurately assessed. “There may be secrets—”
“I will tell you secrets,” he said. “And of Esenia’s magic. That is what you want. Not old books of an extinct people.”
Eris bit her lip. He was right. And she had never seen anyone, not even a Magister, teleport four people so quickly, without any preparation. She recognized the spell as Mass Recall and it was not easy to cast. Such magic was well beyond her at the present.
“I thought I was ‘but a girl?’” she said.
“Girls become women.” He looked her over. “Eventually.”
Rook stumbled next to Eris. “Never do that again,” he said.
“Do it again!” Aletheia said. She grabbed Rook’s shoulder. “Teleport us back to Vandens!”
“Too far. And I need more mana.”
“I’m starting to feel rather left out,” Rook said. “Pyraz, we need to get you back to Patiyali. Are you fit to travel?”
He nodded.
Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
“Then let’s not sit around, waiting to be eaten by a giant lizard.” He grabbed Eris by the wrist and tugged. “Let’s go.”
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They camped in the Petrified Jungle. The wind blew hard and howled overhead and rain barraged the canopy yet even so not a single leaf moved an inch. Within one day Pyraz was speaking Kathar without difficulty.
“What were you doing atop that tower?” Rook asked as they prepared dinner in the dark.
“And why were you a dog?” Aletheia said.
Pyraz stared into the fire. He brought his hand very near the flame, then let it drift within. The streaks of yellow bit at his skin—but he made no reaction. When he withdrew himself he was not burned.
“I don’t know,” he said quietly. “I was on the field outside the walls of Seronos. The Spire’s shield blocked our magic, and in our armor we scaled the walls to pass it by. In the streets my unit slew hundreds. The air was rich with iron, and in the fire off the buildings we passed I felt certain I was in an ancient forge of my ancestors, before the Age of Blood and Mana. In a park lined with oak trees I saw in the distance, unblocked by any buildings, the Spire, and I clutched the Manastone in my sword’s hilt to conjure ourselves inside. When our eyes opened again we stood at its top—but they waited for us there. A man in enchanted armor clashed blades with me. And…he tackled me off the side.”
“The top of a Spire?” Rook said. “You fell all that way and lived?”
“That is all I remember.”
“What happened next?” Aletheia asked.
“Eris opened my sarcophagus. I was a dog.” He shuddered.
“Where is Seronos?” Eris said. “I have never heard of this city.”
“West of Rytus,” Pyraz said, as if everyone should know better than to ask.
Eris raised an eyebrow. “There is nothing but ocean west of Rytus.”
“Have you never heard of the region of Staraz?”
All three shook their heads. He fell silent again.
“So,” Rook said. “They found you alive, but near death. And in appreciation to your service to the Regizar, they built a stasis chamber for you—a place to heal, or to be kept until some way to heal you was found. But the Old Kingdom fell before that day came.”
“How could Esenia ‘fall?’” Pyraz spat. “From the cave-dwellers of Nanos to Ganarajya’s elephant tamers, all men of the Blood were loyal to the throne.”
“They destroyed themselves,” Eris said. “You have seen the lights of the aether in the sky. The Magisters brought heaven down to earth and changed both forever. You will no longer need Manastone to use your magic, as you have well discovered. But you find Esenia a very different place than you left it. And ‘twas your people who made it this way.”
“I know,” he said.
“But why a dog?” Aletheia said. She was growing impatient. This was clearly the only question she cared about.
Pyraz hesitated for a long moment. “My clan was Shvaana, from the mountains of Kailasha. Our sigil was the hound. They called me the ‘Regizar’s Dog of War.’”
Eris remembered. “On your sepulcher! Written on its side! It said, I recall clearly, ‘here lies Pyraz, the Dog of War.’ I thought nothing of it at the time, yet clearly the aether disagreed.”
“That’s it?” Aletheia said with a frown.
They all fell silent once more. No doubt in contemplation. It did seem an anticlimactic conclusion to the saga, and yet it was more or less as Eris had expected from the start.
She continued, “The surge of mana in the Fall transformed this world in ways that cannot easily be understood—look at the forest around you and see that clearly. Atop the Spire, a conduit for magic, it was inevitable that Pyraz would be affected as well.” She shrugged. “He is lucky he merely became a dog and not a gnoll, or a hobgoblin, or a gelatinous cube. We would not have been so eager to restore you then.”
“The transformation must have healed you,” Rook said. “Do you feel injured?”
“…no,” Pyraz said.
“Then it worked out,” Aletheia said. “I guess.”
The man who was once a dog hung his head in silence. There was sadness in his look. He knew more than he let on, for he clearly remembered his time on four legs, yet all the same Eris imagined how jarring it might be to wake up after generations asleep, robbed of all one’s relations, property, and even his very civilization vanished before his eyes. It surprised her how little this Pyraz had to do with the one she had come to know.
That night they slept poorly in the humidity and cacophony of the downpour. Very late Eris overheard Aletheia whispering quietly to Rook: “I miss my dog.”
And although Eris had no regrets, as she looked out the side of her eye and saw the strange scarred man with his eyes closed against a petrified tree, she wondered if she didn’t miss her dog, too.
----------------------------------------
“Can you still feel your beacon?” Rook said to Aletheia.
She nodded. “This way.”
Even with a beacon the jungles were impossible to navigate. The terrain changed steeply as hills were concealed within foliage so that it might be mistaken for a green cloud at any distance, and all the while it never once stopped raining. They failed to make it to Heaven Falls by the first night, so they slept on fallen trees, soaked through, as all the forest underfoot writhed with spiders, centipedes, and crabs the size of cats. Mosquitos assailed them mercilessly. Yet what they feared most was to encounter the megafauna which called this place home. Nothing would be more dangerous.
For now they remained unassailed. By dusk of the second day they reached the cliffs that would lead them down to their boat. They saw the swamplands far below that were sprinkled with pessiyanua pillars, where water spilled outward from the river and spread everywhere around weeping trees. Countless birds took to the sky, each the size of lions.
Looking downward, Rook wiped the sticky, rain-mixed sweat from his forehead and considered the cliffs they would need scale to return to their boat.
“Can you teleport us down?” he asked.
Pyraz traced his tattoos once again. “Yes,” he said. “With a managem.”
“Do not tell me the great Hypaspist is unable to use magic if not atop a Spire or laden with Manastone?” Eris taunted him.
“…this sensation of magic prickling against my skin, this smell of it in the air at all times—I’m not accustomed to it.”
“Me neither,” Rook said with a smile. “You can always levitate us.”
“It is too far and too precarious for so many,” Eris said.
“Then there’s always the old-fashioned way.” He enthusiastically stepped toward a ledge to begin his descent, but the rocks were treacherous and slick with precipitation. That gave him pause. Still, one-by-one they began their way down, but Pyraz remained at the top.
“What’s wrong?” Aletheia said.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t want to.”
“Then cast a spell,” Eris said.
“I risk overcasting without mana circuitry nearby.”
“Then stand still until a dragon carries you away. You have come a long way to die so foolishly, however.”
He nodded. He took one step closer, a hand on a rock, and then…he stopped again. Shaking his head. Frowning. His eyes closed. Eris felt a brief jolt of mana, then a flash, and when she looked back to where Pyraz stood seconds previously, he was gone.
“Where is he?” Rook said. “Where did he go?”
“There!” Aletheia said. She pointed to the bottom of the cliffs. And, indeed, there stood Pyraz, a nervous look about him. He took a seat on a rock.
“That bastard,” Rook said, half-jokingly.
“I think he is afraid of heights,” Eris said.
“He was pushed off a Spire,” Aletheia said.
“If he keeps this up he might get pushed off again,” Rook said. “I’m joking! Let’s get down to him.”
As before they made it less than halfway before it became too dark and they were too exhausted to continue on, so they stopped to rest within the rocks. Come next morning they made it back down to his level.
“I don’t see our boat,” Pyraz said.
“It’s right here!” Aletheia said. “We’re getting nearby. I remember, it’s—”
They rounded a weathered boulder. Not only was there no boat, but there was no beacon stone. Instead they found only the splintered remnants of a wooden hull.
“No,” she said. “No…”
Eris’ heart might have sank, but she was resigned to regular calamity at this junction. Thus she merely sighed. “And who is surprised by this?” she said.
“Where’s the stone?” Rook said. He leaned down to sort through the debris. “Aletheia, you can still feel the stone, can’t you? Where is it? It’s not here.”
Despite this outcome being no fault of her own the girl clearly felt responsible. She shook her head and shrugged, but, at length, pointed out toward the swamp. All the party glanced that way.
“…it’s moving,” she said.
“Something ate it,” Pyraz said.
“We’re stuck here,” she said, despairing. Rook embraced her.
“We aren’t stuck here. The water isn’t deep,” he said. “If we stick to the islets we can walk out.”
“Yet ‘tis far,” Eris said.
“Do you have some better idea?”
She shrugged. “I could turn you all to birds and you might fly to safety. Though you might be disappointed should an eagle pass you by.”
“We walk,” Rook said.
“Oh, joy. I have always wanted to wade eighty miles through a swamp afoot, especially one filled with killer carnivores and psychic snakes.”
“Why?” Pyraz said. “That sounds terrible.”
Rook put his other arm around Pyraz’s shoulder. “You’ve been a hound too long, my friend. It’s best not to take Eris too seriously.”
“Yes, for as we all know, ‘tis I who is the party clown,” she sneered. Together they took a step into the swamp. The water went only to their ankles. “At least we have no halfling in our company. Zydnus would be drowning already.”
Pyraz waded slowly. “Zydnus. I liked Zydnus. He smelled always of bacon grease.”
“He did?” Aletheia said.
“Always.”
“…what did I smell like?”
“Fresh roses in a cool breeze.”
“What did Eris smell like?”
“Rook.”
“So what does Rook smell like?”
Pyraz thought for a moment. “Masculine sweat pooling in fresh blood.”
“You think I smell like a man’s sweat?” Eris said.
“No,” he said.
“Then what did you mean when you said I smelled like Rook?”
He fell silent. “I shouldn’t say.”
She decided some things were better for a woman not to know. Aletheia, girl she was, took no meaning from this exchange, and continued to drill the poor dog-man for hours yet to come. Apparently Guinevere smelled of silver—Eris didn’t know silver smelled like anything—and Jason smelled like a cornered squirrel. But it was the girl’s need to go too far that drove everyone into silence.
“…what about Astera?” she asked.
They splashed along.
“I can’t remember,” he said. And that was that.
----------------------------------------
They camped on a murky islet where the earth was muddy and thorned vines crawled everywhere across the ground. Food was running low. That night they ate nothing as a precaution. Eris had nearly fallen asleep when Aletheia scrambled to her feet.
“It’s coming closer!” she said.
“What?” Rook said.
“The beacon! It’s coming closer! It’s almost here!”
He took hold of her, glancing around, but no one saw anything. “There’s nothing out there,” he said.
“Rook!” she protested.
“I don’t see—” Pyraz started, but by then there was no need to squint.
A sail jutted from the water. Some distance off, closer toward the river, where all was much deeper. Golden and green and pink, an arc, a fin gliding nearer to them. With every yard traveled their way it raised higher and higher above the water’s surface, until its bottom broke that line, and its back came into view, and thereafter its head rose, and then, in the darkness, they all saw.
It was a crocodile that walked on two legs. Its mouth was long and lined with teeth and its eyes were set within ridged brows. From its torso hung two long, clawed arms, and soon its huge legs, followed by a huge tail, came into view.
The creature’s head stood fifteen feet over them.
“It’s here,” Aletheia whispered.
The long snout opened. It lowered down, near to Aletheia, and let out a hissing, snapping breath. One of its legs lurched forward—
Rook drew his sword and lunged forward. He gave the girl enough time to fall to her knees and scramble to her bow. Meanwhile his blade pierced the creature’s outer hide but stopped three inches in; it roared as blood dripped downward, and even a more deadly blow would have been but a pinprick to such a huge monstrosity. One of the creature’s hands—weak, but strong compared to a man—clawed at Rook, and in covering himself it batted him away, into the water.
It came for Eris next. She jumped aside and rolled to the ground. The creature moved quickly and it snapped at her, driving its snout into the mud as she dodged. Air rushed past her as teeth closed with a clatter; she waited until its mouth was shut then reached out with her mind and bound its jaws, straining to pull its teeth together. It struggled and struggled to open again, confused, giving her the time she needed to get up to her feet.
Aletheia fired off arrow after arrow into the creature’s torso. The Elven bow was immensely powerful, accurate, fast, and easy to operate, but still the projectiles were miniscule compared to such a creature, proving hardly enough to stagger it.
Eris stepped forward again and let out a stream of fire from her fingertips. Green flame overcame its head and front torso and steam vaporized from its skin, but it was undeterred, and now realizing its mouth was unusable it simply charged Eris’ way. She tried blasting it backward but it was much too massive and by then enough time was wasted; it grabbed her in its claws, by the shoulder, ramming her, knocking her toward the swamp and to a tree, and just as it was about to step on her and turn its attention to Aletheia, a ray of moonlight cut through the dark swamp.
White, not bright, and within shifted colors of violet and yellow and gold and orange, like the swirling of the stars overhead at immense speed: a solid ray of energy. It hit the creature in the side and tore a hole clean through its chest and out the other side. The creature staggered away from Eris. She was winded and her arm was in terrible pain, but a moment later Rook appeared beside her, and he pulled her up to her feet, away from the stumbling monstrosity.
The creature roared. Eris no longer sustained the spell to keep its mouth shut and it snapped at the air, trying to find its balance. That was when she looked to Pyraz. He held his fingers together; and when the creature turned to face him, another beam shot from his hands. This time the hole was cut through its front, so clean that the moment the spell dissipated Eris saw through the creature: in through its front, out through its back, near its rear sail.
It collapsed into the shallow water, dead.
Everyone panted.
Rook pulled Eris more tightly to him. “Well,” he said. “I guess we aren’t going without dinner tonight after all.”
----------------------------------------
They found Aletheia’s beacon within the creature’s stomach, along with more rocks, pieces of driftwood, and countless fish. Rook helped Eris tie a sling around her right arm: the impact had broken the bone above her wrist. Recovery would take weeks. That was even worse than the pain, which, she had no intention of obfuscating, was itself terrible.
She let the others handle the carcass while she brooded.
Pyraz sat down next to her.
“Why do you use fire?” he said.
She glared at him. “Does your name not mean ‘man of fire?’”
“Those were the enchantments the Archmagisters gifted to me. They chose the name. But I do not use fire as a weapon.”
“I do not wield fire exclusively, as you well know.”
“Yes, but you prefer it.”
“Yes, I prefer it. Will you explain to me why I should not?”
He thought for a moment. “Any magician can release energy for the purpose of destruction. A warrior should know spells to focus that energy more effectively. Using fire magic makes you seem like an amateur.”
She put her head against the tree’s trunk behind her and sighed. She had to admit that Pyraz’s spell was most impressive—and she had seen Lukon use Magic Missile to great effect. But she hated being condescended to.
“I am well in control of my talents, old man. I have won more than enough fights with them that I do not deserve this—foolishness.”
“How many men have you killed?”
“What?”
“Do you know?”
She rolled her eyes, then cringed in pain. “I do not keep a tally.” Still, it was an interesting question. She thought about it momentarily. “I cannot remember. Three humans, perhaps. Two dwarves. At least eight Arktids. Many goblins and bugbears, as well as an entire colony of kobolds. That seems a decent tally for one not even nineteen years on this earth. Why? How many men have you killed?”
“Seven hundred and eleven. Including three Arktids.”
She raised her eyebrows. “What? You do not count rats among these?” He shook his head. “How is that possible?”
“I am a warrior. I fought the enemies of the Regizar until death.”
“…yet it seems death never came.”
“You are a liability until you learn how to harness true destructive magic,” he said at length. “I will teach you.”
Eris did not want to be taught anything. She hated mentors and instructors. Yet this was precisely what she wanted—what she needed—to learn. So she nodded, but said, “Let us see if we survive back to Patiyali first, before we discuss plans for our future.”
“On one condition,” he added.
She wanted to be left alone, so great was the pain in her arm. “What?” she groaned.
“I want my dagger back.”
She unslung it from her waist and handed it to him. “Fine. Take it. ‘Tis useless anyway. Metal weapons are for savages.”
He drew the blade and stared into it. “No,” he said. “There is nothing more human than steel.”