“Wait, so… he figured out that the blood that comes out is actually flesh?”

Soleiman took his eyes off of the book he held in his hands, turning to briefly meet Rumi’s bewildered face mere inches away from his face.

“I mean, apparently,” Soleiman responded, flipping through the pages of the book as Rumi adjusted herself and shifted the blanket that covered both of their backs. “From a layer called the endometrium.”

The campfire just ahead of the two of them crackled silently in the serene tranquillity of the dead night, the waves of warmth that radiated off of its flickering form washing over the two of them huddled together atop a tarp.

“No wonder it always hurts so much,” she said, sitting herself firmly upon her knees again. “How did he say he found it out again?”

“Mmm,” Soleiman hummed, buying himself some time as he riffled through the thin pages of the book in search of the ‘methodology’ segment.

Atop the campfire hung a metal pot, the wide variety of vegetables stewing within its still calm water courtesy of Shirobanegawa Shrine.

“Okay,” Soleiman said, having finally navigated his way to the right section. “He says that he used his Water Technique to… uhm…”

Rumi scooted over slightly, peering over to have a closer look at the text herself.

“Oh goodness.”

“Yeah,” Soleiman said. “He does say it was his wife he did the tests on, though. And she is listed as a co-author. So I’m sure everything was done in a controlled environment.”

“Mm…”

“Look, see?” Soleiman flipped back, jumping to the ‘About the Author’ section at the very tail end of the relatively thin book. “Apparently, he was gifted with a special affinity to using his Ahsuifat to mimic his own body parts.”

“So he could create second hands and the like?”

“Yeah!”

“That sounds useful.”

“Sure does.”

He flipped a few pages more in perusal, finally bringing the two of them to the end of the book. Where, imprinted onto the very last page, was an illustration.

Not a cross-sectional diagram, but a rough, hand-drawn illustration of a man and a woman. Though it was unlikely that this illustration itself was drawn by either the author, Boaz, or his wife– given that this was not the original copy– the two of them could nevertheless feel the emotion in each dancing dash and swiping stroke of the pen.

Especially so, when paired with the paragraph of words printed just beneath it.

To Amiya,

To My Dear Wife,

To My Only Equal.

May this book and its treasures spread far and wide, and may the people of this continent know well the fruits of our labour.

May they know just how much I love you, and may we remain forever together.

“Oh wow,” Soleiman absentmindedly mouthed.

You are, and will always be, the best thing to ever happen to me.

Yours dearly.

“They really loved each other, hm?” Rumi asked.

He felt her hands wrap about his arm, tightening gently and pressing his elbow into her chest. In turn, he shuffled a little closer to her, their thighs pressing up against one another as he held her arms closer towards himself.

“Just like I love you, Rumi.”

She giggled softly, nestling her cheek into his shoulder.

“And I you.”

Soleiman set the book back down, closing his eyes for a moment. Embraced by the warmths of the fire, the blanket and of the love of his life, he sat perfectly still. He sat with the woods to his back and with incomprehensible peril all around him, with fear and uncertainty over his future and with the crushing weight of anxiety atop of him.

Yet, somehow, he felt alright.

He felt safe. As if all was right with the world.

The aroma of the stew soon hit their noses, the heavenly vapours of that night’s dinner wafting towards them atop a gentle forest breeze.

“Ooh,” he let slip.

“Good thing Isami helped put in the word for us, hm?”

“Yeah,” he said. “A whole month’s worth of rations for at most a three week mission.”

Their wagon’s canvas crackled slightly, waves formed by the blowing of the wind rolling down its length.

“I suppose that’s the norm, though,” he added. “When we’re going this far out, where who-know-what lies in waiting.”

“We’ll be fine though, right?”

He looked down, seeing as Rumi peered up at him through her curly fringe.

“Of course we will,” he said, tightening the blanket about them as the wind slowly picked up speed. “As long as the four of us stick together, everything will be just alright.”

“Mm,” Rumi hummed, burying herself back into his shoulder.

“Wanna read another book?”

“Sure,” she replied, still not moving from her place by his arm. “Which one?”

“Let’s see now…”

He slotted the book on the menstrual cycle back into the leather satchel the library had handed him specifically to store the books he had borrowed, running his fingers through the others stored within in search of a good read.

He lifted each one individually, letting the amber illumination of the campfire read out their titles to them.

One of them was a book titled, ‘On the Topic of the 5th’, its immensely unimpressive plain leather cover and ink-painted title doing no favours for it.

“What’s that?” Rumi asked.

“Oh, it’s some guy’s commentary on the whole Spiritguide situation,” Soleiman said. Pulling the book out so that Rumi could more clearly see the Japonic characters written upon its cover, he pointed out each one and read out their meanings.

“This one means ‘ghost’, or ‘spirit’,” he said. “It’s read as ‘rei’.”

“Ooh. And these two mean ‘to guide’?”

“Well, more like ‘guide’ and ‘person’,” he responded. “A person who guides spirits!”

Rumi aahed slightly, the words clicking in her memory.

“You’re getting pretty good, huh?”

“Ehehe,” she giggled, blushing slightly.

“Right,” he said, getting down to business. “You know how the fourth kind of ruined the whole ‘Rei’ name all the previous Spiritguides had been using to help build the trust of the spirits?”

“Mhm,” she said. “You told me after we left Hibara.”

“Do you remember why?”

“Because… she refused to help the Grand Maiden?”

“Mhm!” he responded. “And also because she lost… really badly to Lord Gravitas. Apparently she even had another Artefact with her when she fought him. I believe it was the Artefact of Interference?”

“I see,” Rumi said. “She must’ve put up a hard fight, hm?”

“Well,” he responded. “I’m sure she did. It’s just that the reality is there’s not much you can do when your enemy has sole access to the Corpse of Vigour and the entirety of the Mollitial Navy to back him up.”

“Especially when you’re fighting alone,” he added. He flipped open the book, riffling through a good chunk of pages before continuing. “The book here even says he took ten thousand men and a few hundred galleons to battle against her. Though even then it took him two months to whittle her down.”

“What a coward,” Rumi spat.

“Don’t worry, Rumi,” he said. “We’ll get our chance to kick his teeth in someday.”

She shook her head, her fluffy hair floating about her like a cloud.

“I sure hope so.”

The wind died down, and the two of them eased up slightly on holding the blanket about themselves.

“You know, the strange thing is,” Soleiman began. “Even though the whole book is all about the current Spiritguide situation, the Author doesn’t even know where Shima is.”

“Seriously?” Rumi asked, raising an eyebrow slightly in bafflement.

“Yeah,” he responded, laughing slightly. “All he does is talk about the… I think eleven whole debates the Liturgical Assembly– which is the one for the Shrine Heads and all– had on what to do with Shima over the course of four years.”

“Eleven?” Rumi jut her head out in disbelief.

“Yeah. And they didn’t even figure it out!” he exclaimed. “They just ended up putting a ban on debates about her because they started getting suspicious that some of the Shrines were using it as a distraction from other problems. Like corruption.”

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

“I see,” Rumi said, smiling slightly at the utter bureaucratic ridiculousness of the situation. “What else did you manage to borrow?”

He browsed through the leather satchel a bit more, his fingers passing over one book after another.

A Collection of Shirobanegawan Poems, nope.

A Brief History of the Minervan-Asahiyano Shrine Cluster, he was quite alright.

The Rebirth of a Nation: The Solean Imperium.

“Wah!” Rumi gasped, shocking him slightly. “That sounds cool!”

“Wanna give it a read?”

“Mm!”

“Alrighty then,” he said. “Oh! Wait, you know that things the Fourth Spiritguide refused to help the Grand Maiden out with were actually these wars?”

“Really?”

“Yeah!” he responded. “Partly because she was in Shafraturriyah for the first, and partly because she… just didn’t care for the second. But anyway, I digress. Let’s get into it.”

When it comes to recent history, one may make the mistake of conflating the Solean Imperium with a more modern, novel nation-state. However, the Solean Empire has long since existed, even prior to Ruination. It was only after Incolumnitus’ Invasion and the subsequent conquests of the Tainted King that the great eastern empire began to fade into history.

The Solean Imperium as it is known today was born out of a restorationist movement of Solean refugees residing within Houzen’s portion of the Solar Wall. These refugees had long since fled their homeland in fear of the Tainted King, and though they melded well with the Liturgical-Common divide exercised by the Houzen Shrine Administration and its non-Kitsunite population, they never quite forgot their love for their birthplace.

“Ooh, I think I’ve heard of these guys before,” Rumi said. “I remember Mom used to bring them up every now and then when telling us her stories. I didn’t know they came from Houzen, though.”

Though the exact year of formation of the Seat of the Sun is debated, the general consensus between historians is that their formation very closely followed the not-so-dissimilar Cossyran Uprising in Caldaria (1045-47). Much like the Cossyrans– who were zealous practitioners of the Sposterran, Earthen Technique–, the Seat of the Sun prided themselves on primarily Republican Ideals centred on the liberation of their people from an inherently broken, corrupt and/or evil presence.

In the case of the Cossyrans, this was the now faulty, near-authoritarian Lustretori Party.

In the case of the Seat of the Sun, this was the Tainted King.

Furthermore, the Seat of the Sun predicated themselves on the belief of a ‘Sun’, a distinct entity beyond the clouds responsible for the day-night cycle. While no such proof has been produced in support of this belief, they and their followers nevertheless vehemently hold themselves to it.

“Ah, the Sun!” Rumi exclaimed.

Soleiman looked at her, eyebrows raised in curiosity.

“I remember!” she exclaimed again, her eyes widening uncontrollably as she stared blankly into the campfire.

“R…Rumi?”

“The Sun,” she said again. “Mother and Father would always wake us up at sunrise, and then we’d all be put to sleep at sunset.”

“When are those?” Soleiman asked, tilting his head.

“When the sky turns a brilliant gold, radiant as the Sun,” Rumi said, almost reciting from memory. “When the first gold starts to arrive in the morning, that’s sunrise. And when the last bit of gold disappears at night, that’s sunset.”

“I see,” Soleiman said, nodding away. He’d never heard of these terms before.

“I never knew these guys came up with that,” she said. “I just thought it was a part of… well… our culture.”

“Maybe it was,” Soleiman assured her. “Maybe they just made it really popular.”

Rumi tilted her head.

“Maybe.”

So vehemently did they believe in the Sun that the original restorationists attempted to apply Kitsunite meditative rituals towards their own exaltation. And, much like how the Kitsunites developed their Masoku, so too did they develop Asolstio.

“Wait, what?” Rumi cut in. “How did the Kitsunites develop Masoku?”

“Oh, well, you’re going to love this,” Soleiman said excitedly. Recalling the lessons his Mother gave him personally, he continued.

“Way, way, way, early on,” he said. “Around a few years after the Kitsunites first began appearing and establishing themselves in what is now Houzen– so probably around 1003– a handful of really dedicated monks began jumping off of cliffs to hone their meditative skills.”

“They what?” she damn near yelled.

“Yes! They jumped off cliffs, plummeting often a few hundred metres before ending their fall by diving into a pond or lake,” he said. “It was dangerous work, of course, but the few who did dedicate themselves to the practice learnt well to slowly work their way up to increasingly high jumping-off points.”

“All to get better at meditation?”

“Mhm,” Soleiman hummed.

“Wow,” she said. “That’s really impressive.”

“Oh yeah,” he said. “But here’s what happened; you see, these monks eventually realised something. They realised that by achieving total zen mid-fall, they could often fall for much longer than the heights they jumped from.”

“Uh…huh?”

“Sometimes they would even report falling for entire minutes,” he said. “Even though to outside viewers they really only fell for at most ten seconds.”

“What?” Rumi said, dragging the single syllable out in disbelief.

“Yeah!” he said. “It was from this that they realised they weren’t falling more slowly, but rather that they were slowing time down for themselves, allowing them to perceive more in the same amount of time. And from there, it wasn’t long until they learnt how to do more in the same amount of time, thereby creating Masoku as we know it.”

Rumi huffed.

“You wanna keep going?” Soleiman asked.

“Oh, yes, please!” she quickly responded. “I mean, so long as you do too…”

He huffed slightly, smiling.

“Anything for you Rumi.”

Using Asolstio, these Soleans were able to emulate the function of plants, converting light energy from the sky during the day into mana and storing it within their lobes. They could then use this mana freely using typical lobular manipulation or through the reverse conversion back into light.

In this vein, Asolstio is the only Magical Technique that does not rely on natural re-accumulation of mana from the environmental pools of mana, an advantage which bequeathed upon its users near unmatched versatility and freedom.

In the early stages of Asolstio development, the Seat of the Sun carried out routine covert exercises into the territory of the Tainted King, spreading their ideals and beliefs and fanning dissent in the northernmost reaches of his Domain. While initially slow, these missions eventually ballooned in size and capacity with the full-on discovery of Asolstio, becoming a means for which the Seat of the Sun to spread their influence through passing on the Light Technique onto their fellow kinsmen.

The Seat of the Sun’s Uprising, or the 1st Imperial Solean War (1050-57) as it is known, began in earnest in response to the Tainted King’s attempts to quash early dissenters. Spawning initially from the main holdout of the Seat of the Sun in northern Solea, the revolution quickly spread to both the southern reaches of the Tainted King’s Domain and to the very fringes of the Houzen Shrine. And though fighting was largely sporadic, the Seat of the Sun used the cell-like nature of their combatants to engage both states in arduous guerilla warfare.

In doing so, they managed to very quickly expand into both territories, causing the Houzen Shrine to recall what manpower it had stationed in Minerva in response to the 2nd Minervan War– the War of Treachery (1033-36)– in order to aid the war effort back at home. This is recognised to be one of the key factors in the outbreak of the subsequent 3rd Minervan War– the Midsommar War (1054-58).

That being said, the Shrine Administration’s attempts to contain Solean expansion worked well. In cooperation with their Oldenburger subjects, they managed to reproduce Asolstio within their Instruments through thorough, rigorous use of captured Solean combatants. This legacy of Instrument creation during the 1st Imperial Solean War is not only responsible for the vast majority of Asolstio Instruments in circulation today, but also for the development of all Instruments in general, as it was the first period of major industrial focus and Shrine support since the inception of the first Instrument in 1046.

“Houzen did… human experiments on the Soleans?” Rumi asked, her eyes slowly rising from the book.

“I… I suppose so,” Soleiman managed, himself unsure of how to feel about the newfound knowledge. “They were combatants, though…”

“Mmm,” Rumi hummed. “Let’s just keep reading.”

Down south, the continual retreat of the Tainted King’s influence in Solea proper prompted the newly reformed Cossyran Caldaria to join in on the conflict, declaring a conquest of the Tainted King’s Domain under the name of the 2nd Cleansing (1051-58). At this point in time, the Caldarians had yet to ally themselves with either the Houzen Shrine or the Solean Imperium.

Much like the Soleans, the Caldarians made quick work of the Tainted King’s Domain south of the Solar Wall. However, they too ended up being bogged down by the dogged defence of his puppet armies centred around his Capital upon the Tainted Isle.

It should be noted that during this time, the vast volume of trade undertaken by the Tainted King went solely to Mollitia. Caldarian attempts to besiege the Tainted Isle and whittle down the King’s defences proved futile precisely because of this trade, and in response the Caldarians began a full-blown blockade of the Isle– in turn provoking the Mollitials to war.

Back up north, the Houzen Shrine begins to lose ground to the Solean Imperium, in part because of their growing security upon the Solean mainland improving their ability to reinforce endeavours overseas. In response, they put into place the Zenmessen– or Total War– Decree, calling upon the monks and maidens of every Shrine to take up arms in the name of the Grand Maiden. Moreover, through their connection with the (now retired) 3rd Spiritguide, they requested and successfully obtained the support of Siraj al-Nahr in the form of a few battalions of Elevated Beasts.

These efforts proved successful, and though costly, they were able to entirely repulse the Solean Imperium from the Houzen mainland– their efforts culminating in a crushing victory at Akaki Shrine.

In doing so, they were able to broker a peace deal with Solea. Here, the Oldenburgers pushed hard for the pursuit of a plan of action that would allow Houzen to assist Caldaria in their two-front-war against the Tainted King and Mollitia, rallying their allies in both the Common and Liturgical Assemblies to force the resolution through.

As such, Houzen and Solea came to an agreement, allowing Houzen to ship materials and men through Solea via a system of designated ‘transport towns’ known as the Twin Highways to support Caldaria.

“Oh, so that’s what the Twin Highways are!” Rumi exclaimed. “I always thought they were just two big roads that ran down the entire length of Solea…”

Soleiman chuckled softly.

“Honestly I thought so too,” he admitted.

The efforts proved to be successful, allowing Caldaria to successfully repulse Mollitia incursions into their archipelago and limiting the Tainted King’s Domain to only the Tainted Isle.

In only eight years, the Tainted King had lost nearly one fourth of all land on the continent.

It was not long after that he perished in full to the efforts of first the Archcardinal Freedom in the so-called Freedom Apostasy (1059-61)– as it is referred to by the Thalassimathes–, and then the Fourth Spiritguide in her own Cleansing (1060-61).

Following the meteoric fall of the Tainted King, the Fourth Spiritguide handed over the now vacant Tainted Isle to the joint forces of Houzen and Caldaria– much to the dismay of the Solean Imperium.

This, in turn, sparked the 2nd Imperial Solean War (1062-69). And while the Fourth Spiritguide agreed to assist in defending the Tainted Isle from Solean incursions, she refused to offer any other support to neither Houzen nor Caldaria.

This 2nd War eventually saw the creation of an alliance between Mollitia and Solea and the establishment of a 2nd Zenmessen Decree in response to the return of Solean forces on the Houzen Mainland.

However, the beginning of the 2nd War largely coincided with the opening of the much more significant 4th Minervan War– the Bloodrain War (1065-81)–, allowing Oldenburg and Caldaria to remain in contact even without the Twin Highways. This, in turn, led to a stalemate that saw the borders between the three states return to their pre-war arrangements.

“And so it was through these two, really bloody, Zenmessen Decrees that the Grand Maiden grew to dislike the Fourth Spiritguide?” Rumi asked.

“Mhm,” Soleiman said. “More or less.”

Rumi huffed, exhaling deeply.

“That was… a lot…”

“Yeah,” Soleiman himself admitted, wasting not another moment before packing the book back into the satchel and popping the leather bag shut. “I think we’ve done enough reading for the night.”

Rumi rose from their tarp, their shared blanket falling off her back as she put her hands above her head and threw herself into a deep stretch.

“Oooh,” she groaned. “That was quite nice, though. Thank you, Soleiman.”

“Mm,” he said, nodding. “Anytime, Rumi.”

She smiled back at him, his face momentarily feeling as if a second campfire had somehow formed, its waves of warmth washing over his body radiating from her gentle smile.

Perhaps a Sun really did exist.

And perhaps he was looking right at it.

“Okay, let’s get the stew ready,” she said, turning to look at the pot above the campfire, near tangible clouds of steam now rising from its steadily boiling broth. “Pallas and Qingxi should be back soon.”