By the time Glade mustered the stomach to eat the rift beast, he had advanced to Master. He hadn’t left the rift since, and his only purpose was to gather a massive base of Arcara.
But he hadn’t eaten anything. Now, his stomach gurgled and gnawed, begging him to just give it some sustenance.
He built a fire with the empty wooden remains of casks and used it to cook the cleanest, least slimey strips of the beast’s flesh. In his spiritual sight, it pulsed black and red, and when he cooked it, it glowed bright red.
But he was hungry enough, and he scarfed down a few bites before he noticed a change. It was bitter and had the texture of coal—if coal was malleable enough to chew.
Like eating pure, condensed ash.
His muscles vibrated. Invisible swords of power lanced through them, ripping at his channels and binding them tighter to the surrounding flesh.
The channels weren’t the blood vessels, he knew that much. They didn’t a physical presence, but they existed nonetheless, and the better tied to his form they were, the better control over his magic he’d have.
Before he could take another bite of the rift-meat, his stomach lurched.
He threw up.
It was only once, and only half of the contents of his stomach. He took a few more bites of the meat before lying down and letting his body process it. It wasn’t a proper cycling position—he wasn’t sitting cross-legged with his hands in his lap—but he cycled his Arcara anyways.
When he didn’t feel any burning or stinging in his muscles, he sat up and kept eating until he wasn’t hungry anymore.
Halfway through the process, he felt his sword calling to him, almost begging him to rip it out of his sheath and use it. He felt the metal filings in his pouch begging him to fly out and be used in a technique.
When he finally stood up, it was like a veil had lifted off his mind, and his bodily control had doubled. He moved quickly without a Bracing technique, and ran over to the keg of mind-elixir to refresh himself and fill his channels with more material to integrate.
His body’s singular purpose was to wield a sword. That was what it had been tuned for, and that’s why it wanted him to draw so desperately.
He nodded, satisfied, then continued the process.
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When Wren slipped into the greenhouse, she knew she wasn’t the first—that was a good sign.
Someone had wedged the outer doors open with a mound of rigid dirt. But, as far as she knew, the Mediator wasn’t travelling with a stone-Path God-heir. Either the reports were wrong, and the Mediator wasn’t here, or there were a great many other God-heirs here as well. She settled for the latter.
Passing God-heirs had seen puffs of flame and flashes of white light inside the greenhouse, and though most were being quiet about it (no one wanted to get their loot confiscated by an army of Karmion’s servants) there were some who told Wren what she needed to know.
Inside the foyer of the greenhouse, a wedge of glass separated one half from the other, completely blocking off one side. She, as a First Lieutenant, was never going to break through.
So she ventured to the western side, keeping her spirit veiled as best she could. It was hard—she needed a Bracing technique to lift off from the ground with her moth wings, just so she could fly short distances. Most of their race, those with no spirit potential, had lost their ability to fly long ago.
She half-walked-half-fluttered across the greenhouse for a few hours, searching for any sign of her targets.
If her prey was trapped on the other side, that’d be a problem, but she’d find out. She’d do something to one of them. Her old master, who abandoned her, or the new apprentices who thought they could replace her. Maybe she’d collect a bounty for the Mediator or seek Karmion’s approval, but that was at the back of her mind.
She passed a group of lower Lieutenants who were fighting a horde of angry nymphs, and she ignored them—the nymphs would make quick work of them—and passed a camp of a few terrified Quartermasters who were debating turning back to reap the rewards of the low-quality spirit grains in the fields outside the greenhouse.
She asked around among any groups of First Lieutenants she could find. Supposedly, they had felt the spiritual tingles of an Admiral every once in a while, and most of them believed it was coming from the central column of roots that ran up along this side of the central dividing wall.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
If Nathariel was anywhere, he would be there.
She had no delusions of beating an Admiral, but she could make his life more difficult. She’d advanced a stage since they had last met, and he hadn’t.
By the time the sun rose, Wren had her course. A small fire flickered upon a cluster of conks, nearly a third of the way up the central wall. The conks had grown around an old maintenance platform.
As she approached, Nathariel would sense her. He probably already sensed something, but there were other God-heirs around, and the chances of him distinguishing her without direct concentration would be slim.
The closer she got, the higher those chances got. She had to make it count.
She pushed Arcara into the base of her wings. Wood dust surrounded the thorax-like lump on her back, strengthening and supporting it. The stagnant, still air rushed around her.
By the time she could make out the details of the platform, Nathariel’s spiritual presence unveiled itself—she’d recognize that presence anywhere. Dim, slightly cracked, and wanting to give up. He was preparing to use his magic. He’d noticed her.
Wren targeted the platform’s supports. Her Reach techniques were by far the strongest, but usually, she relied on wood chips and dust. But this old, rickety wood was a suitable subject for her techniques.
A bolt of fire-Arcara seared past the side of her head, and she swerved to avoid another one. Those were just distractions, though. Already, her body was heating up. The Arcara inside her channels felt warm.
Nathariel was trying to set her Arcara on fire.
She reached out with invisible tendrils of un-moulded Arcara, gripping a single support beam of the platform. But the tangled strands of her now-external Arcara reach began to glow, showing their routes and giving them volume—which they shouldn’t have. They were about to burn.
As soon as she gripped the support beam, she tucked her wings and dove. The weak, rotten beam cracked. She recalled her Arcara and cut off her Bracing technique.
The further she fell, the cooler her channels became. They hadn’t burnt yet, but they had been close.
As the ground—a tightly-knit orchard—rose up to meet her, she spread her wings behind her like a cloak, catching herself. She had almost landed, when a blast of fire smashed into her wing. It knocked her into a spiral and sent searing pain all across her back.
She might have been out of range of Nathariel’s most deadly spiritual attack, but his physical fire wasn’t as limited.
She tucked her wings around her like a cocoon and plowed through the trees. The leaves and twigs smacked and sliced, but she crashed through the upper layer in seconds and tumbled through the dirt.
She flopped unceremoniously on her back, looking up through the hole in the canopy she’d created.
The platform, now a distant blur on the greenhouse’s central wall, creaked and groaned in the early morning silence. Then, with a chorus of cracks, it collapsed and plummeted.
Wren smirked.
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Hanging onto the edge of a conk with one arm, Nathariel grumbled aimlessly to himself. He swayed in the air, trying to register what had just happened.
He clasped Pels’ wrist with his other arm, and he held tight to the mortal man. It wasn’t really an exertion of effort, not with his standard strength-based enhanced body. But they couldn’t hang forever. Nathariel hoisted the man up to the edge of the conk they hung off, then climbed up himself.
Only two of the conks in the cluster remained. The rest had been stripped off when the maintenance platform had collapsed. The crane and the sheet of glass it carried had sheared through a couple fungal growths, and the platform itself had smashed off a few more.
“The boy…” Pels whispered, kneeling at the edge of the conk. “He was still in the rift.”
“He would’ve had a little more time inside,” Nathariel muttered.
“Will he be fine?”
“The rift will close,” Nathariel said. “When the conks hit the ground, there won’t be enough powerful Arcara to maintain it. It is…not likely he will make it out.” Nathariel spun away, his robes snapping along with him.
“We have to go back and help him,” Pels insisted.
Nathariel raised his eyebrows. He set a hand on the column of roots climbing up the facility’s center. He slotted his fingers into a groove, looking for the best spot to keep hauling himself up. “Quite unexpected from you, Pels.”
Pels scowled. “I don’t leave my crew behind.”
“From what I’ve heard, you were once very much willing to leave them behind.”
“They weren’t part of my crew then. But people change, eh?” Pels asked. “You’re proof of that.” He stood up, but he kept staring off the edge of the platform.
“Aye, and Glade is as good as dead.” Nathariel let out a soft sigh. “We have made lots of progress. If we don’t keep climbing, we will likely lose both Vayra and Glade. He would want us to keep climbing, for the Mediator’s sake. It is his oath.”
Pels stepped back from the conk’s edge. “And the mothfolk? She’ll be a problem, won’t she?”
“Not if she can’t fly. She’ll be landlocked until her wing heals.”
Pels threw his arms down and exclaimed something incoherently. After a few seconds, and a few deep breaths, he asked, “Why are you so cold about this all, Nathariel? For a fire-Path, I’d have thought…you’d be a little more fiery.”
“Vayra is our best tool to fight Karmion.” Nathariel let go of the root. “She might understand that, and she might not.”
Pels clenched his fists. “She’s not just a tool. Neither of them are, though everyone keeps treating them like it. Kings, Elders, and God-heirs alike…but they’re people, Nathariel. Would you treat your own son this way?”
“I never had any children of my own.”
“Answer the question,” Pels demanded.
Shaking his head, Nathariel turned back to the strand of roots. “You’re not their father, either.”
“Neither of them have a father.”
Nathariel slotted his feet into a crack in the root’s outer surface. He waited for a few seconds, then said, “If you fancy yourself a father, then help me save one of them while we still can, then.”
They both continued to climb.