Vayra and Phasoné scoured the Godscourge book—a small leather-bound tome with a black cover—until they reached a segment where it discussed the transition from First Lieutenant to Captain.
The flag officers—Captain, Commodore, Admiral, and Grand Admiral—were all a realm of sorts. It didn’t involve an ascension to a higher plane of existence, but the stages were very different in terms of advancement. It was all based on self-insight and revelations.
But, thankfully, there were a few pages about the Path revelation.
First off, a Path’s techniques, aspects, and purpose all had to align.
In theory, everything about Vayra’s Path lined up. She had carefully crafted her techniques for offense and punching up well above the user’s weight. It was the revelation’s job to make sense of it all to the user, to craft it into a neat statement, to search through a sea of meanings and land on the one.
According to the book, it could be hatred, it could be ambition, and it didn’t matter how cruel or unjust. It just had to be deeply personal and genuine.
Vayra tried a quick: “I want to live the life I never had.”
Nothing.
“I don’t want anyone else to grow up the way I did.”
Again, nothing.
“Phas, how was your revelation personal?” Vayra asked. She sat at the edge of the enormous conk again, dangling her legs over the edge and watching the root between looking at the pages. If anyone was climbing behind her, she’d notice.
‘I grew up in the shadow of my mother, a prodigy who claimed Godhood over wind when she was only a century old. I was one of hundreds of children, and I was never even in the running for the godly authourity. I knew I didn’t want to be like her, using wind-aspect Arcara my entire life. She was cruel and ambitious, and she didn’t really care about us. To distinguish myself, I deviated from the wind Paths she had laid out. At first, I wanted her attention and love, but then I realized I wanted something more: to be my own person.’
“ ‘I am the in-between’?”
‘I wasn’t the best or most gifted of her children, but I claimed a previously unclaimed authority because I became a symbol of stars and their power. But starlight isn’t known for its raw power. It guides sailors, it illuminates the night sky. It gives little kids something to look at and dream about.’ Phasoné paused. ‘In essence: I knew I would not be the one to change the galaxy, but I’d be the one to guide another to that destiny.’
Vayra nodded slowly. “That’d be me.”
‘That’d be you. I know it doesn’t help that much.’
“Well…it does help,” Vayra whispered. “I’m aware of my duties, Phas, kinda like you were. Just, I don’t know how to turn that into a revelation.”
She turned back to the book and reread the last line of the passage about Path insights for what had to be the tenth time: Focus on the one thing you want the most, more than anything in the galaxy. You must be honest to yourself; nothing less will do. There is only one truth, and that is insight, and insight is truth, and truth is insight, and insight is truth, and on and on.
‘We’ll keep working on it,’ Phasoné said. ‘But look out below.’
Vayra stared down, peering through the beams of midmorning light. When she focussed her First Lieutenant eyes, she picked out a small black speck on the roots far below. She slapped the side of her head, and the speck came into focus just a little better.
But there was only one person who could be climbing up behind her.
“Alright, Phas,” Vayra said, standing up and tucking the book back into her haversack. “It’s time to keep moving.”
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Myrrir stood on the porch of his little shed, side-by side with Tye. The sun was setting over the tranquil valley. He took a deep breath. For the first time in his life, Myrrir didn’t feel the need to dip his hands in Stream water and absorb mana.
His channels didn’t feel as strained as they once did, but it was hard to say. For the moment, he chose not to care.
The Moro-ka riders had gathered at the base of the valley, far off in the distance. Nasyme had once again offered for Myrrir to travel with them, to fight alongside them, but Myrrir turned the offer down. The best he could do was tell Nasyme the story of the old captain of the Hyovao.
He had told the story as best as he remembered: he had boarded the ship, killed the captain—Nasyme’s grandson—and freed the crew.
But it satisfied Nasyme—enough that the God-heir had mustered his army the moment Myrrir had finished.
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There were a hundred riders, maybe, coated in their lamellar armour and bearing Jai swords. Their horses trotted anxiously, kicking up a cloud of dust. Nasyme Braced his voicebox, and with a thunderous shout, he yelled something in the language of the Moro-ka.
The army trotted off down the valley. They would marshal in the foothills, gathering with other bands of Moro-ka from the mountains and foothills before riding off to battle. Like Myrrir most of the villagers watched. Some wept, and others bowed respectfully.
Myrrir sighed, then shrugged. The riders left the valley. Not knowing what to do with himself, he turned away.
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It wasn’t long after the Moro-ka left the village that everything started to fall apart. Within a few days, a group of bandits rode through the village, stealing a few horses and plundering the bridge pagoda. Up on the hill, Myrrir and Tye were far enough from the path of destruction, and it didn’t affect them.
“When will we leave, Myrrir?” Tye asked. “Soon, the fighting will begin, and we would do well to escape before then.”
“Nasyme will attack in about a week,” Myrrir said, recalling their older conversation. “If we’re trying to make it back on foot, we should leave tomorrow—at the latest.”
“You’re cutting it close…” the old man warned.
Myrrir scoffed, then said nothing more. He cast a longing gaze outside.
“You have a choice to make, Myrrir,” Tye said. “Stay here. Live out the rest of your days. Give up and forget about everything, and you will have peace.”
“I don’t give up,” Myrrir snapped. “I am going to the tournament.”
Immediately, his channels started to ache again. He ignored it. He could push through. The favoured son of Nilsenir did not lose.
“An old man can hope,” said Tye. “I can hope…”
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The next morning, Myrrir and Tye gathered provisions from the mill. Tye spoke kindly to the miller in the local tongue, and the miller handed them pouches of rations willingly. Tye bowed with his fists together, and Myrrir copied the gesture, then tucked the pouches into a pack. They wouldn’t have horses, so it’d be slower, but they had plenty of time to catch up and make it offworld while the bluecoats and Elderworld God-heirs were distracted.
He patted himself down. He wore his old red robes, but his armour was long gone. His jade sword hung heavily on his hip, like it didn’t belong. Everything was in order. He forced himself to lift his foot and turn around.
Just when he was about to start walking, marching off towards the shore with the Stream centered directly in his vision, a shout sounded from off in the distance. Myrrir’s head whipped to the side, locking on to the source of the noise.
It came from Nasyme’s house.
He didn’t need his Captain-stage hearing to lock onto it. The building’s thatched roof was burning.
He thrust his pack into Tye’s arms, then sprinted across the valley towards the burning house. Another pack of bandits circled the building, clad in dark robes and mismatched armour. They whooped and hollered and shouted curses, all while swinging around rusty metal replicas of Jai swords. One of them held Tame by the hair and dragged her outside, kicking and flailing.
Myrrir splashed through the river at the base of the valley and sprinted up the other shore. Halfway up the other side of the valley, though, he stopped. He shouldn’t be interfering with the business of mortals in some lowly reach of the galaxy. It wasn’t his place.
But he couldn’t just let the bandits have their way. If he could accomplish one thing before he left…
No. He was just blowing off a little steam.
He ripped his sword out of its sheath and charged up the slope at the nearest bandit. With a high swipe, he smashed through the man’s hip, knocking him off his horse. When he fell to the ground, Myrrir slammed the sword down, crushing the man’s neck and cleaving his head off.
He slashed straight through an unmounted bandit, then spun and hacked another in half. A horse charged at him, and he slashed through the beast’s unprotected chest, then cut the fallen rider in half.
With a shout, he leapt up onto the burning porch. Another bandit stood on it, arms full of trinkets pilfered from the house, but Myrrir cut his head off in a single swipe.
Tame’s calligraphy equipment remained out on the porch—including the bucket of Stream water. Myrrir dunked his hands in the water and let mana flow back into his body.
A bandit pointed a musket at him, but he held his hand out. The gunpowder exploded backwards, and the firing mechanism burst apart. Myrrir sensed more gunpowder in a flask at the man’s hip. With reaching tendrils of Arcara, he pulled it out of the flask, then flattened it into a sheet and used it to rip the bandit into two halves.
With a cloud of gunpowder hovering behind him, he marched around the outside of the house, shredding the bandits. None of them even had an inkling of spirit potential, and none of them put up a fight.
It wasn’t as satisfying as he hoped, especially not when his spirit started to scream in pain. His channels ached, charred and decaying, and they threatened to rip apart. They bulged where the char was the thickest and where the damage was the greatest. But his techniques held, and his magic didn’t fail him—even when he reached the man dragging Tame by her hair.
Myrrir shut his eyes and shook his head, then blasted four separate tendrils of gunpowder into the man. The last tendril glanced off the man’s armour with a spark, and all the tendrils ignited. In a contained flash, the entire upper half of the bandit’s body exploded into red mist.
It wasn’t what he had been hoping for, but it worked.
Tame covered her ears and screamed—the blast had been right next to her—but aside from a film of blood covering her, she was fine.
Still, Myrrir knelt in front of her. He stayed silent for a few seconds, trying to think of what he might say (if anything), and giving a bit of time for her hearing to recover. In the distance, Tye watched, and for a moment, Myrrir let himself wonder.
In another life, he saw himself a peaceful villager. He might have lived at the edge of the village, quiet and reserved, but no one hated him. When he grew older, he married a woman much like Tame, and they had children.
But this little idyll had already fallen apart.
“Are you alright?” Myrrir asked. He stood straight up, purging all emotion from his voice and stepping back coldly.
“Who…are you?” Tame breathed.
“I am Myrrir, former favoured son of Nilsenir.” He didn’t belong here.
“It is not…your sword,” Tame spat. She crossed her arms and turned away from Myrrir, weeping. “Not proper.”
She was right. He’d butchered the bandits, and they had deserved it. He’d butchered Moro-ka before, and Nasyme wasn’t here to shield him any longer.
“Leave!” Tame yelled. “Leave! Do not come back here…ever!”
And so Myrrir did. There was nothing left for him here.