--- AYMIAE ---
Aymiae wove an illusion.
It was significantly harder than before the fire, the magic didn’t want to flow along the same lines she was used to, and Aymi had a terrible suspicion that her affinities had been destroyed.
But one didn’t need affinities to craft a spell, and Aymi just had to trust that she would figure it all out when she got her soul looked at. So she wove the illusion, feeling it drain her more than she was used to on top of the difficulty.
…Oh well, she would just…have to practice more.
That loss was compounded upon her others, but she…she could manage. She just wouldn’t accidentally enhance her appearance sometimes, she wouldn’t instinctively silence her footsteps…she wouldn’t be able to trick her ears into not hearing something or her eyes into ignoring garish wallpaper…she wouldn’t accidentally trick her heart into silencing it’s voice.
She’d noticed the lack of those things in the last few weeks, how could she not? But Aymi didn’t truly feel them until now. She’d just figured that maybe her soul was recovering, she’d figured that once she cast an illusion it would all work out. But it hadn’t.
She probably wouldn’t be able to manage even a complicated wind spell anymore though, let alone the instinctive kind, she was just glad she’d done enough illusions that they weren’t dropped to that level.
With a sigh, Aymi draped the chain over her head, relishing the feeling of transforming into someone else.
In this case, that someone else was herself. White hair, dark gray skin, and light blue eyes that were the slightest bit crossed at all times. Aymi had fixed the crossed part a long time ago, but if people saw them that way they tended to assume her vision was bad. So it had become part of her instinctive illusions, and now it was part of this illusion.
Netun glanced up from his thoughts at the change and appraised the illusion, looking impressed, “I wouldn’t guess that you were sandfrost. We’re moving now then?”
Aymi held up her hand after a thought and frowned at the fifth finger, “Sparking…” She sighed, at least she didn’t still have visibly bright red eyes…this was distinctly less eye-catching. “Yes, first we’ll go to Aubinere and find Harrel’s family, they’ll have an idea where he is.”
Netun nodded, then glanced at the sand, “Have you figured out how to make spare bodies yet?”
“No, but I think I’m close.” Aymi frowned in the direction of Aubinere, “I have part of my mass over there though, shouldn’t it be possible to dissolve this body and make a new one over there?”
Netun followed her gaze, “I tried that once, but it took a week. It would be useful for larger distances, but do you remember what I told you about that conundrum?”
“Right, once the consciousness is gone from part of the mass for too long it stops producing new spores. After a month or two away it dies off entirely. Couldn’t we circumvent that by moving our consciousness back through the networks every few days?”
Netun seemed a bit unsure, “I’ve tried something like that before, and I think it did slow down, but I’ve also talked to some of the other souls and they seem to think that mass just won’t stretch for farther than a few hundred miles, the connections break down faster the more mass there is. At a point it breaks down faster than you can make more.”
Aymi nodded slowly, “And there goes the possibility of any one of us simply growing across the whole world.” Oh well, it was just an idea.
Netun grined and stood up, stretching his back as a puff of stagnant spores fell in a layer from his skin. That part had taken a bit of getting used to, but Aymi could say for certain by now that she would feel odd if they stopped appearing. “Alright, adventure time!”
Aymi felt a familiar excitement envelope her, memories of times with Cada, Marn, Raan, and Harrel, she was once again going out into the world to make a difference.
--
Aubinere was a large city, the biggest in the entire Sanarian desert. It was one of the few remaining cities that had existed long before the cataclysm, it had been named something that meant “land of the scorching sun” before that because according to Netun, aubinere meant sandfrost in one of the old tongues, and sandfrost hadn’t existed before the cataclysm.
Aymi was still reeling from the fact that so many historical conundrums could just be solved by simply asking Netun. He didn’t know everything, and most of his knowledge surrounded the state Melor had been in when the alanerea arrived, but it was still far more than Aymi had ever known.
Yera had been an almost world-scaling power, they’d limited magic in everyone and spread increasingly complicated and powerful technology across their lands. The only thing that had stood in their way was the dragons, and the scaly beasts didn’t particularly care what mortals were doing as long as it didn’t get in the way of their expected eternity of existence.
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Until that is, the alanerea arrived on powerful fleets and reaped destruction and conquest…
Aymi’s mind was still on that fact as the two of them strode into the desert city. The moon hung in the sky and clocks ticked steadily past the last hour and into the next day. The stars slowly faded from view as the light of the city drowned them out. Aymi had seen that effect a few times in her travels, but she couldn’t help but think that it was a loss to be blind to the lights of Orien.
Aubinere didn’t have a check in policy at the walls like Reiaran and the rest of Melor did, it was in an entirely different country where Queen Steris wasn’t in charge or ordering a census of her people every five years. Instead, Aubinere had guards roaming the streets with patrols, stopping violence when they came across it and helping to contain any known criminals that were reported.
In the late hours of the night, those patrolls were impressive, a guard or three would march across any given street at least once an hour, more so in the higher populated areas of the city. Aymi lost count of the amount of guards she passed, they all gave Netun strange looks because of his extremely albino appearance, not to mention the hybrid state of his features.
Aymi suspected they would bother him a lot more if she wasn’t with him, and if she wasn’t holding herself like someone important. Her illusion was keeping up, but she had to channel more energy into it sooner than she was accustomed to. Which was…still a loss, she felt another pang of sorrow, remembering again that her footsteps wouldn’t be magically silent anymore, that she wouldn’t be as observant, that she…
Aymi sighed, forcing her mind into a more productive track. Netun is expecting you to show him where we’re going, you can’t dwell on this right now.
“Harrel’s family is a local power,” she explained, “Their house title is Shelex, and they have a history of being…odd. Most of them barely act like nobles, and they have a long tradition of strongly suggesting all their children in their early adulthood to spend a couple of years adventuring and seeing the world or simply being sent to become priests if they refuse.”
Netun seemed impressed, “It’s a proven way to get people to see each other as people. I suspect if other nobles did that they wouldn’t be as bad.”
Aymi tilted her head, thinking about the various houses in Reiaran, Aulous…Nakonua… yeah, they were terrible. “I’ve met some of his cousins, and that seems right. The Shelex also happen to be extremely interested in other realms, they’ve been trying to politically secure some kind of realm gate for several generations, but all I know about that is rumors.”
“Other realms are fickle… we had some people looking into them before the betrayal, but that was with hundreds of years of buildup. You’re saying these Shelex have figured out how to actually go to other realms?”
Aymi blinked at him, “We’ve…known how to do that for quite a while I think. I don’t know who first went to another realm, but I’ve read about them all over the place. Arendi, Arithren, Wreyn… of course the between too.”
Netun frowned, then started muttering to himself, “Your social and technological maturity is so odd…you have sports but you still have wars, you have sanitation but you don’t have dedicated doctors, you have amazing advances in magic but some of the most basic disciplines are shunned…”
Aymi examined the houses, remembering the address that Harrel gave her, “Is that…not normal?”
“No, I don’t think so. I’ve only experienced a few civilizations in my time, but that’s generally not how things work.”
Aymi frowned, recalling something Turste had told her before the fire, “Your god. He keeps erasing everything. Next time it will be worse, because there are still things you remembered.”
She hesitated, “Do you think there will be another cataclysm?”
Netun blinked, “...What gives you that idea?”
“Just something Turste said once…”
Netun thought for a moment, and then sighed, “We don’t have enough evidence to be sure, but plenty of the other alanerea have been talking about it. They feel like it’s inevitable and I’ve been gone for too long to properly consider their points. I’d ask Salven about this next time you cross paths.”
Aymi nodded, but there was a terrible feeling attached to these thoughts, a sorrow that bit at her. Odds were they had decades before it might happen, but the idea that life as it was might be temporary? And how much death might there be? How much injustice? She’d taken an oath to preserve life and to seek justice for those without a chance at it themselves, if this was true, what could she do about it? “I’ll do that.” She found herself saying, hoping that the alanerea were wrong, hoping that the world would be fine.
“It will be fine, you’ll see.” Netun examined a particularly extravagant house and Aymi followed his gaze ahead toward a more decorated guard patrol down the road. “Are we getting close at this point?”
Aymi glanced at the name above the gate, and toward the next house “It should be the next one.”
The noble district was cleaner than the rest of the city, and somehow more and less crowded, they’d come across at least twelve patrols in just a handful of minutes, each of them wearing different house colors, but Aymi hadn’t seen hardly any regular people.
The next house was different though, it had about the same levels of land and expense as the other noble houses, with enough space to easily fit at least two dozen smaller houses. Yet somehow the house of Shelex was more humble, if that was the word. The gardens contained mostly native plants, cacti and succulents that would be easy to care for. Between plants and along the paths of the gardens, there were formations of rock crafted by magic that seemed to flow like water, impressive, but not extravagant.
The walls around the manor were similar, also shaped from stone but they seemed natural, as if the world had simply decided that the rock would be shaped that way. An arch of stone heralded the entrance and there was nothing visible barring the way for anyone to simply stride into the gardens, but they had to have some kind of spell on it to keep unwanted people or thieves away. The house itself was large, made of natural rock shaped into impossible sweeping shapes, the strata showed off impressive colors and a bronze roof was a stark contrast.
It was humble, but also extravagant, and somehow it was exactly what she’d pictured it would be.
She frowned, glancing at the ground, “I’m starting to feel hungry, Netun, is that strange?” Her gaze moved toward the guards that were still a decent way off, her eyes narrowing in thought, but she shook her head and examined the gate closer.
“That is strange, Aymi, are you-”
She shook her head again, plastering on a smile, “It’s alright it’s gone now, I’m fine. Let’s go meet the Shelex.”
“If you’re sure…”
“I’m sure.”