I was feeling rather drained from lugging Glinka around so I didn’t teach Cali anything new that evening.

Instead, I simply took the Castian Sorceress to her Sleigh, to see what other items of value she could help me extract from its somewhat compressed insides.

As I stepped outside, I simply froze, gaping at what I saw above the ruined village.

For the first time in my new life on Thornwild, the sky overhead was clear of its usual thick blanket of clouds. The sight above made my heartbeat accelerate as I stared at it for a few minutes, not quite understanding what the hell I was even looking at.

The parted heavens above painted a very odd picture, displaying a bewildering perspective that my eyes and brain simply refused to accept.

I put it to the back of my mind, looking at Cali who finished circling her Sleigh.

“Goldara's tits!” Cali stared at her magic vehicle, touching the busted up runework. “You… You actually blew up the ward!”

I nodded and she climbed inside, opening up various shelves and compartments.

“Everything in here is fried,” she commented as she dug through their innards. “The expansion rune got busted up too, so a bunch of fragile stuff in storage got crushed to bits. The eggs you wanted are gone for sure.”

I shrugged, not caring about the eggs, my brain simmering the longer I looked up.

Opening a steel compartment with a steel key she dug out from her coat’s pocket, the Sorceress pulled out what looked like an assortment of cracked gems surrounding a large blue gem. All of the gems were broken as if repeatedly electrocuted and covered in black soot.

“You… cracked a shard of the Wormwood Star,” she uttered with a shudder. “Goldara’s ass, Ioan… how?”

“Trade secret,” I said with a shrug.

We climbed out of the sleigh and Cali looked at the river.

It was night time and a brilliant violet and blue and green aurora danced above us. Above the aurora hung what looked like a supermassive planet… no, moons and planets… covered in colourful rings. Cali ignored it all, clearly used to the view.

Instead, she stared at river Glinka.

“Uh, What? Did you move the sleigh closer to the river?” Cali asked. “Also what happened to the ice?”

“River is actually closer to Svalbard. I didn't move the sleigh. The ice flew away,” I shrugged.

“It… flew away?” She sputtered, peering into the distance. “From the entire effin’ river?!”

“Yeah,” I nodded. “You must have heard the explosion, yeah?”

Cali looked at me. Then, she looked at her Sleigh and stared for a minute at the relocated, ice free riverbed. Then she simply slid onto the step of her sleigh’s door, her entire body shaking.

“Hmmm?” I looked down at her.

“I'm sorry,” she sniffed. “I… I genuinely mean it this time, the blood contracts aren't making me say it. You're an effin’ genuine Arch-Sorcerer and it was incredibly stupid of me to try to bind you.”

“Uh-huh?” I arched an eyebrow. “So was the destruction of your Star-Shard and ward impossible enough for you or do you want more?”

“I…” Cali swallowed her words. “You shouldn’t trust me at all, Ioan. You should kill me sooner rather than later. I… I can tell Jarl Bobliss to piss off, pay him off with the rest of my gold… and then… then you should unexist me, because…”

She broke down into quiet sobs, wrapping her hands around her body.

“Because?” I arched my eyebrow, auroras and the rings of the supermassive world overhead painting the scene in violet and blue shimmers.

“The other me, the girl not bound by golden threads to be your best friend, she will betray you… because she’s never had a friend, never had anyone really, and is plainly put an exceptionally murderous bitch!” Cali declared. “It doesn’t matter if you found the true name of a God. It doesn’t matter what the current me promises you! When the threads of my Aura grind down these contracts to nothing, I… I’ll just go back to being her, to being Callista Liesl, to lying to you, to being a manipulative monster from your book of monsters!”

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

“If you don’t want to be that Callista, then why not just…”

“You don’t get it!” she said. “I’m a Felix Arcanicx. We are highborn Sorceresses, changed by the radiance of the Wormwood Star emanating from the Castian Sea. We own men! We do not think of males as equal to us. We do not think of Norstaii as people… Everyone up North are just barbarians to us, with no value to them whatsoever. You are an impediment or profit to her! The other me, she’s never going to think of you as anyone worthy of anything! She will NEVER accept you as… her friend! There, I said it!”

I frowned, feeling as Stormy wrapped her tail around my neck, snoozing softly on my shoulder.

“Hell, why even wait…!” She smacked the side of her sleigh. “If you can move an entire effin’ river, if you can shatter a seven phalanx Shard of the Wormwood Star, obliterate all its protective wards… then logically you can unexist Jarl Bobliss and his men with a blink of an eye. You don’t need me, Ioan! Goldara’s tits, you don’t need me around at all! I’m telling you this as your best friend, you need to, have to kill me because I can’t protect you from my future self!”

I crossed my arms, waiting for her to conclude her rant.

I didn’t tell her that for some reason Stormy wanted me to keep her alive. Stormy, unlike Cali, somehow knew what the future held. Stormy knew that I wasn’t a hero cultivator, wasn’t a wielder of the Word of God or whatever. I was just a memory of a biochemist and I had just one remote that could turn my domain from solid to liquid.

“Do you know why the leader of Svalbard… Jarl Sunder had that book of monsters with a drawing of my kin in it?” Cali asked.

I shook my head.

“Because he knew that to your people, Felix Arcanicxes are just monsters of legend, that we use Charisma sorcery to permanently bind your youngest, most capable Champions and we… we just take them away in the night, never to be seen again!” Cali revealed. “That was supposed to be your fate! You were supposed to be my thrall… and… I… she… the other me, not bound by seven contracts, she’s going to do anything and everything to make you into one because that’s what we do in Iridium with all of our men!”

“I see,” I said simply.

“I lied to you, Ioan,” Cali confessed. “I lied to you about so many things... I’m a terrible, no good friend. There is no wealth nor power waiting for you in the South. Iridium is deeply Matriarchal, ruled by the Grand Arch-Sorceress Selestine the Radiant. Listen to me, Ioan–as a Nordstaii male you cannot ever trust a female from the South. We are changed, remade, elevated by the magic we wield. Long ago, before the Wormwood Star fell from the heavens men and women were entwined, equal… but no longer, no more.”

I exhaled, staring at the utterly alien sky above that painted both of our faces in intermittent green, silver, violet and blue shades.

“A Castian Sorceress cannot be friends with a Nordstaii boy,” Cali shook her head with a resolute expression. “It’s just the nature of reality, the paradigm of the magical chasm that divides men from women.”

“Hmmm?” I murmured. “Every woman in the South is an Arcanicx then?”

“Yes!” Cali revealed. “Generation by generation, under the influence of Starfall, the Castian women became various Arcanicx subtypes while the men became our thralls. Your people live far from the Castian Sea, Ioan–so your women are still… mundane in their appearance and behaviour. If you want a companion, find a local girl! I’m no good as a friend!” She lamented.

“So the further one goes South, the worse the magical divide between men and women becomes?” I asked.

“Yes!” Cali said. “If you stay in the North, you'll be safe from girls like… like me, those who'd see you as nothing but a unique thrall to add to their harem!”

“So… the whole First Husband and you being married off to a pirate was… what?” I asked.

“Deception,” Cali sniffed. “Just me selling a pretty dream to a boy, something that doesn’t exist! There’s no such thing as a Nordstaii-style marriage in our society. Men are simply property with no rights in Iridium!”

I thought that Callista Liesl was a genuine monster, an outlier of some kind, but if everyone was like her, then things were indeed quite dire. The sexual dimorphism of Thornwild humanity was far more extreme than I had initially estimated.

Who was I to apply Earth morality to Thornwild? Earth…

I looked up at the sky, pursing my lips. My heartbeat accelerated, time slowed to a crawl for just a moment, just long enough for my witchy, inhuman eyes to focus on an object far, far overhead.

Cali got off the step and went into her Sleigh, throwing out broken things, torn up clothes and other things from storage. I left her to it, deep in thought about what I saw overhead.

She emerged with a sleek short sword enclosed in a gold and black sheath, went down on her knees and offered it to me.

I accepted the sword, raising an eyebrow.

“It’s… a dragonglass sword,” Cali said. “My blade. I’m giving it to you… with the rest of my stuff. Take it all, use it however you desire.”

“Why?” I asked her, sliding the emerald and blue, crystalline-looking blade from its sheath and admiring it in the light of the supermassive, ring-covered planet above us. Through the lenses of the Astralscope, the blade radiated, glowed with tendrils of emerald magic.

"Without my sleigh, I'm worthless to Iridium," Cali uttered. "I failed to capture even a single Champion. I'm an utter failure as a Felix."

She slipped off the step and slid onto her knees. She lifted her head, exposing her pale neck.

“I want you to kill me,” she said, grabbing my sword-holding hand with her white-gloved fingers, guiding it to her throat. “Slice the artery right there, so it won’t hurt so bad. This is a Knell-blade forged to kill Star-Seekers and Star-Eaters alike… you won’t even have to press that hard.”