“Does it scare you?” Amyr added, his hand still being attacked by magic lightning. “Does it scare you that your own soul acted beyond your control and knowledge?”

My first instinct hadn’t anything to do with my soul, but with the man before me. I thought: “Are you trying to scare me?” And the answer was, yes. Yes, he was. But that action wasn’t born of hatred but comedy. It amused him to tell me this. It wasn't the act of an emperor trying to cowl an enemy in fear, but an old man scaring a young one.

My second thought, though…

“No,” I responded. “I had already predicted this. The moment my soul fractured it had become a new being. The reason why I was keeping an eye on it wasn’t to recover the lost soul. I can regrow it given enough time. No. It was to not unleash an undead abomination in this world. A soul of a ten-star mage can be dangerous.”

Amyr closed his eyes. “I see.” This wasn’t the answer that he was expecting. “I guess you are wiser than I thought.”

I didn’t know if to take that as praise or an insult.

“But I guess you are right.” The old emperor opened his eyes. “An egoless soul, capable of computation and conjuration can certainly be a menace. Undead are commonly disregarded as legends, but they do exist.”

That last line piqued my interest. “Have you seen one?”

“We have one in front of us.”

“That’s not what…” Yet I closed my mouth as I saw the old man’s visage and soul. Some things were better left unexplained.

I copied his position and looked at the artifact. Amyr knew about the fractured soul, but he was oblivious to the mana conversion happening inside. Perhaps because it was just starting, and therefore there wasn’t much soul mana stored, but probably a non-arcanist couldn’t distinguish the unadulterated and bright leyline mana from treated ones.

I gave the emperor a minute to talk, but the man remained silent, inspecting the mana singularity with a lost gaze.

“Why did you come here then?” I asked him.

“Huh?” Amyr snapped out of the trance with a slow and tired reaction. “What do you mean? I came of course to talk about the resurrection and the artifact.”

“That’s only half of it, isn’t it?”

“You are too young to be able to read souls with such uncanny precision.” He commented.

The emperor was right, though. I was only thirty-two, maybe significant for a draconid, but not at all for an ellari. How was able to inspect other people’s souls as easily as I did? I had only casted Mystic’s Dominion for the first time a few weeks ago, far too little time to even grasp the spell, let alone master it.

Was this another effect of elemental affinity?

Amyr sighed.

“You are right,” he continued, “I have other reasons to talk with you. Many more actually, but I’m a greedy person, and only a few really mean something to me.”

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“What is it then?”

“You recall the conversation you had with my daughter last time you visited? I have been informed about it, and it would seem she hadn’t told you about her intentions.”

I was going to nod, but my attention was alerted by a new presence. A soul had gotten near the basement. It was none other than princess Salayah. She stayed hidden, even trying to obfuscate her soul, but this basement was overflowing with invisible arcane-soul mana. She couldn’t hide her presence from me in any of the corporeal or physical planes even if she wanted.

I respected her pathetic attempt at stealth and focused back on the conversation.

“Yes, I do,” I told the emperor. “We made an agreement, I told her about the soul trapped in the artifact and I asked her to help me free it, but before she could tell me what she wanted out of the exchange, I could only guess she was stopped by her guardian.”

“Guess?” He inquired.

“Salayah had a telepathic conversation with her knight guardian, I do not know the contents of it, but for the looks and the context, I suppose she was restrained from telling me what she wanted.”

If Amyr noticed my slip, as I talked about the princess and his daughter by her name, he didn't seem to care.

“I see.” Amyr scratched his prominent horns with his black claws. “Caius was just being cautious. But that doesn’t matter right now. My daughter’s interests are the same as mine, so I can tell you what we want out of the agreement.”

My agreement with the princess had suddenly become much more dangerous. The stakes had become higher. Before I wasn’t making a deal with the princess of an empire, but with a fellow mystic. Now I was strictly dealing with the empire itself as the emperor had intervened.

“What are your terms?” My words slipped across the tense air of the room.

“We would like you to seek a missing person.” The emperor stated.

“Can I ask why?” I inquired. “I don’t think it’s because of my properties as a mystic.”

“You are correct with your assumptions.” Amyr nodded. “Whilst your Soul Sight is far more advanced than mine, we do not need your capabilities as a divinator, but your geographical location.”

My location? “Tell me.”

“This person disappeared during our assault on Ferilyn, two decades ago.” The draconid’s eyes dilated. “We highly believe that this person is currently trapped under the dome.”

A trapped person under the dome?

“Why do you keep saying ‘this person’? Is there a need for secrecy?”

“There is.” Amyr inhaled deeply and exhaled with the same strength. “Though I guess the secret won’t matter if you find who we are looking for.”

“Can I know who this missing person is?”

With a tired step, the emperor rested his back against the cold wall. Amyr closed his eyes as he scratched his wizard beard in a meditative motion. He only talked again when he opened his eyes.

“The heir of the throne, my son Eygaz, is missing,” Amyr added with lament.

Oh. I certainly didn’t expect that.

As the dragonborn’s words about the lost heir of the Imperium reached my ears I realized that I was quite oblivious to the outside world. The fault wasn’t mine, though. I wasn’t the one who decided to be trapped in a dome for almost two decades.

“Understand that I’m not an emperor searching for his heir on the first line of succession, but a father trying to see his son once more.”

For the first time, the draconid mystic felt human to me. It was easy to alienate a being so different from me. Especially as a defense mechanism as I already tried to murder him and his family.

I gritted my teeth in shame. Amyr, nonetheless, continued.

“Twenty years ago, he participated in the ellari retaliation as military training for his future royal duties. He’s a powerful dragonborn and mystic, so we Caius and I thought it was a good exercise as any other back then, but now, I repent of my decision every single day.” The old emperor looked at me with expectation. “I know he’s alive, I would have felt his death otherwise. Please, ellari, find my son.”

The draconid’s words fell on deaf ears, not because I ignored the man, but because the grinds of my mind began working at unprecedented speeds.

Dragonborn.

Mystic.

Powerful.

Eygaz, the missing heir of the imperial family of Houtz, wasn’t just a prince. It was a person I knew very well. All the missing pieces of the puzzle had finally fallen together.

I finally knew who them was. Or rather, he.

The Author of the Anthology was the heir of the Imperium.