Eris and Dorian rode together on Sinir, which left Corvo to Aletheia. Getting his mother to agree to that arrangement had taken several hours of argument. But now it was settled, and four horses with six riders swept across the grasslands and back south again. They followed the road through swamps and bogs, down hills and past villages and farmlands, stopping only to resupply and let the horses rest before picking up again. Summer was near its end in Veshod, but the days remained sunny, dry, and hot, and clouds were rarely seen.

The magelights followed them everywhere. Trailing overhead, stalking them, from dawn until dusk until dawn again. Creative illusions on the part of Eris made them somewhat less conspicuous at distance, but nothing could conceal the lights from passersby on the road.

There were magicians in Veshod, but not many. News of Eris' presence would spread quickly, and with it, who knew what might come after them. This was not an ideal way to travel. But if the shadow was to be kept away, there wasn’t a choice.

Corvo’s father had been a knight of Katharos. He was the one who taught Aletheia how to ride, when she was just a girl. Now she repaid the favor. She held on to Corvo tight. He was big for his age, and Aletheia was barely strong enough to hold him in place atop the large Veshod courser.

Thankfully, he seemed to have no desire to do anything except sit in place and ask her questions. He was not so talkative the last time they were together.

“We fought every day, but I always won!” he said, as night came in. “I hit the most swords. But then Dorian, he said I wasn’t supposed to hit the swords, and he taught me to hit his hands.”

“Just his hands?” she said.

Corvo shook his head vigorously. “Every part. But mama is afraid of the Shadow Man. She never lets me fight Dorian anymore.”

“It’s only for a little while. And in the meantime I promise I’ll play with you. You’re so big, we can let you use my bow. And I’ll teach you how to fence, just like your dad taught me.”

He gasped and craned his head to look at her, which was mostly impossible with him in front of her in the saddle, but he tried on anyway. “You played swords with daddy?”

"Yes," she laughed. "I guess I did."

So she told him about her time traveling with Rook, when she was hardly a teenager, and how he taught her everything she knew about how to fight. And then he had died, hardly two years after their lessons began.

She almost never cried anymore. Not even when she was lonely, and when she mourned for her countless dead friends. But after an hour of answering every question Corvo had about his father, she felt tears trailing down past her nose.

“What’s wrong?” Corvo asked.

“It’s nothing,” she whispered. “I just miss him. Why don’t you tell me more about Castle Erod? What else did you learn there?”

That was all the invitation he needed. After that he talked the whole journey through.

Eris’ methodical camping procedure cost them hours every night. No one complained, at first, but on the second night, Melitas had apparently had enough.

“This is, frankly, absurd,” he said. “While you draw runes in the mud, the Boyar is withering away—or, bloating—in an open casket! Your neuroses are going to rob us of our whole quest! You really want us to believe your son is haunted by an immortal, invulnerable spirit of shadow, and we’ll all be killed if you don’t do a silly dance and summon a few lights each night before bed?”

Eris stared at the young magician under the harsh, even glare of the magelights. They had a way of illuminating everyone so flatly, making every scar and pockmark visible, that the party always looked its ugliest when they spoke to Eris.

She, of course, was beautiful as ever.

“Your honesty is invigorating,” Eris said as she regarded Melitas. “Say another word such as this to my son, however, and I assure you that you most certainly will be killed this night—regardless of whether or not a ‘silly dance’ is performed.”

Dorian sat nearby, sharpening his sword. “She’ll do it, you know.”

“How original,” Melitas said. “The over-protective mother. You shouldn’t threaten me, witch; I’m a student of the College of War. A star pupil, as it happens. I’ve slain hundreds.”

“Indeed? Strange, that a star battlemage finds himself running errands for a minor aristocrat on the other side of the world from the Tower,” Eris said.

“Some power is too great to contain. Much too great, as it happens. There was—an accident during my evaluations. But my brief absence from the presence of the Magisters says nothing about my quality as a magician. Which happens to be immense. Make an enemy of me at your own peril.”

Eris smirked. Aletheia felt her cast a spell, silently, drawing mana from her staff too quickly for anyone else to notice.

“Let me guess,” Eris said. “An accident. Did it involve White Fire, perchance? And your poor professor….” She tsked. “Turned to ash before your very eyes. ‘Tis unfortunate. No doubt we would all be better off had it been you instead. How embarrassed you were, as you fled from the scene with soot smeared across your face. The Sisters of the Aether who spotted you in the hallways must have thought you a chimney sweep.”

Melitas’ eyes went wide. He stumbled backward. “How did you—” he clutched at his head, “you’re in my memories! Get out!”

Eris shuddered performatively. “Do not worry. There is not much to see within your mind. If you would like a word of advice, shielding your Essence from such probes takes but a minor expenditure of willpower. You would be wise to do it when you are in the presence of other magicians. Now: be quiet, and go to sleep.”

“You—you can’t invade my mind like that! Who the hell do you think you are?”

“She’s Eris,” Aletheia said. “The lover of Rook Korakos?”

“What?” Melitas blinked.

“The only magician to have ever escaped the Dungeons of Pyrthos,” Dorian said.

“The slayer of Lukon and Pandora,” Aletheia said. “The banisher of the demons of Arqa and Moronos. The one who defeated the Kynigos.” She looked to Eris. “Sort of.”

“These days I am better known as the one who let the Kynigos free,” Eris said. “And as the slayer of the Hero of Katharos, although ‘tis not true. We may thank my brother-in-law for that. Did you not know who I was, then?”

Melitas stared.

“I… thought you were a different Eris,” he said.

She laughed. “You are very cute, neonate. Now you know that I will not hesitate to disembowel you if you annoy me. My flights of homicidal fancy are the subject of plays. Be ready for bed, and be silent from now-on.”

The young magician shook his head, and he said nothing else. Aletheia had to hold back her laughter. Melitas would have made a better foot soldier than magician. But mages had to be taken as they were. The Manasearing procedure of imbuing a mortal human with an arcane Essence was deadly in 98% of cases. The Tower had to work with the recruits it received—not necessarily the ones it wanted.

As for Eris’ “homicidal fancy”—Aletheia doubted anything would come of it. She could be extremely violent, but her anger had tempered over the last decade. It had to have; if she lashed out as often now as when she was a teenager, there would hardly be anyone left alive in Esenia. These days she only lost her temper when Corvo was threatened.

Usually.

Aletheia hoped she wasn’t proven wrong.

Corvo insisted that Aletheia stay in Eris’ tent with them. Neither of the women had the willpower to resist him, not with things how they were, so they slept in a pile like lionesses beneath the bright, never-fading magelight. Aletheia felt more comfortable than usual in their company.

But the light still kept her up. Some hours into the night, she stared into Corvo’s sleeping face, watching him breathe while wrapped within his mother’s arms. His eyes were covered by an improvised nightshade.

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She had missed them. Even Eris. She’d left because she had been near turning twenty and had felt like she had never done anything, gone on any adventures by herself, despite years of violence and travel. She was always a sidekick. Or a nanny. Or an aunt. Never a hero. A year ago, that had seemed like a fate as bad as death. She feared being alone more than anything, but there had been nothing for her to do while Eris lounged about in castles, seducing aristocrats and eating all day. So she had left. She wanted to help people. To be a hero.

Now she barely understood why. Really, being a sidekick wasn’t so bad. She was trapped in Eris’ story, raising her son, and in the end—it was a better story than she ever could have had by herself. Trying to lead her own party of adventurers had shown her that much clearly.

She’d hardly failed in her quests. But she’d also been miserable, and lonely.

She was cursed from birth to never have a normal life, but maybe the next closest thing was good enough after all. She did not intend to leave Corvo again.

By the time she had recited all those thoughts, she was awake as she had ever been. This night was a lost cause. She’d try to sleep again tomorrow.

She checked the shade for any irregularities. A hand raised to her face, a glance beneath a blanket. She saw nothing but black each time.

She used a spell to let her see enchantments with her eyes. A magician could always feel mana tugging at her when a demon was nearby or a spell was cast, in the way any other human feels the air around him or nearby heat or chill against his skin, but only with this technique could she truly see the immaterial realm.

The threads of mana in her Essence were twisted and knotted in her imagination until the shape of the spell was formed. Then, when her eyes opened, she was blinded by the magelight overhead.

It had seemed bright with naked vision. It was much brighter without it. Like this, Aletheia could see the concentrated magic, sizzling as it burned itself to give off visible light. Vibrant colors pulsated everywhere, like the Aethereal aurora dancing directly before her eyes, and all that remained of her true sight was the vague impression of shapes in black and white around her.

When her eyes had adjusted, she could see connective lines between the light and Eris. Eris' Essence bubbled within her and radiated outward. A magician had concentrated, solid mana flowing through her veins, literally in her bloodstream, and it showed as a bright green light circulating in a vaguely woman-shaped pattern. Another connection ran to her staff, and at the staff, to the slowly rotating arcane focus on the floor.

The black orb. Eris’ most precious artifact. That was what allowed her to sustain spells, even while asleep. It was a tremendously powerful tool. Almost none of them persisted from the Old Kingdom, and the art of making them anew had been lost forever. Normally, when activated, it was black and starry, like a night sky—and so was it now. It was the only thing in the tent that looked as it did with her normal vision.

Aletheia turned her attention to Corvo. She regarded him upward and down. His skin was dark and nearly invisible. He was mundane. He had no Essence. All she could see of him was his soul, hanging in his sternum, nothing more than a target for a magician’s spells.

She crept a hand up his scalp and brushed back his hair. It was a relief to know he would never have to endure a magician’s burdens. He would never know the agony of being manaseared. He could just be a boy.

There was no hint of the Shadow Man. If it still stalked them, it was not a creature of mana. It was invisible to this spell.

But then she saw something. As a thin transmission of mana had connected Eris to her lights and focus, so did another connect Corvo to...

Something outside.

Aletheia rose as silently as she could and stepped outside the tent. Again her vision was overwhelmed as she beheld the raw mana of the Aether overhead, without any shielding, so that it looked to her like the whole of the sky was on fire. A sea of colors writhed over her like lava bubbling along a volcano’s cliffs, coming down in places like huge waterfalls.

It took her a long time to find the thread that connected back to Corvo again. But she did find it, and she followed it. Beyond the magelights, down from where they’d set their camp, and toward a dull gray shape beside two far brighter ones.

The brightest of the two was Trito. The elf was pure mana, magic given corporeal form, a demon in all but name, and he shone like the moon before the star of Melitas. Melitas looked something like Eris had, but he was much less powerful, and he radiated a fraction as much mana. An Essence was like a muscle: in the weak and young, it was small and underdeveloped. In the strong…

A glance was enough to distinguish between the two.

But the spell did not lead to Trito, nor to Melitas. It led instead to a shape without an Essence, reaching in through a lump of gray and toward the sparkling of a human soul.

Dorian’s soul.

Aletheia froze. She peered into the enchantment. Any spell consisted of a unique combination of Aethereal colors, mixed together to form some different effect from the basic elements of green, red, and blue mana, but Aletheia was never an expert in arcane detection. She couldn’t determine its purpose.

But she could tell clearly that it was one of Eris’ spells. She had Dorian ensorcelled—literally.

Aletheia kept this revelation to herself, at first. But it festered in her mind. Eris did what she had to, but to use magic on the mind of an ally was revolting. Who could say she hadn’t done the same to Aletheia? Or even to Corvo? Some lines were best left uncrossed.

Eris rarely saw things the same way.

On the final night of their journey to the Oak, Corvo was finally asleep, yet the two of them remained awake. Eris told the story of her stay at Castle Erod in Vererszag, about how she had cured the arcane illness of the realm's queen before swiftly departing again. Aletheia told the story of her adventures in return.

Then there was a lull, a moment of silence in the conversation. That was when Aletheia said what was on her mind.

“I couldn’t sleep the other night,” she whispered, careful not to wake Corvo. He slept in his mother’s lap. “I tried to look for the Shadow Man using Supernal Vision.”

“I have told you,” Eris whispered back. “It is impossible to find. It has no Essence, nor any soul.”

“I thought I would check anyway. Just in case. But I didn’t see anything. You were right. Except… I did see something, between Corvo and someone outside.”

Eris stared at Aletheia. They both already knew where this was going. But she let her finish.

“I saw that you have Dorian under a spell,” Aletheia said at last.

Eris put up a hand. She muttered something and Aletheia felt a surge of mana from her Essence, and suddenly the noise of crickets outside disappeared.

A bubble of sound. So no one could overhear them.

“You will tell no one,” Eris whispered, fast and severe. “Dorian cannot know.”

“What did you do to him, Eris?”

“Nothing. Nothing extreme.”

“He’s your friend,” Aletheia said. “You can’t bewitch him. It isn’t right.”

“I know it is not right. But I have done it anyway.”

Eris had changed so much since Corvo was born. But she had also hardly changed at all. Aletheia felt disappointed anyway, somehow, but she wasn’t defeated enough to stay quiet.

“What have you done to him?” she asked.

“It is a minor enchantment,” Eris said. “When we began to travel together, I knew I would have no choice but to leave him with Corvo, sometimes alone, since we were on the move and you were not there with us. But I did not trust him yet. I would not do it, unless I had assurance Corvo would never be harmed.”

“Eris…”

“You know that Khelidon and Jason would seek to have him assassinated. You know any man who did such a thing would be paid a fortune by them, or by any other of our enemies. Would you risk my son’s life at the hope that an ally was incorruptible? Or would you ensure that no such thing could happen?”

“Reaching into a man’s mind is perverse,” Aletheia said. “It’s illegal. Those kinds of spells are forbidden for a reason.”

Eris shook her head. “It was Dorian’s decision to seek me out. He knew the risks when he chose to consort with a magician.” But a flash of guilt showed on her face, as she had to glance away from Aletheia’s gaze. “I did not trust him. And I still do not. The spell does nothing more than cause him to regard Corvo as he might his own son. I promise you; that is all it does. You know you would have done the same if you were I.”

Aletheia sighed. She had to look away, too, and she covered her eyes. It was one thing to use magic on enemies, but this was wrong.

And worse—Aletheia knew that Eris was right. Corvo was a pretender to one of the most valuable thrones in Esenia. His uncle, a very powerful man, would pay a fortune to ensure his nephew was killed before he was old enough to cause problems. Even a good man like Dorian, and he seemed to be a good man, could be corrupted by that kind of temptation.

So no matter how much she disapproved, Aletheia agreed to keep silent.

“You’re right,” she said. “I would have done the same thing.” They looked at each other again. “He sought you out?”

Eris nodded. “What, do you think I collect handsome older men on purpose? Like I am destined to always travel with one, if left alone for five minutes?”

“Yes,” Aletheia said, and they both laughed.

“Well, ‘tis not so. At least, not purely so. Dorian approached me while I was at Castle Erod, inquiring after my assistance for an arcane matter. I told him I would hear his request at a later date, and when that date came, he explained his predicament. He is cursed to never tell a lie. It is a curse of the Old Ones, from a time before the Aether touched the Earth. He has carried it for decades.”

“To never tell a lie? Is that all?” Aletheia asked.

“I gather there is more to it. He has nightmares, very lifelike, and finds little joy in food. Beyond this much, I do not know its effects. But in any case, he believed I could have the power to cure him at last, and thus he sought me out.”

Eris peered out through the tent’s flaps, as if afraid someone might be listening. No one was.

“He was right. I have found how to lift the curse, and had nearly done so, when Corvo suffered his affliction. He bears no small part of the blame for this new development, and so I told him I would fulfill our end of the bargain only when Corvo was well again.”

“Will you?”

“I am not sure,” Eris said. “But I think so.”

“I don’t understand why you agreed,” Aletheia said. “Why didn’t you stay at Castle Erod?”

Eris shrugged, smiling. “You know me. I am a restless woman. But—the true reason is that I became worried Corvo would do poorly without a man to mentor him. There are things he must learn that I cannot teach him, and Dorian, for his faults, can. That was the price I asked in exchange for curing him. It must be said that he was not eager to do this until I placed my spell on him. But things have been much more productive since then.”

The holes in Aletheia’s knowledge were slowly filled in. Soon all made sense. She had only one question, one concern, after that:

“Why was he cursed?”

“You may ask him, if you are brave enough,” Eris said. “I myself have not been yet. I can only gather that it was something—bad. He deserved it. But that was many years ago, and if I, of all people, cannot believe in forgiveness, then who shall?”

That was enough to satisfy Aletheia. She would keep her mouth shut. But when she spoke with Dorian the next morning, and as they readied the horses together, she found it much harder to look him in the eyes than she had before.

That was another reason why she would never be so good an adventurer as Eris. Aletheia was much too sincere and far too honest. But really, if a temperament like Eris’ was what a woman needed to become a legend, Aletheia decided she was happy to stay obscure. Being an aunt wasn't so bad. Playing with Corvo was much more fun than fighting hydras anyway.