« For now, I need you to listen to this little voice echoing inside you. That’s your inner self trying to tell you something important. One day, you’ll understand. »

I woke up with a slight headache. The roof above me seemed… Unfamiliar. Odd. I didn’t remember falling asleep in a stranger’s lodge. I was supposed to rest inside the cavern until… Until the world was again in danger.

“I remember now… I remember everything…”

Me sleeping in the cavern. Roi assisting me in my revival. Qalendra promising me she would be waiting for me.

Long ago, I fought against deities and demons, catastrophes and apocalypses. All in order to protect the world from its impending doom. Whenever a danger threatening to destroy everything was incoming, I would be called to face it.

I was the protector of this world… I was a true hero.

And as to why I was resting in this cavern, it was because my power grew unstable. I became too potent. I reached a limit where my physical body couldn’t keep up anymore with my magical body, and was about to… Mutate into something else.

My flesh eroded, leaving behind a dark form of myself with no features nor visual personality. I became a living shadow, a figure with no colour.

Fortunately, my friend quickly found a solution and prepared a counter-measure against this condition. I was put into a deep sleep, it was the only way to prevent my soul from consuming any more my body.

And now, I became sort of a last hope for my friends, for the mortals in case an unavoidable cataclysm was about to kill them.

Wakening me up meant that something they couldn’t deal with alone was happening, and they were counting on me to take care of it.

But even though I now remembered all that… That still didn’t change the fact that I was alone when I’ve been pulled from my sleep. Maybe the situation was more severe than I expected, and thus nobody could be present at my side.

Then I needed to be present at their side now that I was finally complete.

The very first person I tried to summon was… Qalendra, of course. How could I not worry about her safety when the world was in danger? I gathered energy in my palm, drawing a portal in front of me where the shape of my lovely wife would appear. But nothing happened.

“Ah right… I guess they’re still effective, even after all this time…” I stared at the metallic gauntlets on my hands. Those shackles put extreme limits on what I could possibly accomplish with my miracle. I couldn’t alter the world because of them, yet I could cast as many blessings on individuals as I wished.

I was still uncertain where the line was drawn with this tool. But even though it reduced the scope of my abilities, they never prevented me from rescuing the world.

My friend told me to keep them at all times because it helped conserving my body intact, however they were both a hindrance and a distasteful souvenir from my clash against the gods. A day where the divinities dared to threaten our existence arrived, so I intervened and stopped them. In this intense fight I managed to bring down one of them, but they were still too many and I lost the battle of attrition.

To humiliate me even more, they made me into a trophy, bound by a divine curse inside one of their despicable little bird cage. And through the bars… I could see them wrecking our home.

After some time, I struggled enough to break those chains and went back to my world where I was about to finish the work… But they were gone. Maybe the gods saw no more reason to siege us as I saw no trace left of them. I didn’t know what happened, but I was glad… Truly glad Qalendra survived the onslaught, along with a few other survivors.

That day, we lost the blessings of those gods… So I decided to grant them by myself. I granted back our immortality, I granted back our profound affinity with magic… But I couldn’t grant back everything else we lost. This was when the toll became too heavy for me, and my body lost its original appearance. I saved everyone… And the price was everything I had.

Those gauntlets were a memento of that day, of the decision I made, of the path I choose. They were a curse, a weight, a hindrance… But also the proof of everything I achieved so far.

So I couldn’t summon anyone… That was fine, I only needed to know where I sensed their presence on this world and I could teleport myself there. Another unknown part of what I could do and what I couldn’t do with those manacles.

Then I used my power to scan the whole world. Any lifeform, any presence, anything that breathed, anything that I knew, anything that I recognized… It took a while, but I finally found her. If my memory serves me well… She was in some city, west from here. I had no more reason to hesitate.

I was about to leave the room when… Something hit me. I looked behind me, scanning the inside to search for whatever I could have missed. There was nobody there… Not even a letter or anything. A few wooden furniture illuminated by the twin moons, but nothing more.

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“Maybe I’m imagining things…” I discarded this strange feeling before leaving the chapel.

Outside, someone was sitting on the stairs. I was then reminded of a certain yume I had to escort for some spiritual reasons. Before, I was a bit confused about what to do with him… But now with the completion of myself, I had a better idea of what I should do.

I grabbed his shoulder to gently shake him… However he suddenly tensed up and jabbed a knife in my torso. The colour drained from his face when he recognized who he was dealing with.

“S-Spirit! I… I’m sorry!” The blade sank deep in my body… I paid it no mind and simply drew the weapon from my wound. It left no trace on me, except a small hole in my tunic which I quickly repaired with a thought.

“Don’t mind the small details, Nilie.” I gave him back his knife. “There is no weapon in this world that can harm me.”

“But… I…” He looked apologetic, probably terrified at the idea I would punish him for this. However, as I said, I didn’t mind if he tried to stab me by accident. After all, I kind of liked this little guy. We shared quite the travel together, even if it only lasted one day.

“As I said, it’s fine… Now tell me, I am your spirit protector, right?” He looked at me with dumbfounded eyes. Did I voice it unclearly? “You asked me to protect you at that time. You summoned your ancestors and you pleaded for your redemption, am I right?”

He nodded, seemingly confused, but he didn’t deny he wished for redemption when we met.

“Right. Then I shall comply. Tell me where your family reside, and I shall bring you there.”

Nilie gazed at the ground, perhaps trying to remember where his home was. Could people forget the geographic position of their homeland? But then, I remembered mortals don’t have yet any idea of how the continent was shaped. Forgivable, I guessed.

Then he looked back at me with some sort of determination in his eyes. “Lagida.” He said. “My sister lives in Lagida.”

I clapped my hands with contempt “Good!” As long as he had a general idea, that was already enough for me to help him.

“Then I shall reunite you with your sister.” I showed him my hands, inviting him to grasp it. He seemed reluctant at first, I didn’t know why. At last, he grabbed my hand, so I could begin to gather energy for the grand departure.

My friend once explained to me how space was defined, and how we moved through it. He told me the simplest method to understand it… Was to go down one dimension. By removing the concept of height, we obtained a plane on which everybody wandered freely.

That way, we would more easily draw maps, calculate distances and estimates sizes. He showed me a slab on which he drew a draft of all the continents we knew. That was really impressive, how we were able to conceptualize things that were just too big for us to understand by narrowing it down.

“By removing one degree in the formula, it becomes easier to grossly explain it.” He taught me.

What did I learn? Things became simpler if you removed some of the hard knots in your way of understanding.

And so, in order to arrive where Lagida was located… I merely removed the concept of length and depth from our reality.

The trees elongated, the stars drew an infinite line through the sky. The world around us became a bundle of straight lines of various brightness and tints. It looked like a corridor, but with no definite “front” and “back”. Inside this fabricated space, there was no such thing as over there or behind you. Because everything could be found in the same box.

Then, the lines grew thinner and shorter. The destination was indicated, and now the whole process was being reversed. Colours took shape, light casted shadows. It was over, we were here.

Time visibly flew by, for the sun was already high in the sky.

“Maybe the distance was longer than what I expected…”

I looked around to check our surrounding. We arrived in the middle of a meadow, at the top of a hill to be exact. A large tree was standing next to us, I could see many shining bubbles rummaging the leaves for fruits of small insects.

“I believe mortals call those things… Fairies?”

When looking at the distance, I easily spotted a city. A circle of wall surrounded the roofs, covering a large enough area to shelter all of its citizens. But this place possessed an uniqueness I would have certainly not have seen anywhere else.

From its center stood an immense prism-shaped pillar, towering above every buildings of the town by many storeys. It looked like the whole structure was made with marble, but I sensed something different from its bricks. Something magical, or magical-wise at least…

However, that still wasn’t what piqued my interest the most. I could sense it… My whole body gave the same reaction as I would expect. Inside this town existed something that I coveted. Inside this town… I would find Qalendra there. I was sure of that.

I needed to go inside, so I called for the yume… However I found the poor guy laying on the ground, probably stunned by the fast travel. I sighed in exasperation “Guess it can’t be helped then…”

…

I didn’t have to wait for long before Nilie woke up in panic.

“What-What happened?!”

I showed him the city “Is this Lagida?”

He looked at the city… With slight disbelief, muttering something I didn’t care about. His gaze went from my to the city multiple times, it was annoying.

“Is this Lagida? Yes or no?”

“Ah ehh… Yes, yes… This is definitely Lagida…”

“Then let’s go in.” I was gathering energy for another fast travel before the yume interrupted me “Wait wait! Not again, please!”

I looked at him with scepticism “Do you want to go inside or not?”

He shook his head at my question “I do, but… I need to go through the procedure. If I’m caught inside without paper, they will throw me in jail.”

“Wouldn’t they throw you in jail for being a bandit? Actually, why were you a bandit?”

Nilie made a complicated face when I asked him for his reason “It’s… Difficult to explain… Spirit, thank you for everything.

I’ll be fine now, I can find my sister by myself.”

“But I also want to enter the city?”

He… Seemed surprise when hearing my retort. Then he panicked again, waving his arm in disarray.

“No no! You can’t, spirit! You may scare people and… This is not a good idea, trust me!”

“Nonsense! There is something behind those walls that belongs to me.

You said we must go through the procedure? Then let’s.”

Somehow, I was enthusiastic at the idea of walking alongside other mortals. I kind of already guessed it wouldn’t be a good idea for an immortal like myself to meet too many mortals… But that was also exactly why I wanted to meet them.

I am Haliaetus, the cianala who protects this world from any sort of harm. I am the last hope, the impregnable wall which defends against all.