Before today I could not have told you the difference between a pocket realm and an enchanted satchel. It seemed pretty unreal to me already that I could fit my entire wardrobe and a barrel of ale in a pouch at my waist, if only I had the coin for such an artifact. But to think… someone could create an entire world with a single entrance… which resided on Green Pit of all places.
Before today I had also never seen a snake large enough to swallow even a ship. Despite the fact that Cira called it a ‘torrential basilisk’, she was adamant on the fact that it was just a very large sea krait, and that it was completely normal for incredibly large creatures to affect their environment from innate aura. A beast of the sea calling storms over the sea was a matter of course, she said.
Personally, I grew up learning to avoid the snakes on land or otherwise as a child. They often traveled in schools through the mist, but only once a year or so—around the time the nimbus sharks return from their annual migration.
But a flock of kraits the size of the one Cira incapacitated would destroy the world. At least this breed seemed bound to the sea, but even I couldn’t feel bad for it after watching the aftermath of Cira’s punch. I’d seen men survive from a shot to the head and it didn’t look far off.
Before today I had only seen a siren in story books. They were beautiful angels who sat upon on the sea. Often claiming a rocky bluff or sometimes flying alongside sailors singing their sweet songs. They would always guide a ship into said rocks, and no one would be seen again.
Now I know… Those ships probably crashed into the rocks because they were empty. Harpies were terrifying, ravenous creatures. It was one of the bonuses of not living by the sea, so I never thought I’d encounter one, let alone be forced to defeat eleven of them by myself. Especially one who my absurd master deems as ‘pretty tough’
“So, tell me about your discovery in the flames.” Distant thunder seemed inbound, but otherwise Cira broke the silence as we flew over the sea. The gray storm had grown and now the only sunlit sea in sight were the distant horizons to our left and right.
Who talks like that? “It… sort of felt like sand slipping through my fingers. I could change the way it fell, but I couldn’t quite grasp it…” Goddammit, I’m doing it too.
My cheesy words were met with a sincere grin, “It seems you are on the cusp on innate control. Those flames you condensed are known as aether flame. In the natural world, fire requires a source. Even conjured flame consumes other elements, but when you condense it enough, it’s possible to create a flame entirely dependent on aether. All other elements in its path are simply destroyed, given that they are equal to or below fire in the chain of predation. That crimson silk you crafted was exactly that.”
When did I craft silk? What is wrong with her? “Those flames you pushed aside as if they were a curtain between my bedroom and the hall… You make them seem like a big deal, but it only makes you more of a monster.”
I was half-joking, but I actually regretted it when her eyebrows fell. She looked honestly offended but trying to hide it.
“I am not!” She looked off into the sea, away from me, “I’ll have you know if you can fine tune that control, I would have had to punch a hole through it. It’s loose in your hands, like silk in the breeze. Until you learn to condense it and hold onto it at the same time, you will never progress.”
“Why are you being bashful?” She always did this about the weirdest things, and I never got the chance to ask until now. “I heard what you did at Fount Salt, but I don’t know… Seeing you after coming out of the soul forge, your strength is absurd. You could probably rip Acher in half if you felt like it. How are you not a monster at this point? Got melted down and everything.”
I had seen her infuriated when I said the wrong word, but the look in her eyes was unmistakably hurt. Her lips fell into a slight frown as she looked down at me, “Because I choose not to be one.” She pulled ahead and increased our speed again.
Dammit, I offended her. Was that so insensitive? I guess someone called her a monster before… or something? It’s just as often a compliment in these skies.
Tawny thought the reasonable thing to do was apologize but her wind would not propel her any closer.
Figures…
Her master would need to pout for a short time before her next words came.
Can I really turn those flames into something so solid as a wall? Earlier, Cira only laughed at me for a minute or so while I desperately failed to cover myself with fire after burning all by clothes away. Afterwards, she tossed me a spare set of robes at. Apparently shaping the flames I could hardly conjure on command into clothing that didn’t wisp away was an advanced technique, after all. I need more practice, but…
“Hey, Master!” I shouted, throwing the Infernal Scepter, “Catch!”
“Wh-what?!” She was baffled, “What are you doing?!” The scepter fell toward the sea then simply disappeared. Cira sighed, shaking her head, “Why would you do that?”
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As she approached looking thoroughly exasperated, I replied, “I have the feel for it now, but that staff is too much for me. If I’m to grasp those flames, I think it needs to be with my own two hands.”
Cira crossed her arms and she turned to mist the moment a frustrated smile crept onto her face. She quickly faded away and appeared from the mist again, by my side.
“Good answer,” She smiled naturally as she emerged from fog, as if to brush her earlier sulking under the rug, “Focus on hardening your reservoir which you seem to have forgotten to conjure.”
Crap. A ball of flame instantly puffed into existence in front of me like an angler’s lantern. “I don’t see your passive reservwahhh” I violently exaggerated her accent.
“It is all around you.” The world turned white for a brief moment, and one of those weird quakes from when she gets mad on Acher happened.
When it ended, my eyes were peeled open and I stared at her, feeling the blood drain from my face.
“Well?” She smirked triumphantly and changed the subject blatantly, “Ahem… Do you recall what I told you of when the fleeting cirrostratus are consumed by a coming storm?”
“Of course I do.” Shit, what do I say? “They… are no more.”
Cira often sighed, as she did now. She looked a little disappointed but understanding. It was complicated and irritating.
“Change often arrives as a storm. The sky is no stranger to chaos. Poor old cirrocumulus were always destined to die, but to herald a storm like this… and so quickly is really something.” As she spoke, thunder rattled off like a drum, leaving scarce moments of silence now instead. “It’s obvious the creator of this realm wanted to accomplish something in life and failed. This so-called Paradise that everyone has been seeking for centuries is like a bottle washed up on the shore. Our unseen mage spent the remainder of their life, possibly even expending it, to create this realm. The death rattle of their will, you could say.”
“I feel like you’re trying to dumb it down for me…” It only made sense, to be fair. This was clearly on a whole other level from me. “What did this guy want? Just tell me that.”
“Well, I am dumbing it down, to a degree,” Normally people don’t out and say it either… “But that is mainly because I am still piecing his will together. We’re likely to only finish the puzzle once we reach the center.”
“Can you explain to me… any part of the puzzle at all?!” I was so confused I couldn’t help but raise my voice. It was also humiliating being carried for the past four or five hours. My control over space was miniscule, and using wind emptied my aura way too quickly.
“His downfall, of course.” Cira grinned. “Look at the sky. Dark clouds fell upon us swiftly, and without restraint. They deprived the world of the sun’s light and emboldened vicious creatures—even led them straight to us. Of course it’s possible others could have made it this far, in theory, but it’s clear this place is testing us. We only get bits and pieces unless we prove capable of picking up where they failed.”
Is… Is she crazy? Did she even explain anything? I shuddered. The harpies seemed like child’s play before that serpent… but if defeating both still hasn’t made us worthy, what could possibly be waiting?
I watched the clouds turn from dark gray to black as lightning arced across the stormy ceiling. Building up, ready to strike.
I looked up at Cira and her smile had grown so wide I could see her teeth. She gave an awkward, nervous, and somehow uncertain laugh. “Forgive me for saying… I really hope it’s a storm dragon.”
“But those… but dragons are just a fairy tale, aren’t they…?” My body shook as I felt the static of a thunderstorm engulf the air accompanied with a wave of mana.
Why Am I here? I thought we were going to walk into a cave or something… But why the hell are we in another world fighting giant snakes and literal storms?!
“It… it couldn’t be a dragon, right?” I continued.
“Hard to say.” Her mithril ring took its place behind her back, along with the orichalcum staff above her head and a branching river that unfolded around her like a furious tide. Clumps of stone—miniature islands materialized before her like revolving shields. That weird bone with the so-called prism appeared in a flash of light and twinkling stars seemed to fall from it like hot breath in the cold. Even the scepter I so foolishly gave up appeared beneath her, turning the sky below into a sea of dark, crimson flames that only seemed to furl when I looked at them. “But I’ll be upset if it’s a flock of stromrak.”
Despite Cira’s massive display of mana that would probably have forced me to my knees were I not flying, whatever approached us inside the storm did not slow down. In fact, the lightning only got stronger, as if responding to her resistance. Each bolt was the purest white and seemed to burn the air around it off in a purple haze. I had never seen anything like it in all the storms I’d survived. That lightning looked like it could destroy anything in its path.
“Have you ever seen… lightning like that?” I had already forgotten whatever she said about birds.
“That there is pure lightning. Not divine in any way, mind you. Pure elemental lightning. You can consider it equivalent to that fire you’re trying so hard to conjure.” Cira crossed her arms, admiring it like a painting as the first bolts started to reach for us, dissipating about halfway. It looked like she was really enjoying herself in spite of my panic, until she hung her head in abject disappointment. “I have only met what I presume to be a flame dragon. The mana it gave off even in a deep slumber was enough to shake my soul. As strong as I am now, there’s no way I wouldn’t feel a dragon nearby… What’s weird is I can see through a great deal of the storm and there’s not really anything in there.”
“What…?” The entire world shook, and the storm bore down mana with such intensity it rivaled Cira. I felt like my entire being was about to get torn about. “Then what’s the third guardian?!”
It was more infuriating every time she gave me a cheeky grin, “Who’s to say we didn’t fight the sixth and the ninth? This could be the first or the last for all I know.” She pulled out her spyglass.
“Will you quit talking nonsense for one minute?!”
“Shh. Look.” She put an eye against the lens, and I followed her line of sight, pulling out my own, cheaper version.
Far ahead of us, there was a single sunray breaking through the clouds. When I peered through my spyglass, a flash of reflected light burned my eyes, and I stumbled back. I blinked it away and quickly trained my eye back on that ray of sunlight, fighting through the pain to get a glimpse.
“I don’t believe it…” I looked over from my spyglass to see a chuckling sorcerer. “It god damn looks like gold to me.”
I was left without breath. The island had to be the size of Acher, but a bit flatter, and sparkling like any gold nugget I ever saw.
Cira gave a loud, boisterous laugh, tipping the new captain’s hat she got from the Council, “Looks like I’m the greatest pirate who ever lived.” Thunder struck.