Ranvir waved goodbye to Amalia and Elpir with the others. Despite the earth shattering day he’d had, he wouldn’t ignore the brides. The happy couple waved at them from the window as the potragos gathered speed.

Such a heavy construct started off slowly, and the children even followed them as far as the station allowed.

“So,” Kasos said, elbowing Ranvir in the side. “Who are your friends?”

Ranvir did not need to glance behind him to pinpoint Esmund and Kirs. They both stuck out like sore thumbs on the lines. Distortion from spatial mana came off them strongly, lingering like old rumors in a small village. The only reason it wasn’t more overwhelming was the potragos’ own massive wake.

“They are some of my companions from back home,” Ranvir explained. The two in question were standing a ways off, examining the statue of the King. It appeared they were halfway between marveling at the skill with which it was carved and wondering why he looked so bedraggled.

“I thought you were supposed to come to them.”

“So did I.”

The tail end of the potragos disappeared around a bend, and people started turning back. With the brides gone, the party was officially over.

“I noticed you weren’t going back with them,” Ranvir pointed out.

“Somehow, I got roped into looking after the kids while they’re gone.”

Ranvir nodded along.

“It’s only fourteen days, so it’s not even that long. It’ll take me longer to come home.”

Ranvir nodded along.

“Besides, it’s kind of nice to get some time away and plan ahead for my students. Reassess and the like.”

Ranvir nodded along.

“It’s only a few kids that need direct looking after, anyway. I mean, teenagers basically handle themselves.”

Ranvir nodded along.

“How hard can it be?”

“Vasso has fallen off the roof twice since he moved in.”

Kasos stuttered in his step and turned toward Ranvir. “Why?”

“He thinks it’s romantic to be reading on the rooftop.”

Kasos pinched the bridge of his nose. “Ah, that’s… I didn’t…”

“But don’t worry,” Ranvir said, putting a hand on his mentor’s shoulder. “Teenager only become smarter by gathering them into groups,” he grinned then and walked away.

###

“This is a nice house,” Esmund said. His mouth gaped a little as he stared at Ranvir’s home. “Are those windows?”

“Yeah, wanna see!” Frija exclaimed. Ranvir felt a little embarrassed at how rough her Elensk sounded, but neither Es nor Kirs had commented on it.

“Do I? Of course!” Es ran after her towards the nearest glass pane. “It’s so thin,” he whisper shouted to her.

“It is?” she replied in a similar tone.

“Uhuh.”

“Whoa.”

Ranvir glanced at Kirs, who rolled her eyes. “So, what’s up with you and Pashar?”

He sighed and rolled his shoulders, a motion that carried into his wings. Her eyes lingered on them. “It’s a long story. I think she meant well, but it didn’t come across as such.”

“Oh,” Kirs flushed a little. “I didn’t realize you two were…”

Ranvir frowned at her, but before he could parse what she meant, the two children opened the door, causing his cane to fall over with a clatter. “Ah shit.”

“Why do you have a cane?” Es asked.

“From when I was crippled.”

Es gave him a long, confused look. “Why would you need a cane for your arm?”

“For the first time I was crippled, before the arm.”

Kirs gave him a weird look then. Es shook his head in apparent confusion. “What?”

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

“Advancing didn’t go super well. I suffered a long-term injury.”

“This feels like a much longer story.”

“Yeah,” Ranvir agreed, picking the cane up and putting back where it belonged. “So this is my home.”

“This is nice,” Kirs said as she stepped inside. She hung her coat on the rack, though she hadn’t been wearing at all today. They were dressed for Elusrian summer, which was cooler than any of Korfyi’s seasons.

Esmund stomped hard on the floor and gave Ranvir a commending look. “You know, I was afraid we were going to find in you some hard-packed dirt hovel.”

Ranvir controlled his face and shrugged.

“Then you should’ve come earlier,” Frija immediately ratted him out. “But you gotta see my room! It’s on the second floor! Come Menace!”

Ranvir doubted Menace recognized the command in Elensk, but it certainly knew its name and padded after her. Vasso, who’d been hanging back, looked at Frija and Es, who were both going up the stairs with their shoes still on.

“Does that mean I don’t have—“

“No,” Ranvir said. “She’s young, and he doesn’t know any better. You’re neither.”

Kirs cocked her head. “I kinda understood that, but also I’m pretty sure you were talking a different language.”

Ranvir nodded. “Once I saw you I gave him the translation stone,” he pointed at the stone around Vasso’s neck.

“Translation stone?”

“It has translation mana permanently worked into it. Translates any words spoken in a field around it.”

“Mana is like energy?”

“It is energy, at least in the tethered sense of the word. There’s a lot more than just the six you know of.”

“Like translation energy?”

Ranvir nodded as they entered the kitchen. Vasso awkwardly nodded to Kirs before shyly scurrying up the stairs and into his room.

“I wish I had something to write this down with,” Kirs murmured.

“You don’t?”

“I lost it when we arrived here,” she scowled into the table.

Ranvir put the kettle on the heater. Retrieving one of his notebooks, he checked to make sure it was empty and tossed it to her, along with a pencil.

“Thanks! I really appre…ciate…” she trailed off, running a finger down the paper. Ranvir smiled amusedly at her as she wrote on it. Beginning her usual index, but stopped halfway through. “Ranvir, this is—“

“Normal here,” he gestured vaguely toward her. “It’s far more advanced than back home. I’ve tried to place it exactly, but… some things don’t line up.”

“Like what?”

“If we measure by printing press, Korfyi is three-to-four hundred years ahead of Vednar, but if we measure construction,” he gestured at the house. “It’s between five and nine-hundred.”

“Nine?”

“I think,” he shrugged. “I’m not an expert on architecture.”

Kirs startled as the kettle whistled. Ranvir waved her down and dumped in a few herbs.

“It’s just tea,” he said, carefully placing the kettle away from the heat as the water came down from the not quite boil. As the herbal scents started permeating the kitchen, Ranvir turned towards Kirs. “How did you get here?”

She licked her lips and leaned back in her seat. “I couldn’t get the beacon or whatever you called it work,” tapping fingers on the notebook’s cover, she continued. “So I put it on hold for a while, only maintaining the energy and hoping it actually matched your signature. Then maybe eight months ago, a thought struck me.”

Ranvir smiled in realization. “What if I’d made a beacon?”

She nodded. “It didn’t take long before I started getting a response from that. Then I just had to figure out how to take that signal the energy was responding to and track it down. Then figure out how to make a space and use it to travel to you.”

Ranvir considered how he achieved travel himself and winced. “That sounds complicated.”

She nodded. “It fucking is,” her eyes widened, and she looked around, but Es was still upstairs where Frija was showing off all the statues he’d created for her. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to.”

“It’s fine,” Ranvir waved away her concern. “Language is hardly the worst habit she could pick up from me.”

Kirs smiled at him. “But yeah, then I had to figure out how to charge the ritual with enough power to not fall apart the moment Esmund stepped inside.”

“And find your way back, right?”

She rolled her eyes. “No, we’re stranded here too. Actually,” she coughed into her hand. “It took me a really long time to realize that the energy signature thing wasn’t related to your space powers, but just a thing. Esmund created the effect, then stuffed a glyph full of as much power as he could manage.”

“How long does that get you?”

“About a week,” she winced. “Though the signal gets unreliable after four-ish days.”

Ranvir nodded. He hadn’t expected that she would’ve come without a way back, but it was good to be sure. A thrilling rush of blue and yellow excitement blasted through Ranvir at the idea of returning to Vednar, of coming home.

But first, patience. “What’s the situation like back home?”

Kirs cleared her throat. “It got a little wild after you disappeared,” she checked around, but no one was close. Frija was showing Esmund how the shower worked. “Saleema ran through the city killing at random for a few hours, but then disappeared for about a month. Then she showed up in the Ankirian capital and beheaded the King during a big speech.”

Ranvir handed her a cup of tea, and she thanked him before continuing. “Triplet Masters came out of the woodworks then. More than a dozen. Most of the royal family died in their fight. Elusria moved in, and people flocked to Queen Minul. She used her eyes to stake a claim on the Sun Throne.

“The powers of the country scattered. A few disappeared entirely, others joined her, and some gathered into a third organization calling themselves ‘Purists.’ Their core tenant is for Ankiria to remain pure. It must resist outside influence, including Elusria.”

Ranvir grimaced. “Sounds like it could get nasty.”

Kirs nodded. “It has. Some places are worse than others.”

“What about Saleema?”

“After her fight with the Triplet Masters, she disappeared.”

“It’s her, isn’t it?” Ranvir said quietly. “The Sun King’s daughter?”

Kirs licked her lips. “I haven’t been able to get a proper confirmation, but it’s the only explanation.”

Ranvir nodded and rubbed his jaw. “I want to take Frija and Vasso to meet their grandparents, but…” he grimaced. “If she comes after me again… I’m not sure I can protect them.”

“I’m not sure it’s them you should be worried about, Ranvir,” Kirs said. “Saleema fought at least a dozen Triplet Masters.”

Ranvir didn’t know the strength of Triplet Master, spiritually speaking, but he’d been training using theory centuries more advanced than even Ankiria’s best efforts. Beyond that, he’d been training his spirit in ways they didn’t even knew about. Graywing’s enclosure pulsed with power at the thoughts rolling in his head.

Kirs frowned and looked around. “What was that?” she asked. “Did you feel that?”

Esmund entered the room, staring with narrowed eyes at Ranvir. “You’re a Master?” then he blinked a few times. “That wasn’t space… How was that not space?”

“That was Graywing!” Frija exclaimed, running to her dad. “He’s inside Daddy!” she raised her arms and he picked her up. “Daddy is very strong now! Daddy, Esmund says we’re going to go visit granddaddy and grandmamma, is that true?”

Ranvir looked into his daughter’s eyes.