Arc 5. "The Rise of Finn Warend."
Corvis Eralith
Portal Plaza sprawled around me, the second largest square in all of Zestier, though it felt almost intimate compared to the vast expanse of Elf Court where the Royal Palace held its silent vigil.
Where Elf Court was ceremony and tradition, Portal Plaza was life itself—a constant, churning river of bodies moving in and out of the city, merchants with their carts, travelers with their packs, messengers with their urgent dispatches.
The sound of it was a low, continuous hum that never quite faded, never quite stopped, the heartbeat of a city that had been beating for longer than anyone could remember.
At the center of it all, the portal towered.
I had seen it a hundred times before. But today I looked at it differently. Today I looked at it as something more than a door to a new city.
The Djinns had built this. The same Djinns who had mastered aether, who had discovered Fate, who had been erased from the world so completely that even their name had been forgotten by most.
They had built these portals with the same precision that had made them the greatest civilization this world had ever seen.
Every portal in Dicathen—Zestier, Burim, every city across Sapin and Darv and Elenoir—shared the same dimensions.
Nine meters and eighty-six centimeters tall. Pi times Pi meters, my mind supplied, and I wondered if that was coincidence or design.
The arches were the same width, the same angle, the same mysterious silvery stone that reflected light in ways that hurt to look at directly during a bright day.
They could have been mass-produced, stamped out of some incredible factory, identical in every way that mattered.
And yet they were different, too. Not every portal could reach every portal. The network had a logic Dicathen had never quite been able to unravel.
I would need to learn, eventually. If I was going to search the Beast Glades, if I was going to find and revive the ruins the Djinn had left behind, I would need to understand how their technology worked.
"Corvis!"
The sound of my name cut through the noise of the plaza, and I turned to see Tessia running toward me, her gunmetal hair streaming behind her, her face flushed with the effort.
She was wearing one of her court dresses—she wore little else these days—and the hem was already splashed with slush from the winter streets.
"You were going to leave without saying goodbye?" She skidded to a stop in front of me, and I saw that she was not angry, but there was something in her eyes that I had learned to recognize over nine years of being her twin.
"I said goodbye at breakfast," I pointed out. "You were too busy planning your next social event to listen—shouldn't you get ready to visit the Vernisser estate?"
She opened her mouth, closed it, and I watched her decide to let that go. Her attention had already shifted to Berna, who had been standing patiently behind me, her massive frame drawing stares from everyone who passed.
"Berna." Tessia reached up to scratch behind her ears, and Berna leaned into the touch. "Protect my twin, okay?"
Berna growled her confirmation, and then her tongue was out, licking Tessia's face with the same enthusiasm she showed for honey, iron and anything that caught her attention.
Tessia laughed, pushing her away, and for a moment they were just a girl and her brother's strange bear, playing in the snow.
"Where's Coco?" I asked. "She's usually with you."
The question was innocent enough, but I saw Tessia's expression flicker. Something passed between us—a memory, perhaps, of the first time Berna had seen the robin, the way she had flattened herself against the ground, the way she had refused to go anywhere near the creature that had been a fixture of our lives for years.
"Probably managing her flocks." Tessia shrugged. "She's been busy."
Busy. It was a strange word to use for a bird, but then Coco had always been a strange bird. Too intelligent, too watchful, too present to be just a robin. And Berna, who was afraid of nothing, would not go near her.
"You want to say hello?" Tessia's voice brightened, and before I could answer she had lifted two fingers to her lips and whistled.
The sound cut through the noise of the plaza, sharp and clear, and I felt the wind magic in it, the way she shaped the air to carry her call further, faster.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then a small shape detached itself from the crowd and came winging toward us, a flash of red and grey against the winter sky.
"Have you bonded?" I asked, watching the robin settle on Tessia's outstretched hand. "With Coco?"
Tessia shook her head. "I've tried, but she won't let me."
Strange. Coco had been with us for years, had woven herself into our lives so completely that I could not remember a morning when she was not tapping at my window, demanding seeds, demanding attention, demanding something I had never been able to name. And yet she would not bond.
Berna had gone still beside me. I felt her tension through the bond, the way she pressed against my leg, the way she avoided looking directly at the small bird on Tessia's hand.
She was not afraid, I realized. She was something else. Something I did not have words for.
"Prince Corvis." Lenna Aemaris's voice was professional, patient, but I heard the edge beneath it. "We're ready to depart when you are."
I nodded, and Tessia's arms were around me before I could move, her hug fierce and quick, the way she had hugged me when we were small.
"See you at dinner," she said, and she was already pulling away, already turning back toward the palace, already becoming the princess she had chosen to be.
"See you," I said, but she was already walking away, Coco on her shoulder, Berna's tension fading behind me.
Lenna Aemaris moved ahead, and I followed, Berna at my heels, the portal waiting.
One step. Two. The world shifted, and I left Zestier behind.
—
Vildorial welcomed me with a sound I had only heard once before, in Burim, when the clang of hammers and the rumble of machines had seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once.
But Burim had been a whisper compared to this.
The capital of the dwarven kingdom was a roar—a constant, layered symphony of industry that pressed against my ears and vibrated in my chest.
I had thought the Grand Nectary was crowded, had thought the press of bodies and voices was the closest Zestier could come to chaos, but it was nothing. Nothing at all.
Burim had been a city that grew outward, its buildings spreading from a center like ripples in stone.
Vildorial grew upward. The cavern where we emerged—where the portal had deposited us with that familiar lurch I would never quite get used to—was vast, its ceiling lost somewhere in the darkness above, and clinging to its walls were buildings.
Not scattered, but clung, as if the city had been poured into the cave and left to set. Floors upon floors upon floors, stacked so high I had to crane my neck to see the top, and even then I was not sure I was seeing it.
Lodenhold, the royal palace of the Greysunders family, was up there, and beside it the Hall of Lords, its facade glittering with a geode the size of a prestigious estate.
I had read about them in this and another life, had seen illustrations, had heard Grandpa describe them in his gruff, not very evocative way—but reading and hearing was not seeing.
Illustrations were not standing here, at the bottom of a hole that held a kingdom, watching the light reflect off a hundred thousand windows.
The street that wound upward from the portal square was wide, paved with reddish cobblestones that seemed to glow faintly, as if they had swallowed fire and were still digesting it.
Buildings lined only one side—the other opened onto the cavern's heart, a drop that made my stomach clench when I looked too long—and they were packed so tightly together they seemed to be holding each other up.
It was not so different from Zestier, in philosophy. Space was a luxury here, just as it was in Sprout City.
And where Zestier's architecture blended with the Watchful Willows, grew from them, was of them, Vildorial was stone carved from stone, built into the bones of the earth. I could not tell, in some places, where the building ended and the cave began.
They had been married so long they had forgotten they were separate entities. They could no longer remember a time when they were not there for each other.
A small delegation was waiting for us on the other side of the portal, and at its head, wearing the dark brown uniform of the Greysunders' guard, was a face I knew better than almost any other in this kingdom.
Olfred.
He looked at me with no recognition, no warmth, no sign that we had ever traveled together, that he had saved my life, that I had seen him kill a creature that should have been beyond anything a normal lesser could touch.
He shook Lenna Aemaris's hand with the professional cordiality of a man who had done this a hundred times before.
"King Dawsid welcomes you to his city." His voice was perfect. Impeccable. If I had not known I would have believed he was exactly what he appeared to be: a royal guard, loyal to his king, tasked with escorting a foreign prince through the capital.
"I am Olfred Warend, royal guard. I have been tasked with making your stay in Vildorial as comfortable as possible."
"Lenna Aemaris." She shook his hand, her own professionalism a mirror of his. Then she turned to me. "Your Highness. What is your destination?"
"I have a meeting." I forced my voice steady, though my heart was beating faster than I wanted it to. "With Elder Rahdeas. At the headquarters of the Warend Trading Company."
Olfred bowed his head, and I watched the light catch on his hair, watched the shadows shift in the hollows of his cheeks. "I will accompany you. Please, follow us."
We walked. Berna pressed against my side, her warmth a steady presence, her head swiveling to track the movement of the crowds, the carts, the children who ran up to stare and were pulled away by anxious parents.
I kept my hand on her fur, and she kept her shoulder against mine, and we moved through Vildorial like a single creature, uncertain of its footing but unwilling to stop.
The street was called Anvilrun. One of Olfred's companions told me that—a dwarf with a voice like gravel and a laugh that boomed off the walls.
"Like the head of an anvil!" he said, and I saw what he meant.
The street was where Vildorial was forged, shaped and made. Every building was a workshop, every window a display of something that had been hammered or polished or set into gold.
The people who walked here wore their wealth openly, rings on every finger, chains around their necks, brooches pinned to coats that probably cost more than my clothes had ever cost—I hated wearing expensive fabrics.
They were not the common folk of Darv, the ones I had seen in Burim, the ones who scraped for water and watched their children go hungry. These were the ones who had made it, the ones who had climbed, the ones who had found a way to live in the light.
Berna was looking at them. Not at the people—at the jewelry. Her eyes tracked the glitter of gold, the gleam of silver, the deep red of rubies set into rings, and I felt through the bond a hunger that was not hunger, a need that was not need.
She shook her head, hard, and I saw her force herself to look away. Then she did it again. And again. And again.
"Berna." I murmured it under my breath, and she pressed against me, and I felt her effort, her struggle, the sheer force of will it took to keep her eyes on the road instead of the metal that sang to something deep in her bones.
We stopped in front of a building five stories high, each floor shorter than the ceilings of Zestier, each window round as an eye, each stone carved with patterns that repeated and varied and repeated again.
Elven architecture used plants for decoration, flowers and leaves and the slow growth of living wood. Here, where plants struggled, everything was made by hand.
Every curve was a choice, every line was a decision, every surface had been touched by someone who had wanted it to be beautiful.
Above the door, carved into the stone so deeply it would never fade, was a name: Warend Trading Company.
Lenna Aemaris moved toward my right side, her hand going to the sword at her hip, her body positioning itself between me and the door. Berna looked at her. Not a growl, just a look, the kind of look that said: that is my place.
Lenna paused. Then, without a word, she stepped to my left.
I did not know whether to be grateful or embarrassed.
Olfred opened the door, and we stepped inside. The building was quiet after the noise of the street, the sound of industry muffled by stone and distance and the particular silence of wealth.
We climbed, and I counted the floors, and when we reached the fifth, Olfred stopped before a door that was no different from any other door, and I understood that we had arrived.
"This is a private conversation." I said it to Lenna and to Olfred. I saw Olfred's expression flicker—surprise, perhaps, or something else, something he buried before I could name it.
"Berna." I turned to her, and she was already watching me, her eyes patient, her body still. "Stay outside. Lenna—would you watch her for me?"
Lenna's smile was quick, unexpected, a crack in her professional armor that let something younger shine through. "It will be my greatest pleasure, Your Highness."
I left them there, bear and guard, and I stepped into the office of Rahdeas Warend.
The room was lit by artifacts I did not recognize—lamps that held no flame, light that came from nowhere I could see.
They cast soft shadows across bookshelves heavy with tomes, their spines tooled in gold, their pages edged in colors I had only ever seen in the royal library.
Behind a desk that was the twin of my grandfather's—and I wondered if Rahdeas had bought it in Zestier—sat a dwarf.
He removed his glasses. I remembered, then, what Olfred had told me once, that optics were a dwarven craft, that they had learned to shape glass and light before any other race had thought to try.
Elder Rahdeas's eyes were sharp behind the lenses, and they were sharp without them.
"Prince Corvis." He set the glasses aside, and his hands folded on the desk, and I saw the rings on every finger, the weight of them, the age of them. "I was expecting your visit. Please, sit."
I sat. The chair was dwarf-sized, which meant my feet did not quite touch the floor, and I did not care. I was too busy watching him, cataloging him, trying to see the dwarf behind the merchant, the conspirator behind the elder.
His beard was long, grey, braided simply at the end, and there was nothing in it. No gold, no silver, no jewels. Among dwarves, the beard was a declaration of wealth, a display of status, a thing to be adorned and admired. Rahdeas wore his bare.
"Good morning," I said, and the words came out too formal, too rehearsed, too young. "Good afternoon. Elder."
He waited. His patience was absolute, a wall I could not climb, a door I could not open. I had spoken to him once, four years ago, a conversation that had felt like walking a knife's edge between sense and madness, and I had not known, then, if he was an enemy or an ally or something I had no name for. I did not know now.
"I need your help again."
His eyebrows rose. Just slightly. Just enough to tell me he had heard, that he was listening, that something I had said had found its mark.
"The Beast Glades." He said it like a question, but it was not a question.
I nodded. "I need to return there, and I cannot go simply as myself." I paused, letting the words settle. "I need to be Finn Warend again."
His fingers tapped once on the desk. The rings clicked against the wood. "Such a simple thing," he said, and I heard the calculation behind the words, the weighing, the price. "I can certainly help you with that."
"Then—"
"You wanted to ask what I require in return." He smiled, and it was not the smile of a merchant closing a deal. It was something else, something I had seen in his eyes four years ago, when a child had walked into his study and spoken riddles and he had listened. "This is exactly what I wanted from you, Prince Corvis. When we first met. This is what I wanted."
I stared at him. "What?"
He leaned back in his chair, and for a moment he was not a merchant or an elder or a man I had been taught to fear. He was just a dwarf, old and tired, watching something he had been waiting for finally arrive.
"Have you ever wondered why I asked Olfred to take you to the Red Gorge as Finn Warend?" He did not wait for an answer. "All people have deeper reasons than what they show, Prince. I am no different. And I suspect you are not, either."
He was right. He had always been right, about that, about me, about the things I did not say.
"So." I leaned forward, and the chair creaked under me, and I did not care. "What are your reasons, Elder?"
He turned to the window—a circle of glass, thick and clear, looking out over the Anvilrun and over Vildorial.
"I intend to create a new organization. Parallel to the Adventurer's Guild, but independent of it." His voice was quiet, but I heard the weight in it. "You know, of course, that the Beast Glades are not formally ruled by any kingdom. But Sapin rules them nonetheless. Through the Adventurer's Guild, of course. And thanks to the Sapinese Royal House of Glayder backing and funding them."
The Adventurer's Guild. I had seen it in Zestier before it was removed after the new goods coming from Darv made the competition too high, a splinter of human ambition driven into elven stone.
"You need legitimacy." I said it slowly, letting the pieces fall into place. "From another royal house. From the Eraliths."
"I have money." His voice was dry, almost amused. "I have more money than the Greysunders, more than most of the lords of Darv put together. But money is not legitimacy. Money can be taken, can be taxed, can be declared unclean. But the endorsement of a Royal House?" He smiled, and there was something sharp in it, something hungry. "That, Prince, is something no amount of gold can buy."
I thought of the novel, then. Of the Rahdeas I had read about, the man who had sold his continent for a promise, who had let Agrona's poison spread through Dicathen.
I thought of the war, of the death, of the slow, grinding collapse of everything my grandfather had built.
"Elder." I kept my voice steady. "Why not ask the Greysunders?"
His expression did not change. But something in the room shifted, something I could not name, something that made the air feel heavier, the shadows deeper.
"I have asked." His voice was soft. "King Dawsid refused."
I did not believe him. Or rather, I believed the words, but not the reason. There was more to this, something he was not saying, something that coiled beneath the surface of his calm like a serpent waiting to strike.
But I could not afford to chase it. Not now. Not when the Beast Glades were waiting, when the Djinn's secrets were waiting.
"I have a condition." I said it before I could stop myself, and I saw his eyebrows rise again, and I knew I had surprised him.
"I am listening."
"No limitations by race." I heard my voice, harder than I had intended, sharper. "Humans. Dwarves. Elves. All of them will be accepted. All of them will be equal. In your Guild, or in your organization, or in whatever you are building."
The Adventurer's Guild accepting multi-racial parties had been a historic event toward the unification of Dicathen, no less significant than the opening of Xyrus Academy to dwarven and elven students.
If the Adventurer's Guild wouldn't create that opportunity in this timeline, then I would make it happen nonetheless.
Elder Rahdeas was silent for a long moment. Then he nodded.
"Accepted."
I nodded and let out a relieved breath. "Then what is Finn Warend's role? In all of this?"
He smiled, and it was the smile of a man who had been waiting for someone to ask the right question.
"Finn Warend will be the link between the dwarven merchant and the elven prince. It would be unusual, would it not, for Corvis Eralith to spend so much time with a dwarven merchant? But if Corvis Eralith were friends with a dwarven boy his own age, a boy who happened to be my relative..." He spread his hands. "Then everything becomes simple."
I understood. Of course I understood. Finn Warend had always been a fiction, a mask I wore when I needed to move unseen. But a mask that was seen, a mask that was known, a mask that could be pointed to and named—that was not a mask at all.
That was a bridge. One plank laid across the river of time, between a broken present and a future Dicathen had not yet learned to dream of.
"I will do my part," I said.
Rahdeas nodded, and the deal was done.