Tessia Eralith
"Corvis!" I shouted, panic clawing up my throat like a crawling, living thing.
My voice tore through the sickly orange mist, but it was already too late. He was already too far gone, his silhouette swallowed by the haze, the last thing I saw being the tip of his wand-cane as he used it like a Petaldrift with the undergrowth as his river.
He disappeared, vanished, erased by this hateful amber fog that seemed to drink light and sound alike.
"Corvis! Coco! Come back here! Don't go!"
But the mist did not answer. The forest did not answer. Only the howls of the creatures answered, closer now, hungrier.
Inside my chest, my heart beat like it was trying to escape, hammering against my ribs with the desperate urgency of a caged bird.
I held my wand-sword with trembling hands, my fingers slick with sweat, my grip uncertain. My breath came in uneven gasps, each inhale too shallow, each exhale too quick.
My wind spells—the gusts I had once been so proud of, the magic that had come so easily to me when I was five and the world was simple—failed miserably.
Each attack either missed entirely or was dodged by one of these... these creatures. They moved wrong, jerky and unpredictable, their bodies no longer bound by the natural grace of the Forest Hounds I had grown up knowing and sometimes playerd with.
These were not like the Forest Hounds that had always treated me and Corvis with respect and gentleness. Those hounds had been friends, guardians, the silent companions of the Elshire and its inhabitants.
These things wore their skins but nothing else, corrupting the woods as they existed. Their eyes held a malice I had never seen, a red glow that spoke of something ancient and hungry. Their fur stood on end like the needles of a porcupine, bristling with aggression.
Saliva dripped from their mouths in thick ropes, steaming in the cold air, and every breath they took was a wet, rattling snarl.
I-I didn't imagine it to go like this! The cry was silent, trapped behind my teeth, because I could not let it out. I could not let them see. Outside, I kept the façade of a bold and prideful princess.
My back was straight. My chin was raised. My eyes were fixed on the enemies that circled us like sharks in bloody water. But that façade was not a banner of my status, not the proud declaration of my lineage that I held before everyone—my family included, from time to time.
No. It was a shield. A wall. A lie I was telling myself because the truth was too terrible to face.
I was afraid. I was so afraid.
"Princess!" Alwyn shouted, and his voice was a lifeline, pulling me back from the edge of the dark.
I opened my mouth to answer, but the words died on my tongue. The abrupt, wet sound of bones and fur and sinew and flesh being crushed against the ground resounded by my side like the sudden fall of a giant tree.
Berna's right paw came down on the head of a Forest Hound before it could sink its fangs into my arm. The impact shook the earth, and I felt the vibration up to my teeth.
I looked at Berna. At Corvis's pet. My twin's bond.
She was nothing like the cute oversized bear I knew. Nothing like the grown-up Autumn Cub Mom always joked she was. This was a killing machine.
A bear that tore through the flesh of these creatures as if they were leaves, as if they were nothing, as if the only thing that mattered was the next blow and the next and the next. Her claws were red. Her muzzle was red. Her fur was matted with blood that was not her own.
And she was the only thing standing between me, Alwyn, and an avalanche of monsters wearing the skin of Forest Hounds. Their howls made me shiver, a cold that started in my spine and radiated outward, numbing my fingers, my toes, the edges of my thoughts.
"Princess, are you fine?" Alwyn asked. He was visibly afraid. Unlike me, he was not hiding it. His face was pale, his eyes were wide, and his voice trembled on the edges of his words. But he was still fighting. He was still standing.
And he was bleeding.
"Alwyn, you are bleeding!" I shouted, noticing the dark stain spreading across his right leg. He was holding it with the hand that was not holding Grandpa's rapier, his fingers pressed against the wound, trying to stem the flow.
"It is just a minor wound," Alwyn said, casting his gaze away from me. But his trousers were too bloodied for it to be minor. The fabric was torn, soaked, clinging to his leg in a way that made my stomach turn.
Berna growled—a sound that might have been an apology, though I did not know what she was apologizing for—and punched a monster straight in the jaw.
Sharp rocks encased her claws, making them even sharper, and the creature's head snapped back at an angle that should not have been possible. It fell, twitched, and was still.
She was copying Corvis's wind magic too. I saw it in the way she moved, the way wind currents made her faster, as if the sky itself was carrying her. She was not just a bear. She was a storm given form, a force of nature that had decided, because her bond told her to, to protect us.
I whipped my head to the right. Alwyn had moved in front of me, his rapier extended, and he was driving back a Forest Hound that had been about to tear into my side.
He killed it with a single thrust, the blade sliding through its skull like butter, and then he was already turning, already looking for the next threat.
"Alwyn, stop it!" I said, my voice not loud enough to cut through the chaos unfurling around us. The sounds of the fight—the snarls, the howls, the wet impact of claw on flesh—devoured everything. "You are putting yourself at risk!"
He did not answer. He did not even look at me.
Gritting my teeth, I slashed the air with my wand-sword, trying to conjure a blade of wind magic. My mana core answered the call, but weakly, reluctantly, like a servant who had been neglected for too long and no longer remembered how to obey.
The blade of wind flew true—for once, for once—but it missed the Forest Hound I was aiming at by a wide margin. The creature did not even flinch. It continued toward me, uninjured, unstoppable.
Luckily, Alwyn killed it in my place. He had summoned a Branchberd from his storage ring—the long, elven halberd appearing in his hand with a flash of light—and he drove its blade through the creature's chest before it could reach me.
Then he put it back inside, the motion practiced, efficient, the motion of someone who had been training for this his entire life.
I clenched my fists. My nails bit into my palms, and the pain was grounding, a small anchor in the sea of my failure.
This was not how it was supposed to happen. I was a princess. I was the one supposed to protect others, not the other way around. Especially not by the pet of my brother and his best friend.
I was supposed to be the one standing in front, the one swinging the sword, the one saving the day. I was supposed to be the hero of this story.
But new monsters were appearing from the mist. A strange type of stag mana beast with charred horns, their eyes burning with the same red glow as the Forest Hounds. They moved in a pack, their hooves striking the earth in unison, and I saw the way Alwyn's eyes widened, the way Berna's growl deepened.
And realization struck.
After Alwyn, I was the youngest mage to awaken in elven history. I had always thought I was better than others. By seven, I had even stopped training with Grandpa completely, letting arrogance blind me. I sought the court life instead.
I wanted to become the best princess my nation could dream of, and I let the talent I was envied and admired for—the very talent that made me more than just an average princess of the Elshire—become tertiary in my life.
I had been so proud. So sure. So certain that I was special.
But as I grew older, more kids awakened. When the age of awakening came for them, I ignored them. I told myself I was still better. I was a princess. I was Tessia Eralith. I came here thinking I would be the one protecting Corvis, that I would leave him open-mouthed when he saw my magic.
None of it was true.
I thought Corvis had started the Unraveler's Company because he hated the life of a prince. While he was now at the dark stage of the yellow core, I still thought I was stronger. Just because I was... I...
I never had any right to call myself a better mage just because I was Tessia Eralith. And now I was forced to watch as Berna fought packs of mana beasts because I was weak. Corvis had left—for whatever reason, probably to drive other mana beasts away—all because I was weak.
Coco had gone with him, helping my brother instead of me, because I was useless. Because I was too weak to help.
I was a princess in name. I was a princess in Zestier, where I could win the hearts of nobles and peasants with posture, with elegance, with words and status.
But what was I outside of Zestier? Who was I where the authority of my parents could not reach? I was just an arrogant girl who thought herself better than the brother who challenged the wilds of their kingdom every day of his life. An arrogant girl who thought herself better than all the other kids her age.
A spoiled princess. That was what I was.
Alwyn summoned a Courtblade from his storage ring, putting Grandpa's rapier back inside. The new monsters—the stags—caught the point of the rapier between their long, chaotic horns, but the Courtblade was different.
It was longer, heavier, designed for sweeping arcs and crushing blows. He swung it in a wide circle, keeping the creatures at bay, and I saw the strain in his arms, the way his wounded leg trembled with every step.
Berna fought many at the same time. When the creatures struck her with their horns, blood dripped from the bear's flanks, matting her fur, painting the ground red. But she used water magic to wash those strikes away, conjuring streams that deflected the horns, that kept the wounds from going deep, that made it impossible for the creatures to impale her.
She was magnificent. She was terrible. She was everything I was not.
"Alwyn, we need to find Corvis!" I said.
"If His Highness has gone alone and Berna has not followed him, it is his plan!" Alwyn shouted back, his Courtblade cutting through the horn of a creature. The broken piece flew through the air and landed in the ferns with a soft thump.
"Corvis ordered her to protect us!" I retorted, my voice rising. "Corvis does not have a plan! Coco went with him because she knows it! He is just trying to protect us! We need to rescue hi—"
"Just do as His Highness said!" Alwyn shouted, and I heard the steel beneath his words. He was not angry—I did not think Alwyn was capable of anger, not toward me, not toward Corvis—but he was firm. Unyielding. "His Highness knows what is best! We just need to remain with Berna!"
I opened my mouth to argue. The words were there, on the tip of my tongue, ready to be spoken. But before I could protest, we were attacked. A stag creature charged at me, its charred horns lowered, and I drove my wand-sword against it. The blade caught on the antlers, scraped against the burned wood, and for a moment, I held it back.
But I was not strong enough. The creature shook its head, once, twice, and my wand-sword was torn from my grip. It flew through the air, spinning end over end, and I was hurled to the ground.
I landed hard, the impact driving the breath from my lungs, and I rolled many meters through the ferns and the mud and the blood.
"Princess, just stand behind me," Alwyn said. His voice was steady, calm, the voice of someone who had accepted that he might die today and had made peace with it.
Then Berna came rushing through the creatures. Her blazing fangs roasted them alive, the fire spreading from her jaws to their bodies, and they fell around her like burning leaves. She stood over me, her massive frame blocking out the amber sky, and I saw the fire in her eyes.
I silenced myself. I yielded to what Alwyn had said. If I could not fight, then I could at least support them.
I drove my wand-sword into the undergrowth. The blade sank deep into the soil, and I pleaded as I channeled plant magic. In the gardens of the Royal Palace, when I tended to the flowers and plants, I had been able to communicate with them.
I had spoken to them gently, and they had grown more and been healthier.
"Please," I begged the Elshire Forest. "Please help us."
I drained all the mana from my core into the earth. Every last drop. I fed the roots, the grasses, the bushes, all the plant life within reach. I gave them everything I had, holding nothing back, and I felt my core begin to crack.
The pain was unimaginable. Like breaking all your ribs at the same time, and then breaking them again. Like being pulled apart from the inside, like something was trying to crawl out of my chest.
And then the Elshire Forest around us roared.
Corvis Eralith
I stopped my wand-cane.
The gusts of Wind Surfing died out as I halted in the middle of a clearing where the amber mist thinned, curling at the edges like smoke from a dying fire. The trees here were older, their trunks wider, their roots sprawling across the forest floor like the veins of some ancient, sleeping giant.
The light that filtered through the canopy was dim, golden, heavy with something I could not name.
"Who are you?" I asked, giving a light push to the base of my wand-cane to make it fly upward. I caught it by the pommel—a simple silver sphere with engravings that made it much easier to keep a solid hold.
The wood was resonant with the mana that still pulsed through my core, and I felt Coco's weight on my head, her tiny claws gripping my hair.
The figure I had been tracking stopped as I finally reached them. They stood at the center of the clearing, their back to me, their posture relaxed, almost casual. As if they had been waiting. As if they had known I would come.
They wore a mask vaguely similar to that of a plague doctor from Earth—black and shaped like the beak of a carrion bird.
The eyeholes were dark, impenetrable, and the leather was cracked with age, stained with something that might have been dirt or might have been blood.
Covering their body was the clothes of an elven scout.
A brown hood and coat to blend with the trees, paired with comfortable yet sturdy trousers and shoes. They were trying to disguise themselves as an elf. I felt a pinprick of disgust at the thought, sharp and immediate, like a needle pressed against my skin.
"Prince Corvis," the figure said. Their voice was feminine, clearly belonging to a woman, and it carried a note of amusement that made my blood run cold. "What honour."
The masked woman turned to face me, making a step closer. Her boots crunched on the fallen leaves, and I saw the way her cloak shifted, the way her hand rested on her hip as if she was ready to draw a cloaked weapon.
"What an interesting turn of events for you to be in this ancient place right when I was conducting my experiments, Your Royal Highness."
"Shut up, pawn of the Vritra," I said through gritted teeth. The words tasted like ash in my mouth, like the bitter almond of the Cravenite's poison, like everything I had been swallowing for years.
I had no idea if I could fight this woman. I did not even know what her position was. Surely not a Retainer or a Scythe—I would have recognized her from the novel.
But then who was she? What was she doing here, in the Colour Timberland, in the heart of the Elshire Forest?
"Did you not ask me who I was?" The woman tilted her head, the bird-like mask catching the dim light. "I struggle to see how I can answer you if I have to shut up. But I remain a subject of House Eralith. It would be a crime to not answer you, am I right? The Verticil teaches so." She paused, and I heard the smile in her voice. "My name is Nylith, Prince Corvis."
She is not considering Coco, I noticed. The Asura in disguise was still on my head, her weight light, her presence almost imperceptible.
And this woman—Nylith—had not even glanced at her. She did not see Coco as a threat. She did not see her at all.
"You are going to have to give me more explanation than that," I said. And then I struck.
My wand-cane shot forward in a lunge, the wood singing with mana, the tip aimed at her shoulder—not lethal, but debilitating. I did not know who she was, what she wanted, how many of her kind were in the forest. I needed answers. I needed her alive.
Nylith avoided my wand-cane with a fluid motion, stepping to the side as if the attack had been telegraphed, predictable. If I had brought Berna with me... but no.
There were still corrupted mana beasts in the forest. I could not leave Tessia and Alwyn without her. And the mutants did not attack Nylith. That was the clearest sign of an Alacryan. The corruption did not harm its master.
I did not hesitate. Using Ars Terramorph and Ars Aquamorph together, I weaved the soft ground of the undergrowth with the humid air around me.
Mud, thick and heavy, rose from the earth and flew toward Nylith in a wave. She countered with an expanding force of wind magic around herself—her rune, I realized.
Alacryan magic. Channeled through the spellforms on her back, limited but powerful in its specificity.
My magic was countered by hers. Her spell was stronger than mine.
But Alacryan magic was not as versatile as Dicathian. It was not as organic, as fluid, as alive. I just had to find her weak spot. While her spells were stronger than mine, I had far more options.
And Coco was supplying me with as much mana as I desired, her Asuran power flowing through my core like a river breaking through a dam.
I rushed at her, making myself faster with wind magic. The trees blurred past me, the amber mist parted before me, and I attacked with my wand-cane as if it was a short sword, aiming at her lower body to incapacitate her.
The expanding force of wind came again, forcing me backward as a gust of fast wind rattled all around me. I answered with Wind Surfing, conjuring an antagonistic current to counter her expanding force. The two winds clashed, howled, screamed, and for a moment, we were locked in a stalemate.
"Who sent you here?" I demanded, my voice sharp, cutting through the chaos. "What Scythe? What Retainer is your master?" I took a step forward, then another, slowly closing the distance between us.
"You know a lot of things you should not know, Prince," Nylith said, and I heard the curiosity beneath her words. "I wonder why... is the Spring Lizard whispering in your ears?"
"You taint my religion with your words, Alacryan!" I shouted, and the hate in my voice surprised even me.
It was too much, too raw, too deep. It was hate I knew should not be there, but that I could not repress.
When you spend your entire life preparing for the Alacryan invasion, when you spend every waking moment fearing that continent, fearing the monsters it would send to destroy your home, you start to hate it.
No matter how much you know that the Alacryans were innocent in the grand scheme of things. No matter how much you know that they were pawns too, that their god had made them into weapons and pointed them at your home. The hate was there. It had always been there.
"Oh, you are mistaken, Your Royal Highness!" Nylith exclaimed.
The expanding force finally wavered, and I was on her. Inner Current kept my mind clear, my thoughts sharp, my emotions leashed. I would not let her words cloud my actions.
I raised my wand-cane and drove it toward Nylith's leg, aiming to cripple her.
The woman moved against me. A short sword appeared in her hand, summoned from a storage ring on her finger, and her steel clashed against the wood of my cane.
The impact jarred up my arm, through my shoulder, into the hollow of my chest. My wand-cane was singing with my own mana—or rather, Coco's mana that was being bestowed on me—and for a moment, we were locked in place, blade against wood, will against will.
"I am not an Alacryan, Your Royal Highness!" The woman exclaimed.
Mana began to circulate through her body. Augmentation.
Something normal Alacryan mages should not have been able to do without proper runes. She was strengthening her body, pushing against me, and I felt my grip on my wand-cane begin to slip.
Taken by surprise, I lost my hold. The wand-cane flew from my hands, spinning through the air, and I used wind magic to pull it back to me.
But in the time it took to retrieve my weapon, Nylith moved. Her short sword found my torso, slicing through my coat, through my shirt, through my skin. I felt a deep cut open across my ribs, felt the blood begin to flow, felt the pain white-hot and immediate.
Coco's wings flapped above my head, alarmed, and at the edges of my vision, I saw a shower of feathers the color of autumn. Her magic washed over me, warm and golden, and the wound on my torso began to close. The skin knit together. The bleeding stopped. The pain faded to a dull ache.
"Let me show you something, Your Royal Highness," Nylith said.
She reached up and took off her mask.
Purple eyes looked back at me, bright and sharp, and a smirk crossed her face. She was beautiful, in the way that all elves were beautiful, with high cheekbones and smooth skin and features that had been shaped by centuries of living in harmony with the forest.
Pointed elven ears were at the sides of her head, unmistakable, undeniable.
"If pointed ears alone were a sign of being elven, then mutations would count as well," I bit back, ready to fight, my wand-cane raised, my body tensed.
"I am as elf as you or Her Highness, Prince," Nylith said, covering her face again with her mask. The beak-like shape cast her eyes in shadow, and I could no longer read her expression. "The only difference between you and me is that I have opened my eyes to the true way our kind needs to tread. To fire the old ways of the Verticil, I acclaim a path where elvenkind can gain back what we lost. All under the wisdom of the Fall Vulture."
She reached into her pocket and pulled out a vial. Dark liquid swirled within, thick and viscous, and my blood froze.
"We elves are masters of nature that thought themselves below it," Nylith continued, her voice rising, fervent, almost religious. "But the Caduchicil teaches us that the true way lies in decay. In fall... autumn as you name it. Where we are free and not slaves of the Elshire Forest."
"What crazy ramblings are you spouting?" I asked back, attacking before this madwoman could do anything else.
But it was not I who would establish the order of the forest. It was the Elshire Forest itself that came.
Everything began to shake. An earthquake, but instead of the ground, the one originating the quakes was the roots.
They rose from the earth, thick and ancient, coiling like serpents, and the amber mist dissolved abruptly, as if someone had blown out a candle.
And then, a massive creature rose.
Vaguely humanoid, made of vines and wood, it stood many, many meters high, its branches reaching toward the canopy, its roots anchoring it to the forest floor.
An Elderwood Guardian. I recognized it from the novel, from the descriptions of the creature Arthur had fought. But this one was not a mutant, not corrupted by Vritra's decay.
This one, true to its name, was a protector of the forest. It had come to drive out the corruption, to cleanse the land of the poison that Nylith had spread.
I fell. The ground below my feet disappeared as roots threw me upward, and I heard the screeches of the mutants no longer choked by the mist. They were dying. The Elderwood Guardian was killing them.
I tried to use wind magic to slow my fall, to continue my chase of Nylith now that an Elderwood Guardian had come to make sure none of her mutants would survive to spread their corruption.
But magic failed me. Inner Current stopped dead. My mana core felt the backlash of using so many spells at the same time, all at once, and the mist of the Elshire itself was making mana behave strangely. The work of the Elderwood Guardian.
"Coco!" I shouted.
Before I fell, before I crashed to the ground, I saw a blinding light. It filled my vision, white and gold and warm, and then I felt two arms catching me.
They were strong arms, gentle arms, arms that held me as if I was something precious.
When I was put back on the ground, the Elderwood Guardian still wreaked havoc around me. But it ignored me completely, as if I did not even exist.
The creature of vine and wood stepped over me, around me, through me, and I saw a woman with blonde hair kneeling in front of me.
"Lord Eralith," she said. "I... am honored to speak with you."
Soleil Asclepius. One of the inhabitants of the Hearth mentioned in the novel. A Phoenix Asura, disguised as a robin for years, watching over me and my sister, waiting for this moment.
She knelt before me, her golden eyes bright, her face impossibly young and more ancient than my race at the same time, and I felt the weight of centuries in her gaze.
"Nylith! We need to catch her!" I shouted, pushing myself up, looking around for the masked woman.
"She has escaped, milord," Soleil said, raising her head. Her expression was calm, resigned, as if she had expected this. "She teleported away."
A Tempus Warp. The only thing that could have made Nylith escape so quickly. She had planned for this. She had known that she might need to flee, and she had brought the means.
"Why are you calling me lord?" I asked the Asura. The question came first to my mind, pushing past the confusion, past the exhaustion, past the lingering adrenaline that still pumped through my veins. "Why are you kneeling?"
The Elderwood Guardian continued its work of "gardening" behind me.
Through our bond, I felt Berna's reassurance—everything was fine on her side, Tessia and Alwyn were safe, the mutants were dying. A wave of security washed over me, warm and steady, and I let out a breath I have been holding from before I even stepped in the Colour Timberland.
All that was left now was dealing with the Asura in disguise. Which had been the goal of this unraveling before the "Caduchicil" made its move. Before Nylith, before the corruption, before the Elderwood Guardian rose from the earth to cleanse the forest.
I looked at Soleil, the Phoenix deity kneeling in the dirt, and I waited for her answer. The amber mist was gone; the sun was setting and through the cacophony of the Elderwood Guardian, I heard the last of the mutants dying.