Corvis Eralith
The damp, mineral scent of Grandaunt Rinia's cave filled my lungs, cool and ancient, a stark contrast to the elegant halls of the Castle, the controlled chaos of my workshop or the stifling air of political chambers.
Packed earth, solid and unyielding beneath my boots, formed our makeshift arena. Across from me, Berna shifted her massive weight, her intelligent green eyes fixed on me, radiating a mixture of patience and playful challenge.
Hazel fur rippled over dense muscle. This wasn't just training; it was communion, a language of movement and instinct shared between Bear Guardian and bond.
"Alright, girl," I murmured, settling into a grounded stance, my senses hyper-focused. Mana flowed readily through the intricate lines of Against the Tragedy all over my skin, reinforcing muscle and bone together and in total synchronization with the flow of mana in my veins.
Simultaneously, I activated Beyond the Meta. The vibrant warmth of the fire, the rich browns of the earth and Berna's fur, leached away into stark greyscale.
Mana signatures bloomed—the deep, ancient pulse radiating from Berna, the softer, complex silver-and-blue aura emanating from Grandaunt's nearby cottage, and my own controlled silver core, humming with potential. But I wasn't focusing on mana alone. Today, I sought the ghostly afterimages, the split-second previews of intent.
Berna needed no signal. A low rumble vibrated in her chest, a sound that always reminded me of distant thunder trapped beneath mountains. Then she moved.
Despite her colossal size, it wasn't a lumbering charge; it was a surge of controlled power, a massive paw—claws carefully sheathed like a feline—sweeping towards my side with deceptive speed.
Yet, before the muscles in her shoulder fully bunched, before her weight shifted decisively, a phantom Berna, a translucent echo, had already completed the motion in my greyscale vision. The foresight, granted by whatever twisted blend of Meta-awareness' aether insight, and desperate need had birthed this ability, flared.
I ducked. Not reacting to the real paw, but moving with the phantom's trajectory, slipping beneath the arc of the blow even as the real Berna committed to the swing. Air whooshed over my head, carrying the warm, wild scent of her fur. The displaced air ruffled my hair.
"Good girl," I breathed, straightening, a flicker of exhilaration warring with the ever-present undercurrent of unease. "I know this is difficult for you."
Holding back, modulating her immense strength to avoid hurting me, went against her protective instincts. She rumbled again, a complex series of grunts and chuffs I couldn't fully decipher, but the affectionate exasperation was clear. Play-fighting with the cub.
She returned to her initial stance, her gaze assessing.
Another attack. This time, both massive forepaws rose, mimicking a devastating hammer blow. Slower than her full capability, yes, but still carrying enough force to shatter stone. The phantom descended.
I pushed off with augmented legs, channeling a burst of wind mana through my boots—not flight of course, but a powerful leap backwards. The phantom paws slammed into the earth where I'd stood a heartbeat before; the real impact followed a fraction later, sending a tremor through the packed floor, dust motes dancing in the greyscale light filtering from the cave entrance.
As I landed, slightly off-balance but recovering, my mind raced alongside my pulse. This short-range foresight was invaluable in close combat, a dance partner whispering the next step just before it happened. Against Berna, against a swordsman like Claire, it was a shield, a way to compensate for my lack of raw speed or defensive technique.
But what about beyond the immediate clash? What about the battlefield? What about threats I couldn't see coming until they were seconds away? A mage gathering mana for a long-range artillery spell, an archer lining up a shot from a hundred of meters away, a hidden trap triggered beyond my sight…
Seconds wouldn't be enough. My cane, leaning against the rough cave wall, seemed to mock my limitations. Useful for Accaron, vital for mobility, but a poor shield against a storm of spells or arrows.
But not only that was my limit, Berna was holding back and I coudl confidentially say I was stronger than Claire. But what would happen if I fought someone really strong?
What if my sparring partner right now was Grey? Or what if I was fighting for my life against a Retainer? My short foresight wouldn't help me at all. Could I expand my 'Seer' abilities?
"Are you wondering," Romulos's voice cut through my tactical spiral, devoid of its usual sardonic edge, laced instead with genuine, analytical curiosity, "if you can imitate the fictional abilities swirling in that overwrought mind of yours? Translate them into reality? Like you did with those vibrations?"
He materialized leaning casually against the cave wall near Berna, observing our spar with the detached interest of a scientist examining a specimen.
Heat flooded my cheeks. I—I... it's not like I have many real-world references to draw from! The mental protest was reflexive, embarrassed. Berna, sensing my sudden distraction through our bond, halted her next lunge, lowering her paws and tilting her massive head, a low, questioning whine escaping her.
"For once," Romulos stated, holding up a translucent hand in a placating gesture, his expression surprisingly earnest, "I wasn't attempting mockery. Your fictional world is just that: fiction. But the act of transposing concepts from that fiction into tangible, functional magic in our reality?"
A flicker of something akin to admiration touched his spectral features. "That is remarkable. A unique form of conceptual science."
My flush deepened, but this time it was mixed with stunned disbelief. Ah, do you... do you really mean it? The question hung silently in my mind as I disengaged fully from Berna, offering her a reassuring pat on the shoulder.
"Break time, girl. You've earned it." I gestured towards Grandaunt Rinia's cottage, nestled cozily further back in the cave. Berna's ears perked up instantly, the promise of Grandaunt's legendary hospitality overriding any lingering combat focus. She ambled off with a purposeful rumble, her massive form surprisingly graceful in the confined space.
Berna's relationship with Grandaunt Rinia was a peculiar, heartwarming anomaly. Since our return from exile, Berna had been fiercely, possessively protective. She tolerated my family, accepted my friends, but a subtle tension, a low-grade vigilance, always hummed beneath the surface—a Guardian's unwavering focus on her charge.
Except with Grandaunt Rinia. Perhaps it was the seemingly endless supply of rare, mana-infused fruits and nuts Grandaunt cultivated. Perhaps it was the deep, quiet calm Rinia radiated, a stillness that even Berna's primal energy respected. Or perhaps it was the unspoken understanding between two beings touched by profound, life-altering burdens. Whatever the reason, Berna sought Rinia's cottage with an eagerness she showed nowhere else.
I walked towards my cane, the cool, familiar grain of the ebony wood meeting my palm as I picked it up. Romulos drifted alongside me, his earlier intensity returning.
"Yes, Corvis, I mean it," he affirmed, his voice low and focused. "Your Silver core? Impressive progress for a lesser who has been coreless all his life, but fundamentally mundane. Your specific Acclorite? A fascinating tool, but ultimately external and of my own invention. Against the Tragedy, Beyond the Meta? Ingenious solutions to specific problems, born of necessity, but ultimately… crutches. Prosthetics for a broken existence."
He paused, his spectral gaze fixed on the cane in my hand.
"But this?" He gestured towards it. "Accaron? The conceptualization and execution of channeling vibration through this focus? The very idea of this cane as an extension of your will? And now," his eyes gleamed with intellectual fervor, "this nascent seer ability you're wrestling with, this desire to push its boundaries beyond immediate combat precognition… These are the things born from your unique perspective. These are the sparks of genuine innovation I wanted to see ignited by Meta-awareness. Not mere replication of known paths, but the forging of new ones. That is… interesting."
The word hung in the cool cave air. Interesting. From Romulos, it carried the weight of centuries of asuran knowledge, a rare acknowledgment that bordered on… respect? Not for me, perhaps, but for the process, the strange alchemy of my borrowed knowledge and desperate circumstances.
It was unsettling, validating, and terrifying all at once. He saw potential where others saw limitation, and his vision was invariably edged in shadow.
Romulos Indrath. He was the person I could never understand. Maybe because he was me, or another instance of the Thwart. Maybe that was the reason why I couldn't understand him, reading between the lines.
I reached the cottage door, pushing it open to the welcoming warmth of the hearth fire and the rich, earthy scent of drying herbs and the faint sweetness of stored fruit. Grandaunt Rinia sat in her worn armchair, a basket of peculiar, walnut-brown apples in her lap.
Berna was already nosing affectionately at her hand, rumbling with contentment as Rinia fed her a particularly large fruit.
"Corvis," Grandaunt greeted, her voice soft but strong, her eyes crinkling at the corners with a genuine smile. There was a noticeable difference since my last visit; a touch more color in her cheeks, less fragility in her frame.
Proof, perhaps, that she trusted my promise, that she no longer burned her life force peering into uncertain futures. Relief warred with the guilt of what I was about to ask.
"You weren't exaggerating about Berna's appetite," she chuckled, shaking her head fondly as Berna delicately took another apple, core and all. "I believe she's single-handedly depleted my winter stores of dried cloud-pine nuts and frost-berries. I was saving those for the deep snows!"
I ruffled the thick fur on Berna's neck as I passed, earning a contented grunt. "She eats because she enjoys it, Grandaunt, surely not because she's actually hungry," I said, my tone light. Berna turned her massive head, fixing me with luminous green eyes that held a plea as clear as spoken words.
More. Please.
"Yes, girl," I sighed, unable to resist. "No one said you couldn't. As long as you don't actually reduce Grandaunt to foraging for roots before spring." Berna huffed, a sound remarkably like an affirmative, and turned her attention back to the basket.
Rinia gestured for me to sit in the chair opposite her. The cottage was a haven of organized clutter—shelves laden with jars of preserved goods and mysterious ingredients, bundles of drying herbs hanging from the rafters, thick furs draped over furniture. The fire crackled companionably.
"How is that old fool of a brother-in-law of mine doing?" she asked, her tone affectionate. "Buried under mountains of paperwork for those 'Corvis Laws,' I imagine?"
"Grampa is… managing," I replied, settling into the chair, the worn leather comforting. "Busier than ever, but… good. Determined." I hesitated, then posed the question that had been simmering. "Grandaunt… why do you stay here? Isolated? The danger… it's passed, hasn't it? Since you stopped actively using foresight." The question wasn't accusatory, but born from a complex mix of concern and a strange sense of kinship.
Rinia's smile softened, becoming wistful. She looked around her small domain, her gaze lingering on the fire, the shelves, Berna's massive form contentedly crunching another apple.
"True," she conceded. "The immediate drain is gone. I could leave. Rejoin the world." She paused, her expression turning inward. "But… I've spent so long here, Corvis. Decades. Since… since Lania." Her voice dropped, the name spoken with enduring love and sorrow.
"This cave, this cottage… they became my refuge, my penance, my watchtower. The silence… it's not just absence, it's a presence I've grown accustomed to. And," she added, her eyes meeting mine with startling perceptiveness, a faint, knowing glimmer deep within them, "I suspect you understand the value of a quiet place. Somewhere the weight of being 'Prince Corvis,' the hope of Dicathen, doesn't press quite so heavily."
Her gaze flickered almost imperceptibly towards Romulos's spectral form, which had drifted near the fireplace, observing our exchange with detached interest. "Somewhere the eyes aren't always watching, even the well-meaning ones."
I couldn't suppress a sigh. "Right." The adulation in Sworchester, the constant scrutiny, the crushing expectations—they were a different kind of burden. "And Berna… she seems to find peace here too." I watched the massive bear, her earlier fierce energy replaced by simple, gluttonous contentment.
How long before I could truly connect with her Beast Will? The thought was a constant hum in the back of my mind.
"Then that's another reason to keep this hearth warm and the fruit basket full," Rinia said firmly, her voice regaining its gentle strength. "A sanctuary for wayward princes and their guardian gluttons."
"Touching," Romulos interjected dryly, drifting closer, his voice slicing through the domestic warmth. "Truly, a portrait of rustic bliss. But perhaps we could move past the sentimental fauna and address the interesting part? Ask your questions, Corvis. Let the Seer illuminate the path of forbidden sight. Then," his spectral eyes gleamed with focused intensity, landing on the cane resting against my knee, "let's do something useful with that insight."
I ignored his impatience, but his prompting resonated with my own purpose. Turning back to Rinia, I met her calm, knowing gaze. There was no judgment there, only deep understanding and a trace of caution—she knew I was dabbling in the very magic that had ravaged her. She trusted me to be careful, or perhaps, she understood that caution was sometimes a luxury fate didn't allow.
"Grandaunt," I began, my voice steady, "apart from foresight… obviously… what else can be done with divination? What other… applications exist?"
Rinia didn't flinch. She simply tilted her head, considering, as if I'd asked about different uses for a common herb. "What else?" she echoed softly. She raised a hand, palm up. Mana gathered, cool and clear, condensing from the moist cave air into a perfect, shimmering orb of water, hovering above her palm.
It caught the firelight, casting dancing reflections on the cottage walls. "I can use it to scry distant places," she explained, her voice taking on a distant quality. "To see events unfolding far beyond these walls. And with the right medium…" she gestured with the water orb, "...and sufficient focus, I can sometimes bridge distances not just of sight, but of sound. Communicate. This," she indicated the water, "is my conduit. My lens."
Clairvoyance. Scrying. The confirmation aligned perfectly with the novel's depiction and my own fragmented knowledge.
The translucent sphere—water, crystal, polished obsidian—was the classic medium. My gaze drifted upwards, following the dancing reflections on the rough-hewn ceiling, my mind racing through the dusty archives of Earthly lore I carried.
Divination techniques, countless and varied, all steeped in ritual and symbolism, all seeking to pierce the veil of the unknown with varying degrees of charlatanism… and here, terrifyingly real. Astrology mapping celestial influences. Cartomancy weaving stories in shuffled decks. Astragalomancy seeking answers in the fall of bones or dice. All requiring a focus, a conduit, a medium to channel the seer's intent and the elusive currents of fate.
Then, almost involuntarily, as if pulled by an invisible thread, my gaze dropped. Down from the ceiling, past the flickering firelight, past Rinia's hovering water orb, down to rest on the object leaning against my knee. The ebony cane. The silver pommel, cool beneath my fingers. The dense wood, coated with the resonant varnish of a sound-attuned beast core. The tool I used to walk, to fight, to channel Accaron.
Rhabdomancy.
The word surfaced from the depths of memory, clear and cold. Divination using a rod, a staff, a cane. Seeking hidden things by interpreting its movements, its vibrations, its subtle pulls. A method associated with dowsers, mystics… and now, apparently, a fractured prince with stolen foresight and a desperate need to see further.
"A cane?" Romulos breathed, his voice a mixture of stark disbelief and electrified fascination. He materialized directly in front of me, crouching down to stare intently at the ebony shaft, his spectral face inches from the silver pommel. His usual mocking smirk was utterly absent, replaced by wide-eyed, intense scrutiny.
"Divination channeled through this? A walking stick repurposed first as a wand and now as a scrying rod?" He let out a sound that was almost a laugh, but devoid of humor, filled instead with pure, unadulterated intellectual thrill.
He straightened abruptly, clapping his translucent hands together with a sharp, soundless motion. The predatory scholar was fully engaged now. "Now that is a conceptual leap even I didn't anticipate. Utterly impractical. Deliciously unorthodox. Let's get to work, Corvis. Let's see if this monstrous little spark of yours can ignite something truly… illuminating."
———
The dense, ancient quiet of the Elshire Forest pressed in around me. Sunlight struggled through the high canopy, casting shifting, dappled patterns on the moss-carpeted floor. I moved with deliberate slowness, my boots sinking slightly into the soft ground, the silence broken only by the rustle of unseen creatures and my own measured breath.
Beside me, a spectral shadow, Romulos drifted, his unnerving focus locked not on the verdant wilderness, but on the ebony cane in my hand.
"Now," his voice slithered into my mind, a cool counterpoint to the forest's hum, "from where does the illustrious dowser begin?"
His tone held its usual edge of mockery, yet beneath it thrummed a thread of genuine, predatory curiosity. He watched as I absently rotated the cane, its polished wood catching fleeting gleams of light.
My legs, reinforced by mana flowing through Against the Tragedy, carried me without needing its support for balance.
I halted abruptly. The forest seemed to hold its breath. Raising the cane, I held it loosely before me, not like a weapon or a crutch, but like a diviner's rod. In my mind, I summoned the image Grandaunt Rinia had described: the Moss Moose.
Not a creature of power, barely registering on the mana beast scale, weaker than many E-Class threats. Yet, prized. A source of rich, earthy venison, a humble quarry that wouldn't tax my burgeoning, dangerous skill. Grandaunt's request to hunt one was her way of guiding the experiment with practical, grounding purpose.
Cook a stew, she'd said. A simple goal for complex magic.
I consciously kept Beyond the Meta suppressed. Its greyscale clarity, its revelation of mana signatures, would be cheating. This had to be pure. Pure focus on the idea of the Moss Moose, pure trust in the strange resonance I hoped to find through the cane.
I closed my eyes for a heartbeat, centering myself, pushing aside Romulos's presence, the weight of forbidden knowledge, the ever-present ache in my limbs. I focused on the creature's essence: the damp moss clinging to its flanks, the quiet tread of its hooves, the non-threatening pulse of its meager life force.
I opened my eyes. Slowly, deliberately, I swept the cane in a low arc before me, then side to side. The dense wood felt heavy, inert… and then, faintly, not. A subtle tremor, almost imperceptible, a gentle pull, like iron sensing lodestone. It wasn't in my hand; it felt like the cane itself knew, resonating with something unseen ahead.
"There," I murmured, the word barely disturbing the forest hush. The pull led slightly northeast, into a denser thicket shrouded in the perpetual, soft mist that clung to the Elshire's depths. Now, I allowed Beyond the Meta to flicker to life.
The world washed into greyscale, the vibrant greens muted. And there it was—a faint, mana signature, small and placid, nestled exactly where the cane's subtle guidance had indicated. Confirmation. A thrill, cold and sharp, shot through me—success, yes, but underscored by the chilling reality of wielding this life-draining sight.
Silent as the mist around me itself, I drew the dagger from my belt. Overkill for such prey, yet instinct and ingrained caution prevailed. Mirage Walk wrapped around me, bending atmospheric mana, rendering me a ghost among the trees. I flowed towards the thicket, each step soundless on the yielding moss.
"If a Thyestes witnessed you cloaking yourself in Mirage Walk to stalk a creature barely worth the effort," Romulos observed, his spectral form gliding effortlessly beside me, amusement colouring his mental voice, "they would rend their garments and declare you the greatest blasphemer since my dear Dad." The comparison to the Vritra clan was deliberate, needling.
Possible, I conceded silently, my focus unwavering on the brown signature ahead. Reaching the thicket's edge, I saw it—a large, shaggy form, antlers tangled with moss, head down as it browsed on low ferns. Utterly unaware.
A surge of something complex washed over me—the hunter's focus, the unnatural advantage granted by forbidden sight, the simple necessity of the task. I gathered myself, a coil of augmented muscle and silent intent.
I moved. Not a dash, but a single, explosive leap powered by wind and earth mana channeled through my boots. The world blurred. I landed beside the massive creature, the scent of damp fur and earth filling my nostrils. Before surprise could register in its large, dark right eye, my dagger flashed.
A swift, precise cut across the throat, deep and clean. A soft exhalation, more sigh than cry, and the mana signature in my greyscale vision winked out. The massive body slumped silently to the forest floor.
"Grandaunt will have her moose meat," I said softly, the words hanging in the suddenly heavier silence.