Dicathen, Ashber Woods, 588 years before the birth of Arthur Leywin.
Romulos Indrath
You know, Lavinia, if the Vritra are the most cruel beings in existence, then humans are easily—and unquestionably—the runners-up.
The thought settled in my mind, cold and absolute, as I watched the scene unfold below me.
Why? You're probably asking yourself. The reason is woven into the very fabric of their pathetic, desperate existence.
As I've told you, the gift of magic is rare among lessers, a flickering candle compared to the inferno that burns within us. But this scarcity is not distributed equally.
For elves, the connection to mana is a birthright nurtured by their symbiosis with nature; perhaps one in every hundred and fifty possesses a mana core.
For humans, however, it is a fluke, a random strike of lightning. One in five hundred. A statistical anomaly that they have twisted into a system of brutal, institutionalized cruelty.
And what is their solution to this genetic shortcoming? Do they strive for enlightenment? Seek deeper understanding of the mana they so crudely wield? No.
Their answer is as pragmatic as it is monstrous. They hunt. They capture elven mages—men and women alike—and use them as breeding stock, as reproductive slaves, hoping to dilute their own inferior bloodline with a stolen spark of magic.
It is a practice of such calculated, systemic horror that it would make even the Vritra nod in grim appreciation. They are playing at being gods with the lives of others, and doing a messy, vile job of it.
I was a silent, unseen spectator, a whisper in the wind. In my miniature hare form, I observed the brutal ballet of a battle raging through the Ashber Woods.
The human forces, a disciplined but grim-looking contingent, moved in a spear formation, a brutal, efficient tactic designed to carve through the dense forest like a blade through flesh.
Their objective was clear: Ashber Town, the capital of this elven exclave.
Defending the town—a beautiful, organic settlement of structures built within and around the ancient, towering trees—was a figure who commanded attention even by my elevated standards.
An elf, his mana core burning a steady, remarkable yellow. For a lesser, this was an impressive achievement. He moved with a preternatural agility, imbuing each arrow he nocked with precise, cutting wind magic.
But more than his power, it was his command that struck me. He shouted orders, directed reinforcements, and bolstered morale with a presence that transcended his race.
This was Elias Chaffer. From the way the other elves looked to him, from the instant obedience he commanded, I knew he was high in their hierarchy.
My discreet observations confirmed it: he was one of the most trusted advisors to King Armin Eralith himself, operating just below the two White Cores who served as the kingdom's ultimate deterrent.
And that, Lavinia, is a story in itself. The reason the three Royal Houses of Dicathen have maintained their stranglehold on power for centuries is not due to their own merit, but because of a gift from our own.
Windsom, in his role as Overseer, bestowed upon each monarch two artifacts of immense power. Through a blood-binding ritual, these artifacts allow the rulers to elevate two of their mages to the level of White Core—a feat no lesser has ever achieved through natural means.
It is a leash, a way to maintain a controlled, predictable power structure. Grandfather prefers order, even in his pet projects.
But back to the battle. The humans crashed against the southern border of Ashber like a dark wave. In close-quarters melee, their heavier armor and brutish strength gave them an advantage.
But the elves wielded the forest itself as a weapon. They moved through the canopy like ghosts, raining down arrows from impossible angles, using the very trees as shields and platforms.
It was a beautiful, deadly dance.
Then, a new element erupted. From behind the human lines, a fireball roared into existence, a miniature sun of destructive intent. It wasn't aimed at the elven defenders, but at the ancient, heartwood oak that stood as the centerpiece of the town, a symbol of its life and history.
The caster was him—Dareus Wykes. I recognized his cold, platinum arrogance immediately.
But Elias Chaffer was ready. An arrow sheathed in a vortex of concentrated wind, shot forth. It extinguished the fireball, dissipating the raging flames into a harmless shower of sparks.
Elias stood tall on his branch, looking down at Dareus, a challenge silent but clear in his posture.
I can't miss this for anything! The scholar in me was enthralled. This was a duel, a clash of philosophies as much as elements.
If they exchanged words, I couldn't hear them over the din of clashing steel and dying men. I didn't dare enhance my hearing; to use any active magic would be to break my perfect observation, to become a participant rather than a witness.
Another arrow. Another sphere of fire meeting it in mid-air. Dareus was using his offensive magic defensively, a fascinating adaptation. Their dance continued, a deadly back-and-forth.
Dareus sprinted across the scorched earth, his own fire magic forming a protective cocoon around him, a blade appearing in his hand.
Elias leaped to a higher branch, simultaneously using a gust of wind to save his perch from the encroaching flames.
He drew a dagger, its edge glowing with condensed air, and with a precise flick, he sliced through a crescent of fire sent to consume him.
You see, Lavinia, for all their profound weakness, there is a raw, visceral thrill to watching lessers fight.
When we Asuras spar, it is always with restraint, a constant, conscious effort to not shatter the very continent beneath our feet. Our power is a cage. Theirs is a weapon they can wield to its fullest, desperate extent. They hold nothing back because they have nothing to hold back.
It is terrifying and beautiful in its tragic purity. Unfortunately, the objective of this beautiful tragedy was mutual annihilation.
A new mana signature flared on the periphery of my awareness, potent and commanding. Turning my hare's head, I saw him. A silver-haired elf, his presence radiating authority, leading a cadre of elite mages through the trees.
Panic, immediate and infectious, erupted through the human ranks. This could only be King Armin Eralith himself. The human assault, already straining against Elias's defense, broke.
It was no longer a battle, now it was a rout. They fell back, a disorganized scramble into the burning woods. As they retreated, I saw an arrow find its mark, burying itself in Dareus Wykes's arm—a final, stinging rebuke from Elias Chaffer.
The elves had held their town, but at a cost. It had required the intervention of their king. The humans, though repelled, still held the strategic advantage of numbers.
My curiosity, however, was now tethered to the retreating force. I would follow them.
———
The forest after a battle is a different world. The air, once filled with the roar of conflict, is now heavy with a silence that seems to absorb all sound, a blanket of shock and death. The scent of blood and burnt wood is overpowering.
It was in this grim aftermath that I found her.
She was a casualty of the retreat, left behind in the chaos. A human soldier, curled in the undergrowth like a wounded animal. Her life was a guttering candle, the flickering light of her mana core growing fainter with each labored breath.
With or without the elves finding her, her fate was sealed within hours, perhaps minutes.
She had long, wavy black hair, now matted and dark with blood and dirt. Her skin was an olive tone, pale with shock and blood loss. Through sheer force of will, she was dragging herself away from the direction of Ashber, a pathetic, agonizing crawl towards a safety that did not exist for her.
I hopped closer, my movements silent in the mulch. I had never been this close to a lesser who wasn't actively trying to hunt me.
The Sequence Zero of Mirage Walk held perfectly, rendering me a non-entity in the mana spectrum. She hadn't noticed me yet, her world narrowed to a tunnel of pain and the next inch of ground.
Her armor, though battered and stained, was of fine make for human standards—forged iron reinforced with silver filigree, the leather underlay dyed a deep red.
A broken sword was strapped to her back. Her injuries were a catalog of misery: her left arm was a ruin of torn muscle and broken bone, and a recent, awful burn seared across her shoulder and neck, the flesh blackened and blistered.
Her right ankle was twisted at a sickening angle, and an arrow was still buried deep in her thigh. She'd been smart not to remove it; the head was perilously close to a major artery.
But her wisdom was a delaying tactic. Without intervention, she would lose the leg, if sepsis or blood loss didn't claim her first.
I moved closer still. A strange, unfamiliar impulse seized me. I… I want to help her. The thought was immediately followed by a wave of visceral revulsion at myself.
It was a profound taboo—the worst taboo an Asura could break. Windsom's interactions were distant, administrative, the granting of tools to be used by others. The last time an Asura directly intervened was when those artifacts were given millennia ago, when our mother was a fee centuries older than me.
To heal her, to touch her… if my brethren discovered it, I would be branded a degenerate. An eccentric and unstable heir who'd finally lost his grip on reality, who needed to be "re-educated," locked away for my own good until I regained wisdom.
The shame would be unbearable and the punishment insufferable.
Her breathing hitched, a wet, rasping sound. Her mana signature dimmed another degree, like a star collapsing in on itself.
Lavinia, what should I do?! I screamed the question into the void of my own mind. I don't want her to die here alone in the dirt, but I cannot… I cannot make contact. It would be unclean.
The internal conflict was a war in itself. My academic curiosity fought with my ingrained prejudice. My loneliness wrestled with my pride. I inched closer, until I could see the individual strands of her hair stuck to her damp cheek, see the faint tremor in her hands.
An idea, born of desperation and cunning, sparked. If I helped her in this form… yes! I could be just a strange, benevolent mana beast, a quirk of this wounded forest. A creature with odd healing abilities. It was a flimsy fiction, but it was a shield for my psyche.
Hesitantly, I placed a single, soft paw on the small of her back. I focused, allowing a minuscule thread of my pure, undiluted dragon mana to flow into her.
Not to heal, not yet at least—just to sustain. I wrapped the energy around her faltering mana core, a lifeboat for her drowning spirit. The effect was immediate. Her body, starved for energy, latched onto it greedily.
She coughed, a ragged, surprised sound, and her eyes fluttered open. Awareness returned, and with it, a fresh wave of agony as she fully registered her state. She looked back, her dark eyes clouded with pain and confusion.
"A rabbit?" she murmured, her voice a dry scrape. She grimaced, her gaze falling to her ruined leg.
"Oh gods…" It was a sob of pure despair.
With a strength that was admirable, she dragged herself to prop her back against a thick tree root. I remained still, observing. My mana was a paradox within her—a foreign, overwhelming power that was nonetheless keeping her alive.
"You… helped me?" she whispered, her eyes finding me again. The confusion deepened. "Wow... I never heard of mana beasts able to do such things."
My paw, entirely of its own volition, rose to scratch awkwardly at my horns. Romulos, you idiot! I shrieked inwardly. Mana beasts don't have mannerisms!
She saw the gesture, and a weak, bloody smile touched her lips. It was a startling expression, full of a warmth I hadn't expected. "You want a scratch as payment? Sure, sure."
The arrogance flared. You completely misunderstand me, lesser! I am the Heir of Epheotus! The Future God of Gods, grandson of the great Kezess Indrath! I do not require "scratches"!
But then her hand, trembling and cold, reached out. Her fingers, calloused from wielding a sword, gently found the base of my horns. And she scratched.
The sensation was… electric. It was a simple, physical contact, devoid of any magical intent, yet it sent a shock through my entire being. It was… nice. Profoundly, simply nice.
It was the same uncomplicated affection I felt from Mr. Denoir's ruffles, but somehow more intimate. Grandmother's touches were always measured, Grandfather's were lessons in power. This was just… kindness. Offered without expectation, from a creature who believed I was a simple beast.
Against every instinct, against a lifetime of conditioning, I leaned into it. A low, involuntary thrum of contentment vibrated in my tiny chest.
"Can you do me a favour, little one?" she asked, her voice fading again. The burden of my dragon mana was immense; it was sustaining her, but it was also a weight her body couldn't long bear. "Can you see if there aren't any elves? Those evil people with pointed ears, those who would surely like to eat you."
The prejudice in her words was jarring, a reminder of the gulf between us. They are not evil, I wanted to say. They are simply defending their home from you. And they would only eat me because they need sustenance, not out of malice. But I remained silent.
Her breathing shallowed. The internal bleeding was worsening. The broken rib was a threat to her lung. The leg… the leg needed immediate attention. The burn was festering. My academic analysis of her injuries was rapidly being overrun by a new, frantic urgency.
The healer in me, the person in me who had just received a simple act of kindness, was overriding the Asura.
I couldn't do what needed to be done in this form. Aether arts required a focus and a conduit that this miniature body could not provide. I needed my hands.
The mind spell Mr. Denoir taught me—the delicate, invasive tendrils of decay mana—could be used to soothe, to numb, to bring a painless sleep. It was perfect.
"W-what?!" she gasped, her eyes widening for a second as the faintest wisp of black mana, invisible to her lesser senses, phased through her forehead. Then, her eyes rolled back, and she slumped against the tree, falling into a deep, dreamless sleep.
Sammiram Glayder? The name surfaced from my memory as I probed the surface of her sleeping mind. Where had I heard that? Glayder… the Glayder Royal House!
This wounded soldier, left to die in the mud, was related to the human monarchs. The irony was staggering.
There was no more time for thought. Only action.
I let the miniature form fall away. In a silent shimmer of light and contracting matter, I returned to my humanoid form. The world snapped back into its proper scale.
I knelt beside her, my heart hammering against my ribs not from exertion, but from a terrifying, exhilarating sense of transgression.
I placed my hands on her chest, over the broken rib. The Sequence Zero of Mirage Walk remained active at its maximum potency, a desperate cloak to hide my mana signature from any possible Asuran senses—from Windsom, from any roaming dragon, from Grandfather himself.
I was operating on borrowed time, in a stolen moment.
Closing my eyes, I reached for vivum. To whisper to the fractured bone, to the torn vessels, to the bruised flesh, and show them the path they would naturally take over weeks of healing.
I poured aether into the blueprint of her wholeness, accelerating the process from a glacial crawl to a rapid, visible flow. I felt the bone knit together with a faint, satisfying click. The internal bleeding ceased.
I moved to her leg, my fingers hovering over the arrow. This was more delicate. I used spatium to feel the exact position of the arrowhead relative to the artery, creating a microscopic buffer of folded space around the dangerous edge before I carefully, so carefully, dissolved the shaft and head with a precise application of decay mana, turning it to dust that the body could safely absorb.
Then, more aevum, encouraging the torn muscle and tissue to regenerate, to mend.
Lastly, the burn. I gently cooled the ravaged flesh with a whisper of water-aspected mana I moved thanks to Realmheart, then soothed it, guiding new skin to form over the blackened horror, reducing the angry, blistered wound to a fierce, but clean, red scar.
When it was done, I sat back on my heels, breathing heavily. The entire process had taken less than a minute, but I felt drained.
I had touched a lesser. I had healed her. I had saved a life that, by all rights and laws of my people, was beneath notice and unworthy of such power. I broke the greatest taboo of my people.
She slept on, her breathing now deep and even, the deathly pallor replaced by a healthy flush. She was no longer dying. She was merely sleeping.
I looked at my hands—the hands that had just performed a miracle of aetheric healing on a human soldier. They looked no different. But I felt changed. The world felt different.
The line between Asura and lesser, once so stark and absolute in my mind, had been blurred, smudged by an act of simple compassion and the memory of a kindness offered by a dying girl to a strange rabbit.
I stayed there for a long moment, watching her sleep, the forest silent around us, the weight of my actions settling upon me like a new, invisible mantle.