75. Noble House (Patreon)

As my consciousness came back to my body, I was able to breathe again. My body had been breathing automatically whilst I was gone, mind you. It just felt like a novelty to breathe. And also, very painful. There still was a considerable amount of damage and blood clots in my lungs.

The room was deserted except for Alatea and me, and the healer herself wasn’t awake. Alatea dreamt peacefully on top of two oversized pillows, as ellari tradition indicated. Her silvery hair rested on her face, her bosom slowly raising up and going down with her breathing. I didn’t bother her as she needed the rest. She had been awake for days now, resurrecting and healing Marissa, pouring a lot of concentration and mana into the task.

And her sleepy face also looked cute.

Yet as I went for the door, the rustle of pillows behind alerted me. It would seem her sleep wasn’t as deep as I had thought.

“You finally back?” Alatea said in drowsy confusion as she rubbed her eyes.

“Yeah, it took more time than I thought,” I replied. “Where’s Marissa, by the way?”

“I let her go to her room to sleep.” She explained as she stood up and stretched her arms. A cute yawn slipped from her mouth. “She’s finally stable, what she needs now is rest and a good diet to replenish all the nutrients and calories she lost.”

“It would appear you also need both.” I told with a roguish smile as I looked at the sleepy healer.

Alatea responded by giving me a deadbeat gaze. “Says the man who died multiple times in the last week.” I shrugged at her comment. “Please, Edrie. Rest. I know you aren’t going to die easily, but the damage to your body will aggravate the more you leave it unchecked. Maybe a day or two won’t make a difference, but if you continue this line, you may truly end up without a vessel to link your soul.”

I look at her calmly. Her emerald eyes fought my lavender ones. It was clear to me she wasn’t recommending this to me as a doctor, but pleading as a friend.

“Don’t worry.” I comforted her. “Things may become turbulent in the following days, but for now, I intend to rest and heal my body. I know death very well, and also how to avoid it.”

“I hope you are right then.” She solemnly said.

“And, Alatea?” I said as I grabbed the doorknob.

“Yes?”

“Your dress has been open all this time.” Before I could hear a word from the healer about how she had been showing too much skin, I stormed off the room.

**********

The midday sun hit my pallid skin with surprising force. As someone who had been a cadaver just a few days ago, the coloration of my skin left a lot to be desired. Saying that it was sickly was an understatement. I could feel that very much as the sun burned me even when a violet sky separated us.

My walk across the campus was relaxed and uneventful as most people should be lazing around at their dormitories or other districts as weekends tended to work that way at the academy.

Though I was lying about the uneventful part as I could feel a ballistic missile directed towards me. I didn’t know what a ballistic missile was, yet I found myself surprised as no headache followed my remembrance attack. That put a smile on my face.

What was I thinking about?

Oh right, the fast-speed projectile directed toward me. Well, projectile was a misnomer and too strong of a word. The projectile in question wasn’t but a familiar woman.

“I… I finally found you.” Olivia Nay told between ragged breaths. She put her hands on her knees recovering the air in her lungs. “I… found you, Edrie.”

“Yes, nice to meet you too, Olivia.” Though I didn’t hang much with the ebony-haired girl, I wouldn’t deny I found her charming. “What brought you here?”

“You need to follow me.” She said in distress.

I examined her soul because her behavior seemed rather erratic, not typical of hers. A Mystic’s Dominion-empowered Soul Sight showed me the incongruencies of her soul. The most obvious characteristic of her spirit where the two dual colors floating on its core. An energetic, yellow-tinged blue and a fiery crimson red orbited inside her soul.

True Recall reminded me that Olivia was an electromancer so that yellow-blue color was attributed to lightning. The other color was recognizable by every mage in the world. Fire.

Whilst she hadn’t told me she was a pyromancer, the presence of fire affinity wasn’t a surprise to me considering her lineage. She was a member of a minor branch of the Nay noble house. But even if that fire inside her soul shone brightly, I could tell it wasn’t really developed.

But what mattered here was what lay behind that colorful clash. Her soul showed me great levels of stress. I couldn’t exactly point out where that stress came from as her mind wasn’t on the right track.

I ended my accelerated train of thought and returned to the conversation.

“Why?” I asked her, recalling that she asked me to follow her.

“Someone’s searching for you, of course.” Olivia dismissed with a chuckle.

Something smelt off here. Or rather, felt. The distress on her soul screamed at me that the person searching for me wasn’t good news.

“And who that may be?” I asked with my arms crossed, standing my ground.

“Oh, Edrie!” The electromancer’s eyes shot wide open. “What happened to your arms?”

Now you notice? Olivia wasn’t thinking straight, or rather, she lacked focus. I saw the small, imperceptible bags under her eyes. It would seem Alatea wasn’t the only one who lacked sleep.

“Olivia,” I called for her attention with a stern tone. “Tell me what’s going on? You don’t look healthy, and you are far too unnerved.”

“I don’t look healthy?” She took a step back. “Have you looked yourself at in a mirror? Look at your arm, Edrie! Wait… Are those burns under the bandages? Did they get you already?”

“Who got who? Olivia, what are you talking about?” I asked. “Explain to me what’s going on.”

As she was made aware that my pursuers, whoever they may be, didn’t find me yet Olivia relaxed. She took a deep breath and exhaled air and mana alike. A little relaxation practice mages tended to do a lot.

“Follow me to the station and I’ll explain everything on the ride,” Olivia explained with a hint of determination in her crimson eyes.

I doubted for a moment. On the one hand, my body was no better than an old cloth doll left outside on a tropical storm. On the other hand, I couldn’t just leave a distressed acquaintance to wander around by themselves.

We made our way outside the academy campus, near the border of the Sin’fal-Kris’in district. The Kris’in district was the closest one to the academy grounds, but that was where the closest gondola station was.

Did you think we were going to a train station? A little spark of sealed memories whispered that to me, for sure. Trains didn’t exist in this world, at least, not that I knew of. The otherworldly knowledge didn’t hurt my mind or my soul, showing some newfound degree of control over my memories.

If you didn’t want to walk across the colossal city of Ferilyn, you had plenty of alternatives. Whether by self-powered flight or with ingenious magitech contraptions created in Kris’in, people always found other ways to make the activity of moving from one point to the other more enjoyable.

Yet the more common in the inner districts was the use of automatic gondolas. Self-driving boats that followed a predetermined path across the canals of Ferilyn. This method of transportation was slow and expensive, normally reserved for the more well-standing citizens.

And it didn’t bother me, because if I wanted, I could fly at supersonic speeds as I manipulated the effects of gravity on myself and pushed me around as if I was a rocket.

In less than five minutes we made our way toward the station. There wasn’t a single ellari manning over it, just a handful of gondolas left on the outside.

With a swift and practiced motion, Olivia inserted a blue manite on the little pedestal coming out of the center of the gondola. Then she pushed a bit of her mana and the artifact started moving by itself. The little manite crystal disappeared into the pedestal with a satisfying plop sound.

I cringed at the fact that you had to pay a full blue manite to rent a self-driven gondola. A blue manite wasn’t expensive, by any means, but you could get a solid meal at a restaurant with that price. If these gondolas were fast I could understand it, but I was sure we would reach our destination far faster if we just walked there.

“You coming or not?” Olivia said with a chuckle.

That actually made me want to go even less. I didn’t say that to her face and just hopped on the moving gondola.

As I felt my body tumble slightly to the side I spellcasted the arcane version of Slow Fall in the blink of an eye to recover my equilibrium. I remembered trying to do so once when I was a child and failing catastrophically, but now after reaching the tenth star, a measly three-star spell was but an afterthought.

I noticed in the corner of my soul-eyes the movement of Olivia’s soul as her body sat relaxedly on the cushioned gondola bank and her soul calmed in response. I repeated the same gesture, sitting on the other extreme of the ship.

The purple-skinned woman's gaze was focused on the plentiful pink ter’nar trees that surrounded the canal. The waterborne avenue was decorated by plentiful willow-like trees planted one beside the other.

Ter’nar trees were one of the most beautiful aspects of Ferilyn. They had ashen white trunks that took the shape of springs and their canopy ended like one of a willow. Whilst they came in all the colors of mana, from white to purple, I preferred the pink ones like these ones. This ter’nar looked as if someone mashed together a spring, a willow, and a cherry blossom tree together to form not a disturbing chimera, but a beautiful offspring.

“Are you going to talk or not?” I asked Olivia.

Her head whipped toward me as she snapped away from her distracted state.

“Oh, sorry.” She answered with lingering confusion.

Disturbance on the soul tended to do that. Emotional swings and lack of focus were the main symptoms. Fortunately, this type of affliction on the soul was as common as a cold. And they usually lasted only a few hours. Panic attacks were more dangerous than these disturbances.

“I guess I still owe you an explanation.” Olivia said.

“That you do,” I replied. “So, tell me, who’s looking for me?”

“The patriarch of the Nay house.” She answered.

“And that’s because?” Please don’t say it’s about the leyline incident. Don’t tell me I have already been caught.

“He wants to talk with you about your duel with Saphar?”

“Who?” I answered instinctively, even if True Recall instantly remained me of the moronic pyromancer.

“Do you really not remember him?” Olivia asked in disbelief, truly taken aback.

“Not going to lie to you, I removed that kid from my memory until now.”

“That kid is older than you.” She responded.

“What matters is mental age, Olivia. And if I recall correctly, Saphar was but a spoiled man-child.” She looked at me with a frown, even if saw that her soul agreed with me. “And why in tarnation would his father want to talk with me about the duel now? It has been like what, eight years since then?”

“Actually, it has been nine years for a few weeks now.”

“That isn’t the matter in hand here,” I replied with consternation. “What matters is that so much time has passed since then that I truly forgot about it. And even if that weren’t the case, the specific terms of the duel made that I held no responsibility over the damages I caused to Saphar.”

“The patriarch is a very busy person, and only now has had time to look into such a matter.” Then Olivia continued but in a lower and more shy tone. “And Saphar isn’t that important to him, to begin with.”

Now that was an interesting piece of information. With some quick mental maths, assuming the maximum lifespan of an ellari as four hundred years and that of a human in the eighties, nine years for an ellari were around still around two years for a human. Not even a negligent human parent would suddenly bring out a dispute his child had two years ago.

I just sighed at that information. Especially at the fact that this situation was happening after I had just died, and not on those calm and plentiful days before.

Damn! I was getting angry.

I cycled some soul mana across my body to relax. The manaflows of spiritual energy relaxed me greatly, even when it only was one-star magic. Not even a spell, just unstructured magic.

“So say, why even bring it out?” I asked Olivia.

“I… I don’t know.” Olivia looked down to the deck of the gondola in shame. “I was asked to take you to the Nay house state because I personally knew you. I wasn’t informed of the details.”

I sighed once more. That’s nobility for you, I guess. They disrespected everyone already, but if they were from a secondary branch of the house, it would seem you received even worse treatment.

“Why do you even worry about Saphar?” I looked at her. “Even if you were forced to look for me, I can see you truly care about him.”

“Whatever image you have of him is tainted,” Olivia said. “Saphar isn’t as bad as he seems, he’s a good boy, he just had a difficult upbringing.”

“That good boy of yours called Marissa a whore.” I told with eyes dead as those of fish on display back at Thal’mer bazaar.

Olivia strongly recoiled from my response, even trembling a bit in fear. I blamed my Mystic’s Dominion for that. I could sense in her soul that she had some kind of filial love for the pyromancer. She probably considered him her little brother or something.

“I’ll go to the Nay state with you, but I don’t want a single word more coming from your mouth during this ride, we clear?” I asked in a harsh tone and considered it pretty much deserved. Why I had to deal with this shit when I had just fought multiple ten-star mages in a row?

Olivia limited herself to responding with two quick nods without making a sound. I should get a hold of Mystic’s Dominion, this kind of overwhelming presence had been useful a few days ago, but now it was only detrimental.

**********

The canals had one thing going for them.

Some districts were more in touch with water, whether it was from a river stream or the sea. Lan’el district was an example of that. The new military’s district principal attraction was a half-submerged boulevard. You could also say the same about the Nikt’un district.

Nikt’un district, also known as the noble district, resembled a submerged city from my memories. Even though there were streets and bridges connecting the small isles, the most effective method of transportation was gondolas. Or at least that was the case if you were filthy rich. And considering this was known as the noble district, gondola fairing wasn’t uncommon at all. We had passed by next to a couple by now.

The first part of the district’s name awakened a memory inside of me. But instead of my previous incarnation, which tended to be the case, it was the current one. I recalled the time professor Henry Innit taught us about Xenoglossia for the first time. About the words of power.

The simplest of the runic words, the one Henry had instructed us, was Nikt’aus. If one spoke this word in the runic language, the Mage Light spell would be conjured without the need for traditional casting or spellcasting.

As my intrinsic knowledge of the runic language increased, I was able to discern this wasn’t a coincidence. The Nikt’un district had runic origins. And I would go as far as to say that not only the districts were of runic origin, but the whole ellari language, as a matter of fact.

There were many similarities, so it wasn’t far-fetched to say that the runic language was the proto-proto ellari language. It was too different and shared only little things, so a whole lot of time must have had to pass for the runic language to evolve into the current form of the ellari language.

“And we are here.” Olivia stood up from the cushioned bench and climbed onto the steps of a stone dock. “Follow me.”

I snapped out of my scholarly trance and followed the electromancer inside of the House Nay state. As expected of a noble family, we were greeted by an immense garden of perfectly cut deep blue grass and lush flora encompassing all the mana color spectrum.

The sight didn’t faze me at all because I was used to Sin’fal academy's colossal campus ‘green’ zones and the exotic and beautiful flora of the greenhouse at the healing ward. Either way, it was always morally correct to scoff at highborn ellari.

I was guided by Olivia across the massive garden. I was going to comment on how expensive and wasteful would be to water all these plants, but I remembered that aquamancers were a thing. For water mages such activity was trivial. The ebony-haired woman led me to a patio that was surrounded by waist-high lavender shrubbery.

In the middle of the also gigantic patio, there was a stone circle that resembled a battle training field with its plentiful runic protection enchantments.

Oh, damn. It was a battlefield.

“I am here, patriarch.” Olivia suddenly stood still before a man sitting on a metal garden chair who was drinking from a teacup. “I have brought Edrie Nightfallen with me.”

“I appreciate your efforts, Olivia.” The man said with a non-at-all-appreciative tone.

The patriarch of House Nay stood up from his seat. The man was tall, but not much, around a finger more than me. He wore a white suit with red connotations. His skin was dark blue like my father's and had two vertical birthmarks at the side of his eyes, marking him as a highborn. But unlike my father’s white hair, this man had an orange-red one. To be honest, the whole dark blue, white, orange and red palette was puke-inducing. I mean, such bad taste in clothing.

And that was the man who wore the same tunic for nine years who was talking.

But if I had to highlight one thing from the man, it wasn’t his physical looks, but his metaphysical ones. The size of that soul was unlike any ellari I had seen before, except Alatea and me.

I could be even fooled if someone told me the pyromancer was a mystic. This couldn’t just be attributed to the fact he appeared to be an eleven-star mage. There was something more going on. Not even the two heroes of the Wyrm’s Landing had such massive souls.

The man extended his hand toward me. “Actal Nay, patriarch of House Nay and expert pyromancer.”

I accepted his handshake. Ellari culture didn’t have a formal and informal greeting, besides an over-excessive use of bowing, so handshakes were as formal as you could go.

“Edrie Nightfallen, student of Sin’fal academy, manaweaver, and expert psychimancer.” I said as I shook his hand.

Actal raised his brow with the final part of my presentation and Olivia’s face lost most of its color. He undid the handshake.

“You call yourself an expert whilst being a student, no older than fifty?” The patriarch’s tone was condescending, with hints of annoyance.

“Soul affinity is rare by definition, and not all soul practitioners are psychimancers,” I explained. “I do not lie when I say I am of the best psychimancers at Ferilyn. If not the best one.”

Oh, I could see his soul being ignited. I knew that what I was doing wasn’t sensible. I basically declared myself as an equal to a patriarch of a powerful house. But you know what?

I was equal to him. If not superior.

And I was tired.

“Could I be made aware of why I am currently here?” I asked with a slightly condescending tone and fancy talk.

I felt the heat emanating from the patriarch even if I was no longer touching him. Pyromancers were commonly known to have problems controlling their emotions, so I wasn’t surprised when I saw small concentrations of fire mana escaping him. Meanwhile, Olivia was going to have a heart attack from the disrespect I was showing.

You should have told me to behave myself, that could have even worked. Perhaps.

“Were you not informed by your escort?” Actal said as he looked at Olivia.

Oh, no. You don’t. He was trying to drop the blame onto poor Olivia.

“I was, but the reason was quite strange to me, patriarch Nay.” I intervened. “I was apparently called here for a little skirmish that happened almost a decade ago. I only wanted confirmation as it seemed a rather mundane occurrence to summon someone for.”

“I wouldn’t call the discrediting of my offspring a ‘mundane occurrence’, student Nightfallen.” He said looking over my shoulder.

I had never had a conversation with this much poison and hidden blades. I noticed how he addressed me as a student to discredit me. Marking me as an inferior and unreliable person. But more importantly, how he had referred to Saphar.

He didn’t call him ‘son’ or ‘child’, but ‘offspring’. In another language that would have sounded rude and uncalled for toward his own son, but in ellari, it had another connotation. Later offspring were children that were born far later than the first children, maybe even centuries, as ellari life expectancy was longevous.

This meant usually bad things for these ‘offspring’ as they wouldn’t receive much affection or, at least, their parents and brethren would care much about them. This is one thing I hated a lot about ellari culture, and unfortunately, had experienced it indirectly through my mother.

“Was it, now?” I counterattacked. “Otherwise, it would have been addressed sooner.”

Olivia took a step back as she was scarred by my bold words and behavior. Actal also noticed the small movement.

“Olivia, could you go and bring Saphar for me?” He asked in a way that could only be taken as a command.

The electromancer from the secondary house branch shyly nodded in response and wordlessly made her way outside the shrubbery-enclosed patio with haste.

The patriarch looked at me with disdain, but comparing him with the Ceaseless Storm, he looked rather inoffensive. Judging by his visible mana pool and soul, I would put him on a high ten-star or low eleven-star level. Like the cryomancer I had defeated after leading with leyline sabotage.

“This lack of respect toward my person will not go unpunished.” He barked.

“I only respect those who I consider worthy,” I added with aggression. “And being a noble doesn’t entitle you to it.”

“Truly?” Actal suddenly unleashed a nova of fire mana. “And what about power? Can you truly call yourself an expert mage once you see an expert pyromancer in action?”

Actal’s raw display of power couldn’t be ignored. He still was a high-tiered mage. And yet, with his rather infantile threats, I couldn’t help myself but laugh.

So, I chuckled before him.

The fire got hotter, and the magic stopped being unstructured and assembled into spells. Yet as I read his soul, I knew he wouldn’t attack me. He just wanted me to cower before him.

“You don’t scare him,” I added. “The Ceaseless Storm showed me worse.”

Now, I got a reaction out of him. Hesitation.

I could see him inside his soul, arguing with himself if I was bluffing or being serious. The name of the Ceaseless Storm had more power than I had realized.

“You couldn’t have met hi— “ The patriarch stopped talking as the sounds of steps were heard nearby.

Over the corner of my eyes, I could see two silhouettes. One was Olivia, the other was of a man. Saphar Nay, the foolish pyromancer that dared to challenge me to a duel, but even worse, he insulted Marissa.

“I’m here, father.” He said with a dignified voice. “What do you require of me?”

Yet that façade falter as he saw me. His soul trembled because of some sort of traumatic experience that shook him to his very core. What could possibly have traumatized him this badly?

Figures.