Chapter 126: Along the Redwater

Toren Daen

I shifted uncomfortably atop the swiftsure horse as it ran across the road, the clip-clop of hooves on stone providing a bit of centering noise. These mana beasts were especially mobile: they conjured eddies of wind along their green-tinged hooves to propel them at absurd speeds when they wished. Today, however, we were going at a slower pace than that.

The paved road Sevren, Mawar, and I were following lead in a southeastward tilt, kissing the banks of the Redwater as it gradually snaked toward the base of the Basilisk Fang Mountains.

The sound of rushing water was a constant in my ears, accompanied by the sounds of untamed wilderness. Every now and then I felt the presence of a mana beast nearing our group willing to test its luck.

A meager flare of my killing intent usually sent those on their way.

We'd passed through a few outer towns and minor cities that kissed the borders of Aensgar. Yet the further along the Redwater we traveled, the less and less I saw signs of civilization.

As we rounded a bend on an upward slope, Sevren used the chance to sidle closer to me. He was obviously far more practiced in riding. He shifted and moved naturally in turn with his mount. Meanwhile, this was the first time I'd ever ridden a mana beast. It was painfully obvious I was unaccustomed to this mode of transport.

"You failed to mention to me," Sevren said with a light hiss, "That the person you beat in Nirmala was the Retainer of Etril. Care to explain that?"

I made sure to blanket Sevren's voice with a sound spell, though Mawar certainly sensed my use of magic. She glanced toward us uncomfortably but looked away quickly when she met my eyes. "I didn't think it was really relevant," I responded. The damn mana-empowered horse took a step to the side, and I tugged on the reigns to maneuver the beast back on course. Finicky creature. "I told you my source was trustworthy."

"You did not tell me that you beat a retainer in their center of power, Toren," Sevren said, covertly glancing toward the nervous Mawar. "That's basically relevant to everything. She could get her Scythe involved in this. And we both don't want that."

I sighed. Mawar had been the one to requisition these horses to spare us a week or so of travel. Unfortunately, last night Sevren and I hadn't managed to talk much about our new traveling companion. "That's part of why I let her come along," I said. "If I denied her, there was a significant chance she would pull higher powers into this. And you can't deny how useful having a retainer owe you a favor could be."

Aurora chirped appreciatively from her steampunk sparrow on my shoulder.

"Not you, too," Sevren groaned, glaring at the clockwork construct. He shook his head. "This is your mission, Toren. I just want to make sure you've considered every variable."

I opened my mouth to respond but turned to the side as I sensed something approaching. An avian mana beast fluttered down from above the trees, striations of red running through its dark feathers. Its eyes were beaded with malice, mana churning underneath its surface.

I pulled my swiftsure horse to a halt, mana thrumming along my palms as I prepared to snipe the creature from the sky. I raised my hand, closing one eye as I aimed at the clearly hostile beast.

"Wait!" a voice called out from the side. "Don't shoot!"

I looked to the side, surprised to hear Mawar's voice. She'd been silent for most of this trip, but why would she speak up now? Did she want the kill herself?

The Retainer of Etril raised her hand, some sort of spellform flaring on her back. The mana beast above immediately oriented on her, pausing midair as it flapped its wings. From how the raven-esque creature tilted its head, I recognized it as curiosity.

And there was something about that spellform, too, I thought, narrowing my eyes.

The bird drifted down slowly, circling for a while. Then it landed on Mawar's outstretched hand.

I slowly lowered my own arm, my mana drifting away as I watched, perplexed. Mawar reached into a pack on the side of her horse, retrieving a bit of dried jerky. She tossed it to the mana beast, which caught it with a quick snap of its sharp beak.

Then it flared its wings, flapped them twice, and flew back into the sky.

"It's a blackblood cordwing," she said quietly, her scarlet eyes tracing the bird's wayward flight. "Back in Etril, we have different variations of cordwings all over. But the mana beasts around here have been mutated by the Redwater. That one just needed food for its young."

The Redwater wasn't entirely red . At least not initially. Near Aensgar, there were traces of light crimson in the water that I could see–but as we traveled further and further upriver, the water shifted closer and closer to the color of blood. Some of the trees and plantlife around us had slowly adopted a similar color palette as they became more and more sparse. But to think the mana beasts would, too?

"It was clearly hostile to us," I said quietly, maneuvering my horse closer to Mawar. "How did you calm it down? With that spellform?"

Mawar visibly blushed when she looked at me. I hadn't seen that intimidating mask of a retainer since I'd defeated the young teen in Nirmala. Now, she acted more her age. "I… didn't grow up in a city or anything," she said. "I spent most of my childhood in the woods. You learn how to understand nature when you spend all your time in it. My first spellform reflected that, I suppose."

I think it used some sort of unique intent to communicate with that cordwing, I thought, slightly intrigued.

Mawar coughed, pulling herself up and adopting a more severe pose. "But that doesn't matter. We should keep moving toward Mardeth's base."

The retainer forcefully averted her eyes from me, then pushed her steed to take the lead ahead. I looked back at Sevren with a raised brow. He shrugged, then directed his own swiftsure horse into a light canter.

—

I poked at the fire, savoring the warmth as it fizzled and popped. I laid my hand over the flames, endowing a bit more of my mana into the conflagration. It flared once, then settled into an easy burn.

Sevren sat in a cross-legged position nearby as darkness covered the sky, writing something in his notebook. The horses were lashed to a nearby tree, along with several of our supplies. A few bedrolls were laid out around us in preparation for sleep.

Mawar sat a distance away, leaning against a tree. She seemed more comfortable with the thick, reassuring roots rather than near the fire.

I understood that.

I was thumbing through a book I'd bought from a bookstore a week or so back. It was called Of Mana and Minds: An Argument For Consciousness and the Individual. It was written by one of the top professors of Central Academy a few centuries back and served as a foundation of Alacryan philosophy.

The author, a long-dead mage named Acraten, created a thesis on how mana was the ultimate expression of conscious thought. Through this work, he posited magecraft as the truest expression of self. For while all others were bent to the whims of the world, mages made the world bow to them. Fire and water and wind and earth shifted at the whims of those who controlled mana. Lightning could be harnessed by those with the aptitude. Even gravity gave way to the hands of those with the necessary insight.

I underlined a short paragraph, then scribbled a question on the sidelines. If mana is what makes one truly human, then what of men and women whose cores are pierced? I wrote. Are they suddenly no longer human?

If I asked this question to Acraten, I suspected the answer would be yes. But the way to argue this book's shortcomings to another would come from understanding their point of view. The arguments and ideas posited here were well-thought-out: but they were still flawed. This text represented the backbone of Alacryan prejudice against the unadorned from an angle unrelated to the Vritra.

And so I dedicated my free time to deconstructing books such as this.

I sighed, feeling weary of reading. I snapped the book closed, stowing it away in my dimension ring. Back on Earth, my primary source of reading was fantasy novels: stories of other worlds and fantastic powers.

I would never be able to enjoy those in the same light again. The sense of escapism was gone; ground away under the brutal reality of a true other world.

Yet still, my love for books remained. Something deep in my soul marked me as a bibliophile, and Alacrya had so much to read and not enough time.

Aurora's relic wheeled around the small clearing we'd found ourselves in before settling itself onto my shoulder. When I closed my eyes and focused on my ears, I could hear the timber of heartfire thrumming from her threads.

Sevren and I had made little progress in investigating his spellform's connection to the Relictombs. Mostly, we'd discovered what I couldn't do. I couldn't influence the threads; changing their course or severing their function. I could make out flashes of whatever Sevren was envisioning as he focused on his rune, but nothing more.

If I tried to add my own lifeforce to the tether, the entire connection would immediately collapse. I got the sense that was an intentional aspect from the Relictombs. I was purposefully denied the ability to manipulate the Relictombs at all.

I thought of what I was going to face here, soon. I hoped Mardeth wasn't present at his base when we made it there. I didn't think I was ready to fight him, yet. Besides, the intent of this was to unearth his plans.

Stealth would be king. I was confident in hiding my mana signature. In fact, it was one of my most underutilized gifts. By constantly following Aurora's guidance in maintaining a grip on my internal energy during assimilation, I'd gained tremendous control over my mana. This translated perfectly to keeping my power contained and my presence low.

But Sevren and Mawar? I didn't know about their stealth capabilities. If it came down to it, I expected I would have to go on ahead without them at some point when security became too tight.

As I was running through possibilities in my head, I remembered my last clash with Mawar in Nirmala. She'd been guarding that massive crystal of basilisk blood. From how she spoke, she seemed to assume it was somehow integral to Mardeth's plans.

"Mawar," I said aloud, looking across the fire toward the tense retainer, "What did that massive crystal of basilisk blood have to do with Mardeth's experiments? I could guess he was gradually mixing that crystal with his blithe, but not much more than that."

The retainer stiffened uncomfortably. "I… I don't know. Basilisk blood is an extremely good conductor of decay-based mana arts. I assumed it had something to do with that. But it doesn't really matter now," she said, sulking slightly.

I furrowed a brow. "Why not?" I asked, confused. 

"After you… uh…" Mawar swallowed uncomfortably. "Well, afterward, I went back down. To see if I could save my mother's mages, like you said. But they'd been assassinated, and the basilisk blood was gone."

I blinked. Aurora's relic hopped off my shoulder, then slowly drifted toward the shivering retainer. The girl watched it with a mix of fascination and unease.

This is why she came to you, Aurora guessed. She lost her avenue of attack once the basilisk blood was taken. And so she came to one who was on the same track.

Part of me was relieved that I hadn't killed all those mages. I'd dealt what would've certainly been fatal blows without treatment, but another part of me was disappointed in myself for being relieved. They'd died anyway.

"Your mother?" Sevren blurted out, before realizing what he'd said. He shut his mouth quickly, still uncertain of the retainer.

"Oh," Mawar said. She shuffled closer to the fire. "My master, Scythe Melzri. She's the one who found me after I manifested my Vritra blood in the forests. And she took me into our family. Taught me about being a highblood and all. She trained me to take part in the Victoriad to become her retainer."

I racked my brain, trying to remember all I could about Melzri from my notes on The Beginning After the End. Truthfully, I couldn't remember much. Besides being disturbingly insane in her fight against Bairon and calling Scythe Viessa 'sister,' there wasn't much I actually knew.

That unnerved me more than I thought. As I thought back, I realized my reasons for allowing Mawar on this trip were more subconsciously rooted. I would have been far more comfortable denying her if I had a clear internal picture of what her Scythe was like.

But I didn't.

Aurora's relic hopped on the grass, looking up at Mawar with curious, burning eyes. Mawar looked back uncertainly, before holding out her hand for the little steampunk sparrow. As it hopped on her arm, the Unseen World coated my vision in muted color and wispy smoke.

"I did not truly understand why I vouched for this Vritra-half-blood," Aurora said in my mind and from her shade. "I provided logical reasons, true, but those were not the core. But I see clearly what I only understood through a haze before."

I could feel the complexity of her emotions as they wafted over our bond; like the scent of freshly baked bread from an oven.

"She wishes to please her mother," Aurora said with an almost pitying tone. "This Mawar does not merely wish to ratify her retainership by striking down Mardeth. She wishes to prove to the one she views as her master that she is worthy of being her daughter."

She is naive, I thought with a measure of surprise. Strikingly so.

"The desire to prove oneself to one's teachers is not innately naive," Aurora said chidingly. "Even if they are adopted."

Mawar chuckled slightly as Aurora's clockwork sparrow hopped up and down her arm. "This is a wonderful artifact," she said, a hint of joy in her voice peeking through for the first time. "How was it made?"

I felt a light smile curl on my lips. "I'm afraid I didn't create that one," I said. "You'll have to ask Lord Denoir about it."

Sevren shot me a covert glare as Mawar looked at him with hopeful eyes. "It's a trade secret," he said stiffly. "I am afraid I cannot tell you, Retainer Mawar."

The girl blinked her scarlet eyes. "Oh," she said in a defeated tone. It was so much different from when she was lusting for my blood during our battle. "I'm sorry." Her shoulders suddenly went rigid. "I mean… I shouldn't be apologizing to you. I am a retainer."

Sevren looked as uncomfortable as I felt. I had to remind myself this mage had been a Retainer for less than a year, and from what she said before that, probably spent most of her time in the woods.

Aurora's construct nipped at Mawar's fingers, the clockwork mechanisms underneath whirring. That seemed to draw her attention away from Sevren for the moment.

The asuran shade patted me on the shoulder before the Unseen World vanished.

It was going to be a long night.

—

The next several days repeated much the same as we got closer and closer to our destination. Mawar explained to me in brief how she'd tracked down Mardeth's operations. Mount Coreshen was one of the smaller mountains in the outer perimeter of the Basilisk Fang Mountain Range. According to Mawar's spies, Mardeth had resumed his activities here after he was pushed from East Fiachra.

And apparently, Scythe Dragoth was offering the vicar a measure of asylum. Not so much direct protection, but silently allowing the priest to operate as he wished in Dragoth's Dominion.

"Scythe Dragoth does whatever petty things he can to try and irritate Scythe Seris," Mawar said with irritation. As the days wore on, the retainer had become far more open and sociable. "It's all stupid posturing. Mother–" The retainer caught herself mid-word. "I mean, Scythe Melzri says we're all supposed to be a family. The last of the Vritra in the world. So we shouldn't fight amongst ourselves. Scythe Seris always leaves the rest of us alone and keeps to herself. It doesn't make sense why Scythe Dragoth keeps trying to irritate her."

Except Seris killed Dragoth's predecessor in single combat half a century ago, I thought to myself, remembering the story Renea Shorn had told me over tea. That leaves a mark. He can't outright fight her to avenge his Dominion's honor, so he resorts to things like this.

The Redwater was truly the color of curdled blood, now. There were fewer and fewer bits of plant life as we traveled southeast toward the mountainous source of the river. Part of me wondered how toxic this water was. Mawar had explicitly told us not to allow our swiftsure horses to drink from that river. We had to provide our own water stores to our mounts.

All around me, barren canyons and sandy outcroppings marked the dangerous approach to Mount Coreshen. Despite the roaring river right by our side, the landscape had slowly shifted to a more arid and desolate place. Deep canyons and spanning chasms became more and more common like the empty canals of East Fiachra made manifest a hundred times over.

The slowly setting sun cast this entire place in a grim light. The orange and purple hues in the sky should've been comforting, but I instead found them supremely unnerving.

There is something deeply wrong with this river, Aurora said over our bond. She was flying high above, acting as a scout for anything in our path. I am tempted to believe Lady Shorn's story of an asuran battle on these plains. I can certainly sense the lingering effects.

That made me almost pause in my tracks. Renea had told me a mythological tale of a great Vritra warrior dying at the Redwater's source after a glorious battle. I had dismissed it internally as a simple legend. But if Aurora was saying so…

I looked out over the barren desert-like land. We'd left paved roads long ago. For miles upon miles, there was barely a speck of life. The ambient mana was sparse and thin; like a stretch of oil spread over too much canvas. It reminded me of the outback of Australia from my previous life crossed with the canyons of Arizona. In the distance, the Basilisk Fang Mountains thrust into the sky like the ridges along a crocodile's spine.

A clash between asura did this? I asked internally. The air felt dead, and the land was broken. It was hard to imagine beings doing this at all.

My bond was silent for a moment. There is a river called the Sehz both on the continents of Alacrya and Dicathen, she started. There is a reason for this. Once upon a time, they were one, mighty flow. But as our kind waged war upon your world, the earth was ripped apart. Continents sank. Oceans evaporated to less than dust. And races died.

I paled, thinking of the implications of my bond's words. The Beginning After the End always alluded to the destructive power of the asura. But to have it confirmed by my bond was terrifying in a way I struggled to comprehend.

This is why we work to stop the High Sovereign, Aurora continued, pushing past my silent awe and terror. To avoid a repeat of the many wars of our past.

I swallowed nervously.

"Lord Daen," Mawar said from nearby. I looked at her sharply, pulled from my quiet dread. She didn't cringe back as she had before, whatever measure of fear I'd instilled in her waning as we'd gotten to know each other more. "We're almost at the headwaters. You… you said I would have to follow you from here on out, right?"

I took a deep breath, then swung off of my swiftsure horse. It whinnied as my boots kicked up dust on the ground. "We're going on foot from here on out," I said. Sevren quickly did the same, resting his hand on Promise. "How good are you at stealth?" I asked the Retainer of Etril.

Mawar slid off her mount gracefully. "I raised myself in the depths of a forest, Lord Daen," she said a bit sharply. "You'll never sense me if I don't want you to."

Sevren withdrew a device from his dimension ring. Mawar's eyes widened as they landed on the object, though it looked like a simple cube to me. "This stealth device can help suppress my own mana signature," he said. "We'll be in and out before this vicar even realizes he's been had."