Corvis Eralith
And just like every chain, the Chain of Solidarity grew stronger with every new ring.
Albold Chaffer and Ayden (Altair, as he was known in his eagle form) were the next to join, alongside Ashton Auddyr.
They would officially participate in the Interdicathian as the designated companions of the royal children, while secretly serving as part of our defensive forces.
With Cylrit and Alea already positioned within Virion Eralith's own personal entourage, we would have a formidable striking force. I just needed to officially convince Grandpa to bring the elven Lance with us.
But speaking to my grandfather... revealing him all the truth behind all of my reckless escapades across the continent over these last few years—I wanted to leave that, the hardest part of this entire ordeal, for last.
Through my portable radio, I quickly informed Cynthia about my latest movements and told her to organise the logistics with Gideon.
When Cynthia spoke back, her voice from my nautilus-shaped receiver carried a soothing background noise akin to the lull of the Truce-Waters: a sound like that of the sea you hear when you press a large shell to your ear.
The Tuned Insight Receiver was truly phenomenal. It was vastly superior to even the most advanced military radio systems used on Earth. There were zero problems with interference or physical obstacles blocking the radio waves, because everything was mediated flawlessly by sound magic.
It meshed mundane technological principles with ancient magical arts perfectly: the truest definition of Manatech.
Where a normal electromagnetic wave couldn't reach, the sound magic would come to its aid, and vice versa.
The only potential problem was a logistical one: too many people talking on a single communication link would instantly devolve into a chaotic nightmare of overlapping voices.
Avicenna, I called out mentally, right after I was spat out by a second-generation Portal Frog that Avier had placed on the Xyrus Academy grounds. I need you to act as the station manager for our communications.
'Station manager?' the wise Djinn, resting securely at my hip, asked. 'If you mean that I am to operate your Tuned Insight Receiver system, Justiciar, it will be my honour.'
Fatima, do you have any objections to my decision? I asked the other ancient consciousness. Do you think you would be better suited for this?
'Sage Avicenna is far more versed in the Lifeworks of Manatech than I am,' Fatima replied, her tone crisp and professional. 'He is the correct choice.'
I will drop Avicenna off at Gideon's lab, then, I told the two Ancient Mages. Hopefully, you will be able to communicate effectively with that madman through the Tuned Insight Receiver yourself.
I worked quickly. After having the reality of the situation confirmed directly by Director Goodsky, Gideon had become eerily cooperative. His usual raging egocentrism and rough personality were instantly buried under the weight of something he finally recognised as bigger than himself.
The only thing left to do was find someone capable of keeping the civilian population of Xyrus City safe once the chaos erupted. I knew exactly who to ask.
I stopped in front of one of Xyrus's many bustling inns, knowing with absolute certainty that I would find the Twin Horns Party inside (Chantelle had reported their location to me as she soared the skies of Xyrus).
They were some of the most highly respected Adventurers in the human kingdom, and I perfectly remembered how Arthur had entrusted them with the rule of Blackbend after he reconquered it from the Alacryans in the canon timeline.
I had genuinely wanted our reunion—or rather, the reunion between them and Finn Warend—to be a merrier occasion, but Agrona had stolen that luxury from me.
With a heavy pouch of money weighing down my pocket (just in case, as Elder Rahdeas had generously supplied me with enough gold coins to feed a family for decades), I pushed open the door and entered the unassuming inn.
It was lunchtime, the moment the Twin Horns reunited to eat together. My heart swelled slightly as I noticed Reynolds and Alice Leywin sitting at the table, having happily joined their old adventuring friends now that they had relocated to Xyrus.
"Leòn Leurenzian? I know the kid!" Reynolds exclaimed loudly, likely right after the Twin Horns had just finished recounting how they had witnessed my explosive concert in Greengate. (Yes, I had spotted them in the crowd).
"Oh, we know Finn Warend, while you and Alice know Leòn Leurenzian," Durden Walker laughed lightly, taking a sip of his ale. "That is quite fun."
"I'm right here," I said, coughing politely to catch their attention. Which I did, very, very effectively.
"Finn!" The Twin Horns all exclaimed in an almost comical, unified shout. They were so loud that even the fiercely reserved Jasmine Flamesworth called my name with a volume I hadn't imagined her capable of.
"May I?" I asked, pointing directly at the only free seat around the wooden table. I sat down before they could even answer, dropping the heavy pouch of gold coins onto the wood with a solid thud. "I would like to hire you all for a job of the utmost importance."
Helen Shard, acting as the leader of the Twin Horns, spoke first.
"Don't you have your own Unraveler's Company for this sort of thing now?" she asked, waving a dismissive hand at the vast sum of money I was offering them. "We truly aren't that special, Finn. Really."
"What I desperately need from you right now is your raw combat experience and your widespread popularity as veteran Adventurers," I said.
I immediately raised a highly concentrated Bubblespell to completely silence our conversation. I certainly didn't want the casual patrons of this inn overhearing that a massacre was scheduled for tomorrow.
The Twin Horns instantly tensed at the display of advanced magic.
"Be ready for the absolute worst tomorrow," I warned them, my voice dropping to a grim whisper. "The Interdicathian is not safe. It is going to be attacked. But we have a plan."
I reached into my coat and placed several of the clam-shaped earpieces of our new radio system onto the table, alongside a nautilus-shaped transistor identical to the one I possessed.
"This is a new communication device developed thanks to Gideon Bastius's priceless help—I am sure you all know of him," I informed them. "You will be informed about everything else in due time."
I turned my eyes to look directly at the Leywins. In a timeline that I would absolutely ensure never came to pass, Reynolds and Alice would throw themselves into danger to fight for their continent, joining a brutal war despite Arthur pressing—begging—them not to.
It ended with Reynolds's death in that original timeline. It would not end like that in this one.
"Mr. Leywin, I would be immensely grateful if you leveraged your professional connections with the city guard of Xyrus to ensure civilian evacuation routes are open," I said firmly. Anticipating his question, I added, "And if you are asking how I know about all of this... Leòn told me."
"We don't have much time," I said in a frantic rush, already pushing myself up from the chair. "You can contact Director Goodsky directly using that device. Just tell her exactly what I told you."
The clock—that damned clock ticking toward the midnight that was the war against Alacrya I thought I had stopped from haunting me years ago—was ticking, and there was still so much more I needed to do.
—
Before facing Grandpa, there was one last, critical puzzle I had to solve: breaking the insidious curse of the Vritra Blood flowing through Cylrit's veins.
Currently the exiled Alacryan had no genuine problems fighting its dark influence. Scythe Seris—before whatever horrific punishment Agrona had subjected her to—had devised intricate mental techniques to quiet down the maddening lull of the "Almighty Vritra."
That, alongside the Djinnic Adaptarmour, had temporarily freed Cylrit, but it was not a permanent solution I could just hand over to Caera.
The Adaptarmour alone wasn't enough; Cylrit was only so perfectly attuned to Fatima's Lifework because he had spent years fighting for his life in the Relictombs. And Seris' tricks weren't enough to fight back Agrona's direct influence over his prized Legacy.
But there was one glaring problem to resolve before I could even think of bestowing the Warrant of War upon Cylrit: I needed a Vritra identity.
I paced the beautiful Nexus Garden in frantic circles, the artificial sunlight of the Hearth doing little to ease the war I was currently waging within my own mind.
With Chul, I had used Nabyun Asclepius, and with Olfred, it was Finn Warend; a Phoenix and a dwarf, respectively, to officially sign the Warrant of War and thus anchor its magic.
But what about Cylrit? To overwrite Agrona Vritra's absolute authority over his own Clan, I needed an identity that held equivalent or greater conceptual weight in Alacrya. A pure-blooded Vritra, an equivalent to Nabyun Asclepius.
And I couldn't simply rely on REmould to arbitrarily make me a Vritra. I had no solid foundation to make it a true identity of mine. At most, it would be a hollow mask, exactly like the face of Kai Crestless I had briefly worn before striking down Draneeve.
I plucked a delicate flower from one of the Nexus Garden's hundreds of terracotta pots, a bloom with vibrant petals shaped like sunrays.
I instinctively knew this to be the Mordainflower; the exact blossom that had named the poem Chul's father wrote, the one featuring the Chain of Solidarity.
What if, by willingly adopting a Vritra form, I walked straight into Agrona's trap? What if he, unbeknownst to Caera, already knew about REmould and was only waiting for me to establish that link so he could instantly enslave my will?
Damn. Where was the line where wise carefulness became crippling paranoia, and when did paranoia just become basic survival?
For now, I had to limit my focus to actually finding a way to forge a genuine Vritra identity for REmould. I conjured a simple stone seat for myself, sat down heavily, and took a deep breath.
First things first: what actually made REmould function on a fundamental level? What was the true difference between Kai Crestless and Finn Warend when I used the Arbiter's authority over the Edict of Vivum?
The superficial answer was obvious—I deeply embodied Finn Warend, while Kai Crestless was a stranger, another living being—but attachment wasn't the only prerequisite.
I was able to become Nabyun Asclepius because my soul was genuinely that of Mordain's son; thanks to the Great Lord's plume, I had simply unlocked my original vessel.
I was able to become Leòn Leurenzian because my soul had inherently been human on Earth, even if my mind remembered absolutely nothing of that past life.
And I was able to become Finn Warend because I had obsessively studied dwarven society, history, and philosophy since I was a toddler; and I had first played the part of Finn Warend when I infiltrated the Red Gorge, years prior to ever unlocking REmould.
As thus, all of my true identities shared one fundamental, underlying truth: they were potential manifestations of who I could have been, had I not been reborn as Corvis Eralith specifically.
If my parents hadn't been Alduin and Merial. If my grandparents hadn't been Virion and Lania. If I hadn't been shaped by my great-aunt Rinia and my twin sister, Tessia.
If Fate had just twisted slightly differently, I truly could have been a distant, orphaned great-nephew of Elder Rahdeas, discovered after many years in the squalor of Burim.
In a sudden splash of Insight, REtrocurrent flooded my mind with a blurry, alternate vision of that exact reality: Finn Greysunders, the legitimate Throneholder of Darv, crowned shortly after Aldir Thyestes executed King Dawsid and Queen Glaudera.
If Fate had taken another path entirely, I really could have been a magically talented Sapinese orphan, taken under the wing of Cynthia Goodsky as her prized protégé.
REtrocurrent instantly provided me with a mirroring vision: I saw myself as a starving Sapinese boy, scrounging in the filthy slums of some unnamed human city, until a kind, elegant elderly lady with a sharp eye for magical talent rescued me.
I crossed my legs on the stone seat and rested my chin on my hand. What did I need to do, then, to discover a genuine Vritra identity? I needed to search for it directly at the source: the river of time itself.
Maybe I can speak with Caera a little bit more... I told myself, right before summoning Fiorwato and driving the viridian blade straight through my own heart in one ruthless, suicidal motion.
The river of time, as always, hungrily claimed my dying soul.
—
The shores of The Atoll were gently bathed by the conceptual non-water of the river of time, while Fate turned and twisted high above in its everlasting, golden rhapsody of strings.
"The river is not a static thing flowing on one singular timeline, right?" I asked Fate aloud, not expecting any answer. "It keeps in its waters every single possibility, even those that can never happen—like the original canon of The Beginning After The End. And it keeps track of everything you could have made your Arbiter, am I right? Then show me a Vritra, Fate."
I boldly stepped forward, the otherworldly liquid washing over my bare feet.
The river of time immediately began to react to my desire. Just like so many other times with my authorities, the process came instinctively to me: I simply had to surrender control and let the temporal waters show me the path.
But then—the waters violently pulled back.
Exactly like the eerie, suffocating moments that preceded a catastrophic tsunami, the non-water of the river of time rapidly receded, leaving the sandy shores of The Atoll exposed as it retreated into the metaphysical distance.
Fate itself, acting like an invisible puppet master, was aggressively pulling the waters backward, dragging them away from me as if outright denying my request.
"What are you doing?!" I protested angrily, staring up at the swirling golden storm. "I need to unlock that identity to help Caera! You were the one who guided me to her in the first place! Don't you want to stop Agrona too?"
No answer. Again.
I could have stood there and wasted my precious time screaming at Fate, but it would have been exactly like arguing with a brick wall.
I lay back on the retreated shores of The Atoll, staring up at the golden storm as I desperately searched for a new way to approach this problem. I was deep in thought when a sudden sound broke me out of my trance.
"Ribbit."
A second-generation Portal Frog hopped up to my side, its deep teal, water-like body shimmering against the colourless sand; its malachite horns, it was worth to notice, shone brighter here than on Pax Coronata, where it was its body to shine brighter.
This first REbelf was quickly followed by fourteen others of its kin, materialising in various positions across The Atoll. At least their emergency escape mechanism into the river of time seemed to be working flawlessly.
"Where do you come from?" I asked the closest Portal Frog.
"Ribbit."
"The Helstea Auction House, huh?" I echoed, translating the instinctual pulse of Insight the creature fed me. "Avier chose a good place to hide you."
A daring idea began to form in my mind. Could I bring one of these upgraded Portal Frogs directly to Caera? That way, we wouldn't constantly need to rely on mutually suicidal trips into the river of time just to communicate.
Caera had already proven that—while incapable of safely transporting living people across the two continents—the Portal Frogs could safely transmit messages if the messages themselves were protected by the temporal alterations of the river.
If Caera kept the frog perfectly hidden and only used it for extreme emergencies, we might not even risk Agrona finding out about it. But did I trust Caera her enough?
I stood up, brushing the metaphysical sand from my clothes, and looked upwards into the endless, turning threads of Fate:
"Can you at least let the waters return? I need to speak with Caera," I gritted out, forcing my temper from before down.
That, at the very least, seemed to find Fate in agreement. The metaphysical tide slowly crept back towards the shore, returning the river to its calm, steady flow.
I dragged the Petaldrift out into the current and began paddling towards the Bloodlet Bourne, the rhythmic splash of the wooden oar piercing the non-water being the only sound filling the silence.
But as I rowed—the nightmarish, bleeding waters of the Ancient Wraiths' graveyard finally coming into sight after an unquantifiable amount of time—I found myself asking a terrifying question: what was the Vritra bloodline truly, that Fate itself was strictly prohibiting me from accessing it?
The answer to that question was probably the core reason why I even existed as the Arbiter at all.
It was the ultimate divergence point: the anomaly that had caused this timeline to be so violently, drastically different from the novel I knew like the back of my own hand.
Eventually I reached my destination.
"Corvis!" I saw Caera slide down a lifeless rock coated in coagulated blood.
A geyser of highly pressurised red liquid erupted a few metres to our left, the awful corpse god on the horizon standing as a silent, horrific witness.
She reached the edge of the rivulet and, without a moment of hesitation, threw her arms around me in a tight hug, leaving me completely stupefied.
"What is happening?" She asked.
I shook my head, gently pulling back. "I was trying to find a way to break the curse of your Vritra Blood, but... I am not finding much cooperation," I said, pointing a finger upwards at the golden storm of Fate. "I just came back to reassure you that I won't give up so easily."
"Cooperation?" Caera asked, looking up at the swirling threads. "I am not sure I follow. God doesn't cooperate?"
"God?" I echoed, stunned.
Caera simply shrugged the shoulders of her Soul-Body. "Cecilia called it that when I described Fate to her," she answered dismissively. "Anyway, don't worry about it. I can resist until you find a working solution."
She is hopeful, I thought, but I already knew that.
In the novel, Caera Denoir had kept relentlessly searching for her foster brother, Sevren, in the Relictombs long after everyone else had presumed him dead.
Well, he was dead, but Caera had never given up hope until Arthur Leywin showed up wielding Sevren's dagger.
"For now, I have this," I said, carefully handing her the Portal Frog from the Helstea Auction House. "It is an improved version of the ones from before. If it senses danger, it will instinctively escape into the river of time. Use it to contact me only in cases of absolute, extreme necessity."
"Obviously. I am not stupid," Caera said, rolling her eyes playfully.
And she is surprisingly friendly, I noted, remembering how closely Caera had stuck to Arthur in the canon timeline after meeting him—even going so far as to disguise herself as the male Ascender Haedrig just to tail him.
Caera gently booped the Portal Frog's snout, an innocent sight that felt entirely discordant considering the gruesome, bleeding hellscape surrounding us.
"Thank you again for your help, Caera," I said earnestly. "I will continue to work on breaking the blood curse. Of that, you can be absolutely certain."
Caera nodded. "I will try to do my part as well. The High Sovereign talks to himself about many things; maybe he will slip and reveal something important one day," she said, clutching the frog securely against her chest. "Not that I think he actually will make such a careless mistake, but... one can hope, right?"
"Yes," I agreed softly, looking from her back to the twisting golden threads above. "One can always hope."
—
I stalled this long enough, I told myself as I halted in front of Grandpa's heavy oak doors. But now it was time.
Everything was ready. Cynthia and Avier, Gideon and Avicenna, Olfred and Elder Rahdeas, Evascir and Soleil, the Twin Horns and the Leywins. They all had their orders and were playing their parts; Xyrus City was as ready for what was to come as it could possibly be.
Now, the only thing left was to tell the absolute truth to the true symbol of the Interdicathian, and arguably the true symbol of Dicathen itself: the King Emeritus of Elenoir, Virion Eralith.
A hardened veteran of war, and the future Commander of the Tri-Union in the novel. How bitterly ironic it was that his own ten-year-old grandson had to be the one to tell him that he would soon be plunged into war once again.
"You always knew this day would come, Corvis," I sighed, the heart in my chest pounding frantically against my ribs. "He is just Grandpa."
I knocked firmly on the door and entered, clicking it shut behind me. I had been in many high-stakes offices over this last, endless day: Cynthia's pristine academic suite, Elder Rahdeas's subterranean merchant den, my own Unraveler's Company headquarters on Riverwine Racine, and Gideon's chaotic laboratory. But none of them felt quite as intimidating as Grandpa's.
"Corvis, do you need something?" Grandpa asked, looking up from the reading glasses Elder Rahdeas gifted him. He was busy sorting through a mountain of paperwork; everything from casual letters from old friends to the few critical matters of state that Dad still couldn't convince him to give up.
"Yes..." I said, my voice shrinking. I suddenly felt like a helpless toddler again, pretending to be scared of cats just to hopelessly fool Windsom Indrath. "It is about... the Interdicathian... and what I have been doing in the Beast Glades. And Darv... and other things."
Grandpa fully raised his eyes, carefully setting down his quill.
"Is this about all that Finn Warend, the Throneholder business you and that old fox Rahdeas have been cooking up?" Grandpa asked, a familiar smirk playing on his lips. "I swear it, Corvis, if I ever hear a Darvish diplomat officially accuse our family of manoeuvring Darv's royal politics, I might have a heart attack. Or is this about your little secret adventures in the Beast Glades? Bah, if you got a new scar, do not mind it—you should have seen what I was doing as a youngster, roaming the Elshire Forest and the Wild East, always in search of something dangerous to prove myself against."
He leaned back, his tone growing fond. "I even met your grandmother that way," Grandpa mused, referencing the wild story of how he and Grandma Lania first crossed paths. But instead of the usual deep sorrow that coloured his voice when he spoke of her, he just sounded playful. "I wouldn't be surprised if you ended up meeting your better half out in the wilderness, too."
"I am ten, Grandpa..." I said, pouting slightly, my tension breaking just a fraction. "I would like to hear what Mom or Dad have to say about you fantasising about my love life already."
"Leave an old elf to the dreams he has for his grandchildren, would you?" Grandpa chuckled under his breath, crossing his arms over his chest.
I... I wasn't quite as nervous anymore. Looking at Grandpa's warm, crinkling eyes, I immediately understood that had been his exact intention. What a man my grandfather was.
"Grandpa," I said, dropping the banter. Catching my shift in tone, Grandpa's expression instantly turned dead serious. "I am about to give you dire news. I have just had a remarkably bad day, but nothing will come close to what is going to happen tomorrow at the Interdicathian."
I stepped forward, planting my hands on his desk. "I have proof to believe that tomorrow, a large-scale attack will threaten to shake the entire continent of Dicathen as we currently know it," I pressed on, the words rushing out of me. "I should have told you sooner—way sooner—but I was so afraid of what you would think of me! I have already warned our allies and positioned forces to help prevent the slaughter: Director Goodsky, Gideon Bastius, the Adventurer's Guild through the Twin Horns Party, the Unraveler's Company through me and Elder Rahdeas, as well as Lance Olfred from Darv, and many more."
"Alea will be joining us, too," I continued without taking a breath. "And the new guard—Luchen, the one who bested Commodore Chaffer in a spar. He is not a half-elf. He is, in fact, from the very continent behind tomorrow's attack."
"Breathe, Corvis," Grandpa ordered. His hands were firmly latched together on top of his desk, his commanding voice instantly grounding my spiralling panic. "Now. What exactly makes you think this attack will happen?"
"Kamiel Rennoux! When I dragged Tessia away this morning, it was because I was desperately searching for him! He is not who he told us! He is an Alacryan spy!" I shouted. "Through her Beast Will, Tessia asked the Forest to locate him, and Gaia herself said Kamiel Rennoux died ten years ago! We have had an imposter wearing a dead elf's face living right under our noses this entire time!"
Grandpa's face twisted. He seemed deeply conflicted, as if momentarily wondering if all I was telling him was just the wildly paranoid imagination of a very peculiar child. But more than disbelief, the predominant emotion radiating from him was... profound disappointment.
"I-I am so sorry. I have been stupid," I said, gritting my teeth and looking down at my boots. "You should have been the very first one to know. The Interdicathian is your dream, not mine. I put it at risk."
Grandpa, incredibly, offered a small, sad smile. "Oh, are you sure about that?" he asked softly. "If even a fraction of what you have just told me is true, then you have been the one moving heaven and earth to protect the Interdicathian—even breaking the ancient laws the kingdoms of Dicathen have agreed upon for centuries just to safeguard my fair."
"You... you are not angry?" I asked, completely dumbfounded.
"As the primary organiser of the Interdicathian, and as a proud Dicathian myself, I am intensely grateful and utterly amazed at how you have managed to convince so many powerful people to rally behind you; even if I am absolutely going to berate Cynthia for keeping me in the dark about you two meeting," Grandpa said, rubbing his chin. "But as your grandfather?"
Grandpa suddenly stood up, his old eyes flashing with sudden fury and slammed his fists onto his heavy desk with a loud crack (he splintered his precious desk, he was beyond angry).
"I am furious! What passes through your mind?!" he shouted, his wind magic flaring just enough to make the scattered paperwork violently flutter. "I am your grandfather! It is my sole, sacred role to help you, to protect you, and to guide you the best an elf possibly can! Do you think your sister with her Elderwood Guardians and her crazy Beast Will did it all alone? No! She came to me! She asked me to help her!"
I desperately wanted to argue that my situation and Tessia's magical puberty were just a tiny—tiny—bit different in scale, but were they really? Not to Grandpa's eyes.
He hadn't even raised a single question about the mysterious foreign continent, nor had he interrogated me about the Asuras or Kamiel's stolen identity.
He just cared about me.
"...Sorry," I apologised, my voice cracking, not knowing what else to say. "And I am deeply sorry for everything else you are about to hear, but you get the general trend."
I reached into my pocket and handed Grandpa the Tuned Insight Receiver: the clam earpiece and the nautilus transistor both.
"Artificer Bastius crafted these. They will serve as an highly-effective substitute for communication scrolls," I explained, watching Grandpa tentatively take the transistor in his calloused hands.
"Really? Those scrolls cost more than entire noble estates." Grandpa fidgeted suspiciously with the nautilus-shaped device, cautiously poking the metal antenna. "What is this thing for?"
I suddenly felt like a modern Earthen child trying to teach their elderly grandfather how to use a smartphone.
"It captures sound magic and radio waves. It is much easier to learn than it is to explain," I said, stepping around the desk to show him how to operate the dials. "By pressing this lateral button on the curvature of the shell, you turn it on and off. Then you can just speak into it to broadcast to the network."
I turned on my own device, holding it up.
"Testing, one, two!" I declared clearly. Those exact same words instantly repeated, crystal clear, from the small magical radio resting in Grandpa's palm.
"Impressive..." Grandpa murmured, his sharp eyes widening slightly, though he was clearly still sceptical of its military viability. "But what kind of practical reach does this thing have? We are standing in the same room."
I held down the broadcast button, directly pinging the laboratory frequency.
"Gideon," I called. "I know you can hear me. Speak."
"Huh? Wonderboy, what do you need now?" Gideon's grating voice crackled perfectly from my receiver, the lull of the Truce-Waters as background. I gestured to the device with a smug smile. "Are you quite done recruiting people from half the damn continent? Your Ancient Mage friend here isn't leaving me much to actually work with. I am beginning to wonder what my usefulness truly is."
"Ancient Mage?" Grandpa echoed, his head snapping up to stare at me in sheer disbelief.
I abruptly clicked the radio off, cutting the transmission dead.
"I will explain that too," I answered hurriedly.