Corvis Eralith
The damp, mineral scent of the grotto had shifted. One week ago it was dominated by wet earth, ancient pine, and the faint musk of Berna, it now hummed with a new layer of ozone, hot metal, and the sharp tang of alchemical reagents.
Only lne week. That's all it had taken to transform the sacred, lonely sanctuary into a functional—if unorthodox—workshop. Pride, quiet but fierce, warmed me as I surveyed the space. It was a testament to relentless focus, Romulos' suggestions, Gideon's crash course in efficient field engineering made in few minutes before I left Xyrus, and Berna's surprisingly dexterous application of gravity magic.
The heart of the operation pulsed near the fissure entrance. A complex lattice of mana-conductive copper and quartz crystals climbed the rock face, funnelling the thin, wild energy of the high mountain down into the grotto.
Its terminus: Sylvia's Mana Core. Suspended within a cradle of woven root-like filaments I had coaxed from the pine itself, the core pulsed with a steady, strengthening pink light. It was almost a third full now, a reservoir of draconic potential patiently accumulating under Berna's solemn, watchful gaze. She took her duty as guardian of the core and the workshop seriously, her massive form often positioned near the entrance, a silent, furry bulwark against the outside world.
Around the ancient pine tree, the grotto's life persisted, integrated rather than displaced. Small birdhouses I had crafted nestled among the higher branches, homes for the iridescent birds whose soft chirps provided a constant, gentle counterpoint to the workshop's activities. For the tiny rodents, I had carved small, sheltered niches into the rock walls near the water seepage, lined with moss Berna carefully gathered.
The floor, once entirely carpeted in emerald moss, was now strategically cleared, creating defined pathways. A central channel, lined with smooth stones and fed by redirected seepage, split the space, its gentle burble a soothing constant. The vibrant mountain flowers remained, pockets of defiant color against the stone and wood.
My domain clung to the walls. Sturdy workbenches salvaged from prefabricated sections Vincent and Gideon had sourced now held an array of tools: glass alembics connected by intricate tubing, mortars and pestles of varying sizes, calibrated scales, racks of shimmering vials containing liquids and powders in every conceivable hue.
Scrolls weighted down by polished stones held Romulos's complex formulae and my own annotated sketches. It was part alchemist's den, part artificer's forge, nestled improbably within a mountain's heart.
"Gideon Bastius," Romulos sniffed, materializing near a complex distillation setup I was priming for the Acclorite synthesis. He ran a translucent finger over a joint, his expression one of profound distaste. "Bah. One of my least favourite lessers. Especially for poisoning Emily Watsken's mind with this… artificing filth. She had potential, Corvis. Real potential. To grasp fundamental mana theory, not waste it soldering wires and etching runes. She could have been… significant." He sighed, the sound like dry leaves skittering on stone. "A favourite, even."
I wiped my hands on a cloth, the motion deliberate. I had stopped confining our conversations to my mind. The silence of the mountain, broken only by Berna's rumbles and the workshop sounds, had become too vast. Hearing my own voice, even arguing with my spectral other self, was a necessary anchor.
"Wasn't Arthur your favourite lesser?" I asked aloud, carefully measuring purified water into a large, heat-resistant basin carved from a single block of stone.
Romulos whipped around, his red eyes flashing. "Arthur," he stated, his voice dropping into a register colder than the mountain snow outside, "is not a lesser. To imply such is an insult bordering on blasphemy. He transcends such crude categorizations." He drifted closer to the basin I was preparing.
"Now, cease the philosophical distractions. Let us commence the first attempt. The Acclorite won't synthesize itself while you indulge in maudlin comparisons."
The process was delicate, demanding absolute precision. The salt rock gifted by Wren Kain, crystalline and humming faintly with captured sea energy, needed to dissolve in boiling water infused with specific mana frequencies. This created the base solution—a "primordial broth," as Romulos dramatically termed it. But first, the mana catalyst.
"Before you drown the salt, pour the crystals," Romulos instructed, pointing to the four carefully sorted piles—earth, fire, water, wind. "Integrate them. Shatter them within the solution as it approaches the critical temperature."
I nodded, placing the shimmering mana crystals beside the basin. "Berna," I called softly. The massive bear, who had been watching with gentle curiosity from her spot near the pine, lifted her head. A low, questioning rumble vibrated in her chest. "A small pulse, my friend. Precise. On my mark."
I activated Beyond the Meta. The world shifted. The water in the basin became a swirling, chaotic blue-white potential. The salt rock beside it pulsed with complex mineral energy. The crystals blazed like miniature stars: deep brown for earth, searing orange for fire, cool cerulean for water, swirling silver-green for wind.
"Now, Berna." As the water began to steam and bubble furiously, I dropped the salt rock in. Simultaneously, Berna focused. A subtle, localized gravity pulse, astonishingly controlled for her size, emanated from her. Not crushing, but squeezing with pinpoint accuracy.
The four mana crystals, suspended just above the roiling water, imploded in a silent burst of concentrated light and energy. Dust-fine particles of pure elemental mana rained down into the churning, salt-laden solution.
The reaction was instantaneous and mesmerizing. The clear water churned violently, colors swirling like spilled paint in a tempest. Earth brown melded with fire orange, clashing against water blue, whipped into spirals by wind silver-green. Slowly, chaotically, the colors began to merge, deepen, settling into a profound, shimmering violet that seemed to swallow the light. It pulsed with contained power, thick and syrupy. The "primordial broth" was ready.
Next, the piece of Geolus. Using tongs crafted from a dense, heat-resistant vinewood, I carefully lowered one of the obsidian-black cubes Berna had shaped with her gravity magic—impossibly perfect, a testament to her hidden precision.
The moment the Geolus fragment touched the violet liquid, the reaction intensified. Bubbles, not of steam but of pure, concentrated mana, fizzed violently around the cube. The dark rock seemed to drink the violet solution, the intense color visibly leaching upwards from the contact point, transforming the cube from obsidian to a lighter, luminous amethyst hue as the mana was absorbed. It was alchemy made visible, primal power being transferred and transmuted.
I didn't wait. My dagger, the same one that had tasted boar blood and scaled cliffs, was in my hand. Against the Tragedy channeled mana into its edge, forming a crackling, teal corona. Guided by Beyond the Meta, I saw not just the physical shape, but the mana lattice within the softening Acclorite. It needed to be a rhomboid—the form most compatible with integrating into a persons's body, according to Romulos.
The stone, saturated and malleable under the mana infusion, yielded surprisingly easily to the empowered blade. Chips flew, not as rock, but as solidified sparks of violet light. Within minutes, the perfect cube was transformed into a sleek, multifaceted rhomboid, pulsing gently with internal light, radiating warmth.
"Now," Romulos declared, his voice taut with anticipation, "the crucible. Harden it."
The final step required the inoculant: molten aluminium. A small crucible, heated by a focused jet of fire mana channeled through a rune-carved bracer, held the silvery liquid metal, bubbling at over 660 degrees. With meticulous care, using a ceramic pipette, I drew up a precise measure.
Beyond the Meta highlighted the tiny fissure I'd engraved along one edge of the rhomboid—the entry point. One steady hand guided the pipette; the other held the Acclorite firm. A single, glistening drop of molten aluminium fell, sizzling faintly as it entered the fissure.
Instantly, I plunged the glowing rhomboid into a waiting basin filled with fresh snow hauled from the slopes below. Steam erupted with a violent hiss, filling the grotto with a cloud of vapour that smelled of ozone and hot stone. The amethyst light within the Acclorite flared brilliantly, then rapidly dimmed as the metal sealed the fissure and the intense cold shocked the structure into its final, hardened state.
Silence descended, broken only by the crackle of the cooling stone in the snow and Berna's soft, inquisitive snuffle. I stared at the basin, the steam clearing to reveal the Acclorite rhomboid—now a deep, opaque violet, hard as diamond, humming with a low, resonant power. Four identical cubes sat waiting nearby.
The scraps had already been ground into an iridescent powder destined for my Ineptrune ink.
"Keep it for one of your faithful Lances," Romulos suggested, drifting closer to peer at the cooling artifact. "Or for Grey. He'd find a use for it."
I shook my head, wiping condensation from my brow. "No. Grey will receive his piece from Wren Kain. I have to keep that sequence intact." It wasn't fear of altering destiny, not anymore. It was cold pragmatism. "If I give him one of mine, Wren won't provide his. We'd be down one Asura-forged weapon. This way… we gain an extra."
Romulos raised a spectral eyebrow but didn't argue. His gaze remained fixed on the Acclorite in the snow, the embodiment of a week's grueling labor, Berna's strength, and the strange, lonely alchemy of our mountain exile. The hissing subsided. The steam thinned. Only the deep, patient pulse of the newly forged artifact remained, a silent promise of power born from solitude and stone.
The sharp hiss of the cooling Acclorite in its snow bath was the only sound for a long moment after Romulos's casual bomb dropped. Then, the implication detonated within me.
"I have to tell you, that's not the actual original formula used by Wren Kain." He said scrolling his shoulders.
"You…" My voice emerged as a strangled rasp. I turned slowly, deliberately, every muscle coiled tight as a sprung trap. Berna lifted her massive head, sensing the sudden, violent shift in the air, her green eyes wide with confusion.
"You tell me that now? After we've poured a week into this? After I've handled volatile mana reactions inches from my face?"
Romulos merely shrugged, a fluid, infuriating gesture. "Calm down, Corvis," he drawled, utterly unperturbed. "Unless you want our furry sentinel here to confirm her suspicions about your mental stability. Though, granted, they might already be well-founded." His tone dripped with the usual disdain, but beneath it, I sensed the cold thrill of the scientist observing a volatile reaction—me.
"So," I forced out, the words scraping raw, "you're telling me it's… better?" The absurdity warred with the chilling pragmatism.
Trusting Romulos was like handling live lightning—necessary, potentially illuminating, but inherently dangerous.
"Obviously," he confirmed, a flicker of smugness in his ancient eyes. "My refinement accelerates mana absorption and integration exponentially. Less dawdling, more power. Precisely what your floundering lesser existence requires. I am not in the habit of engineering inferior solutions."
He waved a dismissive hand. "It won't spontaneously develop a personality like that insufferable spirit Regis. Frankly, I doubt it can. But raw potency? Unmatched. For a lesser… or even an Asura."
The mention of Regis was a deliberate needle. "And you were going to blithely suggest I give this… variant… to Grey?" The question was laced with incredulous fury.
"I admit it, Regis proved useful, powerfu, necessary." Romulos conceded grudgingly, a shadow passing over his spectral features. "Instrumental, even, in Art overcoming that… Legacy abomination, despite her stolen advantage." He spat the title like poison. "But I never liked him. An impertinent spark in a universe demanding order."
"Cecilia?" The name was ice on my tongue. "You knew her? Personally?"
"I was the architect," he stated, the casualness a brutal hammer blow. "The one who facilitated Father's design. Who guided the Legacy's soul into the vessel of your sister."
The world tilted. The warm scent of pine and earth vanished, replaced by the phantom stench of burning ozone and betrayal. He did it. Not just Agrona in some abstract sense. Him. This fractured reflection of myself.
He had ripped Tessia's soul from her body, stuffed Cecilia's twisted spirit inside like refuse into a discarded shell. Rage, white-hot and primal, surged through me, a torrent threatening to incinerate the careful control I'd built. My knuckles whitened on the edge of the workbench. Berna let out a low, worried rumble.
"You and Cecilia share a certain… frustrating resilience," Romulos observed, utterly unmoved by the storm he'd unleashed. "Though I concede she edges you out in sheer, grating obnoxiousness. If I have had Meta-awareness I would have done everything to take her powers and then kill her and her stupid boyfriend Nico."
This bastard couldn't be me. The thought was a desperate mantra. I would never… could never… do that to Tessia. The violation was too profound, too intimate.
"Only because she is your sister," Romulos countered, his voice a cold scalpel dissecting my denial. "Trust me, Corvis Eralith, you possess the capacity for acts far more despicable when necessity demands. Or ambition whispers." He tilted his head, a predator considering prey.
"Predicting the future? Merely extrapolating from observable data. But you confirmed it yourself—Dad cannot replicate the Legacy gambit here because of your interference with the anchors." A speculative glint entered his eyes. "Which gives me an idea…"
I knew where this was headed. "If your 'idea' involves Meta-awareness hijacking the Legacy's power," I cut in, my voice flat and hard as the stone beneath my feet, "forget it. I won't touch reincarnation. I won't play god with stolen souls."
"Ally with Dad."
The words hung in the suddenly frigid air of the grotto. Not a plea. A statement. Simple. Absolute. Terrifying. My mental scream was instantaneous, visceral: No. Never. Not with that monster.
"Yet you grovel before Grandfather," Romulos shot back, relentless, his spectral form drifting closer, radiating cold intensity. "A tyrant arguably worse, who views you as nothing but a useful insect. Your 'alliance' with Epheotus is temporary convenience, you claim. Build Dicathen's strength, then defy the Asuras? Admirably ambitious. Almost… less insufferable." The faint praise was worse than insult.
I don't care if he's your father! I don't care how you rationalize him! Agrona is a cancer! I will never stand beside him! The refusal was absolute, carved into my very soul.
"I am acutely aware of my Dad's… moral flexibility," Romulos stated, his voice losing its edge, becoming disturbingly reasonable. "He discards lives like spent reagents if they serve his goal: Epheotus's ruin. But Corvis…" He leaned in, his gaze locking onto mine.
"With your Meta-awareness… your unique insight… you could offer him a swifter path. A cleaner victory. In exchange? Dicathen preserved. Your family, your precious Tessia… safe. Utterly, irrevocably safe. And you understand his mechanisms, his ruthlessness. You can navigate it. Differently from Grandfather Dad will never waste you."
The proposition was a serpent, coiling around my heart. Sell my soul to the Devil for their protection?
"Crude phrasing," Romulos murmured, a ghost of a smile touching his lips. "But… essentially, yes."
Why am I even listening? The thought was a desperate lifeline. This mirrored Arthur's first meeting with Agrona too closely—the promise of safety for surrender. A poisoned chalice.
"And Dad was sincere then," Romulos insisted, his voice dropping, intense. "He honours bargains that serve his ends. You've already taken steps to ensure you can't be turned into a weapon against your family." He gestured vaguely towards the back of my neck where the Failsafe Ineptrune laid dormant.
"Think. Truly think. Not with sentiment, but with the cold calculus of survival. What can your fragile morality truly protect when the storm breaks?"
Yes, of course, I thought, the internal voice thick with bitter irony. Romulos might believe his path offered salvation. He might even, in his twisted way, care. But the trust required… the surrender to Agrona's vision… The image of Tessia, not just safe, but preserved under Agrona's suffocating control, was its own kind of violation.
As I wrestled with the chilling temptation, the sheer audacity of the proposal, Romulos caught my eye. He stood back, a wide, unsettling grin spreading across his face as he watched my internal war, silently waving his hand as if to say, "See?" The thought took root.
The cold dread that followed wasn't just fear of Agrona; it was fear of the part of me that saw the terrifying logic in Romulos's serpentine offer. The part of me who would be leaving this safe workshop and turn his back on his continent.