To Fly the Soaring Tides

There were stratagems for when one took unfounded pity upon you, such as ‘to topple town with a handful of snow’, or ‘teach them of the worm’s grace’, but Cira didn’t feel they fit here. They were heavy-handed. For this situation she had to create an entirely new one. Before the rotten plum could be revealed beyond the broadest leaf, Cira ‘rustled in the winds of sympathy’.

It was hastily named and only really made sense in conjunction with its predecessor, but it was important to provide Eliza a genuine answer while also concealing an ever-widening variety of inconvenient truths.

“I appreciate the concern,” Cira acknowledged. Even if she had some ulterior motive for her concern such as taking on a promising student for prestige, it was objectively kind of her. “But I don’t plan on dying, or relying on someone else with so little time to spare…”

“I’ve never seen a soul degrade so rapidly though…” Eliza countered with an uncomfortably motherly expression, notably no mention yet of deritium, “If we leave immediately, I can guarantee you a couple decades at least. With talent like yours… I don’t doubt that’s enough time to find new ways to extend it.”

“You can’t be serious?!” Kristof was still partially blue in the face, recovering, “If you don’t want to let this bitch die, I’ll kill her mysel—”

His voice was muffled as roots grew from the sand to encase him while rocks scattered into the air, the smaller ones pelting him relentlessly. The meeting place grew brighter, and the heat skyrocketed, centered on a red-faced rookie.

“Remember your place, boy.” Eliza’s cold voice seemed to echo through the surrounding trees, “Have you forgotten your father is an arbiter because of my recommendation? Do you truly think he sent you to me because you are well-tempered and ready to represent the Third Order?”

“Gahhh—” Vines tore through his skin as blood blossomed in the air. A large stone shattered on his head and his skin blistered in the concentrated sun.

“You are a disgrace. If you don’t shape up, I have full authorization to extinguish your aura and dump you on an island of my choosing.” Her eyes burned with a fire Cira only knew occasionally. Such passion was a little out of character for Eliza, if she was being honest.

“I don’t like the guy either,” Cira commented, “But that does sound a little harsh.”

“Would you like to know what he had the gall to say during the report on our meeting last week?” Her incredulous look beckoned only one response.

“Uh, Sure.”

“He told his father he had ‘decided on a concubine’. Make no mistake,” Eliza got deadly serious, and Cira struggled not to flinch. “Such is not an official position within the Third Order. Would you like to know who he had chosen?”

“I really don’t—”

“It was you!”

“GlrughhhdhghghhghGHGHHH!”

“That should tide him over for a while,” Cira decided young Kristof was ready for the second phase of his lesson in sorcerous impertinence. “Thanks for letting me know.”

“The problem is… the arbiters are split on the matter. I had no choice but to claim you as my student…”

“You…” Cira narrowed her eyes, “claimed me?”

“Oh, don’t misunderstand, dear.” The mage’s grin seemed somehow less vicious, but her words offended Cira more than her half-hearted demands of the past, “There would be no end to trouble for you if I hadn’t. Kristof’s nonsense would have been dismissed no matter what, but if you weren’t…aren’t my student, my fellow arbiters are quite eager to meet you themselves.”

“I think I’ve heard enough. I held out hope for this Third Order… but if you don’t have the nectar, our business is done.” It was a struggle sitting up straight at the table, but the adrenaline from the anger this mage’s colleagues had incited in her had Cira as lucid as she had ever been recently. The pitcher and glasses on the table shook as she stood up.

“H-hey, hold on! Who said we don’t have it?” Eliza shouted with unexpected urgency, “Here! I even brought you four pints. You know how many flowers it takes to get just one, right?”

Is that how it is? She’s just after the deritium after all, isn’t she? The moment she thinks I’m walking away, even this prolific mage turns into a dog for this ‘Lost Archive’.

Four glass bottles of pristine red nectar appeared next to the pitcher. Their sheen in the sun was of the richest sunset and it was just the right opacity to be days fresh at worst.

“What a disappointment…” The look of shock on Eliza’s face was something to behold as Cira held up her palm. “I was hoping that useless Kristof would catch on and do this, but… I guess I’ll do it myself.”

The glow of late morning’s light bouncing off distant dunes shone from Cira’s right forefinger and the sound of three distinct objects cracking sounded from three evenly spaced points around the meeting place. The keystones shattered.

At the same time, it felt as if the island cracked in kind. For a brief moment it was almost like time skipped as the expressions froze on the recovering Kristof’s vengeful face and Eliza as mana flooded out of her hand at an alarming pace. She attempted to form a desperate domain of space and light, but it was spent in the same way as the mana of Shadow Spring or even that which steeped the soil on the clear opposite side of Hangman’s Cove.

The world shifted to and fro in the next instant, pressurized, and released. As if the gear which turned the world found its next groove, time resumed with Cira’s next step.

“I can’t tell you how glad I am that this worked,” Cira started squinting her eyes and looked up. There were three pillars of blaring light, illuminating the entire island through the fog. “My, that sure show’s up in the mist, doesn’t it?”

Feeling the onset of exhaustion as her array fired up, she put a hand on the table and quickly hydrated from the stone angel’s mouth. Without a second to waste, she pulled out her flask of dimnut tonic and only reached three swigs in before a flame overtook her entire mind.

She screamed, fist against the table, as Eliza looked on in bewildered horror.

“Gyyahhhhh! What is happening?!” Cira felt her mind ripping apart like it was her soul as of late. A thousand images of earth, nature, or the various rivers of Lost Cloud flashed before her like a slideshow that all appeared at once. She collapsed to the ground, head cradled in her hands.

This… Why does this look familiar—feel familiar?

It was natural for her miniscule mind to resist.

I feel like I’m burning away. Burning up, and melting.

Cira felt her face hit the sand and when she looked at her arm it had fallen into a puddle. She couldn’t even feel her hand anymore.

Don’t panic. It’s never a good idea to panic. Just let the sorcery occur…

Cira swiveled her face across the ground to see her opposite side and blew the sand out of her eyes. Her other hand had also been reduced to a state not unlike that which Aquon spent weeks in. Short of a cozy punchbowl, Cira just had to accept the waves of mana ravaging her body.

The activation and control of such an array could not be completed without some effect on the mind. Cira thought that using three points instead of an entire spring and the tens of thousands of paths it took as catalysts would result in a rather simple artifact domain, but maybe she had misjudged the scale a little.

Just let it happen, whatever this is…

Cira felt herself strain through the sand—an impossible feeling—the millions of grains of sand, then herself filtering through them. It was unclear how long this went on, but the process eventually slowed. She couldn’t spread herself out too thin. As if something was stopping her from dispersing completely. The feeling of bounds and physical limitations actually helped her mind solidify along with her body.

Blinking on the ground in confusion, Cira thought she was submerged in the ground when she came to until she watched water gurgle through the sand and reform…into her. This was something she witnessed from above, but there was a disorienting overlap happening.

Do I… have three eyes? This should be no different than Spatial Sense, so did I make a mistake somewhere along the way? I can hardly even remember enchanting the waterfall and Misty Steppes.

With great effort, Cira separated her sight enough to where the world wasn’t smashed together and managed to place a solid hand on the edge of the table with which to pull herself up. Somehow it felt like this was the first breath she had taken in a while.

Of course… three eyes for my three landforms. The part that disoriented her was that she was experiencing vision in every dimension three times over from slightly different points of origin. She threw them each back from whence they came for now. A towering peak, vast waterfall, and rocky slope came into view.

This reduced much of the strain on her mind, and she could finally stand up, looking forward now through her two physical eyes. Eliza was pallid with her jaw hung slack, and Cira polished off her flask of dimnut tonic before addressing her.

“You’ll have to excuse me. It appears I miscalculated a little.” She glared disappointedly at the small pool of wasted tonic that accumulated on the table after she fell earlier while another eye began to helplessly wander through the earth. “Who knew there were so many tunnels in this island—hey, I found some pirates.”

The arbiter’s brow had grown increasingly furrowed, and it looked like she really had something to say, so Cira allowed it.

“W-what in the nine skies just happened? What did you do?!” Eliza’s capability to speak now only made her concern deepen. After a few seconds to process while her gaze flitted between blinding pillars that burned straight through the storm and seemingly unto the heavens beyond. Her baffled eyes fell on Cira now, “I… I only said what I did to keep the rest of the Order from bothering you. I never had any intention to force you into a place or position you don’t want.”

“Worry not.” Cira sat up on the table and rested her wooden leg on top of a chair. Elsewhere, a young girl paid one silver crown for a loaf a bread on the upper boardwalk of Hangman’s Cove while hundreds of juvenile nimbus sharks tore apart some kind of porpoise along the distant cliffs where they nested. “That’s the impression I got, Eliza. If you think you can teach me something, I am not necessarily opposed to learning it, nor do I think you bear ill intent personally. The problem is it appears I have given your friends the entirely wrong impression. I am no commodity to be reserved, and I am absolutely not one to be bothered frivolously.”

Four men and two women in colorful robes fell from the sky while their staves formed a neat pile next to Cira. Over the next few moments, this was followed by nine more mages at irregular intervals while Eliza and Kristof’s eyes widened at the sound of each thud behind them.

“A few more of your minions should be arriving shortly,” Cira continued, “I’m surprised there are so many of you here, really. I must have something you want. Is it the deritium, I wonder?”

Concern still marred Eliza’s face, but her expression was somewhat sympathetic now for whatever reason, “My dear… I just watched you turn into water and seep into the earth, only to reform and rip my men up from across the island. Just what have you done to yourself?”

Could I have been wrong about her? Either way, if it’s not the deritium, they definitely want to know whatever I’m planning to fix my soul. This is an excellent chance to throw her scent off the soul forge. I almost feel bad lying to Eliza though… Perhaps that’s a stratagem of hers.

“Specters, spirits, elementals… why can they exist exclusively in the aethereal form—and why shouldn’t I? My soul shouldn’t be such a stationary, singular entity, so of course it’s crumbling. My entire essence ought to flow freely like a river.” Her outstretched hand grasped Aquon’s orbiting stream and slowly lost its form, while simultaneously growing anew from a burst of mist at her elbow.

“Do you mean to become some kind of lich?” Eliza was appalled with gears turning aimlessly behind her gaze, but it became difficult to take her seriously mid-stride as she had been for the last few minutes. Cira released her body and gestured her back into a chair.

“I don’t think I could ever become a lich. Undeath is too dreary for me, and probably best left as a backup, but perhaps if I hid a menagerie of phylacteries across the many skies. Turn a mana well into one, maybe. That would be fun to try. It would still come with far too many vulnerabilities.” Cira lifted up the pitcher and an angel vomited water into Eliza’s cup. “No, I’m picturing something more akin to a greater spirit—something new. Wouldn’t it be nice to grasp the leylines with your own two hands? Perhaps souls are overrated. I wish to simply exist.”

These ramblings were partially backed up by the ambient presence she held over the Lost Cloud. Her goblins were building something strange with shoddily carved rocks in the middle of the square and goliaths wandered freely without the threat of undine. The Stick Brigade’s former hideout was silent while the overhead sun penetrated the misty depths to reveal charcoal hung loosely from the sheer cliffsides.

With such a grand perspective, the pain that was her soul felt far lessened. Even her exhaustion was nil. The physical body in which her soul resided and that she usually called home felt even more insignificant than when she sat in Fount Salt’s spring chamber, despite this island being utterly dwarfed in comparison.

“H-have you gone mad…?” Eliza looked at her with even greater sympathy. To the point it actually made Cira a little uncomfortable. Kristof was pale in the face with bloodshot eyes, similar to the rest of the horrified mages who had absolutely no idea what was happening. Five more had fallen throughout Cira’s monologue.

“Madness would be to accept my journey’s end so simply.” She couldn’t help herself from staring into the dark mana well’s core. “A sorcerer’s fate depends on their resolve to walk forward.”