“You have sauce on you,” came a soft, slightly amused voice. Elijah looked up from his plate of hors d’oeuvres to see Kirlissa’s permissive smile staring back at him. Before he could react, her thumb found the corner of his mouth. “Just there.”
Elijah experienced a bit of vertigo as one of the most powerful dragons in all of existence wiped sauce from his face. It also brought forth a sense of shifting déjà vu, because he could easily remember his mother doing the same thing. The experience twisted Elijah’s stomach into knots, as much out of nostalgia and loss as because of the implied matronly familiarity of the act.
He also knew good and well that everyone else was watching.
Was that a good thing? Did the act show everyone that he was a favored child? Or did it ensure that they would never look at him as an adult? As an equal?
“I like your friend,” she said, hooking her arm under his. He didn’t have time to answer before she was tugging him along. “She suits you.”
“Uh…thanks? I honestly don’t know how to react.”
“That’s perfectly fine. How has your training progressed?” she asked, leading him through the crowd. Someone took Elijah’s plate, then disappeared before he could stop them.
“Fine. I think I’ve grown.”
“Indeed you have. I’m proud of you,” she said, stopping in front of a pair of sapphire-trimmed chairs made of white leather. Three large drakes stood guard. She gestured to the seating, inviting, “After you.”
Elijah sank gratefully into the chair, barely acknowledging the slight buzzing feeling that told him he’d just passed the boundaries of an enchantment. Probably to ensure privacy, as the sudden cessation of noise suggested. The crowd’s din didn’t just fade. It disappeared entirely.
Kirlissa sat, elegantly crossing her legs. A cup appeared in her hand, and she offered it to Elijah. “I am told that you have a particular fondness for coffee.”
Elijah nodded. “The best drink there is,” he responded, taking the offered cup. He didn’t even need to taste it. The smell was enough to tell him everything he needed to know about the beverage. It was obviously coffee. But the richness of the aroma and the not-so-subtle trace of ethera woven into the wafting steam was enough to establish the drink as higher grade than anything he could’ve made himself.
“I cannot disagree,” Kirlissa allowed, another cup appearing in her hand. She took a dainty sip. “Did you know that most worlds develop coffee and tea? There is something very comforting about a hot beverage, and people tend to go to great lengths to perfect them.”
Elijah took a jar of honey from his arcane loop, then offered some to Kirlissa. She declined, so he wasted no more time before pouring a dollop into the mug. A summoned spoon finished it off with a stir, then Elijah took a long slurping sip. His eyes widened as energy – vital, ethereal, and something else – soared through him.
But he was more interested in the taste. There were hints of nuttiness there, almost bitter, but smoother than he could describe. Coupled with the sweetness from the honey he’d harvested from his apiary, it was the best cup of coffee he’d ever drunk.
And with a satisfied sigh, he said as much.
“I will have some sent to you,” she said, her smile broadening.
“I’d rather get the cherries,” Elijah admitted. “I’m always eager to grow something new. Maybe I can use them as an example to hybridize the trees on my island.”
She laughed, the sound like tinkling coins. “Always the Druid.”
Elijah couldn’t help but smile at that observation. Once, he might not have asked for the cherries, but ever since Gorveth, he’d been very cognizant of plant growth, and in a way that felt frequently obsessive.
Elijah glanced away, and he saw Kaela across the room where she’d found her parents.
“She truly is a good fit.”
“It seems that way,” Elijah admitted, looking back at Kirlissa. “But we barely know each other. I like her, and she likes me. Only time will tell if it’s more than that, though.”
“So guarded.”
“Call it a learned trait.”
“Broken hearts are slow to mend,” she acknowledged. She leaned forward, placing her hand on his knee. “It does get easier, though. I have lost lovers. I have buried husbands. I have seen the fathers of my children disappear, never to be seen again. The pain never truly fades, but you will grow more resistant to it.”
“I don’t know if I want to.”
“Of course you don’t. No one does, because it cheapens the experience. None among us are strong enough to endure that combined weight, though. We would collapse like dying stars, damaging everything in our orbit,” she explained. Then, she pulled away. “Do not divorce yourself from the pain, though. Feel it. Embrace it. Let it change you. Then, when you are ready, move on to something new.”
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Elijah wasn’t certain if he could do that. He’d never believed his relationship with Sadie was something out of a fairy tale. They had issues from the very beginning. But he had loved her, and that love was one of the things that held his head above water during his lonely years on Gorveth.
She had given him hope. A reason to keep going.
And now, only a hole remained where that hope had once lived.
His nascent relationship with Kaela helped, but it was far too young to fill it completely. And even if he hadn’t put it into words, Kirlissa seemed to understand what he was going through.
Not surprising, given that she was probably millions of years old. There probably wasn’t much she hadn’t experienced first-hand, and nothing she hadn’t at least seen.
“I am proud of you.”
“For the tournament?”
“Of course, though that wasn’t what I meant. Your progression in the tournament was expected from someone with your talent. These children have yet to see the tiniest fraction of your trials. You have survived things they would consider nightmarish,” Kirlissa explained. “A little tournament is nothing to you.”
“I wouldn’t say that. Some of the participants have power.”
“Yes. Untested and unsharpened, but they are the future of the empire. Some have a good chance to reach transcendence, should they remain on the path.”
“I think I’ve beaten a couple.”
“With any luck.”
She took a sip from her cup. “I find newly integrated worlds intriguing. The scale of death is horrific, but the resilience that follows gives me some hope that we may win the ultimate battle. More than that, I am eternally fascinated by the relationships that form in the face of hardship. Families are born. They support one another. They bond in ways they never would have otherwise. And somehow, they manage to prosper, even as they confront horrors and nightmares.
“That has ever been my focus. I began my life as a Sorcerer. My class was meant to manipulate ice,” she revealed, summoning an icicle above her hand. “That was so, so very long ago. I was a naïve child.”
“What happened?”
“I saw suffering. Famine. I saw people’s lives ruined due to scarcity of resources,” she answered. “In the beginning, I was blessed with a magic attunement. A disappointment and a triumph in a single line on my status.”
“Magic doesn’t seem so bad.”
She laughed again. “Oh, it is one of the most prized attunements in all of existence.”
“The triumph.”
“Just so.”
“Where does the disappointment come in, though?” Elijah asked.
“Do you know that a dragon’s scales are only partially representative of their nature?” she asked.
Elijah took a sip of his coffee, then shrugged. “I never really gave it much thought.”
“You would be the only dragon to never think about the color of his scales,” she said, amused. “Most of us obsess over it, and I am no exception. Do you know what gold represents?”
“Prosperity?”
“Indeed. For me, it was a sub-attunement,” she explained. “I should have been born with white scales. And yet, I had gold. Can you guess what that means?”
Elijah shook his head.
“Good. Honesty. None of us really knows, though most of us have theories that we will espouse, given the slightest provocation. Are the scales more representative of our nature than the line on our status? Or does it represent a failure in how we were raised? Perhaps a dilution of the bloodline? For my part, I believe the difference in attunement and scale color is tied to potential. I’ve banked my entire development on that very notion.
“I saw the suffering around me, and I chose to act. To devote myself to recovery after the war.”
“War?”
“One of many, my son. We stand at the pinnacle of the multi-verse, but we are not the only ones who have reached the peak. And those who climb so high are ever jealous and cognizant of their place among peers. That leads to conflict.”
“I see,” Elijah breathed, imagining the sort of war that would sunder the prosperity he’d seen in the Empire of Scale.
“In this case, the conflict came from within.”
“Like the one in my core vision?”
“Nothing so grand, I am afraid,” she allowed. “The inciting incident has long been forgotten, and the war is no more than a blip in our long and infamous history. I was young, though. I lacked the context to see the cyclical nature of prosperity and hardship – a coincidence of timing for which I am forever grateful.
“I could have protected my people by becoming a masterful mage. That path would have been easier. However, I wanted to end the violence. I wanted to ensure that my people never suffered. So, I embraced the heritage of my scales and gradually shifted my path. The easiest part was taking hybrid evolutions that took me closer to an administrative role. I also structured my cultivation appropriately. But more than anything, I altered my mindset. I embraced selflessness. I let the love for my people envelop me. I actively chose to give them everything.
“Then, one day, my dominant attunement changed. Magic to Prosperity. I was a deity, then. Most would have long since given in to the inevitability of the system’s evaluation. But I proved that we are not fixed in time or nature. We can all change, even if all of our traditions tell us otherwise.
“That is the other reason I find newly integrated worlds so intriguing. They do not know the things we knew. They don’t accept that their fates are sealed. They do what they must to survive, and in that endeavor, they change. They become better – or sometimes worse – versions of themselves. I believe that we could learn much from seeing such things.”
Elijah frowned. “The integration killed billions, and that was just on Earth.”
“I know.”
“It feels a little callous to look at them like…like a science experiment.”
“I want to say that I would have saved them if I could have, but that is not true. Doing so would do them no favors. This is a harsh multi-verse. There is beauty here. Wonders beyond reckoning. But soft people do not survive. At best, they live tiny, inconsequential lives, easily forgotten. At worst, they never get the chance to do even that.”
“But why?” Elijah asked. It had been on his mind for the longest time, and he felt that Kirlissa was the best person to answer the most important question that burned within his mind. “Why does the World Tree integrate worlds? Earth wasn’t perfect, but it was comparatively stable.”
“The World Tree expands because that is its nature. You, of all people, should understand that.”
“Can’t anything be done to soften the blow?”
“That is one of the reasons the system exists in the way it does,” she answered. “But know that the pain and suffering does have another purpose.”
“The Ravener.”
“Just so. You have felt the barest hint of his awareness. You know that he will not stop until he has consumed everything. The World Tree holds him at bay, and the system keeps the abyss from invading integrated worlds. At the same time, it gives you all a chance. Perhaps, one day, it will help us overcome the Ravener, and we can at last know some degree of safety. That is my ultimate goal, my son. I only want to protect. To help everyone prosper.
“In the meantime,” she continued. “Hardship will remain the whetstone upon which we will sharpen our claws. For despite appearances, we remain at war. The front lines are far away, but the abyss still encroaches upon our reality. The Ravener ever hungers. Remember that as you develop, my child. Internalize it, and never let it go.”
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