“She can easily double our collective Balar Rank,” Vason said. “It’s quite something to experience.”
“That’s… incredible.” Vir realized he’d never considered that aspect of a mejai. All those slotted orb weapons and armor he’d seen at the armorer’s shop started to make sense.
“The worst part is when the magic wears off. Then you’re normal again, and it feels so horrible. It’s like waking from a dream where you’d turned into the most powerful warrior in the land.”
If that was true, Vir was missing out. No doubt, having a mejai boost him would be an enormous asset, but it wasn’t like mejai were so easy to come across. Again, his thoughts drifted to Maiya. If she learned to power magic in his armor and weapons…
Vir couldn’t wait for that day.
“What about warriors with both offensive and defensive capabilities? Wouldn’t that mean they couldn’t use their powers to the fullest in a party?”
“Actually, that’s kinda the ultimate,” Tia replied. “If you have a party of generalists, people can step in for each other if someone’s injured or if you’re up against multiple opponents and need multiple tanks or damage dealers. Rare to ever come across such a well-dialed party like that, though.”
“Plus, isn’t it lonely?” Vason said, staring into the crackling fire. “I know when I was out by myself, the nights always felt a lot longer and colder. A good party’s like a group of traveling friends. Life’s better in good company, don’t you think?”
Vir chuckled. “I imagine it is.”
Vason and Haymi went to bed, while Tia, Vir, and Neel were assigned to the first watch.
“We aren’t getting paid enough to do night watches,” Tia grumbled as the pair walked the perimeter of the ledge. From up here, anyone traveling the road from below was visible for miles. It truly made for an excellent vantage.
“Might as well make our jobs as easy as we can, eh?” she said, grinning at Vir. He had to agree.
“So,” Tia said after a half hour of uneventful patrols. Only Neel seemed to enjoy the outing, his tail swishing left and right the entire time.
“So,” Vir replied.
“What’s your dream?” she asked.
“My dream, huh?”
Vir fell into thought. For so long, he’d been driven more by goals and less by dreams. Reunite with Maiya was more of a goal. Learning about the Ashen Realm, and possibly entering it, was also a goal. He certainly wasn’t excited about it.
If he had a dream…
“I guess I just want to fit in. I’ve… always kinda done my own thing. It’d be nice to have some friends for once. Maybe settle down somewhere. That kind of thing.”
“Huh. Can’t say I expected that. Thought you’d say I wanna conquer all the Ash Beasts in the Known World, or something. I dunno, you just give me that vibe.”
Vir laughed. “What about you?”
“Altani Magical Academy,” she said.
Come to think of it, Maiya wanted to go there too.
“But you’re not a mejai?”
Tia pursed her lips. “I mean, I am. I have a Lesser Affinity for Fire magic. But I’m pretty average at it. My Talents are far stronger.”
“Won’t that impact your chances of admission?”
“Nah,” she replied cooly. “Even Talent wielders get accepted. You just have to be strong. I’ve been to a lot of places, Param, but the Altani cities take the cake. Especially Alt Ashani, their capital. There really isn’t anywhere else like it.”
“Seems like everyone who’s ever seen their cities swoons over them,” Vir replied.
“You will too if you ever go there. I was always skeptical when they said Alt Ashani was built by the gods… but half the city floats, Param. Like a Vimana. No power in this age can pull off something like that. And it’s everything else too. You should see the…”
Tia went on for another hour until their shift ended, narrating stories of the Altani that seemed too fantastical to believe. Waterfalls that flowed up instead of down, perfectly manicured gardens—all open to the public free of cost—free transportation across the city, and more.
She did such a good job of selling the city that he genuinely wanted to visit it someday.
Vir returned to his own cave with Neel, but sleep wasn’t forthcoming, so his mind turned to Prana Blade once again.
He’d been mulling over how to make progress on that ability, but thus far, nothing had worked. Getting up, he retrieved his iron katar. Thanks to his effort expanding his blood pathways, he could now channel prana from the ground all the way up through his arm. That was necessary for Empower. But whether he used ground prana or his own body’s prana, the question was how to control it after it left his body.
Vir took a deep breath and sucked blood from his feet up into his legs, creating a suction that drew in Ash prana from the ground. Guiding the prana up his body had become second nature at this point, and soon, the supersaturated blood was at his arm.
Normally, he kept his body’s prana under tight control. This, too, had become a subconscious act, and he did it even while asleep. Without it, his prana would leak into the air, and he’d be as prana starved and weak as he was back at Brij.
Relaxing his control slightly, he allowed his prana to escape, but only through a tiny hole on his palm. The prana—normally bound to his blood—rushed out of his body into the air. At least, that was the hope. He’d made the ‘hole’ smaller this time, trying to direct the prana flow, but it was of no avail. The prana simply dissipated in all directions the moment it left his body. Perhaps useful if he had access to a deluge of Ash prana—maybe he could’ve used it as an extreme short-range attack—but with the density being what it was, he doubted anyone would even feel it.
He was close. But the final piece of the puzzle still eluded him. Did he need a way of guiding the prana once it left his body? Or was the solution internal? Could he do something while it was still in his body to get it to stick to his blade?
Neel lifted his head and whined.
“I know, I’m coming to bed. Sorry for waking you, buddy,” Vir said, scratching the bandy’s neck.
When Vir retired, his dreams were filled with floating cities, prana, and Janak’s voice, beckoning him to the Ashen Realm.
Little did he know that it wasn’t the Ashen Realm he’d need to worry about—it was the mountain pass they’d cross the very next day.
9ARYAN
“Where are you?” muttered a black-haired Mejai of Realms in an ornate robe. He stood hunched over a map of the region, his eyes furrowed in frustration.
The shelter they cloistered in could hardly be called a cabin. Hastily constructed and later abandoned, it was one of several hideouts Hiranya maintained for its intelligence operatives in other countries.
Today, it housed a half dozen mejai, the least of them a Greater Mejai of Ash, all of whom kept a close watch on the red-skinned, four-armed giant who stretched out on a nearby bench.
“As much as it pleases me to watch you struggle, I tire of this boredom,” the four-armed half-giant—Cirayus—thundered. “Come, sing for me. Tell me at least one of you can sing?”
“Watch your words, demon. You’ll have your fight soon enough. He cannot hide from us for long,” the Mejai of Realms replied.
“Oho? What makes you say that? He’s hidden from you for a week now, has he not? Such superior mejai ought to be able to find one little gray demon, don’t you think?”
The Mejai of Realms ground his teeth. As much as he wanted to deny it, the demon was right. His men had spent every waking hour combing Parul, searching for any sign or rumor of anyone matching the assassin’s description. Despite knowing their prey’s most likely path, they’d found no trace of the boy.