The Hermit, The Tower, The World (Vol.2 Complete)

26th of Inandyl - 4th Serrin

Orendell finally released Calas from his obligation, his punishment, hours later. It was about an hour or so before dawn he figured from the hues in the sky. At least flight was no longer an issue after his Paragon's relentless instruction.

Calas found his open window, landed on the sill, and entered his room once more. Carefully, he hopped back down from the ledge to his desk, and back down to the floor. Calas shuddered, a ruffle of feathers splaying, as he attempted to shift back into his own skin.

There was a trepidation in him that it might not work as Orendell had played on his fears all night long, and this was definitely the biggest one. Thankfully, he found that he was able to shift back into his own skin with relative ease. Relief flooded him as he breathed, propped up against his desk, still seated on the floor.

He sat there for several long minutes with his head toward the ceiling. He thought maybe he should get used to the gritty feeling in his eyes, but Calas supposed it all depended on how far Orendell wanted to take it. Calas took small comfort in the fact that there was still a pact that bound them together in some way. It was likely the reason he was still alive as there was a promise he made to the god that loomed over him, but that he couldn't recall.

Testing his body, he stretched every muscle in his legs, arms, and back, trying to alleviate the dull, persistent ache. He knew from experience that it would take time for the tightness to subside after being in a different shape for so long. The other side effects he would just have to ignore for now, until he had more time to sort through them internally.

There was likewise no time for sleep. All he could do was clean up before he had to meet the mouse—Serea— at first bell. He suppressed a shudder at the thought of mice, pushing down the unbidden feeling of nausea that had become linked with it. Orendell was a clever God. Clever and cruel when angered, as he found out. Being forced to hunt and kill mice all night in the Eldwood was supposed to make him more used to, more willing, to do the same in the future. Calas knew this kind of torture as he had seen it before within his own family.

Unfortunately for both him and Orendell, Calas meant what he said about the human mouse, the girl Serea, in that he would not be the one to put her in harm's way. If that meant that Orendell would subject his terrors onto Calas instead, well, that was just how it was going to be.

Calas finally stood then, before he drifted off against his desk on the floor. At least I won't have to worry about losing my edge here anymore. He thought while cleaning himself up, trying to find the silver lining in the whole situation.

It was definitely something he had reflected on during this past term in which he was blissfully boring more often than not. No fighting, save for combat class, but no real fighting. No tense situations to try and talk out of. No murderous intent to be on alert for. Until now. He supposed he should be thankful for the reminder that peace in his life was always short-lived.

Still not yet dawn, Calas grabbed "Empires of Eld" off his desk and headed out to the common room to wait until the first bell. He figured if he did fall asleep, at least she could wake him up if he waited there.

The Sanctum was dark and quiet when he arrived, but that was no surprise. He chose a smaller hearth with a setting with two plush, high-backed chairs before it and quickly made a fire to warm himself and read by. The bath helped his muscles, but his bones still felt stiff. He supposed that was better than the alternative, not being in his original form at all, as he sat and found his place in the old tome.

Thankfully, the book had not put him to sleep as the subject matter was extremely relevant to the information he had sought. It talked about the practices of the people called the Solia, at the time, as something unique. This was also the first mention of what the author called "aetheric threads" and defined them as spindles of raw mana.

They stated that according to the Solia, these threads were visible to the naked eye and easily manipulated by conjoining them together. The author expressed some serious doubts about this information and stated a plethora of reasons as to why this was not possible. The foremost of these arguments being that the aforementioned threads were not visible at all, much less to the naked eye.

Despite the obvious point that the author could not see these threads, they reported that this was firmly what the Solia people believed and practiced. When asked to describe it, the Solia likened it to weaving a basket of differing threads to make patterns of condensed mana.

Calas suddenly became aware of someone in the seat next to him the moment before a cheerful voice greeted him.

"Good morning." Serea sang, more like a bird than a mouse. Or maybe he was imagining things. Gods he was tired.

Calas sighed, mentally mustering the energy for the day as he marked his place in his book and set it on the table between them.

"My, you're chipper in the morning, mouse." His voice was a low rumble, shifting his seated posture and his gaze to rest on her face. He felt his own features soften, though, once he saw her face illuminated by the low fire light and his tone lightened as well. "But, good morning."

"Sorry, did you not sleep at all last night?" Her hands cover her mouth in apology, the volume of her voice greatly diminished. There seemed to be real concern in her question.

He groaned inwardly, but only rolled his eyes and thought, I must look pretty rough still. Not that I would tell her the reason for it. He recalled the image of her that Orendell sent; the one that caused him to be so stupid as to defy a god, and a sinful smile played over his face.

"Are you interested in my sleeping habits now?" It was out of his mouth before he could stop himself, but the look on her face was priceless. She even loosened her scarf as if that would explain the blush on her cheeks.

"Please don't answer that." Calas shook his head to try to stop himself from wondering what she might have been thinking at that moment. He nearly laughed but covered it by clearing his throat. "So where are we headed today, mouse, to find these notes of yours?"

"Not find. It's just a bit of a walk is all." She shrugged as she stood, but waited for him to put the fire to rights before moving away.

Fire reduced to harmless embers on the stone, he found Serea in front of him as he turned, proffering his book which he accepted from her with gratitude.

"Lead on, mouse."

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

She turned away from him and he followed her out of the Sanctum and into the crisp morning air. It was a quiet, peaceful morning, as Serrin generally was, and Calas took the quiet walk as an opportunity to stretch his human muscles. They still ached.

Every slight shift of his posture rewarded him with a pop or a crack from his bones that settled back into the correct place. Each one granted a different level of relief from the twinge that had been bugging him for hours now. He apologized to Serea each time, but he was not sorry. It felt so good he could weep.

After the cracking noises ceased, he realized that they were still going east, but hadn't recalled there being anything further in this direction. And yet, they continued to a rather deserted part of campus with a bridge spanning a chasm to what appeared to be a guard post.

He noticed Chou trembling, hiding away in Serea's scarf and asked, concerned, if she was alright.

"It gets really windy on the bridge and Chou had a bad experience." Serea explained calmly while she checked that the scarf was secured.

There were so many questions that ran through Calas' mind, but none of them seemed particularly useful. In fact, so many of the questions he had, already had several follow up questions, so he remained silent as he followed her quickly over the bridge.

Stopping at the foot of the tall tower on the other side of the bridge, he peered up and out to the mountains and town below. It was an impressive view, and he turned to her to remark on it, but the thought died on his lips as she opened the heavy, tower door. Calas was shocked that it was light enough that she could enter. Not only was the place unguarded, but unlocked, too? Resigned to the fact that it wasn't worth asking about, he followed her in.

Chou darted out immediately after the door was closed and she floated over to the stairs with Serea. The station appeared empty inside of all but dust. The space was open, he noticed, but dreary as he climbed the stairs, still following the girl and her familiar.

He was shocked again when he arrived upstairs by the contrast of this space which was cozy and clean. There was a desk with a magic fueled lamp and a wooden chair against an adjacent wall. On the other side was a modest bookshelf that only held three tomes. Also impressive were the three large windows that let in a large amount of natural lighting, even in the din of morning.

"Well, this is cozy." He remarked in awe as she had already started sorting through papers at the desk. Calas assessed these new surroundings further so that maybe he could answer some of those questions from earlier for himself.

He peered out one of the lower windows asking no one in particular, "It looks like a watch tower from the outside, but is it just for show?" There was a pause as he directed the next question to her. "And no one comes here?"

She only glanced in his direction as she started laying out pages on the desk. "Not that I've seen, but I've only started coming here just before our mock exams."

He closed the distance between them as she answered and on the way, spotted another feature of the room.

"You even have a couch."

"More like I made a couch." She scoffed derisively and peeked at him over her shoulder between rifling through papers. "It's just an old mattress we found and cleaned up."

He was barely listening though as he tested it by sitting first. Satisfied with the first test, he turned his body and plopped back on the lumpy cushion to lay on it. After shifting around to find the best spot, he propped a hand behind his head and heaved a sigh.

"A bit lumpy, but surprisingly comfortable." He muttered to no one at all as his eyes lulled for a minute.

"I think this is all of them." Her voice startled him awake and he realized that he had dozed. How long was I out? He wondered as he pulled his legs back toward his chest and jumped off his hands so he landed on his feet. The movement urged his heart to beat faster and kept him from nodding off again. He straightened, wiping the gritty sleep from his eyes as he walked over to the desk and examined all that she had placed out for him.

She wasn't kidding when she told him that she took a bunch of notes. He smiled softly at this display of studious organization and after his initial familiarization of them, he asked to sit in the only chair in the room. This was her space, after all, and there were certain rules for guests to follow. Despite what Fara thought, he actually knew and practiced them.

He started with what looked to be the first notes on the "stupid rusty beetle" and chuckled inwardly. She was definitely not shy to be blunt, dismissive, and scathing in her assessment about the subject matter, said stupid beetle, and more importantly how she felt about the particular object.

Past all that, her assessments were thorough, detailed, and very descriptive. He was glad that he read some of the passages in the "Empires of Eld" this morning as she consistently used terms like "aero thread", "earthen thread, "pure aetheric thread", and so on just like the Solia people supposedly did centuries ago. Also, similar to the Solia, she noted the use of several different types of knots to conjoin different threads together. Like weaving a basket, I guess.

Finally, he turned a page and found several drawings in her notes with strange labels like "unknown section upper A" and was perplexed. He stared at the interconnected lines in a sort of spider web-like pattern with strange notations at intersections and unknown labels for each line.

The labels he began to understand when applying the theory that these were threads, spindles of mana, in different forms. "AT" could stand for aero thread, "PT" could stand for pure thread or maybe it was pyro thread? Using that logic, Calas figured that the notch-like notations at certain intersections must be different types of knots or conjoining types. Without more context though, it was hard to know what the whole section actually was.

"Hey, what is this?" Calas leaned back, folding an arm over the back of the chair to get a better look at Serea, who was reading on the couch. He proffered the paper with the drawings in his hand toward her.

She looked up from reading the "Empires of Eld". Good, she needs to read it just as much as I do, Calas thought as he got up to meet her on the couch. Instead of sitting on it, he crouched down in front of her, holding out the page with the drawing for her to see it better. She peered at the page in thought.

"Oh," she sounded a little embarrassed, but nodded, "these are the parts of the beetle that I didn't understand so I had to draw the weave to use it later on Chou."

Calas flipped the page and inspected the drawing again with the context of calling it a weave. She could understand part of the spell, but not all of it? Maybe it was about interpreting the purpose? He hesitated, trying to phrase the question he really wanted to ask.

"When you say, 'draw the weave', do you mean your interpretation of what the spell might look like?"

Something changed in her demeanor when she shook her head and the subtle change set him on edge quite suddenly. He swallowed his instincts hard when her voice became smaller, more resigned.

"No, I drew the weave exactly as it was on the beetle or as near to it as I could," she stated meekly.

Everything he endured last night screamed at him that she was prey and he had to breathe through it to banish those thoughts completely. A faint tingle at his ribs made him set his jaw with a stark determination. He focused pointedly on her words; from the girl, the human girl, called Serea.

Her answer confused him or maybe he was just distracted from tapping down the wild, untamed side of himself that had been running amok all night. Either way, he was relieved when the sensation on his ribs abated.

"You saw the weave. The mana." He was in awe and the statement turned into more of a question.

"Yes," she nervously glanced away from him as if ashamed, plucking at her nails subconsciously. Realization struck her and she peered up at him directly, a deep yearning in her blue eyes. "Can't everyone here?"

He breathed out a pitying laugh. Oh, sweet mouse. You seriously don't know how special you are. He softened his voice because he knew the truth was not what she was longing for.

"No, Serea, not everyone can. It's more likely that few can." He heaved a sigh before locking eyes with her calmly. "I would say far fewer can see the very fabric of magic that you can based on these drawings."

"Oh…" She breathed. It wasn't her normal voice. It was distant like the look in her eyes as she drifted away from him, like she had on the stairs last night for a moment. Her complexion paled and Chou fluttered over with a worried trill as she perch on her shoulder, a spindly hand on her neck.

His heart sank right down into the pit in his stomach. Calas knew what that felt like. When he realized that something inside himself was so profoundly different that it threatened to tear him apart from the inside.

It seemed he was still dealing with it, but that didn't make it any easier to witness Serea go through it, too. And from that expression on her face, Calas knew that he had said the wrong thing. Again.