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

1st of Yalech - 1st Kaldros

The rest of the Sunflame Dawn concluded without incident though Calas was more attentive to the sensations that came from the thread. The morning after Rea's transformation, Calas sent a jolt of mana-like sonar through the thread at her. To his satisfaction, he was rewarded with a reply in the very next instant. Even though the sending he received was filled with an emotion like anger, Calas still smiled broadly to himself. It reminded him that she was still a vicious little mouse despite her new height.

The day after that, the sun quieted its bombardment of harsh rays and Verdalune had finally arrived. As the blinding light dimmed, the world was revealed anew with lush growth filling the greenhouses and mountain side all around the Court. The town of Perlshaw below also found trees, garden beds, and wild flowers bursting with vibrant life.

On this morning too, Calas sent a bolt of mana through the thread as he ate breakfast in the Great Hall. It fostered a similar reaction and he schooled his face from the grin he kept inside. Revenge must have been sweet for Rea later that morning when she repaid him in kind at his desk in his own room.

The sting through his finger came without warning or preamble and Calas winced as he clenched his fist. It was followed up by a wave of the same smug satisfaction he had had when he sent his own little prod. Instead of anger, though, like she had, Calas sent her back amusement as he thought to himself, touché, vicious mouse.

What he received back was curiosity and Calas could almost see the tempest in her eyes change to that shrewd, calculating part of her in his mind's eye. How her face scrunched and her lips pouted as she puzzled out whatever mystery her mind was picking apart like one of her weaves. Calas had to adjust his mental image, he realized, as Rea's face no longer held that girlish trait, but was now thinner and held more beauty than cuteness.

"Library." The wisp of a thought broke through his mental restructuring of her face. Calas could have sworn it sounded like the feeling of her, as strange as that seemed.

Tentatively, Calas reached back through the bond and sent a question of his own.

"Now?"

There wasn't a word in response this time, but a warm, affirming feeling. It felt inviting and he drummed his fingers on the desk slowly.

His own curiosity piqued, Calas checked on her direction and found that she was in the general area of the Midnight Stacks. Shrugging, he left the Sanctum and made his way to the Library.

As he descended the long stone stairwell of the magical Library, Calas used the thread to pinpoint where in the stacks she was. He needed neither the built in enchantments of finding spells that lined the walls or to ask the desk clerk on duty and it took him no time at all.

Rea was at a podium desk with a large tome opened and her notes strewn about it. It wasn't lost on him that she was likely at the standing desk because they were too tall for her a couple days ago. Clad in another outfit of Cira's in brown and red hues, she turned from scratching at her notes to face him and gave him a dazzling, excited smile.

His heart was in his throat in an instant and Calas did his best to swallow it and smile back at her as he joined Rea at the podium.

"You seem in an awfully good mood. Has Verdalune gone to your head already?" Calas whispered to her in a jeering tone.

"Not at all," Rea began in a similarly hushed tone, "I'm just pleased that my experiment was a success." Chou gave a breezy sound that mirrored Rea's enthusiasm from her usual perch on Rea's shoulder.

"Experiment?" Calas quirked a brow at her and folded his arms, though his expression was amused.

"I was able to summon you here with naught but a thought." Her tone had turned haughty with a playful undertone.

Calas didn't mind the confident tone in her altered voice. He was too busy trying to memorize the features of her new, radiant face which regarded him with the same playful grin that her tone suggested. He had to take a breath to clear the electric sensation that ran through him.

"So that was your voice that I felt." He tried to commit the feeling to memory as he leaned over to see the tome she had open and his stomach dropped.

The yellowed pages were opened to blocks of small-fonted text and a rendition of the wendigo mask; the mark of Orendell. Calas felt himself take another calming breath as he skimmed the contents and confirmed that she was still researching to find Uriell. He wondered how long it would take the clever crow to figure it out.

"Still learning about the gods, huh." He stated as he read.

"Mhmm. Though it's not as straightforward as I had hoped." There was real disappointment in her voice.

"Nothing is with those fickle creatures…" He muttered bitterly, more to himself than to Rea.

"You know about the Gods of the Nine Heavens?" Her eyes were bright with anticipation and a pang of guilt hit him in the chest.

"Not as much as you it seems." Calas deflected, inclining his head toward the book and her cheeks heated beside him. The reaction wasn't exactly shy, but Calas found himself wondering where it came from. "Just curious, but how interesting was this mask you saw?" Calas tapped a finger on the picture of the mark of Orendell and donned a neutral expression when he locked eyes with her.

"Oh," she balked, averting her eyes from his as she pushed back some loose strands of hair behind her ear. It only gave him a good view of the red tint to her ears, the bird mark on her neck, and Chou on her shoulder, lazily batting her wings. "I've just never seen anything like it, is all." She made a show of tidying her notes into a more condensed pile.

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"Uh-huh. And this little research project is just," Calas shrugged as he leaned an elbow on the podium casually so he sank a few inches to be face-to-face with her. "Idle curiosity." It was a statement, but the question was implied since he skirted around another truth that he wasn't sure how she would react when she learned it.

"Um, mhmm." Rea intoned uncertainly as she glanced from him to the page.

"So tell me, what's so special about it?"

Rea bit her lower lip as she stared intently at her notes and the tome in front of her. Calas didn't know if he should be excited or jealous at the notion that "Uriell" had made such an impression on her. As she worried on her lip, Calas found himself wondering how invested in this research Rea would be if he had kissed her that night.

Calas pushed the thought away as he straightened suddenly. "It's alright if you don't want to tell me." He shrugged again and leafed through the tome. "I was just curious.

"Now that you have summoned me, dear Rea," Calas went on after a long pause between them, "what would you have me do?"

At this her expression brightened and she closed the tome on the podium. "Simple, wolfish Calas," she responded sweetly, "it's time for lunch. Don't we always have lunch on Kaldros?"

He laughed as the midday bell started ringing. Her statement wasn't exactly a lie since they had lunch together fairly often through the break, but it was almost a flirtatious callback to what he told Fara the other day. Thinking about that kiss must have really messed with Calas' perception for him to think Rea would be flirting with him.

Then again, she was pretty boastful about "summoning" him here through their bond. She was also holding the information of Uriell back from him for some reason. It made him even more insanely curious as to why she did so. If she couldn't find Uriell through her research, would she tell him about it? What was she so worried about if she told him?

"Indeed we do." He agreed as she picked up her notes from the podium. Calas stepped back and gave her a formal bow as the ringing of the bells subsided before he offered her his arm. "Shall we?" He finished with a wolfish grin.

Her face evolved through several expressions: surprise, mirth, suspicion, thoughtfulness, and finally satisfaction in the span of a few seconds. At the end of it, she took his arm easily at her new height and they made their way out of the Stacks toward the Great Hall.

2nd of Yalech - 1st Auryn

Calas woke with a start before dawn. Instinctively, he reached for his ribs, but no, the mark was still cold. He laughed aloud at himself as the feeling of smug satisfaction came through the bond. It was accompanied by the whisper of a word.

"Practice." Like the day before, Calas heard it in an eerie resemblance of Rea's voice, but he felt it echo in his mind.

He had to admit that turn about was fair play and as he rose and readied himself, he returned what he thought was the feeling of a word.

"Vicious."

"Eager," was the reply he received as he packed his bag.

"Early," he sent back an image, like the sendings he received from Orendell, of the sun not yet risen out his window.

There was silence after that and he left his room to follow the thread to her location, the common room. She stood with her arms crossed and her hip popped out in what looked to be her old leggings as they only went down to the midway point on her calves. The curves her silhouette made now were all too clear to Calas' wolf-enhanced eyes, but they snapped up quickly to meet her gaze. Rea immediately turned in his direction, so quickly that Chou fluttered off her shoulder.

"What was that?" She asked and he could see the insistence in her eyes. Calas frowned as he wasn't sure if she meant his leering or that the image sending somehow got lost within the mana between them. He decided on the latter.

"I meant you're early. The sun's not even up yet, Rea!" He closed the distance between them and Chou chose Calas' shoulder to perch on instead.

"No, I mean, how did you do that? I saw— felt?— an image, not just the echo of your voice."

Calas blinked, pleasantly surprised that the sending had worked. "I'll explain it on the way."

He explained the mechanics and did his best to describe what he felt when he sent the image to her as they walked to the pitch together in the blush of dawn. It was difficult in the way that describing the wind was difficult, but by the time they reacted their destination, Rea thought she understood.

Calas was careful not to mention anything of his pact to the god she was researching as he still had no notion of what she would say or do about, well, any of it. Spiteful gods who wanted him to bring her to the Eldwood, shape changing, the fact that he was Uriell, that kiss. That was a basket full of scorpions if he ever saw one.

When they arrived on the pitch, there was enough light for Calas to see by, but Rea was a different story.

"Perfect." Calas declared when she told him it was difficult to see.

"Perfect?" She repeated with disgust.

"Absolutely. It's the perfect opportunity for us to review what you've learned without relying on your eyes." Calas smiled, but Rea only sighed at him.

"You remember breathing?"

"Yes." Her tone was agitated.

"Show me." Calas stated calmly.

Rea began but after the first full breath, Calas could tell her emotions were bleeding through.

"Slow down. It's not a race. It's a breath." Again his tone was measured and calm. Calas could feel the anchor of his mentorship ground him as he monitored her breathing practice.

"Good. Add the body. Open stance." She followed his instruction and moved in the slow, controlled way he had taught her. When she settled into the form, something was off, though he couldn't place it yet. He hoped and prayed that he didn't have to tell her to tuck in her tail again.

"Small circle." Calas muttered as he began to pace around her looking for the imperfection his instincts developed over years of practice told him was there. Her arms circled around a small invisible point in front of her and still it struck Calas as odd. Not hips, thank the gods, he thought as he stared. The feet maybe? Calas could only tell that something was off balance and there was only one way to find out.

"Ground your stance." He called abruptly, and even though it was not the next exercise in the sequence of circles, Rea only hesitated for a moment before she obeyed. Whatever it was, was still there and so he pushed her shoulder and Rea was flung off balance, having to catch herself before she fell to the dew covered pitch.

"I thought you said that shouldn't happen." She whined at him.

"It shouldn't, if you do it right." He chuckled.

"What was wrong with it then?" She asked in a flat voice.

"Have you considered how tall you are now? The length of your arms and legs?" The question drifted between them as she thought about it. Then she shifted from foot to foot and Calas watched again as she did, the calculating tempest raged in her eyes. The muscles in her new frame must feel vastly different from her mouse-type body.

After a moment Rea spread her arms out wide as if testing them like a bird might splay their wings. Calas stood by silently as she worked through a few other warm ups he had taught her early on in the break. With each new movement, her stance got wider and deeper as if she had held back a portion of herself previously.

Calas smiled as she began to go through all the stances and forms on her own in this updated figure of hers. Once she began again, Calas joined her in them as she started to relearn and become used to what she had already learned all over again.