《The Mirror at the Edge of the World》


 A Wail that Pierces the Sky pt. 1

    The bright light of the lumena in the sky shined on the white cloud just as the prow of an airship emerged from it. The vessel had a long hull, with fans of white feather-like sails at both sides and on the three masts. The air was mostly still, but the sails waved around as if moved by strong winds.


    A pair of huge ears twitched around to pick up every last detail of the air currents and echoes coming from the world below. The owner of said ears had yellowish-brown fur, two powerful hind-legs, and a long thin tail, all of which would easily identify him as a young fei. He was leaning with both his front paws on the bulwark, eyes closed, taking in the faint smell of the breeze and the subtle sounds of both the sky surrounding him and the earth far below. The voice of the wind was gentle and regular, which was to be expected given that they were flying over the massive Morvhal plains.


    His musings were interrupted by his growling stomach. His ears drooped a little as he gently patted his belly. He had to forgo buying lunch in order to afford the boarding fee for his instrument, which he was carrying in a black case hanging from his shoulder. Not that he had much of a choice, since music was his only means of survival, but now he was so hungry that he might have traded one of the strings of his instrument for something to eat. Or, thinking twice, maybe one of his toes: he certainly needed his toes less than his instrument. Without even needing to look around, his ears picked up the noises of some of the ship''s crew on the lower deck enjoying a break from their hard work and eating something.


    Now, his nose was nowhere near as sophisticated as his ears, so much so that he could hear a door opening and the rattling sound of a creature slightly smaller than him scampering around on the deck way before picking up any smell, but, when he did, he almost froze for a moment. The heavenly aroma of baked goods forced him to turn around to see where it was coming from, and immediately he located the source. A tray carrying several different kinds of bread, probably fresh out the oven, was being transported on the head and over the round ears of a minute and nimble creature with fluffy fur and four legs, the tip of its long and fuzzy tail being wrapped around the handle of the tray so to keep it in balance. He had always thought of bread as some kind of plain food that you only eat to accompany something else, but that fragrance, coupled with his ravenous hunger, made that bread more attractive than anything he could think of in that particular moment.


    He had never seen the species of the one carrying the tray, in fact he couldn''t even identify at a glance if it was male or female, but by the purposefulness of its movements he deduced that it was another sentient species, like himself and all the loghral operating the ship, just one that he had never met before.


    While he was longingly staring at that veritable feast, a purple plumed loghra approached the small creature carrying the tray.


    "Hey", she barked, "Are you part of the staff here?"


    With a high-pitched and bubbly voice (which sounded feminine to Lirai), the little furball replied, "I''m sorry ma''am, I''m not. Would you like to¡­"


    "I''m asking the questions here. What are you doing carrying that tray of food around, then? Are you planning on selling those on this public vessel without a license?"


    Almost as if she was oblivious to the harshness of the loghra''s tone, the little creature smiled even wider, "Not at all, ma''am, I''m just¡­"


    The loghra opened her majestic wings, with their purple and electric-blue feathers spread out in a fan, while slowly extracting the claws on her front paws and showing her relatively small but sharp teeth. "You little ferrels think you can come here and act as if it''s all of a sudden your own home, right? What are you even, a mava or something? Think we need more of you little runts littering up the place?"


    Lirai was astounded that someone from the staff could be allowed to treat a passenger like that, but then he noticed that the loghra wasn''t wearing the mauve scarf of the navy, which meant that she was a passenger like them. His ears tried to pick up any noise signifying someone from the crew reacting to that, but the hesitant shuffling noises all around made him realise that, although everyone was aware of what was happening, nobody seemed to want to be the one to defuse the situation.


    Not even thinking, Lirai extracted his violin from its case. It probably wasn''t tuned and, being a cellist, the violin wasn''t his best instrument, but someone had to do something quickly before things escalated further. He breathed in and out as he expertly positioned the bow on the strings, closing his eyes, then let a high tone escape from his violin, soft at first, then stronger and stronger, with a gentle vibrato to make it more expressive. From that first note, he let out a slow, relaxing melody. He quickly touched an activating harmonic with one of his fingers, turning his music from a regular melody into an enchanted one. All other noises from his immediate vicinities ceased at once, as all spectators became spellbound from his simple enchantment.


    Allowing the musical phrase to come to its natural end, he then stopped playing, opened his eyes and spoke to the purple feathered loghra. "I won''t pretend to understand what in that little lady''s actions made you so mad, but maybe, if you''ll let her explain herself, you''ll see that it''s not worth it to make that much of a fuss."


    Although he tried to sound as calm as possible, the fingers with which he was still holding his bow started visibly trembling.


    For a moment, the loghra seemed to relax from her aggressive pose, but then she growled, "Mind your own business, fei. The next time you''ll try to use your magic on me I''m going to¡­"


    "Enough!" Interrupted a third female voice.


    It was another loghra. Her plumage was white with some pale pink spots, especially on the tips of her feathers, and she wasn''t wearing a mauve scarf either.


    The white loghra addressed the other one, "Dheeli, you know what the Master would think of your behaviour."


    Dheeli scoffed. "Spare me."


    Then she turned around without a word and left.


    The new arrival addressed Lirai and the red furball with an apologetic sigh. "I''m sorry about that. I assure you that most of the Princedom''s citizens are more welcoming than her."


    As if nothing had happened, the small one bubbled, "Oh, it''s nothing."


    Lirai cleared his throat to chase away the nervousness. "Thank you for intervening."


    The loghra sighed again. "Even though she went way too far, you do know that you''re not allowed to sell anything on this ship, or anywhere else on Princedom grounds, without a license, right?"


    "Oh, don''t worry," the red one giggled, "I''m not selling anything. I just baked all of these because I want to make new friends and there is no better way to make friends than sharing a meal together. I''m headed toward the dining deck and I already have three new friends waiting for me there. Wanna join us? I have plenty of food for everyone to share and you''re both welcome!"


    Even though his ears perked up, Lirai put his front paws forward and answered, "Thank you very much, but I don''t know if I can accept such a generous offer from a stranger."


    She dismissed him with a paw wave. "Oh that''s easy enough to fix: my name is Nova and I''m a mava. What is your name?"


    A mava¡­ the loghra named Dheli had already mentioned that name. Lirai had heard that the mava were supposed to be a species of really agile climbers and that they were incredibly sociable. He didn''t know anything about them being good bakers though.


    "Um, I-I," he stuttered, "I''m Lirai and I''m a fei."


    The white loghra tilted her head. "Hold on. You said that you just baked those, right? How did you do it? As far as I know, they don''t have the right kind of oven on board and, even if they had it, you shouldn''t be allowed to use it unless you were part of the crew."


    "Eheh," she chuckled, "that''s a trade secret. Having an oven makes things a looooooot easier, but it''s not necessary to a mava like me."


    The loghra stared into space for a few moments, then responded, "I''l gladly accept your invite, then. I''m Leewa, by the way, a loghra."


    Lirai was still hesitant, but before he could mull it over some more Nova spoke again, "If you''re still worried about accepting food for free, how about you play something to us after you''re done eating? I know you only played for a few moments, but it was beautiful and I''d love to hear it again!"


    The fragrance of her bread filled his nose, making his stomach feel even emptier than it already was. Before responding he had to gulp again because of how watery his mouth had become. "Um¡­ okay then. I''m just warning you: I know I''m carrying a violin, but I actually happen to be a cellist, so I might not be able to play at my best."


    "Oh it''s fine, don''t be so shy." She winked. "It''s not like we''ll be judging you too harshly."


    Nova scurried off towards the dining deck and Lirai and Leewa followed her, though he couldn''t help but notice that Leewa seemed to fall behind a little. On the deck Lirai could see several sitting mats with centre-stands to place trays of food on. Sitting on some cushions on the mat Nova was leading them to he could see three other individuals, all belonging to different species. He recognised the young male dorpatchi, since those antlers were a dead giveaway, but aside from him he the other two species, at least not by sight. In fact, he found it a little difficult moving on from looking at the dorpa because of his surly scowl and ominous eyes. Of the others, one had pale blue fur, a pointy snout, and a bushy tail, while the other had long, gracious limbs, a sleek tail, short pink fur with a white collar-like mane around the neck of longer hair, and an elegant muzzle. Around the centre-stand and in front of the cushions for sitting someone, presumably the dining deck staff, had already placed bowls of cleaning water, as well as small towels.


    The one with pink fur enunciated with an elegant smile, "Why, such a handsome fei our little Nova managed to catch."


    Her voice was delicate, yet firm, like a melody of tubular bells, and she evidently made it a point to pronounce each syllable with care and clarity.


    "Pleased to meet you. I''m Lirai." He slurred, embarrassed from all those eyes pointed at him.


    The pink one bowed her head, "Pleased to make your acquaintance, Lirai. My name is Gyvar."


    "I think he''s never been out of the Fesai Republic," interjected Nova, "so I believe you should give the extended introduction."


    "Apologies: your Valdheel accent was so good I didn''t expect you to be a foreigner. My name is Gyvar and I''m a dhelil."


    "Don''t worry about it. Nova, how did you know I was never out of my home country?"


    "Intuition." She shrugged. When she placed the tray in the middle of the mat, on top of the centre-stand, Lirai stared at it intensely, almost forgetting that some of them had still to introduce themselves. He barely even noticed when Nova elbowed the dorpa at her side, inviting him to go next.


    He looked down and responded with a surprisingly juvenile voice. "Oh, uuh¡­ me name''s Sychrill. Ah''m a dorpa."


    Lirai couldn''t help but do a double take: Sychrill''s sweet and gentle voice clashed too hard against his harsh expression. His strong accent, by contrast, wasn''t uncharacteristic at all: even back home the dorpa he met had trouble blending in with the language.


    The one with blue fur stated, "I''m Heleine, a mikai."


    Her voice was warm and velvety, but her tone was kinda dry, or maybe a little hesitant. Perhaps she was a little embarrassed to be there, not unlike himself. He didn''t know much of the mikai, except that they came from a region in the far south and that they were carnivores.


    "There we go!" Interjected Nova, "How about we start digging in? My bread isn''t just bread, though: some of these have cheese and/or cura ham baked inside, so the herbivores should eat on this side of the tray, while carnivores can eat on this side, and omnivores can do whatever."


    After a general murmuring of agreement, everyone washed their front paws in the cleaning water and dried them up, right before grabbing a few loaves from the tray and Lirai had to consciously restrict himself in order not to swallow the entire thing in one bite. The crust was crunchy, but not dry, while the inside was warm and fluffy. He had never thought that bread could possibly be that good. He saw that the pink dhelil, despite having washed her front paws just like everyone else, wasn''t using them to actually eat, rather the bread almost seemed to move on its own, following the deliberate and elegant movements of her long tail.


    He was almost halfway through his second loaf when he noticed that the loghra with white and pink plumage not only had yet to introduce herself to the others, but had yet to even sit on the mat with the rest of them. Instead, she stood with her front paws between her hind-legs, her eyes closed and her wings open upwards so that her flight feathers could be caressed by the breeze. Occasionally, she would slightly wince and furrow her brow following some almost imperceptible twitches in her wings.


    Nova also looked at her and piped, "Hey Leewa!"


    The loghra finally opened her eyes and closed her wings. "Sorry what did you say?"


    "Aren''t you gonna eat?"


    Shaking her head as if to dissipate some dizziness, she replied, "Yeah, sorry, I was¡­ distracted."


    Lirai''s ear twitched. He thought he heard a note of concern in her hesitation.


    Tilting his head, he inquired, "Sorry if I interject, but is everything alright?"


    Leewa blinked a few times, glanced at the other guests at the mat, then answered, "Um¡­ yeah. I just thought I sensed something weird about the Flow."


    Both of his ears perked up. "The¡­ flow?"


    She pointed at the sails. "How do you think this airship is able to fly? It is powered by the Flow. Most loghral magic and technology is."


    He fiddled with the tip of his ear. "Sorry, I just came from Fesai, I don''t know much about Valdhea and its culture."


    "Well, you speak rather well for a newcomer."


    He smiled while his ears twitched with pride, "Us fei are good with anything involving sound, such as music and speech."


    Her eyes widened as her expression lit up. "Indeed. I''ve read that fei magic has all to do with music and is powered by sound, but I''ve never had a chance to delve into that subject as much as I wanted to. In fact, I was very surprised to be able to witness it myself just a little while ago. Say, would it be okay if I asked you some questions on the matter?"


    "Uh, sure. I just need to point out that I''m not an expert myself: I''m able to pull off some simple harmonic-induced enchantments and stuff like that, but nothing advanced because I''m more interested in making music than practicing magic."


    Her smile deflated just a little bit, but she politely responded, "Oh, not to worry: I would be happy even with some of the basics."


    This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.


    Then, for a few minutes nobody said a word, since they were all busy eating. Even Lirai was more concerned with what he was scoffing down than with his surroundings. Still, just as he was about to finish his meal, his ear suddenly perked up, catching an odd echo coming from beyond the ship: it was barely perceptible, yet he felt as though it was alarmingly loud for how far away its level of distortion made it seem. He noticed that Leewa''s wings also perked up as she closed her eyes with concern. He stood on his hind-legs, positioning his ears asymmetrically, so that it would be easier to pinpoint the origin of all the sounds he heard based on tiny differences in delay and volume. He heard it again and he turned his head in its direction as his ears both shot up.


    The velvety voice of the female mikai inquired, "Is everything alright?"


    Even though he wasn''t looking at her, he could tell by the properties of the sound of her voice that her face was pointed directly at him as she spoke, so he naturally understood that that question was directed at him. "I think I heard something. Like a distant rumble, though not quite as loud as thunder."


    Not even saying a word, Leewa got up on her legs and approached the bulwark, opening her wings as widely as possible. Loghral wings were a sight to behold: they said that other species could see better than the fei and that they could see colours that they couldn''t (including some extravagant thing called "yellow"), but even he thought that the figure of their strong and yet compact body gained an almost supernatural air of grace and elegance when they spread their wings. Lirai took his performance glasses from his instrument case and followed her.


    The plains below appeared like an vast succession of green hills, cultivated fields, small towns, and a few patches of wild vegetation. He could also see a few bodies of water traversing the terrain. In fact, it almost seemed like one such river flowed directly under a dark hill, which did strike him as rather odd. Then the hill moved and, a few moments later, he heard the rumble again. It was then that he realised that that was no hill, but some sort of colossal creature moving on four titanic legs; even with his glasses on he had trouble making out distinct shapes from such range. Moreover, any noise he heard coming from that area was too distorted by distance for him to be able to picture shapes from the echoes of the sounds around them.


    "Um," he addressed Leewa, "I can''t see very well what''s happening. Is that thing supposed to be there?"


    She shook her head. "I''ve never seen anything like it. I wouldn''t even be able to tell you what exactly that is."


    Everyone else joined them (and his ears picked up the noise of a lot of other creatures, both passengers and crew, approaching the bulwark to see what was happening). The ship''s course was taking them closer to the thing, so Lirai was now able to at least make out that, other than four legs, it also had some kind of gigantic tail.


    "Ooh! That looks like a huuuuge walking statue!" piped Nova.


    "Kellaiva!" exclaimed the blue mikai, "Is that some kind of loghral magic?"


    "I doubt it," responded Leewa, "It would have to be a massive Flow syphon to work and a Flow syphon of that size would definitely be illegal."


    Lirai''s ear twitched with curiosity. "Why?"


    "Because¡­" before she was able to provide an explanation, they all heard an unsettling creaking coming from the hull beneath them.


    Leewa gasped and frantically ran toward the command deck, shouting, "Change the course! Change the course immediately! We''re approaching an anomalous Flow syphon!"


    But she was clearly too late. After the hull shivered for a bit, Lirai felt as if his body was becoming lighter. They weren''t quite free-falling, but the ship was very clearly losing altitude way faster than it was intended to.


    Someone cried, "Abandon ship!" and a significant number of loghral jumped off-board, just to open their wings and fly away as fast as they could. Lirai even spotted a few of them still wearing their navy scarf.


    The more they fell, the more they approached the huge beast, and the more they approached the huge beast, the faster they fell. Lirai helplessly shouted in fear, like most other wingless creatures on board. Then, suddenly, they fell on the floor, as if the ship had impacted something. It was way too soon (and way too gentle) for the ship to have hit the ground. It felt as if, somehow, the ship had found again some of its stability.


    "Is everyone alright?" Nova whimpered.


    "I think so¡­" responded Lirai, unsure.


    He looked around, trying to understand what was happening. He saw Leewa standing on her hind-legs, her wings wide open, right underneath the main mast. Her flight feathers emanated some sort of bright light, which seemed to be moving in waves towards the white sails.


    Gyvar looked down from the bulwark. "It would seem that we''re still losing altitude, although no longer at an alarming pace."


    Lirai added, "Looks like Leewa is somehow keeping us all afloat."


    The blue mikai inquired, "If a loghra can do that, why did all of those other loghral abandon the ship instead of doing what she''s doing?"


    Meanwhile, the thunderous noise of the colossal creature''s footsteps grew and grew in the background, to the point that it became difficult to hear what someone was saying if it coincided with one of those mighty rumbles.


    Lirai''s ears darted around for a few moments, then he declared, "Not only we''re still getting closer to that thing, but I think we''re on a collision course."


    The pink dhelil adjusted her mane a little and then announced, "I shall talk to the captain, if he''s still on board."


    That said, she gracefully trotted away, chin proudly up, in the direction of the command deck. The rest of them hesitated for a few moments, then followed her without uttering a word. Lirai wasn''t sure why anyone else was going, but he figured that there was really nothing else they could do, so he might as well go see what their pink new friend was up to.


    What crew remained on board moved frantically around, desperately trying to furl the sails on the sides of the ship. The command deck was off-limits to passengers and would usually have some security personnel keeping guard, but they either abandoned ship already or were trying to help the rest of the crew, so nobody was there to stop them.


    Behind the steering wheel, in the middle of several bronze instruments and indicators of various shapes and sizes, they found a male dorpa with rough brown fur and only one antler, throwing curses at the whole situation and not even paying any attention to them. "I swear on the Prince''s tail-feathers if I get out of this alive I''ll have them all court-martialed! How are we even still afloat? And why can''t I stir this old crate?"


    Gyvar the pink dhelil cleared her throat. "I beg your pardon, captain? I know we''re in the middle of an emergency, but I have some information you might find useful."


    He barked, "Plucked Prince Pinions! Then don''t be so bloody long-winded and speak already!"


    She calmly reported, "A passenger loghra is diverting the syphoned Flow in the main sail, that''s how we''re still afloat. Also, we''re on a collision course with the creature causing this crisis in the first place. I thought you might want to know, since the loghral on lookout abandoned the ship."


    "Hah!" he bellowed, "So one of those good-for-nothing fledging-nates still has some spine. Good. Still, if she''s redirecting some of the syphoned Flow then no wonder we''re on a collision course: to keep us afloat, she''s subjecting us to the Flow current created by the bloody thing."


    "Is there anything we can do to help?"


    "There''s not much even I can do at this point," he spat, "just find a spot, brace for impact, and pray on the Prince''s blessed left cheek that I can land this tub in one piece. Or, at least, no more than three."


    One of the indicators next to the captain started rapidly chiming like a tiny bell. "Spit roast me with my missing horn, already? Forget about finding yourselves a spot and brace to whatever you can: we''re landing in moments!"


    A dull pain across the entire body and ringing ears were the first thing greeting Lirai as he opened his eyes.


    The second was Nova''s fluffy face and her bubbly voice. "He''s awake!"


    "He shuld be gud. Ah checked ''im and didn''t see no big wunds or broken bons." Said the juvenile voice of the dorpa they shared a meal with.


    Lirai sat up with a gasp, still inside the command deck, though now it was tilted and the instruments inside were all in disarray or in pieces. "Is everyone okay?"


    Gyvar''s hurtful groan reached him from behind. "I certainly have seen better days, but at the bare minimum I was able to guarantee everyone''s safety."


    He turned around and saw that the graceful dhelil was still on the floor, holding her right arm and cringing in pain.


    "How long was I out?"


    Nova answered, "Well, no more than a few moments. Gyvar used her dhelil magic to protect us all as best as she could, but now she''s in rough shape."


    "I''ll be fine, really" she whimpered in response, "my arm is just slightly injured."


    They were interrupted by the thundering noise, louder than ever, so much so that the floor moved under them as if it was in the middle of an earthquake.


    "Shouldn''t we skedaddle from here? What if we''re on its path and then it steps on us?" questioned Nova.


    Lirai moved his ears around a few times, then said, "That''s not going to happen. We''re on its back."


    Heleine blinked a few times. "How do you-?"


    At that point, Leewa''s voice interrupted her from the entrance. "Is everyone okay in here?"


    Gyvar grimaced, "Okay isn''t quite the word I would be using, but we''re all alive."


    "You were just outside. What is our current situation?" Inquired Heleine.


    "As far as I could see, there weren''t any serious injuries among those who still remain on board."


    "I am truly glad to hear that, but to keep it that way we need to know where we landed."


    "Oh, well¡­ we landed on that thing''s back."


    Heleine addressed Lirai again, "How did you know we were on its back without even stepping foot outside?"


    Gyvar answered in his place. "Veritably, sweetheart, that''s hardly surprising. You see, the spacial awareness of a fei comes mostly from their hearing rather than their eyesight. By all accounts, he should easily be able to make his way around this wreck even in complete darkness."


    Hearing someone speak about sight reminded him of his glasses: he still had them on before passing out and now didn''t have them anymore. Plus, where was his violin?


    Heleine spoke again, "Anyway, we should all thank you, Leewa. It''s because of you that we didn''t crash at full speed."


    The rough voice of the captain rose from the debris. "Yep. May their tails catch fire next time they break wind, half of my gutless crew abandoned ship at the first sign of danger, possibly hoping that I wouldn''t pull through to carry their sorry feathery bums through the consequences of their actions. I''m ashamed to admit that I only survived through the aid of a VIP guest."


    Still looking around for his glasses and violin, Lirai asked, "Huh? What do you mean VIP guest?"


    "Do you think just about any limp feathered loghral can pull off a redirection of syphoned Flow? If that were the case, my crew would have done that instead of flying the coop. Nah, only an advanced practitioner of magic can do that. And, being the captain, of course I knew that two theophytes were on board, so it had to be one of them who saved us, so-"


    Leewa cut him short. "Still, we have two problems: we''re on top of some sort of gigantic moving creature and said moving creature is walking through Princedom''s territory. If it gets anywhere near a populated area it might shut down any local flow mills, which will cause all sorts of troubles. So, captain, is the telecrypt on your ship still working?"


    "I highly doubt that, but you''re free to check. I''d do that myself but I''m bark-munching stuck in here."


    Lirai finally found his glasses. One of the lenses was cracked, the other totally missing, and the frame was bent. His ears drooped and his eyes started to water. He couldn''t afford to buy a new pair, but wearing performance glasses was basically mandatory for a fei to play in an orchestra. He sucked it up and tried to search for his violin. He still had some hope left as long as that was intact.


    Nova piped, "Can someone help me get the captain out of there?"


    Sychrill, the other dorpa, approached her without saying a word.


    Heleine was about to do the same, but then she addressed Lirai instead, "Can you come to help us?"


    Without stopping what he was doing, he responded, "I need to find my violin."


    "He''s stuck under there and probably hurting!" she growled, "Your stupid violin can wait!"


    He froze on the spot. This time he did turn around toward her. Her big teal eyes glared with an intense, almost feral, inner light. Back home he had always only had contact with other fei, the occasional dorpa, and a few loghral; the former as well as the latter were omnivores, while the dorpa were herbivores. This was the first time he found himself peering into the wild gaze of a mikai, an individual from a renowned species of hunters, a real-life carnivore. For the first time in his life, he felt a shiver running through his body. He felt the intense and instinctive fear of a prey realising that they are under the sights of a predator.


    She tilted her head. "Why do you look at me like that?"


    As a hint of confusion took the place of the intense wildness within her glare, the spell was broken. She certainly was not going to eat him. He had to remind himself how much of a taboo it was for anyone to kill and eat another creature from a species capable of spoken word or any other form of higher communication. Plus, she was even a little smaller than him, and he was almost sure that mikai didn''t habitually hunt creatures bigger than them. Right?


    They snapped out of it when they heard the captain''s rough voice engaging in more creative expletives, as he was freed from the debris.


    "Ardja feelin'' gud?" Asked the younger dorpa to the older one.


    Massaging his neck, the captain barked, "You little sprout-horn can take your concern and give it to your dear mama back home. When you were nothing more than a potential future pain in the neck in your parents'' life plans I was already working my way up the ladder and surviving worse accidents than this."


    The powerful rumble invaded the room once more as the floor trembled almost strongly enough to make them lose balance, then the captain added, "Alright, fine, this is the weirdest accident I''ve survived to date."


    When the trembling was almost done, a new sound filled the air. It was some sort of loud and layered wail, howling and piercing through their ears. Lirai couldn''t quite put a finger on it, but something in that sound caused his heart to ache a little. When the wail died down, before he could process what just happened, Lirai finally spotted the case of his violin. He jumped to retrieve it and see if there was any damage. One of the hinges on the case was broken, but the instrument itself had suffered no harm. He hugged the wooden object, tearing up again due to the joy of finding it all in one piece.


    Carrying the case under his arm, so that it wouldn''t accidentally fall apart due to the missing hinge, Lirai asked, "Well, what now?"


    As he asked, Leewa found some sort of delicate-looking box and sighed. "Welp, this telecrypt isn''t going to help us in its current state. I''m pretty sure that Dheeli flew away at the first sign of danger, so I''m probably the only one around with the expertise in loghral magic to deal with this gigantic construct. The rest of you should check if some of the lifeboats are still intact: they don''t use flow-sails precisely so that they would work even in this kind of emergencies, but this also means that they won''t be able to take you very far away."


    Heleine asked, "What is a ''construct''?"


    "I mean an object given the ability of autonomous movement through magic. A construct isn''t strictly speaking alive: it just moves following its functions, which are predetermined during construction."


    The tip of the mikai''s whiskers started glowing with a pale blue light. "If that''s the case, then maybe this isn''t actually a construct. I can feel a gigantic, if very simple, consciousness through Shountu."


    "What do you mean? Of course it''s a construct: I can feel the Flow being constantly syphoned in its body, so it has to be an artificial being."


    Heleine shook her head. "I''m not sure what you''re talking about, but I''m positive that this thing is alive, somehow. Maybe we can try to convince it to go somewhere it won''t cause damage?"


    Leewa stomped her front leg for emphasis. "There''s no need for any of you to put yourselves in more danger. Leave this to me: I have been trained to find solutions for magical emergencies."


    The mikai didn''t back down. "Me too. Back home, I was a shaman."


    While the two were discussing, Sychrill helped the captain sit on the ground and then approached Gyvar. "It hurts bad?"


    She groaned, but then forced a smile. "Don''t worry, sweetie: it will take much more than a little bruise to get me out of commission."


    He gently but firmly took her injured arm in his hands. "Ah think it''s broken. Wuldja keep still a moment, pleese? It vill sting a little, but shuld feel better then."


    Gyvar opened her mouth to say something, but yelped instead. He held her arm still, with a focused look. A few moments later, she retracted her arm and moved it around, looking at it marveled. "It doesn''t hurt anymore. Are you a medic?"


    He looked down, folding his hands. "No, ma''am. Ah have leecense to do first a-id, but ah''m not a doctor. Can treet broken bons, if fracture is simple, and external wunds, but no more than that."


    She smiled widely at him, "Why, I am most grateful to you." She then addressed Leewa and Heleine. "Very well, looks like I will be joining the two of you. If that thing is alive, like Heleine claims, then I should do my job as an ambassador and try diplomacy on our massive¡­ surprise guest."


    Leewa recoiled, surprised. "Wait a moment, how do you even plan to communicate with it?"


    "That''s for you to figure out, sweetheart," Gyvar remarked. "Are you or are you not a theophyte? I am fully confident that you will find a way."


    Heleine nodded. "Some help will definitely be needed. However, I feel turmoil in its consciousness: I think we might also need a way to calm it down, before we can communicate."


    For the second time, she exchanged an intense look with Lirai. He pointed at himself. "Me? I don''t know if my harmonic enchantments are nearly enough to calm down something that huge!"


    She shrugged. "We won''t know until we try it."


    "Sounds exciting!" burst out Nova, "I''ll be coming too, then. I''m not sure how little old me can help, but I would never let my new friends face something like this without helping them as much as possible."


    The captain roared with a long, hoarse laughter. "That''s the spirit, lads. If any of you ever need a job in the navy, let me know. I won''t be coming with you: I can''t abandon this until the Prince''s forces come to rescue us and everyone else on board is rescued before me."


    Sychrill looked around to each of the creatures present, then he mumbled, "Ye culd need protektchon and first a-id. Ah''m coming too. Ah just need to grab some stuff from mah luggage."


    Leewa sighed again. "Fine then, I can''t stop you. But don''t hesitate to run away if you see that you can do nothing to help, alright."


    Lirai, visibly trembling, tried to retort, "But¡­ but¡­"


    Heleine approached him. "Don''t worry, I''m a shaman and a huntress. I used to hunt down prey much, much larger than me all the time back home. Stay close to me and you''ll be fine."


    His ears dropped and his pupils shrank. "I-I''m glad to hear that."


    And so they all stepped out on the broken deck of the fallen ship, though with uneasy footing because of the continuous rumbling and thundering caused by the giant creature walking. Lirai didn''t really want to go, but seeing the decision of all those different creatures around him made him somewhat ashamed of his cowardly instincts. Still, he had never been adventurous and had never found himself in a situation more dangerous than facing the angry pet of an elderly neighbour, so he had no idea of what he could possibly contribute.


    It was then that they all heard that wail again. For the second time, that sound filled their ears and minds, and that''s when Lirai finally clearly understood what he had heard the first time: it was a deep-seated pain hiding in the harmonics of that terrible sound. It was like a cry for help. His body calmed down, his trembling stopped. Every fibre of his being told him that he didn''t want to abandon something capable of emitting such a heartbreaking sound. If there was even the smallest chance that his music could help the situation, he had to take it. If not him, then who would?

 A Wail that Pierces the Sky pt. 2

    While a few lifeboats floated away from the wreckage, lazily gliding through the breeze, six creatures all from different species set foot on the rocky ground beneath it.


    "If I didn''t know better, I would think we were standing on regular ground right now." Noticed Heleine.


    "Yeah," Leewa agreed, "With all these trees around, you''d be forgiving for thinking we''re in the woods. It''s almost as if an absolutely regular hill up and decided to come to life and take a walk all of a sudden. And not a tiny hill either: this thing could almost pass for a small mountain."


    Even with his limited vision, Lirai couldn''t help but agree. The vegetation was very different from what he was used to in the insular environment where he was born and raised: the trees were thicker, darker, with much denser foliage. The underbrush also felt somewhat wilder. And, aside from regular plants, even the omnipresent crystal flowers grew in different shapes and colour here than they did back on the Fesai archipelago. Not only that, but the pale light they emanated flickered and wavered in ways he had not seen before.


    "Where are we even going?" Asked Nova.


    Leewa responded, "Well, we should aim to get to the head. There''s a good chance that whatever magical device is allowing this whole thing to move is going to be found around the head area or, at the very least, connected to it. Either way, if we want to try to communicate with it, that''s our best bet."


    After this exchange was over, the group went quiet. Now that they were standing directly on the gigantic creature, they had to be even more mindful of their footing, since the massive body slowly contorted in between each lethargic step in order to recover from the last and prepare for the next. Lirai tried to pay even more attention to the texture of each sound caused by its movement; there wasn''t just the rumble of its incredibly heavy footsteps, but also comparatively smaller crackles, creaks, and snaps caused by said contortions. Something didn''t quite feel right, but he didn''t dare fully open his ears to learn what it was, since the roaring sound of the footsteps could potentially be loud enough to damage his eardrums.


    The ear of a fei was a very sophisticated evolutionary marvel: the fuzz coming out of it didn''t just protect the earhole from dust and other small objects that could potentially fall into it, it was also sensitive to strong and sudden incoming sound-waves, causing the muscles around the earhole to contract and accordingly close a sphincter to protect the inner ear from noises that were too loud. An amazing thing about this feature of their body was that they could control how closed they wanted it to be, thus regulating how much noise they were able to hear or exclude, and, even when completely shut down, they could still pick up quite a lot through a combination of the vibrations in their skull, the information given by the ear fuzz, and other complementary factors.


    Lirai waited for the thunder of a step to be completely over, then opened his ears a little more, knowing that it would take a while for the next step to come. He closed his eyes and moved his ears around, trying to gather as much information as possible from all directions. In between each rattle and crackle around them, he could easily recognise the footsteps of each of his companions: Nova''s springy bounce on her four little paws, Sycrhill''s careful and steady march on his two legs, Gyvar''s quiet and elegant stride on her thin four limbs, Leewa''s uncertain steps punctuated by the shuffling of her long tail on the ground, and¡­ he quickly assumed an erect position and his ears shot up. Where was Heleine? He couldn''t hear her steps at all.


    He was about to open his eyes when a sudden voice surprised him from his right side. "Did you hear something?"


    The velvety voice of the blue mikai startled him to the point of causing him to jump a full tail''s length in the opposite direction, almost tripping in the process.


    "W-when did you get there?" He shivered.


    She tilted her head. "Um, just now?"


    "P-please, d-don''t sneak up on me like that again." He managed to stutter.


    She blinked a couple of times, seemingly bewildered. "I''m¡­ I''m sorry, I didn''t want to scare you like that. That aside, did you hear anything that could be interesting? I saw you listening very intently."


    "I was just¡­ I noticed that I couldn''t hear your footsteps, which made me worried, since I was pretty sure you should have been around somewhere."


    She chuckled, with a bit of pride in her smirk. "Of course. In my mother tongue, other species sometimes refer to mikai hunters as laizlo jovoira, which¡­ admittedly doesn''t translate very well in Valdheel, but roughly means ''sharp featherfall'', because we''re as silent as a falling feather, yet our teeth are razor-sharp."


    He stared back at her, his mouth agape. How could she so casually say something so utterly terrifying with such an innocent expression?


    He gulped, wishing to change the subject as soon as possible. "So, how come that you speak Valdheel almost as well as a native? I can barely hear your accent."


    "You see, shamans, in my culture, aren''t just spiritual leaders and practitioners of magic, but also mediators and representatives in our interspecies relations. Because of that, my parents insisted that I should learn to speak as close to a perfect Valdheel as possible, since it''s the most widespread language in the known world, and started teaching me when I was still a cub. I basically grew up bilingual because of that."


    A few steps in front of them, Sychrill mumbled something. Before they had jumped off of the wreckage, he had quickly gone to the hold in order to see if he was able to recover something from his luggage and now he had it. His left arm had a round wooden shield strapped to it, while his right hand held what looked like a fancy rolled-up length of rope, finely woven with robust dark coloured fibres. Lirai had already seen a bunch of dorpa with a similar setup: police and fighter dorpachi had that same equipment plus armour. Since Sychrill didn''t appear to have the armour, Lirai guessed that maybe he had experience working as security in some kind of establishment, or maybe even as a bodyguard. He did seem to be rather fit, so it wouldn''t be too hard to imagine. If he was a bodyguard, that would explain why he would be trained in basic healing magic as well as his offer to provide protection.


    As a new rumble filled the air, they all stopped to keep their footing. When it went relatively quiet again, Lirai opened his ears once more, this time even more so than previously. He was sure he heard something strange, but he couldn''t quite put his finger on what.


    Gyvar addressed Leewa, with a little urgency in her voice, "Beg your pardon, sweetheart, but do you have the first idea how far are we from the creature''s head?"


    "Not a clue, but I could do a brief reconnaissance to let you know."


    "Ooh that''s an excellent suggestion: other than giving us an idea of how far is our destination, it would also allow us to avoid potential obstacles."


    Leewa opened her wings. "I''ll be back soon."


    After the loghra left, Lirai asked, "Is everything alright, Gyvar? I heard some concern in the way you spoke."


    "Oh, I do apologise, it''s nothing to worry about. It''s just that my husband was supposed to welcome me at the harbour when the ship landed and I know he''ll be worried sick when he gets the news that we crashed."


    Heleine tilted her head. "You''re married?"


    She nodded with an almost timid smile. "Yes, quite a shock, isn''t it? Everyone says that I look too young to be married. It hasn''t even been a full term since the wedding ceremony." She sighed deeply. "I hope he''ll be fine while waiting for our return."


    Nova interjected, "Oh, I would have loved to be there! I''ve always dreamed to do the catering for the wedding of a friend, but sadly I never had the chance."


    Gyvar gave her an encouraging smile, "You will get your opportunity, I''m positively certain. If we keep in touch and you''re still in the Princedom by then, maybe I''ll ask you to do it when we''ll have the renewal of our vows a few terms from now."


    Before anyone could add anything, Leewa delicately landed next to them. "If we keep this up, we''ll get to the head in about a notch or two. More importantly though, I''ve seen a house not far from here, and it seems inhabited."


    Sychrill asked, "Um, whah is that more important?"


    Leewa closed down her wings. "Well, whoever lives there may have an idea of what''s going on, so we should go and ask them."


    "Fair point," responded Gyvar, "but even if they knew nothing we should still go check them out: they might be in danger."


    Heleine addressed Lirai, "What do you think?"


    He froze for a moment, since he wasn''t expecting anyone to ask his piece. "Er, I agree with Gyvar. We should definitely go check the house, regardless if those who live there are involved or not."


    The blue mikai got a little closer to him. "You seem distracted. Are you sure that you''re aright?"


    He nodded, but didn''t speak further. He still wanted to understand what was it in the background noises of that place that rubbed him the wrong way. He had agreed to go to the house, but he definitely intended to keep his ears open as much as possible on the way there.


    ***


    Right after the umpteenth thunderous step from the construct, the small group reached a clearing in the woods. Without his glasses, Lirai wasn''t fully capable of making out the exact details of the small house that they found in the middle of that clearing, but it was a single story building with something akin to a small tower next to it, both made out of old stone bricks. A little smoke was barely visible as it exited from the chimney. While approaching, he realised it was suspended over the ground, presumably by means of solid stone pillars beneath the pavement, and it had a porch made out of some slightly rotten wood. All in all, even in spite of his bad eyesight, he could see that it was a very old house in pretty rough shape, and the dark vines of crystal flowers growing on its walls only made it feel even more neglected. When all of them were on the porch, Leewa knocked on the door (the knock gave Lirai the impression that the door was made out of very solid wood, in much better shape than the porch on which they were currently standing).


    From the cracks around the door, Lirai heard a high-pitched nasal voice, probably belonging to an elderly female. "Gosh golly, who might that be? We weren''t expecting any company, were we, Her Majesty?" The elderly voice cleared her throat and declared, a bit louder, "Coming!"


    A few bolts and latches emitted some rusty clacks and creaks as they were released and, as the door opened, they saw a pudgy older loghra with a huge pair of glasses. Her plumage was of a pale blue not too dissimilar from Heleine''s fur, but with purple patterns, less saturated colours and streaks of grey all over.


    The apparition cooed at Leewa, "Goodness gracious! It has been a ring of the Golden Bell and a half since the last time I saw such a pretty child. What can I do for you, dearie?"


    Leewa almost imperceptibly shook her head while muttering under her breath, "¡­child?" and then dryly responded, "Ma''am, I have no idea how this came to happen, but¡­"


    The older loghra interrupted her, "Humbugs, where are my manners? You and your little attendance can come inside." She turned her attention to the rest of the group. "I''m afraid I don''t have tea for everyone, so unfortunately the lower circles will have to make do with an ol'' cup of water." Finally, she focused her gaze on Gyvar. "Such a gracious handmaid you bring, you must be of good family. Maybe I do have some tea for her too. Come inside, please, come inside."


    The six of them stared at each other and blinked in disbelief.


    Lirai asked, "What was that?"


    Gyvar sighed, "It would appear that we found a lady in her later terms whose mentality and culture are still stuck a couple of Princes ago. I wish I could say this was uncommon, but truth is that, especially in the countryside, it is anything but. Just let me and Leewa deal with her, as she probably won''t listen to the rest of you."


    The inside of the place was, unsurprisingly enough, a mess, given how the movements of the construct had to had shaken the little house. Some pots and pans lay on the ground beneath a low shelf, on top of which only one pot remained. Of the furniture inside, it seemed like the only thing that was still standing was a small wooden shrine with a reproduction of an opening gate made out of some sort of ivory. That detail, somehow, piqued Lirai''s interest. Why would anyone keep the effigy of a gate, of all things? Also, there was an almanac lying around on the floor, which by itself would have been a very common thing to find inside of someone''s house, but Lirai had never seen one like that: usually, they would have a picture of a green feather on the cover, but this one had a picture of a stone tablet instead.


    The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.


    "There you go," croaked the old loghra while hanging a kettle in the fireplace, "the tea will be ready in a jiffy. What were you saying, dearie? My memory is not what it used to be."


    Leewa cleared her throat. "Ma''am, have you not noticed that¡­"


    The old loghra interrupted her again, "Dear me, did we even introduce ourselves? You can tell your attendance that they''re allowed to talk for themselves. The old timers down the valley would throw a fit if I said something like this in their presence, but I allow that they can move on with the times: my beloved late Princess did teach us to treat all species with respect. Oh, right, my name is Vinthre. What about yours, dearies?"


    After a brief, awkward silence, Gyvar said, "Lady Vinthre, all my friends here and I are deeply grateful for your hospitality and kindness, but there is currently a situation that you really need to be made aware of."


    "Oh dear me, what happened this time?"


    Gyvar opened her mouth to respond, but Vinthre just kept on talking. "You see, I can barely remember the last time that anyone came all the way up here for anything different than delivering bad news." She sighed. "The Princedom used to be a much safer place once, you know. The new Prince has been so worried with foreign affairs that he often forgets about his own subjects, isn''t it right, Her Majesty?"


    The elderly loghra addressed that last question in the general direction of the shrine with the opening gate.


    Heleine took advantage of the brief silence after the question to speak up. "Ma''am, your house is currently located on the back of a humongous creature who decided to take a stroll around the plains. We''re trying to find a solution, but staying here could be dangerous for you, so I think you should consider evacuating."


    The old loghra waved her hand dismissively, "Oh, pish posh my dear. I''ve lived here for a long time and never seen anything out of the ordinary."


    Leewa raised her voice in frustration. "Can''t you feel the earth shaking? Those thundering footsteps? What do you think those are? We''re telling you, your house sits on the back of some sort of colossal construct."


    Vinthre didn''t show any signs of distress. "As I said, pish posh my dear. I''ve been keeping guard to the command poems for¡­ well, for longer than you''ve been alive, I''d reckon, and if the Beighal were to come alive the sigils would definitely start glowing, which has never happened all through my long terms of keeping watch on them."


    If it wasn''t for another roaring footstep invading it, the room would have been engulfed in dead silence. As soon as the last echo subsided, the kettle started whistling and Vinthre gleefully chirped, "So, who wants some tea?"


    Leewa raised a finger. "I beg your pardon?"


    "Tea, my dear, have you ever tried it?"


    "No! I mean, what was that all about command poems, sigils and keeping guard to them?"


    Without missing a beat, Vinthre asked, "So, you''ve never had tea? Preposterous, what do they teach you these days?"


    Lirai experienced his mind shutting down for a moment. The entire conversation, not to even mention all the events surrounding it, was way too surreal for his brain to process. For a few instants, he felt like he was about to wake up from the most bizarre dream he ever had. That feeling only survived until he heard Heleine''s velvety voice addressing him.


    "So, among the enchantments that you can do with your instrument," she inquired, "is there anything that could be used to have her focus on just one topic for a moment and tell us what is actually going on?"


    He thought about it for a moment. "Sorry, the only enchantment with similar effect that I know is a counter-enchantment, which allows someone under magical confusion to think clearly again. I doubt it would work in this case."


    Meanwhile, Vinthre raised her tail and spread the feather fin that all loghral have at the end of it. The kettle removed itself from the hook over the fire and gently floated on the centre-stand of the sitting mat nearby.


    Lirai decided that it was his time to try to contribute. "So, um, ma''am? I¡­ I''m a musician and I thought I might liven up this, uh, this tea party. However, I came straight from the Fesai Republic, so I know very little of traditional Princedom music, aside that it''s usually accompaniment to poetry reading and story telling. Since I''m sure you have a lot of experience, might I suggest that I provide some arrangement for some tale that our generation might have never heard? You know, something about that¡­ Bei-something-or-other that you mentioned a few moments ago."


    The elderly loghra smiled sweetly, "My word, that is truly a lovely idea! And, if you want a song on the Beighal, you couldn''t find a better place in the whole wide world than here, since I''ve been appointed as its guardian by Her Majesty Princess Kaya herself, may she rest as gracefully as she lived and reigned over all of us."


    Leewa, with the tone of someone who had enough, burst out, "Oh, would you quit it already? It''s impossible that you lived long enough to have met Princess Kaya. She died almost three hundred terms ago and I''ve never heard of a loghral other than a Prince or Princess who lived longer than eighty terms!"


    Vinthre stared at her, a little perplexed. "Dear me, isn''t this the forty-fourth term of the Binding Stele age, Prince Khoros'' reign?"


    Leewa, trying to calm down, responded, "No, it''s the hundred and twenty-fifth term of the Green Feather age, Prince Theras'' reign, who is Prince Khoros'' successor."


    Again without missing a beat, Vinthre singsonged, "My oh my, how does the time fly." She then turned to face Lirai. "So, my large-eared child, you were asking me a story about the Beighal, right? Pull out your instrument and try to keep up, because I''ve been practising this song throughout all my long terms of solitude."


    While he took his violin out of the case, she started humming a melody. He picked up on the harmonic progression of the melody and his mind rushed to fill it in, in order to create a functional arrangement. Once he was ready, with the instrument under his chin and the bow suspended above the cords, he gave Vinthre a nod and she started singing. Her nasal voice gained a modulated and fierce tone. Lirai didn''t pay any attention to the lyrics of the song at first, since he was too busy trying to improvise an arrangement for some music he had never heard before. Fortunately, since it focused so heavily on the lyrics, Valdheel traditional music tended not to be very complex in its harmonic structure and composition, so improvising to it was hardly an impossible task. Once he felt comfortable with the loop he had come up with, he allowed himself to try and pay attention to the lyrics, and that''s when he realised that she wasn''t singing in Valdheel. He could barely recognise any of the words she sang, and even those he recognised were pronounced differently from what he would expect. Maybe it was some form of ancient Valdheel?


    At one point, Vinthre stopped singing and gestured him to keep playing, with a look in her eyes that told him to have fun with it. He started improvising variations on the main melody that she had been singing, repeating it quietly at first, then playing around with the rhythm while slowly building up the volume, creating a bit of a counter-theme by playing on more than one cord at a time, finally repeating the theme again very loudly, but dragging out the notes and using vibrato to make it more expressive, finishing with a delicate tremolo, at which point she started singing again and he went back to accompany her voice. After a couple more verses, she started repeating a phrase, slowing down each time, until she reached a point which was clearly meant to be the end, so he set up the last harmonic progression to allow the melody to finish where it was supposed to. Their small audience gave them a warm applause.


    The old loghra chuckled. "For a fellow claiming not to know much about Valdheel music, that sure was a great performance. You really do live up to the rumours about your species."


    Nova cheered, "Wow! That was amazing! Unfortunately, I didn''t understand a word you were saying."


    Gyvar doubled down. "That certainly was a commendable effort indeed, but unfortunately my old Valdheel never has been good enough to understand it fluently."


    Leewa intervened, "Um, mine is. I understood most of it." She paused, then addressed Vinthre directly. "I have to apologise to you for raising my voice in your own house, that was rude of me."


    Gyvar sighed. "I should offer my apologies as well, as I feel I may have judged you too harshly on a first impression."


    Adjusting her massive glasses, she merrily replied, "I don''t even know what you''re talking about, but I''ll take your apologies if you offer them."


    Leewa then asked her, "Is there any chance that you might tell us how to get to the chamber with all the sigils? It''s really important."


    Vinthre gently shook her head. "Sorry, but I vowed to my Princess to keep everyone from reaching that place without an express order from the Erwan Nest, so that the Beighal wouldn''t be awoken without good reason."


    The younger loghra pleaded, "Not even if it''s a theophyte asking? I know you might not believe me, but I am a theophyte returning from an official mission on behalf of Prince Theras."


    She shook her head again. "I have no reason not to believe you. And, being a theophyte, you may one day end up sitting in the Erwan Nest yourself, but until that day comes I am bound by my vows."


    Heleine spoke up again. "I''m not following everything that''s happening, everything is just too new for me. But I think I understood enough to say that this Beighal thing already has been awakened and we need to do something about it."


    Vinthre dismissed her again, "Oh, nonsense. Nobody would ever be able to find their way to the chamber without my help, nor would they be able to gain control over it without the knowledge and power of a Prince or Princess."


    A new tremor invaded the house, and the last pot fell down from the shelf, ringing like a bell that had seen some rough times. That sound finally helped Lirai realising exactly what he felt was wrong about the sound of the hill moving around.


    "Guys," he began, "If the lady says that she''s not going to tell us, maybe we should just thank her for her hospitality and move on. After all, we have a situation to take care of, don''t we?"


    He conspicuously winked to the rest of his group, relying on the notion that the old Vinthre didn''t seem to have the most stable grasp of what was happening in her surroundings.


    Gyvar chuckled. "Oh, I see. I concur with our musically inclined friend: we should definitely proceed, as much as I appreciated this little detour."


    "Ah," sighed the elderly loghra, "the hastiness of youth. I bid you goodbye, then. If you happen to stumble around here again, do not forget to pay me a visit: I don''t get much company these days."


    Once they were out of Vinthre''s house and after she closed the door, Gyvar stated, "I surmise that both Leewa and Lirai have learned something from this encounter that might be relevant to our current situation, yes?"


    "Well," Heleine added, "Leewa did say she understood the lyrics of the song, so it would be great if she brought the rest of us up to speed. I''m curious about what Lirai seemed to have understood, though."


    Leewa said, neutrally, "The song was basically a fairytale and it''s pretty interesting. Beighal in old Valdheel was an uncommon word for ''guardian'', just so you know. Its title can be roughly translated as The Guardian''s Guardians. In summary, the song was the tale of an ancient ruler in the Old Princedom, before recorded history, who wanted a giant stone warrior made to squash his enemies, so he had his mages work tirelessly on creating the incantations needed. They worked for many terms, failing to come up with incantations potent enough to raise something of the magnitude required by their ruler. In the end, the tyrant died of old age before the Beighal was completed, but the daughter of one of the mages kept on working on the incantations even after the project was abandoned. When she too was old enough to see the end of her natural life approaching, she asked audience to the new ruler and reported her progress: she was able to create a functioning framework for the incantations, but it still required generating much more energy than she could possibly provide on her own. She informed the ruler that, were someone else capable of providing the missing energy and activate the sigils she had completed, the colossal guardian would have finally took its first fierce steps on this world, and it would have struggled to protect the Old Princedom from any threat. After that, she collapsed, her last ounce of energy expended on her final report. The new ruler instituted a new order, to keep watch on the site of the incantations, instructed to only ever bring the mighty guardian to life under a direct order from him or his descendants. The song ends with the warning: ''thus, the mighty stone guardian sleeps to this day, and none shall disturb it until the order is given or its last guardian fails''. And that''s pretty much it."


    "So basically, if we find those sigils we find its core, right?" asked Heleine. "I was already thinking so when that kooky old lady mentioned them before, but that''s probably where we should go, whatever it is that we want to try."


    Leewa sighed. "Yes, but who knows where they are."


    Lirai raised his hand. "Um, I think I might know."


    Everyone else turned toward him. He stuttered, "I-I, um, you see, when that pot fell down, I realised that¡­" he cleared his throat. "Before getting into that, I should mention that I noticed something strange about the sounds of our surroundings, but couldn''t quite put my finger on what. When the pot fell down, its hollow ring made me realise that the strange sound I heard were the echoes of galleries running all throughout the hill. If we can find an entrance, I should be able to use my hearing to navigate our way through them. Since Vinthre mentioned a chamber, I''m pretty sure it will be somewhere in there, otherwise she would have used some other word."


    Gyvar smiled widely. "Why, that is very impressive, even more so than your performance a little while ago. I almost wish I could hear half of what you do."


    Heleine agreed, "She''s right, that is amazing." Her smile shrank a little. "Unfortunately, none of us can hear as well as you do, and I fear we won''t be able to see much in complete darkness either."


    Sychrill finally spoke again, addressing Heleine. "Uh, sorry, ah''m sure ah saw yer whi¡­ whiskers glo-wing. Can''t ye do that to lahght the wae?"


    She shook her head. "I can only do that to commune with Shuna, the Mother Goddess of the earth, I cannot use it as if it was mere torchlight. Besides, that light is very pale: it should be fine for me, since we mikai are well adapted to hunting even at night, but I wouldn''t know about the rest of you."


    Nova beamed. "At last, it is my time to shine!" She giggled, before adding, "Literally."


    She then raised her tail and, on its very tip, a small glowing orange sphere started forming and growing, increasing in intensity by the moment. Lirai also felt the temperature rising, as if that shiny spot on her tail had been a small but relatively powerful flame.


    Keeping her tail tall above her head, Nova chirped, "I''ll happily be your torchlight, if you allow me."


    Leewa nodded. "Since that''s taken care of, now all we need is an entrance to the galleries and then we''re golden. I''m going for another reconnaissance, and this time I''ll also try to pay attention to where the Beighal is right now and where it''s going: I''m still worried of what could happen if it gets too close to a more populated area."


    While Leewa took off, Lirai pondered on the story that Leewa told them¡­ well, that Vinthre told them and then Leewa translated. There was a lot that the story didn''t clarify. If the tale was to be believed, the Beighal wouldn''t wake up on its own, but rather someone would have to actively awaken it. Who would have done so? How? Plus, it would seem that the whole Beighal story wasn''t common knowledge at all, given that Leewa and Gyvar, both obviously native to the Princedom, didn''t know about it, and both of them seemed to be well above average too as far as culture was concerned. Whoever was behind it must have had precise knowledge about the whole thing, so, once again, who would have had access to that knowledge and how?


    Finally, even though he estimated that at least two full notches had passed since he last heard the Beighal''s wail, that pain he heard in it was still fresh in his mind. Nothing in old Vinthre''s story provided any explanation on how or why a massive stone guardian might feel pain. Was it all his own imagination? Maybe it was just coincidental, maybe that scream had a more mechanical explanation. Then again, now that he thought about it, Heleine said that she sensed some kind of consciousness from the construct, and she mentioned it being in some sort of turmoil too. So, apparently, he wasn''t the only one with that kind of thought.


    He sighed. There was no point in racking his brain about it at that point: he simply didn''t have the pieces to put that puzzle together. All he could do was to keep going forward with that bizarre group of new friends that he had just met, hoping that, with them, he would be able to find the answers. As he looked at all of them in turn, Heleine noticed his gaze and smiled back at him. He felt somewhat nervous around her still: he still hadn''t forgotten that glare she gave him on the ship, and the way she could walk around completely unheard really did unnerve him. Yet, for some reason, he felt reassured by the smile she just gave him. He still thought he was completely out of his depth in this kind of situation, but that smile told him that someone had his back, were things to go wrong. He made a mental note to thank her for that, once the adventure was over.

 A Wail that Pierces the Sky pt. 3

    A few crystal flowers grew around a seemingly unassuming hole in the side of a small hill. They emitted a delicate light of intense blue. The ones back in the Fesai archipelago tended to be red or white, so these were new to Lirai, but he didn''t focus as much on them as he did on the echoes coming from inside the hole: their voice told him that this was an entrance to a huge maze of galleries that extended beneath their feet and far beyond that.


    Heleine reached his side and he noticed that her whiskers were glowing again. It was a different, paler shade of blue compared to the flowers.


    "I can sense several growths of crystal flowers in the galleries beneath us, a few of them of respectable size. My guess is that one of them must be within the chamber that the old lady mentioned."


    Leewa inquired, "You can sense the position of crystal flowers with this amount of precision?"


    "As I said before, Shountu allows me to commune with the Mother Goddess of Earth, Shouna, and the shamans in my culture often say that the crystal flowers are her eyes to see her children and her mouths to speak to them."


    "Does this mean that you could help us navigate through the maze, together with Lirai?" Inquired Gyvar.


    "I can try," she hesitated, "but I can''t sense the galleries in between the chambers like Lirai does."


    Leewa asked, her eyes still focused on Heleine, "Since these flowers are the mouth of your goddess, are they saying anything of interest right now?"


    Heleine hesitated. "I¡­ I think that we aren''t alone in the galleries, someone else may already be way ahead of us. I can''t say much more than that, because the flowers are¡­ how should I put it¡­ in turmoil."


    "What do you mean in turmoil?"


    "I mean¡­ it''s like they''re excited but also afraid, and they don''t respond to my interrogations, as if their full attention was somewhere else."


    "Enough dilly-dallying, dears, we can carry our conversation on even while we keep on walking." Prompted Gyvar.


    Leewa nodded with decision. "Right. No time to waste."


    Heleine invited Lirai to get ahead of her. "Come on, lead the way."


    "Okay." He sighed nervously as he walked in front of the group.


    Nova merrily pranced inside, her tail up in the air with a globe of intense light hovering right above its tip. "So do crystal flowers have feelings and thoughts like us?" She asked when everyone entered the cave.


    "Eh, I wouldn''t quite say like us¡­" responded Heleine slowly, as if she was trying to find the next words as she went. "They are very different from all other living beings, so much so that I don''t really have the words to describe it to someone who didn''t experience it in first person. However, they are very much aware of their surroundings, more so than regular plants, and I can sense their consciousness much clearer than anything else through Shountu."


    The conversation was interrupted by the thunderous roar of one of the giant creature''s steps. It was way louder in there, to the point that, even with his ears as closed as possible, Lirai felt physical discomfort. He vacillated for a moment, but he managed to keep his footing and, as the echoes died down, he was able to sense the way forward.


    They were right in front of a fork, and Lirai pointed to the path on the right, since he had sensed that the left one eventually led to a dead end.


    "Be careful of where you''re walking," he said, "there are some holes and crevices in the ground further down the line."


    The cave''s ceiling got lower and lower as they proceeded, and Lirai worried a bit about Sychrill and his antlers. He turned one of his ears back to try and sense what the dorpatchi was doing, and he found that he was uncomfortably, but effectively, walking on fours. He had to turn back, curious about what that big shy guy had done with his shield and weapon, only to find out that both had been placed on his antlers. The sight was a little funny, but Lirai tried his best not to laugh.


    Soon, a few turns and diverging paths later, they found themselves in a gallery with a ravine on the right side, going surprisingly deep.


    Nova had her little glowing orb hover right over the brink, revealing the depth of the crevice to everyone else who couldn''t perceive it by ear. "Yikes," she exclaimed, "this looks like a pretty bad fall!"


    Lirai nodded. "It gets way closer to the heart of the maze than the way forward does, but I doubt it would be wise to go down this way."


    Leewa glanced down the ravine and added, "It''s way too narrow in here for me to safely fly down too."


    While their attention was mostly on the ravine at the right side, a few dark stone-like vines grew on the left side wall, with more of those blue crystal flowers they had seen at the entrance sprouting from them. That''s when their light flickered.


    Heleine stared at them, hardly blinking. "This is¡­ concerning. I''ve never seen crystal flowers behaving this way before."


    A new step happened. The ground shook harder than they had felt before, and Lirai had to forcefully close his ears with his hands, instinctively closing his eyes as well. Again, the powerful noise made him vacillate, but this time something caught onto his hind legs, causing him to lose balance.


    He opened his eyes wide in surprise. The brief instant before falling felt strangely long to him, and he saw a crystal flower vine that he had tripped into, one that he had curiously not noticed before, whose flowers emitted a wavering dark red light that he seeing for the first time. Yet that strangely long moment ended before he was able to process it, and he fell right down the crevice.


    ***


    Lirai groaned, as his whole body was sore. It was already the second time that day that he had a pretty bad fall, but this time he didn''t lose consciousness. He was still wrapped himself around his violin case, which he had consciously done immediately upon realising he wouldn''t be able to avoid the fall so that he could protect the precious instrument. He had tumbled for who knows how long, but now he was more or less safe on level ground. He felt like he had fallen for far longer than he should have, and not nearly as hard. In fact, it was highly surprising that he was still alive.


    He shouted, hoping to reassure the others that he was fine, for the most part. "Hey, I''m alive, do you hear me?"


    The echo didn''t return, almost as if the cliff was infinitely high. His eyes could barely make out the feeble glow of some crystal flowers dotted along the stone walls, but no sign of Nova''s light. He felt a chill down his spine. He was sure that, when he listened for the bottom of the ravine before, it wasn''t nearly deep enough to justify the echo not coming back, nor the fact that he couldn''t see Nova''s light, however faintly. Did they fall down too? No, there was no sign of them down there, so they had to still be up there. Maybe there was something preventing him from hearing noise and seeing light coming from above a certain point?


    "Hey!" He shouted again, "If you can hear me, I can''t hear you back. Try to reach the heart of the maze, I''m sure Heleine can find it. Hopefully I''ll be waiting there!"


    He got up and found that his right hind leg was hurting pretty badly. He could move it and it didn''t feel like it was broken, but walking would probably be a painful process for the foreseeable future. He limped through the galleries, occasionally resting against the wall whenever he thought the massive creature was about to make another one of its deafening steps, allowing himself to protect his ears with his own hands, which did help a little. The pain and exhaustion were the two foremost thoughts in his mind, continuously chasing away any other lines of thinking that might pop up, but he trudged on following his instincts and the bouncing echoes all throughout that maze of stone galleries. Sometimes, he could almost swear he heard a weird chime coming from the galleries in front of him, a sound so crystalline and pure that made the way ahead surprisingly clear and easy to follow even in the almost complete darkness.


    Eventually, he could hear himself approaching a pretty big chamber, and in fact he was able to see some pale light coming through the corner. He couldn''t quite figure out its shape with precision, because the echoes bouncing around its walls made their surface sound strangely fuzzy, as if they were mostly covered with¡­ with something, he wasn''t sure what. He almost reached the edge of the chamber before stopping dead in his track. Someone else was in there. He hadn''t noticed it before because, whoever it was, wasn''t moving around too much, but now that he was closer he could finally pick up on their nervous breathing. The other creature was muttering something under their breath, with clear signs of urgency and panic in their mannerism. They appeared to be alone.


    This had to be the one behind the awakening of the Beighal, right? Who else could be all the way down there? Lirai didn''t dare make himself known; after all, for all he knew, someone who would go out of their way to awaken an ancient weapon of war could be dangerous. Tired and afraid, the only thing Lirai could think of was to remain hidden and wait for an opportunity: if his friends managed to reach him, he might be able to use some basic musical enchantments to help them even if they had to deal with something dangerous, or, given how afraid the other creature also sounded, maybe they would eventually run away from there.


    It was during these musings that a sickly sweet voice reverberated from a different entrance to the same chamber. "And what exactly is happening here?"


    The voice was¡­ strangely familiar. Lirai was sure he had heard it recently, but something in the tone made it difficult for him to place.


    The one who had been muttering under their breath let out a brief scared shriek, evidently startled. Lirai could finally place their voice as masculine.


    "I¡­" the startled creature started to respond, before being interrupted by a booming step.


    As the echoes died down, the newly arrived voice sighed and said, "Hold on a moment."


    After speaking, she moved from the other entrance right inside the chamber, and from the way she walked Lirai guessed that it had to be a loghra. His eyes opened wide and he had to repress a gasp as he realised where he had heard her voice. It had been that other loghra, the one who first spoke to Nova and had been so rude to her.


    Before he could finish processing that realisation, the slow movement of the Beighal came to a halt. If the rest of what was happening didn''t already leave Lirai speechless, this would have. How did she instantly cause the Beighal to stop dead in its tracks?


    "There, much better, don''t you think?" The loghra calmly intoned.


    Her tone¡­ it was completely different from when he had heard it a few notches prior. The small inflections in the way she spoke, the subtle emotional cues, everything felt wrong. Even the accent¡­ he was pretty sure that, when he first heard her, she didn''t slightly emphasise occlusive sounds, like "t" or "k", like she was doing now. It was almost as if a completely different individual was now speaking from the same mouth as that rude loghra he had met earlier.


    The male voice stuttered, "A-are you¡­ Are you¡­ M-master?"


    The loghra chuckled with genuine amusement. "Of course it''s me, you silly thing."


    "I-I¡­ I swear I did exactly what you told me how you told me," slurred he in response, "not a single detail differently, but this thing started walking and nothing I could do would stop it and¡­"


    "Hold on a moment," she interrupted with a deceptively warm tone, "I''m sure you did nothing wrong. I mean, you wouldn''t have the capacity to accidentally awaken the Beighal even if you wanted to. Something clearly went wrong, but even if you had messed up as much as you could have there is no way you could have caused it, so I''m not mad at you at all."


    She spoke slowly and deliberately, with a tone of almost over the top fake kindness and exaggerating every single emotional beat in her sentences. Lirai shuddered, unsettled by that.


    The male voice sighed in relief at the news that his "Master" didn''t blame him for things not going as planned. The loghra continued, "Before we do anything else, I''ll just check if I can see what did cause things to go wrong, so you stay quiet and let Master make it all right."


    The young fei heard her approaching the wall next to where the male voice had been coming from.


    "Ah," she marvelled not a few moments later, "I see what''s going on. Hmm, maybe this wasn''t a waste of time after all."


    "Really?" He asked with a hopeful tone. "You mean that the plan could be salvaged?"


    "What?" She burst in a merry chortle. "Oh no, absolutely not. The very moment the Beighal started walking around when it wasn''t supposed to this plan was immediately and irreparably ruined. However, I might just be able to turn this all in our favour¡­"


    Lirai had to purposefully stop himself from gasping again. He had no idea what they were referring to, but he was sure it wasn''t anything good. Also, her laughter sounded¡­ weirdly sincere, almost childlike.


    "Oh, please tell me how, Master!"


    "Shush." She then harshened her tone considerably. "I want you to go into hiding until further notice. Don''t come looking for me, I''ll come for you. Be it a full term from now, or ten, or even fifty, don''t you dare leave your hiding spot until I reach out to you. Understood?"


    "Y-yes, Master."


    "Such a good boy!" She singsonged as someone would to their pet after it obeyed to a simple order.


    Lirai then heard a distinct fluttering of wings as he quickly took his leave. Lirai did take notice of the fact that those wings sounded way smaller than those of a loghral.


    After a silence that lasted a little too long for comfort, the female voice playfully called, "Tell me, did you have fun eavesdropping?"


    Lirai''s heart almost stopped and his limbs almost went numb from how tense they had gone.


    "Yes, I''m talking to you, my big-eared friend. Come out, don''t be shy, I promise you I won''t bite."


    If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    He contemplated running away, but his instinct told him that it would be futile, so he slowly turned around the corner and he finally entered the room. The walls of the chamber were covered in some kind of writing, faintly glowing with white, but most of the light came from a massive growth of crystal flowers covering almost every bit of surface that didn''t have writing on it, including most of the ground. Those writings had to be the activation poems old lady Vinthre had mentioned, which meant that he had reached the control room. There was only a relatively small circle of naked rock in the middle, and within it, sitting atop of a stone, the purple loghra looked at him with a smirk. Even though he was pretty sure that Leewa had mentioned her name, he couldn''t remember it at that moment. It certainly did look like her, but her expression and mannerisms just seemed¡­ off. And it wasn''t the only thing that looked off: normally, a crystal flower would just sit quietly in its spot and emit a rather faint light of just one specific colour, which would be different from species to species. However, these crystal flowers almost appeared to be subtly trembling, and their light flickered and wavered between an acid green to a sickly shade of purple. Even the dark stone-like vines that made up the main body of the crystal flowers seemed to be faintly shivering.


    "There you go!" She mockingly encouraged him. "Why don''t you come closer, so that we can make acquaintance with each other?"


    He did as he was told, almost as if incapable of disobeying.


    She carefully scanned him, then asked, "So, what is a young and handsome little fei like you doing all the way down here?"


    "I, uh¡­" He started responding automatically, before even forming an answer in his head, but then decided to try and go on the offensive, almost scared by how easily he had been obeying to her commands, "D-didn''t we already meet on the airship?"


    "Hmm? You mean you already met with her? Oh, I see. No, I''m afraid I didn''t meet you, but it certainly is possible that you would have met with this loghra on that airship, yes."


    "What does that mean? Are you, like, mind controll¡­"


    She interrupted him, "What''s with all these questions? Don''t you know it''s rude to get so personal when you just met somebody new? Ah, you know what? Fine, I''ll answer your questions, but only if you agree to play a little game with me."


    "A¡­ game?"


    She nodded. "Indeed. Nothing more than an innocent little mind game, in which you get to ask me something and I may very well provide you with an answer. But, like all good games, it has a few rules."


    "Wait, wait, I haven''t accepted to participate yet."


    "Of course." She agreed. "And the game won''t start unless you do."


    "Well, why would I want to accept playing any game with you? I don''t know you, nor do I know if I can trust you."


    She laughed. Like before, her laughter sounded genuinely gleeful. "I completely agree, and, in fact, I feel the same way. Games are the way through which I like to establish trust with someone I just met. What better way to know each other than to see what you''re willing or capable to do in order to win?"


    "Well, what happens if I win? Or if I lose, for that matter?"


    "Oh, it''s very simple: if you win, I''ll answer truthfully to a question of yours. And if you lose, well¡­ that depends."


    Lirai gulped. "On what?"


    "Hmm. Why don''t I just tell you the rules? This way you''ll know for yourself."


    He hesitated, but didn''t really feel like he had a choice. "Alright, go ahead then."


    As soon as he pronounced those words, he had an ominous feeling, almost as if something invisible and untouchable had grabbed him by the neck, and, in response, she laughed once more. Her laughter was even more joyful than before.


    "Very well, here goes then. Rule number one: if either of us, at any point until the game is officially over and the winners got their rewards, breaks one of the rules of the game, then the game is over and the other player becomes the sole victor."


    Lirai nodded. That one seemed rather reasonable: after all, it did make her as accountable as him, right?


    Her smile turned smug just before listing the second rule. "Rule number two: listening to the rules is already part of the game, therefore voluntarily agreeing to hear them gives tacit approval for the game to start and to become a player."


    His heart almost stopped again, just like when she had called for him to get inside. "Wait, wait, I didn''t sign up for that!"


    She chuckled. "Oh but you did. I''m sure you felt it, yes? That sensation of something closing around your neck?"


    His eyes widened and his ears dropped backwards.


    "That was a sign that the contract has been sealed," she continued, "and these aren''t the rules of any simple game, but the binding terms of a magic contract. You have to abide by them, as do I, for that matter: every magic contract is a two way street."


    "Are¡­ are there more rules?"


    "Why, of course: we haven''t even gotten to what the game actually is, these are just preliminary principles that make the game exciting. So, may I continue?"


    Reluctantly, he nodded.


    "Rule number three: no running away; if either of us walks away from the other with the intention of never coming back to complete the game, then they have broken the rules."


    Lirai tilted his head. So, did that mean that walking away with the intention of coming back at some point wasn''t against the rules? Some part of him wanted to ask that question, but he was too intimidated to do so.


    "Rule number four: neither of us is allowed to lie; and, by "lie", in this context I mean specifically trying to say something you know to be true as if it was false or something you know to be false as if it was true; in other words, if you say something that isn''t true but you''re convinced that it is, that is not considered lying."


    "A-and this goes for you too, right?"


    "But of course! One of the main reasons this rule exists is to act as a guarantee that, if you do win, I''ll answer to you truthfully. Unless you can fully trust that I''ll be truthful, this game won''t be nearly as fun."


    "Any other preliminary principles?"


    Another giggle shook her body. "Oh no, now we actually get to the meat of the game. Rule number five: the game consists in setting up a mutually beneficial contract. How this works is you''ll have to decide a piece of information you want me to provide you, and I do mean any information. Then, I''ll establish a price for you to pay in order for me to provide what you asked. Until the contract has been explicitly agreed upon by you, I won''t have to answer your question, nor will you have to pay the price I asked of you."


    His ears and tail worriedly twitched when she uttered the word price. "Wait, what kind of price?"


    "Any price. You get to ask me any piece of information you want, so it''s only fair that I get to ask any price I want in return. Oh, but don''t look so worried: the guarantee that I can''t ask you anything too unreasonable is that the contract won''t be valid until you expressly agree to it."


    Lirai wondered if it really was that simple, but she relentlessly went on.


    "Rule number six: no haggling. I can''t haggle on your request and you can''t haggle on my price; the only way for you to change my price, if you think it''s too much for you, is to change the question."


    He nodded gravely. So, if he asked something she didn''t like, all she had to do in order to discourage him was to ask for an outrageous price in return. He was right to doubt that it would be as simple as she had just made it seem moments prior.


    "Rule number seven: After you present your question and I respond with my price, you can either accept or refuse; if you refuse, as per rule six, you''ll have to ask a different question; if you accept, then the game officially ends and we''re both considered winners!"


    "Wait, really?"


    She nodded with a huge smile. "Yes, really. This doesn''t have to be a zero-sum game, we can both get what we want out of it. Didn''t I say that this is the game I like to play to get to know a new friend?"


    Lirai thought that that hadn''t quite been the wording she had used before, but decided to gloss over it for the time being.


    "Rule number eight: after the game is over and the winner or winners are established, it is time for the rewards; if I win because you broke one of the rules, you''ll have to pay the last price that I proposed or, if no price had been proposed yet, I can make it up on the spot; if you win because I broke one of the rules, I''ll have to answer your last request truthfully, as per rule number number four, and if you hadn''t presented your first request yet you get to ask whatever you want; if we both win because you agreed to my price then I''ll have to give you a truthful account of the info you asked me and you''ll have to pay the agreed upon price."


    After she finished describing the eight rule, she stopped speaking and stared at him with a content smug on her face.


    "Um, i-is this," he stammered, "is this all the rules?"


    She shrugged. "I stopped listing, didn''t I?"


    He immediately fell silent, as he didn''t even know where to start. He simply had too many questions, and even trying to put an order of priority to them was difficult. Who and what was controlling that loghra, and how? What was happening with the crystal flowers and their odd behaviour? What did she want with the Beighal? She had mentioned that something had gone wrong with her plan but had also figured out what, so what was the deal with that? And speaking of the Beighal, what was that consciousness that Heleine had perceived in it? And why was it in pain, as evidenced by its terrible cry? And, for that matter, how did she stop it from moving? What happened to its consciousness after she did?


    Trying to rack his brain to find the best question to ask, he thought that maybe he should start from the boldest one, to see the baseline price for a question she wouldn''t want to answer to.


    Nodding for having found his next course of action, he started, "I want you to tell me who and what are you, and by that I mean you, not the loghra you''re controlling."


    She nodded slowly, her smirk never wavering. "Hmm, you''re starting off bold, aren''t you? Heh, and to think that I took you for being somewhat of a wimp. See what I mean when I say that a game is the best way to get to know each other?"


    "What''s the price then?" He pressured her.


    She sighed. "Must you really be in so much of a hurry? Part of the fun is getting to do some chit chat in between each exchange, wouldn''t you think?"


    Her gaze really intimidated him: he felt once more as if he was being stared at by a predator, even though this time it wasn''t the kind that would literally eat him. Still, the vague nature of the threat certainly didn''t ease him at all, in fact it might have made things even worse.


    Even so, he pressed on. "T-the price?"


    "Ugh, fine." She rolled her eyes, but then her smile grew wide again. "In exchange for that info, I want you to agree to a magical contract in which you surrender every last bit of your free will to me and become my pawn, my puppet, for the rest of your life."


    Ah, so now he knew what was her baseline price for a question she wouldn''t want to answer.


    "What? Who would ever accept to those terms?"


    She shrugged. "That''s my price for that information. See, I really do value my privacy, so that''s not the kind of information I would surrender to just anyone. Only someone who can be fully dedicated to me can have it, so I think it''s a pretty fitting price. Well then, you refuse my terms, I take it?"


    "Of course I do!"


    Her smile seemed really pleased for some reason. "I do like that you value your free will enough not to even consider that someone else could agree to my terms. Now, for your next request?"


    "Can¡­ can I take some time to think about it?"


    "By all means, take all the time you need." She responded with a dismissive wave of her hand.


    He really needed to sort this out. At that point, what he wanted more than anything was get out of that situation, so much so that he''d gladly renounce getting any answer to the many questions he had. However, he realised that, until the game was over, he couldn''t get away. With that in mind, his next course of action would be to try and end the game by getting the best piece of info at the lowest possible price he could get her to propose. What piece of information did he need more than anything from her? Probably something about the Beighal and her plan with it, as that was the point of him even being there in the first place. He couldn''t go straight for that, he needed to test the waters a bit more to see how much he could get away with asking and still get a reasonable price.


    His ears twitched. Maybe there was a different solution too, though. Heleine and the others were coming right that way, and they may very well be able to reach them if given enough time. Leewa was some kind of powerful magic user, right? Maybe she could undo the contract. All he needed to do was buy enough time for them to reach him. Once that happened and the contract was broken, he had no doubt that the others would be more than capable of restricting the loghra and get all the answers they needed from her.


    He nodded, set on his next course of action. He would buy as much time as possible while also trying to see how much he could get away with in terms of price for the needed information.


    "Who was the other creature that was helping you?" He asked, eventually.


    "Who indeed?" She calmly responded, "To tell you that, I want you to agree to a magic contract in which, while you do get to keep your free will for the most part, you become my subordinate and have to obey direct orders from me. This contract would last ten terms, after which you''d be free to do as you please for the rest of your life."


    A pattern was beginning to emerge. It would seem that all her prices would come with some form of servitude or another. Maybe he could put that theory to the test.


    "No, thank you. I, uh¡­ I''d like for you to tell me which language is the official language of the Princedom of Valdhea."


    She raised her brows. "Huh-uh, you don''t plan on accepting my price on this one no matter how mild it is, do you? You''re trying to put me to the test, aren''t you? Either that or you want to trick me into give you a trivial price to pay so you can end the game."


    The way her amused gaze pierced him made him feel guilty for a moment, as if he was the one doing something wrong. And yet, once more, her smirk didn''t waver at all, while the facade of calm that he had been trying to sell completely crumbled as his ears dropped backwards and his eyes widened at being called out.


    "Because of the intent behind your request," she continued, "I will ask you to renounce music. You''ll become tone-deaf and unable to appreciate or play music ever again."


    "I-I¡­" he gripped harder his violin case, "I refuse your terms."


    She leaned her head on top of her hand, and he had the distinct impression that she was telling him "I got you completely figured out" with that motion.


    He felt like the opening he had thought he''d seen before was getting smaller and smaller. Now she was on the lookout for him testing her, so trying to get information out of the deal at a reasonable price became a less tenable prospect. As badly as he wanted answers, his priorities needed to shift, or he would probably lose his freedom by the time the game was over. At that point, the only possibility he could see was to keep buying time until the others found him, but he was a little afraid that she''d find a way to shut down that option as well if it became too obvious what he was doing. As long as he could confide in that line of action, he still had hope.


    So he began asking questions again, careful to only ask something he could reasonably expect her to believe he''d actually want to know the answer to. Furthermore, he always skirted around the topic of her identity, of the Beighal, and the mysterious behaviour of the crystal flowers, so he could expect her to keep on offering prices he could believably shut down without giving away the fact that he didn''t have any intention of accepting them to begin with. Every time, she did as he expected and asked some form of servitude, some more severe and some less, in exchange for that kind of information, and he shut them all down. This kept going for way longer than he was able to keep track of.


    Eventually, he asked, "What happened to activate the poems in this room to awaken the Beighal?"


    She raised her brows again. "Hmm, didn''t you ask that one a couple of notches ago?"


    "Huh?"


    "Yes, I believe it was about two or three questions after your ridiculous request on the official language of the Princedom." She then sharply accused him, "Are you trying to get me to lower my price by asking the same question with slightly different phrasing over a long period of time so I wouldn''t notice? That would be haggling and against rule number six."


    He vigorously denied, "No, no! I wasn''t purposely trying to ask the same thing again and again in the hope you''d lower your price, I swear! I''m just¡­ starting to get tired, I don''t remember exactly everything I already asked you."


    She visibly relaxed. "Well, the game didn''t end just now, so I know you''re telling the truth, since knowingly breaking a rule would instantly end the game. My price for that question hasn''t changed, do you still refuse those terms?"


    He nodded: even though he didn''t remember the exact specifics of her terms for that question, they definitely hadn''t stood out to him as particularly reasonable, or he would have remembered that.


    After a brief silence, in which he went back to thinking about his next question, still visibly shaking, she spoke again, "And, tell me, is there a chance that you''re only buying time for the rest of your friends to reach you and find a way to get you out of trouble?"


    No doubt, the utter panic that struck him from the inside out became immediately obvious from his expression, because she once more laughed a viscerally sincere and cheerful laugh before telling him, "Oh, if that''s the case I''m afraid you''ll be waiting for a while. Since playing with you so far has been very fun for me, let me give you a little bit of information about myself for free."


    She raised her hand and slowly curled one finger. The crystal flowers around him, as if prompted by her, slowly moved in waves, almost as if a very gentle breeze had brushed past a field of regular flowers. During that motion, they turned the same shade of dark red he had seen when he tripped down the hole that separated him from the others. She snapped her fingers, and some of the flowers produced the same chime that had eventually led him there. There was no doubt, she was controlling the crystal flowers.


    "And I can do much more than this too. So, you see, you only got this far because I wanted you to. I led you here. I can keep your friends running in circles, preventing them from reaching us, for as long as I want."


    She joined her hands by interlocking her fingers and rested her head on top of them. "In other words, you are all alone."


    The muscles in his joints almost gave up. He was one breath away from falling down to the ground, utterly crushed by the weight of his last hope being snuffed out in front of him.


    He didn''t know for how long he remained silent, utterly defeated, in front of her, before she asked, "So, what''s your next request?"


    That''s when he kind of woke up from the crushing sense of annihilation that had taken him over. The game was still not over, and it wouldn''t be over until he agreed to one of her unreasonable set of terms. He was almost ready to accept that, in order for the game to end, he would have to accept some form of servitude to that creature. The only way he could escape that fate was if she broke one of her own rules, but it had become clear to him that she had chosen a set of rules she was very comfortable following, so he couldn''t imagine her accidentally breaking one.


    In that moment, his ears perked up. Was it possible? Could it work?


    Noticing his change of attitude, she asked, "Oh, did you just think of something?"


    He raised his eyes to meet her gaze once more, and his heart accelerated exponentially with every instant as he did so. He hadn''t had the time to fully consider the consequences of his next action, but he felt compelled to act anyway.


    "I want you," he declared, "to tell me something you know to be false."

 A Wail that Pierces the Sky final part

    For the third time in a row, they entered the same chamber with the same bed of crystal flowers in the middle. Heleine''s head felt like it could split open at any moment, all because of the terrible headache that had taken her briefly after Lirai had plunged into the darkness. Despite hearing him shout that he was fine after falling, she couldn''t help but be worried for him, and she was sure the others felt the same. Now that the Beighal had stopped moving, their priority had shifted from finding a solution to that crisis to reuniting with their new fei friend. It had been a few notches since they got separated, at least.


    The light of the crystal flowers seemed to pulse, and the pain in Heleine''s head grew stronger with each pulse. Suspicious of the way their light had been flickering and changing colour, she had shut herself off from Shountu, fearing that whatever it was that caused their mystifying behaviour could affect her too if she didn''t. This, of course, had meant that she had had to rely on her sense of smell to guide them through the galleries, avoiding their many dead ends by choosing the path that felt the least stale. But that headache made her almost nauseous, and it seriously messed with her ability to follow a scent trail.


    A small, caring paw touched her on the shoulder. "It''s okay, don''t pressure yourself too hard," Nova tried to comfort her, "this place was obviously designed to be hard to navigate."


    "Indeed," Gyvar confirmed, encouraging, "We''ll all help you finding a way to the best of our abilities."


    With his surprisingly juvenile voice, Sychrill stated, "Ye shuld rest. Did too much in too short time. Ye''re not well, I see it."


    She shot a suspicious glare to the crystal flowers not far from them. There was no doubt in her mind that their odd behaviour was in some way connected to the Beighal starting to move in the first place, perhaps even to Lirai''s fall, but she hurt too badly to be able to reason or to move forward.


    She nodded to Sychrill. "As much as I hate to admit it, you''re right. I can''t keep it up right now. Can any of you take the lead?"


    "Honestly, sweetheart," began Gyvar, "I think you shouldn''t worry about that. Just lay down and have a nap, while we try to find a solution. You guided us all the way down here, that was already really helpful from you, so we''ll take it from here."


    Heleine didn''t intend to actually fall asleep, as suggested, but she did lay down on the cold rocky ground. Closing her eyes for a moment seemed to ease the excruciating pain in her head, at least a little. Her breathing slowed down, her muscles relaxed, the sound of the others softly discussing what to do next in a whisper seemed to become more and more distant.


    She almost dozed off, but successfully managed to remain conscious. As much as she needed rest, she just refused to completely shut down and stop making herself useful in some way. The headache was still there, but now she found that she was actually able to think a bit more straight than before. She had been fighting that headache all that time, but she hadn''t stopped long enough to actually analyse it and try to understand where it came from. But now, she could do just that, so she carefully tried to.


    It almost felt as if something was pressing against her skull from the inside, right in the middle. She had thought it had just been fatigue and nothing more, but she had been through longer hunts with no trouble, so that couldn''t be it. Allowing herself to completely feel any sensation from her body, she realised that, albeit a lot less intensely, that same pain ran down the entire length of her spine. That could not be a coincidence.


    It wasn''t very obvious, unless someone specifically paid attention to it, but from the top of her head to the tailhead, instead of regular fur, the shamans in her species had a line of small and soft epidermal growths not unlike feathers, that could glow a little, just like the tip of their whiskers, when using Shountu. The pain in her head was more intense where those "feathers" grew on her head, and all through her spine. She suspected there to be some kind of invasive force trying to get to her through her connection with the crystal flowers. She had never heard of anything like that ever happening, but she definitely didn''t have any reason to think it was impossible, especially because she wasn''t familiar with the innate abilities of all species outside of her native region. She decided to open herself just a little, in order to test her suspicion. She could almost immediately feel something trying to invade her mind, so she shut it off. Uh-huh, so that''s how it was.


    If any of the others looked at her, she knew they would see both her whiskers and the "feathers" on her back glowing, because she was preparing to go on the offensive. She activated her Shountu and didn''t wait for that mysterious force to try once again to get inside of her head. She invaded it back instead.


    Now that she was going at it full force, she could feel two distinct entities connected with the crystal flowers, aside from herself. One was now quiet, but it felt very similar to the one she had perceived originally when trying to see if the Beighal was alive; so, even after stopping, that was still there. The other, the one trying to assault her, retreated as soon as it realised she was going on the counter-offensive. She prepared for it to strike back, but, to her surprise, it didn''t. In fact, it all but disappeared.


    What happened next would be difficult to describe to someone who didn''t have the ability to experience Shountu. It would be as if she had pushed her entire bodyweight forward, expecting a powerful gust of wind to come and getting ready to resist to it, only to lose balance because that gust didn''t come. Something similar happened to her within the connection through Shountu, and she "fell" against the other consciousness, the one she associated with the Beighal.


    ***


    A warm breeze caressed the rough surface of the massive stone bricks beneath her. Before even being able to acknowledge her surroundings, she realised she was inside of a memory. It wasn''t the first time she had been able to enter the memories stored within the all-encompassing network of crystal flowers, so it was easy for her to understand that. However, on previous occasions, all the memories she had experienced came from creatures coming from her native land. The environment surrounding her now was completely different.


    She had never seen anything like that. She was in some kind of huge stone complex, on top of a big platform in the middle of an impossibly large chamber, with pillars taller than two dozens of koul trees stacked on top of each other, perhaps even more. Only two sides of the locale she was in were closed by humongous walls; the rest was open, revealing more buildings, pillars, stairs, and platforms like the one she was in, as far as the eye could see. She could see the terrain, but only very far away from her, leading her to believe that the platform she was on was in a really high position. What terrain she could see was arid, a vast expanse of sand extending, together with the tremendously huge complex of stone buildings, all the way to the horizon. It was all completely desolated, as if nothing had lived there in who knows how long. For a moment, she thought she heard the distant sound of music, but, when her ears turned in the direction from which it seemed to come, she could no longer hear anything.


    She turned around, trying to locate the origin of the memory. It couldn''t be too far. As if on cue, she found, behind her, the indistinct shadow of some kind of living being. It was about her size, perhaps a tiny bit bigger. It didn''t make any noise, but its shoulders shook as if it was crying. In the dark blur of the shadow, she could barely make up the shape of a pair of arms covering its head, where its eyes were supposed to be. Lying down next to the shadow, she could see a few building tools, like a hammer and a chisel, eroded by time.


    She approached it. By touching a shadow inside a memory, she would be able to understand the feelings and thoughts it had experienced at the moment the memory had been recorded. Before she could touch it, however, it turned to face her and then, as if startled, it quickly recoiled. She stopped dead in her tracks. The shadow was not supposed to react to anything she did. A shadow was not a living being, it was nothing more than an after-image, a footprint of a moment in the past. She turned around to see if anything around her could, within the memory, cause that reaction, but it was still just the two of them in that impossible place.


    "Um¡­ don''t worry, I''m not going to hurt you." She tried to say in Valdheel.


    It responded with an unexpectedly deep voice, but in a language she couldn''t understand. A few notes of a distant music echoed again, but once more it disappeared when she tried to focus on it. The shadow did not appear to react to it.


    "Do you understand the Language of Winter?" She tried asking in her mother tongue.


    Again, it only answered in that language she didn''t know. Oh well, worth a shot.


    So, that clearly was not a memory. If it was, she shouldn''t have been able to interact with anything within it: she couldn''t rewrite or alter a memory, only read it, so to speak. But, if it wasn''t a memory, then what was it?


    Maybe, it came to her, that outlandish place was, in some way, some sort of dream-like state that represented the Beighal''s mind. If that was the case, then that shadow had to be the consciousness at the core of the stone guardian. She looked around again, but nothing in the strange architecture around reminded her of anything she had seen in the galleries, but she shrugged it off because that alone didn''t mean anything. Thinking about it, no stone structure of that size could actually exist in the physical world: nobody could build pillars that tall, or walls that vast; and, even if someone could, it would require an impossible amount of time, and it would all come crumbling down long before the work was even over. That wasn''t a literal place in the real world, she deduced, it had to be some kind of symbolism that made sense for the shadow in front of her.


    Very good, she had made some progress. What now? She had already established that she wasn''t able to communicate with the shadow, so what else could she try to do? She could try to touch it again, but she didn''t want to cause it to panic, because who knew what would happen in the waking world if the mind of the Beighal freaked out in there. Besides, she knew what would happen if she touched the shadow at the core of a memory, but this circumstance was entirely new to her, so she couldn''t be sure that it would work the same way.


    For a third time, she could hear music again, this time a little clearer. It finally occurred to her why it would disappear when she focused her attention on her surroundings: that music probably came from the real world, and, by focusing on her surroundings, she only heard the sounds within the dream. She almost slapped her own forehead at the realisation, because being able to recognise which sensations cam from the real world and which came from Shountu was among the basics. Now she finally could understand what was that music. It came from somewhere else, not from the same chamber from which she had connected, but not too far away either.


    A flutter of happiness and relief crossed her chest as she recognised that music as Lirai''s violin. It was a simple, somewhat slow tune, yet emotional and weirdly nostalgic. She wished that the shadow in front of her could hear it, because she was sure it would soothe it. Then she had an idea. As a shaman, she had been taught what''s needed to preside to ceremonial and ritual functions, and, although she didn''t think of it as her strongest skill, she was indeed capable of singing. The music was fairly simple and repetitive, so that would definitely make things easier.


    She cleared her voice, took a deep breath, and started singing after Lirai''s violin. It had been a while since the last time she had had to sing, so, to avoid voice-breaks, she eased into it and avoided jumping too high in her register right away. The shadow appeared suspicious at first, but then, as the song went on, it finally relaxed. Still singing, she slowly approached it, and this time it didn''t react negatively.


    She offered her hand, still singing, and it took it. When contact was made, a flood of feelings came from the shadow into her mind. He had been a builder, dedicated to a massive project started before his birth, and that he wouldn''t live long enough to see completed. But, instead of finding peace, at the end of his life, something immensely powerful forced his shadow inside of a massive body, so heavy that each step was painful, so cold that he could hardly feel the warmth of the lumena in the sky. He had sensed a mountain on the horizon; he didn''t quite understand how, but he knew that that mountain was home to a powerful prince, and something whispered to his ear that the prince was responsible for his imprisonment. So, enraged, he started walking towards it. Only a little while ago, long before he could reach the mountain, a powerful force stopped him, but he was still impotently inside of that enormous body and couldn''t get out.


    Heleine understood. She couldn''t free him, since she didn''t know how he had been imprisoned in the first place, but she could put him at ease and cause his shadow to fade asleep. So, singing the last notes, she did just that, and the dream around her started to slip away. Before closing her eyes, which would bring her back in the waking world, she felt a wave of gratitude coming from the shadow. She smiled as she closed her eyes.


    ***


    When she re-opened her eyes, she found the rest of them still quietly discussing.


    "Ah, there she is," commented Gyvar, as she took notice of Heleine being awake, "I gather that you''re feeling better?"


    Heleine nodded. "I''m completely fine now, thank you for waiting for me."


    "That is wonderful, darling. While you were out, Leewa managed to locate the approximate position of our destination, so we should be ready to go as soon as you are."


    "It''s not going to be exact," Leewa clarified, "because there are still a lot of disturbances in the Flow, event though the construct itself stopped moving."


    "That''s great, but, before we go¡­" and the blue mikai described the headache she had been dealing with, the two consciousnesses she had perceived from the crystal flowers, and the dream-like experience she had just gone through, including Lirai''s music.


    Leewa nodded. "I see. So, my theory is that this shadow thing you told us about was probably used as a way to control the Beighal once the energy necessary to make it move was provided. In other words, it explains why and to what end the Beighal moves, but we still don''t know how, nor who is behind all of it."


    "And," added Gyvar, "it would appear that the target of this whole thing was the Prince himself."


    Helein pondered, "But then why did it stop?"


    Nova raised a hand. "Question. If Heleine heard Lirai play from somewhere, shouldn''t we be able to hear it while approaching the place?"


    The three who had been discussing up until then looked at each other, then Gyvar proclaimed, "You are absolutely right. We should get moving, before he grows tired of playing."


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    Not wasting any more time, Leewa and Heleine joined efforts to move forward. It took them about a tenth of a notch to reach a point where they could finally hear Lirai''s violin echoing in the galleries, and soon, following the sound, they found themselves in the chamber covered in glimmering writings and crystal flowers. Within the clearing in the middle, they spotted Lirai and the unconscious figure of a loghral.


    The fei lifted his eyes to meet them and gave them an uncertain smile. "Thank you so much for coming", he tiredly stated.


    Before any of them could respond, Leewa gasped, "Dheeli? What is she doing down here?"


    Lirai looked down at the purple loghra, then back to them, with a hint of panic in his eyes. "I, um," he stumbled, "I honestly can''t tell."


    Hold on. Something was wrong with Lirai. Heleine decided to insist. "What do you mean you can''t tell? Was she already here when you arrived?"


    He hesitated a lot before answering. "She¡­ no, she arrived shortly after I did."


    Leewa quickly approached them to check on the purple loghra. "And? Why is she unconscious?"


    Lirai shook his head. "I¡­ I really can''t tell."


    Now that she was closer, Heleine couldn''t help but notice the acrid smell of fear coming from the fei. He wasn''t necessarily scared in that particular moment, but she was sure that he had been seriously terrified in the immediate past.


    "Tell us what happened from the beginning, even if you don''t understand it." Commanded Leewa, with an authoritative tone Heleine hadn''t seen her use before.


    He shook his head. "I''m sorry."


    "Tell us now!" Barked Leewa, opening her wings.


    His eyes widened as he recoiled in fear of her sudden display of aggression. "I can''t! I just can''t!"


    Heleine put herself between the loghra and the frightened musician. "Stop it!" She yelled, rolling up her lips and showing her fangs, "Can''t you see he''s not alright? Something clearly happened here, but we won''t figure it out by snapping on him like that!"


    Leewa closed her wings and lowered her voice somewhat, but her brows remained harshly furrowed. "Listen, Dheeli might not be very amicable or pleasant, but she''s a high official of the Princedom. I need to know what happened here. She was probably down here to try and solve the issue, just like us, so if Lirai used his magic to knock her unconscious that is a very grave action with serious consequences."


    "Please, let''s not fight!" begged Nova.


    "Ahem," Gyvar cleared her throat. "Pardon me, dear, but I seriously doubt our meek friend here would attack anyone unprompted. There is a possibility that, if a confrontation did happen, she was the instigator."


    Leewa rolled her eyes. "Of course, I know Dheeli and I know that I should always assume her to be the aggressor, I''m not mad at him for that. Why can''t you all see that, even if that''s the truth, Dheeli is very likely to spin the events in her favour? I need to know everything that actually happened to make sure that I can help him were she to accuse him of something, because if it''s the word of a theophyte against the word of an unknown foreigner guess who loses."


    Heleine didn''t move from her defensive position. "Well, you don''t have to be an absolute jerk about it!"


    Gyvar calmly nodded. "Indeed. You should be more mindful of your manners, dear, otherwise others might misunderstand your intentions. Your concern is valid, but flying off the handle like that won''t help getting it across or solving the issue."


    That seemed to snap Leewa out of it. She visibly shrunk and half hid her face behind one of her wings. "I''m¡­ sorry."


    The pink dhelil shifted her focus from Leewa to Heleine and Lirai. "I do sincerely ask for your forgiveness on her behalf: she means no ill will, but, despite her rank, she has a lot to learn about dealing with social matters."


    Heleine raised a brow. "You two know each other?"


    Gyvar chuckled. "Hardly. I did meet her a few times before, but I wouldn''t say I know her extremely well. Being a diplomat, I do need to be a good judge of character."


    Everyone relaxed. Heleine was in awe of how Gyvar had, seemingly effortlessly, alleviated the tension and helped everyone calm down.


    "Now," the dhelil queried without missing a beat, "would you mind telling us whatever you can, dear? We were all very worried about you and we really would like to understand what occurred."


    Lirai sighed. "I''m really, really sorry, but I can''t talk about it."


    Leewa shifted about awkwardly, then she raised a finger. "Uh, could¡­ could I get closer for a moment? I''d like to check something."


    For a moment, Heleine didn''t budge and stayed between her and Lirai, but seeing her change in demeanour she slowly made way, eventually. Leewa, doing what she could to appear smaller, approached the fei. She closed her eyes and slowly touched his forehead with the tip of her nose. Lirai awkwardly stood still, allowing her to do so.


    After a moment of this contact, Leewa shuddered away. "He''s been cursed."


    Heleine blinked in confusion. "What?"


    "I just checked for any magic effect on him, and I found some kind of curse. Pretty elaborate too."


    "Well, can you do something about it?"


    The loghra shook her head. "Not right here and right now. From what I''ve been able to see, it''s not been made by an amateur, and it uses an architecture I''m not familiar with, so attempting to break it would be reckless. I can''t be sure of what would be the consequences."


    Heleine pressed on. "But you can eventually do it, right?"


    The logrha looked away. "I can''t make any promises, but if you give me enough time and I''m allowed to check him in a lab I might be able to do something about it. Or, at least, to tell you more about what the curse does exactly."


    She paused, stroking her chin with her fingers. "Clearly, keeping silent on what happened here must be one of the conditions of the curse. Still, most of the victims of this kind of curse, when interrogated on the events, give a false statement, often instructed by the one who cast the curse in the first place on what to say exactly, so as not to cause suspicion. What I''m trying to say is that it kinda perplexes me that Lirai didn''t have such a story to tell."


    She then looked down on the unconscious loghra. "Also, I''m pretty sure Dheeli can''t be the one to have placed the curse on him."


    Heleine tilted her head. "Oh? How can you tell?"


    "As I said," she explained, "this curse uses an architecture I''m unfamiliar with. Dheeli and I learned magic together, I know the way she does things. When it comes to spells and curses, she''s a bit sloppy even with the kinds of architecture we''ve been taught, let alone one that she would have had to learn on her own in her spare time. She''s really good at other things, but magic engineering is not her forte, so I seriously doubt she''d be able to pull off something as elaborate as what I''ve sensed on him."


    "Then," inquired Gyvar, "who did place that curse?"


    Leewa shrugged. "I have no idea."


    Heleine examined the chamber around them. The crystal flowers were now behaving as normal, which is to say quietly emanating a soft glow. The writing on the walls was also still emanating a faint light. She put her nose on the ground and tried to piece together the events by smell.


    The oldest and faintest of smells she found was that of an old loghra, with hints of tea and old paper. It didn''t take a genius to figure out who that was, but Heleine did wonder why she hadn''t found that scent while traversing the tunnels: it would have made finding that place much easier to begin with. After that, she found the anxious smell of a smaller creature, probably feathered and winged, with a fruity hint that reminded her of the rakshia back in her home land. It was probably a male, and he had been hanging out a lot in the proximity of the wall, and also¡­ what was that?


    "Hey, I found something." Announced the mikai.


    She grabbed a tiny object lying on the ground, small enough to comfortably fit in her palm. It was some kind of crystal, the shape of a pyramid with four sides. When she did so, the writings on the wall finally went dark.


    Leewa immediately took an interest in it and seized it from Heleine. "Fascinating. This uses the same kind of architecture as the curse we just discussed. I''m not entirely sure, I would need to examine it further in a lab, but I suspect this tiny thing is what created the Flow syphon that powered the Beighal."


    "Such a small thing?" Inquired Gyvar.


    The loghra nodded. "It probably didn''t do it all on its own. It may be the case that it empowered the crystal flowers all over the body of the stone guardian to syphon the Flow inside of here, giving it the energy it needed to move. This might partially explain why the crystal flowers were behaving strangely."


    While Leewa was busy speculating, Heleine went back to investigating the scene with her nose. At some point, the feathered fellow took his leave by flight. In every spot where she found his scent, the smells of anxiety and fear were almost overpowering. Then, she found the sophisticated but slightly threatening aroma of the purple loghra. It had unnerving undertones of amusement. At some point, the loghra had placed herself on the rock in the middle of the room, and she stayed there for quite a while. The scent of fresh wood, seaweed, and cereals that she had come to associate with Lirai could also be found near that rock. The two of them probably had a very long conversation in that spot, but she could tell that he had been seriously afraid on more than one occasion throughout that time. As much as she searched, she couldn''t find any other smell in the room.


    She explained her findings to the others.


    "From your description of the other creature you identified," reasoned Gyvar, "It might have been a lansa. Correct me if I''m wrong, but I think that, albeit few, there are some lansa capable of this kind of advanced magic."


    Leewa shook her head. "I categorically exclude that a lansa would be responsible for this curse. Even the few advanced magic users among them would never use that kind of architecture, they''d prefer using something more¡­ how should I put it? Streamlined. Simple. Their magical essence doesn''t allow for anything too unnecessarily elaborated. Conceivably, an expert could be able to handle something like that, but even if they had the ability they wouldn''t choose to because it would feel inconvenient to them."


    "Could a loghral handle it?" Questioned Heleine.


    "Sure, but our body is specifically evolved to handle any kind of magic. Even though a loghral would easily be able to use it, this architecture doesn''t feel like it was designed for loghral use to begin with."


    The mikai nodded. "Got it. Still, I can''t find evidence of anyone other than Lirai, Dheeli, and that lansa that flew away having been inside of here today before our arrival."


    Leewa sighed. "Then I''m afraid we''ll have to wait until I''m able to analyse his curse and, hopefully, break it, before we get to learn the events. For now, the best idea would be to finally get out of this place and go home."


    Heleine replied, "It feels to me like the most obvious answer is that this Dheeli was behind all of it."


    "Oh, don''t be ridiculous," derided Leewa, "why would she try to attack the Princedom? She''s a theophyte, like me."


    "I have to admit," intervened Gyvar, "it makes little sense. Theophytes have power, prestige, privilege, all because they are at the direct dependence of the Prince himself. And the successor to a Prince or Princess is always one of his or her theophytes. The simplest way for a theophyte to maintain their privileges and increase their power is to serve the Princedom, so I see no way for a theophyte to gain anything by attacking it."


    "On the other hand," added Nova, "she is kinda mean and rude."


    Leewa dismissed her, "I know her and yes, she absolutely is¡­ rather unpleasant. However, she is loyal to the Princedom, almost to a fault. I absolutely cannot believe that she would willingly put it in danger."


    During this last exchange, Heleine tried to keep an eye on Lirai, trying to see if his body language revealed something. He had been squirming uncomfortably every time someone had accused Dheeli of being the culprit. It felt like he wanted to say something to clear the purple loghra from the accusations but couldn''t. Also, she could see that everyone was exhausted.


    So, she decided, it was time to put an end to this discussion. "Well, we can''t really tell right now, so maybe the best idea would be to get out of here and wait for Leewa to be able to examine the curse further. We''re all tired, and it seems to me that we''ve all done whatever we could to solve the issue and, hey, we were successful at stopping the Beighal, right?"


    "I agree," Leewa assented, "and by now there will definitely be rescue teams and investigators all around the area, so all we really need to do is get out of these caves and they''ll take us from there." She glanced at the unconscious loghra on the ground. "We should also take her with us."


    "Ah do it," Sychrill timidly offered. "Ah did do nothing to help, so ah help with this."


    "Aw, it''s not true that you didn''t help," chimed Nova, "You made us all feel safer in those scary, dark caves, by knowing that a big and strong guy like you was with us!"


    He whimpered a soft "Thanks" while glancing at his own feet. The rest of them, Heleine included, couldn''t help but giggle at his display of shyness.


    As they started to get going, Heleine noticed Lirai visibly limping, so she trotted to his side.


    "Come on, lean on me." She offered with an encouraging smile.


    "Oh, no, there''s no need to¡­"


    "I absolutely insist. Besides, I still need to thank you for helping me."


    He furrowed his brows, puzzled. "What are you even talking about?"


    After he gave up and leaned onto her with his arm, they all finally started on their way back, and she told him about the shadow within the dream, and how his music helped her put it to rest.


    "Oh, that. After the loghra passed out, I didn''t really know what to do next, so I started playing, hoping that you''d hear me and find me."


    She gave him a huge smile. "That song you played was beautiful."


    "Um, thank you." He looked away. "It was written by a friend of mine."


    ***


    Helping the limping fei walk all the way back was seriously laborious for Heleine, but she didn''t complain once and, eventually, they emerged from the caves. The lumena were still bright in the sky.


    Leewa asked, "Someone remind me, how many notches was today supposed to last?"


    "Fourteen!" Chirped Nova.


    "Actually," corrected Gyvar, "you''re getting confused with yesterday. We had a fourteen notches day yesterday, followed by a night only six notches long, and today it''s supposed to be a thirty-one notches day."


    "Oops, I think you''re right." Admitted the small mava.


    "I live and die by my schedule, sweetheart," explained the dhelil, "I know the almanac by heart."


    A trio of loghral landed next to them, all wearing a dark blue scarf. Heleine took notice of the lightweight protective gear they were wearing and assumed they would be part of the Princedom''s army. Aside from the leather and copper of their equipment, she smelled some kind of pungent odour that she had never experienced before.


    "Halt, in the name of the Prince! Identify yourselves!"


    Gyvar and Leewa stepped up in front of them. "I''m Gyvar, ambassador of Her Grace the Dutchess of Dhelar, and this is Leewa, theopyte under His Highness Prince Theras. We''re all rather tired and would really appreciate a ride to the capital. Also, we have information regarding today''s situation that we''d love to disclose to your superior."


    They stiffened up. The one who had addressed them first spoke again. "Ah, of course, ma''am. We were looking for you, knowing that you were among the passengers on board of the vessel that crashed today. We¡­ didn''t expect to find you together."


    Gyvar chuckled gracefully. "Well, here we are. We''ll wait for our ride and for a telecrypt to provide our report."


    "With all due respect, there will be no need for a telecrypt, ma''am." Responded the loghral. "His Lordship the Tribune of Dhelar is personally overseeing this rescue operation, so you''ll shortly be able to report to him."


    "Hah, even better. Is it alright if we wait here? As already established, we''re all rather tired: we''ve had quite the eventful day."


    The soldier bowed with his head. "Of course, ma''am. I''ll personally protect you and your¡­" a hint of disdain surfaced on his face as he looked at the rest of the group, "ahem¡­ friends¡­ while my two subordinates go¡­"


    "There will be no need for that, sarge." dryly interrupted Gyvar, her practised smile ever so sightly veering into a scowl. "As you can see, we have a mighty dorpatchi and a brave mikai huntress with us, so we feel quite secure."


    "But¡­"


    She brushed his mouth with the tuft at the end of her tail. "Hmm, were you about to respond me?"


    He sighed, defeated. "N-no, ma''am."


    She smirked. "I thought as much."


    He slightly bowed with his head again, then gestured to the others to follow him as he took flight.


    The pink dhelil shook her head. "I can''t believe they still tolerate such appalling lack of manners in the army in this day and age."


    "Weren''t you a bit too harsh?" Asked Leewa.


    "I honestly was way too civil." She replied, her calm demeanour failing to hide the sharpness of her tone.


    Heleine whispered to Lirai, "Remind me to never tick her off."


    He giggled and nodded. She smiled, happy to see him laugh: he had been extremely gloomy for the entirety of their way back. He didn''t feel like he was the same as before. He didn''t even quite smell the same as before. She couldn''t help but frown a little; they had managed, somehow, to stop a crisis, but the state of the fei, as well as the mystery surrounding what happened in the time they had been apart, made her think that it wasn''t over yet. She helped him down, so he could rest while they waited for someone to pick them all up.


    She looked up to the sky, illuminated by the dozens of small, yet bright and warm, orbs that they called lumena. The space in between the celestial bodies was a bright shade of pale blue, as opposed to the grim purples she was used to see around her parts. She had run away from her family, hoping to find a freedom that would have been impossible with them, but. now started to wonder exactly in what kind of trouble she had managed to get herself into in doing so. Still, she wasn''t one to regret her choices, no matter how hard, so she decided to close her eyes and enjoy the scent of the summer woods, a sensation so rare in her home land that she could recall only ever smelling it once.