Hi everyone!
I was quite certain the chapters had been uploaded yesterday, and only just realized that I had mistaken that for the last time I posted. Sorry about that.
To make up for it, there will be an extra chapter this weekend.
That said, I hope this one’s enjoyable, and thank you for reading!
***
Aaaah, mornings.
Sael liked them for a few reasons, most of which boiled down to the fact that no one was awake yet. No knocks on the door. No questions. No one needing anything explained, settled, or rebuilt. Just him, and the garden, and the pipe between his teeth, and the sound of absolutely no one talking.
He drew on his pipe and let the smoke curl up past his nose into the mist. The little cloud he'd made sat just above the herbs, no wider than the garden bed itself, a quiet thing he'd shaped about ten minutes ago because the flowers were looking a bit dry and he didn't feel like fetching the watering can.
It dropped a fine, soft mist that wasn't really rain so much as the air being slightly wet, and the smell of it — pipe smoke, wet soil, flowers, and that clean, mineral scent that only rain on stone in the early morning could produce — was, in Sael's opinion, about as close to perfect as a moment could get.
The sun was coming up over the tree line, warm and clear, not a cloud in the sky.
Except the one over his garden, which was his.
The birds in the oak by the fence were putting real effort into the morning when suddenly, he heard the door open behind him.
Lance stood in the doorway, one hand still on the frame. His hair was flat on one side and his eyes were half-focused.
Sael smiled. "Good morning."
Lance stepped out, blinking against the light. "Good morning, sir."
"Did you sleep well? I've never actually tested the bed in that room myself, so I was never quite sure if it was comfortable enough."
"It was plenty comfortable, sir. More than enough." Lance straightened a little, as though remembering he had manners. "Thank you for the hospitality. And please pass my thanks to Lady Margaret as well, the stew yesterday was wonderful."
"It was a pleasure, Lance. I'll let her know."
They just stood there, neither saying much. The cloud misted over the garden. The birds carried on, and Sael drew on his pipe again when Lance finally opened his mouth. "Sir, I wanted to ask you about—"
Then something large dropped out of the sky.
It hit the grass about ten paces from where they stood with a heavy, wet thud. As Sael turned, he found a deer, fully grown, very dead, its neck bent at an angle that said the matter had been settled quickly. And beside it, landing with considerably more grace on two taloned feet, was Oz.
Sael and Lance both looked at him.
"Good morning, Oz, I see the hunt was good?"
Oz tilted his head, one eye fixed on Sael. The deer lay steaming gently beside him in the morning air.
"Where were you last night, Archmage?
... Well, that was an odd question to ask. Sael wasn't sure what to do with it. It wasn't the words themselves, those were simple enough. It was that Oz had asked at all. Since when did Oz keep track of where he went?
So he asked the only thing that made sense to him.
"Did you miss me, Oz?"
Oz's feathers rose along the back of his neck. "Do not be cute with me, Archmage. I am not one of your admirers."
"I wouldn't dream of it."
"I had responsibilities in your absence. Someone had to watch over your apprentice and that other girl, the small one with the—"
"Ilsa."
"—and they are not equipped to be left unsupervised," Oz continued, as though Sael had not spoken. "So I remained. And I watched. As was necessary."
Sael's pipe stopped halfway to his mouth. He looked at Oz for a long moment, genuinely caught off guard by that one.
"Oz, I didn't ask you to watch over them."
There was a pause. A very slight pause, as the dragon's head turned a few degrees to the left, seemingly recalculating something he'd already committed to out loud.
"You did not need to ask," Oz finally said. "Among my kind, the elder guards the young. It is the way of dragonkind. The hatchlings and the fledglings fall under the protection of whichever elder is nearest, and in your absence, that was me. It is not a matter of being asked. It is a matter of what is correct."
He held Sael's gaze for exactly long enough to make the point, and then turned, gripped the deer by the haunch with his beak, and began dragging it across the garden toward the side of the cottage. The carcass left a faint wet trail through the grass. Oz walked with his head high and his talons clicking against the stone path, and he did not look back.
Sael watched him go. Then he turned to Lance, who was already facing him, every bit as lost as he felt.
"To be quite honest with you," Sael said, drawing on his pipe. "I'm not entirely sure what just happened either."
Lance was now looking at the wet trail the deer had left across the grass. "Was that really the Dragon King of Ashams?"
Sael took a long draw on his pipe. "It was."
"The one who terrorized the eastern provinces for five years?"
"The very same."
"He's smaller than I expected."
"He is now, yes." Sael exhaled a thin ribbon of smoke. "I turned him into that shape as punishment. A dragon stripped of his dragon form, it was meant to humble him." He paused. "Honestly, I thought it would take longer. But he's out there hunting deer and watching over children he has no obligation to watch over, so either it's working faster than I anticipated, or he was always more complicated than the stories made him out to be."
Lance was quiet for a moment. Then, softly, "The Lord of Light works through stranger vessels than we'd choose ourselves."
Sael glanced at him.
"Speaking of which," he said, "I've been meaning to ask. Would you be willing to begin teaching me the Path of Souls? Later today, perhaps, if you had the time."
Lance's eyebrows went up, not dramatically, but enough to show the request had caught him off guard. "Of course. I'd be honored, sir. We could even begin now, if you'd like."
"I would like that very much, but I'm afraid the day has plans for me already." Sael tapped the pipe against his palm. "Margaret acquired a building in town for the guild, and I need to go officialize it, sign whatever needs signing, make sure the deed is in order. After that, I have to put Orion's name on the list for the upcoming tournament. And then..." He trailed off briefly. "I more or less promised the Jade Emperor I'd pay him a visit."
Lance had been nodding along politely through the first two items. At the third, he stopped.
"The Jade Emperor?"
"Hmm."
"You're visiting the Jade Emperor?"
"I am." Sael said. "He showed up yesterday and challenged me to a fight, which I declined, and then he asked if I'd like to be friends."
"I see." Lance seemed to be choosing his next words with some care. "He... well, he's known for having quite the personality."
"That," Sael said, with more feeling than he'd shown all morning, "is the most generous way anyone has ever put it."
The birds in the oak had moved on to a different song. The little cloud over the garden had thinned out, its work mostly done, and the herbs beneath it glistened in the early light.
"Would you care to join me?" Sael asked. "For all of it, I mean. It may be a long day, but the company would be welcome."
Lance straightened, still half-awake but entirely willing. "Absolutely, sir. I'd be glad to."
***
Just like that, the quiet of the morning was gone. Poof. It felt like Orlys was louder and louder every passing day, due to the influx of travelers still coming for the tournament.
Sael was walking through the middle of the noise with a hat on his head and a map in his hand, trying very hard not to be noticed. The hat was one of his, an old thing, tall, pointed and faintly ridiculous in the way that most mage hats were if you looked at them honestly. He'd enchanted it years ago on a whim; anyone glancing at his face would see only shadow beneath the brim, features smudged and unreadable.
Margaret's map was hand-drawn and surprisingly detailed, with little notes in the margins like turn left at the baker with the green awning and do NOT take the alley past the tanner's, it smells. She'd even drawn a small arrow near the guild registration office with the words HERE — ask for Clerk Duval, he's the least unpleasant one.
Sael appreciated that.
Lance walked beside him, hands clasped loosely behind his back, taking in the city with curiosity. They turned onto Threadneedle Street, where a cluster of dockworkers sat on crates outside a warehouse further along, sharing a loaf of bread and what sounded like a conversation about... him.
"All right, all right, so Harmon stretches things," the first one said, tearing off a piece of bread. "But even if you cut it in half, that's still sixty pints. Sixty! You or me, we'd be dead on the floor after ten."
"After eight, I think," the second one said.
"After eight, fine. Point is, the man drank sixty and walked out on his own two feet. You don't do that without being what he is."
"Which is what, exactly?"
"The Archmage. That's what. You don't get that title for being good at card tricks."
The third dockworker, who had been chewing bread and waiting for his moment, swallowed and held up a finger. "And that's not even the thing. The thing is the magic he did right there in the inn. My mate was at a table near the back and he said the whole room just... grew. The ceiling went up, the walls pushed out, the place got twice as big while people were still sitting in it. And not just the common room, the whole inn!"
Sael pulled the brim of his hat down a touch.
The magic in the tavern had apparently become its own thread of rumor, running alongside the pints but growing in different directions. He caught other fragments of it as they walked, and also other people talking him and the Jade emperor.
Lance, who had been quiet through all of this, finally spoke.
"It would seem you've gotten quite popular these days, sir."
Sael exhaled through his nose. "I'm afraid so, yes."
Margaret's map led them down a narrower street lined with trades that didn't need foot traffic and then to a squat stone building with a brass plaque beside the door that read ORLYS GUILD REGISTRATION — DUCAL OFFICE OF CHARTERS AND ASSOCIATIONS. Below it, someone had scratched closed for lunch into the stone itself in what looked like permanent frustration, though the door was currently open.
Sael folded the map and tucked it into his coat.
This was the part he'd been thinking about for a while now: to officialize the return of Pointbreak.
It felt odd even thinking the name in a context like this. Pointbreak had been founded centuries ago in a room considerably less official than this one. Just him, Bran, and Koreth, sitting around a little table, arguing over a name that none of them were fully satisfied with. Bran had wanted something with "dawn" in it. Koreth had pushed for "Ironhand," which Sael had vetoed.
"Pointbreak" had been what the three of them settled on, and it seemed to make sense. Thirty-five hero parties had been officially formed before theirs, all raised to face the Corrupted One, and all of them had died. Every last one. By the time Sael, Bran, and Koreth sat down and put a name to what they were doing, it felt less like a beginning and more like a last attempt, a breaking point, one way or the other.
Pointbreak had existed for one reason: to answer the rising power of Corruption in the world.
And it had died for the same reason, more or less. After the Battle of Yrsult, when the Corruption was gone and the cost of that had been a great many people who deserved more than a paragraph in someone else's history book, there was no need for Pointbreak anymore, and Sael had walked away from the name and the memory and hadn't looked back.
Now, Corruption was back. And so, it seemed, was he. And there was a grim, circular kind of logic in the guild following suit.
He knew what the revival would mean out in the wider world. The name still carried enough weight that word would spread fast, and when it did, people would come. Adventurers, soldiers, mages, anyone with skill, nerve and the sense to see what was coming.
More importantly, Sael felt that the revival was the surest way to make the world understand that the Corruption was back. No announcement from a council chamber, nor letter sealed in wax and sent to every court on the continent, would land the way this would. The moment people heard that Pointbreak had reformed — that the Archmage himself had walked into a registration office and put the name back on the books — they would know.
Lance looked at the building, then at Sael. "Shall we go in, sir?"
"Let's."
Sael stepped forward, reaching for the handle, and out of nowhere, the door came off its hinges.
The whole thing — frame, iron bolts, and all — blew outward in one piece, fast enough that Sael felt the air move before he saw it. He sidestepped as the door sailed past, clipped the edge of the street, and broke against the cobblestones in two clean pieces. And through the now open doorway flew a man.
A huge man, the sort of wide, thick-limbed build that should've gotten stuck in the frame on the way out. He came through it like a boulder from a catapult, headfirst, arms limp, legs dragging behind him like afterthoughts. Also, already out cold. Whatever had hit him had done its work inside.
Lance clasped his hands together. "May the Light receive him gently," as the man was heading for the oak across the street, trunk-first, at a speed that would've made the landing unpleasant for both of them. Sael raised a hand and the air between the man and the tree thickened, slowed, caught him the way water catches a stone, and then let him down the last two feet with about as much ceremony as setting down a bag of grain.
He lay on his back in the dirt, arms out and mouth open. Breathing, but not participating in the morning anymore.
A few passersby had already stopped at a respectful distance to look, unsure yet if this was a fight or entertainment.
The man's chest was rising and falling. From where Lance and Sael stood, that was about all they could tell.
They didn't have to wonder long, though, as three adventurers came barreling out of the building — two men and a woman in studded leather — nearly tripping over the ruined door on their way down the steps.
"Gregor!" one of them shouted. "Gregor, you stupid bastard!"
They crowded around him, the woman pressing two fingers under his jaw while the others tried to slap him awake. Gregor did not cooperate. His head rolled to one side and he let out a long, wet snore.
The woman sat back on her heels. "He's fine. He's just out."
"Blessed are the meek," Lance said, watching from the steps, "for they shall inherit the pavement."
Sael looked at the grinning young man, a bit surprised.
"Is that actually a saying among priests of the Light?"
"No, sir." Lance straightened up, though the grin didn't quite leave. "Just my own sarcastic observation. In my experience, adventurers who find themselves airborne through doorways have usually done something to earn the trip."
Sael looked back at Gregor, still snoring in the dirt while his companions tried to shake him awake. "You might be right about that."
They went in
The registration hall was larger than the outside suggested, a long room with a counter at the back and rows of wooden chairs along the walls. Most of the chairs were taken. Adventurers, by the gear, leather, mail, a few staves leaning against chair legs, a shortbow tucked under a bench. And every one of them was on their feet, voices overlapping, all of it directed at a blond young man sitting in a chair behind the counter.
He looked about twenty. Maybe younger. He sat with one leg crossed over the other, arms folded, head tilted slightly, the way someone might sit while waiting for tea.
" You could have killed him!" a broad woman in chainmail was saying, finger pointed at his face.
"He didn't dodge," the young man said, as if that explained everything.
"You threw him through a wall!"
"Door, technically."
Then the young man uncrossed his legs, looked past the crowd, and said, "Next."
Nobody moved. The room got very quiet for a place with that many armed people in it.
Sael glanced around, waited a moment, and when it became clear that volunteering wasn't on anyone's agenda, he walked forward, and stopped a few paces from the counter. "Hello there."
The young man behind it looked up at him. Whatever he saw under the brim of Sael's hat didn't seem to concern him much. His eyes moved from Sael to Lance, then back to Sael.
"Hello, sir." He unfolded his arms. "What can I do for you?"
His tone had changed. The bored edge from a moment ago was gone, replaced by a more courteous one. A few of the adventurers behind Sael exchanged glances, apparently caught off guard by the shift.
"I'm here to officialize the registration of a guild," Sael said. "I was told to ask for a Clerk Duval."
"Duval's on his lunch." The young man gestured vaguely toward a back door. "But I can handle the paperwork. It's just forms." He reached under the counter and produced a ledger, thick and leather-bound, its pages marked with colored tabs. He opened it somewhere near the middle and picked up a quill. "Right. I'll need the guild name, founding members, and a stated purpose. We can start with the name."
"Pointbreak," Sael said.
The quill stopped.
The young man looked up. Behind Sael, the murmuring that had started back up among the adventurers suddenly died out and every pair of eyes in the registration hall was on him.
"Hmm."
This was a hmm of non surprise.