“Come again?”

“How many times must I repeat myself?”

“As many times as it takes for us to believe you.”

“You don’t believe me?”

“That’s not the point.”

“Then what is?”

“That we’re not sure whether to believe you.”

“I healed myself.”

“Come again?”

“Knock it off, Doin!” Sadh Bornak put his rear on the berth besides her, penetrating her being with those grey Tehzvan eyes of his. Finally Addie understood what was so compelling about his eyes that enthralled her over and again: there was water set deep within their greyness, and it was like he cast one pebble into the water for each time he looked at her, and the shudders that caused in the water were friendly and they were inviting, and they invited her to take a dip. Or maybe the drink was still in her. “How do you feel, Addie?”

She thought about it. “Confused,” she said, deciding to be honest.

“As you should be. Are you certain – ?”

“That I healed myself, yes, I am. This talk is all circles and no honey.”

That had been Master Harl’s phrase. All circles and no honey, he would say in company he disliked. Humph. I’d sooner befriend a noble than be part of this witless banter.

“You are right,” Sadh admitted, sighing. “But this is most unusual.”

“Makes perfect sense to me,” said Disha. She was standing near her amber-haired man, pretending she was inspecting her nails. In truth, Addie knew she was scared . . . she could sense it, somehow. Disha’s disquiet. Or, again, maybe the drink was still in her.

“'Course it does, darling,” said Doin. “It does to us all . . . I think. Who’s going to tell her?”

“I’m sitting right here,” Addie pointed out.

“I told you she holds power more than I’ve seen in my life,” Disha said, pretending now that the subject of her sentence did not exist. “I would go so far as to say I saw this coming.”

“Saw what coming?” said the girl who did not exist.

“This means bad things, doesn’t it?” muttered Sadh. He looked terribly tense. “Means it’s near.”

“What’s near?” said the girl who did not exist, snapping her swordhand fingers – the ones she had inexplicably healed – in front of the man. Sadh was not phased.

The door to the cabin opened a mingy bit, and seemingly not by any hand. “Be quick about it, now.” Balwen’s voice. “Not gonna stand watch all night.”

“This may actually take a while, pal,” Doin told his voice. “Keep staving off them eavesdroppers.”

“Sonuvabitch.”

“I think,” Sadh said even before the door had shut, “that it should be the minstrel who does the telling.”

Gryphik stood towards the back of the cabin, none of his usual cheer on him. A lantern sitting to his left shed ominous shadows across his face, shadows which danced as Guese Thazeon swayed ever so slightly on the Ocean To Drown All Oceans. He closed his dark eyes and began to recite something by memory, lines which meant naught to Addie.

“When all hope is lost. When the skies turn grey and the heart yearns warmth. When pain is a familiar rival. When each breath breaks into puffs and you are not truly yours. I will send for you my Children, my Children there for you, my Childs.”

An arbitrary chill raced through Addie’s bones. The Jen held themselves silent.

Gryphik opened his eyes. The shadows pressed deeper around his mouth, lighter around his crooked nose, twirling everyplace.

“That is a part of the Qwhib Prophecies which applies to you. Surely you have heard of the Cycle of Eyrula, Adeline?”

“Please call me Addie.” Her voice came out as a squeak she loathed.

“Answer me, shren-aef,” said Gryphik.

She harrumphed to clear her throat. “Yes. I’ve – I’ve heard of it. Many versions. What does it have to do with me?”

“I am coming to that. It is known that an individual may only possess a single reservoir of power granted to mankind by the Seohrah.”

“But I . . . I have two.”

“Indeed. But you have two.” Gryphik spoke slowly, as if teaching obvious lexicons to a child. Addie had a feeling that, unlike usual, he wasn’t doing this solely for theatric effect. “You, Addie, are what the Cycle refers to as an Emthralea. A Tri-Wielder who can harness all scores of mageic.”

Doin whistled softly.

Addie did not like the sound of the word. “I only used two types of mageic though. I can play with metal and I can treat injuries. Doesn’t that make me more of a Bi-Wielder?” 

Sadh shook his head. “It doesn’t work like that, Addie. Only Emthralea can channel more than one mageic. Only them, and they always channel three. That you accessed two reservoirs implies you must have access to the third. Gird yourself for . . . visions?”

We will keep her. The voice that had spoken to her. The lightning, the mountain, the feathers. She did not word these things, these dreams she had been having, lest they have another volley of questions hurled at her. She was feeling overwhelmed as it were.

“That is exactly right.” Gryphik ran a hand through his hair, making the shadows on its luster condense. “You are all a Skiller, Tester, Seer in one. I know that is a lot to take in.”

‘Lot’ was a severe understatement. Addie remembered Master Harl cleaving her nails half off so she would not let her emotions steer her Skill. She remembered him saying this to Gryphik in the witchwood: I taught her as Marner taught us. She is . . . different. Special. Gryphik telling her back at the inn: He believed you would be the wheel to the carriage that would change the world.

Lalmeja lending her his former Crewmaster’s knife, the one with the sheared groove and silver Trident glyph on its bolster. Right before he left her, for ever.

Had they always known, somehow, in some unexplainable way?

“What does this mean?” Addie whispered.

Sadh chewed his lips and glanced at Gryphik, who sighed and started: “Right before Querth was eternally imprisoned in Inira, he prophesied his Quenchbringers would rise again and finish what he started. He prophesied corrupt man bringing about his own doom. He prophesied this would happen three times. Essentially, this is what the Qwhib Prophecies are.”

“And?” Addie already knew this. This is how Quenchings came to be.

“Well, this is where perceptions start to diverge,” said Gryphik. “The ner’ang say it is us mages who are the Quenchbringers risen again for our sins on Rhaktoor in the Baiid Era. That is why mages are placated by Ations Houses, to cleanse them of their corruption so that man’s doom never comes to pass.”

“But?”

“But us of the Gilded Fingers believe we are bestowed with mageic by the Seohrah,” said Sadh. “That we are here to fight the Quenchbringers when they make their inevitable return. And we are to be led by three Children of the God Evermore.”

These words had an effect which was the auditory equivalent of cymbal noises.

“Oh, no,” muttered Addie, realization striking. “Oh, no, no, no, no, you can’t be insinuating – "

“Three who harness three mageics,” said Gryphik. “Three Tri-Wielders. Three Emthralea who can prevent our Quenchings.”

“Why – why did the first two occur at all then?” questioned Addie, desperate in wanting to prove this wrong. “Didn’t the earlier renditions of Heim have Tri-Wielders?”

“They did indeed,” Gryphik answered. “Or at least they must have, if we are to keep faith in the Holder and shady textbooks. Stories suggest they . . . went mad. Others vanished off the face of Heim.”

“That tracks,” said Addie. “I definitely feel my mind pickling as well.”

“You don’t understand the seriousness of this herald, shren-aef! Querth prophesied that his Quenchbringers would arise three times. Two times it has already happened, in Eras afore. This is humanity's last fight against them. Either that means there will be a Third Quenching . . . and no further Eras. Clean slate. All gone. If another Quenching occurs, that is it for mankind. No do-overs.”

Addie knew he was circumventing in saying ‘the end of the world.’

“Or,” Gryphik continued, “it could mean this time the Emthralea don’t go mad or disappear. May be that it means we will defeat the Quenchbringers once and for all. No more Quenchings, no more resets.”

“I couldn’t even fight the Rys Ami way back when! How do you expect me to – to – I don’t know, save the fucking world?”

“Not you alone, surely,” said Sadh quietly. “If you have chosen this time to show yourself as Emthralea, then . . . there are two more out there who will discover their true selves soon enough.”

“Plus,” Doin weighed in, “we have absolutely no reason to believe the Quenchbringers will manifest themselves any time soon. They could show up after hundred, two hundred years, long past your death. And then they’re the next trio of Tri-Wielders’ problem. Three of them crop up every century, don’t they?”

“That is a good point,” said Gryphik. “But what are the Rys Ami if not the blood of blood of Quenchbringers?”

“That’s just what the priests say,” said Doin. “They could just as well be necromancers' creation, much like those brute Ardaunts. Necromancers made the Rys Ami, sold them to Ptirre. Priests economized this by making them monsters from holy texts.”

“True again,” said Gryphik. “But if this is the time the Quenchbringers have chosen to strike . . . and Addie is one of the Emthralea who have to face them . . . gods forfend she be unprepared.”

Knocks on the cabin door made them jump. “How much longer?” Balwen shouted. “I need to take a piss!”

“I’m sure you can hold it as you did on the battlefield in Craycht,” responded Disha.

“Screw you, woman!”

“You wish, tiny man!”

Sadh rolled his eyes, smiling a half-smile at Addie. She did not perceive it as an authentic smile.

She thought back to the day Master Harl had sacrificed himself for her. The Shadows and the Shadow Men, how they had seemed to come straight after her. How they had filled her heart with resentment and dread.

Back in Gorpal, them theorizing. The Rys Ami were after you, Addie. That is the conclusion we keep coming to. They wanted to conquer Dassan, sure, but their primary prize of doing so was you. Or that is how it was supposed to be, until Keshar decided to have us evicted to Fehnia. It wasn’t that Keshar did it independently. Seer Kaelane Damon pushed him to that decision. Best outcome for Dassan wasn’t for the keep to ward off Dassan or the citizens to be safe. It was the girl whose life downed the scales.

Addie was utterly persuaded that this voyage was a long, bad dream. But then, that is what the senile must tell themselves. That their life had been a long, bad dream.

“The Third Quenching is near,” Doin said, seemingly to himself. “Either that or our permanent emancipation from scriptures.”

Addie drew her knees up to her face in epiphany, folded herself into her thighs. Fox eyes greeted her on the velvet curtain of her brain. Her embarrassment with Sadh had melted. Her revulsion at Joost’s nighttime undertakings had dispersed.

Dumket came to her mind, the piebald she had gotten to get to Port Konta. How everyone else’s steeds had tired, but hers . . . had she been using Tester mageic on it without her knowledge? Disha did say mageic practically oozed out of her being. And she had always had a way with animals, many a time been able to understand them. The sonid’s heart limping to rest. The fox from the clearing with vocal golden eyes as she retrieved the avren lichen off of a stringbark.

The girl who was key to the existence of the world sat that way for several hundred heartbeats, wondering where the other two keys were, and what locks they must be turning.

Outside, rain bucketed down. Heim, which had long awaited her coming, was in motion. As was her world.

When next morn she awoke with the mother of headaches dancing a jig on her head she was convinced all of last night had been a dream. When Addie saw the wary expression on Disha’s princess-pretty face this illusion was smashed to smithereens.

On the quarterdeck, Balwen gave her a look which an individual might cast at a castle-sized wolf pup with no inkling of how dangerous it is. Then Wykson slipped on water or a fellow crewman’s spit – likely Y’tra's, although she was no man, she spat like it would make her less ugly – and the dwarf remarked: “Well, what a shitshow. You know he fancies you, right?”

“Pardon?”

“That grey-haired numbskull with sock for brains. Thinks you’re a goddess.”

“Then he really is a numbskull,” said Addie, and they laughed.

“You will do just fine, kid,” Balwen assured her in an undertone, his many chins twitching. “You are special. You have all mageics. But odds are, the next generation of Tri-Wielders will have to face you-know-who. Or the generation after that. Or, fuck it, maybe the whole thing is a hoax and there are no you-know-whos! Just incredibly rare wielders of tri.”

“And if it’s all true? If I have to lead a – an army of whatsits into battle against a legendary demon’s spawn, then – then what?”

“Then we’ll get you a Relic and we’ll kick their butts together and save this stupid world. Keep your chin up.”

“Thanks. Thanks, tiny man.”

Addie looked at Wykson picking himself up, barefoot, bare-chested. He caught her eye and waved. One could tell he was Tehzvan in a passing glance, but he really was unremarkable. A tall, gangly, unmemorable fella.

Better not lead him on, her tri-mageic nails spoke as she waved back at him. Remember the last chap who seemed to be into you?

Aye, how could she forget. Poe, whom she had known for faintly a chime. Poe, who had been evacuating himself to safety. Poe, who had – along with Nherse knew how many others – died because the Rys Ami had come searching for her.

If she were a heroin in some fiction – and while she supposed she could be seen as one from a certain lens – her brain would likely go: why me?

But in life, that question can be applied to a multitude of situations. Why was she born Casteless? Why was she orphaned so young she hardly remembered her mother’s face? Why was she a magus? Why was she the hinge on which the Ostren Era of Blood was like to turn? Why was that poor lass raped? Why did the plaintiff send an innocent man on a guilty row? Too many questions, even more possible explanations.

Balwen son of Buleth son of Baleen was right. Addie would get her pava. She would join the Guild of the Gilded Fingers as she had always aspired to do since she first discovered her Skill in that treacly-smelling brothel.

And perhaps she would put an end to a recurring enemy from the pages of ancient religious texts, once and for all.

“I cannot do it!”

“Of course you can, why else would I make you try?” Disha crossed her legs and took Addie’s hands in her own. “Picture a beating heart.”

“Why don’t I tear open your chest? I have been cursed with a poor imagination.”

“I hope the other two Emthralea are nothing like you, or we really are cursed.”

“I quite agree.”

Disha sighed. “Listen, I’m sorry about whatever I said earlier. We can’t stake the world on arguments.”

“I still think,” Addie said, “that you have it wrong. I can’t possibly be . . . what you think I am.”

“Did your fingers heal themselves the second time?”

“Maybe. Ask them.”

“The power is fugacious at first, Addie. I’m sure that’s how it was with your Skill as well. From small acorns, tall oaks grow.”

“What if it was a one time thing?”

“I really want to give you a slap right now,” said Disha.

“By all means, do it,” said Addie. “Though be sure to use your less favored hand, so you miss it less when I free it from your wrist.”

Disha sighed again, eyeing a noiseless Sadh seated at one corner of the cabin. 

He leaned forward in his wooden chair. “Forget about the beating heart.”

“Done.”

“Forget you’re a Tester too.”

“Done.”

Sadh wringed his hands and lo! Suddenly he held in them a knife. Her precious knife.

Addie started. “Where did you get that – ?”

“Irrelevant.”

“It’s mine!”

“I am aware. Use Skill to summon it from me.”

The knife came shooting out of the Jen’s hand to be caught by Addie. “Done.”

“Good,” said Sadh, while Disha watched curiously. “Now slowly, very slowly, make it fly back to me.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“It’s mine.”

“My piss is mine too, doesn’t mean I hold on to it.”

“Disgusting,” muttered Disha.

“For the second time, hard agree,” said Addie, wondering how inane her drunk self could have been to make calf-eyes at him. 

“Admit it,” said Sadh boringly. “No shame if you can’t do it. We understand, you’ve had a lot to process lately.” 

The knife lurched at him, until it was floating at a hair’s breadth from his throat. Without breaking a sweat, Sadh grabbed it from the air. “I said slowly.”

“Oops,” Addie said unapologetically.

“Now summon my blood.”

“A hundred pardons?”

“My blood,” Sadh repeated. Even Disha looked confounded. “There’s iron in the blood of man and woman, or haven’t you heard?”

“I . . . isn’t that a myth?”

“Not completely, no. There’s a trace amount of iron in us all. Look for it.”

Addie focused. White smoke rising up to your chest as you inhale . . .

“Picture the beating heart now. It does more than serve as a conduit for poets to possess. It siphons blood in our bodies. See the connection?”

. . . turning into pure stark energy as you exhale.

Then her Wolf caught a glimpse of it. The gleaming wooden door, twice-barred, eclipsed by Violet Smoke. One moment it was standing in front of the Wolf, the next it was gone.

In that moment Sadh clutched his chest like it was seized from within. “You did it,” gasped he. “You used your Tester mageic again.”

“Huzzah to that!” exclaimed Disha, rising to assist Sadh. 

Why me? her brain went, regardless of how much it resisted in thinking this.

Perhaps because of your beauty, replied her one nail.

Or the size of your jugs, spoke the other. Nherse must prefer dainty breasts on a woman.

Or perhaps because of that time she killed a noble mid-release.

Ah, yes, that had to have curried a hundred thousand points in her favor. Nherse does hate nobles – or must.

Addie deliberated tossing herself into Nadius, a shallow section of the ocean basin, just to make the voices shut up. How the sailors could tell which section of water they were on, she did not understand, nor cared to. The climate was cooler here, Belraed but a westerning ball of bronze. She stood there in a mire of thoughts of her own making, stood there listening to the sound of waves split by bow and a variety of snores coming from belowdecks, stood there till the sun was devoured entirely by the horizon.

Night pinned her with a thick black finger, and still she stood. Nobody came to disturb her, nobody called out her name. Zer the Trickwin – for Zer the Trickwin was what Puhezer Gryphik was called by his sailor-smuggler friends – recited a spooky story on the quarterdeck. She could tell it was spooky by the oohs and aahs of the reactions and not because she actually heard it. At the end of it a serious discussion ensued, whose topics included “hairy cunts” and “depressed tits”.

Joost, she noticed, did not partake in this discussion. Instead he had eyes only for a crewman with a ginger beard whose name Addie believed was Break-Bone Henry.

She wondered if it wasn’t the lack of female company at sea but his nature itself which coerced Joost into bed with fellow men. She wondered if Break-Bone Henry was the owner of a gruff voice.

In any case, that was the littlest of her concerns. The world was indeed a strange place, with all sorts of men and women and beasts. But it did support life.

Sometimes Addie poured over the matter of lives. This was one of those some-times. She pondered whether human lives were nothing more than grapes in a grapebunch – and each time a life was terminated, a demon was fed its juices.

A demon such as Querth, perhaps, who was still hassling Nherse’s Creation after thousands and thousands of years.

A claw alighted down on the gunwale besides Addie, connected to the dark body of a rare sea sparrow. Her prominent white irises inspected Addie condescendingly. You’re a Tri-Wielder? they seemed to say. What a joke. I bet you can’t even catch a krill.

As if to prove her point, Ichika dived into the water.

An Addie new to sea would have been concerned at the notion of a suicidal bird, but she had seen the Captain’s pet make this performance before. And indeed, not twenty beats later, up shot the sparrow out of Nadius in a jet of blue and white. A two-inch, translucent fish was in her orange bill, then in her gullet. 

Sink was in the good graces of the wings of wind as she bore north-west. Addie was awoken, naturally, when she keeled off her berth.

Disha of Horephin was still fast asleep on her belly. Her mouth was half-open and even in sleep she looked like a princess. May be not a royal princess with the slobber on her chin. But a Serapu princess for sure.

Figuring her siesta was over, Addie picked herself up and lumbered to the door in a very groggy manner which made her trip nearly twice along the way. Certainly that was no way for an Emthralea to walk.

She clambered up a distrustful ladder with much difficulty and little dignity as the ship convulsed. At least she no longer felt like her insides were acrobats with every little motion the brig made any more. Once up the deck, she was startled to find Roteb dangling in the sky like a melting disc medallion. The scarlet rider was alone bleeding in a sea of stars.

“Hard a-starboard!” Captain Ainar Mhaku was hollering. Joost was besides him on the wheel – him and Break-Bone Henry were together pivoting it clockwise, their faces obscured by veneers of sweat. Y’tra and Gass were pulling ropes and tying knots at the fore and aft sails.

The weather was clear, so what was all this hysteria about?

The ship swerved right. Addie was rocked off her feet and into the arms of the smuggler Edgaar, apparently as bewildered as herself, judging by the look on his face. Addie let her feet take the reins and looked up as a voice from high above started screaming obscenities. A boy Addie recognized as Sad Krennel was up on the fore mast, making debauch illustrations with his hands at . . . Addie turned to see a lighthouse for the first time in her life.

Magnificent blue flames embellished the vertex of the tower. The flames kept swirling such that concentrated rays were thrown high and low, and east and west, at regular intervals. The tower itself was white brick, two hundred feet tall at least. A man with a beard that put Henry’s ginger to shame stood inside what resembled a bulwark in the lighthouse. He was waving a flag of sage-olive green color, appearing yellow under Roteb’s glower. 

“Backstay! Ahoy!” Mhaku convulsed like to his ship, busting his gut with laughter. He extracted his cutlass and shook it at the Ocean. “Eat my junk, old man!”

The lighthouse man with the princely beard collected his flag and retreated into his structure.

Joost took the wheel from Henry, who tapped his hand once affectionately, and Sink weaved through Nadius and into the commercial waters of Baendol.

“Wake up! Hey! We’re docking! Wake up!”

“My sweating balls,” Disha mumbled. She took a generous amount of time in getting all dolled up. Addie hadn’t been able to sleep a wink after the whole falling-off-her-berth affair.

“I’m hungry,” Addie complained. She had grown used to regular meals in her time with the Jen.

“As am I,” said Disha, using her pig-bristles to get rid of bad breath. “Hungry for more sleep. Which you stole from me. For which I accuse you of larceny.”

“I could be the world’s savior, remember? I can do anything I want.”

“Bloody hope you’re not. And your eyes . . . they’re blue now.”

“What?”

“Don’t worry, you’re not an Aaserrdae. Eye and hair changing color has been known to happen to Tri-Wielders.”

So that’s what Gryphik was talking about. Black, then green, now blue. What next? My hair turning grey so I can play siblings with Sadh and Wykson?

On a more positive note, her nails put in, that’s one mystery solved.

The coastline were in sight by the time they reached the lower deck, where Sadh, Doin and Gryphik were waiting for them. The former two were unusually well-dressed, in plaid jackets and half-trousers, while the latter was back to wearing the baggy silk shirt he had been wearing when Addie first met him on the road to Fehnia.

“I had Maihui talk to Edgaar,” Gryphik told them. “They’ve permitted us to participate in the dealing. Say it doesn’t really matter long as we keep our mouths shut and heads low.”

So his investment paid off, whether Maihui was once of an alchemical brotherhood or not.

“I’m coming too,” said Addie. “I’m tired of being on this miserable floating lump of wood.”

“Yes, because that’s what a ship is,” said Disha.

“Fine, shren-aef, you can join us,” consented Gryphik. He raised a finger at her. “Don’t speak to anyone except us.”

“Aye, aye, Cap'n.”

“Well, I for one am definitely not going to be joining you,” said Disha. 

“Why not?” asked Doin. “We can get to see a bit of the city and the attend trade of a highly queer drug.”

“Oh, I’ll see the city, all right,” said Disha. “The brig’s going to stay here for two days, at least. I’ll wander around a bit. I just don’t want to witness disgusting trades.”

“As you wish, darling.” Doin kissed her hand.

“Four days, actually,” said Addie.

“What?” Doin and Disha said together.

“Brig’s going to stay docked for four days, till Ginzl. Didn’t want to get checked by the lighthouse men or something. They’d catch the seeka and our weapons and stuff otherwise, I presume. In this escape they damaged the hull last night.”

“You sure keep revised,” said Sadh. Dare she say he sounded impressed?

“All the more time for me to explore while you do your disgusting dealings,” said Disha.

“I think you might be addicted to that word,” observed Doin. “Oh, well. Balwen will keep you company.”

“He’s not going?”

“Says westerners aren’t kind to dwarves.”

Addie shrugged up an improvised bagpack of discarded canvas cloth on her back and kept in it her scimitar. Her knife she put in her makeshift pocket. Around both she put a barrier of invisible White Smoke around so no other Skiller could use them to cut her own throat.

As soon as Sink pulled into the wharf, they disembarked it. A great many boats were tied to a great many number of piers and a great many number of ships were anchored to a great many number of sodden posts at Port Sokaband. It was much bigger than Port Konta, that was for sure, and more organized besides. There was a rustle here and a bustle there. 

A man of waxy skin and wooly hair right behind the stone quay was threading bracelets and crowns of fire. A woman – either his mother or his sister by the semblance in look – was amassing money from a small herd of spectators.  

“Pyromancers, here?” said Addie, pinching her eyes. “Well, I suppose they have the safety of jumping into water if they mess up.”

“They’re tricksters,” said Edgaar. “Only thing their fire can harm is their prides.”

A party of twelve, as indiscreet as a dozen of people can be, hired mules to ride inland and sell The Elixir to certain very important clients in the city of Chisteen.

Addie is an Emthralea! A Tri-Wielder!

Question: Who do you think the other two Tri-Wielders might be?

Anyway, we'll explore the mageic-enhancement drug seeka falwem and a brand new city of Chisteen and Addie's heritage in the next 3 chapters! There is going to be a lot of action as well!

Happy reading (◍•ᴗ•◍)