With a powerful flap of its wings the seagrass, thick as trees, snapped around them and the bird began hauling both Kael and the leviathan upward.
The leviathan's scales were like armour, each one grinding into Kael like a blade.
A deafening metallic roar tore from the bird's beak as it lifted, something between a thunderclap and a volcanic eruption.
Moments later microscopic whips washed over him as they entered a cloud. The temperature dropped to freezing and the scales beneath him began to ice over.
Kael reached out and placed his hand on one of the scales and activated the Datum mote on it.
The bird twitched and let out another roar.
With the bird's violent ascent and the scale suddenly fixed in place, it tore free from the leviathan, pulling intestines and flesh with it as it went. The scale hung suspended until Kael's Will ran out, then dropped.
He moved his hand to another scale and did the same.
The bird refused to stop, but even with most of the leviathan's internals gone it kept climbing. A waterfall of matter trailed after them into the cloud.
When enough scales had been removed Kael pressed his hand flat against the leviathan's exposed side and applied the mote to himself. With a wet squelch he passed through the body and came out the other side.
Kael's chest moved in short uneven breaths. A red aurora danced around him in slow waves. The aurora had never been natural in the first place. It was the bird itself that emitted it wherever it went.
The leviathan's blood had already frozen around him by the time he stood up.
He couldn't help cursing Jian under his breath. That was the same bird Jian had been planning to bond next.
'So some beasts can move freely between the Depths and the surface?'
Sharp crimson fragments fell when he clenched his fist.
It wasn't unreasonable. In fact he should have arrived at that conclusion already. The why of it was another matter.
In the bird's case it was probably prey. The surface ocean offered things the Depths didn't. But Mona was different. She hadn't been hunting. She had seemed to have her own intentions about reaching the surface, something more reasoned than appetite.
Which raised another question. Why hadn't she adapted to fly? Why was someone as unreasonable as her, stuck with primitive climbing when wings would have solved the problem immediately? Did the adaptivity mote perhaps perceive the surface as a threat and withhold that adaptation to protect her survival? Or was there something else, some reason the mote had decided wings weren't the answer?
Kael glanced at his hand. The skin across his fingers whitened, turned waxy, then returned to normal. The eye was in a constant battle healing a frostbite that kept threatening to form.
"Mmm."
Beneath him, gigantic cloud formations stretched in every direction, reflecting pale moonlight.
"I should probably get down before my Thoughts run out."
The smart decision. And yet he had never been this high before. It was even more solitary than the ocean, and that solitude had a strange quality to it, almost cathartic in a way he couldn't quite name.
He decided to continue west without descending. The sensation of his fingers and nose threatening to freeze was uncomfortable but not unbearable. And at the rate the primordial eye was healing him, his Thoughts regenerated at such a slow rate it was almost a stall, but they were almost at the peak anyways, so he would manage.
His mind drifted back to the leviathan.
He had managed to combine his created pathway with the Datum mote and apply it directly to a scale. The first time he had done that with the Crimson Arc mote he had needed to reverse engineer the mote completely before he could transfer its effect onto an object. Now he could do it almost immediately, at least with lower ranked motes. Rank two seemed to be the current ceiling.
'Applying the effects of a mote onto an object qualifies as a pathway in its own right? It probably does, doesn't it? I should give it a name.'
He thought for a moment.
"Inscription pathway?"
That'll do it.
From his experience the pathways had always been named quite literally. It was probably to make teaching and passing it onto future generations easier, and while he had nothing against that literal mindset, it was somewhat boring. Especially compared to motes.
Two more weeks passed.
By the time Kael stepped onto solid ground his hair had frozen solid and a layer of frost covered his coat.
He took a deep breath and stretched.
It was finally over. Or almost.
He was back on the western continent. Birds sang in the distance and a warm familiar breeze moved through his hair again.
From here Sole shouldn't be far. Like most capitals it sat beside the ocean to make trade and transport easier.
Kael summoned the Stone Coffin and retrieved the Asterite and some mindstones.
'Better take care of this before I reach the capital.'
True to his reasoning it was only a few thousand steps before he entered the outermost layer. He gave a few friendly nods to the mortals he passed.
His steps halted upon entering the first layer.
'Has there always been this many people here?'
A line of mortals, at least three across, stretched through the entire space, snaking back on itself wherever it hit a wall to fit more people in. They were all behaving with unusual patience. Most had dressed up somewhat in finer clothes than the first layer typically saw.
Kael walked along the line. Mortals froze at his presence but refused to leave their place in it.
When he reached the end his face came close to paling. A confused smile appeared.
It wasn't a restaurant or a market they were all waiting for.
It was Velarific Wellness.
He pushed past a few customers and stepped inside.
"Hey. Wait your turn." Luke hissed without looking up from his patient.
Kael obviously ignored him and walked over. "You good?"
Luke shot one last frustrated look at the impatient customers behind Kael.
"I said—"
The bandage roll fell from his hand.
"Mister?"
He walked toward Kael slowly, studying him the way you study something you're not sure is real.
"Is that really you?"
He raised a hand to touch Kael's arm.
"It is."
Kael swatted it away.
Luke dropped to his knees, tears running freely down his face.
"No way… have the gods finally taken pity on me?" He sobbed. " You have no idea how many customers there have been. I felt like I was dying. Please tell me you're real!"
He fell to his knees and wrapped his arms around Kael's legs.
"Wait… your arm?!"
He had only just realised.
"Was that why it took so long? I assumed it was something important but… I should never have underestimated you, Mister."
Perhaps he had assumed Kael was a goner, because there was obvious guilt in his words too.
"How are there so many customers?"
Kael helped him up.
Luke sobbed once more before brushing his cheeks with his sleeve.
"Not long after you left we got a visit from someone in the second layer. You remember that small girl who fell outside? Both her parents are doctors apparently. They came to thank us personally. After that a lot of mortals found the courage to come, and well." He glanced past Kael toward the line. "The rest is history."
Kael sighed.
"No rest for the wicked, I suppose."
He walked to the corner, grabbed a chair, and placed it beside Luke's, both of them now facing the small crowd.
"From here on we'll run two lines. One for Luke, one for me. And don't worry, I may be a new face but I'm Luke's teacher, so don't be shy."
He waved the first patient forward.
"Luke. Usual hours today, then we'll talk about what to do going forward. Alright?"
In Luke's eyes Kael was something close to a trusted adult, and the moment he sat down beside him something shifted. The exhaustion was still there but underneath it new energy appeared, and with it confidence. Luke straightened and turned back to his patient.
"Yes, Mister Eireindaile."
Kael walked the last patient out and closed the door behind them. The street was empty, lit only by the warm yellow glow of the streetlights.
Luke looked like a broken doll draped over the front desk.
"You've improved."
Luke waved a hand without lifting his head. "I'm fairly certain I would have passed away today if you hadn't shown up, Mister."
Thinking back, it had been genuinely stupid of Kael to expect Luke to take time off. He was just a teenager trying to impress someone he looked up to.
"Take the next few days. I'll handle anything urgent."
Luke shot upright, eyes bright. "Are you sure?"
Kael raised an eyebrow.
"Are you doubting me, young man?"
Luke froze, then stood and saluted. "No!"
Kael was almost to the stairs when Luke spoke again.
"Actually." He hesitated. "I've started seeing someone. Would it be alright if I brought them by sometime?"
Kael looked at him, actually blushing.
"Of course." He smiled. "Just let me know beforehand so I can prepare something."
Luke beamed.
Kael tossed his coat over a chair and looked around the attic.
'Not bad.'
It no longer looked like a worn down shed. The floor had been freshly waxed and the old furniture replaced with newer handcrafted pieces. This wasn't how Kael had expected Luke to spend his earnings, but he had no one to blame but himself. He had told him to make himself at home.
Could he push himself further tonight? Without question. Did he want to? Absolutely not.
He had gone weeks without sleep or food. There had never been a bed that looked more inviting than the one in front of him now.
The sky had turned gold by the time Kael tossed the last ingredient into the refinement orb.
A smile played at his lips. He summoned a tendril of the primordial eye and with a small flick sent it slithering into the mote, where it settled somewhere inside.
He studied it carefully.
This was the fruit of more than a year of work. A single rank one mote recipe, created from scratch. Almost no one could do that outside of the refinement pathway. But more than that, he had gotten it to do exactly what he intended. That mattered more than the rank.
Creating a recipe had been different from what he expected in every way, and in no way at all.
Five ingredients. None of them rare. So why had it taken a rank three Luminaire, arguably more capable than most of his peers in the same pathway, over a year to produce it?
Measurements. That was the answer.
In the same way Zeno's paradox suggested a distance could be divided infinitely, ingredients could be divided the same way. Did he need half a gram? Or half of that half gram? Or half of that? There was no theoretical limit to how precisely an ingredient could be measured, which meant the only reliable guide was intuition. Intuition that deepened with his pathway.
This was why creating a mote recipe was considered beyond anyone outside the refinement pathway. Every recipe ever written had been produced with deep intention, often carrying something personal in it. For many it was the closest thing to a life's work they would ever produce. Their magnum opus.
That was also why recipes were genuinely rare compared to everything else on the market.
He held up his life's work and studied it.
A miniature hammock, woven from linen.
By any meaningful standard this mote was absolutely, and utterly useless. Almost pathetic.
He dismissed it and summoned it in its bound form.
Silver specks danced in the air as the miniature hammock expanded to its full size. Rope extended from each end and wrapped itself around something sturdy.
Kael pressed a hand down, testing it. Then he lay down with a long, relaxed sigh.
That was it.
Kael's endless research. The sleepless nights. The study of ancient and modern ingredients, of refinement Luminaires across generations. All of it had amounted to this. A rank one mote that was neither offensive nor defensive. It simply summoned a hammock that fastened itself.
He glanced down at a basket on the floor.
More than forty miniature hammocks rested inside, unclaimed by any Luminaire.
'I have to sleep. Just this once.'
He yawned and closed his eyes.
Ever since his soul had hardened and rank one refinements had stopped posing any risk to it, there was nothing to prevent him from refining multiple motes in a single night. With his skill the only unpredictable stage was the final one, which was entirely outside his control. His success rate sat at exactly fifty percent. The rank one also meant the ingredients were neither expensive nor a lot.