There once was a beautiful realm that, even devoured by the mana drain, still labored to make miracles.
It was a realm where life could appear in the middle of a desert. It was a realm where wishes endured against all odds. It was a place that forgave even the damned. Where magic knew your name and cherished it.
And we were going to save it!
For some reason the decayed meadow didn't share my mood. Monsters wandered on the hills, cautious, and went to bathe in the tar. They had invaded the ship that throned in the midst of their lairs.
From keel to keel they climbed on the nets, on the masts and to the folded sails, licked the deck with famished look then scrambled when another approached. Magic, after all, meant conflict, and the vessel still had plenty.
So they were fighting on the bridge and two more lashing at each other in the lower deck. I separated them and pushed them out, followed them through the hatch.
At the stern, the human was slow to eat, mostly busy talking with all the beasts around him. They feared him but also would not stop pestering him. As a result he had barely finished his tartare and jelly and was moving to the grilled beef ribs when I returned.
"Kaele, help me!" He feigned to beg. "They are overwhelming!"
"We are not going anywhere!" The greyhound on the ceiling boasted.
"Can't you at least take care of her?"
The human was pointing at the legged rapt that almost choked him with her tiny forelegs. Caline was holding the bird mask for him but still found space to speak.
"No! No! Kaele is mean, go away from me!"
"You've met with a terrible fate, haven't you?" I mocked the teenager.
He smiled and returned to his onion puree. That was possibly the happiest I had seen him since he had set foot in the realm. Surrounded by what he called friends.
Except for me.
I served him another glass of berry elixir, forced the menilis down the table and took out the empty dishes.
"I will be leaving, Placide has something to show me."
"Okay! Come back safe!"
"Uhm, sure."
Of course, behind all this joy the mana drain was still at work. Not even the oasis, this whole meadow, could spare a human and yet it felt like the answer to his survival was almost at reach! just two or three miracles away from a happy ending.
And then I could get rid of my cursed necklace.
I let the beads go, jumped off and walked downstream toward the pond, then through a withered grove. The thorns hardly stopped me.
Placide waited for me just at the other edge. The mammoth had lain down, the butterfly wings turned brown so that he almost meshed with the grass. Other monsters with him were sit or pacing around.
Among them was Nasse. I waved at the fire lizard who, unused to it, almost recoiled.
My badger mask turned to the remains they wanted to show me and immediately, my mood turned sour.
What had been beasts had been reduced to broken blocks white as salt. Few monsters absorbed mana that well. I knew only of one. And now she was signing her crimes with a curved S finished with an arrow.
"Muasin."
The wilhorn confirmed: "This time again it was strays. But she moved the bodies there to be found."
"What do you think, Kaele?" Nasse asked. "If it's the snake, the human could be at risk."
"The whole oasis." I noted.
How could she have even followed us here? If not me at least the skeletal wyvern would have felt her presence. Or she came earlier but either way it had to be recent. That snake, when unleashed, could easily wipe out everyone here.
And I doubted she could be convinced by the boy's words.
The teenager, in fact, had left the boat. If not for the metallic cape he wore I would not have been able to track him. My senses were weakening now.
But he was flying low above the hills, toward the edge of the oasis. Above, only a rare few clouds remained, stretched and thin. Maybe it was just him enjoying flight while he still could, but then he would not have flown in such a straight line.
"Kaele?"
"She is marking her territory. I don't think she is after you, only the human."
In short, either a "stay away" territorial signal or a "go away" declaration of war. We kept discussing their previous encounters to try and determine when she had arrived, where she could be hiding and how strong she still was.
Not even the mightiest could do much against the drought.
But the human had now reached the oasis' edge, past patches of black grass and over the sand that flew up in a trail. He landed a bit before the border marked by old monoliths and called.
"Calisle? Eh Calisle, are you there?"
And now I had to track two conversations at the same time, reacting at one while listening to the other. Though the other would be short-lived as the wyvern would not even bother to show up.
"You know, I don't need Kaele's permission to take on your offer. Are you sure you don't want to talk?"
Wait, what offer? Wait no. The wyvern had offered a trade. No way this boy was even considering it.
Still, his trick worked. The wyvern finally appeared, his skull emerging from the rocky land ahead.
"Very well," his mocking voice filtered through his raised wing, "you win little lamb. I will drink your poison."
"How do I get you to stop being hostile?"
Well that was pretty direct. But the wyvern stayed silent.
"Okay then why are you staying away? Don't you want to join the others?"
This time the beast chose to answer but frankly, the anti-magic warping reality around him should have been obvious enough.
"As much as I would enjoy their agony, I have a truce to uphold." And he turned his head back to the decayed meadow. "This whole place reeks of complacency and submission. Monsters longing to be enslaved once more. They dress you up and then play friends. Pathetic."
"What's wrong with being friends?"
That made the monster chuckle a bit.
"Nothing! Little lamb, nothing. Isn't our common friend treating you so well? Aren't you impatient to see how it ends? I cannot wait."
"Well, that doesn't mean the others are wrong!"
"They will meet the same fate."
"You don't know that! You haven't even tried to be friendly!"
For a moment the wyvern forgot himself, approached his head so close to the human as to let the warping skim on his freckles. He then realized his wing was not before his skull and reared.
"I said, who do you think cut my wing?"
And then:
"I licked the hand that pierced me. I praised the one who left me impaled. But all acts have a cause and my fate was indeed my fault."
He chuckled once more.
"My crime was being weak. Too weak to please, too weak to survive. So when I was cast aside, the yelps I made were too much to bear and I was deemed unstable. Too weak to stay silent."
"Eeesh. That sucks. I don't know what to say."
"Say you will kill them." Its voice turned cold once more. "Say none will escape and I offer you the realm. Answer the cry of a legion."
I had offered to go back to the dens. Mostly because hunting Muasin felt pointless and also to get closer to the ship and with it, to the wyvern. I was starting to dislike their exchange.
The boy sat on the sand.
"Don't tell Kaele but, I can't go back home."
Yeah, no kidding. I knew.
"At first I could but I thought I would stay a bit longer. But then the price rose. And I thought it hadn't risen much so I could still make up the difference, grind some quests. But then it rose faster and faster."
He put his head between his hands.
"I screwed up! Kaele warned me that the system deceived people and I still fell for it! Now the only way I could afford it would be making Kaele my friend and that's not happening!"
Because the system considered me hostile no matter what! What part of "it's broken" didn't humans get?!
None of it mattered! Nothing had changed! I was facing those headwinds the whole time so shut up!
The wyvern talked again, his mockery thin.
"Kill all humans and you won't have to worry about any of this."
"Do you even know what life is like on Earth?!" He burst in anger. "There is no magic, there is no miracle! Only screams and failure and you lingering like a deadweight! You already have your revenge!"
"No. Or rather, if it is really your belief, then, be charitable. Help me put an end to their misery."
Neither of them was listening to the other. The wyvern was but a ghost stuck on a single thought. the human could not fathom that.
The teenager threw his mask away, which told me he didn't intend to come back.
Which made me rush now. Past the stream as fast as my legs could carry me.
"Kaele said that there is a golden hour. An amount of mana where the Earth will be defenseless. So, if you help him, you will get what you want. Can't you at least be his friend?"
"The drake's gift is unwavering. The amount of mana will not change. Our common friend is simply toyed with by a worm. No, little lamb, it will take more than fantasy to crack the haven open."
"Just try!" The human stood up and yelled. "What's wrong with you, try! You still have one wing left!"
I was almost there. Practically jumping from one hill to another, which was taxing for my clay body and who cared, I could see the wyvern!
He had not answered, but extended his bone wing past the human to envelop him. Anti-magic hid everything from me. His head rose to see me approach and as I did, he brought the wing back again, to his skull.
The human was gone. Only the mask and cape remained.
Four magic squares formed before my open hand.
"Where is he?!"
"Gone." The wyvern mocked. "It appears your lamb has learned to open portals."
In my stone tablet the truce was long over, I was going to pulverize that beast to dust. And then find its lair. And pulverize it again.
Sadly, though, I could tell he was right. Portals left a trace and there was indeed one, distinctly human, that lost itself in the desert.
But I didn't even need to try and track it. I had already concluded where the human was headed to. Or rather, I could suspect where the human system was trying to drag him next. Because he had not heard of Hashal, but he had heard of Alunra.
He was going home.
"Aren't you excited?" The beast's tone was nearly joyful. "The thrill of the chase! It will make the final act all the more exquisite."
"You just let him go? And I should believe that?! What's your payment, traitor?!"
The monster went into a silent laugh that forced his skull up and nearly made it break. That pain forced him down and still he held that dead head of his in his claws, too amused to stop.
But finally he turned back to me.
"Now that you mention it, I had him at my mercy. So many ways to rid the realm of that stench and it did not even occur to me to do so. That pack of flesh has exhausted his use, he is nothing now but good sport."
And he thought aloud: "Should I have stolen your prey?"