Tessia Eralith
A profound, world-weary sigh escaped me, puffing out my cheeks as I swung my legs beneath the plush dining chair I'd triumphantly scaled.
The rhythmic thump-thump-thump of my heels against the sturdy wood was a drumbeat of my discontent, a solitary protest in the too-quiet afternoon.
Grown-up time was the most boring invention in all of Elenoir, even worse than boiled vegetables. I was a prisoner of peace, sentenced to stillness.
Then, the world upended. Literally.
Strong, familiar arms swooped under mine and hoisted me into the air in one smooth, merciless motion. A wave of lavender and sunshine scent engulfed me.
"My baby girl!" Mom's voice sang, far too sweet and high, pressing me against the soft silk of her dress.
My entire body went rigid. This was no hug of greeting; this was an ambush! A tactical extraction!
The dreaded social summons was upon me, disguised in motherly affection. The boring ladies with their tinkling laughs, their children who stared with dull eyes and spoke only of toys they were too careful to actually play with—they lay in my immediate future, and I would not go quietly!
"No! No, no, no!" I declared, my voice a sharp weapon against her musical tone.
I became a whirlwind of rebellion, legs kicking at empty air, arms flailing in a desperate attempt to break the treacherous, loving hold that confined me. I was a captured sun, burning with indignation.
But Mom was a mountain, her strength serene and unyielding. My struggles were those of a sparrow against a gentle gale.
"Come on, Tessia, you are going to have fun!" Mom chirped, her smile beaming down at me. It was the same smile she used when offering medicine disguised as honey.
Fun? Fun was climbing the ancient willow in the courtyard until my hands were stained with green. Fun was chasing the palace cats until we all collapsed in a dizzy heap. Fun was finding Corvis in his latest hiding spot and poking him until his serious face broke into a real, startled laugh.
Fun was not sipping pretend tea and making stiff conversation with miniature nobles.
"I don't wanna!" I protested again, but the fight was leaching from my limbs, replaced by the slick, clever energy of strategy. A new plan crystallized.
"I will play only with Corvis!" I announced, crossing my arms with finality over my chest. There. A royal decree. My perfect, quiet, sometimes frustrating brother was my one and only acceptable playmate.
Mom's smile didn't falter. Instead, she reached out and pinched my cheek, a gesture that was both endearing and utterly dismissive of my sovereign command. I frowned, the expression deepening as I saw a thoughtful look pass behind her eyes.
"That's a really good idea!" she murmured, more to herself than to me. "Your brother does need to spend more time with other kids."
Triumph, bright and fierce, bloomed in my chest. I had done it! I had weaponized my own ultimatum!
Now, I just had to find Corvis—my fellow prisoner-in-arms—and together we would devise an escape so brilliant, so undeniable, that even Mom would have to concede. The boring meeting would be forgotten!
"Perfect!" I whispered to myself, squirming in her arms until she, with another patient sigh, set me down. My feet touched the polished floor, and I was a general once more.
"This way!" I proclaimed, seizing the initiative and marching down the sunlit corridor without a backward glance.
"Tessia—" Mom's voice held a note of warning, a gentle tug on my invisible leash.
I ignored it, my mission paramount. The search for Corvis was now the paramount objective, a glorious distraction that consumed all my focus. If I appeared to be diligently, desperately looking for him in every possible (and impossible) place—behind tapestries, inside large vases, under the breakfast table—surely the boring meeting would be forgotten in the whirlwind of my dedicated sibling quest.
So engrossed was I in the brilliance of my own delaying tactics, my eyes scrunched shut in self-congratulation, that I failed to see the obstacle in my path.
Thump.
I walked straight into something solid and unyielding—a leg. My eyes flew open as I gasped, stumbling back a step. I looked up, and up, into the face of a woman I didn't recognize.
"Your Highness! I am so very sorry!" The woman exclaimed, her voice clear and sharp, not flustered like the other maids. She immediately dipped into a deep, respectful bow, first to me, then to my mother who had glided up behind me. "My Queen."
I studied her, my earlier pout replaced by a scrutinizing frown. She was tall, with hair the color of fresh snow and eyes like a winter sky.
She wore the silver-trimmed uniform of the palace staff, but it sat on her differently. She wasn't soft and round like the cook, or nervous and fluttery like the younger maids.
She was… straight. Like a blade, or a well-made arrow. Her posture was alert, her gaze steady. This was no ordinary maid. A sense of intrigue cut through my irritation. Who was she?
I turned to gauge Mom's reaction. Her smile was warm, but there was a knowing glint in her eye as she gave the mysterious woman an appreciative nod.
My internal alarm bells, recently quieted, began a frantic clangor. A trap within a trap! Mom had anticipated my rebellion! This person was clearly a co-conspirator, deployed to intercept my cunning escape!
"Tessia is just a very clumsy child," Mom said, her tone light as she took my hand. Her grip was gentle but inescapable.
Indignation burned away the intrigue. "I am not clumsy!" I retorted, pulling against her hand. "Corvis is!"
It was a simple statement of fact. My brother was the one who walked into doors when he was thinking too hard, who tripped over perfectly flat rugs. My collision was clearly the fault of this strangely placed, sword-like maid!
Mom and the maid—Alea—exchanged a glance, and a soft, shared snicker escaped them. The betrayal was complete. They were laughing at me! Laughing at my expertly executed stumble and my flawless defense!
"Oh, Alea," Mom said, her voice dripping with false casualness. "You wouldn't happen to know where Corvis is, would you?"
My heart leapt. Information! A lead! But it came from the enemy agent.
Alea's winter-blue eyes met mine for a flicker of a second before returning to Mom. "His Highness? I saw him with Elder Virion in the western solar, Your Majesty."
With Grandpa! Why hadn't I thought of that? Grandpa's study was a fortress! A sanctuary! If I could reach Corvis there, under Grandpa's protection, not even Mom's most determined smile could extract us. We would be saved!
My soaring hopes were instantly dashed.
"Could you fetch my son for me?" Mom asked Alea, her voice still sweet but now edged with a queen's command. "I don't want this bratty girl to roam the palace any longer."
She saw through me. My grand, delaying search, my tactical retreat—she'd seen it all, and she was calmly deploying her own forces to neutralize my ally and round us both up.
The brilliance of my plan crumbled into the dust of childish scheming. Alea, the knight-errant of boredom, was being sent to retrieve Corvis, cutting off my last avenue of retreat.
"Of course, Your Majesty," Alea said, bowing again with that efficient, non-maid-like grace. I watched her stride away, her steps silent and purposeful, and I felt a fresh, powerful dislike for her. She was too competent. She ruined everything.
Mom's hand tightened just slightly around mine, a silent end to the campaign. "Come on, Tessia," she said, her voice firming into the no-nonsense tone that brooked no further rebellion. "No more fooling around."
The fight drained out of me, leaving behind the heavy, lumpy weight of defeat. My shoulders slumped. My lower lip, of its own volition, pushed out into a pronounced, sulky pout.
I had been outmaneuvered, outflanked, and out-mothered.
With a last, wistful glance down the hall toward the western wing and freedom, I let myself be led away, a prisoner once more, my only consolation the fervent, silent hope that Corvis, wherever he was, was putting up a much, much better fight.
Alea Triscan
My bow was a perfect, practiced angle of deference, my eyes respectfully lowered as Queen Merial guided a visibly pouting Princess Tessia away.
The soft rustle of the queen's gown and the child's determined, dragging footsteps faded down the hall. As I straightened, my gaze inadvertently met the princess's over her shoulder.
Her teal eyes, usually sparkling with mischief or blazing with indignation, now held a different light: a sharp, probing glimmer of suspicion. It was a look that didn't belong on a three-year-old's face.
It was the look of a hunter who'd caught a scent that didn't fit the forest. The surprise it sparked in me was a quiet, professional jolt. To the entire court, to the bustling city of Zestier, to all of Elenoir, I was Alea, another efficient, unremarkable maid in silver-trimmed livery.
Only three people in this palace knew the truth that lived beneath my skin, humming alongside my heartbeat.
King Alduin and Queen Merial, my sovereigns, bound to me by sacred oaths of fealty and the deeper, unspoken bond of the Artifact. And Elder Virion, the legend who had helped forge me.
My parents, before they left me with a screaming little brother and a screaming silence in my soul, had died believing their daughter served honorably in the royal household. They never knew the weight of the title I carried in the deepest shadows: Lance.
One of only six white-core mages on the continent, two for each race, the last line of defense for each Kingdom and the unseen hand of the crown.
My Fate was to be a wraith in the sunlight, my true strength a secret kept even from the stones of the palace walls. Cloaking my immense mana signature was as natural as breathing to me now; even Elder Virion, the mightiest elf alive in the public eye, a seasoned silver-core veteran, would struggle to sense the ocean of power I kept carefully contained.
And I was considered the least of our number, a pale shadow of the devastating prowess of Aya.
Yet, in a child's glance, I felt a faint, unnerving flicker of exposure. Princess Tessia had no mana, no mana core. The logical part of my mind, the Lance's mind, dismissed it instantly: the probability was zero.
But the woman, the sister, felt the truth of it. She hadn't sensed my power; she had sensed my difference. She saw a puzzle where others saw a servant. A ghost that, for a moment, had failed to be fully transparent.
What a sharp little heiress the kingdom has, I thought, a thread of grim pride weaving through my professional caution.
Shaking off the peculiar encounter, I turned on silent feet and made my way toward Elder Virion's study. My path was a familiar one, a route walked in both service and secrecy.
The scene that greeted me at the open door was a disarmingly ordinary slice of domesticity, one that felt almost sacred in its normalcy.
There, amidst the towering shelves of lore and the weight of history, was the Crown Prince, Corvis, looking profoundly small. And there was Elder Virion Eralith, the war-hardened former king, meticulously righting a toppled inkwell and gathering scattered parchment from the floor.
The evidence of a classic childish tantrum was everywhere, and the great Virion was tidying it with an expression of fond, long-suffering exasperation.
I knocked softly on the already open door. "Elder Virion," I greeted, dipping into another respectful bow.
"Alea," he acknowledged with a distracted wave, not looking up from the stack of documents he was realigning. "What brings you here?"
His tone was warm, familiar. He was one of the few who could look at me and see me fully.
"Her Majesty asked me to retrieve His Highness for her," I reported, my eyes shifting to the little prince.
To put him at ease, I offered a gentle, conspiratorial wink, the kind a friendly maid might give a shy child.
His reaction was not what I expected.
Prince Corvis's eyes, the same teal as his sister's but so often clouded with a quiet distance, widened in something akin to pure, unvarnished alarm. For a fraction of a second, his gaze darted to his grandfather before snapping back to me, now shimmering with a nervous energy.
Really, what is with these royal children? The unbidden thought was immediately chastised.
"That's perfect," Elder Virion boomed, blissfully unaware of the silent tsunami of panic he was endorsing. "Follow the young lady, Corvis."
The prince nodded, a stiff, mechanical motion. All the vibrant, rebellious energy that had presumably fueled the office's disarray seemed to have drained from him completely, leaving behind a shell of compliance.
"I will bring you to your mother, Your Highness," I said, keeping my voice soft, a neutral harbor in whatever storm was raging inside him.
As Queen Merial's Lance, her servant, and on rare occasions, her confidant, I was privy to her gentle frustrations.
She often spoke of how both her children despised the structured social gatherings she orchestrated. Princess Tessia's resistance was a loud, colorful, and predictable battlefield. But looking at Prince Corvis now, I did not see the same flavor of annoyance.
His was not the hot rebellion of a spirit chafing against restraint; it was the cold dread of a prisoner being led back to a cell he understood all too well.
He was profoundly different. At first, I had drawn a quiet, hopeful parallel to my own little brother, Alwyn.
He, too, was three. He, too, had become quiet, reclusive, speaking only in whispers and only to me since the night our world ended. I had dared to hope, in a secret corner of my heart I seldom acknowledged, that perhaps Prince Corvis could be a friend for Alwyn.
Another quiet soul who understood silence. But this… this tense, watchful stillness was something else entirely.
I extended my hand. He placed his small one in mine without protest, without a sound. The contrast to his sister's likely vocal and physical resistance was stark.
The moment our hands connected, I felt it.
A faint, but unmistakable, prickle of mana. A tiny, nascent current, humming just beneath the surface of his skin.
My Lance's discipline was the only thing that prevented my fingers from tightening or my breath from catching. I maintained my gentle hold, my expression a placid mask, even as my mind reeled.
He has a mana core. At three years old.
The fact was staggering, unprecedented in all of Dicathen's recorded history. It was the stuff of ballads not yet written. But the greater shock followed swiftly on its heels: Elder Virion did not know.
The elder's demeanor was that of a man dealing with a mischievous, normal grandson. If he knew his grandson had achieved in toddlerhood what happened to people only during their adolescence, this room would be ringing with jubilant laughter, not the quiet clatter of tidying up.
Which meant Prince Corvis was hiding it. Actively. Successfully.
How? A black-stage core's signature was small, yes, but to the senses of a veteran silver-core mage like Virion Eralith, it should have been as noticeable as a single lit candle in a dark room.
Yet the elder remained oblivious. I had only detected it because my senses were honed to a white core's preternatural sharpness, a sensitivity that could feel the heartbeat of the palace's very foundations.
This child wasn't just a prodigy; he possessed an instinctive, terrifying control over his energy, a level of concealment that defied all reason.
"Tell me, Your Highness," I began, my voice still a soft murmur as we walked, an attempt to bridge the cavernous silence he carried with him. "Do you like magic?"
His head shook, a quick, jerky negation. "No…" he whispered, and the word was flat, stripped of any childlike wonder.
It was laced with something that sounded remarkably like fear.
What is going on inside your mind, little prince? The question burned within me, a professional curiosity now fused with a deeper, more personal concern.
Any other child, upon awakening such power, would be overflowing with boastful joy, eager to demonstrate, to be seen as special. They would not cloak themselves in this mantle of fearful secrecy.
And then, looking down at his downcast head, at the way he seemed to fold into himself, the pieces clicked into a painful, poignant place.
He had a sibling. A brilliant, fiery, proud twin sister who dreamed aloud of being a great mage like their grandfather. Princess Tessia's confidence was not a secret; it was a radiant force everyone in the palace admired.
A sudden, profound understanding washed over me. My thoughts flew to Alwyn, to the fierce, all-consuming love that had become the central pillar of my existence. I would move continents and shatter mountains to shield him from pain, to nurture any fragile spark of joy in his eyes.
Was that what this was? This impossible, hidden miracle? Was this quiet, watchful boy, who flinched at the word "magic," deliberately stifling his own breathtaking light so his sister's could shine undimmed?
Was he, at three years old, already bearing the weight of a protector's heart, choosing to stand in the shadow so she could bask in the sun?
A genuine, tender smile touched my lips, unseen by him. The weight of my hidden duty, the loneliness of my secret power, felt suddenly shared with this tiny, enigmatic prince.
The future of Elenoir, I realized with a certainty that warmed me from within, was in good hands.