Corvis Eralith
Another month bled into the history of my fraudulent life, marked not by the dramatic leaps of a storybook hero, but by the slow, grinding accretion of tiny, fragile advantages.
Progress, for someone like me, wasn't a brilliant flash of insight or a burst of unprecedented power. I lacked the inherent, world-bending advantages Arthur Leywin was supposed to have possessed, and I was certainly no natural genius.
My progress was the progress of a sapling growing in shadow, straining for slivers of light.
On the front most immediate and terrifying, Alwyn stood on a precipice.
The sparkles he reported seeing—those faint, colorful motes at the edge of perception—were becoming a constant, swirling nebula in his solar plexus.
In a matter of days, perhaps even hours, he would cross the threshold. The act of awakening his core would be a silent explosion in his own soul, but the aftershocks would be anything but quiet.
Alea's ire was a storm cloud on my horizon, a promised tempest I had willingly summoned by handing him the match. The guilt was a cold stone in my gut, but watching the fierce, focused light in his eyes as he concentrated, feeling the nascent hum of power beginning to orbit him, I couldn't bring myself to regret it.
Meanwhile, Tessia's world continued to orbit a different sun. Her life was a masterpiece of effortless social gravity.
The noble children of Zestier—a small, glittering constellation of heirs and heiresses—drawn into her sphere by the sheer, radiant pull of her presence. She held court in sun-dappled gardens and palace playrooms, a queen of games and invented adventures.
Yet, my observing eye, trained by paranoia and stolen knowledge, saw the subtle fissures. She treated them with a regal detachment that never tipped into coldness or rudeness, but was a barrier all the same.
They were subjects in her kingdom of the moment, not confidants.
Her laughter was brilliant and inclusive, but her true attention, that deep, unbroken thread of focus, was reserved for the quiet spaces where I might be found, or for the adults she deemed interesting. She was performing childhood with flawless, instinctive grace, and they were her willing audience.
A bitter, useless thought whispered: If I was more like her—if I could wield charm like a blade, diplomacy like a shield—maybe I could have convinced Alea to take me to the Red Gorge months ago.
But I was not Tessia. I was all sharp edges and silent calculations, a creature of hidden rooms and furtive plans.
Fortunately, the problem of the Red Gorge had apparently resolved itself, or so Elder Rahdeas's steady stream of correspondence and visits claimed.
The dwarven elder had become a semi-regular fixture in the royal study. His meetings with Grandpa and my parents were filled with low, rumbling discussions of trade routes, tariffs, and portal mechanics.
The focus was on commerce, not war.
The ambitious project of linking Zestier directly to Darv's greatest cities—the mighty subterranean sprawl of Vildorial and the industrious hub of Burim—via rhe portals already presente in said cities was underway.
It was a visionary endeavor, one that promised a future where dwarven craftsmanship and elven artistry could flow as freely as the mana in the atmosphere.
Burim, I knew from these recent events, was the home of Buhndemog Lonuid, Grandpa's old, powerful friend from the aftermaths of the Second War.
The peace felt tangible, optimistic. Dwarven nobles in practical, elegant tunics were now a common sight in the palace corridors, their deep voices a novel bass note in the melodic flow of elven speech. Even the avaricious and perpetually scheming Greysunders had deigned to schedule a royal visit.
Dicathen, or at least this corner of it, was dreaming of gold and growth.
It was within this bustling, hopeful atmosphere that I found myself standing in the newly renovated commercial district of Zestier.
The area hummed with a vibrant, hybrid energy. Elven architectural elegance, all flowing curves and living wood, now incorporated dwarven stonework—geometric, solid, and enduring.
The air smelled of pine, fresh stone dust, baking bread, and the distinctive, oily scent of dwarven machinery.
My heart was a frantic bird against my ribs as I waited, as instructed, in front of Stonebound Tomes. The shop was a fascinating anomaly: a dwarven cave-dwelling expertly carved into the trunk of a massive oak tree that stood blessedly free of other constructions.
It was a piece of Darv nestled in the heart of Elenoir, selling everything from dwarven epic poetry and cunning mechanical toys to clothes tailored for elven proportions. The dwarves were savvy; they made the exotic accessible, wrapping their culture in a shell of familiar comfort.
As I waited, my mind raced in contradictory circles. With every passing week, with every helpful letter, every smoothly arranged trade negotiation, the image of Rahdeas as the future traitor, the architect of Dicathen's betrayal, grew harder to sustain.
He was eccentric, yes—cryptic in that way old, powerful beings often are. He was, in many ways, like a dwarven mirror of Grandpa Virion, only where Grandpa played the occasionally foolish, boisterous warrior, Rahdeas was the inscrutable, calculating strategist.
Could the man facilitating this hopeful future truly be plotting its annihilation? The cognitive dissonance was a constant, low-grade headache.
"Prince Corvis?"
The voice was rough, measured, and carried an accent that struck a bizarre chord in my memory—a guttural, rolling quality that my mind could only categorize as Scottish. I turned.
Leaning against the immense trunk of the tree, just beside the carved shop entrance, was a dwarf.
He had the bronze skin and dark, shrewd eyes of his kind, with a close-cropped beard and brown hair worn loose, not in the distinctive ponytail I remembered from the lost narrative. But I knew him.
The set of his shoulders, the grounded power that seemed to emanate from him like heat from a furnace, the way his gaze assessed me in one swift, comprehensive sweep—this was Olfred Warend.
Lance of Darv. Foster son of Rahdeas. And, according to the story that was my bible and my curse, a traitor by extension.
A violent shiver traced the path of my spine, a primal alarm screaming of danger. I forced it down, locked it away behind the mask of a slightly intimidated, overly curious prince.
"Y-yes?" I stammered, the attempt at composure crumbling pathetically.
His presence here was a breach of monumental proportions. One of the unbreakable tenets of being a Lance, as Alea's comments had implied, was to never leave your home kingdom. You were a guardian, a fixed point of national defense.
For Olfred to be here, in the heart of Elenoir, meant Rahdeas had ordered him to violate that core principle. And Olfred, whose defining characteristic in my mental files was unwavering, dogmatic loyalty to his foster father, had obeyed without question.
"My name is Damien," the dwarf said, pushing off the tree. "Elder Rahdeas has sent me to accompany you to the Red Gorge."
A strange, hollow relief washed over me. So, I'll have a Lance by my side after all, just not the one I expected.
But why? Why is Rahdeas doing this? What does he gain from orchestrating this clandestine journey for a four-year-old elf prince?
"…Corvis Eralith," I offered my name, a feeble attempt to reclaim some semblance of the interaction.
He shook his head, a single, firm motion. "Follow me inside. I can't be seen preparing to travel with the Crown Prince of Elenoir." His voice dropped, lower and harder. "And you are not going to use your real name either."
"I understand," I whispered, the magnitude of the charisma settling upon me. I was leaving my identity at the door of the Stonebound Tomes.
Inside, the shop was a wonderland of curated cultural exchange. It felt like stepping into a geode—the exterior was rough tree bark, the interior a glittering, lamplit cave.
Shelves carved from the living wood held dwarven novels bound in sturdy leather, intricate puzzle boxes, clocks with grinding gearwork faces, and bolts of fabric in earthy, mineral hues. It was Darv made palatable, fascinating but not overwhelming. The dwarven shopkeeper, a woman with kind eyes and intricate braids in her hair, nodded at Damien/Olfred with silent understanding.
He led me past a curtain and through a short, dwarf-sized door into a back room. This was the true workspace, stripped of customer-friendly charm. Mining picks, gem-cutting tools, and half-assembled artifacts lay on sturdy tables. In the center of the room sat a single, lonely stool.
"How long did it take to set up this shop?" I asked, a meaningless question to fill the heavy silence.
"I have no idea," Olfred replied, his tone utterly devoid of interest. "My job isn't commerce."
Of course. His job, officially, was being a guard for the Greysunders. And he was currently, flagrantly, skipping it. The layers of deception and disobedience were staggering.
"And what is it?" I pressed, needing to hear him say it.
"…Security," he grunted, already moving to a shelf and collecting jars of pigments, pots of wax, and strange, malleable compounds.
He gestured for me to sit on the stool. I obeyed, feeling like a specimen pinned under a lens. Olfred began his work with the methodical precision of an engineer, not an artist. He mixed powders, using faint pulses of earth-attribute mana to test their consistency, holding a resulting cake of pigment up to a glowing light-artifact for inspection.
"What are you doing?" The question was redundant, but I needed the sound of a voice, even my own.
"Preparing a disguise for you." He didn't look at me, focused on his mixtures. "Hiding the traits of an Eralith is particularly difficult. Your hair and eyes are practically recognizable by every person in Dicathen with two brain cells to rub together."
The blunt assessment was jarringly accurate. My gunmetal hair and teal eyes were a royal signature.
"So what's the plan?" I asked, my voice smaller than I intended.
"I am going to turn you into a believable dwarven child," he stated, finally looking at me. His dark eyes were impersonal, analytical. "Finn Warend. The son of a lost family member of Elder Rahdeas, recently reunited after years of separation. It's a story easy to believe and hard to verify across kingdom lines."
"Wow," I breathed, genuinely impressed despite my fear. "You really thought about everything."
"It was Elder Rahdeas's plan," he corrected immediately, his loyalty absolute. "I am merely the executioner." He paused, his gaze sharpening. "Have you made your part?"
The doubt in his voice was clear—what could a child possibly contribute to an operation like this? But his faith in Rahdeas overrode his skepticism.
"I did," I said, nodding tightly.
My own web of lies felt flimsy in comparison, however. To my family, I was to be a guest of the Chaffer estate, a story Albold had accepted with eager complicity.
To Albold, I'd spun a tale of needing to travel to Asyphyn on a personal errand, appealing to his sense of adventure and secret-keeping.
Dad had been skeptical, a flicker of parental intuition cutting through the usual royal busyness. But Mom and Tessia… their reaction had been a different kind of wound. They were delighted.
They saw it as me "finally growing out of my shell," as if I were some reclusive teenager and Tessia the socially brilliant older sister, a reversal of our actual twinhood that was both absurd and painfully revealing of how they perceived my quiet, nervous existence.
Grandpa was the wild card, but I had to trust that Rahdeas and the cover story would hold.
The hardest had been Alwyn. Telling him I was leaving, seeing the flash of betrayal in his eyes before he banked it, had felt like a physical blow. I'd used his own awakening as a bargaining chip, a distraction.
When I return, I want you to already be a mage. It was a cheap trick, but it worked. He'd accepted the mission with a solemn nod, his new purpose overriding his disappointment.
I estimated I had five days before my family's mild concern sharpened into suspicion, and six before either Aya or a furious Alea could be on my trail.
With Olfred, travel would be exponentially faster. But that speed came with its own apocalyptic risk. If an elven Lance were to discover a dwarven Lance traveling with the disguised Crown Prince of Elenoir… it would be a casus belli.
For a treacherous, paralyzing second, I wondered if that was precisely Rahdeas's goal. To spark the war between Darv and Elenoir himself, to fracture Dicathen from within before Agrona even arrived.
But I dismissed it, though the fear lingered like a poison. Rahdeas was not a man of overt war, and he would never sacrifice Olfred so readily and so soon.
"Finn Warend… understood," I said, steeling myself.
The process was intimate and profoundly uncomfortable. Olfred began applying the makeup, his thick, calloused fingers surprisingly deft.
The cool, clay-like substances were smoothed over my skin, altering its tone to a warmer, earthier hue, subtly reshaping the perceived bone structure around my eyes and cheeks.
I was reminded, painfully, of my mother's occasional, bittersweet attempts to play with Tessia and me as living dolls, her joy in our mirrored beauty something I tolerated out of love but inwardly recoiled from.
When Olfred finally stepped back to survey his work, he gave a grunt of satisfaction, then picked up a pair of sharp, silver scissors.
"W-what are you doing?" I asked, a fresh jolt of alarm running through me.
"Cutting your hair," he said matter-of-factly. "It's tradition for dwarven boys to keep their hair short. Yours is a banner announcing who you are."
"Okay…" I acquiesced, closing my eyes as the first snipping sounds reached my ears. I felt the weight of my hair fall away in sections.
"Now, wear these." Olfred's voice brought me back. He was holding two small, curved lenses in a solution-filled case.
My breath caught. "Are these… contact lenses?" The anachronism was jarring.
Olfred's eyebrows lifted, the first genuine flicker of surprise I'd seen on his face. "You know of them? They are a new invention in Darv. Many dwarves have sight problems, and glasses can be a hindrance in the mines or the forges." His scrutinizing gaze deepened. "You are quite informed about the world you live in, for a prince your age."
A cold sweat broke out on my newly dyed skin. I said nothing, offering only a weak shrug. The truth screamed in my skull: no, I'm not informed. I'm a plagiarist, haunted by knowledge from a world that wrote this one as a fiction.
I took the lenses, my hands trembling slightly. The process of inserting them was strange and unsettling, a brief, stinging intrusion.
When I blinked my eyes open, the world was the same, yet fundamentally altered. The vivid, luminous teal that had stared back at me from every mirror since my rebirth was gone, replaced by a soft, unremarkable brown. The final, most glaring signature of my bloodline had been erased.
"Now choose some clothes," Olfred said, gesturing to a small pile of dwarven-style tunics and trousers, sturdy and practical, "and we can go, Finn."
A/N:
I will publish the next chapters as soon I finish the next arc—hopefully in a week or so.
In the meanwhile I may change some world-building I have done in previous chapters (mainly names as I am not content with some of them and maybe some little details).