How can I stop her without destroying her, without destroying us? Stars help me, she can’t be allowed to rise further.

  - Emperor Kas Van Dialla

  I find Corinth the next morning as I climb a hill on the east side of the property. Seeing him there, lying in the grass, watching the sun rise over the far line of the horizon catches me a bit off guard. The sketchbook in my hand vanishes, sent back into my inventory.

  He looks up at me. Corinth’s one eye lacks any clear definition, an orb of solid red in his angular face, but somehow you can tell where he is looking. He smiles, a length of sweetgrass sticking out of his mouth, spiny fronds waving back and forth as the morning breeze blows.

  “It’s a good spot, isn’t it,” he says, propping himself up on his elbows, looking out at the lines of trees.

  “I come here to think sometimes,” I say, taking my seat in the grass. I pat around, delighted when I find a worn stone among the grass. A painted face looks up at me from the flat side of the stone, Mr. Rockbottom. How strange that this should still be here.

  “I hope so, I didn’t share my secret thinking spot with just anybody,” he says, grinning over at me. He blows out a sigh, face falling when he sees the lack of recognition in my eyes. “You don’t remember.”

  I shrug.

  “I really have been gone a long time,” he says, looking up at the clouds. “Time seems to…slip past when you aren’t keeping an eye on it. Brotherly wisdom, keep an eye on it.”

  “You have a different relation with time than me,” I say. I toss Mr. Rockbottom back into the grass, watching as it disappears among the blades of green. “Time can’t pass fast enough for me.”

  “You’ll miss it,” he says. “Promise you that.”

  “You’re one to talk. Don’t you have like ten thousand years of life now, Mr. Fifth Rank Magician?”

  He shrugs, though with one arm the gesture is a bit off. “Who knows? It isn’t as if I can expect natural causes to be the end of me.”

  “What do you mean by that.”

  Corinth keeps his silence, and I join him in it. We sit for a while, watching the workers move out among the trees. There is more work now on the orchard than I remember ever seeing before. The eastern part of the property has expanded out, with signs of new trees being planted everywhere. Before I left, my father had a claim to one of the largest plots in Lord Timmian’s domain, but it looks as if that proved insufficient.

  “The man would lay claim to the whole county if he could,” Corinth says, words echoing my thoughts. “Put down neat rows of trees stretching off into the horizon.”

  “Have you visited Halford?” I ask. “You should find him if you can.”

  “I did. He’s in Gallia, working with his team there to climb the ranks in a city where the needs might match his strength. He took up dueling apparently, much to the chagrin of the local nobility.”

  “Humans can duel in the capital?”

  “If you have permission from the duke. No idea how he obtained that. Our reunion didn’t go exactly as planned. He had a lot to say, had a lot to say about you.”

  “Me?”

  Corinth shakes his head. “He was convinced that I ruined your life. Thought that I gave you only a single essentia to make you dependant on me, and when I never sent more, made you prey for the powerful Willian Guild. Said that you were indentured to them now.”

  “I’m not,” I say. “Halford can be a bit…over-protective.”

  “So, you don’t owe them anything?”

  “Not exactly.” With a gesture, I pull the copy of my contract with Arabella from my inventory, handing it to him.

  Corinth squints against the sun as he holds it up to read. “It’s a bit one-sided,” he says.

  “That’s what I thought too at the time. I couldn’t figure out why they would give me so much, asking so little in return. Now, I know.”

  He sighs, handing the paper back to me, tucking his hand behind his head again. “Sorry about that. If I knew they would try headhunting my family I would have told the guildmaster directly to knock it off. The last thing that I wanted was for all of you to get swept up in my issues.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t, for what it's worth.” I catch his attention again. “What would I be doing if Arabella never came to Westgrove, driving ponies around, delivering orders, and helping to plant trees?”

  “That doesn’t sound so bad. Sounds like a good life, a safe one.”

  I shake my head. “I’ve learned a lot over the last couple of months, learned that I don’t know myself nearly as well as I should. One thing I do know though, is that I don’t think a safe life is the place for me.”

  “Charlene.”

  “Did you tell Halford to go home and work on the orchard when you saw him, or is the stay-at-home speech going to just be for me?”

  “As a matter of fact,” he says. “That is exactly what I told him. Come to think of it, he hit me in the face too. He throws a better punch by the by.”

  “So, risking your neck, gaining fame and power, that is just for you.”

  “It was supposed to be,” he admits. “I knew Halford would end up following my trail. Saw it in his eyes the day I left. Like a fool, I hoped he would at the time. Tried to correct that with the essentia I sent him, thought that he might stick around at home if I sent him and Dad the same set. The boy basically ruined everything by selling them and buying cheaper ones for himself and his little friend. He could have destroyed his whole life by doing that.”

  “Did his life look very ruined when you saw him?”

  “No,” he admits. “He was all smile and cheer before he noticed me. It’s probably best I leave him alone for a while.” He looks back at me, looking me over. “I’m sorry that I never was able to send you the rest of the set I picked out for you.”

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  “What did you have in mind? If it is okay for me to ask, given that spies are looking after you.”

  He waves his hand, and for a moment the sky overhead turned a violet-red. The shift only lasts an instant, but I realize then that we sit inside his soul presence, a presence so huge that it stretches past the far horizon. “I bullied my way into claiming this territory for a time. Either the king is fine with it, or he hasn’t gotten around to dispatching someone who can make me stop yet. For the time being, no one will be eavesdropping on our words.” A bird flies past, ducking between the trees, oblivious to being in the complete power of this man next to me.

  “That is incredible,” I say, trying to see again the color of his presence in the clear blue of the sky, but not managing to find any clue of it.

  “An incredible pain in the ass,” he says.

  “The other essentia?”

  “Right. Well, knowing my industrious father, I thought that after he got his hands on the power to do what he wanted to do with the orchard, he would need assistance running the business side. I remembered you being good with numbers, thought I might try to help you along in that way. Gold was not too difficult to find, but the Fortune and Prosperity Essentias were more difficult to get my hands on. Then, some things came up, and I found myself too busy to take the proper time and find them. To be fair to me, I didn’t think you would be able to integrate essentia before you were eighteen, that’s the time most people start being able to.”

  “That is what the lord’s ritualist said too,” I say. “I’m an early bloomer.”

  “Something I should have predicted. Sorry.”

  I shake my head. “It’s fine. I am happy with the ones I ended up with. Magic and Dragon sound better to me than Fortune and Prosperity. You have Magic, don’t you?”

  “That’s right,” he nods, looking to the sky again.

  “You aren’t going to ask about the Dragon Essentia? Not going to act shocked that I got my hands on a legendary essentia?”

  “I could tell you had one when we first met,” he said. “It is written all over your soul for anyone that knows how to look. If you are going to keep walking down this road, shooting for the third rank, you need to learn how to protect your soul. There are those out there who can attack it directly, and even if they can’t, reading your thoughts and emotions will be easy for them. Trust me; it can lead to bad situations.”

  “I didn’t know that you could read souls.”

  He huffs. “Charlene, you are in the second rank, and by now you should be able to see them at least a bit. Right now, you will probably be only able to see them when someone is expressing power through their soul, but by the third rank, you will be able to see them all the time unless an individual is hiding theirs. Have you not noticed how your soul presence flexes and bends when you command it? People can read those kinds of currents. Souls have movements all their own, predictable enough to be a kind of language if you know how to read it.”

  “Is that why my eye tells me nothing about you?” I ask, tapping the side of my head. “You are hiding your soul from me?”

  “No.” His face grows hard for a moment. “Have you ever heard of providence?”

  “I know the word; it is used a lot in the canon, but I don’t think that’s what you mean. A fey spirit came with the eye, the enchantment in the artifact too complex to be controlled any other way. She spoke about providence once or twice, but refused to explain what it is.”

  “The eye, it’s from Faeth?”

  “Yes,” I reply, a bit surprised that he could tell that.

  “Just like Caranall,” he says. “You have to understand, the Faethians are one of the groups at the forefront of enchantment, and their work in understanding and reading providence is inferior to no one. They follow the teachings of the goddess Aminriale, and providence is her domain, much as magic is Exeter’s.”

  “But what is it?”

  “Providence is a record,” he says. “Everything leaves an impact on the world. The origins of anything are a byproduct of where it came from, and Aminriale seems to have an obsession with investigating the past. At least, that is what I have gathered from reading her teachings. Because of her interest, a power exists in our world to investigate the past of things in much the same way as she attempts to, to read where something or someone has come from. It is not a well-known natural power, likely because you cannot blow things up with it, but its utility begins to show with the more power you gain.”

  “Why?”

  “Because people’s weaknesses are often found in their pasts,” he says. “Your eye cannot read my providence, likely because I am too powerful for it to, but even if it was a higher tier item, I keep my providence shrouded. Don’t want people following my past back to here.” He taps the dirt with his hand. “Back to my family.”

  “You have enemies that would do that?”

  “Anyone with power has enemies, Charlene. That is a law as self-evident as gravity.”

  “Right, gravity. I only learned what that was, recently.”

  “Tell me what happened after you left Westgrove,” he says, closing his eyes, snuggling back into the grass. “How did my sister’s introduction into the life of a magician go? It must have been difficult to let you reach the second rank in such a short time.”

  I fall back into the grass, looking at the sky as well, and the words spill away from me. I hold nothing back, not even the nightmares or what I did to Coriander. The story can’t stop once I have started it. Some parts are hard to say, my throat choking through the words, like swallowing a stone, but I don’t stop. Corinth lays next to me, never saying a word, nodding now and again at certain points with his eye closed and turned heavenward.

  Sniffing, I finish my tale, wiping at my eyes despite having kept back all my tears, letting loose a laugh out of sheer embarrassment.

  “They sound like good friends,” are his first words.

  “I think they are.”

  “Good. Having a real team is the way to do it. Going at this kind of life alone is doable, but it is a lonely experience. You don’t want to follow that path, trust me.” The solemnity in his voice makes me trust his words. “I could buy you out from under your contract, allow you to go adventuring with your friends without any expectations put upon you. A fresh start.”

  I shake my head. “No. If I wanted to do that, I think I could manage it on my own. No, despite how terrible the competition went, now that I am away from it, I do still feel like I owe Arabella something. Even if it might have been just a way for her to strengthen ties with you, she took a chance on me, and gave me power that I didn’t deserve. If I reneged on the first deal I made of my own; it just wouldn’t feel right. Besides, it isn’t as if I am locked into anything serious. All the contract stipulates is that I need to reach the third rank in the next two and a half years, and I am already planning to do that. After that, they will examine me for some kind of competition, find out that I am not as powerful as the elites they already have gathered, and I will go my own way.”

  “I think you might be selling yourself a bit short there,” he says.

  “For my sake, I hope you’re wrong.”

  We share a laugh, falling back into a relaxing silence, letting time tick by uncounted. I bring out the lunch I had made before I left this morning, sharing a bit of it with him as we sit on the hill overlooking the family orchard. There are so many new faces down there that it seems almost as if someone else’s family runs this place now. I try to see the rows of trees through Corinth’s eyes. How much has changed for him?

  “So,” he says, chewing a bit of buttered bread. “You probably have questions for me.”

  “A few more, though you have answered the first ones that I thought of already,” I say.

  “And I think I can guess your next,” he says, nodding. “Go ahead, ask me it.”

  “Will you teach me how to be a proper mage?” I ask.

  Corinth pauses in the middle of buttering his next piece of bread. “I thought you were going to ask me about Grise.”

  “Maybe later. So, will you?”

  He returns to buttering the bread, deliberately moving slowly. “You said that you would only be here for a few weeks.”

  “Surely, you can teach me something in that time,” I say.

  He blows out a sigh, turning his head this way and that as he thinks about it. “Sure,” he says at last. “It might be difficult, but I think I can show you a thing or two. Are you prepared to work hard?”

  “Brother, my goal in life has become to work harder than everyone else.”

  If you happen to be enjoying the story so far, you can support it by leaving a review, rating, following, or favoriting. Ratings help this story immensely. I have recently launched a for those that want to read ahead or support this work directly. Also, I have a fully released fantasy novel out for anyone that wants to read some more of my work.

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