Airlean Tales S2E20: Miasma (1)

Author's Notes:

Wow, yeah, it’s been a hot minute. So I got married (yay!!), and moved (whoo?), and there's been family weddings and funerals and a whole bunch of Life Being Life™, but HEY new year new chapter happy new year! I'll give some more news on chapter updates and schedule at the end of this chapter, but the short of it is that updates will be continuing, just irregularly. Sorry folks.

I know it's been a while so, might recommend reading over the previous chapter to refresh your memory. Either way, though it's long overdue, hope you enjoy the update!

A fight, a fight.

Halcyon’s blood was singing, roiling, clawing around in his skin. He had stood helplessly on the sidelines as Karis had spilled her precious blood, as the senators had openly challenged Sethis’s authority, as warriors left and right were raring to fight and he had felt it simmering, ready to boil over. Now it was finally time. The cage had been opened, the hound unleashed.

As Halcyon tore through the sky, Atlantean spires and porticos lurching underfoot, he found his mind quieting. Karis had seemed somewhat upset with him when he’d left. No doubt she begrudged him for his early start. No matter, she would arrive well before the real fun. He’d leave her one of the greater scarecrows as an apology.

In the distance, the Harvester’s Dominion formed: buildings intertwined with colorful coral and blooming things, like a garden of fairy pools. A canopy of wide-topped hoplon trees cast the dominion into speckled shade. The estate would have appeared leisurely and peaceful compared to the Warmonger’s, if not for the gates that enclosed it on every side, shut tight to the outside world. Halcyon plotted his course carefully to gain as much elevation as possible before he passed overhead. Windsoles were not in favored in Atlantis, and few warriors would think to look up without the cue of a tidebreaker’s warble.

Mathias was already waiting at the ivy-draped gates of the Harvester’s magnificent palace—the Hanging Gardens—as if he were an official envoy. Halcyon stared as he alighted before the palladian door.

“Lord Yuden,” Mathis greeted.

“How are you here? They were watching the walls for tidebreakers.”

“I did not pilot my tidebreaker.”

“Yet you’re here before me.”

“I walk very fast,” Mathias said with a straight face, and Halcyon snorted.

It took him a moment to remember the gullets. The founding senators had never intended for dominions to try to shut themselves off completely; the gullet system infiltrated deep into many territories, and the Warmongers held control over most of it. Still, Halcyon expected most of the routes to the Harvester Dominion to have been blocked. How Mathias had snuck through undetected was beyond him.

“I expect you plan for me to directly confront the senator as the last Leventis arbiter.”

“That would be convenient, yes,” Mathias said mildly.

“Will they accept the credibility of my identity when we look like nothing more than a pair of trespassing stragglers?”

“Would you rather have crashed through the gates with pomp and a huge crowd to bear witness to your true identity?”

“That depends. How many people already know?”

“Senator Xiph announced it only to her inner circle.”

“Which includes you. A mere pilot.”

“A pod captain, thank you. There is also the Prime Consul and…” Mathias’s brow furrowed for a moment. “A young initiate. Though even he was not privy to your identity.”

“An initiate? Not even a fully ordained Champion?”

“He is on the cusp of it at sixteen years old, and a talented fighter.”

“I don’t recall seeing him in the procession during the opening feast.”

Mathias hesitated, his face inscrutable. “He was otherwise occupied.”

“Quite the entourage,” Halcyon said dryly. “Xiph’s inner council is a pilot, a scholar, and a kid. What’s next, a pet otter?”

“There was one,” Mathias responded. “Captain Wiggles the otter.”

Halcyon closed his eyes. “Of course there is.”

“Was. He’s dead.”

Halcyon raised a brow. “Old age?”

“No.”

“I see.” He grimaced. “Guess she should have known better than to try to keep a pet as the Warmonger.” He raised his hand to the Garden gate. “Let’s get this over with.”

Most anticlimactically, he knocked sharply and waited. There was silence for a moment, and he braced himself for the doors bursting into wooden shards, people vaulting down from the rooftops, or weapons flying towards his face.

The doors swung open, mild as could be.

Halcyon exchanged a glance with Mathias, and they stepped inside.

The outdoor compound of the Hanging Gardens was just as picturesque as the rest of the dominion. Polished boardwalks crisscrossed over a shallow layer of water, from which cypress trees, cattails, flowering pickerel weed, and other wetland plants flourished. A beaked scarecrow balanced one-footed on a cypress knee, hovering over the shallow water like a heron, still and silent as a statue.

Mathias did not walk any closer, avoiding intrusion into the Gardens. “Hail, harvest children,” he announced, his voice resonating off the courtyard walls. “We come seeking only peaceful negotia—”

“Don’t be coy, warmonger.” The voice under the mask was gravelly and smoky, raw from disuse. “You know how you have stolen through the gullets like a thief.”

“The borders turned away a formal inquiry by the senator herself. Given that Senator Vathalos did not make an appearance, reasonable suspicions of insurrection or some other internal conflict were raised. Senator Vascea was concerned for the safety of her fellow ensign.”

The scarecrow became very still, and even Halcyon almost winced. He wasn’t a political man by any means, but even he knew how brazen Mathias’s lies sounded.

“And so you disregard the sovereignty of our borders and march through like it is your own domain,” the scarecrow said softly. “Very well. The senator you shall see.”

Suddenly, the scarecrow gave a sharp whistle and dropped soundlessly onto the boardwalk. Movement rustled in the surrounding trees, and Halcyon realized with a jolt that innumerable scarecrows were perched throughout the boughs and the foliage, unnoticed thanks to their stillness and remarkable balance.

The head scarecrow jerked his head and drifted toward the open gate at the end of the courtyard, leading them further into the Gardens. They passed through more open courtyards full of gnarled trees and flowers blazing with color. The wildlife grew progressively more untamed; roots leapt out of the ground in knotted spirals, and thorny vines twisted out of the canopy of leaves, as if they were approaching the heart of nature itself.

Halcyon glanced at Mathias with a raised brow, as if to say, I sure hope you have a contingency plan if this all goes horribly wrong.

Mathias gave the smallest, vaguest shrug, which made Halcyon pause for a moment in concern.

“Wait here,” the head scarecrow suddenly said in that gravelly voice, halting them just before a flowering ivy curtain that would lead into the Harvester’s innermost sanctum. He disappeared through the foliage, leaving them surrounded by the remaining scarecrows.

The stilted silence that followed was almost comedic. Being surrounded by a swarm of eerie, unmoving beaked masks was equally nightmarish and amusing. Halcyon leaned in very close to one, morbidly curious if the scarecrow would flinch or try to stab him. They did neither, only staring back with perfect composure.

“Lord Yuden, what are you doing?” Mathias said.

“Amusing myself.”

“Can you behave until after we have escaped mortal danger?”

“Who knows when that day will come.”

He sensed the tidebreaker pilot shaking his head in disbelief. Then the head scarecrow emerged from behind the ivy curtain, and beckoned them forward into the Harvester’s central sanctum.

It was a glade every bit as stunning as Halcyon remembered. Huge flowers swayed above them like lanterns. A giant tree loomed skyward, thick branches hanging a canopy of a weeping willow. At the base of its trunk was a throne carved from a hollow, surrounded by ornately decorated vines and roots. But the hollow of the tree was empty, lacking Senator Rathos’s stately presence.

Mathias glanced around, but he looked unsurprised. “Where did the senator go?” he said dryly. “Out on a morning stroll?”

“Did you really believe you had the right to face the dominus with your shoddy excuses?” The head scarecrow glided in front of them, head lifted haughtily. “Fool warmonger. You come without your pod, without your senator, revealing the sanctity of the aqueducts to a foreigner—you are the insurgent, a stain upon this country!”

The scarecrow flicked out a multi-jointed fluttering knife, and the other scarecrows followed suit. The metal rippled under the leaf-dappled light like a sea of butterfly wings.

“We have only brought you here,” the scarecrow said softly, “to kill you and this landwalker in the quiet.”

Mathis glanced towards Halcyon, who stepped forward.

“Not exactly a landwalker,” Halcyon replied in his mother tongue. He reached up and lowered his mask.

He waited for the spark of recognition, the shock of a bloodline that seemed to return from the grave. Hail, Leventis, the scarecrow would say, and then he’d reply…ah, damn. He’d only seen the procedure once, and he’d followed his siblings through it. He didn’t actually remember what to say to demand an arbiter’s authority and passage.

The scarecrow’s gazes flitted over his sharp facial structure, his dark hair, and finally settled on his eyes, piercing and stormy blue and undeniably Leventis.

His only warning was a sharp inhale before he rushed him, knives flashing.

Oh well, he thought wryly. Guess I don’t have to remember after all. Not that he’d expected to. They’d only cited the law because they’d thought every Leventis was dead.

Shadows rippled from every corner of the sanctum. Scarecrows seemed to melt from thin air, their wiry figures twisting into catlike shapes as they vaulted forward. Halcyon’s glaive was out immediately and he heard Mathias’s sword ring as it was drawn.

“Dedemitos!” Mathias called sharply, swinging to deflect a knife thrown at his neck. “You risk execution for assaulting the Lord Arbiter!”

“Our law is our lord,” one of the scarecrows hissed back. “We will defend him from your greed, Warmonger!”

“Fool! This isn’t about greed! You’ll doom all of Atlantis if the miasma takes him!”

They said nothing in return, only doubling their efforts. Five were on Halcyon, who pivoted among slices of water mana, studying their deadly grace. The scarecrows were swift and acrobatic, boasting the same brutality he’d seen in the kennels. Only, where vagabonds and brawlers were desperate with hunger or intoxicated with bloodlust, the scarecrows were impassive and pragmatic, nearly hollow. It made them calculated, impossible to distract or demoralize.

Most concerningly, they were trained to fight together. Knives flashed from four different angles and when Halcyon twisted away with a deflecting sweep of water, another blade shot over his collarbone, opening a weeping cut to the slope of his shoulder. It missed his neck by an inch.

Alright, he thought grimly. So you want to fight a Leventis?

His manawell burst. Water mana, thick in the air from the wet flowering gardens, pressed into a serpentine current that tore through the scarecrow ranks. The force of it shattered bones and sprayed muddled blood across the boardwalk. One of the scarecrows crumpled with a collapsed ribcage, groaning in a muffled, plaintive way that gave Halcyon pause—like he’d just butchered an animal.

No, there was no time for guilt. They were trying to kill him; those knives had headed right for his vitals.

Mathias was holding his own against three scarecrows, albeit barely. Blood was trickling down his temple and a gash had opened along his arm. The opalite veins in his short sword were glowing a searing, brilliant cerulean, indicating a stretched manawell as he resonated with it to empower his strikes with water mana. Still, he was doing well for a pod captain. Halcyon had no doubt that an average tidebreaker pilot would already be dead.

But skill was not enough. They were outnumbered and would be easily worn down. This had to end, one way or another.

Halcyon braced himself and flared his manawell. Water mana coursed through his glaive in an almost overwhelming surge of power. His hands shook with the effort of controlling his weapon as it crested through the air, water tearing in its wake—wrapping around him protectively, rippling out in waves, sweeping scarecrows off the of the walkway and into the walls like rapids.

More blood. Ripping flesh and crumpling bones. An enormous bush fell with a shuddering crash, bringing down a section of wall. Halcyon was used to wreaking this scale of damage on the endless swarms of corrupted beasts—not living and breathing humans, humans fighting for what they believed was just and loyal.

Karis was right. It messed with his head.

He and Mathias stood back-to-back for a moment, breathing heavily. Scarecrows encircled them, studying them with a new wariness.

“That was rather effective,” Mathias said. There was a new lilt in his voice—equal parts caution and respect. “You were chosen to inherit the Hunt, weren’t you? Set to be the next Arbiter Sovereign?”

“What makes you think that?”

“I’ve never seen such a strong affinity for water, and few can boast such a vast manawell.”

“Maybe they should try harder.”

Mathias huffed a soft breath, but it cut off in the middle. Halcyon glanced over to see his face twisted in pain, hand staunching his side. Blood was leaking from between his fingers.

Oh. That was not good.

“Leave me,” Mathias said through gritted teeth. “I’ll only get you killed.”

Halcyon opened his mouth to respond when mana exploded into the atmosphere next to him. Bracing himself for death, he instinctively threw up a wall of water to shield himself and Mathias.

He needn’t have.

A whorl of blue fire pinwheeled out of nowhere and passed cleanly in front of him, slamming right into the nearest scarecrow. An agonized scream rent the air, paired with the acrid stench of burning flesh. The other scarecrows drew back for a moment, murmuring among themselves.

Halcyon’s gaze snapped towards the source of the fire, just in time to see a figure flit over the low rooftops of the sanctum. Blue fire. He racked his memory for a connection, but found none. He’d never seen blue fire before, let alone attributed a user.

Wreathed in dancing flames, the figure plunged from the roof into the courtyard. They were humbly dressed—a ragged cloak shrouding anything of distinction, revealing only a practical weathered pair of traveler’s boots. They held a sword, but it was of standard Airlean Garrison issue, lacking a mana quartz. An Airlean? With that level of Forming rambunctious fire mana without a focusing quartz? Impressive, and concerning. Halcyon definitely should have known of such a strong manacrafter, yet he was still drawing a blank.

“I hope there’s more to your plan than just staring,” said the cool, dry voice of a woman from beneath the hood.

Halcyon’s brow furrowed. Natural Airlean, upper city accent. Expert fire manacrafter. Woman. A highly unusual combination that yielded no matches.

“We need to retreat, but the scarecrows will have the whole inner court cordoned off,” he replied in Common. His glaive swept up to deflect knives whistling through the air. “Our best way out is up the sacred tree and out the open roof.”

The scarecrows had regrouped and were converging again. A handful wove skillfully around the woman’s lash of flames, swiping straight for her vitals. She lifted her sword with a deft hand and struck, not with effortless grace like Karis Caelute, but with strength and precision like a soldier. Though she fended off the flashing daggers with athletic sweeps of both blade and limbs, Halcyon noticed a tremor of hesitation at the end of each of her swings, like she was unused to the weight of her own sword. Not Garrison by training, then; a noble, perhaps? Yet she handled the sword as if it was too light, not too heavy.

“And how are we going to ascend,” the woman said sharply, “with deadweight that’s as heavy as you and me combined?”

Halcyon glanced over to Mathias, who deflected a brutal slash, but was sporting a new cut on the jaw. He cast Halcyon a withering look. “I said leave me,” he snarled.

“No,” Halcyon said flatly, bracing his glaive as the scarecrows advanced.

They were both right. It was unthinkable that an Atlantean faction would blatantly disobey the direct command of a Leventis arbiter, but now that one had, it was foolish to fight face-on when they were sorely outnumbered. At the same time, he refused to leave Mathias to die. The man had done little to endear himself, but it galled Halcyon’s conscience to leave a fellow soldier behind.

He rapidly scanned his options as hostiles closed in on all sides. There weren’t many. The ivy curtain was blockaded by scarecrows; the walls were reinforced with opalite, naturally attuned to resist the force and damage of water mana; the open roof lay teasingly in reach, but Mathias bore no windsoles.

There was only one thing left to do, then: retaliate by threatening something more important.

Halcyon’s eyes fell on the Harvester’s sacred tree, the Daughter’s Willow. The tiny part of him that was still Atlantean shriveled at the thought of touching a symbol of heritage, but he quelled it. Better a plant than a human life, even if it was a legendary tree that the original Harvester had raised out of the ground with her tears when her daughter was stolen away.

“Watch my back,” he told the swordswoman, dropping his guard to prepare his manawell.

“That doesn’t sound good,” the woman said acutely, but she darted around to ward off the scarecrows slashing for his back.

Halcyon struck the butt of his glaive against the shallow water that submerged the ground. The surface, churned to a froth from the fighting, stilled until the sanctum rested, glasslike. A few of the scarecrows glanced around, disconcerted—but most of them pressed on without faltering.

Grimly, Halcyon continued. He pulled on the threads of water mana around him, heavy and strong from the humid, magic-rich atmosphere. They were pliant, eager to be loosed. He held them back like a dam, letting the power build low and slow; then, with a burst of his manawell, he snapped them all together.

Tendrils of water wove into a monstrous, rippling current, spiraling around the Daughter’s Willow and climbing high—a serpent poised to strike. Cries of alarm pierced through the commotion as scarecrows turned back. “The tree!” wailed the distinct rasp of the head scarecrow.

“Make way for us, or the Willow falls!” Halcyon roared.

The threat did the opposite of what he was hoping. Instead of being subdued by fear, the scarecrows rose in a frenzy. Knives sailed in his direction with biting accuracy, fresh with desperation. The swordswoman swore openly as her blade pinwheeled, attempting to intercept the knives. Some broke through her guard and nicked Halcyon’s cheek, his arm, his neck. He felt blood weeping on his skin from the stinging pain.

No choice left. Halcyon prepared for the devastation, steeled himself to do what his younger self never would have dared. He raised his hand and felt the water incline toward him, ready for his command.

“Enough.”

The voice resounded through the sanctum like a bell, sunken and almost unearthly. The frequency of it reverberated painfully in Halcyon’s head—and somehow interfered with his manacraft, severing the bond between him and the monstrous coil of water. It fell apart, dousing the sanctum with a lashing wave that left some of the scarecrows spluttering.

Senator Rathos Antheos Vathalos glided into the sanctum, his steps slow yet graceful like a deer, each footfall sending a chiming ripple over the surface of the water. The duckweed bobbed around him; the fronds bowed to him; baby blossoms budded on the greenery that brushed his skin. His entire being thrummed with undeniable power, striking the air like a current.

From that alone, Halcyon knew he was beyond saving. But there was more.

Rathos’s eyes were were pitch black, the yellow irises luminescent and mottled. Patches of his skin adopted a ghostly sheen, the veins beneath glowing blue, as if his blood had mixed with mineral dust. It was eerie, disturbing, beautiful.

Halcyon felt a jolt of adrenaline and rearranged the grip on his glaive. These were not the starting symptoms of furor. But how? The senator had been fully lucid just days ago at the feast.

What could have possibly accelerated his condition in such a short time?

“My lord,” the head scarecrow rasped, bowing until his head nearly touched the water. “We did not mean to disturb you.”

Despite his warped, otherworldly appearance, Rathos lifted his brow in a very human way that demonstrated full control of his faculties. “Three intruders could not be turned out with the full force of the scarecrows, Griffin?”

The head scarecrow, apparently named Griffin, did not move. “The failing was mine, my lord. An unprecedented opponent has come to call.”

Rathos’s gaze was steely as it moved to Halcyon, simmering with an ancient fury that rattled even the First Hunter’s considerable composure. Then a stroke of recognition passed over the senator’s features.

“Leventis eyes,” he said mildly. He laughed humorlessly, a sound like frozen chimes. “I see…I see. Vascea never fails to impress with her deception. All of you were said to be rot and ashes, yet here you are, crawling out of the grave like a roach.”

“The only thing that went to die, senator, was your courtesy,” Halcyon replied coldly. “Your scarecrows not only spat at the authority of a Leventis arbiter, but laid their hands on him. None of them will be spared.”

Rathos’s smile faded.

“Honorable senator,” Halcyon continued, “I, the last Arbiter, invoke the precept of venarei morben and warrant your detention. Your condition proves mortal danger to all of Atlantis. In lieu of the Leventis Dominion, which may no longer serve for confinement, I have sanctioned the Warmonger Dominion as temporary warden. Do you accept this decree?”

There was silence for a prolonged moment. Then Halcyon heard a ragged, low rumbling noise—something he eventually recognized as Rathos’s laughter.

“The Warmonger Dominion.” There was a mocking edge to his voice. “Airlea has wasted no time getting in bed with the filthiest faction, I see.”

Halcyon felt Mathias tense next to him, but the captain thankfully said nothing. “They are best equipped to serve for secure detention, senator, and nothing more. As a Leventis—”

“As a Leventis!” The new sharpness of Rathos’s voice resounded around the sanctum, warped by his new form. “You’re no Leventis, child. You live and breathe the landwalker air, you wear the landwalker garb, you wield the landwalker blade. You hold no authority here.”

Rather than be cowed, Halcyon was annoyed.

“Would you like to find out?” he said coldly. “Or do I need to drag you out of your sanctum, subjugated in front of your own servants?”

“You have noth—”

“I was anointed the next Arbiter Sovereign. A drop of oil from every one of the Elect.” Silence fell at that. In the contentious and competitive Leventis household, unanimous anointing was rare. “With that power, can you deny my claim? We can test it now, if you’d really like.”

Rathos eased, leaning back with the smallest trace of a smile on his greying lips. “That would make you Orion Leventis. Hardly the paragon of integrity. Or is murdering your own kin some new lofty achievement in your barbaric household?”

Halcyon was surprised at the intense wave of fury that nearly blinded him. Thankfully, Mathias spoke before he could.

“No matter how you attempt to incite the arbiter,” Mathias said, “he will not sway, and the facts will not change. You have been indicted under venarei morben. If you refuse, you prove a threat to all Atlantis. Will you come peaceably, or will you force the senators to unify and drive you out, risking the safety of your people?”

“My lord,” Griffin murmured. There was a rustle among the rest of the scarecrows; some drew their knives again.

Rathos raised his hand, calming them briefly. When he met Mathias’s gaze, he no longer seemed angry, or even perturbed. His expression was distant, perfectly calculating. A stark contrast to his earlier temper. Had it all been a mask, just one more move in this game of words and charades, a feigned ploy to force Halcyon to reveal his birth name? It had Halcyon feeling young and incapable again. The battlefield of smiles and lies was one he had no experience in.

“Provisions would have to be made,” Rathos said placidly. “In accordance with the line of succession, the head scarecrow shall serve as authority for the dominion.”

Griffin looked shaken, but Mathias nodded. “That is doable.”

“And in return for my obedience, extend a pardon to my scarecrows. Their actions were born of loyalty—misguided, perhaps, but an edifying trait nonetheless.”

That briefly threw Halcyon. Of all things he’d expected for bartering, mercy for the senator’s underlings had not been one of them. Most of the corrupted cared for nothing other than their own survival.

“The scarecrows directly violated the Law of Ancients and assaulted an arbiter protected by venarei morben,” Halcyon countered.

“As did you violate due process by withholding your identity, then passing into the Hanging Gardens without negotiating at the border,” Rathos said readily. “Let neither of us claim sainthood, Lord Leventis.”

“Let the rest of the Senate decide. They’re the most uninvolved, and therefore the neutral—”

“Then withhold the Warmonger’s vote. One of their own was involved with the trespassing and ensuing violence.”

“How convenient to exclude the party with the most frequent dissenting opinion to yours.”

“Convenience has no bearing on the facts of this case, Lord Leventis.”

Damn the senator. Halcyon was a soldier, not a legalist. His brain felt sluggish, Although no one had died, it felt wrong for him to submit a blanket pardon for the scarecrows, whose violent resistance had definitely counted for treason. But that was a feeling more than memory; he no longer knew the Law of the Ancients by heart, no longer had every clause engraved in his very being. He was an outcast again, someone on the outside looking in.

Then the swordswoman suddenly spoke from next to him, and he almost jumped.

“We shall furnish that pardon,” she said, “on one condition.”

She sounded completely different than she had in the thick of combat. Confident, poised. A hint of that cold imperiousness that was difficult to refuse. And, most notably, she spoke in Atlantean. Not native, most definitely tinted with an Airlean accent, but clear and concise.

A noblewoman for certain, then. One better equipped to play this field than Halcyon.

“Oh?” Rathos said softly. “What would that condition be, young lady?”

She ignored the condescending tone. “Nothing that has happened today leaves this hall. Not the treason of your honor guard. Nor the identity of ours.” Her mouth tipped beneath her hood. “This is the only way we can truly issue a pardon, you understand; if nothing took place at all.”

The senator was surprised. Halcyon could only see it in how his fingers twitched because his face remained unmoving. The solution was clever, deescalating the situation entirely. The swordswoman could not speak for her prince, nor for the Warmongers, so instead she proposed the matter never reached their ears at all.

A long moment passed. Then Rathos lifted his chin.

“The devastation in the Gardens was an unfortunate effect of my affliction,” he said meaningfully. “I was not aware of the changes of my own manawell.”

The swordswoman nodded. “You nobly acquiesced to detention, knowing that if unchecked, your state could endanger the citizens of Atlantis.”

“Acquiesced to prolonged examination from a miasmatist,” Rathos corrected.

“Within Warmonger facilities. For security.”

“For my security.” He smiled. “We have come to an understanding.”

“No understanding was to be had. This is what happened.”

The senator nodded gravely, and waved a regal hand towards his scarecrows. They stepped back, but were visibly upset. Griffin looked ready to crumble where he stood.

“You cannot go, my lord,” he managed.

“Care for the gardens.” Rathos turned and gathered his robes. “They must look beautiful for my return.”

He strode out of his estate, flanked by a limping Mathias and the swordswoman. Mourning wails erupted behind him, and would proceed throughout the week. For everyone knew that the senator would never return.

Eager to rid himself of the misery, Halcyon quickened his stride until he was sidelong with the swordswoman. She remained ever veiled under her cloak, her identity hidden even to the senator. Perhaps Rathos hadn’t cared. She was only Airlean, after all, and had seen her use by proposing an acceptable solution.

Still, she was an expert manacrafter of fire, strong with a blade, raised on a noble’s education, experienced with proceedings both on the battlefield and in the court. Halcyon had heard rumors of such a person, though he had never met her directly.

“You must be—”

“Not here.” The swordswoman’s voice had lost its lofty edge, returning to that brisk diction he had first heard. “Back to the embassy first. I have a few choice words for your liege.”

Halcyon thought of all the rules, both legal and cultural, that he’d broken—dispatching himself without his liege’s permission, trespassing foreign territory, inciting violent conflict. He felt a tinge of guilt. “None of this was Prince Lunaren’s choice.”

“I know that.” She looked drolly at him. “I’ll have a few choice words for all of you.”

Author's Notes:

So!! Life, adulting, aaaa. It has been so long and most of ya'll have probably forgotten this story exists, so if you're reading this, I'm grateful you've come back. Thank you from the bottom of my tiny cat heart.

The initial plan was to prewrite most of the story to about 80% completion, then gradually post as the story was finished. Well, well. This is because Scarlet Rider went through that process, so I thought it might work again. It didn't. Scarlet Rider was 183,000 words long. Rise of Atlantis is currently 158,000 words and by my estimation, only about 50% done.

So yeah I got impatient and just started posting anyway. This book is long as heck to give enough time for all the characters and the new world to breathe, more like a DnD campaign than a hero's journey. Maybe I'll be exploring just as much as any of you.

Summary: Chapters will continue! More irregularly. It's like we're back to the AO3 days. The one exception is that I don't like keeping mini-arcs far apart, so those installments will probably be weekly. For example, you can expect Miasma (2) next week. See you then!

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