by Eric Vall
Wouldn’t that be embarrassing?
I walked through the main gate to see something incredibly odd, and it definitely wasn’t what I was expecting to see. Though, to be honest, I wasn’t really sure what I’d thought the two architects from Leyte were doing at this time of night. Or morning, since it was so late it was actually early.
Outside of the main gate were the two architects I’d met earlier in the day, Raisa and Azra, and they were surrounded by piles of dirt. There was even dirt on their faces if my eyesight didn’t fail me.
“What are you doing?” I asked as I rubbed at my eyes and leaned against the bluestone wall. “Do you have any idea what time it is?”
“Oh!” Raisa’s brown eyes gleamed, and the starlight made them seem even brighter than before. “Are you feeling any better, Lord Evan?”
“Yeah, just pretty much on bed rest.” I smirked from my position against the wall and shrugged. “I have strict orders to not use my powers for a bit.”
“Makes sense, Lord Nikolaus told us what you were trying to do.” Azra nodded as he rubbed a bit of the dirt off his face. “A little reckless, if I do say so myself.”
“Yeah, in hindsight that probably wasn’t the smartest of moves.” I bit back a chuckle as I glanced over at the outer wall. “But you gotta risk something in order to gain something. I didn’t get to raise the wall, but I did learn more about my power limits.”
“That is very true,” Raisa agreed as she moved to help Azra with the dirt on his face. “Discovering one’s limits is the first thing anyone does when they first begin on the path of cultivation. Ask anyone, and I’m pretty sure they’ll tell you the same thing.”
“Yeah?” I tilted my head as I studied the two of them. “Passing out like that is pretty common?”
“Well, not usually from trying to raise a massive wall,” Raisa laughed a little as she wiped some of the dirt from her own face, “but from pushing themselves to the furthest point of their capabilities? Definitely.”
“What about you guys then?” I moved off the wall and walked toward the two architects. “Have you done something similar?
“Well, I tried to make an entire palace out of diamond in one week.” Azra practically preened in front of the dirt piles, making for a hilarious image.
“Out of diamond?” My eyes widened at the thought, and I couldn’t help the gasp of awe that left me. “You can really do that?”
“You are looking at the cream of the crop here.” Azra smirked back as he leaned on Raisa. “We’re the top architects of not only Leyte, but most of Rahma. Dare I say it, but perhaps even the whole world?”
“He isn’t,” Raisa added without missing a beat, “but I am.”
“Hey!” Azra glared at his fellow architect. “I’m just as good as you are, if not better.”
“Says the architect who took three weeks to craft a single palace out of pure diamond,” Raisa replied nonchalantly as she glanced down at her nails.
“How long does that usually take?” My mind ran at a million miles as I tried to figure out how much power it would take to do something like that.
“By oneself or with the help of others?” Raisa looked up from her nails and tilted her head at me.
“Um, how about you tell me both?”
“With the help of others, it would take perhaps half a year if everyone is incredibly talented.” Azra waved his hand, and the dirt piles around us turned to chairs and a table. “That’s including the use of rejuvenation elixirs. But, if it’s by oneself, perhaps three times that period of time. A year or two, depending on the power of the architect in question.”
“That timeline is only considering if the architects are provided the materials for building and if they don’t have to either search for them themselves or craft them with their power,” Raisa added as she sat down in one of the chairs in a rather unladylike manner and stretched out like a cat.
“Did you have materials or did you do the crafting thing?” I joined Raisa at the table and tapped it.
The table and chairs didn’t seem to be made from stone, but weirdly enough, it was like they were carved from wood. Which didn’t make sense since this was just earth all around us, so shouldn’t it have been stone or dirt?
“The majority of the palace was crafted out of my own power.” Azra smiled as he sat down and placed his palm on the table between us. “I used my power to compress the surrounding mineral deposits into diamonds. From there, I concentrated my magic and allowed it to flow through the earth surrounding me. Just like how I made this table, I rearranged the composition of what was around me to become what I wanted it to be.”
“So, you did all of that in three weeks?” That opened up so many avenues for me, I hadn’t thought of controlling earth like that before. “When it would have taken everyone else months, if not years? Color me impressed … ”
“Well, I wouldn’t say it was impressive,” Azra shrugged as he leaned back in his chair, “especially considering I was passed out cold for the next three days while I recovered.”
“But how did you do that, and is this something all architects can do?” I glanced between the two and remembered their boasts from earlier. “Creating things like the palace you mentioned, I mean.”
“Well, yeah.” Azra blinked as if he was surprised by my question. “To be an architect isn’t just drawing up plans and ordering people about.”
“It’s truly being an artist,” Raisa added from where she’d been quietly stretching, “to live and breathe with what you create.”
“Is that why you’re still out here working?” I glanced at the piles of dirt still around us and knew they must have been digging for hours.
“Yeah!” Visible excitement shot through Raisa’s body, and as she sat up straight, her eyes were alight with an artist’s fire. “How can we go back inside to rest when we have this beautiful project to work on? I mean, this is pretty much a blank slate for us to work with, and it’s glorious. We can run wild with it.”
“Well, within reason anyways,” Azra laughed as he rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s not like we’re going to do anything terrible or collapse any tunnels. Wild to us means doing our absolute best work, not doing a shoddy job or anything like that. We won’t do anything less than our best when it comes to these terraces.”
“Hey, I’ve already made the decision to trust you guys.” I smiled back at the two and did my best to reassure them. “And if you can make an entire palace out of diamond by yourself in three weeks, then who am I to tell you how to do your job?”
“See?” Azra’s smile widened as he pointed at me. “I like him. He’s not overbearing or acts like a know it all, not like those other nobles we’ve worked with.”
“Focus with me here.” A smile twitched on Raisa’s face as she shook her head. “We still haven’t even finished answering his questions.”
“Yeah, I think we got distracted,” Azra chuckled as he clasped his hands in front of him eagerly. “So, you ready to learn some fun stuff?”
“I can’t use my powers, though, so I don’t think I’ll be of much help.” I shrugged sheepishly and nodded in the direction of the outer wall.
“That’s the trick to it all, you just watch us work.” Raisa smiled and tapped the side of her nose. “Some things you don’t have to use your own power for, you can watch, see how others do it, and learn from their actions. Which is what we’ll be showing you since we’ve already gotten a look at how you were trying to raise that wall.”
“Just to confirm, you were trying to raise it all prebuilt, correct?” Azra asked as he hummed in thought.
“Azra, he might not know all of the terms,” Raisa interrupted him as she glanced at me. “Be more thoughtful toward Lord Evan.”
“Ah, that’s true.” Azra’s eyes widened for a moment before a faint blush took over his cheeks. “Sorry, I got overexcited there.”
“Don’t worry, Raisa and I will stop you if you start pulling out words I don’t know.” I gr
inned at Azra good-naturedly, and I couldn’t help but be drawn into their enthusiasm.
“I’ll start with what I meant by ‘prebuilt’, okay?” Azra coughed as he straightened in his seat.
“Sounds good.” I nodded as I leaned forward, eager to learn something new.
“So, raising something prebuilt means you aren’t doing it in sections.” Azra nodded in the direction of the walls and pointed at the chairs and tables he’d created. “You’re pulling it up from the materials or the ground as one whole structure and going through it at once. Usually, this is only done for smaller buildings or simpler things, and only masters would even dare to attempt raising larger and more intricate structures like that wall.”
“Is it because of the power drain?” I asked as I thought of how much attempting to bring up that massive wall had taxed me.
“Not just that, a power drain can be avoided if one links up with others or if they’re using a power source.” Raisa shook her head as she leaned forward. “The issue is the structural integrity of the building will be put in jeopardy if one isn’t properly focusing on every piece of what is being raised.”
“And if you’re building it up piece by piece,” I began as I followed their logic, “you can avoid a drain, right?”
“Exactly!” Azra smiled blindingly at me as he clapped his hands. “If you start with the foundations of whatever you’re constructing and then continue with the structural skeleton. After that, you fill in the bits and pieces that aren’t as integral to the foundation and skeletal shell of the structure.”
The three of us continued eagerly talking about the way buildings were brought up with magic. Perhaps saying the three of us was a bit of a stretch, though. It was mostly Raisa and Azra dumping knowledge in front of me as they tried to slow down enough for someone who was completely new to this.
But I soaked it all up like a sponge. In fact, if it hadn’t been for the orders to rest, I would have tried building the wall exactly like how they said architects brought up larger structures. All I had to do was start with the foundations of the wall first and then work my way up its body.
Which, in hindsight, was kind of like how I’d fixed the aqueducts. I just hadn’t thought I could use the same technique for the wall. Now, I knew my instincts had been on the right route after all.
Before we knew it, the sun had begun to rise on us, and it was a new day.
“As much as I’d love to keep talking with you two, I should probably get back to the River Moonstone House.” I grinned as I stood up from the table. “And you two should probably get some sleep.”
The two architects blinked at me owlishly for a moment before they both broke out into yawns.
“I think you may be right,” Raisa replied between her yawns. “We’ll get started on the terraces again later today after we’ve slept some.”
“Don’t push yourselves!” I called out as I walked toward the main gate. “We have time for the terraces, after all. Also, you two still have a ton to teach me later, and you can’t do that if you’re knocked out for days.”
At those words, the two architects burst into laughter behind me.
I stifled my own laughter as I jogged back into the city and made my way back to the meditation hall.
I’d learned some amazing things about construction, but now it was time to turn my studies toward soul magic.
Chapter 11
“Take in a deep breath and center yourself,” Alyona’s voice echoed all around me in the River Moonstone House. “Feel the way your spiritual sea runs through you, how your power curls around you and penetrates every fiber of your being.”
Alyona glowed in the dim light of the meditation hall, and she seemed to be a goddess come down from the starry ceiling. Maybe she was one, it was as if she always knew what to say and had all the right answers. Even now, she was explaining what would happen when she left me alone.
“And after that?” I asked as I stared deeply into her amethyst eyes. “What do I do?”
“You gather and control your power.” She pressed a gentle kiss to my forehead before she stood. “You have to understand how you and your power are one. And if you aren’t one yet, then you must make it meld with you. The one in control is you, not your power.”
“I will.” I nodded sharply as I watched her leave the hall. “I will overcome this.”
Then I breathed in deeply as I took in her words, closed my eyes, and focused only on the sensation of my spiritual sea. I hadn’t dived back into it since the day I’d attempted to free Asher from the chains of the miasma, but it was just as familiar to me as if I had been doing it all of my life.
Understanding the power that flowed through my veins and body was something far different than the meditation I’d done back on Earth. This was on the verge of losing myself to something much bigger that slept inside of me, like a tempest waiting to break free.
Aside from Asher’s sleeping presence inside of my spiritual sea, I could sense my connection to Miraya like a taut string. I followed that vaguely glowing string to what was like another abyss of energy inside of me. It wasn’t like the serene sea I’d come to know as my own power, but almost a glacial lake. Even then, that wasn’t the right way to describe it.
A mirror, that’s what it was like. A silver mirror set upon an icy surface.
Even as I reached out to it, this power felt cool and almost indifferent. There was a sharpness to it, and yet, a duality as I sensed the desire to heal from it.
This was the Sword of Healing, after all, it wouldn’t make sense if there wasn’t any healing power coming from it.
I devoted hours simply to learning the sensation of the new power source and the way it curled around me. It was a cold sort of power, a bit like how my lightning felt as I summoned it, but there was no cool heat. This was just cold, like the reflection of the moon on a lake.
Just sitting in a lotus position and breathing quietly was exhausting. My body wasn’t doing anything, but my mind was going at a thousand miles per hour, and I couldn’t slow down at all. This normally took the average cultivator or mage decades to accomplish, if not centuries.
And I wanted to cut that down drastically to months, if not weeks.
Still, I couldn’t push myself to the brink. Not with this. I’d already seen how that ended, and I was going to be careful. I never made the same mistake twice, and I already knew I was going to have to come back here and meditate more often. I wasn’t sure how I would accomplish that when my schedule was already unpredictable, though. Maybe I would take advantage of my lessened need for sleep and spend most nights meditating.
The three moons had already risen by the time I left the River Moonstone House, and I realized I must have been in there for hours. Yet, somehow, it hadn’t felt like time had passed at all for me. It was like a single moment frozen in time.
I didn’t want to go back to my rooms in the temporary palace, but I also didn’t really know where I wanted to go. I was listless and full of tired energy from the intense meditation. Even though my mind was exhausted, my body wasn’t, and there wasn’t much I could do about it.
Working on the reconstruction of the city would be a tad risky considering what had happened yesterday. There was also the fact that I didn’t know if the architects had continued studying the potential farmland.
So, I wandered throughout the cobblestoned streets of Hatra, not really thinking about anything as I let my feet carry me along. As I walked, I could sense warriors patrolling the inner walls in small groups, but other than that? Everyone was asleep in their respective beds.
Including, to my great surprise, my princess. I could feel the purity of her presence in her room in the temporary palace, which shocked me to a degree. I expected her to have spent yet another night down in the underground library and fall asleep while surrounded by ancient tomes.
After some time, I stopped and glanced up at the three silver moons of Inati, and they shone fiercely and proudly as their light painted
the bluestone walls and roofs in a wash of pale gray. I couldn’t help but smile with pride at the sight. Hatra really had changed in the short time I’d lived here.
My home had gone from a crumbling ruin to a city reborn. It would take time for it to become the jewel it once was, but it was happening, step by step. Even now, with the arrival of the architects and nobles from Leyte, there was a sense of excitement in the air. Everyone knew change was coming, and the despair of the past thousand years was being wiped away.
During my aimless wandering, my feet took me down through the subterranean library to the catacombs of the rulers of Hatra. Marble statues of each lord and lady lined the grand hall that was deep within the underground archives, but there was one in particular I was looking for.
I finally came to a stop in front of the white marble statue of the previous ruler of my city, Tristan of the House of Hatra el Shamash. This was my grandfather, and I’d gotten the chance to meet him and fight alongside him when some strange power had thrown me back in time a thousand years.
Last time, his spirit had just sort of appeared in front of me. I hadn’t summoned him or called out his name, but maybe placing my hand on his name plate would work?
So, I took a step forward and placed my hand on the carved etchings at the base of his statute.
“Tristan?” I said aloud. “Gramps? It’s me, Evan. Are you here?”
The marble statue glimmered for a moment, and it seemed like the stone behaved as if it were liquid for the merest of seconds. There was no flickering of lights and no sudden whoosh of wind like I’d seen in ghost movies back on Earth when a spirit was being summoned. All that happened was just a minute shift in the air as power concentrated within Tristan’s statue.
“Hello Evan,” Tristan spoke as his translucent body stepped out of his statue and readjusted his azure robes, “it’s been a while.”
His brilliant crimson hair caught the light of the crystal lamps and seemed as if it was on fire. A pair of fox ears, the same color as his hair, twitched excitedly on his head. Mischief glimmered in his emerald eyes, so very much like my father’s eyes, and I knew I had to bring Ruslan down here one day. It would definitely happen before I left Hatra to travel around Rahma and win over the nobles and people.