Aethernea

by Cloe D Frost

  She was lost in thought, completely disregarding the distance. She could see him clearly, as though he was standing right next to her. Aethernea of Sight, besides giving her mana vision, also improved her regular sight, making it even better than the excellent sight of an argel.

  All of this seems to be too big of a coincidence.

  I am looking for an argel to become my soulmate. And you just happen to need this bond just as badly as me.

  No, it isn’t just the bond that you need. You need an elibu with a large enough mana pool. It is…as if…you need me specifically…

  Elaru furrowed her eyebrows.

  The coincidence doesn’t stop there…Our situation…is different…yet quite similar…as if we were two sides of the same coin…

  Is this truly a coincidence?

  Her eyes narrowed. Tsk…tsk…knowing the person who gave this to me, all of this has something to do with fate…

  Fate… Elaru rubbed her chin in thought. Am I connected to him by fate?

  And if that is the case, is the fate connecting us the one I yearn for or the one I am trying to change? Is meeting you a good thing? Or is it a bad thing? Should I be fighting against this fate, or embrace it?

  The crystal in her hands changed colors beautifully depending on the angle one looked at it. Her face revealed a soft smile as she spoke to it. “What is it? Are you asking me to come closer or are you telling me to stay away?”

  She had to make a choice quickly. Time was running out. She needed to return to Ashar to take the Muni exams.

  My involvement with non-mages tends to always be a matter of life and death. That time, I almost died so he could live. This time, will it be the same? Will I die so you could live the life you always wanted? Or will you be the one to forfeit your life for mine?

  This time, her smile was not directed towards the pendant. “Call of life or call of death, it matters not. Those that are not truly alive need not fear death.”

  She grinned widely. When has Elaru Wayvin ever been afraid of a gamble? This chance…I won’t give it up! If I can’t stay here with you, then I just have to take you with me.

  But…her destination was Muni and the only way for him to follow her there is if he had qualifications to enter on his own. However…

  A non-mage can’t pass the entrance exams.

  Elaru continued passing the crystal between her fingers. This gamble…It’s all or nothing. Aetherneal bond is unavoidable…Is this what you want me to do? Is this why you brought us together?

  To be bound to him for the rest of my life…

  The thought didn’t cause her reluctance or apprehension at all. I need a soulmate, yet I am running out of time to find one. I don’t even have an another candidate in mind.

  Elaru searched her memory of every argel mage she had ever met or heard about. She considered each one of them before confirming her initial feeling.

  Kiel Rroda…isn’t a bad choice at all. In fact, he is the best choice out of all of them.

  She chuckled musically.

  I wouldn’t mind him becoming my soulmate.

  I wouldn’t mind it at all.

  Her heated gaze almost bore holes into the boy. Kiel Rroda. I pick you.

  The boy must have felt her stare because he turned around and returned it with his own chilling gaze. He was doing that more and more often. Meeting her gaze.

  A while back, after covertly tailing him for some time, she still didn’t notice anything strange about him. That’s when she decided to stop hiding and reveal herself out in the open. She had multiple reasons for doing it. She was sure that he would notice her soon, and after a while, he would even recognize that she was looking at him specifically.

  If he had something to hide, he would feel under pressure, and it would increase the chance of a slip-up. It could help her unveil the secret behind the reaction of her pendant.

  If he didn’t have anything to hide and didn’t change his behavior, then there was a large chance that she would need to interact with him to find out the reason. However, since he was living in an all-argel town, he might feel uncomfortable around elibu. So if she wanted to interact with him in the future, she needed to make him get used to her.

  He might even approach her on his own – that would be ideal. If he approached her instead of her catching him off guard, he would be less vigilant.

  She could have chosen to head into town and monitor him from there, but this way she could avoid interacting with other people. And her pendant wouldn’t be on the fritz the entire time.

  An entire week had passed, and he still showed no signs of being under pressure or any intention of coming over.

  A whole week! If her clothes didn’t cover her entire body, she would have been roasted by the blazing sun. Thankfully, they were made out of high-grade meep wool, which had special heat isolation properties, that kept both the heat and the cold outside, making them appropriate for all seasons.

  What a stubborn guy. Elaru chuckled. If you won’t come to me, I guess I’ll have to come to you.

  She looked down to the crystal in her hands. And you, my dear, are going into a platinum box inside my backpack until you stop behaving like a lupax in heat.

  ◈ Saturday, 25th of August 1449 A.W. ◈

  ( Present )

  In the room located in the attic of Hot Pot, Elaru stood in front of the bed on top of which a sleeping figure could be seen. She was holding her pendant deep in thought.

  The pendant was lifeless, it neither glowed nor shook.

  She remembered how restless it had been right before they established their Aetherneal bond. Yet, after the deed, it turned deathly still, no different from a mundane rock.

  It hadn’t shown any signs of life ever since.

  Did it decide to stop wiggling because there was no more need for it? Because she understood the message? Was the pendant telling her to make Kiel her soulmate and now it had nothing more to say?

  Or did Aetherneal bond seal her fate so that not even the pendant could do anything to change it?

  Elaru shook her head, dispersing the thoughts, and looked up at a wooden pendulum clock on the wall above the storage cabinet.

  He should regain consciousness soon. I have no time to waste.

  * * *

  Author Note:

  And we are back to the present.

  By this point, I gave you enough hidden clues to connect the dots about how everything/everyone is connected. Alas, don’t feel bad if you didn’t manage to catch them. :) After I finish Aethernea, you can reread it and then you’ll surely catch them all. (Anyone else that couldn’t resist saying “Gotta catch them all! Pokemon!”? XD)

  Coming up in the next episode:

  It was as if a flame had been lit up inside her. The warmth pulsated everywhere,heating her up.

  Elaru chuckled softly. No. When it comes to you and me…there might not be any coincidences at all…

  Tsk…tsk…and you were even complaining how horrible it is to be stuck with me…

  The source of the imposing aura was an old man, looking to be in his sixties, seated behind a large work desk, in an armchair that looked nothing short of a throne.

  The old man’s eyes flashed dangerously, his voice dropping down lower and lower. “You. Don’t. Know?”

  He sneered derisively. You think this is a place you can casually come and go as you please? Who gave you the permission to leave Beyd?

  Episode 27 – Quasi-Tempering Pill

  Episode 27 – Quasi-Tempering Pill

  Previously:

  Elaru stops reminiscing about what happened to make her meet Kiel and decide to make him her soulmate. She returned to their room at Hot Pot. Kiel is still unconscious.

  * * *

  Elaru sat down cross-legged on the rug before taking out a pillbox from her backpack. She opened the box which contained three candy-like pills. As she picked one up, she felt a familiar warmth spread through her fingers. So this is what happened to that Feather o
f a Firebird I got for uncle Ixos.

  Initially, she had thought that plucking a feather from a firebird would be as easy as taking candy from a baby. Yet it had given her unexpected trouble. It wasn’t that finding a firebird was hard for her, it wasn’t that she couldn’t approach it or sneak attack it. No, the problem was quite peculiar:

  A firebird didn’t have any feathers.

  Where normal birds would have feathers, firebird was covered with flames instead. She lost count of how many times she cursed whoever named the item as the “Feather of a Firebird”.

  Elaru shook her head. Misleading. Totally misleading! Then, without hesitation, she popped the pill into her mouth and swallowed it down.

  As soon as the candy reached her stomach, it melted into a hot liquid. The liquid quickly passed through the walls of the stomach, seeping directly into her bloodstream.

  Through her blood, it quickly spread to every nook and cranny of her body.

  It was as if a flame had been lit up inside her. The warmth pulsated everywhere, heating her up. Her skin turned reddish and hot to the touch. Sweat started pouring down her forehead like a waterfall.

  The warmth started burning her from inside out. This must be how a freshly roasted porkling feels like.

  Searing pain assaulted her senses. She closed her eyes and took long breaths, her body posture shifted to that of meditation. Although her body ached, her face was the definition of calm, showing neither pain nor worry.

  Tempering medicine was the kind of medicine she was the most familiar with. It took only a single glance for her to be able to tell that this particular pill was a quasi-tempering medicine.

  Quasi-tempering medicine didn’t actually temper the body with mana, but rather, changed the body in a beneficial way that would ultimately result in improved mana resistance and tolerance.

  This pill tried to make the composition of one’s body closer to the body of a firebird. Not only was its flesh resistant to fire, but it also had a better mana resistance and tolerance than the bodies of argel and elibu.

  The firebird was always on fire, and its body consumed a lot of mana to sustain the flames. This increased consumption of mana, when compared to the consumption of argel and elibu, caused its body to excel in channeling mana.

  This pill used the flame of the firebird to burn away all impurities within the body. Afterwards, it modified the cells using the flesh of a firebird as a reference.

  The impure matter within the body negatively impacted the passage of mana, so removing these useless particles was desirable. It was a similar process to refining gold. Only by removing useless impurities would the gold be able to shine resplendently.

  The burning pain persisted for several hours before starting to subside. By that time, Elaru was as drenched as if she had been swimming with her clothes on. She looked down at her sorry state, sighed and then proceeded to cast a cleansing.

  After she was sparkling clean again, she got up from the floor and stretched. Her body felt a bit lighter, and her skin was even more radiant than before. It was so smooth and flawless it could give a baby a run for its money. (If babies had money.)

  This should have removed the last bit of impurities that were left in my body. Uncle Ixos was right. This is indeed a miracle medicine.

  After all the impurity removing pills she’d consumed, her body had almost no impurities left. It had reached the point in which no other medicine could improve it further. The fact that this medicine managed to remove the left over impurities that all others couldn’t was a testament to its extraordinary value.

  She wanted to test how much her mana resistance and tolerance improved, but she needed to let her body recover to its best state first. She wanted to take another pill, but that also had to wait for her body to completely recover.

  She looked at Kiel, who was still soundlessly sleeping. Technically, he wasn’t unconscious anymore. Because he was exhausted from his whole day of hard work and the mana tempering, his lack of consciousness had somehow turned into deep sleep. He would probably wake up in the morning, brimming with energy.

  She looked back at the pill box she was holding in her hand, and then looked back at Kiel.

  Say…Isn’t that ice block over there in a need of tempering pills? What a coincidence!

  Elaru chuckled softly. No. When it comes to you and me…there might not be any coincidences at all…

  She didn’t think about it for long before concluding: I’ll leave one of the pills for him. He is my soulmate now. I should treat him with more sincerity.

  These types of pills that permanently altered the body had significant diminishing returns when consuming multiple pills. Depending on the type of the pill and the body of the person consuming it, the second pill would at most reach 40% effectiveness of the first pill. The third pill would at most reach 15%, and the fourth would barely reach 3%.

  Therefore, even the rich nobles wouldn’t squander money to make their heirs take the fourth pill. At most, if the person in question was extremely important to the family, they would give them three pills.

  This was exactly the reason why uncle Ixos gave her only three pills.

  Elaru grinned widely as she looked at Kiel’s peaceful face. It’s your lucky day mate! You didn’t get a single strand of hair burned by the blasted firebird and you still get to enjoy a priceless treasure of a medicine.

  Tsk…tsk…and you were even complaining how horrible it is to be stuck with me…

  * * *

  ◈ Sunday morning, Rroda Mainhouse, Ashar ◈

  It had been a pleasant summer morning in Ashar, yet the temperature in the disturbingly neat room was everything but warm. Only one word could be used to describe the biting cold – subzero.

  The source of the imposing aura was an old man, looking to be in his sixties, seated behind a large work desk, in an armchair that looked nothing short of a throne.

  The time had almost completely turned his black-blue hair into white. However, his chilling icy blue eyes showed no sign of age, still as piercing as ever.

  The man held a tacky, luxurious looking teacup, adorned by many patterns and crystals, that looked out of place in the elegant yet sparsely decorated room.

  His eyes flashed left and right, causing every person they landed on to shiver involuntarily.

  Although there were several armchairs positioned in front of his desk, no one dared to sit down. The three men stood with their heads lowered, sweating profusely and avoiding his eyes as if their life depended on it.

  His gaze stopped on the man who looked to be the leader of the group. “Care to repeat that?”

  The sunlight came through the window behind the old man, casting a shadow over his face. However, even in the lack of light, his eyes were disturbingly bright. Like the eyes of a predator eying its prey in the darkness of the night.

  Clem, the leader of the group of three, felt his hair stand on end. He gulped but didn’t know whether he should repeat himself or not. His panicked eyes looked at the butler standing behind the old man, pleading for help. The middle-aged butler stood with his back straight, dressed in a tidy uniform. His face was perfectly calm, as if he had long gotten used to witnessing such situations. He nodded at Clem briefly, encouraging him to repeat himself.

  Clem swallowed another batch of saliva before speaking out in a weak voice. “Your grands…”

  The old man’s eyes narrowed, making Clem’s words get caught in his throat. He gulped again and continued. “Master Kiel…left me instructions to bring his luggage here…to the mainhouse. He said he would stop by to pick them up later.”

  The man’s cold face didn’t change at all as he held out his hand.

  Clem looked at it briefly in panic, before realizing what the old monster wanted. He hurriedly gave him a paper with the previously mentioned instructions.

  Venric Rroda glanced at the letter briefly, his expression remaining frozen the entire time.

  Even though his expression still didn’t ch
ange, the temperature in the room seemed to plummet down again.

  “Where is he now?” Venric Rroda spoke slowly, extenuating every word as if he was attempting to communicate with morons. A species that couldn’t understand the greatness of his words. Every cell in his body radiated innate arrogance.

  The deep, cold voice made Clem feel as if there were ice needles piercing his heart. “We…we don’t know.”

  The old man’s eyes flashed dangerously, his voice dropping down lower and lower.

  “You. Don’t. Know?”

  Even though Venric’s face showed no fury, instead wearing a chillingly cold expression, Clem felt that the word “terrifying” couldn’t do him justice at all. There was something about Venric Rroda that made him look like a demon in human skin; a viper that could end Clem’s pathetic life in an instant.

  Clem’s scalp turned numb, his back had long since become drenched in cold sweat. He hurried to explain himself. “M…master Kiel didn’t leave us any other instructions…We…we believe he used a beacon to teleport somewhere…his aura just suddenly vanished…”

  Venric Rroda placed the tacky teacup against his thin lips. His mannerisms were dignified and refined. His poise could make anyone feel like they were nothing more than dirt in front of him. After the agonizingly slow sip, he spoke out a single word: “Lawrence.”

  The butler behind him bowed his head down and responded. “Yes, your grace. I’ll get it investigated right away.” The butler, whose name seemed to be Lawrence, put down the teapot he was holding and quickly made his way out of the room.

  The entire time, Venric Rroda didn’t look at his figure at all. His eyes remained fixed on Clem. “And you…”

  Did he forget my name? Clem didn’t dare remind him of it.

  “Tell me everything you know. Did…the boy…exhibit any strange behavior before leaving? What caused the departure? Speak.” His authoritative voice exuded powerful pressure. His black clothes, pale skin, beard and mustache, his every feature made him look imposing.