60th of Season of Fire, 160th year of the 32nd cycle

  Four weeks passed in the bunker. The tremors and battles between the Summersweald’s exalts had lasted the better part of three weeks, and had died down ten days ago, but the awakened still hid, fearing what the terrain would look like above and whether the saurian exalts or their minions were still around.

  “I’m the best choice for a scout,” Newt argued again.

  While Whitesnow from the Tidebreaker group was at the seventh realm and had earth as his sole element, Newt still thought that his danger sense made him a superior candidate.

  “You are too important to risk on a scouting mission.” Darksong argued again, and he had the majority behind him.

  Newt tried to push one more time, but the seventh realm exemplars had him sit out the scouting operation.

  Helpless, Newt went back to doing the only thing he could do given the circumstances - sculpting his realm.

  He appeared inside his realm, looking at the domain of black stone and magma. The glowing seals made Newt think of him again, and he sighed.

  “You even robbed me of the right to feel sad about you dying.” He shook his head. “I mean, who jokes about banging a god as their final gift?”

  Get it? Bang!

  Newt grumbled at the memory, but swiftly focused on work. The bait mission, the massive loss of life, the imperial forces’ callousness, the cultists, all of it rubbed him the wrong way.

  But he couldn’t deny the end result of their collective effort. A group of mortals, mageknights at the seventh realm and lower, had caused devastating losses to the cultists and even killed one of their gods.

  As far as emperors went, the current one had done everything right. She crippled all her enemies with a move that would damage those whose loyalty she questioned. The best part, the results spoke for themselves, and if anyone complained, those results would shut them up. Someone had to die, someone had to be the bait, and it was natural to use the people the cultists had already attacked and would again.

  “I wish I could make plans like that. Where everything happens the way I want and my allies suffer no harm.” Newt mumbled, trying to get himself into the headspace needed to carve the next rune of his realm. He couldn’t. The past few days, he knew he was stuck. There was nothing he could do, but as soon as something showed up, a chance to act, it made him lose his center.

  “Magmin!” Newt shouted, and the dragon flew towards him. “Do you know, or have you ever heard of creatures called the outer gods?”

  “Can’t say I have. Those who reach the ninth and the tenth realm are my kind’s gods. And that’s only because I’m at the seventh now, and I’m confident about facing those at the eighth.” Magmin paused. “Or I would be, if I could face them. My confidence comes from memories that aren’t my own.”

  Newt didn’t know how, but the dragon’s depression was clear on his face. The scaled features hadn’t changed in any visible way, and yet the sorrow they showed was obvious.

  “Don’t worry. We know it’s possible, and we’ll make it happen somehow.” Newt paused, then asked the question he was uneasy about. “Did the sharpbeak appear in your realm?”

  “No. Thanks to your help, I have defeated that heart demon once, and I remember killing him at the second realm too. He can’t spawn, even if I have memories of his lifetime. It’s strange. I remember everything, and yet I can’t find a difference in the way my past self acted whether I was the one ruling my realm or the sharpbeak.”

  Newt nodded. Instead of working on his realm when he didn’t feel like it, he chatted with Magmin. At first, they exchanged thoughts on the nature of their realms, then Newt explained Dandelion’s situation and his guess that the outer gods were trying to eat the world or more accurately consume its energy.

  If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

  Magmin listened, but what little theories Dandelion had shared with Newt conformed with a manabeast’s world-view. Precious resources were protected and eventually consumed. The fact that the outer god’s presumed death unleashed incredibly pure mana only gave more weight to the idea.

  About an hour later, Newt left his realm.

  Whitesnow was back, making his report to the collective of exemplars. By the time Newt joined them, the meeting was over, and Maelstrom filled him in.

  “The jungle is gone. The world above us is an open plain of ash. Everyone and everything monitoring the land will see us from miles away, and the agreement is to wait another half a year before checking again. Once the jungle recovers enough to provide us cover, we’re heading back home.”

  Newt nodded. “The cultists? Imperial forces?”

  “No sign of anything. Whitesnow decided not to walk about, both to avoid detection and so as not to leave a trail leading to our hiding place.”

  Newt scowled.

  “What? You think he should’ve looked around?”

  “No. No.” Newt shook his head. “I’m just thinking that this is the second time I’m stuck in the Summersweald with nobody knowing whether I’m alive or dead back at the order.”

  Maelstrom gave him a weird look.

  “What?” he asked.

  “You’re thinking about people from Explorer’s Gate not knowing. What about your parents and the rest of your family?”

  Newt shrugged. The order was his family. Had been for a long while.

  “It doesn’t seem weird to me. What about you? Does your grandfather know you are alive?”

  Maelstrom nodded. “The gift of water will return to him should I die, so he knows I’m alive. And given the current situation, he’ll have to trust me. Had all this happened in the Wintersweald, he would’ve come searching for us in person, but crossing the empire and leaving the kingdom without a king would do more harm than good. In the long run, my talent is expendable. Even if I become an exalt, the family must come before the individual, otherwise our legacy would unravel within a couple of generations.”

  Newt didn’t agree. Neither did Maelstrom. She might have said the words, but her clenched fists hinted at her true feelings.

  “Do you resent our engagement?” Newt asked suddenly, and Maelstrom stared at him in shock.

  “No.” She shook her head, regaining her composure. “You might be a pumpkin, but you are my pumpkin. You?”

  Newt held back a sigh at the whole pumpkin thing.

  “I don’t. It’s just weird. We hardly know anything about each other except that our age, realm, and talent are compareable.”

  Maelstrom cocked her eyebrow. “Really? You are Newstar Salamandra, one hundred and thirty years old, born and raised in your family’s castle on the slopes of Dragon’s Rest mountain. Your parents arranged an engagement with one Jasmine Steelwheel when you were three years old. You spent your childhood…”

  Newt just stared as Maelstrom recounted a number of events from his childhood. She lacked personal insight into the events, but had the facts mostly right, all the way until his uncle’s coup and the exile of Newt’s parents.

  “The Steelwheel patriarch betrayed your family to the Blood Cult and was the mastermind behind your uncle’s rebellion. The cultists wanted your parents for some unknown reason, but your uncle’s greed allowed them to slip their grasp.”

  “Wait, what? What did you say? Where did you hear that?”

  “It’s in the heresy hunters’ report. They interrogated Steelwheel after the Blood Cult incident in which some of your distant cousins died and added a copy of that information to your family’s dossier.”

  Newt stared at the wall. “I didn’t know that.”

  Maelstrom graced him with a charming smile. “See, I know you better than you know yourself, Pumpkin. Now, where was I? Right, your history. Explorer’s Gate concealed pretty much everything about you once you joined, keeping the world in the dark, like most organizations do with their talented youths. So maybe you would like to fill in the blanks?”

  Maelstrom fluttered her eyelashes, but Newt just shook his head.

  “With the story about Newstar Salamandra out of the way, how about you give me a short history of Maelstrom Tidebreaker?”

  Unexpectedly, Maelstrom crossed her arms and pouted.

  “Put in some effort, do your own research.”

  “Why when I can just ask you?”

  “Hmph.” Maelstrom turned around and left.

  Newt just stared after her. What did I do wrong?

  He considered the question from every angle and still found no problems with it.

  Should I ask Darksong or someone to explain?

  Ultimately, he decided against it, made himself comfortable and entered his realm once more.

  “Six moons, huh?” He looked around. “I have more than enough work for six years, let alone six moons, and if Maelstrom doesn’t want to talk to me, that’s fine too.”