Aureum stabbed forward.
It was simple. The first time.
Repeating it the next couple dozen more times was where the trick of it was.
Aureum didn't mind at the moment.
It was the only thing she could do to clear her head.
The rising sunlight caught a bead of sweat that slid off her face. She repeated the motion until she was finished.
Standing straight, she took a breath.
Did she dare to layer?
In her state maybe it would be inviting disaster.
But then… When would she layer? When the sun and the temperature were perfect and all the days ahead seemed bright? There wasn't a chance of that anytime soon.
I'll try one layer.
It wasn't that her little goals of improving were more important to her than all that was lost. It was just that habit made it almost unthinkable not to train, and her desire for normalcy was the deciding straw.
There were only so many tears she could shed.
Aureum compromised with herself. Sitting underneath the tree, she started one layer.
Aureum had bought a room at an inn last night. But it had been a waste of money. She hadn't slept.
Worse, she'd walked out of the room about three hours after she bought it. Without concern for anyone or anything, she'd wandered the city streets in the night. With no walls, she simply left Ariolus.
It had taken some hours to find this tree in the forest she sat under, but the walk had cleared her head. Or maybe it just wore her out enough that her thoughts stopped hounding her enough to force her to keep moving.
Was the day brighter after everything she had done?
No.
But she could breathe a little.
The layer was formed… fine.
Even if she felt hollow and relatively peaceful, her body and mind were exhausted. The mana she pooled from the early breeze didn't come easily. The amount of effort she spent on one layer was the same amount of effort she'd spent on ten layers just last week.
Still, stopping once she started forming the actual layer was certain to make imperfections.
"Ugh…"
Opening her eyes, Aureum finished. The day was really bright. She closed her eyes against it.
She didn't exactly sleep, but neither was she entirely awake.
———————————————————
When she returned to the city, what she was met with wasn't the lull right before the midday rush as she had come to expect. The streets were filled everywhere, but she couldn't understand why.
Nobody seemed to be doing anything clearly. There weren't stalls or a parade. No one was dancing or performing, but everyone was excited.
"What's going on?" Aureum asked, grabbing a stranger's shoulder.
"The walls are going up!" He said. "Didn't you hear?"
"The walls? Ariolus has a wall?" Aureum said.
"Of course it does. You don't live here?"
"No, I'm a traveler—
The man smacked her on the shoulder. It wasn't an unkind gesture, but it did make her jolt nonetheless.
"You might want to get going then," he said. "You can watch the walls go up from the other side, but once they go up they aren't coming down."
"Oh," Aureum said.
The stranger turned away back to his own group. They were watching one man inhale some beer.
"Chug! Chug! Chug!"
Aureum left them to it.
The walls going up didn't sound like something to celebrate to her, but many people on the streets were cheering.
"Let them rise! Let them rise!"
Was one such chant she heard.
"Meet Nix with thorns! Meet Nix with thorns!" was another.
She bumped from one throng of people only to get crushed the next moment.
I need to make sure that Gemmo—
Of course she didn't need to. Aureum slowed down a little.
It was frustrating.
The crowd. Her mood. Her exhaustion. Coming back only to leave. She'd wanted to figure out her next step. Now she was being shoved into another choice.
But…
She looked at the height of the towers that circled Nix.
I don't want to look at a wall that high.
She jumped. Almost into another stranger, but it was just enough. Once she was even just a little above the throng, she could move much faster.
"Fly like a bird! Wooooo!"
Some of the people below started cheering her. Aureum ignored them.
As she rose higher, she saw more.
The "wall" was rising was in segments between the towers. Large roots that looked ancient and covered in some kind of black substance were coiled around and over each other in an intricate pattern. They shivered and coiled themselves out of the dirt.
One section was already a quarter risen.
The other segments between the towers weren't there yet.
So quick!
When she'd arrived back in the city only a dozen minutes ago, there had been only the people to show that something would happen. Now, the roots had burst out of another segment, and the ground was cracked by a third.
How many sorcerers does Ariolus have?! And they all have to be of incredible strength.
Aureum leaned forward to speed her way.
She wasn't staying here, that was for sure. She peered up at the towers as she soared beneath them.
But, though the sorcerers inside could only notice her, they paid her no mind.
She was allowed to leave freely. Aureum looked back in curiosity. The wall rose higher and higher. Now they had started on the fourth segment.
Well, I understand how they withstood Nix all these years.
But she was curious why they would choose wood. It worked against anyone who didn't control wood, certainly. She wasn't so sure about anyone who controlled fire.
More importantly, the second an ascended sorcerer of wood came, they would rip control of the city's wall from its defenders.
I suppose it's a brag of its own.
After all, what sorcerer controlled the mana of wood better than the Lord of Ariolus?
If there came a time when this "common sense" failed, then the walls of Ariolus would fall.
Aureum scowled to herself and turned back ahead.
Complete reliance on their lord.
I hope it serves them well.
The day waned into evening.
Aureum barely paid attention to where she was headed. It hardly seemed to matter.
She felt like a kite with a cut string.
Aureum finally stopped to look for a place to camp as the sun was sinking. Her head pounded. It was difficult to find a place that fit her tent around all the trees. But she found one.
She still had everything she needed for camp, as long as she had the sense to use it. Some part of her was going off of habit. The tent was set up, and she lay down to sleep.
The tent was too big.
It was too quiet.
She was too cold.
There was too much in her own head. Throughout the night, it was a miracle she drifted in and out of dozing.
The next day was no brighter than the last.
A decision had to be made.
Either head to Nix and give everything to try and save Hiems and Gemmo…
Or…
What else? What else was there even there for her to do?!
Her course had already half begun to head off in the direction of Nix after she left Ariolus. In a way, it was the only answer.
Almost everything she'd known was there, and everything she had wanted to know was there too.
But.
She couldn't keep on that path when she woke up.
How many soldiers of Nix had it taken to stop her? And that had been with Hiems' help.
Her hands became fists.
The risk.
If it was Gemmo's neck under a sword, she would rush to take it. But it was not a sword. It was a fortress with an army and a little self-proclaimed king that was the problem.
Aureum could not deal with it like a sword and expect to get even one of them back.
She could not even count on being able to sneak in.
That damned cyclops wanted to kill me. And I ran away with his assassin. His son. Even as it's the son he never publicly acknowledged.
If she wasn't an outlaw in Nix, she would be. Caducus had ample excuse with her consorting with a known traitor.
Even if the truth was that he was a traitor for not killing her.
The difficulty would be convincing anyone of that story before they killed her for it.
Even if she could convince the people of Nix that she wasn't a true traitor, did it matter?
Caducus had the final say.
It filled her throat with a bitter taste.
At least truly thinking upon the matter for the first time in months, she could finally put together why Lord Caducus might have tried to kill her.
If the rest of the ascended sorcerers knew of the past like Spesavia, that meant Caducus had some motive for wanting to kill her.
Motive? More like he was aware of the nuisance she had been in the past…
The decades I spent as his daughter-in-law only proved me to be trouble. And once I ditched Nivis and left, it made it easy to get rid of me out of public sight.
Her mouth formed a sneer that stuck into her heart as she made it.
For such a small thing he would kill someone who threatened his plans so weakly.
It wasn't that she was something of small concern so that he would overlook her, as she had hoped. It was because she was such a small concern that he could, and he would kill her.
Bastard…!
But even anger was a tiny flame smothered by quiet hopelessness.
The worst thing was she didn't know if she was allowed to hope that Hiems or Gemmo would still be alive.
Would Caducus spare his son or kill him with just as much impunity as he had treated everyone else? What would even happen to Gemmo? Could any human decency be expected from Caducus?
She rubbed her wrists.
When I return, I have to do it so that I can find out what happened.
Not as a suicidal attempt that would be brushed aside.
So for now, Aureum turned away from the direction of Nix.
It was time to head back to Fluentem.
If I can't destroy a fortress, perhaps at least I can prick at the separated arms.
Lacuna and Sitis were there. They might need help too.
…And friends in need are friends indeed.
If Fluentem could be freed, the city would likely retaliate against Nix. At least that was how Aureum saw it.
Not that Aureum knew how she would free a city anymore than she would Hiems and Gemmo… but there were more people there that would want to.
At least two people in the city would want to help her. That was better than being alone.
Nix was there as well, yes. That was part of the point. Maybe she could stab a few of the soldiers. That was beginning to feel like the best solution to all her problems.
Really, maybe she was just running away again.
Aureum didn't know the truth herself.
———————————————————
And Hiems, during this time, was…
He was hung from ice-cold shackles in a tiny cell underneath the House of Nix.
The cold metal he hung from bit into his wrists, but that wasn't his focus. Nor was the drip-dropping he could feel on his head.
If he could but think of anything else.
It wasn't always consistent, which made its presence even more of a dig. Like a stab under the nail.
Even his thoughts and his emotions—his feelings of failure, his nightmares of her and Gemmo's fall—even such thoughts as these were a release from the agonizing sensation of being constantly awoken into exhaustion.
Of lulling into a sense of hollow nothingness where pain almost didn't exist—but that damned dripping broke it.
Of all the things Hiems hated: himself, his father, the soldiers of Nix, his old teachers, his brother, Aeternitus itself, and sometimes even his own mother for fleeing what he could not, he hated that innocuous sound of dripping even more.
It was nearest.
He was not even able to imagine slicing out a drop of water's throat.
Though he could imagine a vague scream of terror being silenced as he cut an imagined man for the impertinence of letting an underground cell have a leak.
He still could not flee even this small thing. He couldn't even scratch his face.
Without sleep, drowsed irritation was constant. Even the gentle drops in a cold cell were a torture. For a little more than the lack of sleep, but that was enough.
One might imagine that sorcerers would be imprisoned in special cells with runes carved onto every door. Where the chains themselves were imbued with mana that disoriented the sorcerer from being able to harness their own mana at will.
And for imprisoned ascended sorcerers, this could be true.
And for sorcerers that could control metal, the chains would be shaped wood.
And for sorcerers that could control earth, they would be hung over a stagnant pool of water.
But, rather than more of these tedious designs, the brutal simplicity of starvation and the number of guards was enough to keep peace in the cells of Nix.
All designs had their flaws.
The dripping that agonized Hiems so was not intentional torture. It was just the side effects of the disregard for prisoners of Nix's cells. An unintended benefit most likely in the eyes of the jailers.
If it weren't for how the dripping kept him from even the half-sleep as he hung.
If it weren't for how its presence upon his ears was a constant reminder of where he was.
Then he might've drifted off far longer in his state of brokenness.
His journey to Nix had been pain. His state had been forced into stabilization, but of course they had not cared for his well-being beyond that. The soldiers had dragged him, at speed, while he was half-conscious.
All he wanted was rest…
More than his desire to break his tormentors in response, to redeem himself for his failure to protect even one woman and a little boy, or for any dignity deserved to a human being to be returned to him, he wanted only peace.
A rest of nothingness in a state that wasn't even close to real sleep.
But that constant, insidious dripping kept him even from that.
What if I… tried to make ice…?
The dripping was water.
And the damned cold from the iron cut into his wrists.
It would be tedious.
Any mana he would get from it would be worth little. Nearly nothing.
There was nothing else.
He couldn't even sleep.