2412 Xavem 23, Daleth

He hadn't found a merchant selling fairy potions since yesterday. There were no fruit trees, grass, or even any life in the middle of the city. Nobody told him that Rabante was uprooted and that the plateau had come down on top of it. Nobody certainly told him that all the trade routes leading to Helinfirth were closed.

Tough luck.

June spent the day before combing the wasteland of wet soil and chunks of broken wood and bricks. He knew at one point that he circled the plateau before he collapsed in exhaustion and fell asleep without finding food.

So, when he woke up, he was so hungry he could barely move. Not to mention his wound now hurt like his arm was about to fall off and he had soaked through every strip of his old tunic. At this point, he'd start hacking away at his own cloak or his trousers.

He and Xanthy were currently in an abandoned ore mine that was untouched by the landslide but still dusty, dark, and cold—all the perfect conditions to drive people away. He should be safe here. With that, he sat on the cave floor and pressed his back against the cold wall. He rested his head against it and heaved a breath. He had been doing that a lot lately.

He closed his eyes for a moment, keeping his ears open for any suspicious noises. His stomach growled loudly that he had to tuck his knees to his chest to numb the pain. Perhaps, his fate was to die of hunger, alone in this cold and musty cave.

Then again, he wouldn't be completely alone, would he? He had Xanthy and the chalice. If he died of hunger here, who would be lucky enough to stumble upon the Virtakios and a throne that could purify souls? He inhaled a breath and along with it the thick, forest air of Helinfirth. When he opened his eyes, a person with a greenish skin tone was staring at him with his face inches from June's.

June yelped and slammed his foot into the man. His leg sailed right through the chest but never connected. He cursed. A spirit? That only means...

A hasty shield flickered to life with the words barely leaving his lips just as a sword tip clanged against it. If he had been any later, the blade would be buried deep in his gut by now. His eyes traced the sword to an arm covered in gray sleeves, to a face of pale skin, to bluish-green hair framing the face in straight, luscious locks. He knew this face.

Kymalin Iaro.

Rudik's ass. He's doomed.

Kymalin smiled, her crooked teeth almost elongating like fangs in June's view. "We meet again, half-blood," she dug the sword against his shield harder. "Hand over the Virtakios."

June stepped back, expanding his shield to that of a wall separating him and the banshee. "No," he breathed. He made a mistake of using his injured, dominant arm in casting the shield that it now throbbed as bad as his head.

Kymalin just winked before snapping her fingers. Two green-tinted fairies stepped through his shield like it was nothing but air. June's boots skidded against the cave's dry soil as he edged backwards again. Spirits were intangible. They couldn't be touched unless they wanted to. Not good.

The first spirit, which was a man, threw the first punch. June ducked, rolled, and found himself next to Xanthy. Not good, indeed.

Where should he run next? He's closest to Diven in this part of Rabante. Should he risk it?

"There's no use in running, half-blood," Kymalin's shrill voice rang through the cave. She seemed to be everywhere at once.

June kept his eyes on the two advancing spirits. The exit was behind them. The male spirit swung his fist again. June ducked just as it almost connected to his jaw. June rammed his palm into the spirit's stomach. A spell at the top of his head left his mouth and the spirit exploded into a pile of greenish ribbons. June chuckled in disbelief. A curse not just to decapitate living fairies but spirits as well, apparently.

The woman, the other spirit, hooked her leg behind June's knees. That brought her face with just enough proximity with his hand. He pressed his palm on her forehead during that small window of skin contact and barked the same spell. She ended up in the same fate as her companion.

"You!" Kymalin growled, brandishing her sword at him. "You will pay for that."

June grinned. Had he just disabled two combat spirits while carrying Xanthy? Cool. "Make me," he ducked his head at Kymalin with what little respect he had for the banshee and dashed for the exit. He manipulated his shield to wrap around him as he barreled past Kymalin who gave a cry of indignation as she tried yanking him back.

The sunlight exploded and stung his eyes the moment he made it out of the cave. He turned and gave a little salute to the growling banshee before sending a destruction curse to the rocks by the cave's lip.

Relief washed through his gut as chunks of purplish rocks crashed by the entrance before Kymalin could make it out. From the inside, the banshee's frustrated yowls rang in muffled intervals. June huffed. That should hold her for a while. A long while.

He set his eyes forward, past the setting sun. Onwards to Diven.

He blew it, of course. Since waking up in this cave, it seemed like all he had done was make mistakes. The girl wouldn't forgive him all the more after that half-assed declaration. He needed to do something other than apologizing. What, though?

The girl came to check on him as he was hiding out in his cavern and while he was perched atop his rock. She carried a tray filled with potions, bandages, and a basin of hot water. At the back of his mind, he knew what was going to happen.

The girl stood eye-level with him. There was neither hatred nor excitement in her eyes. "This is the first time I am doing this with you awake," she said. "Bear with it."

Nyxis swallowed the growing bitterness at the back of his throat. He had noticed the bandages the second time he woke up but didn't think about what's underneath. Dread settled in a tangled mess down his gut at the prospect of seeing the state of skin. Was he that particular about it before? Perhaps.

The girl produced a pair of cutters fashioned from sharpened rocks and began cutting through the fabric. Next came the splints. Nyxis's heart sank with the increasing glimpses of how his form looked like now. He stared at his fingers void of bandages. They weren't pretty to look at with their scabs and angry red flesh slowly being overshadowed by his skin growing back. They hurt like crazy too.

When the bandages on his arms came off, his stomach lurched and threatened to reject the food he had just eaten. His skin had turned a deep shade of purple. Splotches of missing skin littered the length of his arm. Lacerations as deep as his bones decorated him from the elbow up. When the girl removed the splints, his joints hung in weird angles.

And the smell...Oh, gods.

He clamped his mouth shut to keep his food inside his guts and to brace for pain as the girl retrieved a vial of potion from her tray. She's going to pour it on the wounds and he wouldn't be able to hold his scream in.

Instead, the girl waved her hand over his arms and water encased them. He watched as the water neither splashed everywhere nor did it soak him. The girl dropped the contents of the vial into the water cocoon.

Then she began to sing.

The melody hit him in the chest like a battering sugrarsask. It's the same song she sang when he foolishly tried to end his life by throwing himself into the ocean. She had saved him then. With this song.

Words that sounded foreign in Nyxis's ears filled the cave. It spoke of coming home and finding hope even though he couldn't understand a thing. The song rang against the dark, humid air making it more vibrant and strong. Light shone from the center of her spell, illuminating the whole cavern in soft rays. Nyxis stared at the girl who had her eyes closed and focused on healing him. And healed him, she did. The pain faded from his arms, his skin slowly mending and melding together. For a while, there's only comfort.

Finally, the last of the song's verses escaped the girl's lips, the light died and she moved to replace the splints and the bandages. The skin on his arms looked better but they're nowhere near healed. As the girl rolled the bandage up his left arm, Nyxis blurted, "How long have you been here?"

The girl froze for a moment before shaking her head and resuming her task of bandaging his arm. "It is none of your business."

Okay. Not exactly the answer he was hoping for. He cleared his throat. "How did I end up here?"

The girl clicked her tongue as she replaced the splint by his elbow. "You were half-dead, bleeding, and broken when I found you," she recalled. "The cold had eaten most of your skin and the waves have torn your bones. You were unconscious but miraculously alive. I had to help."

He bit his lip, grateful that at least the cold didn't leech his lips from him.

"How much do you remember?" the girl asked as she moved to the other arm, breaking what illusion silence had put between them.

Nyxis exhaled. "I remember how I ended up in the water. I remember..." he choked. "My family."

"You mentioned Ceris Helgase," the girl's voice hitched in her throat. She's hiding something. Nyxis's eyes followed her movements, searching for any familiarity in her frame. She still hasn't changed out of her white-strips clothes but now that her hands were in plain view, he noticed an elaborate pattern of lines and curves inked into her right forearm.

Inking wasn't a common trait among water sprites. It's more of a fire sprite thing. The design itself was almost like the keiju koset but not quite. Wait a second...her ears. They were pointed like those of the other fairies but hers were slender and pointier. It's like she's another species but still a fairy. What was she?

The girl cleared her throat, snapping Nyxis back to her question. Ceris Helgase, the legendary sailor who has led many successful quests around the world. He visited various continents and always left something of value behind. He was someone who would have changed the world if only he didn't incite the early vestiges of the Hundred Years' War. By some god's miracle, Nyxis knew that he was related to that legendary sailor.

When the girl called him his ancestor's name, it opened some kind of door into his mind, into a memory of a man whom Nyxis knew to be his father telling him that all Helgase men should leave a mark when they pass on. Had that man ever done it?

A heavy breath left Nyxis's lips. "I am directly related to him," he faced the girl who was starting to unravel the bandages by his other arm. "I am his descendant. The fact that you called me his name implied that you knew him from somewhere. The way you say his name meant that you not only knew of him but did on a deeper level. It is like you were that...intimate with him."

"Which cannot be possible," Nyxis said quickly as he battled the heat creeping to his cheeks. "Because he died a thousand years ago and yet here you are, alive and...robust."

The girl nodded, barely sparing Nyxis's face a glance. "It is true. I should not be alive today but I am," her tone dropped to almost a whisper. "I try to make the most out of it."

Was there an implied meaning directed at him from that statement? Eh. No matter. "I see," was all he said.

"Take off your tunic," the girl braced her hips with her hands.

Nyxis blinked. "Sorry?"

The girl frowned. "Do not look at me like that, human," she snapped. "Take off your tunic or I am cutting it right down the middle and you would have to live the rest of your life in this cave with a torn tunic."

Nyxis gulped and followed the girl's orders. The bandages wrapped around his chest and stomach were out for everyone to see. It had the same amount of pain as his arms had earlier which meant that either it's damaged the same as his arms or it has sustained worse injuries.

The girl passed him a shard of a mirror and positioned his arm so that it reflected the image of what was going on behind him. She hacked at the bandages and when they fell off, he saw what had been the result of an unfinished spell hitting him. His back had been burned and mangled. That's all he had the stomach to say about it.

Dried skin peeled off his back with the wound itself exposing his flesh. The memory of the spell hitting him flared to life along with the pain it brought. The girl wrinkled her nose at it and did the same trick she used for his arms.

A relieved sigh tore from him as soon as the water dulled the pain and brought him closer to getting better. More relief drowned the dread in his gut when the girl finished changing the bandages. What he wasn't relieved at, though, was when she had to do it by getting closer to him than he wanted to.

The girl passed him a vial filled with greenish muck as she gathered the soiled bandages into a smaller, empty keg. "Drink that to heal your insides," she ordered. "They are not fine beneath that thick hide of yours."

Nyxis smiled thinly and without humor. Being compared to an animal was not much of a compliment. Still, he drank the potion. And gagged. "What is this?!" he demanded as his stomach threatened to send it back out of his system. "You could have at least added iranore to soften the taste of ephrah."

The girl hummed, her face flat. "Yes, good luck finding your iranore out here," she gathered the scissors back to her tray. "Stop complaining. It is all you ever do."

"Yes, I know but—"

The girl slammed the empty basin into her tray. "Look, if you want to complain about the things I give you, make them yourself."

Nyxis pursed his lips. She's still angry about something he did. Sadly, he did so many things to piss her off that it became hard to pinpoint what. He picked up the mirror she gave him and moved to put it in her tray, tilting it at the perfect angle to get a good look on his face. He froze.

His own face blinked back at him...except it was not. His hair had been singed but had grown longer than necessary with the locks tangled and unkempt. Hollow cheeks, sunken eyes, and pale complexion—that's all he was now. Then his heart thundered when he saw it.

A scar.

It ran from his left eye to his nose and at least as thick as a fingernail. This couldn't be. Not his face. Not—

The mirror slammed into the floor and shattered into a thousand shards as it slipped from his hand. He cast his eyes around. There has to be something—anything—to remove this scar. He had to remove it. This simply couldn't be. He would not allow it. He reached inside himself, expecting that river of warmth to find him again. It didn't. Cold. It was cold.

He tried again, his heart pounding in his chest and temples. His breaths hitched and twisted in all the possible ways he never thought it would. He tried reaching his magic once again. There was only cold beyond his soul. His magic had abandoned him.

The image of his scar flashed in his mind again and he screamed. No. He could not be like him. He could not end up like him. Having a scar would make Nyxis like that man...

The girl called his name but she sounded far away. Nyxis clutched his head and screamed. He shrieked until he could taste rust at the back of his throat and his coughs had returned.

He spent his life avoiding becoming his father. He could never forget how that scar terrorized his dreams at night and tormented him when he was awake. That scar killed people. That scar raised up a woman who would go to great lengths to get what she wanted. That scar was what made his father that man—a murderer, a liar, a betrayer, a destroyer.

A failure.

Nyxis swore he would not get any kind of scar on his face that would remind him of what his father had done. He swore it upon his life. But now...

The scar screamed at him from his memory. He was poised to continue screaming, to carry on trying to return his magic to him. Anything, to make that scar go away. He would do anything. The girl's palm flew past his face, a slap embedding itself on his already aching cheek. He froze. "You will never finish healing if you keep doing that to yourself," the girl's tone amplified the growing cold in Nyxis's spine. "A scar is just a scar. Stop being a baby about it."

"You do not understand, you son of a witch," Nyxis found himself rasping. No, that's not right. Take it back.

He didn't.

The girl grabbed her tray and stepped away from him. "Yes, I do not understand," her frown was enough to say that she had truly given up on him. "Go rot in hell, for all I care."

Without another word, she turned around and marched away, leaving Nyxis to his ever-growing misery.