Nyxis awoke to Cyrdel wiping ice shards off his face. When Nyxis first opened his eyes, all he saw were endless blue so he closed them again. He waited for his vision to clear up and felt his limbs. He had never felt this good in such a long time. Well, in all honesty, all his life. There was something new in him he couldn't quite place. Somehow, he was stronger and he has...

He gasped as he shot upright. Denara lay passed out next to him. He closed his eyes and reached inside him again. There it was. His synnavaim. Where his past internal probes presented him with a black void inside his soul, it now was bright and not empty. His soul pulsed in waves of magic as it adjusted in its new state. This was...a new feeling.

That's when Nyxis noticed Cyrdel looking at them with raised eyebrows. "What in the world did you hit me with?" the brownie crossed his arms. He missed a few icicles which froze his eyebrows.

"I don't know," Nyxis responded in perfect Keijula. Wait, what?

Cyrdel's eyes almost popped off their sockets. "Holy Nira," he cursed as he gripped his hair. "What happened to you?"

As an answer, Nyxis held up his palms and summoned a little of his new-found magic. He succeeded in making a few snowflakes form and swirl by his palm. Cyrdel acted like he saw his great-great-grandma come back to life. He pointed an accusing finger at Nyxis. "T-that wasn't just possible," he said. "A h-human with a synnavaim—wait, what are you?"

Nyxis turned his hand over and back again. "I guess I'm an ice sprite now," he looked up at Cyrdel and grinned. "No longer human."

Denara chose that time to stir and groan. She rubbed her eyes and sat up. The first thing she noticed was the destruction around her. Pointed icicles hung from the roof of the cave. Patches of the wall were lined with soot. Cracks spread in thin webs on the floor. Also, they were sitting in the midst of three inches of water which somehow made it inside the cave system.

Nyxis blinked. Denara laughed in wonder and staggered up. Nyxis followed her. Since he didn't really know what Denara was before she became a nymph, he held his breath as he lowered his gaze into the trail dimension to look at her trail.

What he found was beyond his comprehension.

Denara was a sprite—that much was clear and judging from the characteristics of her most prominent trail—but judging from other colors twirling, shooting off, and clinging to it, it's almost like she was...

"All four sprites?" Nyxis blurted just as Denara conjured a mound of clay into her palms, spooking Cyrdel further. The brownie sputtered and edged against the wall only to yelp at how cold it was.

Denara smiled at Nyxis, the brightest she ever gave him. "Six," she summoned fire into her hands this time. "There are six types of sprites and it seems like I have a reach into all their abilities."

Nyxis laughed along with her without anything funny even being said. "Well, it seems like I was right about coming to you," he said. "You could level an entire plain with just your magic."

Denara faced him and planted a kiss on his cheek. "Not too much magic, though," she winked as she drew away from him. "Shall we explain to Cyrdel what happened? He looks like he might pass out."

Nyxis spared the brownie a glance. "Yeah, we should."

Cyrdel was losing it. He messed with the throne so much he had begun to hallucinate. The gods were punishing him. He had conjured up a scenario where Nyxis turned into an ice sprite and Denara, the nymph, was suddenly an all-powerful sprite goddess.

He had been in the kitchen, tinkering with the throne in an attempt to find his own. He had just succeeded in connecting the Warseeker's energy to another throne's when he heard the unholy howls. It came from the cave where Nyxis and Denara had just disappeared into for their "private" talk. Then, a surge of magic slammed into him like a weighty slap.

Something was wrong. Did a wooller attack them?

Just as he stumbled into the other cave, he was blinded by light and hit square in the face with something which felt like a wall of ice. Then, when he regained his senses, Nyxis was conjuring up snowflakes with his fingers and Denara was claiming there were six types of sprites.

Apart from fire, air, water, earth, and ice, there was apparently a type of sprite who could control storms. A storm sprite. Just another thing to fear during battle. Sure, Cyrdel could handle escuira and rysteme spells manipulating the energy around him to produce a spell which looked like lightning. But a fairy who could conjure them at will, a fairy who could command storms, summon tornadoes, and one who could basically be a pain in the rear, how would those look like in the enemy ranks?

Nyxis and Denara, as they seated Cyrdel on the cave with the fire, explained they have bonded their souls together and in turn freed up their locked synnavaimis. Cyrdel was all up for a magical-technical explanation any time but this was beyond his brain. Bonding just to free up locked synnavaimis? That was a pile of pink manwari crap.

However, he couldn't refute the evidence right in front of his eyes.

Nyxis pointed his spoon at him, the once-human looking like he had just won the black market lottery. "You should eat or else it will get cold," he said in spotless Keijula.

Just a day before, Nyxis was saying "aunt" in place of "brother" as he struggled with the fairy language. Now, it's as if someone took all the Keijula words, rolled them into a ball, and shoved them up Nyxis's nose.

Cyrdel had been fighting the urge to switch to Ylanenla the past thirty minutes. It would take a long time before he got used to speaking in his native language with Nyxis at the receiving end and with him understanding it perfectly.

Cyrdel shook his head. He could process all of this later. "I found the throne," he rapped a finger against the edges of his new invention. "It's in the Synketrian camp with the Sovereign."

Nyxis raised an eyebrow and whistled. "As expected," he shoved the spoon into his mouth. "At least we wouldn't need to travel to the Cardovic camp nor would we have to search for the Synketrian camp. How did you do it with just the Warseeker?"

Cyrdel grinned. It's payback time. He spent the whole meal-time rambling about spatial fields, magical traces, and the most plausible way to exploit the fluctuating dimension of trails. "And so I took in the variables, ran it through my calculations, and voila," he spread his hands in pride. "I triangulated the location to somewhere near where our spies speculated the Synketrian camp could be found. See? The wonders of science."

Nyxis 's eyes glazed. "Yeah, I didn't get that at all," he waved his hands. "So, can we go now?"

"Not so fast," Denara stood up and planted her hands on her hips. She looked commanding and Cyrdel didn't want to do anything that would upset her. "We need to get ready."

Cyrdel stood as well. "What kind of getting ready are we talking about?"

Denara disappeared past the kegs and came back brandishing a sword. "This kind," her teeth were bared in a triumphant smile.

Cyrdel's blood went colder than the ice still lining the walls of the cave. "No way," he stepped back, his boots skidding against the cave's relatively smooth, stone floor.

Denara's smile didn't reassure him at all. "Yes way," she said, completely missing the idiom. "I can't have you two raltzing into enemy lines with nothing but luck and a few tricky spells."

Cyrdel glanced at Nyxis to either ask for help or to confirm Denara was just a crazy, old grandma, but Nyxis was smiling at the ex-nymph. "Taking charge of the situation already?" Nyxis said. "How does that feel?"

Denara snorted. "Like I'm not a day past one-thousand and twenty."

Xanthy groaned as she picked herself up from a bed of sand. Sand...

She bolted upright, sending black spots dancing in her vision. Ugh.

"Oh, I forgot how sirtyais actually hurts your head," Jonadrin moaned from somewhere. "Where are we?"

"Desara," June said, not even fazed at the sirtya-travel's effects after several trips with Xanthy. "Somewhere."

Xanthy sighed as she brought her hands to her face. Something clinked. Oh no. "Uh, guys?" She called her friends. They scooted to her and she held out what she grasped in her hands. It was the sirtya. Only it wasn't quite the sirtya anymore. On her palms, at least five sirtya shards lay. Their blue glow was dying. Rudik's breeches.

"Is there a way to fix that?" Jonadrin wrinkled his nose and cursed at the sand dusting his hair and getting into his eyes.

June shook his head. "It would require an expert mechanic since it's an elaborate machine. Sadly, we're short of that right now."

Xanthy nodded. Even though, back at Alkara, she displayed a proficiency at inventing, without the proper training nor tools, she doubted she could fix something as complicated as this. If she looked at a sirtya, she understood how the stone could tear apart a person's soul at incredible speed and put it back together again. If Xanthy messed that up, there's no telling which parts of them would make it and which ones wouldn't.

So...no. There's no repairing the sirtya.

Xanthy sighed long enough for Jonadrin to brush sand from his hair. Wait. Jonadrin. "Why aren't you gone?" Xanthy narrowed her eyes at the heir.

Jonadrin winced. "Do you want me to be?"

"No," Xanthy groaned as she massaged her temples with her fingers. "I saw you kill the throne. Why are you still here? Why aren't you dead?"

Jonadrin stuck his hand inside the breastplate of his armor. He held his palm towards Xanthy and it contained...a seed. Xanthy blinked. "What's that supposed to be?"

"The Lifegiver's offspring," Jonadrin turned the seed in his fingers. "It took me a while to figure out but it seems like the throne figured out a way to save itself. It's a species of scassel and they're known to clone themselves into different types of plants according to their current energy reserves. Looks like the Lifegiver managed to clone one fruit-bearing tree and here is a seed from a fruit of that tree."

An inscrutable twinge curled in Xanthy's gut. "You mean..."

"This seed now contains the essence of the throne," Jonadrin said. "I killed the parent plant so all the burden passed into this little fellow right here. The Heiress may have controlled Gandirk but we have a chance to restore the throne now."

Relief brushed across Xanthy's system. "Will you come with us to Penleth?"

"Looks like I've got no choice," Jonadrin said. "I can't access most of my magic and most nature sprites would probably be acting with limited power with the throne being like this but I'll go."

June turned west and frowned. "We should hurry if we are to make it to Penleth by foot."

"Yeah, of course." Xanthy pocketed the shards of the sirtya, feeling their weight against her leg.

Jonadrin tucked the seed back into his breastplate compartment. "Lead on, then."

Xanthy stood and faced west. They have all the heirs and hopefully all the thrones now. It would only be a matter of time before they face the real battle in Penleth. Let her hope Reeca and the others have held their own for this long. "I'm coming," she whispered into the wind, hoping that it would reach her friends from all places. "Wait for me."