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Rolling Ian's ring between my fingers, I stare at an empty piece of paper on the desk before me, moping.

The new apartments of mine are a replica of Loretto's except for a shelf with countless books and airy curtains on the window and chaos with an unfinished bottle of whiskey in the bedroom. Too bad, I could use a glass.

It's been two hours since I've sat at the desk to write Cale a letter, and I still haven't invented a word. I've been looking for a chance to contact my family since the day I got here, now I have an untraceable, ugly aura ring and shaman power that allows sending notes undetected even easier, and yet, I don't write.

But what can I possibly write?

Hey, Cale, this is your little brother who you've abandoned among the shamans, wondering if you're still planning to rescue me. If you don't, that's okay for I've survived on my own. Only...it took me becoming a shaman myself, so I've decided I'm not helping you to overthrow the empress.

I can explain everything, but you probably hate me already. Before you tear this message apart, I still feel obliged to warn you that your revolution is fucked--the empress knows your every move. By the way, how are moms? Still working day and night, never noticing one son is missing and the other is masterminding a revolution?

I can't write all this. I sigh, dropping the ring to the desk.

Maybe start with moms?

It's true, I guess, that each thing is only valuable at the right time. I was willing to rob someone for this ring just three months ago. And now? I should throw it away. The useless ring glints in the dull shadows of the evening as I spin it across the tabletop, and tumbles off its edge with a clink, clear and sharp unlike my restless mind. Maybe I'm overreacting, and Cale won't hate me for this letter?

After all, I'm still his brother, right? I haven't seen my family in less than three months, but somehow, my life has changed so drastically I can't even imagine how they're gonna react to everything I have to say now. Like I told Faris, it's like I don't know them anymore.

But I know they despise shamans. They said it themselves, dozens of times.

When I bend and lean down to pick up the ring, sudden smell of burning paper enters my nose. Glancing up, I realize there's a note hovering over my head, forming from ashes out of nowhere just like the one Loretto once sent me. My inspiration spiking, I reach for it. Loretto and I had a brief magical practice this morning, but we haven't talked about last night's hug, so maybe as the sun is setting again, Loretto is willing to talk?

Alas, the handwriting isn't Loretto's. I realize it the moment my fingertip touches the note and it sparks, forming fully, not an illusory shadow visible only to the receiver anymore, but a real letter.

"Is it true???" the letter demands.

I stare at the question, perplexed. The round, proportional letters are clearly Ariane's, but how can she send me a shaman note? Faris. She's still worried she might also be watched. But what's true? While I ponder on it without replying, another note falls on the tabletop before me:

"You're a shaman for real?!"

I curse under my breath. So Faris told her. A damn gossiper. Wasn't it obvious it was a secret?

"Don't tell anyone," I write back and quickly send it, pressing the aura ring against the paper, thinking of Ariane for a receiver. I still haven't learned to send shaman letters, and if I get distracted while channeling aura myself and accidentally direct the note to someone else, it'll look worse than bad. At least, the ring is useful now. My message blinks out of my sight without any sparks and ashes.

"Mute as a grave," comes the reply. "But you haven't gone mad, have you, Eli?"

"Doesn't feel like it," I write back. Ariane won't leave me alone now, I realize. Not until she learns everything. I've somehow forgotten that my sister's curious mind would never let her sit still unless she knows everything. But I myself don't know everything. I guess I should be happy that at least one member of my family admires shamans and doesn't hate me for being one, but the more people know my secret, the harder it to keep it secret.

"Then how can you be a shaman, Eli?" she asks with another scape of paper. "With no magical ancestors? You're sure you ain't adopted?"

"Not more than you, thanks."

Pause.

"So??? My talkative brother is suddenly out of talks? Tell me how! Is this a goddess thing? A ritual? A spell? She taught Loretto to convert people into shamans, right? I knew it!!! This is what I've been looking for here, Eli, you see now, right?! That's why I came to study alchemy!

Cale and Kofi could never understand this, but you get it now! We can use magic, too! Shamans don't have to be our enemies! Ohhh, I'm so happy I can talk to you about all this. I've so much to tell you! Can I test your blood? And your piss. And..."

Her writing turns hasty, and I can't tell what else she wants to test, though something tells me I wouldn't like knowing anyway.

I feel weird, though, reading Ariane's message, bittersweet. I know, of course, she is just as talkative I am sometimes, but now it occurs to me that we haven't talked much lately. When we were kids, we talked all the time--about toys, candies, colorful robe buttons, people we saw in the streets...

Ariane and I once had a huge faded tablecloth that her father Umar gave us; we used that cloth to draw a map of Tik'al on--despite the fact that none of us had ever been there before. We made it up. We imagined ourselves to be shamans, building temples, marking them with buttons that we stole from our moms.

Then, out of nowhere, evil aura demons appeared at our Tik'al--plump chocolate cookies--and we saved the terrified city and its inhabitants from the demons with our made-up invincible shamanic powers. Ate cookies to the last crumb.

The city rejoiced. We were heroes, and built ourselves new button temples...

I have no idea what was the point of that game? Eat so much chocolate you want to puke? To protect the world? To feel like you're a part of a magical force? To visit, at least in your imagination, the far-away mysterious temples, which no one would let us see in reality?

Anyhow, it was fun.

Only when Ariane's father died, we hadn't talked for a month, but-I haven't talked to anyone for that month. Yet we spent hours together nonetheless, playing or just sitting side by side in silence, laying out the temple buttons on an old tablecloth map...

That's why I've always felt much closer to Ariane than to our brothers. We talked. We heard each other. We understood.

Ariane's father was no longer with us, but the tablecloth he gave us remained. It seemed disturbing, but also...inspiring. Like those inaccessible temples. It felt as if we had a common secret--the three of us. As if Umar hadn't disappeared, but had gone there, to the shamans, to the gods...and we continued to protect the world from the evil demons, believing that one day he would find his way back.

Without speaking, Ariane and I believed that by continuing to play, we were lightning up Umar path back, through dense aura forests and stormy seas, through impenetrable mountains and cruel towers of ancient castles that were guarded by otherworldly spirits...A person cannot disappear, leave and not return, die if his return is expected at home, right?

We were missing him, which meant he couldn't die without a trace.

Leaning back in my chair, I now wonder if that tablecloth was just a game for Ariane? Or maybe, she still believes that magic can bring her father back? That Tayen or the First Blood--or alchemy--can resurrect the dead, and that's why she buries herself so hard into magic every day and asks me about it...

But if it was possible, it's unlikely that my mentor would be content with his orphan lot.

And yet, in these last few years, since Ariane began studying alchemy and I started stealing aura for Cale, we...grew distant. She seemed to stop understanding my zeal for justice, I felt like I couldn't understand her magical passion.

But now, this letter full of exclamations and questions--it's like the old good sister I had. Something warm stirs over my heart. My sis. So she's been looking for an answer to why shamans are--or are not--different from the rest of us for all these years? Seeking justice in her own way? And keeping everything locked in her heart.

Just as I do now.

But I'm not alone, and she was.

"I love you, Ari," I write, following some momentous impulse. When was even the last time I called her Ari? She used to like it when I called her that.

I almost feel her confusion when a long minute passes before her next message. "I love you too, Eli. Always."

There's another pause, and the next note I receive is suddenly different. The handwriting is the one I don't recognize, though the way its edges form from the ashes is the same, so the sender hasn't changed.

"Heard the news?" Faris asks himself now.

I know there's a trick here somewhere. But all I have in reply is, "No."

"They say councilor Azmat died last night."

I blink, gaping at Faris's pointed letters, which don't make sense. A councilor is dead? Like, the empress's councilor? But she cherishes them like gold, like personal godmothers willing to do whatever it takes to ensure her rule. Why hasn't she still questioned and blamed everyone for this, then? Why there's no fuss around the city, no soldiers searching for a murderer? Then the word died grabs my attention. Died, as in...by himself?

And then it hits me.

She killed him herself. A cold chill slithers down my spine. Or she ordered to kill him--not much difference--making it look like an accident or a heart attack. Faris said Counselor Azmat had been bragging about his plans to conspire with Cale's friend; if he's dead now, it wasn't a ruse, it was true. And the empress didn't like this kind of truth.

"Listen closely, Eli," Ariane's new message comes. "I have a bad feeling about all this. Have you talked to Cale? Our brothers can't do anything fatal, can they? You and Kofi have been stealing aura, and Cale has been bragging about the size of his rebel ambitions, but you're not serious. You never get beyond words, and no one cares about these gossips for a long time..."

The sun is sinking lower and lower, the shadows around me thickening, casting ominous blood-red stripes on Ariane's words, and the chill bites my spine more insistently.

"...Faris told you about Azmat's plans, didn't he? Azmat is dead, but he managed to give Pablo the recipe for the essence. I heard Kofi and Cale talking last night. They're planning to test the essence tonight and if it works this time, if it really deprives shamans of power, they're determined to storm the Great Temple at the trials."

All the recent warmth exits my heart as I read this, the chill spreading over my whole body. At the trials. Feels like a death sentence. Even if Azmat hasn't admitted all this before his death, even if Maricela fails to catch Cale in time and he survives, everything will turn to shit if he strikes. Shamans lose their power. I lose my powers. Loretto will lose faer power.

They might even kill Loretto for making me a shaman. Or enslave all of us. Jaya's words flash before my eyes like pictures. Her uncle who still remembers the Civil War. Piles of the dead, Elisey. Is that what you want? To clean blood from the streets? Because shamans won't knee willingly. Because that's how it will be.

At the trials. So I have less than two weeks to convince Cale to reconsider? How do you convince someone who hates someone to love that someone? Cale has dedicated his life to the dream of ruining every shaman in Cabracan, what can possibly make him give up that dream and those years spent on the dream? Me? Will I even be enough?

"I'll talk to him, Ari," I write back. "I'll think of a way to convince him. Promise."

I can do it, I add to myself. I have to. Promise.

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The next three hours I walk in my apartments in circles. Thinking of a way.

Discovering none.

First, Maricela's spies constantly watch me, so I can't just walk straight home.

Second, I'm terribly unconvincing with my words.

Third, Cale is not the type to listen to anyone's words once he makes up his mind.

The only answer I see here is a miracle, but even the magic I know isn't that easy. Maybe if the gods really existed--

A knock on the door pierces the stillness when the sun has almost sunk behind the horizon, leaving a shy patch of scarlet light across the room. Rather mechanically, I cross over to turn the handle, expecting nobody, wishing to see nobody at this late hour. If it's Yaling with her porn club or Ian with his heartbreak, they'd better piss off. I've a bigger problem here.

Not Yaling, not Ian.

Loretto.

I must've looked too surprised by faer visit or too lost in my prior thoughts--or both--the moment I pulled the door open, because a disturbed line gathers between Loretto's brows as fae looks over me. "Are you alright?" Loretto asks.

When I fail to confirm that in words, only nod, Loretto gently pushes me sideways and steps into the room. "Are you busy?" Loretto continues, glancing over my apartments, faer eyes inquisitive.

"No," I say, still perplexed. Well, I guess Cale can wait one more hour. I close the door, watching my mentor. Loretto notices a heap of papers I haven't used for letters on the desk. Thankfully, I've hidden the aura ring, so there're no extra questions. Yet my mentor hasn't asked me about my new place, hasn't shown any interest in visiting until now. "Why?" And Loretto never seeks me out without a reason.

Before answering, Loretto walks over and seats faerself on my couch, in that exact corner fae is usually reading while sitting on faers. This gesture doesn't feel like intrusion, though, because these apartments already look almost identical to Loretto's, so faer presence here feels rather like a missing piece set in place. Natural. And I find myself pleased by Loretto's sudden attention, however the reason behind this might be.

Only when my mentor lounges on the couch, thoughtfully running faer fingers over its silky cushion as if looking for the words to begin the conversation, I notice that Loretto looks a little bit different tonight. Fresher? Faer hair is recently brushed, faer robe is of a darker blue color. Darker robes shamans normally wear for informal meetings.

My thoughts yet again travel back to all the images of Ian's dream of a date with Loretto, because this is a lot like I'd imagine Loretto be there-informal. But before I can ponder on whether my mentor has changed faer mind about meeting Ian and grow bitter again, Loretto looks up at me.

"I was thinking about what you told me, Eli," fae says.

"About everyone needing a hug from time to time?"

"No, about being a step ahead of everyone. About playing along but setting our own rules." Loretto pauses. And when speaks again, faer voice is a fraction tenser, uncertain as if fae can't predict how I'm going to react. "How do you feel about going to the hot springs?"

Still standing in the middle of the room, still not seeing where all this is going, I frown. "The springs?" The shaman springs? I've never been there, and I'm not sure I'm allowed to since I'm not officially a shaman until participating in my first trials, but I know it's quite an entertainment. The place is probably magical--for how else can you locale hot spring right inside a city temple?--and popular, especially in the late, chilly evenings like now.

Acknowledging my confusion, Loretto nods. "Plenty of shamans enjoy going there, including the councils. People relax there, drink, gossip, speak too much. I thought we might go as well, listen a little? You wanted to find Valto's murderer, right? And you must've heard about Azmat. Maybe we might learn something useful there, and"--a ghost of a smile tugs at Loretto's lips--"have some fun?"

Loretto is inviting me to have some fun? Loretto? Fun? Inviting me? But I ponder on it for a moment. I can't deny that idea sounds alluring--I've never thought of going out to listen to the rumors myself, but it must be a good way to stay updated. Like a reconnaissance mission. Plus, it'll make me look less suspicious if I pretend to have fun. And even though Valto's still unsolved murder can't help me, the detailed intel about Azmat's death might be used to convince Cale that I'm still on his side.

And so we go to the springs.

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Author's note:

Wow! A new chapter took quite some time... But the story is being written! Slowly, but steadily, and I promise I'll finish it 🔆

Meanwhile, here's Eli and Lo's pictures made with AI: