Chapter Fifty-Eight Point Seven: Bordering on a Solution

  [Nine days ago—in the southeastern reaches of the Eastern Province—Agurdia]

  Please… let it not be true…

  Selriph felt his heart pounding against his chest as he ascended the bare, rocky slopes of the hills in front of him—a minor mountain—Mount Tsyin, only six hundred metres in elevation.

  This hike wasn’t some wayward whim to indulge himself in the nostalgic experience of trekking through the Greyspire Mountains.

  No, this had a utilitarian sentiment, one that drove the youth on a southeasterly vector three days from the town of Brightwaf—a detour by all accounts.

  As it advanced, the boundary line was set to arrive at a new mountain range. This range was under the control of Hgor, a satellite state of Eldeitia, which had just sworn fealty to the massive continental power.

  It was not from a sudden change of heart—after all, why go through the struggle of crossing the border only to settle in a country that was essentially Eldeitian?. No, this was to confirm the existence of something that he’d only heard rumours of—one that would determine his course of action for his actual attempt to cross the border.

  The moment he reached the peak, the vast blue vista unfolded before him, and the sound of the gravel beneath his feet ceased. The sun shone upon the Halpop Flatlands, a vast, fertile, but empty plain to the east, no doubt harvested after the Mikus’ feast almost two months prior.

  Looking out over the landscape, he saw the plains, with deep orange-crimson trees scattered here and there. The leaves were likely just beginning to detach, or maybe they had already done so. The expanse blends farming communities and smaller towns, their survival and commerce probably dependent on the productive plains and diverse forests and woods surrounding them, all benefiting from the waters that branched out from the Great Lake Uanipi to the west.

  As he tracked up to the horizon, he saw other specs—not vegetation, not civilisation, but towards where the border with the Principality of Hgor was.

  Dots, tower-like structures, which resembled trees

  After looking at the map, Selriph’s gaze focused into the distance once more.

  He kept glancing from the map to the scene in front of him, and with each look, his heart sank, as though sinking into quicksand.

  That was indeed the border with the Hgor, a foreign state. They weren’t hostile; they were, in effect, part of Eldeitia’s sphere of influence, whether willingly or not.

  And yet those things were there: the obstacle that Selriph wished he didn’t have to overcome.

  Without a doubt, there were pylons, and they were far more numerous than anticipated. The network of magical protections and hidden defences, which the woodsman and the homunculus had alluded to, was now an unwelcome problem that disrupted the last part of his long and challenging journey across Eldeitia.

  Even though they appeared as small specks far away, he could almost picture the feeling of standing before them: the sensation of protective magic, like an invisible or possibly transparent wall, surrounding him.

  The moment that he, Nightwind, or Emmett attempted to pass through that? An alert would likely be sent to the various border outposts. The Valkyrie and Pegasus knights, like a swarm drawn to honey, would rush to the scene, with smaller wooden skyships trailing behind them as they chased the fugitive.

  Selriph muttered a curse, then glanced back at his horse and dire wolf, who were approaching and about to see the same unpleasant thing—if they even comprehended the weight.

  “I apologise, friends... I truly hoped those rumours were false,” he said, his tone regretful, as the horse and dire wolf approached him, their heads cocked inquisitively.

  Then Selriph looked back across the horizon, towards his final hurdle—which was hopefully surmountable.

  A mocking chuckle escaped him, as if scolding himself for momentarily succumbing to that notion.

  “Naturally… this won’t be easy, will it…?” Selriph sighed as he looked down at the map, processing the reality that had been with him all this time.

  Fate was ever going to be unkind to him—this was the latest addition to the sardonic web of obstacles that Selriph had to dance skilfully around, all in the palm of its whims.

  [Present time, in the woods, three days to the south of Solvelis]

  Selriph observed the linen cloth, now suspended above the fire on a wooden frame. He stared at the patchwork map spread out before him. His gaze followed the eastern border of Agurdia, which also served as its boundary with the Nalthrys state to the east.

  With his eyes furrowed in concentration, the parchment covered in scribbles and question marks, all representing the main dilemma that plagued him:

  How would he get past the border, to overcome the line of towering structures he’d witnessed with his own eyes?

  The first option—which was the most unviable—crystallised in his mind only because of its chronological conception; what he had originally meant to follow through after he escaped the Templar compound and Caer Eldralis, if he could even consider it a plan.

  Selriph had to acknowledge that he hadn’t contemplated the exact specifics of the latter elements of his escape when he first conceived of it. After all, escaping the Templar Compound and the cursed city of Caer Eldralis was the main priority. Along the way, he’d plan to procure a disguise, find a vulnerability, a lull in the patrols with the border with Venthar—however long it took — and eventually find his way across.

  The faint inklings of what he’d initially thought he’d do involved crossing under the cover of night, perhaps even trekking through what people considered no-man’s-land—sheer cliffs and mountains. Among his bolder schemes was constructing a crude air balloon, lifted by his pyromancy, hoping it would carry him over the border to Venthar under the cloak of a moonless night.

  That course of action was somewhat flawed—there was a chance he’d be detected. However, the main point was that if he got to Venthar, Eldeitia wouldn’t pursue him over the border to arrest him, seeing as the two nations were essentially rivals. In the worst case, he’d become a Ventharian captive, and there, he could explain why he abandoned his old allegiances, possibly securing his freedom and eventually, a quiet life learning magic.

  Regardless of how foolish and poorly thought out it was in retrospect, he would have accomplished his goal of helping him cross the border—traversing that boundary was the main crux, as opposed to any need for subtlety.

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  It hinged on a perfectly reasonable assumption: the Ventharians would probably either fight against or hinder any planned border pursuit. Eldeitia, despite being the more powerful nation compared to its magic-embracing counterpart, wouldn’t risk war for a single escapee—it simply held no tactical sense.

  For Selriph Daryth was merely the disowned son of a noble family in the capital—hardly worth going to war over.

  At worst, Eldeitian agents operating far beyond its borders would find ways to assassinate the youth in his life of magical study—a reality he was more than willing to accept in exchange for getting out of the suffocating embrace of the holy empire.

  And so, in theory, this general framework of a plan could have been something he could have adapted into his Nalthrys-bound vector. Cross the border, get captured, and achieve the same outcome.

  However, this hinged on a singular assumption that would not hold true; something Selriph knew the moment he decided in the woodman’s lodge to change his final destination to the nation bordering Eldeitia’s eastern flank.

  Nalthrys would not oppose an Eldeitian party of pursuit.

  Though the nation was the same size as the province he found himself in, it suffered from economic instability, owing a great deal of money to its neighbours and being considerably poorer than Eldeitia—at least if the imperial propaganda contained a shred of truth.

  Which meant that his means of crossing the border had to be discreet, perhaps even to the Nalthrys authorities themselves—there was a risk that Eldeitian sympathisers within Nalthrys itself would turn him over for a handsome sum of coin.

  Is it even worth settling in Nalthrys…? Perhaps I should head further eastwards, maybe all the way to the Imperium of Lakron if need be…

  Selriph gave a weary shake of his head, a wave of fatigue pouring into his mind at the prospect of further traversing a distance that likely spanned four, maybe five times the length that he had already trekked—all that with a black gulper horse and dire wolf in tow.

  No. Further border crossings will be a hassle; there are many states with a web of different allegiances. It’s best to find a mage college in Nalthrys and learn what I can first—even if it’s for a year. I can always run to another nation if the need arises—once I have learnt formal magic.

  Selriph stared back down at the map, withdrawing his mind from the speculative pondering of a future that might not even materialise—he was bound by the constraints of his current predicament.

  Also, I don’t need to worry about that right now; I can’t even cross this ridiculous border.

  His mind drifted to the second option: the one that had held the most viability. As a matter of fact, this was the somewhat loose scheme he had formulated when he first decided to head for the Spire Mountains in the first place.

  The idea was brilliant because it considered the existence of border wards and how to circumvent them, one inspired by a passing mention from the male half of the Ventharian twins, his voice playing like a long forgotten tune, one bearing an exceedingly simple yet effective solution.

  “The Eldeitian bastards aren’t all-seeing—especially not below ground.”

  The implication, and hence the solution, was obvious from his words: burrow under the wards.

  There was just one problem—one represented by the formerly crimson-soaked linen cloth Selriph had spent nearly an hour cleaning.

  Selriph’s earth manipulation remained stubbornly impotent, or more accurately, rebelliously so. If only he could use it at will, he could dig a tunnel wide enough to allow him, Nightwind, and Emmett to go beneath the border wards.

  By this point, the runaway mage had started to wonder if fate was mocking him, just as it had when he was pondering by the river Valdorea during his journey to Fallbrook—the most simple, direct solution, always unfeasible because of circumstance.

  Selriph looked at another question mark notated on his map, labelled with two words: disguise self.

  His Third Option.

  This alternative seemed reasonable, perhaps even plausible. In his recent magical experiments since leaving the eastern bounds of the Greyspire Mountains, Selriph had found a way to bypass the issue of the magical signature from the arcane energies he used to modify his physical appearance.

  The solution was simple: the very skill that Old Man Vick found himself stupefied with: the boy’s dual casting.

  It was unembellished and elegant, almost too much so. The boy could channel the magical disguise in one hand while using his other hand to cast an active form of suppress aura, effectively masking the magical signature. It would be like wearing two layers of skin—one for his arcane disguise and another on top of it, suppressing its magical signature.

  If Selriph could obtain a way to forge papers and create a convincing facade, border officials might permit his entry based on fabricated mercantile grounds.

  Selriph gave a soft, wistful grin on his face—he acknowledged that this was the natural means he’d have used to cross the Greyspire pass had he not got entangled in the debacle with the Ventharian twins.

  And the reason for that lay quietly with him near the campfire: his beast of burden, or rather, companionship.

  Emmett the Direwolf.

  No… that’s not right.

  Selriph looked at the dire wolf, who didn’t stir from Selriph’s internal assignment of blame to him. Perhaps it was trust, or perhaps it was because the wolf couldn’t actually respond and react to the youth’s thoughts.

  For Selriph knew the truth: it wasn’t the oversized canine or jet-black steed’s fault.

  The cursed wards are the issue. Besides, I carry more than enough incriminating items on my person—they would search anyone crossing the border, whether I have a dire wolf or a newborn feline.

  Selriph turned to his side, looking into the bottomless assortment of items in his main rucksack. His eyes focused on the main articles of concern: the former crystal house, Ereknul’s soul, the Tome of Arcane Foundations, his personal scribbles on his magical experiments, and the Mithril ingot.

  It makes no sense. Even if I abandon the Nightwind and Emmett at the border, I’d rather not throw these items to the wayside.

  Selriph stared at the contents of the bag, his eyes drifting across for anything that could grant a solution to his predicament. His eyes drifted to the clear liquid—the invisibility potion.

  The vial that he’d meant to use for his ill-conceived prison break by the woodsman, to rescue Old Man Vick.

  Confound it all… If only the wards didn’t exist, it could have been as simple as splitting the dose between the three of us and crossing over.

  Selriph, his irritation growing, shook his head, staring back at the map.

  His mind, now very much annoyed at each solution bordering on viability, drifted to more adventurous options—all centred around overcoming the wards. Perhaps he’d use his arcane abilities to disarm the wards somehow?

  No, too risky … for all I know, magical interaction with them could set it off.

  Perhaps the solution lay in getting over it? The youth could construct an air balloon large enough to house the three of them. In fact, this made a modicum of sense with his current magical repertoire. A shadow veil would make him all but invisible on a moonless night; his other hand focused on casting a small burst of flame to keep the air balloon airborne.

  No… that’s just impractical. With the materials I could scrounge. Plus, there is no way to make something in a timely manner and keep it hidden. A glider, on the other hand…

  Selriph contemplated the natural product of this thread of erratic thought, and he imagined a glider, powered by his pyromantic propulsion, one that would allow him to bring it well above the wards.

  But that was the problem; only he could manage to get across; the laws of the material plane dictated that a pyromancy-powered glider could not carry both a fully grown horse and a wolf across the border.

  Damn it all, it’s either the wards or the fact that I have the two of them with me.

  Selriph felt the soft brushing of fur against his person as he noticed the shadow cast by the matted grey fur.

  Emmett the dire wolf stared straight into the youth’s ocean-blue eyes. On the surface, ever stoic, but Selriph, for the first time, could read something in the wolf’s expression—or perhaps he was just imagining it.

  Actually, it wasn’t just a figment of his imagination—the wolf’s paw was touching something: Ereknul’s crystal, which had tumbled out of the bag; the wolf’s handiwork.

  Selriph answered the unspoken question, his voice clear and assured.

  “No, whatever that old mage said. I am not abandoning you three. We will get out of Eldeitia, one way or another. You two are too invaluable.” Placing his hand on the dire wolf’s collar, he scratched it reassuringly.

  With its tongue hanging out, the dire wolf seemed pleased by Selriph’s affection, enjoying the scratches on its collar.

  “For now, let’s do what we can: head to Solvelis and give us a week there. If the Shepherd’s Trail or anything that exists can help us, we will find it.”

  Selriph then looked down at the map, to the Caspian Sea, and the port city of Worfil, on the northern shores of the Agurdia Province.

  “In the worst case,” he admitted, “we might have to head further north to Worfil, the port city, and come up with some sort of plan to get the three of us on a boat while staying hidden during the voyage.”

  The dire wolves had tilted in curiosity, mirrored by the perking of the horses' ears in the periphery of Selriph’s vision.

  Selriph stood up, exhaustion evident in his movements, and went to his bedroll, situated beneath a leaf-covered lean-to.

  Lying down, he was struck by a single thought, his hand resting on his scarred cheek.

  Relax…we are close to a solution; as long as I can get over this, whatever is impeding my terramancy… everything will work out…