Content Warning for book 3:

  SpoilerViolence and death (of people, animals, and many monsters), dealing with PTSD and grief, wartime battlefield conditions, and lots of anxiety mixed with teenage hormones.

  [colpse]

  Things were not progressing well in this reality for Roimeldor. After losing almost half of his forces to the opposition they discovered on the pnet Erythros, he was not happy about some of the resource losses they were receiving on its sister pnet, Makera. Even more frustrating was the fact that the initial Erythros force wasn’t even in a retrievable state. At least if they had died he could have used their tech to reap and reconstruct but not as they now were.

  “I may need to destroy the entire pnet,” he murmured to himself as he stared out the window looking down upon the source of his current concerns: a red desert pnet that cked any moons and was currently shrouded in a haze of pink magic.

  “I’m sorry, sir?” his secondary source of concerns asked in response to his spoken thoughts, and he turned to look at the woman who served as his Second-in-command.

  Asyamil was currently at the max of Rose Caste, or what the locals called “Ruby”, and had been struggling to gain her Epiphanies since he had first met her and brought her into the ranks of the Soul Reapers. How many years that equated to depended on the reality they were in but he hadn’t kept track anyway, not bothered by such a trivial detail.

  “What’s the cost for us to just destroy Erythros?” he reiterated.

  She blinked down at him for a moment before stating, “Sir, I know you want to speed things up but we’ve discussed this at length. We can’t just—”

  “I know, I know,” he interrupted with a roll of his eyes, “We wouldn’t escape the backsh and be able to reap the souls properly but is there nothing we can do about that?” Roimeldor asked, gesturing out the window towards the seemingly cursed pnet, “That was not part of our pns.”

  His Second gnced at the pane of glowing gss in her hands and touched at it while speaking, “You listed the Primal Gates as a viable secondary target for the sowing process and—”

  “To contact any daemons willing to work with us or destroy its connection to this pne, not awaken the damn Primordial sleeping within it!”

  “Sir, with all due respect, we couldn’t have known the Resistance would interfere in the way they did, and you were the one who suggested working with those who were fighting against the local gods to—”

  “I know!” he growled in further frustration, “You don’t have to tell me something I did, Asya. I may be human, but I’m also a Hollyhock Caster, we have perfect memories, remember?”

  She seemed to flush slightly as she continued to stare at the thin gss tech in her hands, “Right. Sorry, sir. Well, we don’t currently have a solution, but our Research Division is working on it. That’s not why I’m here, though.”

  Roimeldor groaned as he walked over to sit at his desk near the center of the small room and gestured in front of a drawer that opened for him to pull out the gss and bottle that waited within.

  “Sir, can Hollyhocks even get intoxicated?” the elf asked him with a raised brow.

  “We can try,” he replied wryly and poured himself a gss.

  The drink was a local concoction that one of their envoys to Makera had brought back along with their information. He was just gd it was his Caste, which the locals called “Obsidian” instead of Hollyhock.

  Roimeldor thought the stone names sounded better than their flowers, but there had definitely been worse naming conventions he had heard based around the colors given to the magic at each Caste level. The most basic realities just called them White, Blue, Green, Red, and Bck but he had always preferred the more fanciful names.

  “I haven’t even told you why I’m here.”

  “You’re here and it’s not about that,” he gestured again to the window with the gss in his hand now filled with the dark purple liquid, “Which means I’m going to need a drink for the next round of bad news you’ve come to deliver. Unless you’ve come to inform me that Haldambar was caught up in that mess down there; in which case, this will be a celebratory drink.”

  She shook her shoulder-length orange hair in disapproval as she reported, “No, sir. He’s currently in the lounge with his mate, I believe.”

  “Of course he is,” the man grumbled, taking a sip of the burning liquid, “I swear they’re all scking now that they have their—”

  “We did manage to detonate a handful of Reality Rifts on Makera,” his Second stated, interrupting his griping to continue the report, “But the reaping was unfruitful. We’ve also gotten word that some of our targeted Reality Rifts on Makera were intercepted and no longer have capture teams avaible. A few were sealed for the foreseeable future but one had our allied forces discovered and captured or killed before they were able to detonate. Luckily, the targeting rituals were already active, so we were able to reap those souls.”

  He contempted his gss for a moment before gncing out the window that was opposite of the one still dispying his previous orbital view of Erythros. The window was actually an enchanted dispy that showed the sister pnet, Makera, which was a mostly blue and green pnet with one blue and one red moon currently orbiting it. This pnet had more magic overall than the previous and wasn’t currently cut off to them. What this currently meant was that Makera was the only viable source of souls at the moment, so he inquired, “Expected reaping from that Rift?”

  “Around a million souls, sir.”

  Roimeldor gave a low whistle, “That would be a decent haul. Looks like getting them to group up with this blood moon thing was efficient at least. Location and Caste?”

  “This one is in the northeastern quadrant in a zone currently reading at low Bluebell.”

  “That shouldn’t be difficult then. Are any of our nearby forces avaible? I’m not keen on using these unreliable allies,” he grumbled, gncing at the rainbow of runes tattooed around his wrist.

  He hadn’t been aware of the quirky magical rule this reality had in pce when he made his vow of alliance, called an Oathbond, with the local group known as the Renseres. After learning it was a universal magic of this particur reality, he was just gd that he hadn’t accidentally promised more than he was capable of delivering.

  “They were the ones that helped us locate this reality in the first pce, sir,” the elf pointed out, “And coordinated said blood moon into being prolonged.”

  “Yes, but I’m still not happy with the circumstances around our deal and now their usefulness seems to have reached its limit. Back to my question,” he commanded, taking another swig from his gss and wishing it was stronger.

  “We have a unit that has been met with unexpectedly strong defenses and no foothold for our… allies. They have reported reaching a stalemate currently in their mid-Ivy zone and the expected reaping from there is only around a hundred thousand as it’s a small isnd city-state.”

  He nodded, gd that once more his Second was dispying that she was on the same page as him, already having answers to the questions she knew he would ask, “We’ll need to send a Breaker potentially to that city, though it’ll risk the Progenitors getting involved so we can wait. You already moved the initial squad to a new staging point?”

  “And gave them a trio of Reality Seeds as a backup,” she replied with a hint of a smirk.

  “Why do you even bother telling me the bad news if you’re already taking care of it?”

  “So that you believe you’re actually the one steering this ship, Commander,” Asyamil replied with her usual quip and he gave a weary smile to her in return. The exhaustion was apparent in his eyes despite his immortality, and she finally met his gaze as she said consolingly, “Just one more left, sir.”

  “Just one more and I’ll gdly let you publicly steer us instead,” he replied and leaned back in his seat.

  “No, thank you, sir,” she retorted and then added, “There is one more note of concern I feel… prudent to report.”

  He simply nodded for her to continue and she hesitated before saying, “Some of our contacts in the southwestern quadrant have reported interference from a person that seems extremely focused on intercepting our people… an Ivy Caste Abyssal Dragoon.”

  Roimeldor’s head snapped up to stare at Asyamil and he crified, “The one from Erythros? They escaped the Primordial?”

  “It appears so…”

  The gss in his hand shattered as he stood and growled, “Find them. If they know how to escape that curse, then they have information we need.”

  “Sir, capture will likely be much more costly than—”

  “That’s a price I’m willing to pay to get the souls of our people back first. Then we can reap theirs, along with the rest on these pnets. Now bring me that jumped-up Ivy Caster!”

  “Soooo… were you serious about that grounding?” Phoenix asked a bit nervously as she gnced up at Paul who had finally managed to shoo her party out of his home. He was leading her toward his study, despite her knowing the way, and she assumed it was to talk privately.

  Gold eyes gnced back at her as the corner of his mouth twitched and he replied, “Well, seeing as we haven’t signed the papers yet to make things official, I don’t think I can legally enforce that.”

  “You’re the strongest Caster in like a bajillion miles, plus a Padin of the Avenger, I doubt legal actually matters to you at the moment,” she pointed out with a roll of her eyes.

  He raised a brow at her as he opened the door to his study for her to enter ahead of him and asked, “Are you arguing for or against the grounding?”

  She paused for a moment on her way towards her usual seat, mentally repying her words before slowly admitting, “Good point. Ignore me, I’m still recovering from being totally awesome and taking out that Emerald Caster.”

  “Pretty sure it was my Execute ability that actually took her out and you died, remember?” he countered after snapping the door to his secured room shut and making his way to the opposite side of the desk from her.

  “Semantics,” she waved a dismissive hand in the air at those minor details.

  “Though, you did win by stealing all the loot,” he said with a ft look.

  “Uh… Did I mention I have presents for you?” she replied with a grin, recognizing that he had moved from scolding to teasing.

  Paul proved her right the next moment when he returned her smile, “Let me guess, it’s Emerald Caste and you can’t use it?”

  “It’s definitely Emerald Caste and there’s no way I can possibly use it,” she confirmed, then they both broke out into ughter and she brought forth the items from her collection and pced them on the desk between them.

  He gred briefly at the Robes of the Purifier and Pure Wrap and stated, “Go ahead and sell those. I’m sure there’s a tinker or tailor out there that can repurpose those into something more useful and ideally not bearing the Purifier’s markings.”

  Then he picked up the Wings of Zeal and seemed to stare at it for a moment and she brought out her book to dispy the information for the item, asking, “What’s an Augment exactly? I can kinda guess from context but wanted to make sure I’m assuming right.”

  “You probably are assuming correctly,” her mentor stated before expounding, “They’re basically magic items you directly bond to your body. Not many allow for separation after the fact as this one states. Usually, they get burned off in the process of ascending to the next Caste.”

  “Like tattoos?” she crified.

  “Exactly so,” he confirmed with a nod, “Just like tattoos, they normally can’t increase in Caste with you; so the body rejects them and they get purged during the transition. They’re usually fairly nice to have, though. Working with the body more directly than a magic item but you lose the benefit of swapping them out like you can with gear.”

  “So if I want my own wings, I’ll need to be choosy about which kind ‘cause I can’t just swap them out with a better pair I find ter?”

  Paul chuckled, “Most magical flight abilities don’t happen until ter Castes but you might be able to find a glider or something. There’s a wide variety of Augments out there. Spendy, especially since they’re basically long-sting consumables, but that’s actually one of the perks that can come with being part of my House.”

  It was her turn to raise a brow at him, “Are you trying to bribe me into signing those papers?”

  He ughed at that, “I’m just pointing out that we can get you some items if you want them. I already consider you part of my House just by being my Protégé and will see you taken care of. I just hope that your protests of my spending money on you will lessen once you’re seen as a Daughter of House Waynd instead of an apprentice.”

  She squirmed uncomfortably in her seat as the humor died down, “I just… my mom had to pay so much for my hospital care and she worked so much to take care of me… I don’t want to be a burden to you too.”

  Paul leaned forward slightly as he said, “Phoenix, I know I’ve told you this before, but you’re not a burden. It’s my honor, as well as my duty, to assist you in growing and cultivating your skills. I want to help you and I’m more than willing to pay for some equipment or augments or tattoos if it means keeping you and the others safe and happy.”

  “Kinda hard to be happy when there’s crazy zealots, murderous nobles, chaotic evil invaders, and monsters swarming the tundra every night,” she said with a grimace.

  “I know it’s been a lot of doom and gloom but I want you to remember that there have also been many happy times already. Those were almost non-existent for me in the st six years until you dropped into my life,” he gave her a warm smile, “You gave me that happiness and I just want to help return a bit of it.”

  She flushed slightly at the praise and murmured, “You’ve made me happy too,” before she would let the emotions overwhelm her, she sat up a bit straighter and cleared her throat, “Maybe, instead of buying me things, you could show me how to do some more rituals? Or we could go somewhere? Does Tulimeir have a museum? There’s still a lot I have to learn.”

  Paul grinned at her and asked, “Actually, how much have you learned about flowers?”

  “Flowers?” she repeated.

  He lifted a green leather book embzoned with the symbol of a sword wrapped by what looked somewhat like a thorned rose and said, “The Waynd House is a bit partial to them.”

  She ughed, “Are we going to the Cultivator’s Citadel then?”

  “No,” her mentor replied with a smirk, “We’re going to the roof.”