Chapter 1
Green light forced its way under his eyelids, pulling him out of the blackness together with the sharpness that dug into his side. Something cold touched his nose.
He pried his eyes open, blinking in the bright light before his gaze focused on small brown irises framed with dark fur staring at him. A rabbit. What was a rabbit doing in The Realm of Air?
His eyes went past the rabbit to the trees and bushes behind it, the strong scent of the forest litter in the air. There was no forest in The Realm of Air either, well, not one that untamed and wild-looking one. Which meant…
He jumped up, swaying from the dizziness. He leaned on the trunk of the tree nearby, his icy blue eyes blinking. “Where am I?” Then, frowning, he asked. “Who am I?”
The rabbit ran a distance away, then faced him. It lifted onto its back legs and watched him.
“I am…” The knowledge of who he was just on the tip of his tongue. “I am… I’m THE LORD OF STORM,” his voice boomed through the forest, frightening the birds perched in the treetops so that they lifted, looking like a moving dark cloud. His long white hair and the white silk of his long sleeves lifted as if he were hit with a blast of wind, while power brimmed beneath his skin; he could feel it like pricks of pins.
The rabbit wheeled around and fled.
Okay, so he knew who he was: Oriel Leonem Albus, the Lord of Storm, the second child of the Third Prince of Heaven’s Peak of East Heaven, the Realm of Air. Now, because of the surrounding forest, it wasn’t hard to guess where he was: in the Realm of Earth. He looked around, a scowl on his face. Where was Cat?
“Cat?”
There was no reply.
And where was Jurij? As his always trying to please protégé, he should be there by his side. “Jurij!”
There was no reply.
His eyes narrowed. It looked like he would have to take care of everything himself, as always. He imagined himself as a white dove, his arms turning into wings and feathers covering his body. His body started to change, but then in the next moment, it settled back into his human form.
His shifting didn’t work. Why didn’t it work? Because he was in the Realm of Earth?
He had been in the Realm of Earth many times, and he never had problems with shifting.
What about magic?
He spread out his arms and imagined symbols for weightlessness on his body.
He started to lift, only to settle back on the ground in the next second.
Okay, let’s try again, this time in the way somebody new to magic would do. He wrote a sequence of symbols on the ground to build a vessel to bring him to the nearest capital city, where he could hire the winged wagon to bring him back to his home. The leaves, grass, and branches came from all directions, building a small boat with wings. When it was built, he swayed his body to see if the structure was sturdy enough. It was. He wrote a symbol for ascend on it.
The boat didn’t lift. It just blew apart into the pile beneath him, including the bench he’d been sitting on. He landed hard on his ass.
He stared at the branches and leaves, frowning as he absently rubbed his sore backside. He wasn’t just good at using magic; he was the Ultimate Mage and an Elemental. He was known in the Realm of Air as one of the best magic practitioners, with the ability to use a 7th level of magic, who could manipulate magic energy with only a thought, which was just a level below Dragonbloods, the reason Jurij’s father had used all the means available to him to force him to become Jurij’s mentor.
Had he run out of magic energy? With his thumbs, he rubbed the fingers, feeling the tingle of magic energy under his touch, which spread through his whole body. Nope, he had enough of it. And it worked, but at the last moment, it was like something prevented it from completing the last step.
He took a deep breath, pulled himself into a squatting position as he wrote the same symbols on the ground, focusing on imagining the boat with wings.
Like the last time the boat was built, but when he wrote a symbol for ascend on it, it shattered.
“Never mind!” There were other ways to get home. Like with the Reflections Department’s Pegasus that was used by the field teams. Only they, just like Cat and Jurij, refused to answer his call. He was the Lord of Storm from Heaven’s Peak and the head of the Department of World of Reflection; they should have appeared at his first call.
“Storm and thunder.” Oriel could feel his inner power brewing beneath his skin. He allowed irritation to wash over him as he stomped the ground, the dry leaves crunching under the thuds of his slippers. His eyes zoomed in on the slippers.
Why was he wearing slippers?
He only wore those inside his manor. He furrowed his eyebrows, thinking. How did he get here? The last thing he was doing… He’d been on his way to Heaven’s Peak branch of the Reflection Department. The last thing he could remember was him making a step towards his changing room to change his attire into his official clothes. And then he was here, lying on the ground.
Why? The only time something similar happened to him was when he went through the Ascension of White Light, but he had been informed about the trail beforehand, and it was the only trail the Heaveners Mage from Heaven’s Peak had to overtake to graduate and to get a practising licence. So why was he here, in the Earth Realm, unable to go home? Could it be because his mother was an Earthling, a noble coming from the Kingdom of Vales’s larger and oldest shifter community, the reason he and his two siblings could shift into animals? Was that why he was here? To go through her tribe’s trial? But did Earthlings even have ascends and trials? And even if they did, that would only explain why he couldn’t return home, but not why he didn’t know about it.
He looked up at the sky and the white, fluffy clouds before he fixed his gaze forward at the path that he saw between the trees. He made a step towards it. “Auch.”
He, careful not to add additional tension to his scalp, turned around and glared at the branch that held the strand of silver, a part of his hair accessories, mingled with a strand of his hair imprisoned. He grabbed the tassels of his hair and tugged on them.
The oak tree refused to release it.
“Let go of it.” He pulled harder. The hair ripped, and pain pierced his skull. His inner power pricked the inside of his skin. He narrowed his eyes at the tree before him, putting no power into the movement, kicked it. Twice, and then for good measure once again.
“What’s the meaning of this?” a deep voice said. The branches of the tree moved, and the tree bent towards Oriel as the voice coming from the tree trunk repeated, “What’s the meaning of this?”
A waretree. Weren’t those old forest deities extinct? Oriel lifted one of his perfect eyebrows and pointed at the long strands of silver hanging off a branch. “Self-defence.”
The branch with strands of silver and hair lifted.
“Self-defence,” Oriel repeated, giving the tree a do-you-dare-to-doubt-my-words look.
The leaves fell off as the tree stretched, and then the branches thinned, and the tree’s size reduced and changed into a man, a tall, buff man like the oak tree that he had been just a second before. The man hummed, not sounding too convinced. He took the hair accessories’ silver strands and put them into the inside pocket of his vest.
Oriel narrowed his eyes at the man. Why would he store the thread of his hair accessory? Oh, yeah, silver. He could demand it back, and since he was well-versed in the art of combat, he was confident that he would best the man even though he was twice his size. But he could demand something useful in return. “I assume you’ll, in exchange for the thread your branch has so violently torn from my head, direct me to the nearest town with a post office.”
“If you give me another one of the silver threads, I’ll take you there.”
For a second, Oriel’s eyes scrutinised the waretree before he pulled a strand of the ornament, gave it to the man, and waved at the path. “Lead the way.”
The man stored it before he walked to the path, glancing over his shoulder at him, probably to make sure he was following him, which Oriel did. Their journey through the forest passed in silence, broken only by hums and small yelps Oriel emitted every time his long hair caught in branches and bushes. That was not something that happened in the Realm of Air, and to prevent it from happening further, Oriel gathered his hair and hid it under the collar of his white robe, which wasn’t so white anymore, and there were even some rips in the fabric of the long, floating sleeves and the hem.
They reached a clearing with a view of the valley and houses nestled there. It looked small, more like a village than a town. Only the Central Continent’s larger cities offered scheduled transportation with winged carriages and wagons, everywhere else, one had to go to the post office and submitted a request to hire one, which was not only more expensive but also involved more bureaucracy and as a result required more time, or buy or rent a broomstick or a flying carpet – though those weren’t available everywhere.
“That’s as far as I go,” the man said. He glanced at Oriel, frowning. “You’re an Airor.”
“What gives it away?” Oriel tilted his head, giving the man his ‘duh’ expression.
The man rolled his eyes. “I suggest you do something about your hair decoration. Or otherwise you’ll soon lose it.”
The man was right. “I will. Thank you for the advice.”
“You, Airors, are so weird.”
“Don’t I know it.” Oriel smiled. “You meet many of them?”
“Enough,” the man grumbled out, turned, and left without saying goodbye.
Where are all the waretrees such grouches? Oriel arched his eyebrow as he watched the man until he disappeared between the trees. He turned forward, his gaze fixed on the village before him. With his thumbs, he rubbed his fingers, trying to judge how much magic energy he had. Enough.
He removed the silver hairpins from his hair, rolling the long threads with chiming ornaments attached to the hairpins around them before he put them into his pockets. Then he took his hair, braided it, and then pushed it under his collar. He readjusted the white robe he wore over white pants and white tunic and straightened the belt holding the robe’s edges together before he strode towards the path that led to the village and followed it, past the empty fields and the sign with the village’s name and warning that no shifters in animal form were allowed into the village.
The village was small, with one main street and a square with a market before an obelisk and with stone buildings that looked sturdy and well-maintained. People in brown, grey, and green simple-looking clothes made of robust fabric rushed past him, giving him curious glances. Some of them wore brown lederhosen with suspenders, which made Oriel assume he was in the Central Continent’s country named Corfranum. There was a small region in the Kingdom of Vales in which they wore those too, but without embossed embroidery at the front, he could see here, and without the narrow leather plaque, part of the suspenders that ran across the chest.
His eyes glanced over the buildings surrounding the square, looking for the statue of a pigeon that all post offices in all the realms had over their entrances. He found it on the small building across the street. He waited for the horse pulling the wagon to pass, then walked to the other side and strode into the post office through the door under the arch with a bird above it.
An old lady sat behind the counter, her hair in a messy bun that reminded him of bird’s nests. Behind her were birds, mostly pigeons and crows, perched on branches growing out of the wall.
“Good day,” Oriel greeted her, giving her a pleasant smile, since it never hurt to be nice and polite, something his mother had taught him. Since he didn’t see any corners with broomsticks or flying carpets on sale, he said, “I would like to order a ride to the East Heaven.”
The woman rose and grabbed a round, thin metal object from a small pocket of her bodice, the Pass Scanner, to scan his travelling permits, most likely. Not that he needed those. Since he was an Airor, the access to the Realm of Air was his human right, and as an employee of the Department for World of Reflection, his position gave him unlimited access to all the realms. Well, except to the Realm of Fire, but nobody, except a single-digit number of selected few, could enter it freely.
Oriel stretched out his left hand and pulled up his sleeve to expose the inside of his wrist, where an orb with symbols was inked.
She positioned the Pass over his wrist.
Light flashed through the thin metal and wrote words over its surface; Oriel’s title and the address of his residence in the upper part followed below by: “Travel permission to the Realm of Earth granted.”
Of course, it was granted. He was here, wasn’t he?
The woman read out loud the word that appeared in the lower corner of the disk. “Return to the Realm of Air denied.”
Wait, what? Oriel read the words on the Pass. He frowned, then lifted his gaze to the woman’s.
Without even a flinch, she stored the Pass into her pocket. “It seems I’m unable to help you with that. Is there anything else I can do for you?”
“Denied?” Oriel silently mouthed the word. No wonder none of his attempts to return home on his own worked. Somebody went to the trouble to input his new status for travelling into The Orb of Seals, and the system put a blockade on his magic and shifting abilities that would enable his return home, a blockade he, even though he was an Ultimate, couldn’t break. The Orb, which was actually a very complex set of magical treasures and arrays made of spells and symbols, was set by the Dragonbloods after the War of Greed, to prevent the Realmers from entering the other realms uninvited. Even though, through the millennia, Realmers studied it closely and took great care of its maintenance, fixing every curve or line that faded and patched any small furrow, slit, or hole that appeared on the magical treasures set in the grooves of the rods that formed the system’s large dome around which the InterCity was built, nobody knew exactly how the thing worked.
His gaze went to the price list written on the counter and the line that read: Delivery to the Air, Water, or Fire Realms: 7 sterling.
He didn’t have any money, but he had silver threads he could use. Even though… “I would like to send a message collect to the Realm of Air.”
“We don’t do that.”
Oriel pointed at the line with the message collect. “It says here that you can send a message collect.”
“Only for locals.” The lady tapped on the line under the one Oriel pointed at. “A one-way message to the Realm of Air: 7 sterling.”
He should have picked up some earth outside and, from it and silver threads, made coins. Well, he could still do that. From the pocket of his tunic, Oriel took one of the silver threads and put it on the counter. “I believe this should be enough.”
The lady glanced at the silver before she lifted her eyes to his. “No. But two will be enough.”
The thread was pure silver, valuable at over five sterling. “Do I look stupid?”
“No, you look like an entitled, spoiled rich princess.”
Which he sort of was. Oriel put another thread on the counter. “Together, they were worth over ten sterling.”
The woman’s hand covered the threads and pulled them towards her. She glanced over her shoulder. “Martin. We have a client.”
A crow lifted from the branch and flew to the counter.
She nodded at Oriel.
“My change.”
“Yeah, yeah.” She gave him three coins, a scrap of paper, and a pencil, then moved away.
Oriel scribbled a brief message to Cat to arrange his permits and get him, rolled the paper into a small scroll and told the crow the address and described Cat.
The bird grabbed the small scroll and flew out through the line under the ceiling.
Oriel leaned with his side on the counter, tapping his hand against the wooden surface. It shouldn’t take more than fifteen minutes for the crow to arrive at Heaven’s Peak, another five to ten to find Cat, which meant that it would take a few hours for him to be back home, where he planned to spoil himself with a cup of cherry blossom tea and a matcha cake, and put this unpleasant experience behind him.
He glanced down at the dirt marring the torn hem of his robe, pressing his lips together. His clothes were torn and dirty, and his hair pulled. So undignified. He could feel the start of a prick beneath his skin. His workout room would come in really handy. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and imagined the slightly bitter taste of the matcha cake on his tongue.
Somebody behind him cleared their throat.
Oriel opened his eyes and glanced behind him to see a man. He moved aside and then, after deciding it would be better to wait outside, left the post office. His eyes went over the people with baskets in their hands, walking among the stalls in the market, to land on the inn nearby and its outside tables occupied with what looked like families. He could feel people’s curious gazes on him. With his robe and tunic made of white silk with edges decorated with delicate waves and clouds, he among the people dressed in simple clothes made mostly out of robust-looking linen and cotton, stuck out like a tree in a meadow.
The scent of the fresh bread teased his nose. His eyes stopped on what looked like a small bakery. He walked to it and glanced at its display window, monitoring the post office.
He passed the obelisk, his eyes landing on the man cleaning graffiti on it. The upper part was blurred, with the words “Long live the Prince Regent” written in thick red letters under it.
That’s weird, Oriel thought. The Prince Regent had abdicated years ago. So why was his name back on the walls?
To waste time, he then moved to the stalls, looking at their wares while he continued to cast glances at the post office. According to the clock on the town hall, an hour passed, and there was still no Cat.
Sick of strolling around, Oriel intended to go to the post office, ready to send another message, this one with a few choice words in all caps, when a shadow veiled him. He looked up to see a dove with a small canvas backpack. It flew right up to him, and when it was just over his head, it released the backpack. Oriel caught it.
The dove made a U-turn and flew away.
