“Breath Divine, why does everything hurt?” I very slowly open my eyes and have to squint immediately at the morning sun beaming into my front window and bathing the room in its golden glow. After my eyes adjust, I take stock of my body. I flex and unflex my wings as much as I can from this lying position, doing the same for my tail, to confirm my movement isn’t restricted by an injury. I notice my hand has some pretty bad scorching, but my scales and skin seem to have resisted the worst of whatever caused it. Satisfied, I sit up so I can inspect myself more thoroughly and get to piecing together why I am so sore all over.

  A few things immediately stand out to me: my books are stacked everywhere except where they should be, with several open on the table. Other shelves have apparently been emptied of clothes. My spear is nowhere to be seen. “Someone has been in here and turned it over, seemingly living here?” Wary, I very slowly and softly place my feet on the ground, trying to maintain total silence. I fold my wings in tight against my body and look around for something to arm myself with. I find an unfamiliar knife within arm's reach of the bed and reach to grab it. “But…is it unfamiliar? No, I pulled someone out of the river and they had that knife. Lilly was with me.” The events of that day start to come back to me. “Lilly needed to talk, said she saw something interesting in the river that she wanted to talk to…” Now, feeling far more objective, I see another side to Lilly’s story that I hadn’t at the time and feel a little bit angry. “Her little curiosity apparently laid me up for a couple of days, and I’ve been…what? Robbed? Who would even come way out here? Was the guy in the river a trap we both fell for?”

  I shake my head, bringing my focus back to a sharpened point, ready to fight if I have to. I creep to my table, and look at what books are out. Triage and First Aid: Saving the Most With the Least opened up to the section on dealing with someone who is unresponsive, specifically feeding and watering them. I nod to myself, and immediately feel a pang of hunger pain. I relax a little bit, “Unlikely that whoever has been in here meant me harm. I’m still fully dressed, no visible wounds, and aside from being more hungry than I’ve ever been, I’m relatively hale.” I let loose a quiet sigh of relief. Not entirely out of the woods, but the odds are dropping with every hint I find that anything too bad took place.

  Standing straighter, but keeping the knife in my dominant hand, I move towards the doorway and spot something—someone—huddled in a tight bundle of my winter blankets, looking small and vulnerable. I creep closer to get a better look and get a line of sight on the rest of their body and see their other arm, the one not shielded by the blanket at all. I stare for a few moments, trying to resolve what I’m seeing. His arm looks almost human, except carved out of a single piece of amethyst and covered in bone-deep fissures that seem to intermittently leak a purple miasma.

  I feel panic welling up within me fast. I recognize the “material” and the aesthetic. My memory of what put me in bed comes rushing back. Long moments of agony as my vitality and essence were pulled from me by a terrible force. A sensation my parents surely experienced in their last few moments. My breaths come quick and shallow as I try to center myself. “He was guarding the door, and trying to hide his arm from me. He was out in the elements at night making sure I was safe. He doesn’t even have a weapon. Okay… Calm down Ayre, what he did, he did while unconscious. It’s fine. It’s fine.” I feel the tunnel around my vision starting to gradually widen and take a few deep, shuddering, breaths.

  I squat next to his left side, poised to jump away if he attempts to grab me, and gently nudge his shoulder, “Hey, um, Allanius?” I think back to the deeds with that name on both of them, while I watch. His breathing remains even and slow, clearly not reacting. I nudge again, this time a bit more firmly. “Allanius, you’ve gotta wake up. You and I really need to talk.” More waiting. “You must really be out. One more try and then I’ll let him sleep for a bit.” I hold his shoulder and jostle him a few times and speak a good bit louder, “Allanius, it’s time to get up.”

  He groans and slowly looks up, trying to adjust to the sun beaming down on him before drowsily looking over in my direction with heavily lidded, puffy, and bloodshot eyes. I see tiny rivulets that, combined with the rest of his state, definitely make it look like he’d been crying. I decide not to mention that for now. Blearily, he looks at me, rapidly blinking his eyes to clear sleep from them. Unsure of what I should do, I slowly bring my hand into view and give a small wave.

  His eyes lock open in shock, and one of the biggest grins I’ve ever seen spreads across his face. He quickly scrambles, trying to get to his feet. Maintaining my caution, however, I step back a bit, concealing the knife behind my rear thigh. “I can’t believe you’re up! I wasn’t sure you were ever going to wake up! It's been three days, and you've not really shown any sign of changes.” He begins to chatter at me, seeming purely excited to see me alright, and after a few moments I find myself matching his own charming smile. He’s got an infectious air around him, and it’s hard to not get swept up by it. I almost feel a little guilty when I bring up the topic on my mind.

  “Look, I appreciate the enthusiasm, and presumably the help. Your name is Allanius Parchess, right?” He looks at me with confusion spreading across his features. There’s a small bit of hope behind his eyes as he speaks, though.

  “I…don’t know.” He says after a long delay, seemingly searching for words. “Where did that name come from?” The sad and pleading look he gives me is heart-wrenching, “Wait, does that mean you know me?”

  I see him starting to spool up into a series of questions, so I raise a hand to forestall him. “I saw the name on something in one of your pouches and I don’t know you,” He looks like I just kicked over his sand castle, so I follow after a moment with a fragile, “… Sorry.”

  He draws in a deep breath, then lets it out slowly as he sags, “Nah, I should have expected that. It does make sense that that would be my name if it were in my pocket. Was there a note or anything saying something to the effect of “Hey, me. You’re about to lose your memory, so I wrote this note to give you context whenever you come to”?”

  “I can’t say so, no. There were two deeds to a couple of pieces of property, but I didn’t look all that close because I was trying to treat your wounds at the time before I grabbed your hand and-” He flinches like I just struck him and backs up a few steps, angling the arm in question to hide it behind his body and away from me, so I hold up both of my hands to placate him, forgetting I’m carrying a knife. His eyes lock on it with open fear. I quickly toss it aside into the nearby grass, “I wasn’t sure what was going on when I woke up, so I armed myself just in case. I have no intention of harming you, and I hope you feel the same way.”

  For a few moments, he looks like a cornered animal, but he relaxes marginally after a few more deep breaths. It seems we both probably have some problems to deal with here, “I…uh, have a history with that knife. Seeing it raised just reminded me of it. I didn’t mean to react that way.”

  I feel my stomach grumbling, and decide to put an end to this circling of one another so we can actually have a discussion about…well…everything. “Alright, Allanius. I’m beyond starving, and I assume that’s because you couldn’t work out how to feed me without me choking to death. I’ll make us some food. Can you go draw some water from the well while I prepare everything else?”

  “Sure.” He agrees, but then follows up with, “What is a well?”

  What follows is not, as I had hoped, a meal to try to recover more quickly, but was instead a crash course on the concept, purpose, and operation of a well. He seems to take to it very slowly, almost like how I’ve read that newborns behave when faced with something new. Slow, clumsy movements. Lots of uncertainty. After he explains his memory loss - what little he knows about it - I add a mental note to my eternal list to find something in my books about amnesia. It’s very bizarre.

  After the well is handled, which takes around an hour — I take multiple snack breaks — both of us are seated back at my table. We had spent a little while sorting things back where they belonged because I just could not abide things being as messy as they were now that I didn’t feel like my life was in immediate danger. A copper pot sits on the table between us with a pair of bowls and a single cup. I was disappointed to hear my other cup had broken, but couldn’t really be too mad, given that it was broken in the effort of trying to help me not die. I ladle some stew into his bowl and he looks uncomfortable.

  “Look, you mentioned the first time you ate was after you’d had an empty stomach for Gods know how long. It’s been 3 days since I ate, if I just started eating fast I’d probably throw up too. Just take a little sip and see how it sits with you.” I demonstrate by doing the same for myself. I savor it for a few moments, smiling around the wooden spoon. It was simple, ironhide venison chopped and boiled with dried berries served alongside travelers biscuits, but I enjoyed it thoroughly, normally. Today it’s extra tasty because I’m actually starved.

  I watch him as I eat. He is clearly very reticent about it, though he’s very reticent about most things given his condition, so it's not too surprising. But after I’m moving onto my second bowl, he works up the courage to take a sip. I wait with no small amount of anticipation and after a few moments he smiles, apparently enjoying the taste. I feel a swell of pride at that. For the probably thousand or more times that I’ve had this stew, I've never gotten tired of it, but I’ve always wondered how someone else might react to it. It’s nice to see someone else eating my cooking, too. It scratches an itch that I hadn’t really even been aware existed.

  As he takes more sips at the soup, I continue to think on the idea in between savoring spoonfuls. “Lilly has eaten my soup and seemed entirely unimpressed, but she’s used to fae food, so I disregarded her opinion. But this guy likes it, and I like that. Why’s he different? Maybe because I’ve known Lilly for so long.” I spend a little while watching his face as he eats, and I realize that I’ve never really talked to a man my age before. My thoughts continue on for a while, and I realize I’ve been staring while thinking when he looks at me with a question clear in his eyes.

  “Did I do something wrong? You’ve been staring at me for a couple of minutes.” He looks a little uncomfortable on asking.

  “Oh, no. Sorry. I’ve never had a visitor here apart from Lilly, and I just got caught up thinking about it. You’re perfectly fine.”

  He nods and takes another small sip. “Oh, did you read Lilly’s letter when you woke up? She left it for you to explain the…everything.” He gestures over my shoulder to a shelf where things were put away. It is amongst a small pile of similar letters.

  This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

  “Ah, no. I’d put that away, thinking you’d gone through the letters looking for information. One moment.” I twist around, tucking my wings in out of instinct, and grab the letter to read. I carefully slice open the seal on the letter with one of my shorter honed claws and unfold it.

  A few moments into reading it, I feel a blush coming to my face and make a show of holding the letter up closer to my face to hide it. “I’ll kill her this time, I think.” As I finish reading, I notice some more text sparkling into being on the bottom of the letter.

  Did you blush?

  “Yes, I’m definitely killing her. Plucking her wings right off. I’ll feed her to one of the fish she wants to talk to. Yeah. That’s how it’s gonna go.” More words appear.

  Did he see?

  With a drawn out groan of frustration, I lean back in my chair and throw the paper to the other side of the room—or try to. The paper goes a few feet and then falls like a leaf, twisting and gliding to the ground and, gratefully, landing face down.

  “Is everything alright? Your face is looking a bit red.” He asks me with a simple, unaware, sincerity in his voice.

  “Yeah,” I cough awkwardly, trying to will the blood away from my cheeks, “The note just had something of a joke that Lilly likes to subject me to. She’s always had this fixation on me, being a dragon, winding up being wooed by a prince after discovering the princess wasn’t interested in him after being saved.” I shoot him a lopsided grin as I recover my composure, “Naturally, in this story, Lilly is the disinterested princess who has been “captured” by the dragon. It’s something we used to act out when I was quite a bit younger, but she’s never really let it go.” I smile wistfully as I talk, feeling those memories coming back to me, “Much as she might annoy me a little bit sometimes, I don’t think I’ll ever forget those times.”

  When I look up and out of my memories, I see Allanius looking away and idly stirring his soup with an uncomfortable look. He looks up with a weak smile and quietly asks, “How long have you and Lilly known one another? She was really worried after I hurt you and seemed to use an unbelievable amount of some essence to heal you. I didn’t recognize either what she was using or how she did it, but it was clearly a tremendous effort, even though she played it off afterwards as being a simple task.”

  I hesitate a little bit, trying to suss out the reason for his mood change, but after failing to come to a good answer, I reply, “Little under twenty years. She found me about a year after I…started living on my own,” I finish after a pause.

  He smiles a bit more warmly, seemingly missing or not understanding the implication. But seeing him brighten up is good, “Is that why you’re here as the guardian of the shrine? Does Lilly have anything to do with that?”

  “Nah, not directly, she’s sometimes helped me replace some stones every now and again, but n-” I stop abruptly, my brain catching up to the question. “How do you know about my shrine?” I try to think if I’ve mentioned it at any point but can’t recall any times I did, and he'd never mentioned going in the cave.

  He hesitates, “I’m…not sure.” he says, looking down at his right hand after pulling it from around his back where he’d been holding it while at the table. “When I was thinking about what to ask, I just remembered that you’re the guardian of a particular shrine.” He pauses and looks at me, through me.

  The way his eyes defocus almost like he’s looking into the distance through me feels uniquely uncomfortable. But he refocuses after a moment and looks me properly in the eyes, “Okay, that was odd. Maybe related to the amnesia? Thinking on it, I have seen him get that look seemingly at random…”

  “I don’t really know how to explain it. I’m missing countless things, sure, but some things I just know with perfect clarity. I don’t think it’s old memories, unless we’ve met, and you don’t remember. For example, You’re Ayre A’khana, the guardian of the A’khana Shrine, a dragon with a potent enough connection to Ignia that you actually have access to a gate within your soul in addition to having a strong affinity with Ignia and a middling affinity with Aero. I don't know what a lot of that really means, though.” He recites it as if he’s reading out of a book, getting that distant gaze again as he does. He shakes his head to clear it and then shrugs at me with an embarrassed look. “I can tell you some similar information about some other things around here that I’ve…” He trails off, distress plain as day on his face as he looks down to his right hand in his lap.

  “That’s a lot to take in.” I say, looking at him, gobsmacked. It was an eerie feeling hearing myself detailed out loud so objectively by a near-total stranger. “And I imagine it’s a lot for you to take in, too. I want you to know that I’m not bothered or feeling put off. It’s strange, but that sort of information could be gleaned with essence any number of ways. You also might have seen a page or two of my journal while you were rummaging.” I start trying to offer some excuses to try to take some weight from his shoulders that’s so clearly crushing him.

  He doesn’t seem to hear, “Can I try something? I want to try to do…my arm thing, but on purpose. Every other time I’ve used it, it’s been subconscious or unintentional after I’ve lost control of myself.”

  I feel color drain from my face, starting to draw some connections about what he’s thinking for myself. But I make an effort to steel myself and nod with more confidence than I feel. “Just…not me, right?” I struggle to keep a shudder from entering my voice.

  He looks confused for a moment, “No? Never.” he shakes his head vehemently, his dark brown hair tousling back and forth, “Look, I swear I didn’t mean to do that. If there’s something I can do to make it up to you, and it’s within my power, I’ll do it without question. I give you my word on that, if it’s worth anything.” He gives a much more restrained shake of the head, “No, I was going to try to do the thing with the soup. It’s not a single “object” like an ironbark tree or an embergourd.” He looks down at the bowl, “And I’m curious about this specifically because even as I’ve eaten, I don’t feel like I’ve eaten anything at all. Like it just evaporated as soon as I swallowed.” I nod at him, setting him in motion.

  He draws in a breath, holding it for a few seconds, before letting it out slowly. Bringing his right hand up and holding up a single nearly crystalline finger, he very slowly and carefully dips it into the soup. I am expecting a flash, or a release of essence. Maybe an explosion?

  But when exactly “nothing” seems to happen, I find I’m almost disappointed. I hear an odd hissing noise, almost outside my range of hearing, and as I look closer, I realize that something is happening, just not how I expected. At the point of contact where his finger touches the soup, there’s a ripple. Not in the soup, but in the air. The soup around his finger is starting to turn a stark white, almost like milk or a sheet of cotton. I find myself leaning forward to look more closely, but he snaps at me suddenly through gritted teeth. “Please. Back up. Far.” I see he’s clearly concentrating, struggling, even, so I back up as instructed to the doorway of the cabin. He visibly relaxes and after about a minute he drops his right arm limply to his side and slumps with a sigh. He’s giving that distant stare to the former bowl of soup.

  “You okay, Allanius?” I hold my position, uncertain.

  After a moment, he asks, “I think so. “Deer-ey Numnums”?” with a smile that’s equal parts confused and amused. Hearing that name out loud hits me like a sack of bricks. I simply boggle at him for a little while. Apparently thinking I’ve been silent for too long, he adds, “But it wasn’t made by you, apparently. Do you know a Kaelen A’khana?” Sack of bricks number two. “Ayre?”

  “Uh, yeah, Kaelen…was my ‘ma. She made that soup for me a lot growing up. How did you know those names?”

  “It's hard to explain. Whenever I use the arm to do that, I immediately feel sated in terms of hunger and thirst and the more of something I “eat” that way, the more information I know about it. It pops into my head as though I've known it forever. The Kaelen name was who made the dish originally, as near I can tell.”

  I pause for a bit after listening, feeling a bit of emotion rising, “Can you…not tell anyone else the name of it? I don’t understand what you did, but it’s something very personal,” my voice gets smaller and smaller towards the end of the thought, “and it’s kind of embarrassing.”

  He whispers at me from across the room, “By “anyone else”, you mean “Lilly”, right?”, sounding conspiratorial. “My lips are sealed. Promise.”

  I return to sitting across from Allanius, and reach over to grab his bowl to take a look at it, carefully sifting around the white powder with a spare spoon. “I know it sounds silly, but this recipe means a lot to me, even though it’s far from the most impressive thing. So, thanks again.” I give him a weak smile, while trying to think of how to best inspect this powder without any alchemical reagents. Having an idea, “I don't want to spook you, so fair warning that I'm about to use some magic. I want to inspect this powder more thoroughly.”

  He nods as I draw in a breath, beginning to call aero essentia. My breath draws deeper and deeper, far too long to an outside observer, but for every second I pull in air, I feel my vessel filling with the essence rather than my lungs. Though, it comes far slower than I would normally expect. Every mote of essence I call makes me feel a bit lighter, and each bit of essence drawn makes the next come easier: a property unique to aero essentia. Having reached the appropriate concentration of essence, I focus, switching from drawing breath to holding it. Distantly, I see Allanius staring at me with that far-off expression, but I push it away.

  The spellshapes in my mind are fairly complex, so I follow my mental exercises; simple mnemonic tricks to remember the way the magic feels as it takes its form. Tracing both shapes in my mind and pulling the essentia within it, I begin to compress the essence. I feel it nearing completion around the same time that I start to feel an uncomfortable burning in my lungs, so I rush the last stage. I release the spellshape, and allow its compressed form to suffuse my body. Its full effect settles in quickly, working its way through the leyveins that fill my body, up from my lungs and into my eyes and mind.

  [Aerosight]

  [Imbuement | Perception | Aero]

  When I open them again, I see the world through the lens of the essence of air. Everything within my view comes into sharper clarity, though loses some of its color, as some colors are replaced with the silvers and blues of a summer zephyr. I see shapes differently, mostly by the way, that threads of airflow frame every object, watching how everything is wreathed in air. Waves constantly issue from nearby objects, representing every minute movement and sound. A rustle of trees sends a cascade of obscuring ripples over the entire room, and when they have settled, I look down at the bowl of white dust leftover from Allanius’s touch.

  While using this Imbuement, I can’t see all forms of magic, but Aero is a major component of several of the ingredients in the stew, so I am expecting to see some. However, on inspection, it is not only devoid of aero essentia, but seems to be being actively avoided by the ambient essence in the air. Essentia likes to travel from points of high concentration to low concentration, so the behavior is ultimately an anomaly that I’ll need to research. Making mental notes of the way things are interacting with my improved clarity. On a whim, I glance at Allanius directly and narrow my eyes to focus on the minute details of essentia flowing around him and find that I cannot see any sign of him having an essentia vessel, a soul, represented within his torso like all mortals would, according to my books. Normally, any of the kyn should have a small, but visible under any form of aethersight like I'm using, blue-white “container” in their chest near their heart. It's not just how someone stores magic, but it's representative of their soul and what separates kyn from monsters and beasts… The essentia around the room seems to be steadily, but slowly, being drawn into his arm at a trickle. Its pull seems irresistible, even if it’s only slight.

  I begin to expel my Imbuement, having gathered all of the information I can glean with this spell. Being untrained and even less practiced with aero essentia, I’m beginning to feel the effects of aero poisoning, tapping my feet and drumming my fingers on the table—the general restlessness of a leaf riding a great gale settling into my mind. I regret holding the spell as long as I did, as I’ll be feeling this way for hours afterwards, but with a final sigh, the last of my spell dissipates into the air and my sight returns to normal over a few moments.

  “I have some things I need to talk to you about, Allanius—observations I made while I Imbued my sight.”

  I'm planning to release chapters daily for the next couple weeks while I set up patreon and stuff for anyone who's interested(Insane though those people would be).

  I also have been working up a discord, which is free for anyone to join.