TBATE: Corvis Eralith

Grey

The Disciplinary Committee uniform felt like a lead shroud. Every step through the echoing Xyrus corridors was an exercise in grinding frustration, the crisp black fabric a mockery of the chaos churning inside me.

The weight wasn't just wool and insignia; it was the crushing awareness of every wasted second. Corvis was out there, exposed, hunted by his own people, while Agrona's shadow stretched longer over Dicathen. Every tick of the academy clock was a hammer blow against my control.

The urge to simply leave—to tear through the halls, burst through the crystalline walls, and scour the Beast Glades, the mountains, anywhere—was a physical ache, a scream trapped behind clenched teeth. Sylvie's small claws tightened almost imperceptibly on my shoulder, a silent anchor.

I should be searching. Not walking to Team-Fighting Mechanics.

But Tessia's words, sharp with fear, echoed: They'll take you both back to Alacrya. The image—Corvis shackled, Sylvie ripped from me, dragged back into the nightmare I had fled—was a cold blade twisting in my gut. It was the only thing stronger than the compulsion to run. That, and the unsettling encounter with Windsom.

The memory of the asura's visit was a fresh bruise. His arrival had been seamless, appearing from an alley of Xyrus City as if stepping through a curtain, an aura of ancient power held just beneath a veneer of calm authority.

"Windsom," he had introduced himself, his voice smooth as oiled stone. "Your friend, Prince Corvis Eralith, is not in immediate danger. My people are aware of his location. He has proven… useful. Should the worst occur, we would intervene." Useful. The word tasted like ash. Just another pawn in the games of beings who saw centuries as moments. His assurance wasn't comfort; it was a leash. And then the threat, delivered with chilling nonchalance: "Collaborate, Grey, and there will be no need for unpleasantness… like separating you from Lady Sylvie."

Bastards. The rage flared white-hot behind my eyes. Manipulative bastards. Agrona had discarded Sylvia. Kezess and his ilk would discard Corvis, discard us, the moment we ceased to fit their calculations. Windsom's presence wasn't salvation; it was a reminder that we were caught between two monstrous powers, both eager to use us up. Sylvie's soft mental voice pierced the fury.

'Papa?' Her concern was a warm, worried pulse through our bond, mirroring the tension coiling in my muscles. She felt the inferno beneath my icy exterior.

Sorry, Sylv, I sent back, forcing my breathing to steady. The hand that rose to gently scratch the soft fur at the base of her skull trembled only slightly. I let myself go. My thumb traced the curve of her small head, the simple contact a tether to reality. Sorry.

'I am worried too, Papa,' she nuzzled into the side of my face, her small body radiating warmth against my cheek. 'But you and Mama will stop fighting, right?'

Fighting? Me and Tessia aren't fighting, I reassured her, the lie tasting bitter. The distance between us wasn't hostility; it was the chasm carved by shared, helpless dread. Tessia drowning in duty and guilt, me simmering with frustrated power and the ghosts of Alacrya. We are just… on edge. The understatement was vast. We were walking fault lines, holding back tremors that threatened to shatter everything.

Rounding a corner towards Professor Glory's classroom, I spotted Curtis Glayder. His World Lion bond, Grawder, padded beside him, a massive, regal presence that still carried the phantom sting of humiliation from Professor Glory's mock battle—the battle where Corvis had effortlessly used Grawder as living artillery against me.

Curtis himself looked weary, the usual princely confidence replaced by a grim watchfulness. Since the proclamation, the air in Xyrus crackled with tension, a powder keg constantly on the verge of ignition.

The Disciplinary Committee's workload had tripled—breaking up fights sparked by radical students, emboldened by Corvis's fugitive status and the revelation of his corelessness, spewing venom about 'elven corruption' that was soon accompanied by violence even against the dwarven students. I knew Draneeve's poison was at work, weaving discord, but Cynthia hadn't flushed him out yet.

"Grey!" Curtis called, his voice lacking its usual energy. We'd spent hours training together in the DC, a forced camaraderie forged in the crucible of maintaining order. He was… tolerable. Perhaps the closest thing to a friend I allowed here beside Tessia and Corvis.

"Curtis," I acknowledged, my tone flat, devoid of the false warmth others expected. My gaze flickered over him, assessing, finding only shared exhaustion.

"How are you doing?" he asked, the question heavy with unspoken understanding. He knew. He saw the strain, the barely leashed violence beneath the surface. He had seen me break up fights where the insults against Corvis, against elves, had turned my vision red.

"I am doing fine," I replied, the words automatic, hollow. Fine was a continent away. Fine was searching for Corvis. Fine was burying Dawn's Ballad in Agrona's throat.

Sylvie chose that moment to launch herself from my shoulder with a chirp, landing squarely on Grawder's broad head. The mighty World Lion froze, utterly bewildered, as Sylvie planted her tiny paws triumphantly, a vulpine smirk on her face. Grawder emitted a low, confused rumble, but didn't dare shake her off. Curtis managed a faint, strained smile at the absurdity.

We fell into step towards the classroom. The relative quiet shattered.

"Hi Grey! Still searching for that manaless mongrel you call a friend?"

Lucas Wykes. His voice, dripping with smug malice, cut through the corridor's murmur like a rusty blade. He leaned against a pillar, flanked by his usual sycophants, his expression one of arrogant disdain.

Since the proclamation, he had become the loudest voice preaching about 'favoritism' and unworthy influence, conveniently ignoring the mountain of elixirs and artifacts propping up his own mediocre abilities.

He was everything I despised: weak, entitled, using the chaos to spew his venom, hiding behind his family name like a coward behind a shield. A fly. A buzzing, irritating fly that needed swatting.

The rage didn't flare; it detonated. It was a geyser of pure, incandescent fury—the helplessness of Corvis's plight, Windsom's threats, the constant tension, the sheer audacity of this pathetic worm daring to insult the only person in this world Agrona trapped me in besides Tessia and Sylvie I had allowed close.

My vision narrowed to Lucas's sneering face. My hand twitched, mana surging instinctively to my fingertips, a crackle of raw power I barely contained. The air around me seemed to thicken, grow cold. I took half a step forward.

Curtis's hand clamped down on my forearm like a vise. "Grey," he hissed, low and urgent, his eyes wide with alarm. "Calm down." His grip was firm, anchoring. The rational part of my brain, the cold strategist forged in Alacrya's pits, the mind who once was a king, slammed back into control. Consequences. Exposure. Agrona. Curtis was right.

This petty insect wasn't worth jeopardizing everything. Not yet.

Lucas, mistaking my stillness for weakness, pushed harder. "Yeah, Grey! Run back to your elf princess with your tail between your legs!"

The insult to Tessia was another spark on tinder. The voice in my head, the one honed by years of survival and violence in both of my lives, screamed: silence him.

Permanently. I felt the phantom weight of a blade in my hand, already figuring Dawn's Ballad clenched in my gril and the imagined crunch of bone. But Curtis's hand remained, a grounding point. Sylvie's worried chirp from Grawder's head was a tiny bell cutting through the red haze.

I met Lucas's gaze, letting him see the absolute, frozen void in my eyes—a promise, not a retreat. I didn't speak. I didn't move. I simply looked at him, letting the killing intent I usually kept locked down radiate out in a chilling wave.

His sneer faltered. The color drained from his face. He took an involuntary step back, bumping into his cronies. The corridor fell utterly silent. Then, without a word, I turned away from the buzzing fly, Curtis releasing my arm as we continued towards the classroom.

The rage didn't dissipate; it settled, compressed into a diamond-hard core of resolve in my chest, colder and more dangerous than any outburst. One day, the fly would meet the swatter.

But I needed to remain sane, the promise I made Sylvia... I couldn't break it now. I had to be a better person, I didn't want to become King Grey again.

Corvis Eralith

The weight of five days' travel settled deep into my bones as I finally shoved aside the mimetic carpet sealing the grotto's entrance.

The biting cold of the Grand Mountain peak, usually a bracing shock, felt like a welcome embrace compared to the weary slog through foothills and forests.

I stumbled into the familiar gloom of my workshop, the scent of ozone, pine resin, and cold stone a bittersweet homecoming. Berna lumbered in behind me, dropping the massive, dark-brown carapace of the Swarm Leader with a resonant thud that echoed in the cavernous space. Dust motes danced in the weak shafts of afternoon light filtering through the opening.

"A way to travel faster," I groaned, collapsing backwards, "would work actual miracles." The words were muffled by the plush wool of the armchair I had painstakingly crafted many days ago—pine frame hauled from the valley below, stuffing from the surprisingly soft fleece of docile Rock Sheep mana beasts.

Its comfort was a stark, almost mocking contrast to the brutal journey and the dungeon fight. The cold stone of the grotto seemed to seep into my very marrow, despite the chair's warmth.

Romulos materialized, sitting precariously on the edge of my main workbench, examining a chisel with spectral disinterest. "The only practical way to alleviate your pedestrian woes," he drawled, "would be a Tempus Warp anchored directly to this… charming hovel." He gestured vaguely around the grotto, his tone implying he found it beneath his celestial dignity, even as a ghost—although, deep down, I knew he liked it.

I tilted my head back, staring up at the ancient pine tree stubbornly growing from the centre of the grotto, its foliage acting as a thermal shield against the cold. Tempus Warp. The name alone conjured images of impossible distances bridged in an instant.

A Wraith's accolade. Agrona's gift to his most lethal tools—his own private army—allowing them to step from Alacrya to Dicathen like crossing a room. The sheer audacity of the power, the terrifying convenience of it, was a physical ache. To replicate even a fraction of that… to step from the heart of the Beast Glades back to this workshop in a single breath…

"Can't you replicate the Djinn's runes?" Romulos pressed, abandoning the chisel to float nearer, his spectral form casting no shadow on the stone floor. "With that understanding, a localized Tempus Warp would be child's play." His voice held that infuriating blend of genuine insight and casual arrogance.

"I could," I admitted, the frustration sharpening my tone. I flexed my left hand, the Falling Down tattoo a faint, raised pattern on my skin. "But first, I would need Beyond the Meta to perceive aether and Against the Tragedy to mold it. And for that..." I trailed off, the impossibility heavy in the air. "...I'd need another dragon core. Or something equally obscenely potent."

Sylvie's scales had been a key, unlocking the initial Beyodn the Veil, but peering into the fabric of aether itself? That demanded power on a different scale entirely. Power I couldn't just harvest.

"You are depressingly correct," Romulos sighed, the sound like dry leaves skittering across stone. "And killing Windsom remains, alas, a delightful fantasy." He said it with the casualness of someone discussing the weather.

The sudden shift made me blink. "Do you hate Windsom that much?" The intensity of his offhand remark felt out of place, even for him.

Romulos's spectral form stilled. "His death," he stated, his voice losing its usual mocking lilt, gaining a cold, razor-edge precision, "would be the singularly most useful contribution he could ever make to my existence. If it meant facilitating your deeper grasp of Meta-awareness." There was no humor in it. Only a chilling, absolute certainty.

"How… sweet of you," I managed, the jest falling flat even to my own ears.

"Sure," he snapped back, the familiar, predatory lightness instantly returning, though it felt brittle now. "And if you simply joined Dad, you wouldn't even have to worry ab—"

"Enough." The word cracked out, sharper than I intended, echoing slightly in the grotto. Berna lifted her head, green eyes glinting in the dim light. "That 'joke,' Romulos, stopped being remotely amusing weeks ago."

I held his gaze, the weight of his constant pressure, the seductive danger of his offers, suddenly feeling suffocating. I knew it wasn't a joke to him. It was his game.

"Fine," he conceded, the word clipped, a flicker of something unreadable—annoyance? disappointment?—in his shadowed eyes before he waved a dismissive hand. "So, what's the next thrilling installment in the Chronicles of the Wanted Prince? Because I must confess, I've always harbored a rather keen desire to visit the Relictombs. Tragically, being an asura, I am… persona non grata. So..." He let the implication hang, a sly, knowing look on his face.

"And how, precisely, do you propose I access the Relictombs?" I countered, pushing myself upright in the chair, the weariness momentarily forgotten under a surge of wary skepticism. "The known accesses in Dicathen are sealed, disabled, or buried. And it's not like I could wield aether directly anyway."

"There are accesses," Romulos insisted, leaning forward, his spectral form seeming to intensify. "And you know them. Think of the artifacts you could forge there, Corvis. Not for you as your body isn't even able to resist mana," he added quickly, seeing my expression, "but for your tools. Your weapons. The Sanctuary… or perhaps The Hearth?" He named the ancient Asclepius refuge, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper.

The potential was staggering—ancient asuran and djinn knowledge, sanctuary, power. But the risk… Kezess would see it as the ultimate betrayal.

"While I'd love to see dear Uncle Mordain," Romulos continued, his tone shifting back to flippant, though his eyes remained sharp, "the former option is significantly less… politically volatile. For now."

"It's too soon," I stated firmly, my gaze drifting back to the massive Hulk Beetle carapace lying near Berna. The immediate, tangible task anchored me. "First, the exoform. Then we can discuss potentially suicidal field trips to ancient death labyrinths." I fixed him with a hard look. "Which I still suspect is merely your latest elaborate scheme to nudge me closer to Agrona."

Romulos threw his spectral head back and laughed, the sound echoing strangely in the stone chamber. "Nonsense, dear other self!" He spread his hands wide in a gesture of mock innocence that was utterly unconvincing. "I merely wish for my Dad and my… favorite lesser instance of me… to become friends." He grinned, a flash of sharp, white teeth in the gloom. "Wouldn't that be cozy?"

Friends? With Agrona? The image was so grotesque, so utterly abhorrent, that a cold, visceral revulsion swept through me. It bypassed thought, striking straight at the core of my being. In that instant, facing the grinning specter of my tormentor-offering salvation, the thought was crystalline, absolute: I would rather activate Failsafe and erase myself from existence than stand as Agrona's 'friend' or even ally, or servant.