Auras placid, bodies of blue water, and irises that shimmered like the sparkling seas.

Agwyn’s curious eyes crossed with the gazes of the hundreds of translucent beings of magic that emerged in the night sky.

Spirits!

Their ethereal bodies flowed with the aurora above in grace and mystery. They glided the skies as one with the tides of light in serene peace and purpose, spiralling the Loch Sagathan Temple.

Agwyn looked down towards Lochuir below, again at the lush forests in the mountains around.

The spirits were everywhere.

Up in the clouds and down under the lakes. From the rich valleys and jungles to the waters of the Aenraad river that spiralled for hundreds of miles south.

Again, with each stride she took, their numbers increased.

They were akin to a spectral army from a realm unknown. Yet even with such great numbers, Agwyn knew they meant no harm. This was a give and take, an exchange of blessing. It was just like,

「…the vision in the murals.」, Elrhain said with a squeak. The little boy with his short arms carried the staff sideways, with one end dragging on the steps below.

Clink, Clank.

Every time they went up a tread, it would hit the stairs like a xylophone, raising a hollow sound with no tune or flow. Yet, the constant rhythm harmonized with Lilian’s echoing hymns without fault.

ᛟᚺ ᚷᚱᛖᚨᛏ ᛚᚨᚴᛖᛋ ᛟᚠ ᛖᚨᚱᛏᚺᛚᛟᚲᚺ, ᚨᚾᛞ ᛏᚺᛖ ᛋᛈᛁᚱᛁᛏᛋ ᛏᚺᛖ ᛋᚹᛁᛗ ᚹᛁᛏᚺᛁᚾ,

ᛒᛚᛖᛋᛋ ᛒᛖ ᛏᛟ ᛏᚺᛖᛖ, ᚨᚾᛞ ᛏᚺᛖ ᛗᚨᚾᚾᚨ ᚠᛚᛟᛟᛞᛋ ᚷᛟᛟᛞ ᚨᚾᛞ ᛒᚱᚨᚡᛖ,

「Did you see the Angels too?」 Agwyn asked, her eyes unconsciously revealing a hint of fear. But when Elrhain peered towards her, she swiftly averted her gaze.

Looking the other way, she lent her ear to the song, and again her mind drifted. She understood the meaning, and she didn’t at the same time. Why was that?

「Yeah, if the spirits are real, then maybe Angels too will pop up one day. If so, then this reincarnation has one hell of a main quest. However,」

Elrhain clicked his tongue, re-adjusting the staff with his elbow pits and forearms,

「Don’t let those apocalyptic visions bother you. Whatever they were, we can figure out the meaning later. For now, ugh, how many steps are there to this temple anyway?」

The grin returned to Agwyn’s face. She looked up at the peak that pierced the sky.

「I think one thousand.」

「What? Why?」

「One spirit for one lake, and Earthloch has a hundred thousand, remember?」

Elrhain’s face broke down in despair. He halted his legs and almost tumbled on the risers.

He then glared at the stairs above as if they had plagiarized his research work. Because that’s the only time Agwyn had ever seen him make such a face.

A few seconds went by, but the boy remained still. Then suddenly, Elrhain started to wiggle his knees and shoulders.

「Ellie?」

「Have you noticed? We’re not tired at all.」

Agwyn tilted her head, then concentrated within. True to Elrhain’s words, The fatigue and exhaustion that should obviously be there with their toddler bodies climbing steep steps were completely missing.

She angled her head around to take in the distance they had already scaled.

「We must’ve at least climbed a hundred steps by now, right?」

Elrhain nodded.

「Then we are already a tenth of the way there. So, fifty more minutes!」 Agwyn cheered, 「This will be over before we know it.」

Elrhain whined but moved his legs nonetheless.

ᛗᚨᚤ ᛏᚺᛖ ᚨᚾᚷᛖᛚᛋ ᛞᛁᛖ ᛟᚾ ᚤᛟᚢᚱ ᚹᚨᛏᛖᚱᛋ, ᚹᛁᛏᚺ ᚡᛁᚲᛏᛟᚱᚤ ᛏᛟ ᛏᚺᛖ ᛒᚱᛁᛗ,

ᛒᛚᛖᛋᛋ ᛒᛖ ᚢᛟᚱᛁᛋ, ᛟᚢᚱ ᛋᛟᚾᚷᛋ ᚨᚾᛞ ᚡᛟᛁᚲᛖ ᛒᛖ ᛏᚺᛖᛁᚱ ᚷᚱᚨᚡᛖᛋ.

And so they climbed, step after step, as the minutes continued to mercilessly pass.

Around the 500th, Elrhain stopped again. The little boy was gawking at Agwyn with unwavering focus.

「W-What?」 She asked meekly, a blush creeping onto her cheeks.

Elrhain answered a breath later.

「You are glowing so brightly.」

「Thank you- Wait.」 Agwyn quickly looked down at her body and saw a neon light. She lifted the edge of her robes after putting down the jar and twirled. She then angled her head back to peek at her lumber curve and waistline.

…it was like someone dressed her up as Kowloon walled city.

「Huh?」

Her underarms and sole of her feet too. Even the leafy hair that drifted on the wind.

「Watch out!」, Elrhain screamed without warning and yanked her back by the shoulder. She jerked her head around to see what had spooked him.

Her eyes met a spirit’s, hovering a few feet away.

「Huh?」

It was twice as tall as her and watery all over.

And those eyes… reminded her of her mother’s…of her past life’s.

She saw love there. Something she failed to notice back then, while it mattered.

「It’s okay, Ellie. I don’t think she means any harm.」

The boy looked wary but let go of her after warning her to be careful. He then picked up the staff that had fallen down.

Was it luck that it didn’t plummet five hundred steps below? Nevertheless, the thought pleased her.

That he was willing to forsake this lengthy ritual for her sake.

The spirit gurgled. Its call mixed with the wind and created a song of power.

It extended a hand with its palm open, and an orb of blue light a few inches across materialized.

With a push from the spirit, it floated towards Agwyn without any malevolence. She stared at it in fascination, guessing what it could be.

Until she didn’t, when the orb entered her forehead.

With a tilt of its head, the spirit broke apart into a spray of mist. Not even explaining its purpose or saying goodbye.

Agwyn stood there, letting the moisture ruffle her hair, as the mist from the spirit extended way up high to meet back with the aurora in the heavens.

Elrhain checked her over for five long minutes, from body heat, bruises to signs of pain.

In the end, he concluded that it wasn’t anything harmful—for now, other than her glow remaining as bright.

The light simply condensed, not extending as much as before, as it contoured her tiny frame now.

They put the curious interlude behind them and tiptoed on the next tread.

When ten more spirits materialized, with many more studying them, her, from a distance.

ᛗᚨᚤ ᛟᚢᚱ ᚲᚺᛁᛚᛞᚱᛖᚾ ᛒᛖ ᛋᛏᚱᛟᚾᚷ, ᚹᛁᛏᚺ ᚾᛟᚾᛖ ᛁᚾ ᛞᛖᚨᛏᚺᛋ ᛗᛖᚱᚲᚤ,

ᛟᚺ ᛏᚺᛖ ᛗᛟᚢᚾᛏᚨᛁᚾᛋ ᛟᚠ ᚤᛟᚱᛖ, ᛗᚨᚤ ᚤᛟᚢᚱ ᛚᛖᚨᚡᛖᛋ ᛒᛖ ᛈᛚᛖᚾᛏᚤ,

The number of orbs Agwyn received increased with every bit of distance they passed. The colours or contents would vary depending on the gifter too.

Some were just light like the first, while others had swirling images within. Ultimately, they all melted into Agwyn’s body.

Some into the limbs, some to her chest.

The glow condensed even further, and the colours sometimes shifted like a moving gradient sheen.

Yet this magical experience didn’t give her any joy.

「Why don’t they give you any?」

Agwyn grumbled with a mean pout. The flickering lights of the stars and aurora accentuated the displeasure on her face.

「Who knows? Maybe because you are the clan’s princess?」

Agwyn pouted even harder with a squirrel-like sound.

「Come on, you don’t have to be angry for me.」

「I’m not!」

「You are.」

Elrhain grinned. Then moved his eyes towards the sky.

A few minutes ago, it had drizzled. Now, it poured. The clouds had successfully fought their way back.

Glistening drops fell through the aurora from the heavens, echoing the rainbow light in the midnight’s dark. As the wind took on speed, it carried the raindrops from the valley into far beyond.

The only place it didn’t reach was the step Agwyn and Elrhain stood on. A soft cloud-like field created by the tether with the three below protected them like a guardian’s embrace.

It didn’t stop the sound of rain or the flow of the wind. It simply made it calmer, like she was sitting on a bed by the window, watching the stormy night outside.

Agwyn was enjoying this feeling until the spirits ruined her mood.

「We still have a hundred steps to go, and there are so many spirits left. You won’t explode or anything, right?」 Elrhain exclaimed, and Agwyn hmph’ed.

The boy awkwardly scratched his head,「Perhaps a few will choose me.」

Agwyn wasn’t convinced. Until now, there had been all sorts of creatures, both alien and familiar, that had appeared. They might look like trees on the land, beasts of the desert, or fire breathing drakes from myths, but all of them felt like they belonged to the water.

Regardless of their eyes of metal or bodies of stone, at their core, in their bloodstreams, and by their soul, there was water first and everything else second.

That’s what Agwyn learnt after receiving so many of their gifts. But in her heart, these gifts were more like forceful obligations.

Other than the first, none gave her anything without a want in return. Alas, such was the world, both this one and the past.

That is precisely why the spirits simply found Elrhain unworthy. They judged him based on their own selfish criteria and concluded he was of no value. That he could not offer them anything worthwhile in return for their gifts.

They whispered in her ears,

Why walk with him? Why love him? His blood flows slow, his lattice so crooked, and his manna so weak.

‘This is a blessing.’ She reflected, ‘Of both ways. A boon for the clan, and the spirits, they mean no harm. So, I shouldn’t find it unfair. Yet,’

Elrhain guessed a part of it right. She was angry for him.

Just not for the reason he guessed.

ᛏᚺᛖ ᚲᚨᚡᛖᛋ ᛟᚠ ᛖᚨᚱᛏᚺᛚᛟᚲᚺ, ᛞᛟ ᛒᛚᛖᛋᛋ ᚢᛋ ᚹᛁᛏᚺ ᛏᚺᚤ ᛋᛏᛟᚾᛖᛋ,

ᚹᚨᚱᚱᛁᛟᚱᛋ ᛟᚾ ᛞᚢᛏᚤ, ᛚᛖᛏ ᚤᛟᚢᚱ ᛗᛁᚷᚺᛏ ᚨᚾᛞ ᛗᚨᚾᚾᚨ, ᛒᛖ ᛟᚢᚱ ᛒᛟᚢᚾᛏᚤ

The last ten treads, the final few steps. The clouds skimmed past their skin like swaying feathers. The white spirals painted a picture of how helpless dhionnes were in this savage world, with their uncaring swirls.

It was as though Agwyn now stood in the eye of a typhoon from up in space. Safe and sound, yet she knew of the dangers looming beyond the white walls.

The thunder struck, and the gale shifted sides. One moment, the burnt taste of plasma was there; the next, her humid breath washed it away.

The black spire up above rotated gently, without a care in the world. Looming like an obelisk. Drab, unshining, and apathetic.

Yet Agwyn sensed a call, from the spire and from the stars.

It told her how it missed its old friends, the jar and the staff, and how it felt happy to see them again.

A gentle heart under its cold front. Like the dear mother of her first life, showing no joy at her deeds and achievements. Yet, in places Agwyn could not see, she would wear a proud smile.

The spirits came and went, their actions unchanged. Still, not all were as obstinate as the majority.

Some just hid as they sent her the blessing. Like shy little girls too flustered to give the chocolate they made for valentine’s day to the boy they admired.

They put it in the boy’s locker without even a name, running away for a sleepless night.

The bold ones, like the dragon in front of her, demanded she accepts the gift and eats it first before all others.

Because these orbs weren’t just cakes, they were legacies.

‘Like those tacky, fortuitous encounters? Is that even a word?’

Agwyn giggled, her hands furiously petting the long creature of cuddly fur.

It was hard work, as she was hugging an oversized jar too. The old, broken thing had no handles or places to grab, and some kind of magical barrier blocked its mouth smooth.

But where there was a will, there was a way to fluff cute things.

「Annie, I don’t think this is a dragon.」, Elrhain said. Suspicion painted his voice.

「Don’t be ridiculous. It has the tails of a fish, the neck of a snake, the belly of a clam, the claws of an eagle, the paws of a tiger, the ears of a cow, the eyes of a demon, the beard of a goat and the horns of a stag. It’s a dragon!」

「And the fur of a cat, and the face of a fox. Its fishtail looks like two fox tails glued together to make a heart shape. Besides, how exactly do you know what a tiger’s paw or demon’s eye looks like? 」

「Potato po-tah-to. It’s okay if it’s cute. Do you want to pet it too?」

「C-Can I?」

He could, as the cat-fox-dragon looked twice as content with four chubby arms stroking it.

This was only one reason Agwyn liked it, however.

Until now, the fox dragon was the sole spirit who hadn’t derided Elrhain at sight and regarded the boy thoughtfully before sending an orb her way. It was likewise the first to let her touch, and the first who cut in line, pushing back the other eager queue-ers.

Though the rest didn’t oppose it, merely moving back in dismay.

A hard choisse, misssy, to have two good sseedlingss, mrrrawl. I will let ᛋᛋᛋᚺᛖᚱᚠᚨᚢᚾ have the other whelp, then. Ahhh yesss yip, there, that iss the sspot, it said, purring like a cat and hissing like a snake.

‘Now, who is this spirit with the unutterable name, and when will it show up?’

The spirits now seemed to outnumber the stars in the sky. Their glow leaving a tail-light as they swanned in the clouds.

Watching, waiting, hoping.

Their gift of orbs flew to her like fireflies. With such vast numbers, they shone like a beacon on this stormy night.

Agwyn now reckoned she could be seen from a thousand kilometres away. If not her, then at least the light show.

She took another step forward as the cat-fox-dragon puffed away, while the spirits remaining became even more frantic.

The fireflies bloomed like rockets, and she was their destination.

Agwyn felt like she was the one doing them a favour and not the other way around.

ᛚᛖᛏ ᛏᚺᛖ ᛋᛈᛁᚱᛁᛏᛋ ᛚᛁᚡᛖ ᛁᚾ ᚺᚨᚱᛗᛟᚾᚤ, ᛁᚾ ᛏᚺᛁᛋ ᛖᛩᚢᚨᛚ ᛏᚱᚨᛞᛖ,

ᛞᚺᛁᛟᚾᚾᛖ ᚨᚾᛞ ᚠᚨᛖᛞᛁᚨᚷᚨ, ᛟᚾ ᚢᛟᚱᚤᛋ ᛞᛁᛋᚲᛋ ᛚᛟᚡᛁᚾᚷ ᛖᛗᛒᚱᚨᚲᛖ,

Only one step remained. Barely a foot away to reach the top, yet move, they could not. In front of them was the first and final roadblock to the climb.

Not an interlude like the dragon and other spirits, this one far eerier. Like an unexpected horror story on a rainy night.

However, Agwyn knew that this, too, was a spirit. The final spirit.

The rest had done their blessing, and there were no longer any fireflies in the sky.

「I don’t feel anything.」 She said, scuttling closer to Elrhain, 「The others had a sense of self, a mind, and a will to communicate. This one, though…」

「Doesn’t even have a face.」 Elrhain fixed his eyes on it.

There was a rustling sound and a click of a chitinous leg against wood.

The spirit closed, wobbling in the air like a log floating on a river.

It was green like the plants of the forest. But it was also opaque, like the drops of rain, with flecks, specks, cords, and bulbs bobbing up and down within its gelatinous body.

The feelers swayed in space from its front and back. Wet, wobbly, sloshing. It laid on a log-shaped raft of water hyacinth and rotten birch, from which its body grew.

It had seaweed for fur and clams for scales. All alive as the spirit, but dead like it too.

From its skin and flesh lined spikes of bone. Some were its own; others were from creatures of the lakes and gheists from above.

Yet,

「I’ve seen this one before.」 The boy concluded, and Agwyn nodded.

Till now, she had already seen an octopus with goat heads at the tip of its tentacles, with an ant’s torso behind. She had crossed eyes with a serpent of tongues and mouths, as long as a train yet as thin as her arms.

Out of all of them, this spirit was the most alien, the most frightening, and the most unfeeling. But was also the most familiar.

The secret behind gene-mods, the primordial monster of legends.

「A Hydra」 They spoke together.

The beast, the bastardized version of the immortal, microscopic Cnidarian from Earth, ripped apart its own flesh and reached a tendril inside.

From there, it took out a dripping, gelatinous splat of manna and flung it forward.

Towards Elrhain.

And the splat vanished into his chest.

「Huh?」 They both stilled, completely flabbergasted.

The Hydra floated for a few more seconds and ran its slimy fillers over Elrhain’s pale face.

A drizzle of ichor fell out of the Hydra’s flesh and mixed in the wind. The gap in its body closed as it wobbled steadily up in the violent eye-wall of the typhoon.

Then it left, just like that, leaving the boy coughing with slime dripping from his hair and tufts of green smoke entering his eyes, ears and nose.

「All things considered,」 Elrhain spoke after his breath returned to normal. Agwyn supported him the best she could with her chest and shoulder, as they both took the ultimate step of the thousand, 「At least one spirit likes me.」

Agwyn laughed. Glad that the fox-cat-dragon didn’t lie. That Elrhain, too, got to experience the magic of spirits first hand.

It was then that the Dhionne song came to an end. The clan’s role was over. Now, it was all them.

ᛏᚺᛖ ᚡᛖᛋᛋᛖᛚ ᛒᛖ ᚱᛖᛈᚨᚤᛖᛞ ᚹᛁᛏᚺ ᛏᚺᛖ ᚷᚢᛁᛞᛖ ᛟᚠ ᛏᚺᛖ ᛋᚲᛖᛈᛏᛖᚱ,

ᛈᚱᛟᛋᛈᛖᚱᛁᛏᚤ ᛏᛟ ᛖᚨᚱᛏᚺᛚᛟᚲᚺᛋ, ᚹᛁᛏᚺᛟᚢᛏ ᛞᛖᚨᛏᚺ, ᛋᛁᚲᚴᚾᛖᛋᛋ ᛟᚱ ᛋᚺᚨᛗᛖ.