“Hey, hey. You alright?”

Aya opened his eyes as someone shook him, lightly, then with some urgency.

A woman with brown short hair stared down at him. She looked concerned and shook him one more time. Kylendel, was it? She was the one with the sword if he remembered it right. He should fix this people-forgetfulness problem of his. Yes, this was Kylendel.

“Ugh…” Aya massaged his temples. He had an annoying headache as he woke up. Did he grind his teeth as he slept? He said, “Yes, I am, uh, I'm alright.”

“You were tossing around in your sleep,” Brummer called out from another carriage. He sat on top of a tall cage so he saw Aya sleeping even if he rode a different carriage.

“Had a bad dream?” Kylendel said. She swept her hair back and stood up. “You sure you’re fine now?” She sat on a sack of grains and looked at Aya with a brow raised.

The grains were food for the beasts. They were in the carriage of food supplies.

Aya didn’t want to sit with Drabon. He also wanted to gaze toward Krysperium while they were traveling away from the city. Kylendel suggested he could stay with a carriage with a retractable roof. She went with him since it was their duty to guard him.

“I’m fine. Just some dreams. Not necessarily bad dreams.” Aya sat up and leaned against his precious chest full of mana parchments. Then he coughed. He wasn’t able to stop coughing; it got worse. Kylendel tossed him a bottle of water which landed at his feet standing upright.

“You’re not sick or anything?” she said. “I think we have a healer in our caravan.”

“I’m really fine. Just tired from all my work,” Aya said. He opened the bottle and drunk from it. The cold water felt nice in his throat. He stopped drinking and said, “Takes lots of concentration to inscribe runes on mana parchments. Sometimes I just forget to eat or rest.”

Brummer jumped from his carriage to theirs. “You’re the only one who recorded everything in that chest?” His eyes blazed with interest and he smiled like a boy given his favorite toy. “How many sheets of mana parchments are inside there, anyway? Must be like a hundred or more. You have some pretty awesome things in your chest.”

“Yeah,” Kylendel said. “Not that I know anything about seals. But the mage guards who checked those things, whatever they are, were pretty impressed.”

“The sealcrafter flying overhead even wanted to come down. You remember that guy maintaining the scanner seals we passed through? I could see on his face he wanted to have a closer look.”

Aya patted the hard wooden side of the chest. “I did research hard for this. My master has some contacts with the sealcrafters of Krysperium. Exclusive access to their vaults. You know, and other stuff…” He then winked at Brummer.

“Yeah, I get you,” Brummer said with a laugh.

It's good you got that because I have no idea what I’m talking about. Aya finished the rest of the water bottle. He closed it and handed it back to Kylendel. Where was the city? I want to see it from afar. He pushed himself up, taking care not to fall over, using the chest box for support. The rocky terrain proved to be a nuisance to his viewing pleasure.

Drabon told them they would change their carriages drawn by groofs to more advanced and faster ones power by aureon fuel from mana processes when they reached the next city. It would run under its own power and would speed up their travels by three times.

It would be expensive to rent the aureon carriages in Krysperium and use it for non-stop travel to Bandurria. It was the capital city after all. Expensive rent rates weren't surprising, particularly since many people were also leaving the city after the festival.

No permanent portals connected Kryperium to Bandurria, or even to Mandolin. The latter cities were part of the ‘reclaimed’ areas from the Blight. The mana lines running beneath the earth threading through those places hasn’t recovered and was still thin. Not enough to support permanent gates.

It was fine, Aya thought. Traveling in wide open plains made it easy for him to blank out his thoughts. And he could admire more of Krysperia.

Kylendel said, “It was fortunate that you were with us. Sped up the whole scanning process.”

“A scribe from a powerful mage family connected to Drabon’s master?” Brummer said. “They would obviously let us go through.”

“I was thinking we would have problems with Malakor. They were looking for a large and muscular man, right? When we go through checkpoints, Malakor always gets ‘random inspections’.”

“He should buy a wig to cover the scars on his head,” Brummer said. “Makes him look less scary.”

Aya smiled as his two bodyguards made fun of their leader. He gazed at the distant city of Krysperia gobbled by the horizon. Only the upper levels were still visible. Once they passed through the valley leading out of the ‘basin’ cradling the Krysperium, he wouldn’t be able to see the city anymore. The tall mountains ringing the plains of Krysperium would cover the view.

Pillars of light stretched from the city up to the sky. Elemental essences, agitated by the shifting mana flow beneath the world, peered out of their usual veiled existence. Even people with no experience with magic would see the splash of colors of elemental essences jumping around the city. It was as if a huge rainbow cotton ball of light plopped right on top of the city.

Aya inhaled through his mouth and nose. The cool air of the plains flowing in through his nose and mouth reminded him of the cold night when he performed the last experiments with the spell he would use against the Blight Incarnate.

Hooray, that stupid spell worked. Worked in the sense it bought this world five hundred years. Or maybe Clement did something? Oh well, I'm going to claim credit, for now. For the mortal humans, five hundred years was a lot. Like fifteen generations?

Did he expect that he destroyed the Blight Incarnate? No. Absurd. And he was still alive, wasn’t he? The spell should have bound him, the Blight Incarnate, and the thousands of corrupted spirits in the WorldHeart orb in one common point of existence between the Void and the Elemental Plane.

Just bind them there. Stuck. Forever.

He was walking around. Five, one of those spirits in the Worldheart Orb, was inside his stomach. If the two anchors were walking around, then the one they were supposed to anchor certainly was walking around as well. Still. Five hundred years was five hundred years. I sound like Clement talking about his age.

“A beautiful city, isn’t it?” Aya said.

Kylendel and Brummer stopped joking about their leader and turned to him. They saw the serious and sad look on his face and kept their silence.

Aya nodded. “A very beautiful city.” He said it with almost a sigh. How many times had he said or thought Krysperium was beautiful since he woke?

Was this all a dream?

What if, right now, he was floating around in a state of non-existence, dreaming about the world he saved?

Aya snorted in derision. His two bodyguards gave him weird looks and turned to each other with questioning expressions on their faces but they didn’t speak. They might have imagined this was the way an eccentric but overworked rune scribe with a girl’s name passed time.

What made Clement stop the ignition? Did they find a solution during the time he left for the Blighted Lands and failed completing his spell? Good job to them. Clap. Clap. Or was it because of him? Clap, clap to him.

He was excited to find Clement to know what happened. Hey, maybe I crippled the Blight Incarnate or something. Another worrying thought was that perhaps the Blight Incarnate was also asleep all this time like him.

Round two, then?

A second chance?

This time, Aya had something new. His precious chest filled with ancient runes that even he couldn’t make. Thank you, friend, whoever you are. Aya closed his eyes and bowed, his own way of honoring this person who was most likely already dead.

Aya wasn’t sure if the one who buried him beneath his old palace and placed the curse on him was on his side but he already accepted this mystery person as a friend. When he awakened, he did not have an inkling of the persecution of void mages. It was only a matter of time until he would have pranked someone using his void magic just for a few laughs. And then the armies of Krysperia would fall upon him. The end.

But the curse prevented that from happening. This person prepared for the awakening of Aya, setting up some kind of timer for everything to work flawlessly after his death.

Unless he had a Bloodline that made him live longer then he would surely be dead. The secret chamber was beneath the old castle. For that to happen, somebody dug it up, made some nifty renovations, and put everything back into place.

The history books mentioned nothing like that happening in the past few hundred years. They even made it into a museum of sorts. They wanted to take care of the structure of the old palace as a legacy or heritage. Which meant they or he or she constructed the chamber a short time after his “death.” The person who constructed it would be fertilizer by now.

It occurred to Aya that Clement could have been the one who hid him, possibly to hide him from the purging of void mages. But that scenario made little sense. Clement would have prevented something like the void mage wars from happening in the first place.

Aya constructed a rough timeline of what could have happened. He messed up the spell binding the Blight Incarnate but somehow stopped it from ending the world. Or perhaps the others found another way to stop it. Clement then paused the countdown of the ignition of the mana node. Clement left for some inexplicable reason. Everybody went nuts and fought among themselves. During that time, or maybe after the void mage wars, someone buried him beneath the palace with safeguards in place to trigger after five hundred years. Was this the right guess?

There were plenty of questions that needed an answer.

Many of these questions were irrelevant to saving the world. Like what's up with the void magic hating? Why do people hate the void mages yet their government have void mages to control the citysigil? His part of the citysigil. Void seals, void magic, void mage. Since they operated the citysigil of the old part of Krysperium, they had to have void mages.

He even tried contacting them for fun but they didn't respond. Not really his problem. They were probably enslaved or mind controlled or something. An irrelevant matter to saving the world.

He didn't even bother revealing himself. Many wouldn't believe him. But he was sure there would be those who would go with him. Civil war, for sure. Not the crap I want. At the least, they could their remaining time in peace and harmony. I couldn't save everyone, that much was clear. It was best for people not to know his plans. A repeat of the past wasn't needed here.

The metal lining of the wooden chest caught a hint of sunlight. Aya turned to it. Maybe he shouldn't be that pessimistic. There was still a chance if he could rework his spell. And it would be unfair for the person who went through all the trouble to make sure the runes reached Aya if he disregarded it completely and went with his original plan of imploding the mana node.

It was obvious to Aya that the person who left him with the curse made from the weird runes wanted to help him with his spell. This time, Aya had access to runes that could channel both void and elemental energy. Perhaps he could make better anchors and make sure the Blight Incarnate would cease existing for good.

The upsurge. A question that was relevant. Part of its energy was drawn away somewhere else. Like it was collected. Was that supposed to be the anchor in the Elemental Plane? He didn't have the WorldHeart Orb filled with corrupted spirits. Making another one would almost be impossible. Filling it with corrupted souls once again would take a few generations of work. Did his 'friend' provide him with one anchor?

Aya ran calculations in his head. He didn’t any confidence they could bind the Blight Incarnate. That monster probably wouldn't let them get near again. No high hopes. But he had a new hope.

If it failed.

Then.

Sorry.

Aya swallowed. He could feel a cough coming. For years, he agonized over blowing up the mana node. But what could he do? They were mere humans. Even the Progenitor of Mankind couldn’t have stood up to the First Being. And they were up against the offspring of the First Being?

Some contest this was.

He clutched his stomach as he coughed. He covered his mouth with his arm. Good manners even when thinking about all the deaths he would cause. No one would forgive him. And he wouldn’t give them the chance to forgive him. For they wouldn’t know what he would do.

Kylendel was beside him, patting his back. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Should I call a healer?”

“They’re in the middle carriage. Thanks, Brummer. I’ll follow with Mr. Aileen here.”

“Sure,” Brummer said. He jumped to the next carriage and then to the next.

“Let’s go, Mr. Aileen,” she said. “Let’s get you some medicine. I’ll carry you.” Before Aya could say anything, she picked him up like a baby.

“Maybe food. Let’s get food instead of medicine,” Aya said after his violent coughing died down.

He always loved choosing which food to eat. It would only affect him. No one else. Maybe he should stuff his face with food like usual to forget thinking about igniting the mana node. It was hard to choose for others. But there were times he would rather choose for them than let them choose for themselves.

Humans do stupid things when driven to a corner.

Maybe I am doing a stupid thing?