Verena’s spirit saw through Arrin’s ebbing vision that he was secured atop the wrynn’s perch. The winds caressed his face as the great bird slowed to a gliding descent. She could feel his pain; soft screams in his aching mind. A sylvan sylf scuttled back to the wooden platform, rope tied to her waist, a man draped over her cloaked shoulders. She carried the man to a seat, securing him in place, then lashed herself to her own seat. Verena knew this sylf – Nireih.

They landed on a meadow surrounded by thin, leafless trees. The wrynn rested upon the ground. Oslo, clambered down the tied wooden ladders.

He stood below them, hands on his hips, calling out, “Check the boy.”

“The prince will live,” Nireih replied, unbuckling the leather straps across the seemingly dead man’s shoulders. “I don’t know of Thael’s fate.”

Verena knew this man. The father of none. The father of their son. Nireih scaled down the wrynn with all of Thael’s dead weight over her. Verena saw Arrin reach out to him, then look down and take off the leather bindings that held him in place.

“We’ve got a live one!” Oslo hollered, pointing to Arrin.

Nireih had laid Thael on the ground and rushed to climb back to the wooden platform atop the wrynn. Arrin stumbled and attempted to climb down himself. Verena felt his deliriousness, sense of balance skewed. He fell from the ladder and landed on his backside with a thud.

He stared up at the azure sky. It was a rich blue laden with wispy white clouds. His dizzied head cleared after a moment. He rose, the sylf holding out a hand to help him up.

“Thanks.”

The sylf nodded. “Please don’t climb the wrynn again without my aid.”

She knelt to Thael’s still body, placing her two long fingers to his neck.

“He’s dead.”

“We should give him a proper burial,” Oslo said. “The man deserves that, at least.”

“Why not there?” Arrin pointed to a lone tree in the distance, over fifty feet tall.

“I’ll have to tend to Ryzel,” Oslo said. “Will you be able to help with the burial?”

Arrin nodded. With his helping hands, Nireih carried Thael over her shoulders once more. He followed alongside her.

The tree was a hundred paces or so away. Nireih carried Thael without any seeming strain. Yellow flowers scattered between the long grass of the field.

She laid Thael under the sweeping shade of the lonesome tree. Arrin gazed above. Countless leaves were dappled in the sun, intersecting spaces letting through shafts of soft light. There was a quiet through his deafened ears, the foliage above rustling from the warm breeze. Somewhere a bird chirped from a nearby wood. Nireih dug the ground with her curved swords, chopping through the earth, even scooping the soil out with her hands. She held out a hand as Arrin bowed over to do the same.

“Save your strength,” she said. “It’s up to you to say his last rites.”

He knelt to the man who had saved them all.

His eyes were closed, his visage serene, as if he had released his last breath with a long-awaited acceptance. Arrin bowed over and touched his face. His father’s face. Verena had witnessed how he had come to know Ambrose uprooting the memory of his forebears. How he knew this man who he had never met before as his father. As his hand brushed over Thael’s cheek, Verena knew what she must do. She could feel the connection in their blood, their being. She followed and tethered herself to Thael’s dormant spirit, for she could still feel it there, ever fading with each moment.

Her spirit coursed within Thael. She raced through his veins; one with the world and with him. She was past material yet she was material. His heart beat once. It drummed again. Twice. Thrice. Her task was done. She ferried herself into something with no soul, only matter. Verena knew it would imprison her until the link between her and Thael was broken. She felt it in her soul. She did it anyway, for Thael was her world now. Life now coursed through him, powered by her spirit; her being, before she waned away between the planes of material and the void, held between the radiance and the darkness.