The seasickness never went away. So much power coursing through her veins again and a great quest before them and an item of incredible power tucked against her skin but it was the smell of salt and the rolling of the waves that proved undefeatable. Her nausea loomed as eternally as the Daromese sun while their galley skirted the southern edge of the peninsula.

The eternal days were a small taste of what was to come. Eris only hoped her stomach would be settled by then.

The party slept between amphorae jugs fastened to the hull. They ate the crew’s leftovers and drank water scooped from the sea and made potable by Hydropneumonic Purification.

After her experiment transmogrifying a rat into a mouse with Polymorph, Pyraz began bringing her the still-living vermin he caught each morning and night. The first occasion was while she was still at bad. She awoke to feel a paw on her stomach and a writhing beneath. When she opened her eyes she saw Pyraz over her, panting, tongue in her face, pinning a black rat against her.

“You disgusting mongrel!” she cried as she scrambled to her feet. “What are you doing!”

He let her up. The rat was injured and scurried away but he caught it again soon enough. It was then that he brought it over to the chamber pot still nearby from her experiment and dropped it inside.

He sat. Tail sweeping the deck. The ship around him creaked. He looked down into the pot where the rat scurried to climb out against the cast iron confines and glanced back up at her. Mouth opened, tongue out. Expectant.

“What is it you want from me? We have done this already!”

He barked

“Do you wish to have a lover? A playmate? A cat to chase?”

She groaned. This was what the depravity of being stuck on a boat did to her. She was talking to a dog as if it were human. If she had any sense she would kick him and go back to sleep.

Pyraz barked again. He licked his lips. She realized.

“Ah,” she said. “Very well.”

She kneeled down at the pot and focused. With curled fingertips in an outstretched hand she molded and shaped the rat into a mouse in her mind. The spell was sealed with an arcane symbol drawn with two fingers. When she looked again the rat was white.

Pyraz barked. Without any delay he stuck his head into the pot, grabbed the rat-turned-mouse, killed it, and ate it. The spectacle was so casually brutal that she watched on in amazement. When he was done blood dripped from his snout. He trotted over to her and rubbed against her leg like a cat, sticking his head upward toward hers. Then he ran off.

This repeated. Pyraz did not like the taste of bilge rat. After the third morning of being awoken by a bloodied, frightened rodent in her lap she told him flatly enough was enough, but even her cold heart couldn’t endure the whines of such a loyal companion for long.

She decided it needed to stop. She went to the top.

“We must discuss your dog,” she said to Rook. He and Robur sat near the bow on the deck, in the shade of the sails, gazing off toward the horizon. Astera was nowhere to be found.

His shirt was off. The left half of his torso was encased in bandages.

“Which one?” he said. He joked, but his voice came weak.

“The one which has mistaken me for the chef who must prepare his meals.”

“Oh, that one. Don’t dogs deserve to eat well too?”

“He is an animal.”

“Animals all, we,” Rook said. He shifted away from the galley’s edge to look at Eris more directly, grimacing in pain. “What would you like me to do? Give him a talking to?”

“That would be a good start,” Eris said.

“Smart as he is I doubt even Pyraz will appreciate a lecture. I can’t talk a dog out of his instinct to hunt.”

“Be that as it may, he needn’t accost me with captured rodents.”

“He’s showing his love!” Rook said. “And his trust.”

Robur interjected before Eris had a chance to respond. “His human soul should allow him to comprehend your meaning no matter how complete his transformation.”

Rook and Eris both stopped. They stared at each other for a moment longer, before turning to Robur. He sat in the shade with a book and an expression of innocent surprise on his face.

…

“What?” Rook said.

“Were you not aware?”

“Aware of what, precisely?” Eris said.

“Pyraz has the soul of a human. Of a magician, in fact.”

“Of a magician?”

“Why—yes. It’s very faint, but I can see his Essence when I use Supernal Vision. But—you knew that, didn’t you? How couldn’t you?”

It was like Robur disappeared in that moment. Eris looked to Rook. She had postulated when they found him that he was once human, that he had been transformed, yet to be told those words with certainty was different.

A possible explanation came to her. Suddenly it seemed so obvious.

“We found him at the top of Dakru Spire. A place of infinite mana from the aether. A final resting place for a mortal to be preserved for all eternity, on the brink of death. Yet when Esenia was changed, so too would be those within its stasis chambers.”

“Into a forty pound mutt?” Rook said.

“We have seen stranger things,” Eris said. “Of course the mutt was clearly intelligent, but—a human soul, you say?”

Robur nodded.

“You are certain?”

“Yes, I can be—”

Eris made a sound somewhere between disgust and surprise in Rook’s direction. “He has watched us share a bed!”

Rook frowned. “No wonder he likes you.”

“Shared a bed?” Robur said.

“This is—” Eris stopped herself. She sputtered for a moment, but Rook cut her off.

“He must remember what he was before. He’s been trapped, following us around all this time, unable to tell us who he is.”

“Yes, that’s likely,” Robur said.

“Can we restore his original form? Turn him back into a human?”

“I see no reason why not. If I may take the time to study him I could gather some ideas on how it might be possible,” Robur said.

“You know a spell for removing enchantments,” Rook said. “Will that work?”

Eris felt an unraveling sense of vulnerability. She knew Robur was right. She had reached the same conclusion the day after they retrieved Pyraz from that vault atop the Spire. So why had she treated him like a normal dog for these last years? Why had she forgotten? How hadn’t she thought of this sooner?

It was stupid of her. More than anything else, purely stupid. And for a woman who prided herself foremost on her intelligence, the feeling of stupidity was worse than a lifetime of seasickness.

She had to compensate.

“If I am right,” she said, “then no spell was responsible for this transformation. ‘Tis not like Polymorph. This transformation was an act of aethereal caprice, not a calculated shapeshifting willed by conscious beings. That will make it much harder to break.”

“She is correct. Arcane Abrogation is insufficient,” Robur said. “Oh! There must be books on such transformations in Katharos. Perhaps at the Grand Library I will be able to find something to help…”

Thus the plan was set. A far-off goal for another day, but Rook was adamant that they would pursue it, and they would transform Pyraz back into a mortal human. Eris wondered if he wasn’t more useful as a dog. Yet all the same, when she threatened to turn him into a toad if he put another dying rat on her blankets while she was asleep, he desisted like the wisest among men.

The streets of Katharos held nothing but distant bad memories. Like nightmares forgotten until a moment of déjà vu she only recalled her childhood there when triggered by one intense feeling or another. Beyond that she rarely gave it thought. But that was the sort of person Eris was. Aside from her desire for revenge when wronged she never dwelled on the past or lingered on trauma. Her concerns were always for the future.

She hadn’t returned to the city since her Manasearing ten years ago. She was someone else completely from the scared little girl who left it in a cage.

So she felt no particular anxiety or nostalgia as Archon’s Palace and its attendant Spire came into view, as the black walls of the port approached, and as more and more ships swelled to their sides along the Hepaz. If anything she was eager to return so triumphantly as an adult. Katharos represented opportunity. It represented an end to this stage of their miserable voyage. And if she was lucky, perhaps a chance to meet some of her old antagonists. How she would enjoy the looks on their faces now as she turned them into cockroaches and fed them to the pigeons…

The galley’s deck bustled with sailors while they entered port. Rook gathered the party and spoke over the clamor.

“I’ll fetch Jason once we disembark. With luck he’s kept his word. He may be able to retrieve books regarding Pyraz’s condition as well.”

“You are still injured,” Astera said. “You should remain behind. I can find Jason.”

Rook glared at her. The two had been friendly enough by Eris’ standards, but she saw loathing flash through his eyes. His voice came like a thrown javelin. “We both know what happens when I stay put for my injuries.” Then, more his normal self, “No. I’ll be fine.”

Astera took a moment. “So be it. I will sell the orc’s sword. Those funds should be enough to reprovision.”

Rook nodded. “Robur, come with me. And Eris…”

She folded her arms. “Allow me to guess. You are about to tell me how you do not trust me to walk the streets of Katharos alone, because it is a dangerous place, filled with laws and rules and guards and customs, so thus I should follow after you like a pet?”

He recoiled. “More or less,” he admitted.

“Your honesty is refreshing. But I will not follow. I intend to explore the city while I have leave to do so. ‘Tis an unprofitable place for us to visit and I do not expect us to return for some time.”

He nodded. “That’s your choice.” He took a step toward the side of the ship and a brief gasp of pain left his lips. He clutched at his ribs, sighing, and he gazed out at the city. “We can meet back at the docks tomorrow morning. I don’t wish to stay here any longer than we need to.”

As they pulled in past the great Kathar walls, Rook stayed there, watching the city approach. Eris studied his face. He became very quiet. She realized then that whatever had befallen this man to set him on this path, to make him a dirty adventurer rather than a dignified aristocrat, must have been terrible indeed. In that moment she felt an ounce of sympathy for him. She felt the unfamiliar desire to ask him what had happened and the need to understand, because she sensed in him a profound emotion that she herself understood in academic terms but almost never felt.

Sadness. And for a man so social, so often smiling, always ready to make a joke even when in pain, that was the last thing she expected.