Ranvir jolted awake, rolling onto his side. Vomit spewed from his mouth before he even fully opened his eyes. Briny water spilled from him, his body convulsing reflexively. A cough interrupted his retching, more less-briny water spilling out. For a few moments, he struggled between throwing the water in his stomach and the water in his lungs up.

Eyes burning, a trail of slimy water running down his nose, Ranvir swayed to a sitting position and looked around. I’m not in the fold anymore, he realized. Amalia’s face appeared before him and she dragged him away slightly.

The light burned his eyes, his skull attempting to split itself as his pulse throbbed like a vice. He spat more water out of his nose, attempting to wipe his mouth. He croaked out a few rough word-like utterances before another fit took him.

When it finally stopped, Amalia once more hoisted him into a sitting position. For a moment, Ranvir caught only the look of someone rising into the sky. His form was vaguely familiar, but it was only the spikes rising like mountains encircling a valley around the man’s head that he recognized him.

King Phormos, Ranvir thought. The King hovered in the air for a moment, sweeping his gaze across the gathering. Ranvir’s heart stopped as the King’s eyes landed on him.

The tether-sense that followed wasn’t so overwhelming as to crush any errant souls. It was gentle, like that of a child too weak to even ruffle the hairs on your head. It slipped right into the core of Ranvir. Down to his Fundament and the Concept stamped upon it. At a single glance, the King of Limclea saw all of him. His power, spirits, and soul. And the King dismissed him, continuing their examination.

Blinking rapidly, Ranvir watched the man disappear in a crack of thunder, spraying rain water on all of them. He licked his lips idly, the edges of his vision fading as Kyriake joined them.

Ranvir awoke again. He was coughing up water again. It was still horrible.

Amalia slapped his back, helping him cough up the last bits, before handing him a napkin to wipe his mouth.

“Didn’t I just do this?” Ranvir groaned. It was hot. Unbearably hot, almost. And so wet. Ranvir had swiftly acclimated to the fold’s temperature. The Orykto fold had been a lot closer to Elusria’s climate than anything on Korfyi he’d experienced so far.

“That was a day ago,” Amalia supplied. “You were knocked out cold after coming out of the fold.”

“I remember,” Ranvir lifted his arm… and nothing happened. He took a deep breath and looked down. “Right,” a stump wrapped in bandages wiggled slightly. The compression of his limb was tight. Uncomfortably tight. He could feel his fingers being squished together, the circulation to his hand cut off. Feel it, but not see it. He rubbed the stump gently with his other hand, wincing at the pain. “I remember, the King. Didn’t he come through?”

Amalia nodded, avoiding looking at Ranvir’s lost arm. “They did. Talked with Kyriake and someone from the merchants—I’m not sure who—then left again. Kyriake won’t talk about it, but I don’t think it was a particularly positive conversation.”

Ranvir nodded. “I wouldn’t imagine so. Getting chastised by the King.”

Amalia cocked her head. “Yeah, but we have something more important to discuss. Your survival. Did you escape before the fold broke? Slipping out with no time to spare? How did you get around Sabas without him following?”

Ranvir cleared his throat. “I’m not sure of all the questions, to be honest. I can make guesses, but we might need to ask the expert,” with a nod from Amalia, he turned his attention inward. His soul was a mess. The energy, anima, was fluctuating wildly. One moment, it was calm and quiet, the next a wind that shook his spaces rushed through, disappearing just as quickly.

It took a moment to parse through the obfuscation and find where he’d placed Latresekt. The spirit had gone dormant, it would seem. Ranvir could only imagine that it was tuckered out after all the heavy lifting it’d done at the end.

He poked it, feeling the rigid outer shell. He blinked, not remembering giving it such a refined border. Latresekt hadn’t been given a dedicated space, but a simple divot. A place where it could be safe and develop its spiritual form. Ranvir reached out more gently this time, a soft hand on the shell. Latresekt was raging within. Struggling and gathering its strength, forming its rage into a vicious war cry.

Ranvir frowned, taking a metaphorical step back. The space had hardened, leaving it solid and near impenetrable. But not impermeable, Ranvir’s senses could still reach through and feel the intent within. Latresekt was a spirit of war, except it’d had the roughest edges sanded down into a smoother finish. What lay behind that wall was all edges.

Ranvir gathered his will and anima. It came sluggishly through the intermittent storm, but it came at his call none-the-less. Infusing the power with restraint, iron bars over a prison, heavy chains of silvery steel, shackle weights trapping it in place, then into it all he added Persistence. His Concept recognized the call and for a few moments, energy shone more cleanly from his Fundament infusing the prison.

Stepping back, Ranvir examined what he’d created. It wasn’t like Amanaris-space, which let him tap into the power. This was pure entrapment and suppression. Already, he could feel the vicious energy boiling away, the creature within returning to slumber. With that retreat, Ranvir felt a slight ache in his sternum retreat.

He returned to his body and pulled down the collar of his sweat-drenched shirt. His skin was all wet from sweat, though that didn’t hide the mark on his torso. A hexagonal piece of his skin at the center of his chest, just below the collarbone, had turned white.

“Ranvir?” Amalia asked. “What did you find out?”

Blinking twice, Ranvir cleared his throat. “I made a bargain with Latresekt to continue fighting after the crussor,” he rubbed at the odd colored spot on his chest. “The deal was that Latresekt would see us safe out of the fold, before being free to leave. I argued for it to leave a… fragment of itself behind, a child, if you will.”

“Why?”

“Because I knew it wouldn’t leave behind any of its knowledge, but also couldn’t resist the chance at corrupting me.”

Amalia shook her head. “Again, why?”

“So I can corrupt it,” Ranvir grinned, even though he didn’t feel up for it. “I just gotta prove I’ve got the superior will.”

“And how did you survive the fold?”

Ranvir shook his head. “I’m not certain,” he explained, how Latresekt and Loce had forced him to swallow all the thólos gunk, then broke the knotting point while standing directly on top. As he finished, the vehicle transporting him stopped. Ranvir blinked, realizing he hadn’t even noticed until then.

Kyriake jumped into the bed next to him. “That explains more than you realize, but that’s also incredibly risky,” she reached down with a cloth to wipe the water off his forehead. “I don’t know for certain. We’ll want to make sure once we get to Legea, but I suspected this isn’t sweat.”

“Not sweat?” Amalia asked. With her brows furrowed, she wiped a finger over his cheek. Sniffing it once, she winced before licking it off. “Just water?”

“Storm rain,” Kyriake corrected. “Probably,” she saw the looks of confusion on their faces. “By now you’ve noticed that we harvest fyla and other types of material from folds, but when we use them in mana-items or other such devices, they’re no longer First-Order material, but of the Second. It requires a large quantity of the product, however. It can even happen naturally if you take a big enough chunk out of a fold.

“What Ranvir experienced suggests that he ate enough thólos for it to clash with his physical body, beginning the process of transforming from First- to Second-Order material. Meanwhile, the knotting-point was also pulled, which tore the entire fold, emptying it in an instant directly onto him. Normally, that would be absolutely lethal, but thólos is a binding agent.”

She let that thought linger for a long moment. Ranvir licked his lips, tasting the distinct lack of salt in the water.

“He bonded with the storm mana,” Amalia breathed. “But wait, can you not control it?”

Ranvir reached into himself. Now that he knew what to look for, he recognized the disorderly power within. After a few failed attempts, he pulled back. “Not right now.”

Amalia licked her lips, appearing to stifle a smile, though that made no sense to Ranvir. “And you’re actively experiencing issues with the mana coalescing randomly on and in your body?”

Ranvir nodded impatiently, rolling his hand for her to continue. She was definitely trying to suppress a smile now. “So you’re sweating rain water. Getting bouts of being winded, probably? And going to be spitting up water for the foreseeable future? By Nysea’s stars, you’re crippled again.”

Ranvir gave her a flat look. “Oh yeah,” he lifted his goddess-cursed stump of an arm. “I hadn’t noticed.”

“Oh right,” Amalia said, still smiling as Kyriake guffawed wildly. The older woman laughed so hard she nearly fell out of the wagon. “I’d forgotten about that.”

“Yeah, don’t worry about it,” Ranvir frowned down at the limb. “I’ve got a few ideas.”

“And the rampant mana?”

“I’ve got a few ideas for that as well.”

“I should tell Kasos about this,” Amalia said, looking around in the wagon bed. “He would want to know you crippled yourself again.”

“There’s really no need,” Ranvir argued, raising his hand to stop her.

“Well, while you two idiots argue, I’m going to get back to dragging,” Kyriake jumped over the rail and soon the cart moved once more.

“Dear Kasos,” Amalia dictated as she scribbled in her notebook. “You will not believe what your absolute masterpiece of a student, Ranvir, has been up to since last I wrote you.”

“Amalia,” Ranvir growled, lurching upwards to grab at the book, but he was still injured and her mostly whole. Despite the pain, Ranvir couldn’t stop a little mirth from slipping into his voice. “Give it!”