Archive of Our Own ^beta

I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine, and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy one, I will indulge the other.

-Mary Shelley (Frankenstein)

In all of Richter’s earliest memories was the smell of spices and mushrooms. He grew up in the slums of Ozette, on the outskirts of town, just inside the tree line. The house of his childhood was an old house, with the boards worn and thin, the roof leaky during summer, when it rained often. There were generations of his family worn into the wood, into the stone stove and the threadbare linen.

Richter didn’t remember his father. He only remembered his father in his mother’s words as he helped her in the kitchen. She would tap his nose, winking. “Your father was very charming, Richter.”

“Was he handsome too?” Richter remembered asking. Because his mother always called him handsome, and if he looked like him, he would have been too right?

She laughed as she stirred a stew. “No, not particularly. He always had a very big nose. And his smile wasn’t straight.” She did a strange smile, not hers. One that tilted to the right. “Kinda like that.”

(She will never tell him how his father died. But he will hear it from some humans in town, sneering at him how his father tried to go above his station and they had to shove him back in his place. They will tell him that it is not their fault that his place was in the gutter. The gutter that ran red with blood)

Richter would always remember his mother as the most beautiful woman in his world. She had a scarf, stitched with flowers, that was her mother’s, given to her on her wedding day, that she wore whenever she cooked to keep her mousy brown hair out of her face. The scarf had been bright blue—“like a forget-me-not,” mama always said—but now it was fading. He had her eyes, that much was true. Green, like the herbs she grew in their garden. But his hair, he got from his father’s father.

“Not that you can tell now,” his grandfather would say, passing a hand at his receding white hair.

His grandfather’s father was the one to open the little restaurant that was tucked into the trunk of a large tree. The tree had grown around the restaurant, embracing it, love sanded into the wood. The chairs and tables were rickety, but the stove was sturdy. Richter’s great-grandmother sewed the tablecloths, her brother—who had been a blacksmith’s apprentice—had made the knives for his brother-in-law as a good luck present.

Richter grew up with two brothers. One older—his name was Allen—and the younger was named Saffir because he had Mama’s blue blue eyes. He had a little sister too, Katriana. She had grandfather’s hair too.

Everyone took turns doing jobs in the restaurant—whether it was delivering food to the tables or washing dishes—but Richter was almost always with Mama, in the kitchen. “He has a talent,” Grandmama insisted. She was a baker.

Mama taught him how to take the spines from a sea urchin so they were okay to eat. She taught him to debone a fish and how to tell if their skinny chickens were cooked all the way or not. She taught him about spices and smells and how to chop vegetables properly.

“Cooking is life,” she told him once as he brought her a chicken that he’d chased through the yard. “But to cook, you also have to kill.” She snapped the chicken’s neck quick and clean. Richter had seen a lot of other people flinch at the sound, but he never had. It was something he was used to. “You make ghosts. Do you understand?”

“Yes, mama.”

“If you make the animal or the vegetable suffer, their ghosts are angry and they won’t let the food taste good.”

Richter nodded and helped her pluck the chicken.

Richter was the one that was usually sent to the market to get their ingredients. They couldn’t get them all themselves. Allen or Mama used to come with him, but now he’s nine and he could go by himself. The people at the market—the half-elven one. Humans had their own market, higher up the hill, in the trees—knew him. They would smile at him and talk while pulling out the box of ingredients that had been set aside for the Abends.

Richter’s favorite stall was the fruit one, because it was right beside the humans’ library. (What he will never know is that the owner of the stall—Chrissa—is regularly getting her stall broken, getting beat by the humans for being on their land. So she stays as close as she dares because she likes the sight of learning, likes to imagine herself in there) Richter would set his basket of ingredients down and press his nose against the glass, Chrissa right beside him.

“There are so many books!” Richter exclaimed. “Do they read them all?”

“No. They only read some. The others stay on the shelves.”

Richter remembered frowning in confusion at her. “But why? Don’t they want to learn everything? Why would they have those books and not read them?”

Chrissa shrugged. “They take it for granted. They don’t appreciate them.”

He was there once. When the humans came to attack her stall. (He will forever be able to hear their words. How half-breed scum are too stupid to read, how they don’t deserve to learn.) He limped home and he remembered how Mama looked at him, so relieved and so terrified. Grandpa was the one to patch him up; he had a lot of bruises on his sides and he couldn’t see out of one eye, it was so swollen.

“Why was Mama scared?” Richter asked quietly.

Grandpa pressed a cold slab of meat over Richter’s eye. “She was scared because she thought you weren’t going to come home.”

“Oh,” Richter said quietly. He held the meat in place as Grandpa gently pressed against his bruised ribs. He flinched a couple of times, and took some deep breaths when asked, but Grandpa assured him that nothing was broken. “Like Father never did?”

“Yes, boyo. Like your father never did.”

“The humans are wrong.”

His grandfather’s eyes flicked up to meet his. “About what?”

“We’re not stupid. And everyone deserves to read. And Mama already kinda taught me.” He went to frown, but it tugged at his face in a painful way, so he stopped. “We can learn just as good as they can.”

Grandpa’s smile was sad and fond; Richter knew that smile. Mama had it sometimes, when she didn’t think anyone was looking.

“What?”

“You sound like your father when you talk like that. You have his spirit.”

The world ended in fire.

Allen grabbed Richter’s hand, yanking him from the stove and making him scramble to keep up. “Al? What’s going on?”

“We need to go, Richter.” A window crashed and Allen turned them both away from the falling glass. Richter heard Saffir scream and saw the walls light up in orange and yellow. “Saffir!” Allen looked down at Richter. “Get outside, past the tree line.”

“But—”

“Go!”

Richter’s feet listened before his mind did, taking him past the familiar turns of the restaurant, away from the roaring of a fire and Saffir’s cries. He stumbled over fallen chairs, catching himself and hissing as shards of glass pierced his skin.

He could hear her. Mama. Looking for them. He called back to her, feeling the words catch towards the end, smoke in his throat. She stumbled out, forget-me-not scarf fallen away, clutching tightly at Katriana’s hand and she slammed into him, holding her son tightly to her.

“Where are the others?”

“I-inside still. Al told me to wait out here.” Richter was shaking. His legs felt like they wouldn’t hold him up much longer.

Mama turned and was about to head back in the restaurant—Richter grabbed at her skirt, he didn’t want her to go—and they watched the ceiling crack and collapse, heard Saffir and Allen’s screams.

(They stay there until the fires die away. They are rooted to the spot, Mama on her knees, sobbing, Katriana wailing beside her, face tucked into Mama’s neck and Richter standing by—his legs are numb. His entire body is numb and he feels the tears roll down his cheeks, but he doesn’t remember crying)

The humans shoved them in a carriage, handcuffed and chained to their seats. They weren’t the only ones. There were a few others from their village that they recognized, though most weren’t from Ozette. Richter hadn’t been able to see clearly since the fire. His eyes stung and were always dry. It made everything a little blurry.

They’re led through a back gate of a large city, one with high walls where the sea was constantly crashing. The humans look at their hands, look at their sizes. One look at Mama’s hands—scarred with burns, old and new—and they shoved her off to one side. Richter’s hands were smaller, less damaged. They yanked him in the other direction. He screamed for her. The humans beat him until he couldn’t scream anymore. He didn't know where they'd put Katriana.

Richter was handcuffed and marched in a line with others into a big building, down the stairs and through a very heavy looking door. A blue-haired woman in a white coat came to meet them.

“New batch. From Ozette.”

Richter couldn’t quite make out her face—it was dim, down here, and the blurriness wasn’t helping—but he thought he saw her face twist in some kind of emotion. “I’ll take care of them. Thank you.”

His wrists felt tons lighter without the handcuffs on. Richter rubbed at his wrists. “Where are we?”

The woman looked down at him. “My name is Kate. I’m more or less in charge down here.”

“But where is ‘down here’?” Richter pressed. He was a kid, not stupid. He knew when people were avoiding a question.

“This is the basement of the Research Academy in Sybak.”

“Sybak,” Richter repeated. He didn’t know much about the place, other than what some of the traders would talk about the market there. He knew it was far away from Ozette though. “But. Why are we here? Where’d they take Mama and Katriana?”

Kate tensed before relaxing and she crouched in front of him. The others that were cuffed with him—they hadn’t said a word. Fear, maybe, or perhaps they were resigned to their fates already. “I don’t know. But I can guess. They’re likely being sold as housekeepers, if they’re lucky. Or being put to work in a factory or some such.”

“But—What did we do?”

Behind her glasses, Kate’s eyes were dark and sad. “We’re half-elves. That’s enough.”

Even his elementary reading skills were good enough to actually be of use down here. Richter was put to work, helping mix chemicals, create alloys, organize research notes, and to deliver messages. He liked the last two the most; it was calming, organizing things and putting them in proper order. He would skim the research as well, not understanding most of it. Even if he knew the words, he didn't always know what they meant. It was frustrating, but he started making lists of the ones he didn't know, and asking the older researchers. Even Kate—who wasn't particularly friendly—would answer his questions.

Delivering messages was definitely the best. It was nice to get out of the basement, see the sunlight. See other people. The half-elves in the basement weren’t mean or anything, but there was a certain hopelessness about them that Richter couldn’t stand. (Had they forgotten about the world out there? About the world they came from? The rest of his life would not be trapped inside that basement)

At fourteen, Richter was all awkward, gangly limbs, constantly tripping over himself. It’d been over three years since he’d seen his family, since he was brought to the basement in Sybak and he’d seen nothing outside of the Research Academy building since then.

Kate had another file for him to deliver. “This is going to the Director, okay? He need it ASAP.”

“Yes ma’am.” Richter only half-meant it as sarcasm. Kate somehow was the de facto leader of the half-elves down here, and he couldn’t quite figure out why she, of all of them, kept in constant contact with humans.

The sunlight coming through the windows upstairs was almost alien to Richter’s eyes; he was so used to the florescent lights from downstairs. He flinched away from the people in the hallways, even if they tended to ignore him, hiding behind his hunched shoulders.

Richter stumbled up the stairs, one hand flying out to catch himself, his knee slamming into the step. Not a moment later, he felt someone’s shoe go into his ribs before a crash echoed through the foyer. Richter tried to stand, hissing when his knee wouldn’t quite bend all the way.

Someone was scrambling up the steps. “Hey, you okay?”

Richter jerked back from the hand on his shoulder, spinning to look at the person. Blond hair made a fluffy, messy halo around a blushing face. They held their hands up, as if to show no threat.

“Sorry, I really gotta watch where I'm going. I get really lost in my own head.” They scratched the back of their head, half-grimacing. “I hope I didn't hurt you.”

“I-it's okay.” Humans didn't talk to Richter. Not anymore than they had to. And none of them had ever apologized before.

“Here, let me help you clean up.” The other boy—he must have been around Richter's age, maybe a little younger—scooped up loose pages, straightening them and making sure they were right way up. He tilted his head. “Hey, where are these going?”

“To the Director.” Richter's reading was better than ever; Kate and some of the other researchers had helped coach him so he could help them more efficiently.

The boy grinned, bright as the sun. “Perfect! I'm his assistant. I'll walk with you.” He held out a hand. “I'm Aster, by the way.”

Richter hesitated at the hand. Before he could say anything, another person shoved past them both, sending them stumbling into the bannister. They looked down at Aster. “You and your trash are blocking the hallway, Laker.”

Aster didn't seem phased by the fact that the man was easily twice his size, pushing up and glaring at him. “Hey, don't talk about people that way! I guess you flunked out of your fancy manners school, huh?”

“It's bad enough that you got let in as a charity case. I shouldn't be surprised that you associate with the rest of the gutter trash.” The man—Ezra, apparently—shoved them both apart and continued down the stairs.

Richter jumped when Aster whipped back around, extending hands to try and steady him. “Ezra's an ass, don't listen to him. Did he hurt you?”

He shook his head mutely.

Aster softened, pulling his hands back and taking a step out of Richter's personal space. “Sorry. Do you still wanna walk with me to Director Samuels'?”

He glanced around. The boy seemed so bright, and he seemed so nice, but...wouldn't he get in trouble? He didn't look or feel like a half-elf. And he was a research assistant; he could lose his job just for talking to Richter!

“It's okay if not.” Aster took a few steps back, grabbing the folders to hand them back. He smiled, but it was much dimmer than before, something polite and strained. “I'll see you around?”

He was halfway down the stairs before Richter found his voice. “Wait!” He scuttled down some of the steps, holding the folders close to his chest. “I-I—c-can you show me where the office is?”

The blinding smile was back. “For sure!” He bounded up to meet Richter. “C'mon, follow me.”

Richter had his nose buried in results, trying to find the discrepancy—something wasn't adding up. Richter's reading was decent, but his math was excellent—when the lab door opened. Everyone's heads went up; no one came into the basement that didn't have to, and there were no scheduled visits today.

He wasn't expecting to see a patch of sunshine bob and weave his way through. “I didn't get your name last time,” Aster said without so much as a hello.

Richter blinked at him, hyperaware of everyone's eyes on them. What was a human doing down here? How did Richter know him? Were they in trouble?

“That was me asking for your name, by the way.”

“What is wrong with you?” he hissed, stutter gone in the face of absolute bewilderment. “Why are you here?”

“I just said. I didn't get your name.”

“No one comes down here, especially not for something stupid like that.”

Aster frowned. “I don't think you're stupid.”

Richter reined in the urge to strangle him. “I think you are!”

His laugh was as bright as his smile, the sound echoing out through the lab. “You know—you're the first person to ever call me that?”

“Seriously—what are you doing here?” Richter tugged him away from the open, to a corner in case anyone else came down to see him there. “You could get in major trouble for this! We could get in trouble.”

“I'm not worried about myself.” His smile came flicker-fast. “They can't afford to lose me. But I didn't think about how it could affect you. I'm sorry.” He bit his lip, shuffling his feet. “I just—you seemed like a cool person when we met the other day.”

Cool? No one ever even noticed Richter, let alone thought him cool. “There's something wrong with you.”

Aster laughed again; did he think Richter was joking? Or was he just mentally unstable?

“And what do you mean they can't afford to lose you?”

This time, his grin was sharp, a knife in the dimness of the basement. “I've been working as an assistant researcher since I was nine. I'd be doing my own research if I was old enough. But they know if they get rid of me, they lose one of their best people to potentially any competition they have.”

Nine years old? Richter's ninth birthday had been the first one he spent in this basement. That Aster was brilliant enough to have been a research assistant that young? “You're a genius.”

“First I'm stupid, then I'm a genius. You gotta make up your mind.”

A genius kid as a research assistant. What must it be like to be so secure in your position that you could break the rules like this? Half-elves were thrown away, left to rot and killed for nothing. Richter couldn't so much as step outside the lab without authorization lest he be killed.

“But seriously, if you want me to leave, I'll leave. I don't want you guys in trouble.”

Aster began stepping away, and something about him had dimmed. On a wild impulse, Richter grabbed his arm before he could walk out of reach.

“My name's R-richter.” Damn. The stutter had come back. He'd been doing so good at keeping it off too!

Aster leaned into the grip, his balance swaying with it. “Is the stutter an accent?” he teased, but it didn't sound mean like others' had. It was like he was inviting Richter in on the joke.

He flushed almost as red as his hair. “You're a genius, you figure it out!”

Aster's laughter echoed in the basement long after he'd left.

The meals in the basement came in three kinds: canned goods that were generally so slimy they might be developing sentience, squares of packed together, protein mush that left a powdery aftertaste on the roof of your mouth, or—if they were lucky—rock hard bread.

Richter had stopped dreaming of his family's kitchen years ago. It hurt less, to remember his Mama's hands around his as they kneaded dough, or his siblings darting in and out to sneak tastes.

Still, on one of the tests he was running on a few rock samples, he saw a familiar name on the test order. Aster Laker. The other boy hadn't come back down to the basement since he'd been warned off. But sometimes, within the files that were delivered for testing, there would be little notes slipped in. Drawings usually. Usually they were quick and cute representations of people. Richter could recognize Director Samuels by his exaggerated, proud mustache, and Francis in the kitchens by his very shiny bald head and prominent eyebrows.

Sometimes though, there would be other drawings. Sketches of objects in the lab, the refractions of light on the glass beakers rendered in clean arcs, or potted plants in quick sharp lines. Occasionally, there were notes on the margins of those. Things like: 'my succulent has officially survived one month!' or 'you ever get so bored that you idly think about combining things into explosives?'

(Yes, Richter does get that bored. He doesn't let it sit too long because then the pressure of being trapped in a basement for the remainder of his life pushes on his ears. But the thought makes him laugh, reading the notes and looking at the drawings as he chewed through protein mush of dinner. It brings him new daydreams, sometimes, of cooking in a kitchen like his family's, Aster perched on a stool and sketching and talking a mile a minute like he does, his accent fresh from Sybak bay)

Seventeen was entirely too young to spontaneously develop hearing loss. Still, it was the only explanation for what Richter heard Kate say.

“I'm being assigned somewhere?”

“Yes. To one of the labs upstairs.” Was he imagining the pinched look on her face? Was she jealous? Or just upset to lose him? They weren't friends, really—Kate didn't have those. She had people she got along with more than others, but no one wanted to get too close to the woman in charge of running her type of experiments—but he and Kate got along well enough.

“It—I—” What did you say to someone when they just handed you your dream on a platter? Kate had been polite enough to tell him away from the others currently working, but...they would just be left here.

Fear seized his heart, and all he could smell was ash and smoke burned his throat and his eyes. The last time he'd been sent away from people, he'd never seen them again.

“This assignment...it's a good thing,” Kate said, comforting in her own awkward way. “Just make sure you drop us a note from time to time.” A forced smile, rigid on her face, but sweet as a gesture. “You know where we'll be.”

Aster had been waiting for him at the end of the hallway to the basement labs. He grinned and waved to him, faltering at the panicked tears that just wouldn't stop flowing down Richter's cheeks. He dragged Richter into a bathroom, locking the door for some semblance of privacy.

“Was this the wrong thing to do?” Aster asked, crouching next to where Richter was pressed into a corner on the floor, chest heaving. “I thought giving at least one of you a way out was a good thing.”

“It is,” he assured him, scrubbing at his eyes. What were you supposed to do when your dream came true?

Aster brought him some paper towels soaked in cool water for his eyes, which Richter took gratefully, pressing them into his eye sockets. His sinuses were already stuffy from the tears—he hated crying. He was supposed to be happy about this, dammit!

Aster sat next to him, not touching, but close. He leaned his head back to look up at the fluorescent lights. Richter had seen him briefly over the years in his message-delivering. Aster's face was still round with baby-fat, but something was happening with his jaw where he didn't look like a child anymore. His hair was falling into his eyes, and sitting like this, their legs were almost the same length even though Richter was taller than him.

“I cried too when I left the labs,” Aster said. “Mine were pure happiness though. They...didn't like me much, in the lab I got stuck in.”

“The hell did they put you in a lab for?” Richter's stutter had gotten a bit better over the years, but the outrage of putting a human in those same conditions? For what?

Aster gave him a strange smile, wry and bitter-adjacent. It looked wrong on him; he should always be that bright boy that had kicked his ribs in on the stairs. “Child genius, remember? They needed to make sure it wasn't a fluke, then they wanted to try and figure out why. Wanted to know if I had any elven blood, what I could be useful for.” Aster stretched his arms out. Richter could just make out the pale round scars in his wrists and elbows; the people that Kate experimented on had scars like that too. “Still hate getting my blood taken.”

“Your parents were okay with that?”

He snorted. “My parents sold me to the Academy. Can't blame 'em. I was kid number six. Lotta mouths to feed.”

“That's not right.” Richter sat up on his knees, turning to look at Aster directly. “They should've kept you, even if it was hard.”

“Ha! Knew I liked you for a reason. How much did they tell you about your transfer orders?”

“Just that I was getting assigned to a lab upstairs.”

Aster grinned, spreading his arms out wide. Had he had a growth spurt recently? He looked as skinny as the half-elves in the basement. “Meet the new head of Summon Spirit Research.”

“You're a head of a department?” At, what, fifteen years old? Maybe?

“Not a whole department yet. It's just little 'ol me doing this research so far, but I managed to convince the department heads that it's a viable line of research.”

“How'd you do that?”

“I may or may not have managed to figure out a way to create a Summon Spirit.”

“You did what?”

“C'mon. I'll explain upstairs. Got my own office and everything.” Aster stood, dusting himself off and offered Richter a hand. “I needed a research assistant. You were my first choice.”

Using Aster's hand as leverage, Richter pulled himself to his feet. “You barely know me. How do you know I'm not stupid?”

“Because I've seen your notes on my tests.” Aster strode confidently through the halls, Richter dodging around people to keep up. “Your notes are part of what led me to my breakthrough on artificial Summon Spirits.”

“Which part?”

“Something about how you ran a few different versions of the test to adjust for inherent mana levels within an object.” Aster turned, walking backwards. Richter grabbed his shoulder to steer him away from other people in the hall. “I never would've thought of that on my own. Ah, here we are.”

Aster's office—their office​?—was a narrow one, with tables and shelves shoved into the walls. Crates of books and papers were yet to be unpacked. A big chalkboard took up much of the right wall, and there was a small window set high into the back wall.

“Pretty sure they expect me to fail.” Aster leaned on one of the tables, looking around. “I know plenty of them want me to.”

“You don't seem like the type of person to do what people expect.”

That surprised him into a laugh, the same bright, loud one in Richter's memories. “You're damn right I'm not. See, that's where you come in.”

Richter snorted. “Working with a half-elf would be extremely unexpected.”

“It would be. They're all really short-sighted like that. But that just means they're blinding themselves to other views of the world. Like I said, your ideas about how to run the tests—how'd you come up with that?”

“It—made sense? Everything has its inherent mana. You have to control for that.” Humans really didn't know much about mana at all, but then, they couldn't feel it like half-elves could. Richter had even heard of some really powerful half-elves being able to see mana.

“See, that kind of thing? Is what I need. I'm brilliant enough. But even I don't know everything. I think if we work together, we could think of some really amazing things.” Aster stood, holding out a hand. “Partners?”

“Thought I was supposed to be y-your research assistant.”

“Only on paper. They would never have agreed to the transfer if you weren't subordinate to anyone. But I don't want a subordinate.”

What was wrong with this guy? A human, saying things like that? Still...he didn't seem disingenuous. Richter took his hand. “Partners,” he agreed.

They shared a student dorm. It was a small, leaky one-bedroom apartment, but it was theirs. Aster had shoved another bed into that room, with the most narrow of walkways inbetween. He scratched the back of his head, flushing. “New researchers make really terrible paychecks, y'know?” he said. “And I spent a lot when I was working in Meltokio 'cause the stipend for room and board over there paid for almost nothing—the prices over there really are ridiculous—so for now, this is what we got.”

The living room had a secondhand couch and a coffee table that was a big plank of wood nailed to some milk crates was piled with books and papers. There were shelves and stacks of books everywhere.

Richter's favorite part was the kitchen. It had a squat fridge, an ancient-looking stove, and maybe a square foot of counter space. Aster watched him run his fingers over the warped cabinets with an odd expression.

“I...hope I wasn't too forward with all this,” Aster said. “You don't have to stay with me. I just didn't know where else you would want to live.” Or could, was what he didn't say. Half-elves weren't allowed in human neighborhoods. They had their section of city by the docks that was always prone to flooding.

“It's great,” Richter choked out through memories of smoke and Mama's smile.

Richter couldn't go grocery shopping in the human market. They overcharged, and spat at him assuming they let him in at all. The half-elven markets had a decent selection, but a lot of times their quality wasn't very good, or the food was ready to spoil the next day.

“Why don't you just give me the list?” Aster asked, resting his cheek in his palm. They didn't have a dining table; they had a couple of rickety stools and a counter in front of the kitchen sink. Aster liked to work there while Richter was cooking. He called it relaxing. “I know I'm not a very good cook, but shopping is well within my skill set. Or you could come with me?”

It became a weekly thing for them. They'd go check out the half-elven markets first, to see what they could get for cheaper, but then make their way back up to the human ones. When they tried to start things with Richter, Aster stepped in, chin tilted like a haughty noble. “He's with me.”

Their story was that Richter was his servant if anyone tried to complain. “I don't like calling you that,” Aster said. “You're my friend.”

One day. One day they'd be in a position where Richter's place would be unquestionable. Or he would be strong enough that an ordinary person wouldn't dare say anything.

“It w-works for now,” Richter said, pressing his fingernail into an orange to peel it. “Their opinions don't matter.”

He chewed his lip, even as he took the proffered orange half. “I guess you're right.”

“The artificial Summon Spirit was proof of concept more than anything,” Aster admitted, crossing his arms and staring at the boxes containing his research. “It wasn't very strong, and it was small. But it was intelligent and conscious.”

“Where is it now?”

“With the Mizuho ambassador, so I hear. She's the last summoner.”

“Were you trying to make a Summon Spirit?”

“Not exactly. My theory is this: the world is short on mana.” Aster rolled out a chart. “Look at these dates. It's almost—cyclical, how the amount of mana we have at our disposal comes and goes. Sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less—I haven't figured out the exact math for it—but roughly every fifty to a hundred years, our mana yoyo's. And with that, so does our economies, our standards of living, all of it.”

“Summon Spirits are pure mana. You were trying to find a way to channel theirs.”

“Yes. But historically, that doesn't work out great. The latest disaster was at Volt's Temple like four years ago. He destroyed half of Mizuho's population.”

“Aren't the Spirits supposed to help guide and protect the world? Why would he be so violent?”

“No idea. I asked the Mizuho ambassador when I was in Meltokio—she was there when it happened, but—I don't think it was a good idea. She looked really scared.”

Richter sat on the opposite table, staring at the data. He could see where Aster was coming from. Tethe'alla had been doing well for a long time, but from that data? They were due for a downswing, and they needed to be prepared. “But you spontaneously created mana to make that Summon Spirit?”

“But that's the thing—that shouldn't be possible. Mana exists like energy. It can't just be created. The only thing that I've ever heard of creating mana was the Great Kharlan Tree.”

“Which doesn't exist.”

“Nope. Environmental studies would know if something that massive was just, hanging out in a forest somewhere. The most likely place that matches up with it is in elven territory.”

Richter tugged a map closer. “While that makes sense...I have another theory.”

Aster grinned and leaned into his shoulder, looking down at the map. “Let me hear it.”

“The Giant Kharlan Tree died, didn't it? That much mana doesn't just disappear. It would have to go somewhere. And the Kharlan War would have had a devastating drain on mana levels to make that Tree wither away. So I don't think the Tree was in Heimdall at all. Ecological reports say that that forest is healthy and thriving, right?”

“Yeah. Crops imported from Heimdall are crazy expensive 'cause of their quality.”

“There's only one other forest that would've had the kind of density required to support a Tree of that size.” Richter tapped a spot on the map. “We got warned about Gaoracchia all the time growing up. There were rumors of curses and ghosts haunting it. But people stay away, and there's no trade routes or anything passing through there. So where are the ghosts coming from?”

“...You mean literal ghosts, don't you? Like the monsters?”

“I never saw them for myself, but yeah. People don't go into Gaoracchia, but there's monsters in there all the time. So how are they spawning? How are they getting the mana?”

“I love hearing the way you think.” Aster bounced to the chalkboard. “So. We got a lot of research to look into already. We need the history of the area, we need monster reports, ecological data...”

His handwriting when he got excited was a scrawl. It was like learning to read all over again. Richter grabbed a notebook and some pens. He wasn't good about keeping track of them. “Which one do you wanna tackle first?”

Aster looked over his shoulder. “I can take the history portion? My Tethe'allan history is still kinda fresh from figuring out all these dates.”

“Okay. I'll take on the ecological data then. I can compare it to Ozette's, since they have a similar environment, but Ozette was actually suitable for life.”

“Divide and conquer.” Aster shoved on his shoes and grabbed his jacket. Then he paused looking at Richter, who was also getting his shoes on. “Do you not have a jacket?”

“No?”

“It's like forty degrees out! You'll freeze!”
“That's literally untrue,” Richter sighed, already resigning himself to being dragged somewhere other than the library. “Water freezes at thirty-two degrees.”

“Don't science at me now. C'mon. Can't have my partner be a popsicle.”

The heat in their building broke that first winter. They bundled themselves in layers, and Richter learned his first Fireball spell to try and burn newspapers in their oven for warmth. Still, they shoved their beds together because winters in Sybak brought polar winds from Flanoir and they were especially bad at night.

Aster snored. Not loudly, but on sleepless nights, Richter heard it. That first winter, Richter felt his snores vibrating against his shoulder, a bony arm thrown over his waist.

Richter was used to sleeping around people, but he hadn't shared a bed since Ozette. The basement was full of machines that kept the air pretty warm during previous winters. Aster was taller than his sister had ever been, and as bony as his brothers. Aster snacked more than he ate, but that couldn't be good for him.

Perhaps he would make a lentil stew. Lentils were cheap enough, and it would keep well in the fridge. He could even make a curry, like Mama would make during the winter, with extra spice to warm them from the inside out.

Aster shoved his forehead pointedly into the meat of Richter's shoulder. “Y'r thinkin' too loud. G't'sleep.”

Richter laughed softly. Aster was very much not a morning person. Their sleep schedules were complete opposites. “Sorry.”

Aster found Richter nearly doubled over his desk, one hand to his forehead like he was trying to hold the world together with it. Richter's migraines didn't happen often, but their intensity was not to be underestimated.

By now, Aster knew the drill. He turned off the overhead lights and turned on some candles. He went down to the cafeteria to get a bowl of ice water and was careful to come back into their lab quietly.

“You've been getting these migraines more often,” he said, pitching his voice low as he soaked a small towel in the ice water. “You should go see a doctor.”

“I'll be fine. I just need to get this work done.”

“You don't have to lie to me, y'know. Tilt your head back for a sec.” It was a sign of how much pain Richter was in that he didn't argue about the directions. Aster lay the cold, wet towel over Richter's eyes, watching a little of the tension bleed out of him. “It could be something serious.”

“It's fine. I'm just tired.”

“The solution for tiredness is sleep.”

“I'm not a child, Aster.”

“Then stop acting like one. You're not doing yourself any favors and you don't have anything to prove.”

He jumped as Richter shot up. “Of course I have things to prove! You get to live easy. A genius human darling of the university! Meanwhile I need to be perfect before I get carted back to the basement. Or I'm just shot and left to rot in a hole somewhere. I don't have the luxury of mistakes.”

“I won't let that happen to you.”

“As if you get a say.”

Aster shoved himself into Richter's space. “Listen to me. I know that I can't imagine what it's like for you, but the world isn't as cold and terrible as you seem to think it is. There are good humans out there just like there's crappy half-elves. You think I'm so important to them? Then trust me to use that importance for you.”

“And what happens when I get in your way? Or too many people come whispering around about how you don't need me because you're so brilliant?”

He caught Richter where he swayed on his feet. “Since you're such a damn scientist, how about you wait until you have evidence that I would ever do something like that before jumping to conclusions?” He helped Richter to the floor, wedging himself between the wall and the edge of the desk, and grabbed the bowl of ice water.

Richter's laugh was a bitter, acidic thing. “I have plenty of evidence of humans screwing us over.”

“Well, I'm an outlier. But you don't want my help? Then sit here on your own then. I'll be at the apartment whenever you're ready to get your head out of your ass.”

Richter sat on the ground in front of the couch were Aster was curled. They hadn't spoken since the fight yesterday. “...Why am I here? Of all the people you could have chosen to be your partner...you picked a half-elf you barely knew. Why?”

“...I told you, didn't I? I saw the way you approach problems, the care you put into your work. I liked that.”

“That can't be it. No human would risk all they have just for that. Especially not one with so many options.”

“You weren't my only option,” Aster said, almost insulted on Richter's behalf. He could hear him shifting position. “I could have picked other people.”

“So why didn't you?”

“I'm only the 'university darling' on paper. A nine-year-old genius is a great look for them. Looks like they're doing outreach, and kids are supposed to be a lot more malleable for political purposes. But—the adult researchers. They're not happy about it most of the time. They're jealous, and angry. They resent having to work with me. You—you didn't treat me like that.”

“You met me for five minutes. I barely said anything at all to you.” Richter was grateful for their positioning. Looking at people's faces was hard sometimes when it was a serious conversation.

“Even after that. When I went into the lab. And your notes on the files and tests I would send down.” He could hear the smile in Aster's voice, and hated that they knew each other well enough for him to know that. “You're not a nice person, exactly, but your notes didn't have the same tone that other people's would.”

“You didn't know me well enough to make that judgment call.”

“No. But I had enough data that I was willing to take a reasonable risk.” Aster leaned forward enough that he came into Richter's peripheral vision. Richter turned to face him so that the moron wouldn't keep leaning until he toppled over. “And so far, I've been proven right.”

“...There's something wrong with you.”

Aster's laughter burst into being. “See? Things like that. You're not nice, Richter, but you're not mean or cruel either. Not if you don't have to be. And you're a brilliant researcher who isn't blinded by his own ego. Therefore, you're clearly the perfect candidate for my partner.”

“...I'm sorry for what I said.” Richter startled a little as Aster slid down to sit cross-legged next to him on the floor, their knees touching.

“'s okay. I know you didn't mean it at me.” He'd heard Richter vent about people. He couldn't say things to their face—his position was a delicate one. He was right about that—but the inventiveness of his curses and insults as he chopped vegetables for dinner never failed to impress. When Richter meant his words to you, there was no subtlety. It was one of the things Aster liked about him; you always knew where you stood with Richter.

“I am a little worried though. These migraines have been getting more and more common.”

Richter shrugged. “The Goddess hates me?”

He smacked him lightly. “Don't blaspheme! I don't wanna be next to you when you get all—smited! Smote?”

“Smitten.” Richter couldn't hide the fond smile.

“That! I'm surprised you haven't done more research into your problem, honestly.”

“If I'm gonna be squinting at books, I'd rather them be for my actual research then for something that I can just deal with. It's only a headache.”

“Headaches that make you unable to get out of a chair?” Aster asked dryly. It didn't happen to that degree often, but even once had been way too often. “Wait, wait—squinting?” Now that he thought about it, Richter did seem to squint a lot, always moving closer to read their big board in the lab.

Aster got to his feet, grabbing a book at random from their coffee table. He opened up to a page and held it up. “Read this. Second paragraph.”

“The hell is this about? You know I can read, you weirdo.” Richter leaned forward, and yes, had to narrow his eyes. How had Aster never noticed? “Ugh, these books all have this tiny font.” He had to shift closer. “'We do know that the Foojian civilization was established on the Fooji continent during the first millennium A.N—sorry, A.M (this being by the then recently established Papal calendar). There is evidence of a devastating earthquake that may have'—what's the point of this, Aster?”

“Am I blurry to you? Like, my face? Anything?”

Richter rubbed at the bridge of his nose. “Kind of? I guess?” Aster had come into his life a flurry of fuzzy movement. Things hadn't changed much. “But everything's been like that for years.” Ever since the fire that took his family and burned down their restaurant. He'd stopped noticing it really.

“So is it easier to read or see things more in focus if they're closer?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Richter, for a brilliant guy, you're stupid. You need glasses.” Aster dropped the book and grabbed his wrist. “C'mon. We're gonna go get you tested.”

“Theres nowhere open this time of night, Aster!” Richter had to hunch a little to make up for their height difference. “And besides, no doctor is gonna look at a half-elf.”

Aster's green eyes blazed like a copper sulfate fire. “I'll make sure they do. You might be right about the time though.” His grip on Richter's wrist relaxed. “Fine. But we're going first thing tomorrow morning.”

The glasses were way too expensive. Richter balked at the price. He could put up with migraines to avoid spending gald he couldn't even fathom.

Aster tried to fight him about it. Said it was for his health, but Richter could be stubborn too. They needed to eat. To have a roof over their heads, and running water. They couldn't afford them.

He wasn't ready for Aster to take it to the university board, to petition to include the glasses in their budget. He would have stopped him if he'd heard about it first. Medical assistance for a half-elf coming out of a university budget? Absurd.

But Aster was an excellent speaker, twisting them into arguments and saying that the other departments had a discretionary budget set aside for accommodations to their employees. Richter Abend was in their books as an employee, allowed access to the same areas and resources as the others. He leveraged their trust in his expertise, saying that if they refused to accommodate his research partners and assistants, then clearly the university didn't value him or his research so he would go elsewhere.

And it worked. When Aster gave him the little case containing his glasses, Richter couldn't stop staring, stunned.

“You're amazing,” he breathed. “Did I ever tell you that?”

“Ha! Nope. Buuut I could stand to hear it more often.” Aster beamed. “Go on, put 'em on!”

The glasses felt tight against his temples, odd over his ears. But oh, look at the world! The trees had leaves rather than just being fuzzy balls of green. The edges of everything were so crisp, the colors even being a little bit more vibrant when they were in focus like this. He could read the signs, he could count the bricks.

Aster had freckles. Not many—they didn't see much sunlight in their line of work, but he had some on his nose. Richter had never known that.

“I'm taking a walk,” Richter declared. He wanted to see everything.

His best friend's laugh rang out down the street as he jogged a little to keep up with Richter's longer stride. He bumped his shoulder playfully. “Told you I'd fight for you.”

“Never gonna let me live that down, huh?”

“Oh absolutely not.”

Aster had a sweet tooth like there was no tomorrow. He was like a little kid, always snacking on candies or cookies. Richter hadn't had much opportunity for baking. He'd helped Mama make the bread for their restaurant, but not the desserts.

Work didn't take him as long now that reading and studying samples didn't leave him with horrendous headaches to fight through. He had more energy now, his mind less foggy with low-level pain. So he found some cookbooks at the library, and saved little bits of gald here and there on their groceries to save for some more expensive ingredients.

Two months after Richter first put his glasses on, Aster stumbled into the kitchen, rubbing at one eye, lured by the smells of french toast and freshly baked beignets.

“...Is it my birthday?” he asked, frozen in the kitchen doorway. “Are you sick?”

“Shut up and drink your coffee.”

Still eyeing him suspiciously, Aster did what he was told and made his cup of battery acid. “Seriously—what's this fanciness for?”

“It's breakfast, what does it look like?”

“A fancy breakfast. Where'd we even get the money for this?”

“I made room in the budget, don't worry about it. Now eat it before it gets cold.”

The sound that came out of Aster's mouth as he took his first bites were downright obscene. Richter very determinedly looked at his own portion of French toast with eggs. There were still floofs of powdered sugar dusting his jaw and his sleep shirt.

“I knew you could cook, but damn, when did you learn to do this?”

“I tried the recipe from a cookbook.”

Aster's lips were lined in powdered sugar and honey. “Putting all that effort into this?”

“I needed a test subject, didn't I? Who better than you?”

“Yeah, but even you don't get something this good on the first...try—Richter, are you cheating on me as my roommate/cook?”

“Don't be stupid. A test subject pool of one is entirely too narrow a data sample.”

“You are! I've been betrayed.” Aster draped a dramatic hand over his forehead, leaning back in his chair.

“Your coffee kicked in quick today, I see,” Richter said dryly as he stood, already done eating. Once he was back in the kitchen, collecting dishes to start washing them, he let himself say, “...It's a thank you. For everything.”

Aster kept eating in a contemplative silence. But once he was done, he shooed Richter out of his own kitchen. “You did all this trouble to cook—you know I'm cleaning. Go shower.” He leaned a shoulder on the doorframe, smiling gently up at him. “I didn't need a thank you, but...you're welcome.”

Richter didn't notice how long his hair was getting until it hung in his eyes while he read. They'd shaved them down in the basement to counteract the chance of lice, and at this point, shaving it sounded fantastic.

Chuckling, Aster watched him stomp into the bathroom, looking for a razor. Richter didn't produce much body hair yet—half-elves were less likely to do it over all, and even when they did, it was much closer to their middle age—and Aster was similarly unimpressive in the facial hair department.

(He'd grown a mustache, he insisted, but Richter had snorted at the pale, barely-there hairs on his upper lip. Aster had shaved it the next day)

Richter had the razor in hand, but when he paused upon looking in the mirror. He liked his hair. The same hair as his grandfather, who he still heard humming when he shelled peas. The hair his sister had put dumb bows in, and his brothers had ruffled to annoy him.

The hair that had been shaved away when he'd been brought to the basement. And he was no longer trapped there. No one else would have say over what he did with his body when.

“I need to run to the market.”

“Now?” Aster's head poked up from behind the couch.

“You don't have to come. It's not for groceries.”

“If you're sure. Come back safe.”

Richter took to the half-elven markets, the stench from the docks particularly strong today. Ah, there, a woman selling woven goods. “Do you have scarves?” Richter asked.

She showed him her wares. There was a blue one that caught his eye, almost the same shade as a forget-me-not.

“Is it for you or for a sweetheart?” the woman asked. Her accent was thicker even than Aster's, a nasal drawl.

“Uh, for myself.”

“It'd clash with your hair. I think you'll want something a bit more neutral, since your hair is already such a nice color.” The woman held out several options, dusky browns, or charcoal blacks. All a bit boring, but they would match with a lot of things, so Richter wouldn't need to worry about buying multiple scarves. He wasn't a fan of the brown ones, so he took one of the blacks.

His eyes lingered on the blue, on the dimming memory of Mama's face pinched in concentration as she made dumplings.

“Do you want this one anyway?” she asked gently. “I can give you a discount, since you're buying the black one.”

He didn't really have money for it. His paycheck from the University was a pittance even when compared to Aster's. Between groceries and rent? They were already spread quite thin. Still...

“How much of a discount?”

He used the black scarf to keep his hair back when he cooked, or ran tests in the lab, but he kept the blue one in his nightstand. It was something nice to pick up and hold on restless nights. It was on one of those nights that Aster looked across their little bedroom at him and asked quietly, “...Do you miss home?”

Richter kept his back to Aster's side of the bed, but his fingers curled tighter in the scarf. Did he miss Ozette? Not much anymore. As a village, it hadn't exactly been welcoming to them. “...I miss my family.” He didn't let himself much, but some nights like this, when the smoke of their neighbors' burnt cooking had infused the building and all he could see were his family's faces in the fire that night. “What about you?”

The sound of Aster's body shifting. “...Not really much to miss. I miss my brothers, but...my parents didn't bother with me much.”

It was weird to think that Richter had been lucky in that way. “...my mom had a scarf like this. And I had two brothers and a sister. We—we had a restaurant and everyone helped.”

There was a kind smile in Aster's voice. “That sounds nice. You learned to cook from your mom?”

“Yeah...”

“No wonder you're so good at it. She must've been a good teacher.”

It had been a long time since Richter cried about his family; he wasn't going to now, but his eyes burned like they wanted to. “She was the best.”

Richter's studies led to experiments with mana, and his abilities with magic began growing. Water came easiest to him, the pull of the ocean outside the city he'd lived in for more than half his life now. The gentle bubble of a rolling boil, the rush of a storm surge.

Darkness was almost as easy. The memory of Ozette's shade, the familiar press of shadows in the basement, always curled in the edges of the room even with all the lights on. The way it blurred the edges of his vision without his glasses.

Using dark magic was trickier in that he had to click his mental state over to use it, like a shift in focus on a camera. It was the conscious swell of mana that had to be allowed to keep swelling instead of channeling it out like other elemental magic. Like blowing up a balloon, but trusting it not to pop if you blew too much air into it.

Of course, then there were the times those spells went wrong.

“Ow!” Aster clapped his hands protectively over his ears, giving Richter a baleful look as he did the same.

Dark spells failing popped your eardrums like a dagger, sharp and painful.

“Sorry.” Richter rubbed at his ear.

“At least you didn't flood the bathroom this time.”

Richter had made the mistake of practicing Aqua Edges in their apartment once. He'd lost control of it and soaked their sofa. Since then, he'd taken to practicing it in the bathroom where there were drains in the floor.

Richter flicked a ball of paper at Aster's head, which just made him yelp and lobbed it back at him.

Watching the arc of the ball through the air, a lightbulb went off in Richter's head. “I've been going about this the wrong way.”

“Goddess, I'm going to have hearing loss at the end of this.” Still, Aster scrambled up to sit on the back of the couch, legs dangling like a kid's despite his twenty-first birthday being in two weeks. He was fascinated by magic and how it worked, and liked to watch Richter experiment with his spells.

“I've been thinking about dark magic like a spacial spell. Like water, it would fill whatever container it's in, right?”

“Sure?”

“But that's not what darkness does. That's what light does. Darkness is the base state. It's not characterized by space, but by weight. Gravity is what holds the darkness together. The speed of light is what lets it escape gravity and act like it does. It's a density issue.”

Richter frowned, gathering his mana again. Instead of letting it go and swell beyond the containers of his reach, he made his mana the container, a place for the gravity to center, letting the darkness pool in such a well-lit area.

“There it is.”

Aster was off the couch now, peering curiously past the Dark Sphere. He took the paper ball and stood on a chair to drop it over the Dark Sphere hovering over Richter's hands. He grinned as the ball fell straight until it bent around the Sphere, thrown off its path by the Sphere's gravitational pull.

“You're amazing,” he said. “We should go out to dinner to celebrate!”

“We don't have money,” Richter reminded him, letting the mana dissipate.

“Ugh, you're right. Let's make it a picnic then! I'll make sandwiches.”

“Wait, Aster, I'd like not to die from food poisoning!” He scrambled after Aster, trying to grab their slices of turkey from him.

“It's not that bad.” Aster clutched his deli meat close to his chest, pouting. “Besides, you always cook. Let me do it this time. We're celebrating you anyway. You shouldn't be the one cooking.”

“Not how that works.”

“Of course it is. You wouldn't expect to have to cook on your birth...” Aster squinted at him. “When is your birthday? You've never told me!”

“It's not important!” Richter tried to use his reach to his advantage, but Aster was squirrelly, ducking and dodging him in their little kitchen.

“Of course it is! I'd like to celebrate my best friend living another year.”

“You're such a sap.”

“You like me that way—hey!” Aster squirmed as he got snatched and tossed over Richter's shoulder. It was utterly unfair of the man to use his height to his advantage. He whacked him in the center of his back with the package of deli meat. “Lemme go!”

“I'll make you a deal.” Richter pointedly shrugged the shoulder under Aster,his boniness digging into Aster's hips. “I'll cook since I'd like us to not be stuck on shifts on the toilet tonight—”

“You're so rude,” Aster grumbled. It was one time that he'd wanted to try a recipe for the type of potstickers they made at a stall outside the university. Their food was so good, but they couldn't really afford to eat outside the university cafeteria much.

“And you can pack the damn picnic basket or whatever.”

“On one condition.”

Richter sighed. “What is it?”

“Tell me your birthday.”

“Fine.” And then he proceeded to dump Aster unceremoniously onto their couch, which had somehow grown even lumpier over the years. Richter held out a hand expectantly for the turkey, which Aster returned reluctantly.

He walked to the kitchen without another word.

“Richter! What's your birthday?! You said you'd tell me!”

The half-elf slanted a grin at him. “You were the one that failed to specify when I tell you.”

Aster groaned, even as he heaved himself off the couch to go find their grocery basket. It would work as a picnic basket well enough. “You know I'm just gonna annoy you until you tell me.”

“Good thing I'm used to you being annoying.”

A week later, Aster fell asleep reading in the lab. He woke to the book he'd been reading closed on his chest with a piece of paper as a bookmark.

The paper had a date on it, written in Richter's blocky-neat handwriting. September 27^th.

“It all comes back to the Great Tree. Its existence is true, and sure it distributed mana, but how. Trees absorb nutrients with their roots and give off carbon dioxide. Arguably, the Great Tree could have just given off mana instead, but then there would be less mana on the other side of the world from it, assuming it had the strength for its mana to reach all the way around.”

“The evidence doesn't support that,” Richter said. His hair was back up in its scarf. Summer in Sybak was a humid affair, and he'd gotten tired very quickly of his hair sticking to the back of his neck. He pulled back his notes. “The least fertile areas of Tethe'alla are all on Flanoir. But your hypothesis would have the Tree centered in elf country, which is way too close.”

“What about if the epicenter was Gaoracchia?”

“A little better, but then our evidence still isn't supported. The lower reaches of the Fooji continent would have to have Flanoir's same ecosystem based on distance and the fact that both landmasses aren't connected to the Sybak continent, but it's not. I think the Tree did give off mana, but it had to have another system for actually spreading it to where it needed to go.”

Aster hummed, but stayed staring at the map they'd pinned up. “What if the Summon Spirits are responsible for that?”

“For delivering mana?” Richter scoffed. “They've been dormant for centuries, and the last one that we have recorded contact with fried half a village. If awakening a Summon Spirit was what delivered mana, then Mizuho should be thriving right now.”

“Not so much delivering, but like...an area of effect. Kinda like a spell.” Aster pulled out a pencil to draw over their map. He drew big X's on the locations of known Spirit Temples, which was really just Gnome and Volt. Celsius was somewhere on the Flanoir continent, but no one knew its exact location. “If these are the Temples, then that's the seat of the Spirit's power. So they've gotta be like, charged with their elemental mana. Kind of like a battery. If you're right, and they don't deliver it, then I think maybe that's why Volt exploded. Stored power that suddenly got its cap taken off.”

“There are historical records of rituals and things happening with some of the other Spirits.” Richter propped an elbow on his bent knee, fiddling with a pen. “Perhaps those functioned as...periodic pressure releases.”

“Could be! But if those went dormant, then I would think that maybe there's an array that could be made to like, distribute that stored mana without an explosion. Like a siphon, kind of. We don't have those rituals and things that people used to do, but perhaps an array could perform the same function.”

“You want to design an array?” Richter stared at him. “You can't even do magic.”

“It's not really a feasible solution. But—perhaps this problem was already solved. The Temples might have such an array built into them that just needs to be activated.” Aster patted at his pockets for a notebook. “Rilena from the archeology department was researching the Temples. She might be able to help us.”

Rilena was a blonde woman who seemed pretty quiet up until you annoyed her. Then her words came a mile a minute and even though she was kind of short, she wasn't afraid to get in your face. It wasn't hard to see how she and Aster had become friends. She'd been one of the first women who wasn't from noble blood to publish her research at the University.

She listened carefully to them, and then said, “It's possible? I'm afraid we don't have much research into magical arrays, but there are plenty of places in the Temples for them to be.”

“Because humans can't do magic?” Richter assumed.

She inclined her head at him. “Yup. It's a giant hole in our research, but the elves won't agree to exchange information with us, and there's no way the university will let half-elves bring in their knowledge.”

“Unless we don't ask for permission.”

Aster grinned sideways at him. “I was about to say the same thing. If the university won't recognize half-elves' contributions to research, then we just have to show them what their prejudice is costing them. They loove numbers.”

Rilena looked between them. “You two are a terrifying combination.”

“But will you help us?”

“If you can bring me that research? Of course!”

Richter knew minimal things about arrays. He went more by feel for his magic than anything academic, which was backwards to how he usually worked. Aster happily recorded the arrays that appeared below him when he cast, but that was also too small a sample, and the literature for magical arrays really was lacking.

So he went straight to the source. The half-elves in the basement didn't do magic; Richter had lived there for years and not seen a single lick of it. But when he went down to the half-elf neighborhoods by the docks? People used them almost without thinking there.

They weren't big spells. Or even named ones, usually. It was a flicker of power to turn on a candle, to push away the smog of the churning boat motors on the big ships, to kick on a tired old generator, or to keep food frozen to make it last longer.

But he'd seen some of the older half-elves doing their spells. Bigger ones. Barriers to keep the Pope's men from raiding houses and Healing spells that fixed broken arms.

So he went to ask them. He recorded their arrays that appeared—at minimum, they would have things to decode and compare to anything in the Temples—but they also let him copy any faded books of their ancestors that they used, and showed him the classes for the small children to control it.

Ozette had had nothing like this. Magic hadn't even been allowed in the village; Mama had been afraid to so much as light a candle with it. And officially, the city of Sybak wouldn't want half-elves doing things like this either, but they didn't have the manpower to police it.

“We don't know many fancy things,” one of the Healers—an older man named Joshua—said. His voice was deep and rough as sandpaper. “But we pass on what we know.”

“It's all we have sometimes,” he said. “Thank you, for this.”

“They let you study things like that at the university? Didn't know they were lettin' half-elves in now.”

Richter gave him a wry smile. “Officially? They're not. Unofficially? My partner and I are fighting them every step of the way for it.”

He fought an automatic flinch as Joshua clapped his shoulder with a hearty laugh. “Good man! My grandfather was in the last bunch that was allowed to go to university, y'know. Before they outlawed it. 's why he had all these journals.”

Rilena was bouncy with excitement when he brought back his findings. “I'd need to compare them to the etchings we took from the Temples, but I think some of these match! Thank you!'

The combination of research from their Summon Spirit research and the archeology department made a lot of the inquiries easier. Funding didn't exactly come flooding in, but they had something at least for tests and inquiries and experiments. And it looked so nice for intra-university relations.

These days, Sybak was known for its university, but it was still an important town for trade and fishing. There was an annual food festival in August, celebrating the Goddess' abundance. Aster dragged Richter out of the apartment for it, excited to show it to him.

“You love cooking so much, I figured you'd like it.”

It was fascinating to see food from every corner of the world, cooked with such a variety of ingredients. Pirozhki from Flanoir, hot in their napkins and so full of flavor. Aster got one of the sweet versions, full of sweet cottage cheese and jam. Spicy chicken served over sweet plantains from Altamira—Richter really liked the flavor variety of that one—and rich blood sausage and potatoes from Meltokio.

They spent the little spare gald they had on portions of the food, oil dripping from their fingers as they sat on doorsteps and walls to eat. Aster waited patiently when Richter struck up conversation with some of the cooks when they had a spare moment, asking questions and writing things down in the little notebook he kept in his pocket for recipes. Richter really wasn't a social person, but he was always happy to talk shop with other cooks.

Near the end of the day, when the sun was starting to sink, they found skewers of spiced and roasted vegetables and glazed venison from Ozette. Richter had lingered at that stall, aware of how little money they had left, but Aster had moved past him to purchase two. They ate those sitting on the lowest steps of a fire escape, the smoky scent of the vegetables making Richer quiet with memory.

When they were done, Aster swiped a napkin at Richter's cheek where he'd missed a smear of sauce. “Ready to head home?” he asked.

The question threw him. He hadn't thought of a place as 'home' since he'd been taken from Ozette. But yes—their crappy little apartment full of their blankets and Richter's kitchen (Aster laughs every time he calls it that, pouting that it was his first, but he doesn't mind). Their lab, chalky and stuffed to the brim of books and empty coffee mugs that they really needed to bring back to wash—they were home now. Aster was home.

Richter moved before he thought about it, one hand cupping Aster's face, stopping close enough that they could feel each other's breaths. Would Aster even want this? He hadn't even asked, it was a total invasion of space—

Aster closed the gap, pressing his lips firmly to Richter's and hooking a hand around his neck to yank him down. His lips were still sticky with sauce, and Richter chased the taste of Ozette cooking with whatever was underneath that was Aster.

Aster broke the kiss, giggling into the space between them. “You're always surprising me,” he said, cheeks flushed. His freckles stood out even more like that, and Richter couldn't stop himself from kissing a path along his nose, his cheeks, back down to his mouth.

The sun was well and truly setting, casting long shadows and deep orange light across the streets, when they finally began the walk back to their apartment. Their home, Richter reminded himself as Aster slipped his hand into his as they walked.

Aster told him about their approval for the research trip to Gaoracchia by flying into the lab and kissing him soundly, making Richter stumble back into the desk, even as he wrapped an arm around him to kiss him back.

The memory was a warm one in the deep shadows of Gaoracchia Forest. Richter hadn't realized how much his eyes had changed, living in the city. The dimness here was only a bit darker than in Ozette when the lamps weren't lit, but his eyes didn't know what to do with this anymore. He'd read the ecological studies done, but Tethe'allans had largely written off Gaoracchia as a lost cause. No viable farmland, no useful trade routes, no mines—no reason to keep researching it. Any studies done here had been shallow, out at the edges of the forest.

The monsters that were near the outskirts were largely ordinary fare. Wolves and hawks, with a few ghouls. Richter's magic was enough to take them down, and they recorded all that they found. They took samples of the trees and the soil before moving further in.

The further in they moved, the worse the monsters got. Boxer Irises and Pepperheads that moved quick and tied them up. Still, they'd been sure to stock up on plenty of Holy Bottles—so much of their stipend had gone to those. Richter was realistic about their skills and he could handle small monsters. He wasn't up to these guys, not when Aster's sword skills were basic at best.

In here, everything flinched from light. The monsters, the underbrush...it was behavior Richter hadn't seen recorded anywhere.

“I've heard of skototropism in plants, but this isn't that.” Aster was carefully picking some leaves to add to their specimen collection. “This is...almost violent in their reactions.”

“It kinda reminds me of monsters, actually. Of the way they react when against their elemental weakness. It's causing a flinch reflex.” Richter tested it again with raising his lantern towards a plant, which skittered away from him.

“But plant monsters will still fight back.” Aster gestured at the Boxer Irises lingering outside the radius of their Holy Bottle. “They have a different sentience than these plants.”

Richter ran a hand over a tree trunk. He stretched out with his mana the way he'd been working on with his spells. He wasn't sensitive enough to see it, but he could feel out the mana of things if he worked at it. He recognized the feel of this; it felt like the weight of dark magic, like the memory of hiding beneath the blankets during storms, and the dimness of the basement.

“There's dark mana in these plants,” he said. “Like they've been...absorbing it?”

Aster frowned as he stood straight, rolling his shoulders. “So wait, what do regular plants feel like? They live off sunlight, but is that under Aska's purview or Efreet's?”

“I'd say it's Aska's because it's light, not heat that they're absorbing. But I can't say I've ever looked very hard at normal plants.”

“That could be cause for the reaction. The plants on the outskirts of the forest weren't behaving like this.”

“There were less dark monsters out there too. They seem to be more populated closer in.”

“If this was where the Great Tree died, it could explain that dark mana? Isn't that usually because of bad things?”

“In theory, no element is aligned with good or evil. They're neutral. But can't deny—it doesn't feel right in here.” Richter kept circling through, stretching out his senses in the air. He could feel earth mana, moist and soft. This was rich soil according to Aster, so it should be good for growing things. And by the state of the plants here, they certainly weren't starving for nutrients. But then why weren't they like other plants? Did the dark element affect that much?

Aster sucked his teeth in thought, flipping through their notebook they'd started specifically for this trip. They'd put together what information they had, but this was looking like they needed to make some expeditions out to the Summon Spirit Temples to compare the data. “If the Great Tree was so instrumental to the world...it would have put it on par in importance with any of the other Spirit domains, right?”

“Yeah...”

“So why didn't it have a Summon Spirit?”

Richter stared at him. “I've never heard of a Summon Spirit dying, but...if you can create one in a lab, why wouldn't one be able to die?”

“And when one dies, wouldn't it create like...” Aster snapped his fingers as he tried to connect his thoughts. “Like a vacuum! Like when stars die?”

“And darkness is what's there by default.” Because light and water filled spaces. Darkness was space. “And with enough time, it would just...infuse the place probably. That makes sense with what we know of existing spaces anyway. Ghosts and ghouls, zombies...we know those monsters come from where people have died. So maybe...the death of anything causes that kind of reaction.”

“Yes!” Aster flapped his hand at Richter for a pen. They needed to write this down. “Those sorts of monsters are associated with younger people, or tragedies, right? So maybe...that's because they have excess mana? And that mana like...implodes? Upon death? And that's what makes that vacuum and with dark mana coming to fill it up—”

“It transforms into a dark elemental monster? It seems sound.” Richter crouched next to Aster, reading over his shoulder. “That all correlates with existing data, but...what about other types of monsters?”

“If we can find where one kind of monster comes from, we might be able to figure out all of them. Maybe they're more like Summon Spirits than we thought.” Aster grinned at their notes, private and fierce as he could only get when faced with a challenge. “This is more than we ever expected to find. If we can find more data to support this, it'll open up so many avenues of—look out!”

Richter was sent sprawling as Aster shoved him out of the way of a Boxer Iris. Crap, their Holy Bottle had run out. The Iris moved quick and—oh, that was a Pumpkinhead. Richter shot out Fireball after Fireball—his water spells would do so little against these things, and dark spells even less—but one of the Pumpkinhead's roots slammed him into the ground with a sickening crunch.

Blinking away white spots from the pain, Richter felt the moment the roots slackened, Aster having chopped them away with Richter's ax. Aster slashed at the encroaching Boxer Irises, kicking one of them back.

Fireballs wouldn't do. They weren't strong enough. And they couldn't die here. Richter yanked his mana up and out—he needed something stronger, and while he'd never successfully done this spell yet, he also didn't have a safe place to practice it in, so what was he supposed to do about it—and an Eruption bubbled and boiled out of the ground, filling the air with the stench of boiled and burnt plant matter.

Aster slid next to him immediately, popping their last Holy Bottle—they really needed to keep track of time better.

“Are you okay?!” Richter struggled to sit up, but there was no way he wasn't going to inspect the blood running down the side of Aster's face.

“Me?! You're the one with a broken arm.” Aster batted away Richter's hand, inspecting his arm. Oh hey, yeah his arm was not supposed to be bending like that. He dug in their backpack for some of their apple gels. “Eat it.”

Richter looked at the gels. They'd prioritized Holy Bottles over gels given that they figured preventative measures were better than trying to fix the damage. But apple gels weren't intended for tis kind of serious injury. Not to Heal it all the way. And judging from Aster's bloody face, he might very well have a concussion.

He shook his head and pushed Aster's hand back towards himself. “No. You eat them. It won't fix me, and one of us should be clear-headed.” Aster's face pinched in his irritated/angry way, and Richter dug in his heels. “We don't have time to argue. That's our last Holy Bottle; we need to get moving and get out of here. Yell at me later.”

Aster didn't yell when he was angry, but the scolding did come in pieces after they went to the clinic back in Sybak while Richter was being kissed within an inch of his life. “You're alive,” Aster whispered against his mouth. “And that was incredible. And so stupid of you. Don't ever prioritize me over your own damn health.”

Richter relished the warmth of Aster in his arms—well, arm. The other one was in a cast—but he nipped at him in response. “Not a chance.”

Two days after they got home from Gaoracchia, Aster found Richter fighting his hair in the bathroom. Or attempting to. The hair was winning, for sure. It was so much longer now, and while Richter had managed to wash it decently well, it had gotten tangled from their trip and the fighting. They'd both slept through all of yesterday—waking briefly to split a bagel and down some water before knocking back out—but today they'd had enough energy to actually eat real food and shower.

Aster had had first dibs on the shower since Richter would take longer—he always did anyway on hair-washing days, and it would be even harder to coordinate with his cast which had required some advanced engineering to wrap in a garbage bag safely.

“Let me help,” Aster said, reaching out for the brush.

“I've got it.”

Richter and his thrice-damned independent streak. “I know you do. But this'll be easier and I want to do it for you.”

“...Fine.”

Aster led Richter back to their bed—which they'd finally upgraded from two single mattresses pushed together to a proper double. It had been a big purchase, but so worth it—and sat cross-legged behind him.

The tangles were bad. Aster went to find some of the hair oil Rilena had gifted Richter for his last birthday. It was expensive, so he tried not to use it often, but this was clearly an emergency. He patiently worked from the ends back up to his scalp, undoing knots and soothing Richter's occasionally aching scalp with quick apologetic kisses.

He chattered at him while he works; his brain hadn't stopped thinking of all the things they'd discovered. Thankfully, most of their samples made it. Tomorrow they'd get back into the lab and start analyzing it all properly.

And no one would be able to deny Richter's place at the university anymore. For a potential discovery of this magnitude? The existence of monsters was a constant problem for the Crown; they clogged trade routes, endangered tourists and cost more money on guards and security. If Richter was so instrumental in helping solve the problem, no one would be able to give him problems because he was a half-elf anymore.

Richter snorted. “You're dreaming if you think that'll happen.”

Aster flicked a triangular ear, earning him a baleful look. “Dreams can turn into reality just fine if you're not a coward.”

His shoulders shook from a burst of unexpected laughter. Aster loved that sound. Usually Richter's amusement was subtle; smirks and snorts and rolled eyes. A proper laugh was always satisfying. “Not pulling your punches today, huh?”

Aster leaned forward on Richter's good shoulder, resting his chin on it. “Against you? Never,” he said sweetly. “Now c'mon. I'm almost done and then we can go grocery shopping.”

Richter usually wore his hair loose when he wasn't cooking or working on anything volatile in the lab. Aster loved Richter's hair; the dusky red color looked so beautiful when it caught the light. Or spread out in the sheets below him, or spilling over his shoulders and tickling Aster's chest as he braced over him. Aster steered his thoughts back on track—they had things to do today that were not each other—and separated the hair into three strands for a basic braid. It would be easier on Richter to not have to fight his hair and his cast in the same day. He wasn't very good at doing hair, so there were frizzies and flyaways all over and it was very uneven, but at least it was out of his face.

When he pronounced his hair done, Richter leaned back into him gratefully. Aster wrapped his arms around him—careful around the cast—squeezing tight in that way he knew Richter liked. He pressed his nose into Richter's neck, breathing in the clean smell of his skin and their soap. They'd smelled so grimy and bloody until they'd gotten back to Sybak; now they were safe, and clean, and here.

A hum vibrated under his nose, the only warning before Richter turned, drawing him up for a slow, sweet kiss. Aster melted into him, pressing back in when Richter pulled back. “We need to go grocery shopping,” Richter reminded him, amusement deepening his voice. “Something about not starving.”

“Bah, groceries. Why do I date a guy who's so needy?” Aster groaned, rolling out from under Richter's weight.

“'Cause otherwise you really would starve. Or die from scurvy since all you remember to eat is sweets.”

Aster was sitting and pulling on his shoes when Richter leaned over his shoulder. “Besides,” he said lowly. The tone ran shivers of anticipation down Aster's spine. “The quicker we finish groceries, the quicker we can get back. I plan to take full advantage of a free afternoon.”

Aster popped up, hating the glint in Richter's eyes. Damn him for knowing exactly how to play Aster like a fiddle. “Well why didn't you start with that?” Aster asked. “Talk about an incentive! C'mon then.”

He pulled Richter by the good hand even as he stumbled to keep up, feet shoved into his shoes, accompanied by Richter's warm chuckle he tried to keep up.

“I think our key will be in the rarer monster types,” Richter said, staring at the map. “If monsters are born from dying things creating a vacuum, then wouldn't the rarer types be easier to track down their causes?”

“You're saying dark monsters are too broad a category?”

“Yes, but also—they're harder to quantify because the low-level ones are common, particularly at night. But take for instance water monsters: Tethe'alla doesn't have very many of those. There's legends of sea monsters and stuff, but...no verified sources. But there are plenty of aquatic monsters that are regularly hunted for food.”

Cooking makes ghosts.

“That's only in specific places though.”

“Exactly. A smaller, more quantifiable areas so that data can be more specifically collected. We have a control group for dark elemental work. Let's go down to the docks and talk to the workers there. They can tell us about anything they might have experienced.”

The dockworkers and fishermen of Sybak were rough types. Sybak didn't have much of a fishing industry anymore. Their fish were smaller and often ended up in canneries, ready to be shipped out from such a main trading hub. Altamira and Flanoir were where the real variety of fish were.

“We don't see a lot of monsters out there. Birds and things mostly. Sometimes we get some Seahorses and the like, but not often. Usually in bad winters when the cold pushes 'em inland.”

They dug back into the ecological studies. Water monsters were sometimes found in some sewers and things, but even then, not very often. Shorelines saw they commonly, but not all of them. There were old reports from a former Sybak University professor by the name of Kloitz who found water monsters quite often in Latheon Gorge, but not in the swampy areas of the Ymir. Altamira had the most reports of water monsters, but that was unsurprising.

“What if you were sort of right? About those rituals and things being like a pressure valve release for Summon Spirits and Temples?”

Aster watched him carefully. “Go on.”

Richter circled the known areas of Temples. North of Gaoracchia for the Lightning Temple, and north of Meltokio for the Earth one. Flanoir was a big section because Celsius had to be somewhere out there. And a question mark over southern Fooji. No one knew where Shadow's Temple was, but Richter and Aster were fairly certain it wasn't in Gaoracchia due purely to proximity to Volt, and there were no reports of dark monsters anywhere on the Altamiran continent outside of the usual low-level kinds.

“The Tower of Salvation is known to appear in the southern continent.”

“Right...”

“Isn't it strange then that these Temples make almost a circle around that area, but there's nothing down on the southern continent at all?”

“I thought the elves claimed Origin down there.”

“But even if they do, look. It's still almost dead center with the Tower.” Richter gestured at the southeastern edge of the map. “The biggest concentration of water monsters is in Altamira and in the Latheon Gorge. All of which are away from the other Temples.”

“With you so far.”

“What if Undine is out there somewhere?” There were no known records of Undine, Efreet, Sylph, or Luna and Aska. Not a single one of their Temples. “A river carved the Latheon Gorge. I think her Temple should be somewhere either at the start of that river or where it meets the ocean.”

Aster consulted some of the books. “The Latheon River's origin is subterranean. All expeditions to find it have gotten people killed trying to explore any cave systems out there.”

“Which would explain why no one's found it.”

Aster kept talking. “But I agree you have a point. If there's no pressure release down there, it could even explain about the Exsphere mines that Lezareno has, about why they're so plentiful there and nowhere else. Going for the origin of the river is too risky right now. I think we should go check out where it meets the ocean.”

They wouldn't get a chance to go out there.

Richter was down in the basement running tests—he could ask them to be run for him, but he was perfectly able to do them himself, and he wanted to be absolutely sure they were done right—when the tremors started.

Earthquakes weren't unheard of in Sybak, but they used to be fairly rare. These past few months, they'd been happening much more often. Rumors were that it had something to do with whatever the Chosen was doing with the Sylvarant visitors, but Richter wasn't supposed to know anything about that. Aster's contacts back at the Meltokio Research Academy had been the ones to mention some things to him, and really, there were no actual secrets in academia. Everyone was a terrible gossip.

Aster was the one who had theorized that maybe it had something to do with the Summon Spirits. After all, Mizuho's ambassador had gone with them, hadn't she? Kate had told Rilena who told Richter about them breaking into the lab and helping with that Angelus Project girl. The ambassador was the last summoner, and if they'd gone for Gnome, perhaps that could be a cause of more seismic activity.

When the tremors started, everyone paused what they were doing, feeling it out. They had enough practice with this now to wait to see if tremors were all it was.

It wasn't. The floors rolled violently like waves. Richter ran for the door, struggling to keep his feet. The basement labs were kept locked from the outside, but he had a key. There was the other way out, through the tunnel, but that was a horrible idea during an earthquake.

The door was sticking and he shoved his shoulder at it. Growling when it wasn't budging much, he snarled a Fireball at the lock, melting it with the heat of his temper. Once he managed to get the door open, he was almost bowled over by familiar faces fleeing. He helped up some of the ones who were still trying to find their feet, and did a final sweep in case of anyone stuck or trapped.

There was one kid in there—sullen as a teenager though they were a year or two shy from actually being one—who was crawling to get their crutch that had been kicked away in the confusion. Richter grabbed the crutch and hauled the kid to their feet. “C'mon.”

The tremors hadn't stopped, but the ground wasn't rolling like it had before. They had to stop and huddle next to a bookcase as the building rattled around them. Everyone was heading for the main gates to the city, away from the ocean. They'd been warned about potential tidal waves after these earthquakes, and they'd been lucky so far.

Richter stood with the other half-elves from the basement. The kid went with someone, thanking him. Richter didn't respond, head on a swivel as he looked around for a familiar face. Everyone was too crowded together, and the entire population of Sybak was out here.

He climbed the hill to get a slightly better look at everyone. Not many people were the same kind of sunny blonde as Aster, but that didn't mean much in a population of thousands. He spotted some familiar faces here and there, but not the one he needed to see.

It hadn't even been an hour since that first terrible roll of the earth when someone hollered to keep moving inland, to get to high ground.

Richter's brain didn't want to comprehend what he was looking at. The horizon was an odd shape, swelling and—growing? Then he registered what he was looking at: a wall of dark water, moving impossibly fast. The sound was...distant, but a roar, and then came the screeches and squeals as it hit Sybak, clouds of dust coming up as it crushed buildings beneath it.

Debris crashed against Sybak's walls, frothing angry water spilling over and through eery crack and opening. Everyone could only watch in mute horror. Even the children didn't wail; their crying was muffled and sniffled, afraid to break the silence. What would even be left after all this?

It was over in less than another hour, the water receding back into the ocean with a rush of sound like stormy winds in your ears. Everyone breathed together, and their voices returned. Cries of alarm and fear, soothing and comforting each other.

Richter stayed away from the others; he wanted comfort from exactly one person and he could only hope that he was even alive. His brain wouldn't stop throwing up images of Aster crushed under their bookcases in the office, or trapped in the ruins of their creaky apartment building as it came down. Would his body be found, bloated and floating in the floods?

He let himself be coaxed to the fires others were building. Some people had gone hunting, and the city's officials had brought provisions to help tide them over while they confirmed that the city was safe to return to.

“Oi! Richter!” He turned to the voice, one of the maids at the inn who sometimes covered shifts at the university. “Your partner's name—it's that Laker guy right?”

“Yes.” He stood, his legs shaky. He didn't care; let them shake. Aster was more important than keeping his balance. “Have you seen him?”

She pointed to some of the other fires further downhill. “Down there. He was goin' around asking for you.”

Alive. He'd been seen alive. And not injured, probably. Not seriously.

“Thanks.” He was moving forward towards the fires she'd indicated. Once he got nearer, he started calling Aster's name, ignoring the occasional dirty looks from people trying to get sleep.

“Richter!” He saw the blonde head bobbing between people and he braced himself to catch his lover running full tilt at him. He wrapped his arms around him, burying his nose in Aster's hair. He smelled of outside, dust and blood.

Aster squeezed him tight. “I heard someone say they'd seen you in the basement,” he said, leaning up to press grateful kisses along Richter's throat and jaw. “I was afraid you got trapped down there.”

“You think I'd let myself die in that basement after all this?” he asked, his voice scratchy from the woodsmoke. Definitely not from the relief of seeing him.

Aster smothered a slightly too hysterical laugh against his chest. “Silly me. You're way too stubborn for that.” He drew him down for a desperate kiss, and Richter happily melted into him, squeezing him close.

“I was more worried about you,” Richter said against his lips. “With your dumb heroic streak.”

A snort. “You're the one that went to go save people in the basement. You try to act all tough, but you're a marshmallow, Richter Abend.”

They moved to sit by a fire, never not touching. They each awkwardly ate with one hand each, unwilling to let go of each other's hand. The provisions were a familiar kind of thick, gummy packaged food. Familiar to Richter and anyone from the basement at least as some of the same things that used to be their regular meals.

With Aster curled close to him, too exhausted to babble (for once), the anxious buzz at the back of his mind was soothed. They were okay; even after earthquakes and a damn tsunami, as long as they had each other, they would be okay.

Richter and Aster squeezed themselves into the room full of people waiting to hear from these Heroes of the New World. One was a half-elf. The other speaker was the President of the Lezareno Company.

The President spoke about helping bring repair crews to Sybak. Altamira was all too experienced with the concept, being the victim of hurricanes every year. Lezareno was also funding the rebuilding of other cities in Sylvarant, which wasn't the moon, and was now...merged with Tethe'alla due to the efforts of their group. It sounded ridiculous, like something a storyteller found at the bottom of a bottle.

When they mentioned about a new Spirit of the Tree, Aster grabbed Richter's hand, squeezing tight. After the news, when the reporters and everyone surged forward, it wasn't surprising that they ignored the half-elf woman. Raine Sage.

Aster seized his opportunity. “C'mon.”

“One of us needs to stay here to listen. You go ahead.”

He nodded and let go of Richter's hand to weave through the crowd towards her. “Ms. Sage?”

She turned, looking surprised at being addressed. “Yes?”

“My name is Aster. I'm a researcher here at the university, and I have some questions for you.”

“I'm surprised you're not asking Regal.” She nodded to the President who was fielding questions with the effortless ease of someone used to the press.

“He seemed busy. And I don't care if you're a half-elf.”

She seemed to not entirely believe him—unsurprising for anyone familiar with Tethe'alla—but still, she said, “...What do you want to know?”

“You said there was a new Spirit of the Tree?”

“Yes, that's correct.”

“That implies there was an old one. What happened to it?”

Raine opened her mouth and closed it, brow creasing. “...That's a very good question. I have never heard of any Spirit of the Tree prior to this.”

“On your journey, you met the other Summon Spirits, correct? You said that they were the reason for the series of earthquakes.” Aster had his little notebook out, pen at the ready.

“Yes, we did. They were not directly the cause. In order to trap the Great Seed, Mithos had formed a cage of mana links between opposing elemental Spirits. It was the breaking of these links that caused the earthquakes.”

“So you found all their Temples?”

“Correct. That was where we formed the pacts.”

“Can you tell me where they were? My research involves Summon Spirits, but we had lost knowledge of anything regarding Undine, Sylph, Efreet and Luna long ago. And we only had theories as to the locations of Celsius, Shadow, and Origin.”

“May I?” she gestured for his notebook.

“Of course.”

She sketched out a rough map of Tethe'alla, and another map of what must be Sylvarant. She placed dots and initials at several different locations. “These are all the ones we know. Of course, this was before the reunification, so we no longer have accurate maps.”

Aster grinned at the unfamiliar lands of Sylvarant traced onto the page. “No, this...this is a big help already. Thank you, Ms. Sage.”

“You're welcome. I...appreciate your curiosity, and your patience with the fact that we are still missing a lot of answers.”

He shrugged. “A good scientist has to get comfortable with I don't know. That's where we do our best work. And this is all kind of a massive change, so I'd be kind of an asshole to not be patient.”

Her smile was pretty, and a little exasperated. “You'd be surprised at people.”

He met her smile with a knowing one, pocketing his notebook. “I really wouldn't. But I appreciate your time. Would you be open to me reaching out to you in the future for further questions?”

Raine blinked, looking wrong-footed. “It—there may be better people to ask.”

“Better than someone who was there? You know there's nothing better than a firsthand source.”

“I meant—” She shook her head, seeming to change her mind mid-sentence. “Yes, alright. Mail might be a bit scattered and delayed for a while, but you can address any letters to the Lezareno Company and they'll get to me.”

He held out his hand. “It was an honor, Ms. Sage.”

She shook his hand firmly, hand surprisingly calloused. She'd led a rougher life than it seemed on the surface. “Likewise, Aster.”

“A new Spirit of the Tree. I want to make a trip out to the Tree to see if we can maybe speak to it.”

“They said her name is Martel,” Richter said. He'd taken his own notes during the speech. “The same as the Goddess that apparently never existed.”

“Which begs the question—does she choose her own name? Origin is supposed to be the King of Summon Spirits. Does he choose their names for them?” Aster sat cross-legged on one of their tables, transferring the map Ms. Sage had drawn onto a larger piece of paper, as well as sticking thumbtacks on the Tethe'alla map for the locations of the Temples. Well, the old locations. “Do Summon Spirits have internal politics?”

“But her method of creation was very different. It came from the Great Seed, apparently. In which case...does it function like reincarnation?”

“It could. If the Great Seed was indeed being kept in stasis for so long...it could have halted that kind of reincarnation cycle.”

“You said Ms. Sage was unaware of any former Spirits of the Tree.” Richter drummed his pen on the table, leaning back to balance on the back two legs of his chair, his right foot just barely skimming the ground. “But perhaps there are records of it somewhere. If Cruxis was some absolute control entity, it wouldn't have survived as long as it did without its own database.”

“And how would we access it?” Aster asked, resting his cheek in his fist. “There's no way they're just gonna let anyone do it. We don't even know if it survived the Tower's collapse.” He jolted up. “The elves! Their longer lifespans mean their records won't match ours. For all we know, they have records predating the creation of Cruxis!”

“You might be able to access them. They won't let me near them.” Forestalling the flash of temper and outrage, Richter said, “We can divide and conquer. You take the elven research. I'll start looking into Sylvarant's own archives. They have to have a hub of information somewhere.”

Aster frowned at his map. It had only been a little more than a month since the worlds had reunited. Everyone was still reeling and trying to recover. Half of Sybak was still dealing with flooding every high tide since their seawall had broken. Their apartment had been unsalvageable, so they were living out of their lab, their bed a thin mattress shoved into a corner and piled with thin blankets.

“I don't know where that hub would be.” According to their ambassador—and new Chief—Mizuho was working on creating an accurate map of the new world. Travel was limited until then to try and mitigate accidents and injuries. The Lezareno Company and the Renegades—who were real, who knew? Aster had heard of them, but they'd seemed like conspiracy theorists—were organizing a lot of necessary trade. “I don't think going to Sylvarant is a good idea right now. It's too dangerous.”

“We need this information.”

“I'm not disagreeing with that.” Aster unfolded himself from on top of the table, moving to stand in front of Richter. “I'm disagreeing on us splitting up.”

“Aster, the elves won't let me step one toe onto their lands.” He tangled their hands together, tugging him a little closer. “And with the university in the shape it's in right now, there's no point in me sitting put and waiting for you.”

Aster's forehead thunked into Richter's chest, a familiar, welcome weight. “...Being apart makes me nervous,” he confessed. “After the earthquake...”

He pressed a kiss into the familiar sunshine hair. “I'm not happy about it either,” he said. “But this is too good of an opportunity. This influx of information can put us ahead of the game, and maybe it'll give us a way to help stabilize the mana levels. Besides, I...don't want to ruin your chance of having good connections with the elves. They might not even deal with you if I go too.”

“I wouldn't let them,” Aster grumbled. His tone made it clear that even if Richter went, and if the elves were even the slightest bit rude, he'd give them a piece of his mind. The knowledge was comforting, even if impractical. “But as for everything else you said...I hate it when you make sense.”

“So...all the time?” Richter shied away at the expected pinch at his side. Aster had a careful mental catalog of all his ticklish spots.

Aster rested his chin on Richter's chest, leaning his head to look up at Richter at an angle that had to be bad for his neck. Richter leaned back to get a little bit of distance between them, giving Aster's neck a break.

“...it won't be for long. And it'll be good to get out of Sybak.” Aster said it as he looked over the water-damaged spots on their ceiling. The lab hadn't collapsed, but the building had gotten a little bit of structural damage during the earthquake. The roof leaked in new ways now, and the walls made concerning groans when strong winds came.

“Think of it like an adventure.”

“Richter Abend—is that optimism?” Aster asked, smiling slyly.

“Absolutely not.” Richter turned away from him.

A finger poked at his cheek. “You can't hide from me.” Aster giggled and playfully bit his shoulder. “You're stuck with me now.”

“Unfortunate.” Richter looked over his shoulder at Aster. “I thought you figured that out years ago. It took you this long? Thought you were supposed to be a genius.”

“And here I thought you knew me better than that.”

Three weeks later, they split up: Aster to the elves to see if they had any literature about the original Spirit of the Tree, and Richter to Izlood. It was the first Sylvaranti port available out of Sybak, and according to Ms. Sage's map, it had been near the Temple of Water. The new maps made available from Mizuho and the Renegades were fairly accurate, but the roads were still largely unknowns.

It took Aster a month to make it from Heimdall out to Izlood. Unsurprising, given the state of the world. So Richter spoke to people. It took some doing, as they were wary of Tethe'allans, but he slowly won them over. Izlood had become a refugee town since another Sylvaranti town called Palmacosta was destroyed in the earthquakes. Their stories matched a lot of what Sybak had gone through, but it seemed that it had been even worse on their world. The city was in ruins. In that mess, it didn't seem to matter as much who was a half-elf and who wasn't. Richter didn't know much Healing magic—he'd figured out a basic First Aid after their adventure in Gaoracchia—but he chipped in when he could. He also helped the kitchens at the inn he stayed in in exchange for cheaper rates.

The Sylvarantis' accent made it a little hard to understand them. Drawled out vowels and strange phrases. But they made it work. Richter took notes when he spoke to them. The earthquakes that had displaced them? Caused by some monstrous tree that, when it got destroyed, had a woman's scream.

Had that been the new Spirit of the Tree? Trapped by Mithos' cage? But the Great Seed hadn't been released yet, by Richter's understanding of the timeline. So had that been the previous Spirit?

Emi—the innkeeper's sister-in-law—flapped a hand for him to come into the kitchen as he came back from getting rid of some seahorse monsters that had been getting too close to the outskirts of town. Emi was a broad woman, with thick curls that went halfway down her back. “Come help me. We've got a good haul today!”

He followed her in, already tying back his hair. They'd been kind enough to give him a bandana, patterned blue and white like the waves. The baskets on the kitchen counter were full of black spiny balls. “Sea urchins?”

Emi beamed. “Yup. Found a good batch of them out on the reef. My brother will be so happy to know I found some! We haven't seen them in a while, since before the earthquakes. But tonight, we can make oko-oko for everyone.”

Richter picked one up, feeling the dull prick of their spines against his palm. “What's oko-oko?”

“I'll show you.” And she did, showing how she scraped the spines away, and how she scooped the entrails from a hole at the bottom. “This yellow-orangey part you keep.” She took uncooked rice and a big spoon of seasoning from a pre-mixed bowl and stuffed them in there. “After that, you take the coconut leaves and you plug the hole. Then we boil them.”

Richter followed her directions, and some old muscle memory made the spine removal easy. “We used to use the spines for jewelry. Or whistles.”

“You have these back in Sybak?”

“Not...often. But I'm not from Sybak. I'm from a little village called Ozette.” A village that was burned to the ground, from what Richter heard. Good riddance if you asked him. He hadn't been back since he'd first been taken. It wasn't like there would be anyone there waiting for him. “...My family would cook these. But I've never seen them made like this. We made them as a sauce with lemon or eggs.”

“That sounds tasty! Maybe you'll make 'em for me next time.”

Richter dropped his eyes, even as he patted the rice into his urchin. “Maybe one day. I'm...very out of practice. I'm surprised to find them here.”

“Gotta admit, didn't imagine Tethe'allans to be eating urchins either. Figured you were all too fancy for that.”

He chuckled hollowly. “A lot of them would be. But a lot of us grew up in poorer areas, so we made do. Couldn't afford all the big fish or the good cuts of meat. If we could afford them at all. But no one wanted urchins. Or lobsters.”

“Some of the Palmacostans taught me how to make lobster! We don't get them as much in these waters.” Emi tossed her urchin into the big cookpot. “Maybe one day we'll do a potluck. Everyone brings something from where they're from.”

“There's a festival like that in Sybak. One with food from all over. My partner and I went once or twice.”

“See, great minds think alike! We can do a festival here too! One with all kinds of seafood. Tethe'allan, Sylvaranti—we'll get famous for it.”

“Aster would like that a lot. If he can find a way to eat sweet-and-spicy shrimp from Altamira again, he'll be the first in line.” When Aster came, maybe Richter would make oko-oko for him. Or he'd make his Mama's sauce for him, just to see that slow smile and the pleased curve of his eyes.

It would be almost two months when Aster finally made it to Izlood, skin browned and heavily freckled, Richter had already managed to confirm from the fishermen where the Thoda Geyser—where the Chosen's party had visited during their pilgrimage, so therefore it had to be a Temple—had ended up.

The inn in Izlood had little privacy; it was one large room with several beds. Someone had installed some curtains between the beds, but that was it. Still, after they both washed up in the tubs outside—Richter had heard that Sylvarant was the poorer world, much more rural, but here he saw the proof of it. Even Tethe'alla's poorest towns had basic plumbing—they laid in their shared bed, just basking being in each other's presence again.

“I never want to go back to Heimdall,” Aster said, one leg thrown over Richter's hip, head on his shoulder. “I felt like I was being boiled alive. The air is like soup.”

“But you like soup,” Richter said mildly, snorting when Aster flicked his arm.

“Not when I'm the main ingredient. Even out here isn't as bad.”

“'s the ocean breezes.” That was something else Richter had learned; the ocean smelled different in Izlood than it did in Sybak. Probably due to the sheer population and sewage in Sybak. The coastlines were different too. Izlood was much more sandy, more similar to what he'd heard about Altamira's beaches. He much preferred the beaches like this.

Aster smiled into his skin. “You seem to like it here.”

“It's a nice change, but I wouldn't want to stay.” Sybak had been downright claustrophobic since the sea wall broke. Everyone was crammed into tighter quarters with an entire section of the city still flooding at every high tide. There were tons of people in Izlood too, but it didn't feel so tight when there was the wide expanse of sky still visible when you looked up, unbroken by tall buildings.

Aster shifted so his chin was resting on Richter's chest. “City boy at heart, I see.”

“You're no secret country boy either. Or didn't schlucking it through the swamp remind you?” He stroked a hand absently down Aster's back and across his hips.

“There's country that isn't a miserable soup-storm. Think of like, Meltokio's climate! Pretty temperate, still lots of open spaces. Close enough to civilization.”

“You'd go insane without people to babble to.” There would be no confession ever that Richter liked Aster's babbling, even if he absolutely did. His rants when he went on his deep cleans of the apartment were particularly great; no one was safe. Not the dean, not the lab assistants or the girl who burnt that morning's pot of coffee. Aster was too nice and polite to ever say anything like that to their faces; it was just his own natural frustration when lines took too long, and why couldn't Peterson walk at a speed faster than that of a drugged snail? But Richter got to hear the venting, and it was endlessly entertaining because Aster didn't have a cruel bone in his body, but his annoyance was legendary.

He gave a mock gasp. “You wouldn't be out there with me? You'd confine us to a long distance relationship?”

Feeling playful, Richter flipped them, letting his weight settle onto Aster's smaller body. “Absolutely not.”

“Richter!” He pushed ineffectually at Richter's shoulders. “You're crushing me, you big tree.”

“Oh no...Sylvarant's gravity is stronger than back home.” Richter dropped his weight more, much to Aster's groans.

“Ugh, you're terrible.” Aster bit his collarbone, the only part of him he could reach, and poked at his sides.

Snickering, Richter rolled off him. It hadn't exactly been lonely in the month and a half since they'd gone their separate ways—Izlood was entirely too populated right now for that—but there was nothing like Aster's familiar company.

“You missed me,” he said. There used to be a nugget of doubt when Richter said things like that, like maybe Aster was happy to have a break from him for so long. Of course they got on each other's nerves sometimes—they lived and worked together, after all—but usually after a few hours, or even just a day or two, of some distance, they were okay again.

These days, that nugget of doubt was microscopic, and it only shrunk more when Aster wrapped an arm tight around him. “Of course I did. Where else would I get people who crush my lungs and make fun of me?”

They compared their notes over dinner. Aster's research had been a bit of a struggle—the elves held to their information tightly—but he'd managed to convince them to at least let him look. Not even make copies. Just look and take notes.

“Turns out,” Aster said, swallowing a bite of bread. “They do have records of a previous Spirit of the Tree. It had a dual title; it was also the Lord of Monsters, apparently.”

Pushing his glasses higher on his nose, Richter studied Aster's notebook. His handwriting was chickenscratch—always had been—but Richter was used to it by now. “Ratatosk. Never heard of them. So what, they died when the old Tree did?”

“I guess so. There's never been two Spirits of the same element. I mean, besides Luna and Aska, but they're like...two different facets of the same thing. They don't deal with the same realms.”

“Wait, but what if this works the same way? This new Spirit is proof that Summon Spirits reincarnate. They can't be destroyed.”

“Mmmhmm...”

“So Ms. Sage didn't say anything about a new Lord of Monsters. Just a new Spirit of the Tree.”

Aster's eyes widened. “You think Ratatosk is still alive somewhere.”

“Exactly. And if the Tree and Monsters were his two domains, and they're as intertwined as Luna and Aska are as two different aspects of light—”

“There's a good chance that they're like two different aspects of mana,” Aster breathed. “So our theory about monster populations and the elemental mana density might be true!”

Richter frowned at Aster's notes, flipping back a few pages to where he knew he'd noted about mana levels in respective places. For Tethe'allans, the mana had grown thin since the reunification, but the opposite appeared true according to Sylvaranti. “This new Tree...Ms. Sage said something about how it's too small to really be contributing a lot to the world's mana flow.”

“Right...”

“What if it's because she's a new Spirit? It's like a baby in terms of development. It can't be expected to output that much.”

“Ooh, you're right. What if Ratatosk—if he's no longer dormant—can help pick up the slack? Or—I don't know, train her or something?”

“The idea seems solid. But what about where we would even find Ratatosk? The Heroes of the New World hadn't even heard of him and they travelled both worlds extensively.”

Aster leaned over, going forward three pages to a sketch. “This was in some of those research things. It's a legend about how Ratatosk and Origin created the world. But that's not the interesting part. This is.” He pointed to the middle of the sketch, where it showed an elaborate tree. “This is supposed to be the Great Tree, and therefore Ratatosk. Look around him.”

There were eight circles drawn around him, four on each half of the page. Richter tilted his head. “They kind of look like the elemental symbols, but...they're not. They look different.”

“That can be accounted to their evolution over the millennia. But it only shows eight.”

“Eight main elemental Spirits. It's not counting Origin, or Maxwell.”

“Right. I think our theory is sound about the monsters being tied to the elemental mana density. But I think the Spirits are more involved than we think. And conveniently enough, we're very close to the Temple of Water. Maybe if we go searching there, we'll find clues about Ratatosk.”

“It definitely can't hurt.”

They hadn't expected to find anything more than some elementally dense areas and monsters. They hadn't been ready to find an altar. It was beautifully carved of shellstone and coral. The entrance was only visible at low tide; they'd been lucky to have been exploring on a bit of higher ground, observing the mechanisms to open some of the doors. Some of the mechanisms were jammed and broken after the earthquakes, but they'd managed to jury-rig them to work. Richter had been the first to spot it, calling to Aster that they should check it out before high tide came back.

They weren't expecting a Spirit.

“Are you Undine?” Richter asked, staring. She was beautiful, whale-like skin dark and light in turns. Her eyes were large and crystalline blue, like a clear lake, and her hair shifted and rippled like the ocean, ending in a whale's fin.

She laughed, sharp and whistling like a dolphin. “Can't say I've ever been mistaken for her before. No, I am a Centurion.”

“Sorry to seem ignorant—” Aster started.

“Too late for that.”

“But what is a Centurion?”

She regarded them curiously. “Why do you even care? No one's come to find me in quite a long time.”

“We're researchers,” Richter explained. “We were primarily learning about Summon Spirits, but even in all of our research, no one had said anything about a Spirit of the Tree until this new one—“

“Right. The new girl,” she said, rolling her eyes.

“But—even with all that, we have never heard of a Centurion.”

“After that traitor,” the word was hissed like steam escaping. “I'm not surprised. We Centurions are responsible for distributing mana through the world, keeping our monsters in check.”

Richter stood there, stunned. So they were right? Partially? Monsters weren't byproducts of the elemental mana, but the distributors.

“By traitor,” Aster said slowly. “Do you mean Mithos Yggdrasill?”

“He lied to us! Said he wanted to use our powers to bring peace, but instead he warped everything for that damned sister of his.”

Richter took a step forward. “I'm sorry. No one deserves to be erased like that.”

Those crystalline eyes focused on him. He wondered if Centurions could see mana the way half-elves could, or if they saw the world another way. What could she tell about him just by looking? “Why did you come here?”

“We were looking for answers about Ratatosk.”

“Master Ratatosk?” Her eyes widened before becoming narrow slits, hair lashing in a threat. “What do you want with him?”

“So he's still alive?”

“Of course he is.” She flipped her hair. “That traitor would never be able to get rid of him. He's too strong.”

“But the mana in the world is still out of balance even after the reunification. People are suffering!” Aster stepped up next to Richter, voice shaking a little.

“So why not ask your Summon Spirits to look after you? It's worked out so well so far.”

The tone of it was petty, but the phrasing of what a Centurion was made Richter pause. “They couldn't, could they? They're collectors of mana. They provide an anchor point for their element. You Centurions are the ones putting in the work with what happens to that mana once it's there. You're the differential.”

She blinked. “That's...that's right. Summoners can work with the Spirits all they want. It gives them access to that mana, but...they're not taking care of it.”

“But...Ratatosk isn't just a collector. He's a differential too, because he's both. We—we had a theory that maybe he could help.” Aster drummed the fingers of his left hand against his thigh, his body bursting with anxious energy at this sudden influx of information. “If Spirits really are just collectors, then...the Tree hasn't had time to collect enough to make any kind of difference. Ratatosk could help to rebalance the world until the new Spirit is strong enough to do it on her own.”

“And why should I trust you? Humans and half-elves—you're all the same. Abusing us for your own gain.”

“You're right.” Aster glanced over at him, surprised. Good to know he could still do that to him after all these years. “Helping us for our own sake—it's not worth it. But we aren't the only ones who rely on mana. The trees, the animals, the air—this whole planet will die without it. You're already working hard with the little mana we've got. But let's just—we can ask Ratatosk, can't we? If he really is your Lord, he should want to help you.”

“...I suppose you're right.”

“We know you've been hurt,” Aster added. “And that you don't have any reason to trust us. But—you don't have to stick with us. Just help us find Ratatosk so we can ask him for ourselves. Please. Everyone's suffering from the thin mana, and the two of us don't want to stand by and just watch.”

She hummed, the sound cavernous and echoing as whalesong, too big to be coming from her physical body. “But how would I know you're sticking to your word if I don't stick with you?”

Richter shrugged. “You're welcome to stick around if you want. But—” He held out a hand, thinking of Aster all those years ago on the stairs, of himself terrified of humans, of Aster projecting that fearlessness anyway. “If you are, I'd wanna know your name.”

She looked at the hand like she'd never seen such a thing before. “It—my name is Aqua.”

“I'm Richter. And this is Aster. It's nice to meet you properly.”

Aqua snorted, but held out her hand, placing it in Richter's. Her skin was cool and rubbery. “You're a strange one, y'know. But okay, I'll help you.”

“Ratatosk's Temple is at the Otherworldly Gate?” Richter said, looking at where Aqua was pointing. “Thought that place was just a myth.”

“Wait—there's ruins there. Maybe originally, they were his Temple and just, with the world shifting, it became its own thing?”

“Lord Ratatosk is in charge of circulating and generating all mana on this planet. Has been ever since he first arrived here.”

“Wait...so what was here before then?”

Aqua shook her head. “The way he describes it—it was all lifeless. Nifleheim is what the elves called it. Only death could flourish here, full of demons. What the Tree did was generate its own mana and it transforms demonic energy into mana.”

“Like carbon dioxide and oxygen. Plants take in what is toxic to people, and make it something that can create life.”

“Exactly. When people die, their mana needs to circulate too. Nifleheim absorbs the souls of the dead, and it'll take their mana. Lord Ratatosk takes the dead and stops it from becoming demonic energy and circulates it back out.”

“Which is why the mana is so thin,” Richter realized. “If he wasn't able to do that for four thousand years, with all those people dead...”

“The Exspheres are part of the planet's own natural solutions. Solum thought of it pretty early on, when Master Ratatosk was—he was so weak in those days. During the War. And there were...so many dead. So he decided to turn their mana into crystals to try and preserve them in stasis so at least Nifleheim's power wouldn't grow so Master Ratatosk could have some time before he got to them.

“And then after...we couldn't get to Master Ratatosk, and we weren't able to access our Spirits 'cause of that traitor's pacts.” Aqua never used Mithos Yggdrasill's name. “And he experimented on them, on people's souls. All to bring his sister back.”

“So monsters are part of the recycling system?”

“Well, yes.” Aqua shook her head like she was trying to clear the cobwebs of bad memories. “They're a part of the ecosystem. And demons—they feed off of resentments and unresolved grudges...that kind of negative energy. Lord Ratatosk's idea was to take those and kind of...give them an outlet instead of letting that energy go back to Nibleheim.”

“So the stronger the resentment...”

“The stronger the monster. And that monster can work like a mini recycling system themselves. They're so full of elemental mana that when they die—”

“They nourish the areas they're in. And when they're alive, that resentment leeches off and finds outlets, so it works itself off that way.” Aster was scribbling down notes immediately.

“Right. You're a smart one y'know. Most things like this go over people's heads.”

“Don't give him a bigger ego. I don't think I could stand it.”

“It's your theory too, Richter. Don't pretend like you're not excited about us being partially right.”

“How did you come to that conclusion?” she asked, bemused.

Richter showed her their notes from Gaoracchia. “Oh yeah...that's not super surprising there.”

“Why's that? What happened in Gaoracchia?”

“There's a bunch of folktales and stuff,” Aster said, stretching. “Always something about ghosts, and people murdered, and them still haunting the place. But that's not true, is it?”

“I...not entirely.” Aqua shifted uncomfortably, her body rippling like the surface of a lake. “...that's where Martel died. All that resentment there? It's—like a vacuum. Tenebrae and Lord Ratatosk had to work really hard to not let her soul get out of control. She was so powerful, and so were the others. She and Mithos' mana leaned towards the light element, so Tenebrae had to put in a lot of work to cancel that out. Their resentment was strong even while they were alive.”

“The others? Like the other Heroes of Kharlan?”

“Yes.”

“So resentment...it can happen even when people are alive.”

“Of course. But...by and large...most people, even if they have a lot of it, don't know how to work with it. It's when they die—”

“And all their mana gets tangled up with it.” Cooking makes ghosts.

Aqua inclined her head. “Yes. People who can channel it...they're usually summoners or specialize in dark magic. It's why Tenebrae was the one to help Lord Ratatosk with Gaoracchia.'

Richter remembered trying to learn Dark Sphere, remembered how different dark elemental mana was to the others. “Dark mana needs an anchor. It is the space. So resentment can act as that anchor.”

“Exactly. I don't know a whole lot about the specifics—not my field, y'know—but that sounds about right.”

“So wait, when you make monsters, you don't use resentment?”

“Sure we do. That's part of it all. It's...” Aqua frowned, gills fluttering at her neck. “For me at least, it's kinda like...the resentment's got gaps in it. It's kinda close to like smoke, y'know? It doesn't have a physical form on its own. So I just...give it some mana to fill it in, and it kinda decides a little what shape it wants to be. I can direct it, but it'll go its own way if it really wants to.”

Aster rested his cheek on his fist. “Most resentful spirits or whatever must not have a lot of imagination for the same kind of monsters to be so common.”

She shrugged. “People like what they know, so they usually pick things pretty close to animals they've seen. And most aren't strong enough to have much of an opinion anyway. They're just upset.”

He beamed at her. She looked a bit surprised by it, and Richter could sympathize. A full force Aster smile? That was a powerful thing. “Thanks for answering all our questions. I'm sure we must be really annoying.”

“That's your natural state of being.” Richter soothed the words' sting with a kiss to the top of Aster's head as he stood up. He needed to get started on dinner. One of them had to be responsible enough to take care of basic needs.

“No, it's...okay. No mortal has ever really...cared much. Maxwell was always asking questions, but he's kinda...snooty about it.”

“You're not close with the Spirits?”

“I mean, sure. Our elemental ones. Undine's kinda chill most of the time. Pretty quiet. Luna is too, but those two like to talk to each other. The Sylph are such gossips, lemme tell you. Never tell them anything that you wanna keep a secret. And they think they're sooo important.”

“So you could say they're full of hot air?” Aster said, grinning in anticipation of Richter's groan. Aqua laughed though, her dolphin chitter loud and whistling.

“I hate you both,” Richter declared. “I'm going home and getting started on dinner.”

“Oh...okay.”

Richter looked sideways at her as he threw his coat on. It was unseasonably cold right now, but everyone's weather was kinda messed up lately. The black coat had been a Celsius day gift from Aster a few years ago, since he'd outgrown his old one. “Do you want to join us?”

“Can I?”

“'Course you can! Richter loves feeding people and he's such a good cook.”

“And the faster I get food in his mouth, the faster he shuts up,” Richter said dryly, earning a balled up piece of paper to the forehead.

Aqua smiled, too wide for a person, and her little pointed teeth on display. “Yeah, let's go.”

Though Aqua had pointed out where the Otherworldly Gate was on the map, it would take them a while to be able to get there. It wasn't like there was a ferry to that island. They needed to apply for university funding for such an expedition, and that was after convincing them about the entire thing.

“Do you want to be cited in the paper?” Richter asked, pausing as he edited his first draft.

Aqua wasn't always corporeal. She came and went as she pleased. Still, whenever Richter spoke aloud, she seemed to hear him if he was directing his words to her. She bubbled into being above his desk. “Why would I care if I was cited?”

He leaned back in the chair to properly meet her eyes. “Centurions have been nonexistent to the outside world for millennia. Do you want to be known to people again? They'll probably search you out, bother you more.”

“Don't you need to do it for your paper anyway?”

“It'd be easier. But if you don't want me to do it, I won't. I can just figure out another way to say it.”

“That's more trouble for you though.”

“I wouldn't be offering if I wasn't okay with doing it,” he said, more edge to his voice than he would've liked. “So what do you want to do?”

“It...I don't know.” She fiddled with the fish skeleton in her ear. “People never cared about the Centurions, even before that traitor erased us.”

“They still might not. They have their own problems.”

“...I need some time to think on it.”

It would be another week when she appeared, this time when Richter was in the shower. He jumped, almost slipping in the tub and grabbing for the slick tiles for leverage. “Aqua!”

She giggled. “Sorry. I couldn't resist.” She passed an appraising eye over him. Richter resisted the urge to cover himself; he was naked in his own shower dammit, there was nothing shameful about that. Besides, she was an immortal being. Surely she'd seen it all. “I made my decision.”

“About what?” he grumbled, having to duck beneath the showerhead to finish rinsing his hair. It was almost at his eye level; this new apartment they'd been allotted was made for people distinctly shorter.

“Your paper. I think I'd like to be in it.”

He eyed her blurry form under his wet bangs. “How come?”

She bared her teeth in a grin. “We didn't have a choice last time. That traitor erased us. I want to be known. I don't want the Spirits to take credit for everything.”

Richter matched her grin; he knew the feeling. It had festered when he was in the basement, and it drove him once he and Aster became partners. No one expected half-elves to be relevant, or intelligent. Despite pressure from the higher-ups, Aster refused to leave off Richter's name, proudly at the top of their papers. No, Richter would never be invisible again. And neither would Aqua.

Richter and Aster didn't often do anything for Celsius Week. They would exchange their own gifts, but as far as parties went? It wasn't particularly their scene. They went to the obligatory faculty party where Aster cheerfully ignored all the dirty looks they received—Richter in particular, but these days, the two of them were basically synonymous with each other—and they enjoyed free food and alcohol.

One of the days, Rilena would invite them to her place for a festive dinner with her roommate, Violet, a mousy girl from one of Meltokio's outlying farms. Richter wasn't very social, but it tended to be a fun night of drinking cheap wine and card games.

This year, Aster suggested they spend it in Sylvarant. “C'mon, it'll be cool!” he said, turning off the shower. “Think of all the towns we didn't get to see! And their traditions are probably completely different.”

“You want to spend it in the desert so you're not freezing for once,” Richter retorted around his toothbrush.

“I mean, it's definitely a plus!” Aster laughed as he wrapped a towel around himself. His hair was getting long, the ends edging towards his collar. “And you can't convince me you're not in the slightest bit curious about it. We gotta go early, while travel over there is still kinda cheap. Izlood is still the closest port anyway, so we can stop and say hi to everyone before we go south.”

Which is exactly what they did. Izlood and its residents greeted them warmly, and Richter helped Emi make a seafood stew with loaves of bread. He even got Emi's permission to add Mama's sea urchin flavoring into the stew. The kitchen was hectic and full of people jostling each other and kids darting in and out. He could hear Aster out front, making friends as easily as he breathed.

(He tries not to compare it to his family's kitchen, tries to keep the fuzzy memories of his siblings' laughter as they stole bites of food under their mother's watchful eye and fast hand with a wooden spoon. He focuses on how different these accents are, how their blend of spices isn't the same, and the ever-present smell of the sea. It helps. Kind of.)

There was a young lady by the name of Chocolat—a few years younger than them, human and her accent was Palmacostan to Richter's admittedly limited ear—who helped escort people through Sylvarant.

“I used to work as a guide on pilgrimages,” she explained, her brown hair frizzy and curling around her ears. “These days, that business isn't so great, but I'm really good at maps, so once the Renegades brought us some updated ones, I decided this is how I can help.”

“It's a good idea,” Aster admitted. “We'd be probably dead in the wilderness without you.”

“You're lucky that the Ossa Trail isn't too dangerous these days. The Chosen's group cleared out the real big monsters.”

So Chocolate took them and a few others out through the Ossa Trail. Even though they'd both decided they weren't working on this little vacation, they caught each other taking notes and grabbing samples, especially near the peak of the Trail where Chocolat told them the story of Aska supposedly being sighted here, and when he was, the trees sang.

Aqua appeared near a corpse of a big tree, roots exposed. She trailed a hand along it, and she hummed her mournful whalesong. “The trees did used to sing,” she told Richter. “They were a special kind called Linkite. When the wind blew through their fruit, it would make music.”

“It sounds beautiful,” Aster said, leaning his head on Richter's shoulder. “Are they all extinct?”

“I...don't know.”

“We'll keep an ear and an eye out for them,” Richter said. “Maybe they're just harder to find now.”

Aqua gave them a small smile. “Thanks you two.”

It took some weeks after their 'vacation'--they both definitely did work, even though they had told each other that they wouldn't—to chart the best route to the Otherworldly Gate. After the statements given by the Heroes of the New World, the university was much more willing to fund Summon Spirit research given how important they'd been in the reunification.

“I wanna order really random tests just because we have the budget,” Richter said upon seeing the approved budget for the next quarter. Not as high as it might have been before the university needed repairs from earthquake and water damage, but still significantly higher than it had been in the past.

“You just want a chance to play in some of those fancy labs,” Aster teased. Richter liked learning about technology, and only humans were trained in using some of the more expensive testing equipment.

“Call it a push for equality.”

Their path took them looping south of the Sybakan continent to enter Altamira through the south. The route wasn't terribly perilous—especially not with Aqua with them—but there were still a lot of ruins riddling those tropical waters from the Tower of Salvation's fall, so boat captains were wary of it.

They were both getting comfortable at traveling by boat now, and this was a much shorter trip than all the way to Izlood. They both enjoyed being out in the sunshine, even if it was horrifyingly bright for Richter's eyes still. Aster teased about buying a sunhat in Altamira for his delicate constitution. Richter cheerfully threatened to toss him overboard.

Altamira was too expensive for them to stay in anything more than the lowest price room that was on offer at one of the inns on the outskirts of the city. Aster hummed at the smell of the ocean—so different from the way it smelled back in Sybak, and so similar to Izlood—and happily tried some sweet coconut bread from a vendor. Richter found one that was filled with savory pork and slathered with sauce and...pineapples?

The mix was interesting, and the thought of how he could incorporate foods into their meals at home sat in rotation in the back of his mind as he followed Aster to the docks. They found a local sailor by the name of Carlos who was willing to take them out to the Otherworldly Gate.

“It's not a far trip at all,” Carlos said cheerfully. His Altamiran accent had rolling R's and warm, round vowels. “Couple of hours outta the bay.”

Carlos was entirely too cheerful the next morning when they met him in the pre-dawn light. Aster was still yawning and leaning on Richter as they stepped onto the boat. Altamiran coffee was strong; personally, he was surprised it hadn't kicked in for Aster yet. Being out in the sun all day yesterday was exhausting in a very different way, though, so perhaps that was it.

“How long has it been since you've seen Ratatosk?” Aster asked Aqua. She was hard to see out here in such powerful sunlight; it made her translucent.

“Since the worlds split. We could feel him the whole time of course—we're still connected to him—but it's not the same.” She smiled wide, sharp teeth glinting. “It'll be good to see him again.”

The Ginnungagap was eerie. It was a kind of half-light, similar to a misty day. Bright enough to see, but nothing was very clear. Aster kept a hold of Richter's hand as they followed Aqua. She was very solid here, swimming through the half-light with ease. Things dangled from—was there even a ceiling to this place?—like roots or cables, branching off and connecting to each other, draping over each other.

Richter knelt at one point, touching a hand to the veins of mana running through everything. It was so rich it felt raw, the way the salt from the ocean scraped at your nose and throat if you swallowed it, the sharp bite of a winter wind, the searing of the sun on delicate skin.

And then there were the other apparatuses, rings and poles pulsing with energy that felt riotous and violent. “Is that...resentment?” Richter asked.

Aqua's cool presence hovered near his shoulder. “Yeah. It never stops.”

They followed the resentment down down and everything grew hotter. They came upon something that...Richter was willing to call it an altar. It had a circular frame that kind of looked like the sketches Aster had from the elven texts, circles on the outer edges and infinite, looping designs in the center. It reminded him almost of spell circles and stained glass. Panels of the floor arced up around the sides like half a barrel.

And right in front of it...

Richter's eyes found it hard to keep the being at the altar in focus. It was always shifting and morphing. Sometimes humanoid, sometimes animalistic, sometimes something else that his brain couldn't compute. But the one constant was his eyes, red as the resentful energy pulsing throughout the Ginnungagap.

Every instinct in Richter's body was telling him to leave. Still, Aster stepped forward, bold as ever. “You're Ratatosk, Summon Spirit of the Giant Kharlan Tree, correct?”

The steadiness of his voice helped Richter find his. "Ratatosk, the current balance of mana in the natural world is in a state of chaos. We believe your power is necessary to restore the correct balance."

When Ratatosk spoke, it was like a multitude of voices were trying to speak at once, their accents merging and making the cadence odd. "Even if I adjust the mana, the world will die without a tree to sustain it."

"We have heard that a new tree has been born," Aster said. "But, as far as we can tell, the Summon Spirit of the new tree doesn't possess your power to control the flow of mana.”

Ratatosk chuckled, a dark sound that shivered down their spines. "So?"

The dismissive response set off a tick of outrage in Aster's jaw. "So please use your Centurions to restore the balance of mana! If you do that, then the world will be saved!"

Those red red eyes studied Aster for a long moment before his voice thundered through the space. "Awaken, Centurions!” The command rattled Richter's ribs as the symbols of the Centurions on the floor below them glowed. “Restore your bond with your monsters and repair the mana of the world!”

No way had this worked. A breathy laugh started in Richter's lungs, and he met Aster's disbelieving eyes. They'd done it. All these years of work and it had paid off!

Ratatosk's voice echoed out again. “And then, go and eradicate mankind who destroyed my tree!"

What?

"What are you doing?" Aster cried.

"You wanted to save the world, right?"

"Yes, but you don't have to kill everyone to do that!" He stepped towards the altar, unconcerned about the fact that he was speaking to a whole Summon Spirit.

Ratatosk moved closer; the vibrating energy that he had given off had apparently been low-grade this whole time. Now, it was suddenly powerful and electric, humming thick in their ears. "Who destroyed the Giant Kharlan Tree, hm? It was the humans and the half-elves! That's why they deserve the same treatment themselves!"

Richter could see Aqua hovering above her symbol. She looked pale—even for her—and almost translucent, her light eyes wide and her body rippling and bubbling like rapids. Her nerves didn't make him feel any calmer. She would've warned them, wouldn't she? If she knew something like this would happen?

"But a new World Tree has been born!"

"Don't you understand? You 'people' are nothing more than parasites on this world."

"No! That's not true!" Aster protested. Richter couldn't find his voice, found it trapped in his throat like it would when he stuttered as a child. Between Aqua and his own instincts, all he wanted was to grab Aster and convince him to leave; Carlos said he could wait for them until sundown, and they didn't even know how long they'd been here. "Humans and half-elves are-are a very important part of this—"

"Silence!"

Everything went white. When Richter could see again, Aster was crumpled on the ground, unmoving.

His voice broke out of him. “Aster!”

He crashed to his knees at Aster's side, shaking him and searching for a pulse. Nothing. His green eyes were glassy and unseeing, and he was so limp in Richter's arms. Even when he was knocked out in the middle of the night, Aster was never so still. He was always wiggly and twitchy.

Ratatosk's voice came again, no longer thunderous, but still with the same presence. "And there you have it. See? The world is no worse off without that parasite."

Parasite ?! Richter snarled, and rushed at Ratatosk in a red haze, ax in hand and all his mana coming to bear. Would it be enough? Could it be enough? It didn't matter. He felt something give under his ax; his mana seared through him, hotter than anything he'd ever produced.

That voice had no presence again, but it rang with a thundercracking roar of pain. Everything went dark a moment later, and Richter was washed away in a sudden drop like stepping into too-deep water.

He was on his knees at the Otherworldly Gate, gasping. Aqua hovered nearby, not touching him.

“You protect me but not him?!” Richter snarled at her.

She flinched from his tone. “I didn't know what Lord Ratatosk was going to do. I—he didn't used to be like that. I didn't think—”

“Of course you didn't! We're just...parasites to you too, aren't we?!”

Her eyes narrowed, her fins flaring. “If I thought like that, I wouldn't have risked myself to save you! Now c'mon.” She took his arm, pulling him to his feet, shoving him towards the beach. “Get to Carlos. Get somewhere safe. I—I'm going to try to keep them distracted.”

He must've looked a sight because Carlos didn't take him back to the inn. He took him back to his family home, where his wife made up a bed for him and they brought him a stew.

He didn't register much until he was sitting in that stranger's bed, the bowl of now-cold stew dropping from numb hands as he tried to find an anchor point in the dark. In the window, he could see Altamira's lights in the distance. Windchimes jingled somewhere outside, and no matter where he looked, Aster wasn't there. He wasn't going to be there ever again.

Richter pushed his face into his hands and cried.

He didn't know where Aqua was. Even if he'd asked for her, she hadn't appeared. So Richter stopped expecting her too. He made his way back to Sybak, rage settling harsh and bitter in his throat.

It wasn't until they were pulling into port that he realized. He couldn't go back to the university. No one would believe that Richter hadn't had anything to do with Aster's death. He was a half-elf. Even the slightest suspicion would have him arrested at best, or made an example of in some mockery of a trial and execution.

Look what happens to half-breeds who dare to try and rise above their stations. Look what their people do to ours, snuffing out one of our brightest and best.

So he laid low in the fish market until nightfall, slipping back up to their lab. He ignored the burn in his eyes as he moved past the little nest of mattress and blankets they'd never taken out, even when they got their new little apartment. He ignored a half-empty mug of coffee from their last morning here, where Aster had guzzled it down before running to keep up with Richter.

Mutely, he gathered their research; no one else would be privy to what Aster and Richter had slaved over, what Aster had sacrificed his life for. He paused over the copied sketch of the elven texts, of Ratatosk surrounded by the Centurions' symbols.

They hadn't even come to help. Not a single damn one of them. They'd all been summoned; Richter hadn't been able to make many of them out—Aqua had been a little more solid, but even she had struggled—but no one had made a single sound of protest, had lifted a finger to help an innocent man.

He would kill them. Every single one of them. Centurions, Ratatosk. They'd gone begging for help for the world, and gotten it blown back into their face. Fine. Let them reap the punishment.

It wasn't like Richter had anything else to live for anymore.

Richter was on the road to Luin when Aqua appeared before his campfire.

“I swear—I didn't know that he was like that now.” Her voice was quiet and hoarse. “I-I would never have wanted this. You and Aster are my friends.” She didn't say that they were her only ones. She didn't have to.

Richter dragged his eyes up to look at Aqua properly. Her pale skin was mottled dark with bruises; angry gouges scored her chest. His rage still burned close, but the memory of her being summoned, in that spot over her symbol...had she been able to leave at all? Would she have had a choice? And when she did...look at the choice she'd made. Look at what it had cost her.

And she'd made it anyway. It must have taken courage. Aqua must have known what would happen when she went back. And still, she'd done it.

“C'mere,” he said, his voice as hoarse as hers. He hadn't cried since that first night in Carlos' guest room. Everything was still hot and numb. She approached gingerly, like it hurt to move or like she was afraid of him. Richter didn't know which was worse.

His First Aids weren't strong, and his focus was spilling out of his hands like water. Still, something was better than nothing to close the gouges a bit, to soothe their red edges and the lighten the bruises.

“I'm going to kill him,” he told her. “If that's gonna be a problem, we should part ways now.”

Aqua's voice vibrated like a rolling boil. “That's the opposite of a problem. You weakened him a lot; he got reduced down to his core. And he's not about to get away with hurting my friends. But the others are on his side. Tenebrae was the one who grabbed his core. I wasn't able to stop him.”

“We'll hunt them all down,” Richter promised darkly. “We'll make them pay for this.”