Chapter 16: Visitor

Gaping in wonder, Rylan reached out towards the glass, his fingers pressing up against the pane, with the little yellow spirit hanging just on the other side.

“Hi,” he breathed softly, careful not to startle it again.

[What’s going on, Boss?] Arphin asked. [Is there something there?]

Rylan did not have the wherewithal to answer, holding his breath as the little spirit seemed to extend a tendril of light, which touched the glass from the other side of his finger.

Something seemed to brush against his mind, evoking whispers of curiosity and hesitance, but strange, alien. Not his own.

His brows furrowed in concentration as he tried to reply, leaning on his experience with communicating mentally with Arphin to try and send soothing feelings and words back through his spirit. ‘It’s all right. I won’t hurt you. I’m a friend. Will you be my friend, too?’

The hesitance melted away like skyclouds under the relentless light of day, replaced by a growing sense of excitement. More sensations flooded into him, this time accompanied by images, sounds, and smells, and he didn’t fight them.

He saw stone roofs and vendors selling soft fabrics, a fountain shaped like a fogturtle, and an alley that smelled like blood. The scene shifted, and he was in a cave lit only by glowing footsteps in thriving moss. Following that, there was the creaking ropes and bamboo, as puffs of hot steam sputtered out of two pipes.

Rylan’s breath hitched as he saw a maw full of glowing teeth and... himself, hanging from a rope, waving around Arphin. He felt the breeze blow against the shark, slowing it down as it tried to pass under the arch of stone.

The images sped up. Flashes of a city in ruins and an unnaturally still pool, laughter coming from a group of familiar figures huddled around a warm stove, a room lit only by the glow of three still working portals, then a forest of blue kelp.

Vertigo swept over Rylan as they dove into a ravine, sweeping down alongside fat droplets of rain. He saw himself jump towards the pillar Tamina was desperately clutching onto, trying not to get swept away by the flood. His heart clenched as he almost overshot his jump, when the breeze swelled and pushed him back.

The images accelerated further, showing him cloudphins and corals and a burning carcass. He hurtled alongside a rapidly plummeting whale, then saw three figures fall off a cliff.

Finally, he saw a familiar stone building, with a patch of gorgeous yellow flowers blooming in front of it, and a fat, funnily buzzing fly going from flower to flower, sometimes missing the entrance when it swayed in the breeze. Suddenly, something drew his attention from inside a sweltering room full of strange scents. It was a kind of muttered verse, a request for help, for cooling winds.

On a whim, he flew over, dragging the winds with him, amused when the fat fly got sucked along through the window. However, inside, he received the shock of his life when a big knife went flying almost straight through him, only to nail the fat fly onto a piece of bamboo on the wall.

Finally, there was a flood of power, pinpricks of blue, that flowed into the one who had thrown it, making their spirit glow up in a beautiful shade of green.

The return to the here and now was jarring and sudden. Especially as, for a split second, it felt like Rylan had swapped places with his reflection, hanging outside his own window, looking in.

With a gasp, he drew back his fingers, sweat beading on his forehead as he took a step back. “It was you! It was you all along!”

One thing was clear: the little spirit wasn’t Zeph. It had just happened by and heard his prayer somehow. Except Rylan was pretty sure he hadn’t prayed out loud, so that also seemed suspect. Was it through Zeph’s divine interference that the little spirit had heard his plea?

The little spirit twitched slightly in response to his exclamation, but remained in front of the window, its tendril still mostly extended.

[Boss, who are you talking to and—more importantly—what was that?!]

“We have a guest, Arphin. Someone who’s been travelling with us for a long time.” Rylan bit his lip, then reached out for the window’s handle, and pulled it open. “So... would you like to come in, friend?”

Rylan’s eyes followed the little spirit as it darted around the room, endlessly curious. He’d communicated with it some more, but while the spirit seemed to understand him, it couldn’t really answer in words. Only sensations and feelings.

He’d tried to ask it why the little spirit had been following them, and it had given the spiritual equivalent of a shrug. As far as he could tell, it had simply become somewhat fascinated with him back in that kitchen, and had been following along ever since.

Arphin had complained about being excluded at first, as the spiritblade still couldn’t seem to do much more than vaguely sense the spirit’s presence when it came very close to him. So Rylan had gently encouraged the little wisp to contact Arphin. After some prodding, it hesitantly had, and now Arphin was over the moons that he had someone new to communicate with.

[Ooh, Boss, Boss, she needs a name!] the spiritgear claimed. [Something cool, like Deathbreeze, Destroyer of Flies! Do you like that name, Deathbreeze?]

The little spirit emanated back confusion.

“That is definitely an option,” Rylan replied diplomatically. “But I’m not sure it fits... her.”

Rylan wasn’t sure spirits had genders the way humans had, but the spirit did give off a feminine vibe. And calling it ‘it’ didn’t feel right.

Either way, he wanted to give the little spirit a proper name, so he took a moment to think. “Let’s see... Oh, you liked those yellow flowers, right?”

The spirit replied with an impression of the smell of their pollen in the sunlight, the dewdrops rolling down their velvety petals in the morning, and the delectable nectar in their depths that attracted cutely buzzing insects.

That seemed like a yes.

“Then, how about we name you Izillia, after those flowers?” he suggested. “Izzy, for short.”

Izzy swooped through the room, causing a slight twister that made the papers on Rylan’s desk flutter.

He laughed at her antics, though his smile faded a little as he recalled a day long ago.

Soren, Zahra and he had been warned by miss Amberleaf to stay away from the izillias growing next to the field, as they were Dionne’s favourites, but Rylan had somehow ended up crushing a few when he took a tumble anyway.

However, Dionne—who had happened by—had just laughed and helped him up, putting a kiss on his scraped knee.

‘Plants will grow back if we take care of them,’ she’d said. ‘But people don’t. So don’t mind the flowers, just mind yourself.’

[Well, if she likes that name, I guess that’s all right too,] Arphin reluctantly agreed, snapping Rylan out of his sudden nostalgia.

Arphin’s disappointment was short-lived, as Izzy came sweeping by, and the breeze in her wake sucked the chatty blade along. In no time, the two fast friends had a new pastime, as Izzy sent Arphin spinning around the room.

Rylan watched them in bewildered wonder. This must’ve been what Maris was like before she was caught by the Hermeans... Except for playing in water rather than air, I suppose.

It seemed clear that Izzy was nowhere near as powerful or knowledgeable as Maris, and Rylan had to wonder whether that was due to a difference in age, or mostly because Maris had grown stronger under the pressure of her confinement.

Well, either way, the little spirit seemed attached to him—and protective of him—though he got the impression she viewed him as a diversion, like a cute pet, more than anything else.

Seeing her play with Arphin, he couldn’t really bring himself to care how she viewed him. He just hoped she would stick around.

Eventually, Rylan’s tiredness caught up with him, and he had to ask the rambunctious duo to keep it down and not play around his head as he went to bed. The yellow glows coming off Izzy and Arphin’s spirits played across his retina even with his eyes closed, but he just turned over to look the other way, and went to sleep.

He woke up to find his room an utter mess. Arphin had ended up beneath the desk, floating there half asleep, drained of most of his mana. It appeared the twosome had tired each other out, and Izzy had left for a bit to drift on the breeze, but Arphin said she’d be back when the sun climbed the sky.

After cleaning up the worst of the clutter—and putting away anything breakable that remained on a shelf or windowsill—Rylan grabbed Arphin and his trusty knife belt and went down for breakfast.

As always, his pan-baked rice cakes with gilderberry compote were on the house. He took his plate to the back patio, and enjoyed them in the shade of the now-permanent awning. It was a bit chilly without direct sunlight, but that was a small price to pay for privacy.

Finished eating, Rylan started by warming up his body by running and jumping around, then limbered up his throwing arm with his regular blades. Down in the cloudsea, they hadn’t really needed warm-ups, as they had been active all day, but that hadn’t stopped Tamina from hammering on about their importance.

It wasn’t just that Rylan didn’t want to waste credits on any possible injuries. The more Skills he gathered, the more he was stretched thin in training them, and he didn’t want to waste any of his precious mana while still groggy from sleep.

He only produced about one point of mana an hour, which meant about twenty-four points a day. Six of those were reserved for Cooking specials, another twelve for his morning Skill practice—usually—and the last six for his afternoon training in mana-shaping techniques.

Rylan wasn’t sure what Sapphire Skills he was eligible for exactly with his Attribute spread, but he knew he would never get one if he didn’t practise making textured mana.

Either way, this meant he only had about four mana available per Skill he was training—so he had to make the most out of it.

Tired as he was, Arphin quickly rallied when it was his turn, The blade wouldn’t be Recalling today, as Rylan couldn’t afford to refill the spiritgear’s mana, but he still needed the blade’s help.

Today too, he started by working on curved throws. Using his rotation control, he first straightened out Arphin’s flight, then shifted the spiritgear’s tip slightly to the left, so that the flat of his blade would catch the wind and push him aside.

Well, that was the theory. The practice had turned out to be rather finicky, especially with regular throwing knives.

Too little shift in the knife’s yaw and nothing happened, too much and it slowed down and clattered onto the ground before the painted target, and the margins were slim. To make matters worse, even throwing the length of the patio, there was very little time to make subtle adjustments to the blade’s yaw.

But that’s where Arphin came in. Not only was the spiritgear capable of providing Rylan with feedback about the pressure of the flowing air, he could be thrown much, much slower, as he wasn’t affected by gravity.

Of course, at really slow speeds, there was no airflow to speak off, but Rylan had managed to find a middle ground, a speed he could throw Arphin at that would cause a normal blade to drop down before the target, but was fast enough to notably curve the blade.

Now it was a matter of slowly speeding up his throws, and keeping it steady as the resulting airflow grew increasingly turbulent.

Unfortunately, he’d used a little more mana than usual yesterday, so he called it quits after only about thirty throws and moved on to Knife-Fighting.

He’d been surprised to find how different the Skill felt to Knife-Throwing. With his first Skill, there was a kind of tension when he used it, like he was winding up a spring and preparing it for release. That had also been why he’d had such trouble with keeping his Skill active without throwing his knife at the start.

With Knife-Fighting, there was none of that. The mana seemed content to languish in his knife indefinitely, guarding his hand and coating the steel, ready but not waiting to strike.

His first Augmentation goal was naturally still Overcharge, as the initial amount of mana his Skill pulled from his Mana Pool was quite pitiful. However, thanks to his lack of available mana, it was slow going. He’d only gotten up to about 0.6 mana so far.

Training the Skill without a sparring partner was a bit awkward as well. Thankfully, Burtrand had at least been so kind as to provide Rylan with a training dummy, so he didn’t feel like a complete clodpoll as he went through a series of stabs with Arphin.

When Arphin had the mana to spare, Rylan sometimes practised Recalling the spiritblade from one hand to the other, or throwing him at a target, Recalling him, and then swiftly activating Knife-Fighting and stabbing the training dummy.

It was slowly starting to look less clunky, and he was glad for his privacy.

Finally, after straining his Skill a little, he moved on to Jumping, trying to get as far across the patio as he could.

Overall, he felt like he was making steady progress. The only progress that worried him, was that of his Affinity. Because, unexpectedly, it was still slowly growing closer to completion, gaining about 0.1% every three days.

Right now, he was at 1.6%.

His feelings about it were rather mixed. On the one hand, he didn’t know what his Affinity was, and there was a nagging worry inside of him that completing it might harm him in some way, like it was a toxin building up inside of him.

On the other hand, he’d calculated that at this rate, completing it would take ten years, and that seemed like a long time to have to wait when other Quinthar could just inhale from a canister for a few weeks and be done with it.

Rylan landed his final long jump in the pile of hay Burtrand had kindly provided and climbed out of it, brushing off his clothes. As he opened the door leading into the restaurant to go grab some lunch, however, he found Fylsa on the other side, about to yank it open by the excited look on her face.

“Ryles!” she whisper-shouted. “There’s a girl asking for you at the bar!”

Rylan’s heart skipped a beat as his mind went straight to Tamina, followed by his eyes widening at the potential implications.

However, he didn’t see any green glow coming from the restaurant...

‘Arphin, can you see who it is?’

[Sorry Boss, no clue. There’s a bunch of people in the restaurant, but I don’t recognise any of them.]

Rylan’s brows furrowed. “You know I don’t want to interact with customers...” he replied out loud.

“I know I know, but listen,” Fylsa continued, gesticulating wildly while still talking fast for some reason. “She’s asking for a special. Not just any kind, though; she wants something to go that’s easy to eat, and focused on the restorative properties of your Skill.”

Rylan blinked in surprise, though perhaps he should have seen this coming. While his Cooking Skill mainly helped provide stamina, there was the minor effect of boosting physical recovery, and Burtrand had naturally used that in his advertising.

He folded his arms over his chest. “I see... I suppose I could make an exception for her and whip up a bowl of porridge or something, but I’m honestly not sure how well it’s going to work if it’s meant to help a sick person or something like that, because that’s not something I’ve focused on so far.”

“I think you might want to do it anyway,” Fylsa said, with glimmering eyes, grabbing his lower arms and leaning in conspiratorially as she continued. “Because apparently it’s for her father... Art!”

Rylan froze, his mind grinding to a halt and taking a moment to restart. “Art? As in Red-Nosed Art?”

“Yes!” she squealed. “She didn’t seem to like that nickname, but she confirmed he’s one and the same!”

[Woah!] Arphin said. [Hey Boss, if that girl’s father is your father as well...]

Rylan swallowed, his mouth dry and his heart pounding. ‘That would make her my sister.’

[Oh! I was just going to say what a crazy coincidence that would be, but damn, you’re right, Boss! She’d be your sister!]

Meanwhile, Fylsa had leaned back again a little, and was rattling on. “Apparently he’s gotten hurt in an accident a while back, and that’s why he hasn’t shown up! Anyway, aren’t you glad I was manning the till today? I swear, if Madalynn had been up there, she probably just would’ve just shrugged and sent the girl on her way empty-handed.”

Rylan wasn’t so sure about that, as Madalynn seemed like a very sweet and helpful girl, but he wasn’t about to gainsay her.

“I... yeah, definitely,” he replied, shaking himself out of it. “Thank you.”

“So what are we going to do now?” Fylsa asked. “Are you going to make the porridge? D’you need me to pass a message or something?”

Rylan licked his lips, his eyes darting around as he considered his options. “Actually, I’d like you to invite her to the back room for me, please.”

Fylsa looked a little taken aback at that, but didn’t try to dissuade him. “Sure, I can do that. How would you like me to word that invitation?”

“Just tell her the chef has some questions about her order.”

Author's note:

I personally really like the reverse flashback sequence from Izzy's perspective. ^^

Her reveal has been a long time coming, obviously, and I hope you enjoyed it too!

More about the other new character that's about to be introduced on Monday. ;)

Thanks for reading. :)