What a weird feeling, to name myself a master of the craft.Thatfeels inappropriate.
My heart twists. But it’s not like anyone else is ever going to name me such. As ever, I’ll have to claim my space first, and then defend it.
Gaspar, throughout this, is looking increasingly nonplussed.
“Wizard Master Sierra Walker,” I say more firmly, “at your service. Thank you for your help today, Gaspar.”
“Wizard Master Sierra Walker,” he echoes shyly. “You are welcome. Those of us here can hold the forest for you for a few hours more.”
My eyes widen. There’s... a lot to unpack there.
There’s multiple spirits, working together, and he is organizing them. This means they have somehow either emptied the forest of visitors or prevented them from entering without calling down further investigation, along with the employees who would normally work here... The scope of this, and for him to say it so simply, is sort of overwhelming.
I bow my head again, and see both surprise and pleasure in his gaze at the recognition.
“We may have visitors from High Earth,” I say. “Will your measures keep them out too?”
“No,” Nariel says.
A flash of rebellion on Gaspar’s face, quickly quelled. Ah, someone who wants to do more, then—a kindred spirit.
“Not without calling a confrontation down upon us we are not prepared for.” Nariel’s tone brooks no argument, though I see in Gaspar’s clenched jaw that he would reallyliketo argue.
But I’m not here to endanger anyone besides myself. That’s one of the great advantages of being on my own.
“Understood, then,” I say. “Anything else I need to know, or shall we get started?”
Gaspar bows once again, a jerky motion, and it occurs to me that maybe the problem isn’t just that he doesn’t know how to act, but that he is really fundamentally against bowing to anyone.
I am, possibly, projecting from my own adolescence in High Earth.
“The path is made clear for you,” Gaspar says, and then melts back into the trees.
With a glance at Nariel, who gestures for me to proceed, I take my first step inside.
It takes a little while of hiking the trail before you really get the sense that you’re walking inside a cloud.
It’s longer than that before Nariel finally says, “You can speak freely now.”
With the quiet, with the surrealness of being shrouded in mist, it feels more private than it is. There could be a spirit behind any tree.
Well, that’s not true. I’d feel that—unless Nariel is masking them.
And if there are any spirits here when Grand Magus Evram inevitably arrives to disrupt me, Nariel will absolutely mask them.
“Did you think I needed the reminder of who else I’m doing this for?” I ask him.
“I thought you might like to see that you won’t always have to force people to help you.”
I pause to frown back at him. “Gaspar is helping because you asked him to.”
“Gaspar would like to be helpingmoreif I would let him,“ Nariel says with a little bit of a growl in his voice. “He is smart and passionate but lacks... moderation.”
“Well, I resemble that remark.”
Nariel snorts. “No. If you lacked moderation, you never would have been allowed to learn all the skills you extracted from High Earth in the time that you had—time that you also extracted from them. Gaspar is one of my agents in this world to keep him out of trouble outside Makora.”
And this fallen angel, who ruled over a demonic territory and planned to challenge the angels themselves, had taken notice of this one bright boy and found a way to help feed the spark in him rather than snuff it out.
