The Wind Shows No Mercy

The long throne hall felt like an immense game board. On the central table lay a hand-painted map of Ventos, stitched with leather strips to withstand use: Azoth at its heart; Niflheim to the north like a frozen crown; Donner to the east, carved by mountain chains and thunderstorms; Caldus to the south with its desert and copper ranges; and Vetramar to the west, lined with ports and salt flats. Folded standards rested like sleeping beasts. The air smelled of ink, wax, and metal.

Tifa held an ivory pointer. She stood like a queen who left no room for doubt.
—We don’t have the luxury of time. —Her voice cut clean—. Zeknier is moving his acolytes along Azoth’s borders and raising taxes where the law is weakest. If he’s waiting two months, it isn’t random: he’s testing us. That’s why we must secure allies and find bearers.

Blair listened at her side, hood up out of habit even in the palace. Her red eyes followed the pointer.
—Who first?

—North. —Tok. The ivory tapped Niflheim—. The queen with no name in tavern songs and too many names in treatises… our best hope. Her armies are built for long campaigns, and her mages know ice the way we know bread. If Niflheim leans toward Azoth, Zeknier loses the board.

—And the bearers? —Blair asked, a shadow of urgency in her tone—. Soldiers won’t be enough.

—No. —Tifa conceded—. We need the Orb bearers to awaken. Someone of Water, someone of Light, of Earth… and Air has already awakened, but he’s having an identity crisis.

The slight tug in Blair’s chest—that thread of the Sweet Kiss—thrummed like a tuned string. Asori’s in the east wing. Moving. Frustrated, she thought, pressing her lips to hide the smile.

Tifa went on:
—I spoke with the Sage of Air. As of today, Eryndor is done playing with apples. The real work begins: body and Astral. If Asori wants to live, he must do more than fight—he must cross that threshold.

—Eryndor… —Blair tasted the name, part breeze, part stone—. Do you think Asori can take it?

—I don’t know. —Tifa’s look was honest—. But I want him to have a choice other than dying.

Silence fell, dense as heavy cloth. Blair slid her fingers along the map’s edge toward the east—Donner’s realm.
—Jason —she whispered, almost to herself.

Tifa’s brow lifted a fraction.
—He’s still in Donner’s mountains. Training lightning with the high monks and the Sage of Thunder. They’re harsh, but if anyone was born for the storm…

—It’s him. —Blair finished. She swallowed. The candidate. The word hurt more for what he would no longer be—. I haven’t seen him in months. If… if something happened to him, and I…

—You chose to save a life. —Tifa cut in, rough with tenderness—. Don’t waste that act on regret. Jason’s stubborn. He’ll live.

Blair nodded, but when she left the hall, her gaze drifted out the window toward the east, where the sky always seemed brighter and more dangerous. —Live, idiot. Come back with scorched boots and that same ridiculous smile— she thought, pulling up her hood and vanishing down the corridor like a noble shadow.

The east-wing courtyard had changed little and everything. Where ribbons hung the day before, there were now new chimes, ropes, stakes, and a stone pillar with an iron ring. The round basin at the center—the small fountain—mirrored a noon sky so blue it ached.

Asori arrived scuffing his boots, hair a mess. He spotted a basket of apples and lit up.
—Perfect. You’ll set a record with me today: twelve apples, twelve failures. Efficiency!

Eryndor—sky-blue robe, white hair tied back, eyes like an old river—shook his head.
—No apples.

—Pears? —Asori tried, unsure if in hope or fear.

—No fruit. —Eryndor’s voice was a breeze one did not argue with—. Tifa has spoken. The wind brings war, and there is no time.

Asori froze, pricked by a pride he mistook for laziness and a fear he masked as sarcasm.
—Air doesn’t run. It blows when it feels like it.

—And we with it. —Eryndor pointed at the pillar—. Center.

Asori obeyed… grumbling.
—What, tie me up and say a prayer?

—Something like that. —The Sage smiled—. Up you go.

Ten minutes later Asori hung upside down from the ring, ankles bound with a broad strap. The rope, fixed to the pillar, let him swing over the basin’s edge. Each arc made his hair brush the water, the world a carousel of stone, sky, and nausea.
—This is an attack on my person —he groaned—. And I didn’t leave a will!

Eryndor crouched a meter away, as if watching a clock.
—Do what we did yesterday, but inverted: breathe. Four in, six out. Don’t fight the swing—govern it. Your Astral is the rope: snap it and it breaks; slacken it and you drown.

—I can’t breathe if the world’s upside down!

—The world doesn’t change because you see it inverted. —Eryndor’s reply was even.

Asori shut his eyes. Four, six; four, six. At first, every exhale threw him off. Slowly, his abdomen took over, setting a rhythm the swing obeyed. Eryndor flicked a bamboo rod; the courtyard’s currents shifted—and with them, the arc.
—Hey! Cheating!

—War is cheating in uniform. —The Sage stayed calm—. Now tense only the right side of your abdomen. Correct without hands. Slow. Think of your Astral spreading like a thin membrane over your skin, wrapping you. Not force—form.

Asori grunted but complied. Small muscles he’d written off as decorative began to burn: weepy obliques, forgotten lumbars. The swing shortened, then shorter still, until the rope hummed at a calmer pitch.
—That’s it —Eryndor murmured—. Now, listen to something else.

He dropped a pebble into the basin. Ripples spread in rings. Rope, body, water—three rhythms. Asori picked them apart like instruments in an orchestra.
—Align your exhale with the third wave —said Eryndor.

—The third what? I can see the blood rushing to my head!

—Let your ribs feel it.

Asori tried, missed. Tried again, the rope slung him, his hair slapping his brow. On the fifth try he hit it—his exhale left exactly as the third ring touched the basin’s rim. For a heartbeat, everything clicked: rope, body, water, wind.
—Good. —Eryndor’s mouth curved by a millimeter.

—I’m going to vomit… gracefully —Asori panted.

—Vomiting in rhythm is progress, too.

At last, the Sage lowered him. Asori dropped to a sit, gasping, dizzy—and proud in spite of himself.
—Will that save me from a sword?

—It will save you from yourself. —Eryndor repeated—. Sometimes that includes the blade.

—What’s next, o tormentor of the skies?

—The Leaf in a Hurricane.

Eryndor tossed a handful of dry leaves aloft and, with the rod, coaxed a tame whirlwind that kept them dancing over the fountain.
—Catch one with your toes. Don’t tear it.

—With my… —Asori eyed his boots in horror—. I didn’t sign up for this.

—And the wind didn’t sign up for you. Go on.

Barefoot, still wobbling, Asori climbed a low plinth and stretched a leg toward the spinning leaves. The little cyclone played coy, hiding them; one brushed his instep. He tried pinching it with his toes—the leaf slipped away.
—Subtle. —Eryndor said—. It isn’t a fish. It’s an idea. Hold it gently or it breaks.

Three, five, seven attempts. On the eighth, the pads of his toes caught the edge. It started to crease; Asori softened, “holding without holding,” and the leaf obeyed.
—…Got it —he whispered, as if speaking of a secret.

—You’ve got it. —Eryndor nodded—. Belt it. Your first leaf that listens.

Solemn now, Asori tucked it away. The Sage raised a finger.
—Chime trial. Blindfold.

The linen blindfold returned. The chimes—strung along a path between stakes—waited for their first note. Eryndor didn’t walk; he moved the wind: crossing currents, sly nudges, tiny gusts. Hands raised, Asori learned to ride air like a horse’s back: if it shoves here, load there; if it yields there, step here. The first chime quivered; by instinct, he shifted to the ball of his foot and missed it.
—One —Eryndor counted.

Asori smiled in the dark.

At the fourth, he failed. Tiling.
—Four minus one —he muttered at himself.

—Again. —The Sage’s order was simple.

By the third round—back slick with sweat, patience hanging by a thread—Asori crossed the yard without a single jingle. He pulled off the blindfold, and the world seemed sharper. Not through the eyes—inside.
—I don’t feel stronger —he admitted—. Just… less clumsy.

—Sometimes the space between dying and not dying fits in that one word.

—Good thing I’m not a poet.

—The wind is, for you.

Eryndor lifted four pitchers from the basin’s edge and poured them—one from each cardinal point—into four curtains of water. The sun stitched small rainbows across them. Asori frowned.
—Don’t tell me…

—Trial of the Four Points. Eyes closed. Don’t move much. Move just right. Let your Astral form a skin that redirects the drops. If you do it well, you’ll get a little wet. If you don’t…

—I’ll be soup.

—A fine soup.

Asori shut his eyes. He felt the fall of each curtain at a different rhythm. Eryndor’s wind barely touched them, shifting diagonals. Asori adjusted shoulders, tucked his chin, hollowed his back, engaged the right abdomen; water slid more than it struck. He ended up soaked, yes—but not drowned. Eryndor nodded, satisfied.
—For a rushed first day, you live.

—For a rushed first day, I hate hanging a little less. —Asori conceded, dripping and half-smiling.

—Tomorrow, repeat. And run the chimes.

—Run? I’ll set them all off!

—You’ll learn to keep them silent even at a run.

The Sage withdrew with the smallest bow, like a musician putting away an instrument.

Asori slumped at the fountain’s edge, legs sprawled, breathing deep. His chest beat with something like pride and something like fear. He was tired, yes—but with the kind of tired that stitches bone to will. He drew the leaf from his belt and looked at it a moment, chuckling at his own solemnity, then tucked it away like a ridiculous, precious medal.

The sun began to fray into oranges. Blair crossed the courtyard with a soft step, hood up, a long cloth bundle in her hands.
—I brought bread. —She announced it like a treasure—. Real bread. Crisp crust, tender crumb.

Asori lifted his eyes with a believer’s devotion.
—My religion.

She sat beside him and handed over a warm piece. When it broke, the air filled with the exact smell of a late afternoon worth remembering. They ate in silence for a while. The Sweet Kiss purred in Blair like a drowsy cat: she felt Asori’s fatigue, the sting of pride, a flicker of embarrassment for the leaf he’d kept. I saw it, she thought without saying, the first time something obeyed you that wasn’t you.

—Eryndor hung you upside down, didn’t he? —she asked, feigning innocence.

—Only to polish my dignity. —He chewed—. Then he made me catch leaves with my toes. If you’d told me yesterday, I’d have laughed. Today, I did it.

—That’s because you’re an idiot. —Blair’s voice was tender—. An idiot who learns.

He glanced at her sideways, that half-smile that was sometimes a shield and sometimes a prize.
—And you’re a silver-haired princess who brings bread so idiots don’t die.

—Someone has to prevent disaster.

Silence returned—denser, kinder. The basin’s reflections blurred with the breeze. Far off, a trumpet practiced a short motif, repeating, as if the city were rehearsing its own heartbeat before news arrived.

—Tifa spoke of Niflheim today. —Blair lifted her gaze—. If the ice queen leans our way, the board changes. But… she also spoke of you. Of leaving the apples behind.

—The apples left me first. —He squeezed the bread—. Put me upside down and made me play pendulum. Said it would save me from myself.

—She’s right.

Asori looked down at his wavering reflection.
—I don’t want to be a weapon, Blair. —He finally let it out—. I don’t wake up thinking about saving kingdoms. I just want… not to feel useless when the hit comes.

—That —Blair said softly— is already wanting to save something. Sometimes the first thing you save is yourself. Then, if you’re lucky, someone else.

He nodded, swallowing something that wasn’t bread.
—And you? —he dared—. That thing inside you… when it shows up, does it hurt?

Blair fixed her eyes on the waterline. The flower-jewel at her brow pulsed once, like a secret.
—It doesn’t hurt —she said slowly—. But it burns. And I feel… the flame has a memory that isn’t mine. As if someone lent me a great hall built in my name but furnished by hands I don’t recognize. If I fling the doors open, the fire takes me. If I keep them closed, it breaks me from within.

—Don’t name it. —Asori murmured, not looking at her.

—Not yet. —Blair agreed, smiling—. Look at you, finally learning.

—Don’t get used to it. —He shot back, half-teasing—. I might start liking my life.

They laughed, then fell quiet, then bit into bread again. The pull of their bond shifted tone—a warmth that, if visible, would have glowed like a freshly stoked brazier.

Footsteps rang along the gallery. A messenger in Azoth’s tabard halted a few paces away, struck his chest with a fist, and extended a leather tube with a seal.
—For Her Majesty and hers. —He announced—. Proclamation of the Capital City.

Blair took the tube, broke the seal with her thumb, and unrolled the parchment. She read under her breath, brows drawing together.
—Two moons. —She finally said, steadying her breath—. Two months. The tournament will be announced at dawn. Rewards… and a “living treasure” as second prize.

Asori tensed.
—They don’t even bother changing the name. Slavery with polish.

—I know. —Blair’s eyes flared for a heartbeat—. That’s why we’ll go. To gain allies… and to make sure that “treasure” stops being one.

—Win? —Asori arched a skeptical brow.

—Or lose the right way. —Blair folded the parchment—. Whichever becomes possible first.

The messenger withdrew. Crickets stitched the afternoon back to night.

—Tomorrow I train at the hour when even the roosters are still thinking about it. —Asori grumbled, pushing himself up—. Eryndor said “running” the chimes. If I don’t come back, erect a statue of bread in my honor.

—I’ll make one of a green-apple foot. —Blair winked.

—Traitor. —He smiled.

They stood. For a second, they didn’t touch; for a second, almost. The breeze nudged them a step closer, and neither confessed it.
—Tie? —Asori asked.

Blair met his gaze, smiled with her eyes, and nodded.
—Tie.

The sky, now violet, kept the word like a small vow. Somewhere in the palace, Eryndor lifted his eyes toward the high current that no one else attended and, satisfied, murmured to the wind:

—They’ve a long way to run. But they’re running the right way.