Aggression

We were led to a mansion that looked as plain as the other buildings, with no effort put into decoration at all. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to call it a giant slab of stone. And it was the home of the Everhart family, which meant that Lyla grew up here.

The night was approaching just in time. Cyrus led us to a guest room so we could settle down. The room was drab, just as the mansion was. I finally understood why people would fall for the shifter’s fake hostel. The guest room here was only a little better than something a monster built, composed of stone instead of wood. They had two mattresses here at least, one for each person, but I had a feeling that Sabedra wouldn’t appreciate how great a mattress was.

Only Cyrus ate dinner with us. Apparently, Lyla wasn’t even in the mansion, but at the wedding venue preparing for the ceremony tomorrow. She didn’t tell us it was so soon.

Will I be able to talk to her tomorrow? What should I say to her? What does she really want? Is this better for her? These concerns piled up in my head until it seemed it was about to blow. I caught a glimpse of Sabedra next to me, gorging herself on the variety of unknown meat and side dishes. She seemed to have forgotten all her worries and even her table manners, if she had any to begin with.

Looking at her intensified my headache. I had already gotten used to the pain in my phantom limb and the calmness projected from Coyote’s mind, but I couldn’t bear this new twinge in my head.

“I think I need to wash my face,” I said as I stood up. Cyrus gave me the directions to the washroom, at least I thought he did. My mind was spinning too much for me to hear him. I wobbled through the halls, wandering in hopes of finding the washroom.

Eventually, the pressure in my brain lifted by itself, and I realized I was standing in front of a room with an open door. The lanterns inside weren’t lit, so I could only rely on the light from the hallway lanterns. The layout looked similar to the guest room, but here, even the mattress was absent from the bed. On the wall hung a few bows.

I peeked in to get a better look, only to find myself face-to-face with a pair of glowing yellow eyes. My instinctive reaction was to fall backwards out of the room, the momentum bringing me onto the ground.

It was too late. Something flew out at me. I blocked it with my only hand. Claws grazed my skin. When can I stop being assaulted by pain? I don’t want to lose the only arm I have left.

From the traces of white wings I saw to the sound of their flapping, I gathered that a bird of prey was my attacker. Knowing that didn’t help me escape; I could only wave my left arm frantically, thwarting its attack with my best efforts.

At that moment, I wished I had connected to Sabedra; then, this pathetic display wouldn’t have happened. Believe me, I had tried since the start of the trip to understand her more, but it just never seemed to be enough to establish a mental link between us.

In the chaos, I picked out a faint whistle. And the bird flew off me and landed on a bare arm, digging its claws deep enough to draw blood. The owner of the arm was Cyrus. And the bird was a white owl. At this moment, the scariest detail to me wasn’t the owl’s ferocious eyes directed at me or the state of Cyrus’s arm; it was that on Cyrus’s face, his smile was replaced with a frown. It would be a normal frown on anybody else, but not Cyrus.

My first action was to bow to this person. “Greetings, my name is Thomas. Are you the twin brother of Lord Cyrus?”

The elf spewed out an annoyed groan. He stepped past me into the room and flicked the arm with the owl. The owl flew behind the wall, out of sight again. The elf pressed his open palm over his injuries and said with a perfectly clear voice, “Heal.” A glow seeped out from under his palm, and once he removed his hand, the wounds were closed. He healed the lacerations on my left arm the same way.

“Thank you. Can you tell me your name?” I said as politely as I could.

“I’m Cyrus, idiot.”

I still couldn’t believe it, but I wasn’t about to ask again and risk incurring his rage. “What was that?” I switched to a more reasonable query.

“That is Lyla’s pet spirit owl. It views Lyla’s room as its territory. Only our family can enter without being attacked.” I was waiting for Cyrus’s smile to return, but it never did.

“How can she feel safe sleeping with an owl watching her?” This was an unnecessary question, but an overpowering sense of concern compelled me to ask it.

“It’s not just an owl. It’s a spirit owl. Do you not know what it is? It has great reflexes and even greater hearing. Some accounts claim that the spirit owl can hear a single pin drop as long as it is in the same building. Why wouldn’t you want something like this as your guard?”

A creature with such sensitive hearing should have a hard time dealing with any noise, but I didn’t plan to bring it up with that frown still on Cyrus’s face. With nothing else to say, I stood in silence, unsure what to do next.

Cyrus got tired of waiting. He started moving and gestured for me to follow. “Go onto the roof with me,” he said.

No one would expect the rooftop to be more interesting than the building itself. That was precisely the case with this roof. There were marble sculptures of elves scattered about, most of them nocking an arrow to a bow.

“Don’t mind them. They are just some of my side projects.” Cyrus leaned on the balustrade. He gazed up at the night sky, where the six moons in different phases drifted. I joined him. But what’s up with men with obnoxious smiles bringing me to strange places to chat?

“Have you ever wondered why there are six pearls in the night sky, but only one ball of fire in daytime?” I almost wanted to answer using astronomy terms, but I wasn’t sure how much the culture here knew about planets, and he was clearly fishing for a symbolic answer.

“Because the night gets lonely?”

“What a pretentious answer. The truth is that the night is a time of freedom, where efficiency is no longer necessary.” His answer was definitely worse than mine. “Bravara, Vindicus, Elysium, Omniconos, Apotheon, and Tempraxia. They have no obligation to light up the world, so they only give off a modest level of light. Tempraxia is the best example of them all. Do you see how it is only bright enough to be visible?” I couldn’t believe he was judging moons on this criterion.

“We have to fulfill our duties during the day so we can enjoy the freedom of the night,” he concluded.

“And most of it is spent sleeping,” I said.

“Resting isn’t part of our duty.” He sounded like a boss who would ask his employees to work seven days a week.

“Why did you call me up here?” I didn’t want this conversation to drag on more than it had to. The only reason I even came up with him was that he saved me from the owl.

“Don’t you want to enjoy a spot where you can see the sky and the Titan’s Leg?” It escaped my notice until he brought it up: the giant tree was visible from here as a distant shadowy pillar.

“You mean the tree.”

“Tree… Yes, Lyla must have told you it was a tree.” Why did he have to link this to Lyla? Every normal person would have come to the same conclusion…

He dropped into reminiscence; I could almost see the cloudy transition to a flashback. “She had always been an outcast. Avoiding group archery practice ever since she could shoot. No close friends. She slept on hard surfaces, saying that she was practicing for when she would travel around the world once she grew up.”

“She can make her own choices.”

“I knew you were a bad influence on her. How much do you even know about her? And about her life?”

No matter how much I wanted to refute him, he was right for once. Lyla was careful not to share her life. The only thing I knew about her was that she loved archery, even though she was terrible at it, and knew the Clarity spell.

Cyrus scoffed at my silence and took that as a cue to demolish any room for disagreement. “She was born with the blessing of healing, able to recover from any non-fatal wounds, much more potent than the Heal spell. This puts her in so much more danger. Some groups actually specialize in collecting and selling those with natural magical skills. And what about her place in the community? Do you think she could build connections from the other side of the land? Imagine my relief when Nephrite offered to marry her. That is when she has no social contacts here at all, with her poor archery skills, no less. For Titan’s sake, we had to skip over the archery challenge proposal so that we wouldn’t embarrass her.”

I wanted to defend Lyla; to have a clever comeback that could render Cyrus speechless. But unlike the words directed at me, his comments about Lyla came from genuine concern, regardless of whether those concerns were valid or if they stemmed from love. In the end, I was only an outsider, intruding in their home for a selfish grasp at closure.

“I prefer the you from before.” That was the best response I could think of. A weak shot for control.

Cyrus didn’t even feel the need to defend himself; he continued with his monologue: “That is why I strongly urge you not to take part in tomorrow's wedding.”

He could have led with this request, then we wouldn’t have had to force ourselves to tolerate each other as long as we did. However, the things he told me about Lyla, those words strangely curtailed the unpleasantness of the situation.

“You don't have to worry. My presence won't have any effect on Lyla at all.”

Cyrus laughed with clear malicious intent. “How can you be so clueless?”

“I have thought about this for a long time.”

“Not enough.” He started walking away, clearly communicating that he couldn't stand another moment with me. “You didn't see her face when we left Nautia.”

He suddenly halted his exit, as if he had remembered something. “One more thing. I’m just curious. Did the dragon bite your arm off?”

I had been worrying about Lyla so much that I nearly forgot about my lost arm.