Page 45 of The Truth-Teller's Bargain
“I never understood that. They’re the most powerful of all the bloodlines. How did they all disappear?”
“As an Aeshlien, I take that personally.” Nakir wiped a bead of sweat from his brow, trying to regain a touch of humor despite traversing such an inhospitable landscape.
“Can Aeshlien shift into a large reptilian beast of incredible destruction?”
“No, but we are witty and brave. And everyone loves an underdog.” Nakir heard Balthasar snicker from up ahead.
“So you’ve never met a dragon?”
This kid never stopped.
“Not that I know of.”
“What about a Wolven?”
Nakir sighed, shaking his damp hair out of his face and trying to shove it behind his horns. “Are you just going through all the bloodlines right now?”
“I only ask because you’re close with the professor. And he teaches advanced seminars about the bloodlines and what they can do. I bet you met so many of them when you studied with him! You were so lucky to be his protégé, to go on adventures with him outside the confines of the Academy. You know. Before you lost your magic.”
The pang hit Nakir right in his chest, pulling the breath out of him. “Does he talk about that too?” His voice was quiet, shame tightening his throat.
“No,” Mika replied. “I mean, not exactly. He... warns us about burnout. One of the girls in the mage class... Well, you know what happened to Elena.”
Yes. Nakir did know about Elena Sideris. He felt the loss of her deeply, in a place he wasn’t willing to let himself dive into without a bottle of alcohol in his hands.
“Was it painful?” Mika questioned. “When you burned out?”
“I don’t really want to talk about it,” Nakir snapped back, in his frustration nearly letting a branch hit the scholar in the shoulder.
If Mika noticed, he didn’t care. “No... I don’t suppose it’s important to me anyway. I’m not a mage, just a humble arcanist.”
Nakir let out a long sigh, studying the withering trail in front of them, unable to stop himself from ruminating on the fact they were painfully lost.
At least theyhada trail. The trodden path continued south, nature trampled into tenuous submission by a great manycreatures. Even still, it sought to reclaim its lost land, and the underbrush had grown out onto the path like a bad haircut.
He slapped his own neck at the sudden prickling of a mosquito on his skin, irritation mounting to a new height.
Balthasar pushed through the low foliage ahead of him, panting from the exertion of fitting through the often narrow tree line. Sweat dripped down their faces, necks, and backs. Everywhere else in the world was celebrating a beautiful late winter, but the jungle still reached uncomfortable temperatures.
Mika stopped, staring at the faded parchment in his hands. “Uh-oh. I think we went in a circle... again.”
“I thought you knew where we were going,” Nakir bit back, his tone sharper than the blade he kept at the ready. The Grimm was unforgiving, and wandering too far into uncharted territory could prove fatal.
“I do!” the young arcanist assured him, wiping the sweat from his brow. He pushed his damp hair out of his face, brown eyes scanning the map in his hands. “I do. It shouldn’t be far. We’re almost there!”
“I swear to Aeshma he said that an hour ago,” Nakir growled to Balthasar, who only sighed.
“I promise, it shouldn’t be far.”
Anyone else would be wise to fear the Aeshlien’s temper, but Mika simply waltzed forward with a bewildered grin, unperturbed by the viciousness in Nakir’s eyes.
“It’s all right, kid,” Balthasar promised, turning to the young man with an encouraging, if worn, smile. The Empath’s patience was endless. Meanwhile, Nakir was struggling to contain his rising temper.
Three days they’d been in the Grimm. But it hadn’t been just three days of searching. No, for Nakir and Balthasar, this particular quest had gone on forfive years. In all that time, they had never found even a whisper of a weapon or an item called the Truth-Teller.
So when a friend of Emi’s from the Crystalline Academy told her about an enchanted item he’d been researching, rumored to grant the wielder a single wish, Nakir knew he would be willing to do anything to find it.
“Well, it’s not exactly awish,” Mika had explained upon their initial meeting in the library of the Crystalline Academy, pushing his metal-framed spectacles up his long nose as he poured over tomes older than the Empire itself. “There are presumably limitations. I don’t suspect it’s strong enough to revive anyone who has died. Or change the past in any way. It’s called Dreamseeker. It’s supposed to help mortals achieve their dreams.”
