Chapter 471: Practical Methods
"Young Hauke’s future is in your hands."
Aspakos’s words weighed on Erkembalt like an anvil strapped around his tail, dragging him down to the ground and forcing him to look at the captive Frost Walker like a person rather than a puzzle to be solved. The aging artificer would have preferred to treat Hauke’s condition as nothing more than a challenge to his skills, one that he could succeed or fail at without real consequence. After all, Lady Nyrielle had only asked that they try, she had never demanded results.
But now, his old friend had not only reminded him that this was a painfully young man, younger even than Erkembalt’s own children, but he was a young man who could be incredibly useful in the days to come.
It didn’t take a prophet to understand that Lady Nyrielle and Lady Ashlynn likely hoped to use the Frost Walkers to blunt the fire sorcerers, the so called priests of the invading human army. One look at the Holy Flame Blade had been enough to show both men the sort of enemy they were up against and a sorcerer like Hauke formed a natural counter to those sorcerers.
But beyond that, he was a young man... one who was suffering a curse that was far too cruel for someone who seemed to have blundered into the schemes of ancient spiritual revenants.
"You take the joy from my life with words like those, old friend," Erkembalt said, collecting the tools he’d dropped and returning them to their place on the table. "Be a second pair of eyes for me while I work," he said gruffly as he brought a cone of incense and a burner to Hauke’s feet. "Tell me if you notice anything that I don’t."
Pulling a small mechanical striker from one of his vest’s many bulging pockets, the artificer quickly lit the incense before lowering a set of colored lenses over his ordinary spectacles, blocking out the light cast by torches and focusing only on the flow of faintly visible energy as it circulated thorough Hauke’s body.
Within his icy prison, Hauke watched carefully as the sorcerers performed their work. He didn’t know what the strange feathered sorcerer had seen in his vision but the feeling of great power pulling aside a vast curtain reached Hauke even in the prison of his own mind. The brief brush with power gave him a feeling of an immense world of possibilities and at the same time, the heavy feeling of dozens of hopes and dreams dying all at once.
Sorcery like that was far beyond anything that Hauke had ever experienced but since it seemed to have convinced the man called Aspakos that he should spare the young Frost Walker lord, Hauke was inclined to at least respect the power of the sorcery even if he didn’t know what kind of revelation it had provided.