Chapter 122: Skyland [2]
Alden shook it.
Ulvakor’s grip was firm. It wasn’t aggressive, the casual squeeze of someone holding back immense strength. Still, Alden felt his hand getting crushed by the simple gesture.
’Damn, he’s strong.’
Then Ulvakor’s casual expression shifted. Just for a moment, something sharper came through.
"Fair warning though." His eyes held Alden’s directly. "I’m easy to talk to but I’m not easy to train under. The Windsky style doesn’t go gentle on anyone, human or Primordial. Don’t expect exceptions."
Alden looked back at him steadily. "I wouldn’t want any, Lord Ulvakor."
Something in Ulvakor’s expression settled at that, like a test had been passed that neither of them had announced.
"Good." He let go and turned, gesturing for Alden to follow. "Come on. Father’s going to do his meditating-for-several-hours thing, which means I’ve got full clearance to show you around."
He added, after a moment:
"Also, don’t call me Lord anything. It doesn’t suit me at all."
"Trainer Ulvakor?"
"Yeah, Trainer is fine." He glanced back over his shoulder. "...For now."
Alden’s eye twitched.
’For now. Yet. When the time comes.’ He followed Ulvakor down the marble path. ’This entire Assembly has one setting and it’s ’answer this later.’’
The tour took the rest of the afternoon.
What Alden learned about the Windsky territory as Ulvakor walked him through it was that it didn’t look like a place built for fighting. It looked like a place built for understanding something. Wide open courtyards where the wind moved in patterns that seemed too deliberate to be natural. Training grounds positioned so the altitude worked against you specifically and forced adaptation. Ancient archive towers full of texts that Ulvakor described as "dense but worth it"
Eventually they came to the outer perimeter of the primary island, where the path ended at a marble cliff edge with nothing past it but open sky in every direction.
Alden stepped up to the edge and looked out.
The view hit him quietly and completely.
In the far distance, through the gold-lit cloud layer, other islands hung in the sky. Each one enormous, each one separated from this one by miles of open void. The shapes of them were distinct even from this distance, their architectures different enough to read the character of each place.
Ulvakor stepped up beside him and pointed.
"Veyne." The iron-dark landmass to the left. "Celestial." The glowing island to the right, ringed by orbiting formations of magical light. "Empyreon." Straight ahead, sharp and mountain-like, as if the island itself had once been a sword.
Alden looked at all three.
Somewhere on those islands, his people were starting something new. Nicholas and Claire would be in Empyreon. Roselle and Cecilia in Celestial. Leon and Adrian in Veyne. And Seris had yet to be placed in any of them, including where he had belonged.
He had watched them all walk through portals today.
Now he was standing at the edge of his own assigned territory, looking at theirs from across a sky.
"That’s where the rest of your group ended up," Ulvakor said, reading the direction of his gaze without asking. "You’ll be able to visit after your initiation period. A few weeks."
Alden nodded.
He didn’t say anything for a moment. Just looked.
He exhaled.
’A few weeks.’
Ulvakor brought him to it at the end of the tour, along a wide corridor of pale ivory stone, and pushed open a pair of heavy carved doors.
Alden stepped inside and stopped.
It was a suite, large enough that the far wall felt genuinely far away. To the right, a wide desk of dark-grained wood sat beside a floor to ceiling arched window overlooking the cloud ocean below, the light outside already shifting toward evening gold. Beside the desk, shelves of books rose to the ceiling, thick leather covers and older texts that already made his curiosity reach toward them. In the center of the room, a bed that could have fit three people comfortably was dressed in deep silver fabric. A lounge area to one side, a private space to the other. And past them all lay a beautiful, sprawling balcony.
He walked to the desk and put his hand flat on the surface.
The wood was cool and solid under his palm.
Ulvakor leaned in the doorway with his arms crossed and an easy smile. "Dinner comes to the door. You don’t need to go anywhere tonight. Get some rest." He pushed off the frame. "We start early tomorrow."
"Understood," Alden said.
Ulvakor pulled the doors closed.
The click of them settling into place was the last sound.
Alden stood alone in the room for a moment. Then he walked to the window and looked out at the gold-lit clouds spreading to the horizon, the distant shapes of the other skylands just barely visible.
His mind went back through the day in pieces.
’What are they?’ He looked at the clouds. ’What is Alarion, actually? What is Constantine?’
’Did I create them? Or did this world exist before I touched it?’
He didn’t have an answer.
He turned from the window and sat on the edge of the bed. The material was exactly as soft as it looked.
’Fine.’ He lay back and looked at the vaulted ceiling. ’I’ll wait and train, It doesn’t seem likely that just training hard will make me qualified to figure it out, but I’ll get strong enough to handle whatever comes. The same goes for the vampire war.’ A dry, tired amusement found its way into his expression. ’I spent months writing characters who uncovered truths they weren’t ready for. Now I’m the one being told to wait for the right moment.’
’If I wasn’t living it, I might find that funny.’
He closed his eyes.
The wind moved against the windows gently. The light behind his eyelids shifted as the evening settled into something darker and quieter.
Tomorrow he would find out how the Deities of Windsky trained. It was going to be nothing like his days at the academy, or with Soul Rendering. Tomorrow the actual work gets started.
Tonight he was just a person who had survived enough in one day.
Alden slept.