“We’re almost there, Sephrin!”

Zephyrin followed close behind as Rose ascended nimbly up the mountain’s final stretch to a rocky outcrop. Already he could tell it promised a superlative view on the environs.

She’s fast, for a baseblood.

*clang clang* *clang clang*

Zephyrin glanced behind and below himself. Noisy at the best of times, the bells around the necks of Rose’s sheep were now positively cacophonous. While most of the sheep were milling about contentedly in an open pasture below, a few hardier specimens had come up partway with them, surprising him by their intrepidness. In his first sickly and pampered life, Zephyrin thought, he wouldn’t have suspected this boldness in sheep.

Nor would he have ever imagined himself scaling a mountain like this, hale and breathing lightly, the wind ruffling his hair, a baseblood by his side…

“Sephrin! Sephrin! We’re ‘ere!”

Taking his eyes off the precariously perched ovines, Zephyrin clambered up the steep, rocky path with Rose and crested the outcrop at last.

The province of Baras lay before them.

Looking down at the falling valley and undulating hills below, bathed in the reddening light of the westbound sun, the girl opened her arms wide as if to embrace it all. “Ain’t it grand?” She looked back at Zephyrin, giving him a wide, gap-toothed grin.

“Very,” he murmured, taking in the panorama. Front and center was Estrelti, and dotting the landscape the fief of Armora’s other villages; while that speck there in the distance was the city of Kalonis, seated on a hill and watching over the province like a proud mistress; and, if he wasn’t mistaken, that hazy dark line on the horizon consisted of the Black Mountains, beyond which lay the Yndrian Marshes. Cross those, and one would encounter Lutesse, the beating heart of Gaulyria…

Rose looked at him curiously. “Are ya… cryin’, Sephrin?”

Zephyrin blinked. He wasn’t, but an emotion had indeed welled up from deep within him. Several years though it had been since the commencement of his new life, the sight of his homeland did not leave him indifferent yet, nor did he think it ever would. “I… I’m very grateful to be a Gaulyrian.”

Rose nodded slowly. “Aye, I kin understand that. My fam’ly pray to the king ev’ry day.”

Zephyrin didn’t bother clarifying that his attachment to their country had very little to do with the monarchy. He rarely if ever thought of the king, knowing the events that would unfold in less than two years’ time. He gave Rose a sidelong look as she eagerly pointed down at the villages and farmsteads below, chattering away about who lived where, and since when. Finally her finger stopped over a familiar farmstead.

“So that’s yer home?” she asked.

“Yes,” Zephyrin replied, following her indication. “And that’s Uncle Erwan’s just adjacent to it.”

“Adjass…?”

“Next to it,” Zephyrin amended.

“Oh. Ye sure talk funny, Zephyrin. I mean, ye sound right proper an’ all,” she hastily added, “But ye don’t sound like folks round here—not ev’n the school master, I’ll wager! Are ya really from round these parts?”

“I spring from the purest Barassian peasant stock,” Zephyrin said, somehow keeping a straight face.

“Hm.” Rose eyed him suspiciously, evidently favoring another hypothesis.

“Can we see your home from here?” Zephyrin asked, changing the subject.

“Naw. It’s tucked ‘way ov’r yonder,” she said, motioning to the other side of the mountain. Rose then began to press Zephyrin for specifics about his family’s livelihood, such as what crops they grew (wheat and some peas and beans, he answered), and what animals they kept.

“Ye got any horses?”

“Two. A pony as well, until it passed away the winter before last,” said Zephyrin, sparing a thought for faithful old Àdan.

“Any chickens?”

“Of course. Who doesn’t?”

“Pigs?”

“Unfortunately,” sighed Zephyrin, thinking of the smell.

Rose grinned at the thought of him tramping through muck and mire, buckets of slop in hand for a row of grunting, eager hogs. “Mind ye don’t get yer wings dirty.”

“My wi—oh, I see.” Zephyrin lightly snorted. He had hated the constant avian terminology applied to him in his first life; ‘the nestling’, ‘the fledgling’, ‘the Gryphon’, who ‘never got to spread his wings’… angel wings were a new addition, but now hearing that sort of thing didn’t grate on him at all.

After all… couldn’t he say that he now really possessed a pair of wings? Wings that would allow him to soar to this world’s pinnacle, whence to leave his own mark in the annals of history?

“If I have wings,” Zephyrin finally said, deciding to tease Rose a bit, “you should pluck a feather or two from my back.”

“Eh? What for?”

“To serve as quills when you learn to read and write,” Zephyrin said, and then he smiled pleasantly, an ominous twinkle in his eye. “I’ll teach you.”

Rose’s eyes widened in horror. “Naw, Sephrin! I don’t need no schoolin’! Readin’ the sky an’ stars is good ‘nuff for me! Now hush wi’ yer tomfoolery, an’ look at this now!”

With a smile playing on his lips, Zephyrin turned to watch the ruddy sun dip down and touch the horizon’s edge. In doing so it diffused blood-colored light across the sky, deepening the golden hues of the low-lying farmlands into dark reds and oranges, while dying pink the fluffy cumulus clouds above, as might wine spilled on a pure white tablecloth. Zephyrin momentarily took his eyes off the radiant display to glance at his companion. The peasant girl’s eyes were wide, and her lips were moving, causing Zephyrin to fancy that she was conversing with an unseen entity; perhaps Fengar, whose medal caught the waning light and gleamed brightly on her neck.

The sun hadn’t yet been completely consumed by the horizon when Zephyrin and Rose turned away, conscious that there was a return trip to make. Just as Zephyrin was about to begin making his way down the precipitous descent, Rose suddenly spoke up. “Will ya come see me agin, Sephrin?”

Zephyrin turned back. “Aye,” he responded, mimicking her accent.

She giggled. “Naw, Sephrin! Ya can’t talk like that! Yer an angel! Angels don’t sound like us common folk!”

“How do you know they don’t?”

She giggled again. “Yer silly!” was all she responded.

Zephyrin smiled, then said seriously, “I’ll be back.”

The girl nodded gravely. “It’s a promise.” She took a few steps forward, then held out her pinky. Zephyrin curled his own around it, and they shook on their innocent vow.

Zephyrin and Rose made the descent in thoughtful silence, then parted ways at the mountain’s base. Zephyrin faintly smiled as he returned Rose’s enthusiastic waving; he then let his hand fall.

“As the country church-bell struck eight o’clock,

In joyous billows flow’d the foamy flock…”

Zephyrin murmured to himself, half-remembering a bucolic poem studied in childhood, one of many assigned by his Elysian tutors during his first life (for reasons which he had only understood much later). That probably wasn’t how the verses originally went, but in this place, at this time, seeing Rose depart with her sheep in tow, the last red rays of the day on their backs, this version seemed apropos.

Taking a last look behind him, Zephyrin raised his hand again. It glowed a subtle blue as he cast a ward over the girl and her flock.

Zephyrin walked along the road to the Calon farmstead with a spring in his step. More than his training, he knew, the cause of his good mood was his encounter with Rose. He felt… a renewed sense of determination. Of responsibility. Yes, that was it, Zephyrin thought. Responsibility to the girl, and others like her. His goal of preserving Gaulyria and seeing her thrive seemed less abstract than yesterday. An empire was made up of subjects like Roselena, or it was no empire at all.

Though, that being said, Rose and other peasant children her age were in a sense the last of their kind; the subsequent generation of young basebloods would have very different upbringings, for better or for worse. The girl little suspected that schooling would become compulsory with the Emperor’s ascension to the throne. Children helping their parents at harvest had been a rarity by the time of Zephyrin’s birth in the old world; the same process would repeat itself here. It was sad, in a way, but such was the price of progress. The empire’s ideals had to be drummed into its subjects, and there was no better place to do that than in school.

School. Zephyrin’s tread slowed. The thought bent his musings to his own education. He supposed it wouldn’t be long before the curate broached the subject of a vocation to his parents. He was nine now, and had repeatedly distinguished himself in the village’s small rural school as well as in catechism classes; as an uncommonly intelligent child, he would be prized as a promising candidate for the priesthood. Though his humble origins in this life wouldn’t do him any favors, he was sure his precocious intelligence would more than compensate, and while Zephyrin had no intention of being groomed as a future ecclesiastic, it was clear that higher education was his surest bet at moving on from this village… and meeting his real father. Having memorized every scrap of information pertaining to the Emperor in his first life, he knew on which school to set his sights; whether he would be permitted to attend without a surname à rallonge, however, was a different story.

Either way, wherever he ended up, it was evident Judoc would be reluctant at the prospect of losing the only help around the farm he could have relied upon in his latter years. Zephyrin hoped his adoptive father’s piety would soon outweigh his self-interest. He reasoned there was a good chance Judoc would acquiesce before long, recognizing there to be something highly peculiar about his son, whose existence he and his wife believed to have been willed in some especial manner by the Goddess.

Zephyrin would have the opportunity of confirming the accuracy of his speculations no later than that very evening. Shortly after he had returned home and the Calon family members had taken their seats around the dinner table for a simple but filling meal, Zephyrin’s adoptive father cleared his throat and broached that very subject: “Son, the abbé and I have had discussions about yer future.”

Finally!

Zephyrin’s eyes intently sought out those of his father, whose gaze was avoidant. Drawing a deep breath, Judoc slowly said, “The abbé’s very impressed wi’ yer catechism an’ school grades. He tells me ye could put to shame noblemen’s sons…” The farmer paused and imperceptibly shook his head, as if still hardly able to believe in the priest’s assurances. He continued, “Wi’ yer abilities, he’s convinced ye could study in Doëndessa, at the Pontifical minor seminary, an’ that there’s a promisin’ ecclesiastical career ahead o’ ye—either as a parish priest… or as a Monseigneur at the Lateran.”

In truth, Abbé Beauval had said more, but Judoc thought it prudent to forebear repeating his statements—for his own peace of mind, if nothing else. He knew his son was special, but the priest had evoked possibilities the humble farmer wouldn’t have allowed himself to consider in his wildest dreams.

Rousing himself from his speculations, he regarded his curiously silent son. “What say ye, Zephyrin?”

Zephyrin sat stock-still, frozen in consternation.

...What?

The Pontifical minor seminary in Doëndessa? All the way across the Baléran Sea? That… That would put him out of the country during his father’s formative years! Furthermore, why would Abbé Beauvran think to raise as even a remote possibility the most prestigious ecclesiastical school for youths in all Kosmædom? There was no chance of him being admitted as a baseblood. If there were, well… Zephyrin had to admit that the idea was intriguing. It would put him in contact with the upcoming crop of bishops and cardinals. He had extensive geopolitical knowledge, but lacked money and connections to use it to the fullest. Rubbing elbows with Church elites could only help him lay down a surer foundation for his plans to shape the future. Not to mention, if he got access to the Lateran Archives and its exclusive spell tomes, and then returned to Gaulyria…

Zephyrin shook his head. He was deluding himself. As a baseblood, the best he could hope for was gaining admittance in a school for the upwardly mobile bourgeois, to then enlist in the army at sixteen. Without a title to his name he could expect no better. Not to mention there would be time to study in the Archives at his leisure.

After all, the future Emperor would conquer Doëndessa less than two decades from today. And when that happened, he needed to be at his father’s side. His real father.

“Father…” Zephyrin met Judoc’s eyes. “Rather than a cleric, I want to become...”

Both his parents’ gazes were on him. In a steady tone, he concluded,

“… a soldier.”