The art of cartography is not a skill I possess. I had seen maps of Esturia and knew that there was a dearth of information available about this important subject, but I had never felt like my skills would be put to their best use by working on it.

I was however an accomplished boy scout and knew some techniques which would allow me to prevent myself from becoming completely lost. The operative word being completely.

I later worked out the exact amount of time I had spent wandering underneath Aramor after escaping from Solus’ dungeon, and it came out to around two and a half days, with some rounding. I spent half of that time wandering and backtracking, and the other half laying very still as feet padded around in the darkness, hiding my essence lantern beneath several folds of my tattered clothing. I didn’t know if they were looking for me, or if their presence was merely incidental, but I was unwilling to risk finding out.

My salvation came, strangely enough, when I finally ran out of essence. I had been circulating a moderate amount of white magic through my system in an effort to keep my flagging body going throughout this entire ordeal. Between that, and my constant renewal of the awareness spell, I felt myself run near the end of my second day.

With an effort that felt herculean to me, I let the white magic go, and somehow kept the presence of mind to prevent myself from renewing the awareness spell when it next wore off. I settled down to meditate and let the world wash over me. I carefully reviewed the past.

My body itself was whole, I had passed the point at which your stomach stops complaining about the fact that it hasn’t been fed in a while. The only thing I really craved was fresh water. I had even gone so far as to lick some condensation from a wall, only to immediately spit the vile stuff out.

Solus’s many voices had become something of a group of loyal companions to me. I even found myself answering them at points.

Give in

“I would,” I muttered, as I walked down a hallway, “But then someone would have to go to all the trouble of hauling my dead body up to the surface so that I could be burned properly in a church yard. I would hate to be a terrible inconvenience.”

Let go

“Trust me,” I retorted as I contemplated which of three paths to take, “I have learned to let go of a lot of things. If I’m not careful now, I’m going to let go of my sanity. That would be a terrible loss to the Alchemists’ Guild, if I do say so myself.”

Why fight?

“One of the great questions of life,” I muttered as I scaled a ladder hewn into the stone, “I’ll be sure to ask Tylee that philosophical question after I get out of here.”

I missed Tylee.

I brought myself back to the present and focused on my meditation. I sank into the little cubby in my mind, letting Solus’s voices and the yammerings of my body fall silent. I was alone, and it felt wonderful.

After some time, I brought myself back. The first thing I noticed was a faint stench. Focusing on it, I realized that I had been smelling it for a while, but the pleasant feeling of white magic coursing through my veins had deadened me to any outside unpleasantness.

I pulled myself to my feet, started to ignite some white magic, then paused. For the first time in a very long time, I was feeling the telltale ache of essence depletion. My body was not as responsive as it could have been, and my toes were feeling a little numb. That might have been the cold, but I couldn’t be certain.

I must have had a lucid moment, because, instead of embracing the comfort of white magic, I muttered the incantation and held the matrix of the awareness spell in my mind. My body burned with needles of pain as my soul warned me that I had passed Mekel’s limit long ago, and I felt a tingling numbness shoot up the side of my right leg. I leaned against the wall and took in a deep breath. After this passed, I found that my senses had been sharpened, though I was not sure if that was a blessing or not. I inhaled deeply and caught a whiff of something foul.

Yes, that was definitely excrement.

Beautiful, beautiful excrement.

I let my nose lead me, and with only a few reversals and another half-day march, managed to reach a flowing stream of human, animal, and other unidentifiable waste. I had reached the sewers.

“Praise be to the goddess Orianna,” I muttered, “I’ve found the crap that I was looking for.”

I limped my way upstream, the smell growing fouler as I walked. I had never been so happy as when I started stepping over tributaries. That meant that I was approaching more and more populated areas. If I got lucky, I would find an inlet.

I was a mess when I finally crawled out of the sewer. I probably smelled even worse than I looked, and with my tattered clothes covered in all manner of filth, I looked really bad.

The sweet night air was bliss upon my skin, and I staggered my way over to a public water pump. The stuff wasn’t necessarily clean, but at this point, I was willing to risk it. After feverishly working the thing, I had the presence of mind to at least rinse my hands, then vigorously began slurping of handfuls of the frigid nectar.

Shortly thereafter, I staggered a few houses down, found an alleyway, and promptly collapsed into it.

When I awoke, I was being dragged along by the fraying collar of my clothing, the grumbling of the man doing the pulling wafting to my ears.

“Bloody beggars,” The man grumbled, “Why can’t the guards keep them to the lower city? It ain’t proper for them to be in the sight of respectable people.”

“Arefina.” I muttered.

The man stopped and looked back at me, “Woke up did you? In that case, you can move with your own feet.”

He dropped me. I felt woozy but managed to pull myself to my feet with some less than gentle assistance from the man.

“I need to get-“ I took a breath, steadying myself, “To the Arefina manor.”

The man snorted, “Don’t we all. Look, why don’t you crawl back to whatever hole you pulled yourself out of and get back to drinking yourself to death.”

I looked at this man. His clothes made him out to be a servant of some kind. If not to a noble house, then to the city itself in some civil capacity.

“You’re a servant, aren’t you?” I growled.

The man took a step back at my tone, his eyes going wary, “You’re not going to cause trouble are you?”

My essence had restored itself enough for a simple attunement spell. I muttered the incantation and looked at him. Sure enough, this man had no talent for magic. That made this simple.

I was tired, hungry, and being driven on by a dozen voices whispering in the back of my mind. I had promised myself that I would think twice before doing stupid things, but at the moment, I simply didn’t care.

I pulled the knife I had stolen from Solus’ alchemist.

The man backed up a few more steps, his eyes growing wide. If he didn’t know the exact spell that I had used, he might have seen the silvery flash that flows through a mage’s eyes when they use practical magic. My own gray eyes probably didn’t show this phenomenon very well, but I knew that commoners looked very closely at the eyes of those who they thought might be wielding magic. I knew, because I too made it a point to gauge the eyes of people who started speaking gibberish.

“Point me to the Arefina manor,” I growled, “Or I am going to find out whether a man can bleed out before he cooks alive from the inside.”

My eyes must have been red enough to convince him that there was at least a very thin halo of red around my them, because he responded as if I could actually carry out my threat.

“Please!” He begged, dropping to his knees, “I have a family!”

“I don’t want to kill you.” I muttered, “I just need directions, without having to dance about with you forever. I swear upon my life and power that if you just point me in that direction, I will not hurt you this day.”

I felt the oath wrap around my soul. The man hastily gave me the directions I had asked for.

“Thank you.” I rasped out, “I apologize for this, but my errand is urgent.”

I limped away, leaving the man behind. I truly did feel bad for intimidating him, but at the moment, expediency trumped everything in my book. My short rest had given me energy, but I had no illusions about my chances of getting to the Arefina manor if I were to collapse again.

The hour was early enough that I encountered few people, and even fewer who wanted to have anything to do with me. I stuck to the edge of the road and kept my head down, trying to exude an aura of danger.

Bertram was inspecting the roses, which were beginning to bloom for the second time in the year. Harvest time was approaching, and the smells of autumn were heavy laden in the air. That, and the stink of the sewer, but that was my fault.

At first, Bertram wrinkled his nose at me and refused to even acknowledge my presence at the gate. I shook the bars which kept me out until he finally gave in and approached.

“Move along,” He said to me, “Or I shall call the guards.”

I bowed as elegantly as I could manage, “Is that any way to greet an old friend Bertram?”

Bertram froze, his eyes widening. He ran his gaze over me for a long moment, then looked deeply into my eyes.

“Master Dyre?” He gasped, struggling with the key that would open the lock to the gate.

I found that I seriously disliked bars of any kind at the moment. Fortunately for the bars, I didn’t have any way of dealing with them right now. Maybe later.

“In the flesh,” I said, trying to put a little strength behind my words, “I was in the neighborhood and thought I should stop by.”

Bertram succeeded in getting the gate open, and unconscious of his rather fine attire, stepped up next to me and took an arm over his shoulder. I found myself gratefully sagging against him, and he grunted as a significant amount of my weight settled on him.

“Lady Arefina has been tearing apart the lower city looking for you!” He explained, “Lady Megaine’s spy was found dead almost six days ago, the one whom she had set to follow you after you left. We thought that you were…”

“I could really use a bath.” I noted as he brought me inside, “It doesn’t have to be warm.”

“Raila!” Bertram yelled.

The short, black haired maid appeared, then gasped as she recognized me.

“Master Dyre!” She exclaimed, rushing over to us and trying to take my other arm.

“Enough of that,” Bertram snapped, “The man’s been swimming the sewer, get the bath going. I’ll go inform the lady that Master Dyre has returned.”

“Thank you, Bertram,” I said, “but could you give me just a few minutes to soak?”

Bertram hesitated, then nodded. The man was aware of my almost religious bathing habits and knew that it would probably prepare me for the grilling that I was about to get from the lady of the house. Bertram was a good man.

“I shall make myself presentable.” He said, pushing open the bath door as Raila ran water.

I almost dropped into the steaming water with my clothes on, but managed to wait until Raila had departed before stripping off my clothes and literally falling into the basin. It was just about the most glorious thing that I had felt in a long time.

Speaking of glorious things. When I surfaced, I ignited a sizable portion of my remaining essence into white magic. After so long without it, my body literally shuddered at the sudden pleasure which coursed through it. Between it and the bath, I was certain that I had died and gone to a better world than this one.

Minutes passed, and I slowly let the magic fade. I felt like a new man. A man who still wanted that power in him, but one who could face the world again. I focused on the warmth of the water as I took inventory of my almost empty essence stores. I would need to rest some more before I could use more white magic. Now was not the time to be hasty, there would be plenty of time to refine my control over the stuff later.

Maybe I could get Tylee to lend me a phylactery. Purely for the essence of course. I didn’t want to suffer from essence depletion.

Everything was almost perfect, then the voices started up. I groaned and tried to focus on the water, but Solus’ fragmented voices would not be ignored right now. I quickly began scrubbing myself down, and was pulling on a simple gray bathrobe when, with a resounding boom, the door to the bathing chamber was hurled open by a white-haired, golden-eyed goddess.

Tylee, her face a storm of emotions, led a billowing robe of pure white through the door. The depictions of the goddess Orianna could not have found a better likeness in the flesh. If she were in fact the goddess of vengeance, rather than of light and life. I could see why Orianna had named Tylee as her child.

Long strides brought her up to me. For a moment, her hard eyes looked me over from head to toe. A hand reached out and felt the stubble where my hair had been torn out and begun to regrow. Finally, that hand moved to my cheek. I remained silent, and by some miracle, the voices in my head did as well.

Like dawn shattering a storm-filled sky, Tylee’s smile brought radiance into the room, and more importantly, into my heart.

“Ethan!” She gasped, enveloping me in her powerful arms.

I had wanted to say something smart, like I had with Bertram. Or maybe something witty that would make her laugh. But as that woman enfolded me in her embrace, I felt safe for the first time in a very long while. Tylee is shorter than I am, but in that moment, I felt as if I were a child being embraced by its mother. All thoughts fled at the touch of those mighty, yet gentle arms.

So, I did then one thing that was left to me. I cried.

As I wept, Tylee Arefina, the daughter-heir to the house of Arefina, and one of the most powerful geomancers in all of Esturia, held me. I was home, and that was all that mattered for now.