‘By the heights!’ or ‘Thank the heights;’ you may hear these spoken casually, particularly in the western mountain regions of Metako, Raysh, and Leetan. It is easy to assume one is referring to their mountainous homelands, but that is not truly the case.

By its oft-forgotten traditional meaning in this context, ‘Heights’ actually refers to the land above the sky. Many of the houses maintain that the existence of incursions from above mean that any greater power or other beings living in the Heights must be inherently antagonistic. Contrariwise, Highla believe that the incursions are as infrequent as they are because their purpose is not to destroy us but to test us.

-Light of the Heights: An Examination of Highla Religion

I wasn’t able to pin down either Desten 6 or Trancy throughout the entire remainder of the week. I did survive two uselessly horrifying training sessions with Pel, and barely talked my way out of a third. No progress there. My flight and shield grew incrementally faster and less fragile, but I still had no idea how to form the dispersal attack he insisted I learn.

As Abridged moved on to Utrenad, Pel arranged for me to switch to the Verdis circuit heading to Oros. I silently wished I could detour to Wightok to check on Desten 3. I missed his company, but refrained from saying anything. The sooner I could wrap up this investigation the sooner we could get back to being a simple scholarly duo out to see the world.

And then we arrived in the first Oros city and I realized how truly unprepared I was for the reality of the touring season. I began to see why Verdis and Reverse needed to be kept separate. The crowd at the ryshglide event had been huge. But this was far beyond that.

Verdis’s touring group was massive. Some of them had attended various events when they overlapped with Rotational, but the number of people present easily doubled or tripled that quantity. The player arena itself was half the size of the ryshglide arena, but the building sprawled out with seating for three times as many people.

Thankfully, I wasn’t here to watch the games. I was here to find Desten Oros. Both of them.

I reviewed my remembered information about the pair of them. They were cousins, both with the same name, born six years apart. Desten Oros 1, the elder, was the son of Laerth Oros (formerly Novarot) and Laund Oros, whose sister Nalour Oros was Desten Oros 2’s mother. Out of nowhere, after only a handful of Destens ever recorded in Oros, and none of whom were related to the duo.

It was weird, but then again, Oros was positioned just south of Varon. Maybe Laund and Nalour just had an obsession with history, found out about Reirn Desten, and decided to name their kids after him. Who knew.

That did leave me with the problem of actually locating them. Since I had no convenient contacts here to make me lists of addresses, I had to go to the governance offices and trawl through records. Thankfully, if there’s one thing I was good at, it was looking up information. I’d gotten a feel for how these places worked over the months I’d spent so far working on this project, and locating the Destens was the simple task of a day and a half.

I found the elder Desten’s address, though I suppose ‘elder’ made him sound older than his 24 years of age. Desten Oros 2 was only 18 and did not yet own his own land or have any job on record. But, hopefully Oros 1 could point me in his direction.

I made the trip to his house easily enough, careful of the high traffic volume. The verdis tour really made things far more crowded than they should have been, but it would be weird for me to show up on my own in the middle of touring season on an off week when they were busy preparing without having a very good excuse. Verdis happened to be in the area, and it provided a convenient cover.

On the way over, I tried to refine my pitch a bit so I wouldn’t come across like a desperate salesperson. I think that’s what soured Desten 6. I needed to somehow excuse being a nosy busybody without coming across creepy or suspicious. Hm. Easier said than done. Maybe my research project was still the best cover story.

Long before I had time to fully think through the probabilities and possibilities, I arrived. So I knocked on the door, and waited.

“Yes?” asked a servant in Oros colours.

“I’m looking for Desten. Is he available?”

“Eirn Desten is not here right now. May I take your card?”

Oh, cards. I didn’t have a card. I should make some, I have all the necessary expertise. How did I never think of this?

“I’ll just write a note,” I said. “Have you any paper?”

He returned a moment later with paper. I wrote a quick message explaining that I wanted to interview Desten and his cousin at their earliest convenience, my name and the address of the room I’d be staying at, then passed it back to him.

Well. That didn’t take very much time. It felt like a letdown, flying all this way only to find he wasn’t home.

“Actually, I’d like to speak with his cousin, the younger Desten, as well. Do you know where I could find him?”

“I believe young eirn Desten is at the verdis game today.”

“Ah, perfect. I shall seek him out there. Thank you.”

He nodded, went inside, and closed the door.

I stepped into the sky and headed for the verdis arena.

Attendance was high; halfway through the tournament, stakes were rising as the weaker teams dropped toward the bottom and the best teams vied for the top spots.

Oros played against Teshron today, and the speed and ferocity of the players was breathtaking. While the reverse game relied a lot on moving and adapting to changing terrain and strategic positioning, verdis was more like a game of towerstones. Except instead of two players alternating tiles on a board, it was two teams fighting each other in midair over who placed which tile where.

Coming in mid-game, it was chaotic enough that I had no idea what was happening or who held the advantage. But I could see the incredible precision with which the players blocked each other, boosted themselves or their team-mates, blocked, dispelled, all in seconds, while maintaining their concentration on positioning the blocks in the scoring area.

It was enough to make me wonder if Desten 2 was even that good. From what I’d seen of his power, his speed didn’t come close. But Sarosa was doing well in the overall rankings, so he couldn’t be bad.

I pushed my way through the stands, asking people if they’d seen Desten Oros or where he was sitting. Most ignored me or brushed me off impatiently, but I persevered and eventually was pointed to a boy I knew immediately could not possibly be killer Desten.

Desten Oros 2 was soft-faced and short, with a wide-eyed intentness about him that bespoke sheltered childhood and thorough innocence. He stood on his bench, shouting and cheering and waving a ribbon of yellow power in the air. The proportions of his silhouette were far too unique. If it had been him, I’d have recognized him in an instant.

As I looked around at the vast swaths of teals and blues, I realized that he was one of only a handful of Oros attendees to have yellow power. That could explain the name. The visitors from across the world were their usual rainbow, but Oros seemed as strongly teal and cyan as Sarosa had been blue and silver. Desten Oros 2 didn’t seem to mind being the odd one. I approved. There’s strength in accepting yourself as different and not caring what the people around you thought.

But as glad as I was to be able to cross him off the list, I couldn’t help worrying. The closer I got to the end of the list, the harder it became to keep my composure. Pel’s insistence that I had to learn things I seemed completely incapable of learning if I were to even have a chance of escaping an encounter with killer Desten nagged at me. All he’d have to do was put up a basic shield and I’d be trapped.

It was one thing to casually investigate people who turned out to not be Fylen’s murderer, but when I actually came face to face with the person who was capable and willing to kill?

I just had to ensure things never escalated that far. As long as I could get away and bring Pel and Let and Lan, and Vess if he was around, we could deal with him together. Or, rather, they could deal with him; I’d just get in the way.

I didn't bother approaching him. He seemed to be enjoying the game, and I'd seen enough.

The afternoon passed peacefully enough, with most of my time spent making name cards in case I needed them again. There wasn’t much else I could do. I didn’t have access to any of the remaining Destens, and I’d already done as much research into them as I could with publicly available documentation. For anything more, I’d need to attain at least a miteirn position.

It still felt weird having an apartment to myself. I missed the presence of Desten 3. Even when we never actually interacted, there was a sort of familiarity to it. Alone, I had way too much time to think about how out of place and useless I was.

Honestly, if I turned the investigation over to Pelys and Vess entirely they could probably get more done. Why did I even bother? At this point, even the gnawing sense of guilt over stealing Fyless’s legacy felt like a weak excuse.

What was I doing?

I knew these dark moods all too well, and forced myself not to let it influence me too deeply. I ate dinner and went to bed early.

The following morning, a messenger arrived with a letter for me from Desten Oros.

I know who you are, Astesh Myen.

Unless you want your lies exposed, leave my family alone.