Tanca led Eli into a small office with a desk that looked far too small for the man’s size. Two weapons, a spear and sword, hung on one wall with a red and white banner on the opposite wall. On the last wall, behind the desk, were a series of little cubbies filled with a hodgepodge of items, including some books, folded fabrics of multiple colors, and other seemingly random objects. On one side, set in the corner, was a little table with a few dark bottles of various liquids. There were no windows, but two lightwells set in the ceiling made the room as bright as any decent office back home.

Gesturing to the single chair in front of his desk, Tanca walked over to the corner and poured a good amount of clear liquid into two small cups that looked more like oversized shot glasses. He passed one to Eli but then dipped his pinky into his own drink, flicking a few drops onto his office floor. “Spirits protect me,” he whispered, his eyes downcast, then threw his drink back like it was water. Setting the cup down, he sat behind his almost comically small desk.

Confused by the gesture, Eli tossed his drink back like a shot of whiskey but almost immediately coughed as the fiery liquid burned down his throat. Like the deora drink he’d shared with Wolf, the potent liquor set off a pleasant explosion of warmth in his gut even while his throat protested the rough treatment. He wiped away a few tears as his lungs remembered how to work again, and his coughs subsided. Finished and a bit embarrassed, he set the tiny cup on Tanca’s desk as he finally sat.

“Are you an Outlander, Eli?” Tanca said slowly with no sign of his usual humor.

“I haven’t exactly hidden it well, what with my big mouth,” he answered with a weak stab at a joke. “What gave me away?” He finished with a smile.

Tanca changed before his eyes, the quick blurring shift sending goosebumps up and down Eli’s spine. In little more than an eyeblink, a much smaller man sat behind the desk – his clothes hanging on his smaller frame like a boy trying on their father’s military uniform. He wouldn't have recognized the man if it wasn’t for Tanca’s slight smirk that had bloomed across his face.

“It’s more than clear enough, just by your reaction to my gift,” the now smaller man said with a chuckle.” Either that or you’re the best liar I’ve ever met. Not to inflate my ego, but my gift and family are well known, yet you act as if you’ve never heard of the Tanca name nor our powers. Beyond that, as you’ve already said, your mouth gives you away with the things you say and don’t say. Dara tells me you saved her life, and I watched you save Wolf’s, so I’m going to tell you something taboo, almost vulgar.” Sighing, Tanca sat forward, his eyes honest in their scrutiny. “First, though, do you come from the north? Are you a thuard?”

Surprised by the seeming non-sequitur, Eli answered with his usual eloquence, “huh?”

“It makes sense,” Tanca replied like he was arguing his point in a debate. “There are old stories of the giants living in the far north, and I’ve seen drawings that somewhat resemble you. Very few people travel that way with the monsters and countless extreme dangers in that direction. Our records are sparse, yet the old tales of the giant thuard people persist.”

“Uh, no,” he slowly said as he considered how to answer. “I don’t even know what that word means since it didn’t translate well, but I can honestly say that I’m not from the north. Just think of me as someone who grew up on an isolated island far away from here.”

“Too bad, I’ve always wanted to meet a giant,” Tanca replied with a slight frown.

“Well, up until a minute ago, I’d have said you were the giant between the two of us,” he responded with a smile.

The smaller man smiled as well, though it didn’t quite match his eyes as they remained fixed on Eli. “Do your people have a name for a person that betrays their family, who kills their own blood?”

Sitting back as the question came at him like a curveball, Eli was lost in thought for a moment. “I guess it’s not used much,” he began, “but kinslayer fits, though I’d just say it was murder or manslaughter regardless of the family connection.”

“And that’s another difference between us, bigger than all the rest,” Tanca answered with a slow and assured nod. “For us, anyone that would kill their own family, especially of their own blood, is an Aberrant. They are wrong in the head, in their very soul. An Aberrant has all of humanity as an enemy, and only another Aberrant would even think of sheltering such a monster.”

“Oh,” he murmured. Thoughts whirling with the implications, his mind replayed moments over the past week. Dara had been shocked by her uncle’s betrayal as if the idea rocked her reality, and he’d seen the confusion, terror, and disgust when they talked about it. Wolf had been much the same when they met in his office, if slightly more restrained than his daughter. While the idea of turning on family was abhorrent back home on Earth, it was apparently on another level here on Lurra.

I need to learn more about this world. I can’t keep spouting ignorant crap all the time. My friends don’t deserve this.

Tanca continued, unaware of Eli’s racing thoughts. “Your question earlier about if the Alliance would hold Duarte responsible calls not only our people’s honor into question, but Wolf and all of his family. So to answer your original question, yes, the Alliance will take this matter seriously – very seriously. If Duarte betrayed his niece and family, he will pay with his very spirit.”

***

A couple of hours later, Eli was in his borrowed room below the manor. Sitting at one of the room’s two tables with his head resting on one hand, he turned another page of the codex – he’d grabbed it on the way down after leaving Tanca’s rooms.

A yawn snuck up on him, and he leaned back and stretched both arms over his head. “Holy crap in a bucket, this is boring,” he almost moaned with some despair.

The words were tough to work through, surprising with the large text. It wasn’t the reading that challenged him but the concepts that were hard to grasp. Wolf had specifically suggested he read the first section to explain why his glowing eyes were a big deal, which Eli had tried to follow. Still, he’d already had to slog through all sorts of myths and legends without finding any clues. It didn’t help that the codex was a massive book by modern standards. It dwarfed any book he had ever seen at a meter long, about half that in width, and hundreds of thick pages bound with a few metal rings and spine. The text wasn’t formatted easily either, so he wasn’t sure what the first section even meant as he still hadn’t found any section breaks. There was no table of contents, so he assumed there was some strange order or connection to everything that was still beyond him.

He had just finished yet another creation story about how the Alliance was founded in the dim past. There were names, places, and concepts that didn’t connect with anything useful. Entire pages were dedicated to genealogy, like, “Yusef, son of Yuselt, daughter of Yurelta, daughter of…” and on and on. It was like reading some parts of the Old Testament or scriptures from his childhood. Still, a few fascinating nuggets were hiding within the pages. For one, the Oververse wasn’t mentioned in the old stories, but instead, some other nameless force that controlled everything. There were also god-like beings more in line with what he understood – supreme entities controlling fundamental concepts like the sun, nature, love, war, etc. The magical creatures didn’t stop at the gods, though, as the stories included demi-gods, monsters, demons, talking animals, and stuff along that vein.

Feeling like he was back in one of his old anthropology college courses, he doggedly continued reading through the codex. He’d always been fascinated by the parallels in so many of Earth’s creation tales, viewpoints, and natural processes regardless of barriers such as distance, language, and time. It was as if humanity had some shared psychology driving the narrative, and the Lurran stories could have easily been right beside stories about Gilgamesh. He might not remember all the details years later, but he’d enjoyed the classes.

Turning another page, he found another filled with a series of poetic prose that wouldn’t make much sense to him but paused at the poem's ending. His eyes went to the text just above as he reread the passage.

“In the time of the last Eternal Empire, 4th of its name, we brought forth our doom. Thrown down with our blood, we lost our way in the dark. We must never forget, for the Harbinger will come. May the Greater System show mercy so we may find our way once more into the light.”

“The weight of sin

Brought through time,

Weighs down all

who fail to heed.

The cycle turns

We climbed too high,

But we were blind.

We failed to see.

From olden wood,

The sign approaches.

Life or death

Lives in its mind.

The end will come.

The world begins.

Look ever for

Its shining eyes.”

He scanned the following few pages, but the text moved on to another subject about some great flood that wiped away some forgotten sin. There was nothing more about the Harbinger or shining eyes, and he turned back to the passage again.

“This could be what Wolf meant. At least it mentions shining eyes, but what’s the rest of this mean? How can there be a 4th Eternal Empire? If it was eternal, wouldn’t it just be the 1st and only? There’s the ‘Greater System’ again, though.”

Another yawn erupted, and he rubbed his face several times to wake himself up before closing the codex with a slight thump. “I need to do something more practical, or at least more active. Now that I've read it, I’ll have to ask Wolf about that passage later. So, what’s next?”

Suddenly smiling, he walked across the room, idly counting off twenty paces from his workspace. Holding out a hand, the armored dummy from the Gifted Hall appeared in front of him. A moment later, Bash materialized in his right hand.

Over the next hour, Eli practiced beating on the faceless dummy. He only vaguely remembered some of the moves and forms from his training with Aarav, but every little bit helped. At least the metal-capped staff felt more comfortable in his hands when he finally stopped.

Of course, all his efforts had done little damage other than rough up the armor a bit. He hadn’t been using any special abilities for the past hour since he’d wanted to test how well he fought without his powers. Sadly, the answer was: not very well.

There was definitely something magical about the dummy. Under Manasight, the whole thing glowed, though its round base was bright where it attached to the stone floor. He didn’t understand how the dummy, and its armor, could resist his attacks so thoroughly. Even without his powers, he should have created some visible damage.

Damn thing might as well be made from steel.

“Okay, time to test another theory,” he said as he held Bash firmly. He’d wanted to test the time ability for a while now to see whether it was slowing time or somehow speeding up his perception of the world around him. Whatever the case, the power was a big part of how he and Dara had survived their journey.

Remembering the feeling of thickness in the air, he imagined the sensation as he focused on the dummy. The air solidified around him until he felt like he was moving within a viscous liquid. Bash slowly rose as he carefully settled into his stance. He took a single, glacially slow step as he brought his staff around, one hand on the end and the other a bit higher as a pivot. His eyes remained locked on his target as he swung Bash to connect near the dummy’s center mass with a solid low boom of sound. Unfortunately, the featureless face almost seemed to mock him as it barely quivered from the strike.

He tried whacking on the dummy for a while, imagining the outcome he wanted each time, yet the damned mannequin resisted everything he could throw at it. The sensation of thick air was the same, but the results didn’t meet his expectations as he failed to do more than shake the target.

“Well, shit,” he said with some disgust. “No way is it just my perception of time. I destroyed those bandits with overwhelming strength. Hell, I literally threw Oyett through a wall. Even that first cultist’s pulverized head hints at some sort of buff. I’m sure there has to be something that boosts my strength when the ability works correctly. What am I doing wrong?”

He felt his frustration bloom as his anger rose and his temper snapped. Time slowed again as he swung without thought as Bash came around to strike the dummy near its chest.

Boom!

Confused, he coughed as his aching lungs protested their treatment from the force of the explosion. He’d landed meters away from where the dummy was set up previously, but only the broken-off round base remained. The rest of the object was in pieces against the far wall, somehow thrown by the strike. Bash lay near the far corner, tossed away at some point.

“Ow,” he whispered as a fresh new headache blossomed. He toggled Lifesight and looked over his body but didn’t see significant damage. His back and butt might soon sport a few nasty bruises, but he immediately focused on healing the injury. After a few minutes, his body looked like he hadn’t just thrown himself across the room with his own stupid, angry actions.

“Damn it! I’m such an idiot, losing my patience like a spoiled brat. Talay. It’s done. Learn from it, dumbass.” He breathed in and out a few times as he lay there, propped up on one elbow, and surveyed the damage. The dummy’s armor was all over the room, exploded from the impact with the far wall. “Holy shit, what a mess.”

“I need to write this down,” he said to the empty room while climbing slowly to his feet, his whole body aching as if he was slightly sick. His muscles and joints protested as he stood on his feet again, but the ache slowly dissipated. Soon, only his splitting headache remained. “What the hell was the difference this time? Was it anger? That doesn’t seem right. I don’t think I was angry with the cultists, just scared.”

His stomach rumbled as he swayed in place, a wave of weakness passing through his body. “Yeah, and whatever that ability is, it demands a lot of energy. Ah well, it has to be time for dinner. So eat, write up my notes, and get some sleep. Then, it’s back to the grindstone tomorrow morning.”

Feeling somewhat vindicated yet stupid at losing his cool, he cleaned up his mess. It took a bit for him to collect all the dummy’s pieces around the cavernous space, including crawling under the two tables for a few smaller chunks. Still, it wasn’t too bad a punishment since he only had to touch each piece for it to disappear into his DS. Soon enough, he turned off the room’s lights and walked out the door to find some grub.