17th of Season of Fire, Year 4 AL

  Roselilly was coping with the changes, as were most people who found themselves deep in the saurian weald. New rules for hunting and fighting were ridiculous, and Rose’s plan was to never leave her treehouse.

  As a sixth realm healer, she had enough business to keep going and to slowly advance her realm in her spare time. What others saw as salvation, she saw as a prison. Naturally, the imperial family working together with the cultists against her order seemed obvious in hindsight, and staying where they were, just waiting to be crushed and sacrificed in a fiendish ritual, sounded horrible.

  But her former obliviousness was a blessing. Or at least it felt that way.

  Rose sighed and stood. She couldn’t meditate. Her mind was wandering. Like most, her world had crumbled, and she was picking up the pieces.

  Some, like Newt, didn’t even seem to notice the transition. He was living with his fiancee, exploring the jungle, hunting, and gathering treasures. Some of it he kept for himself, but most went to the settlement.

  She saw him from time to time, and Emeraldstreak, and Rexheart. All three had started growing stronger at an astonishing rate, as had a number of others whose talent had apparently been shackled somehow inside the empire.

  The other side of the medal were those with great confidence. They went into the jungle, never to return. Then, another change happened a year ago. Newt brought a dragon to see her master for healing.

  Chaplain Monsoon treated the manabeast’s injuries, who then paid with a cartload of unknown fire-attributed crystals, which they had named Magma Rubies. It wasn’t much for the eighth realm healer, but considering she had fixed an injury of a seventh realm dragon, it was a windfall of wealth no seventh realm awakened would’ve wasted on healing.

  News seemed to have spread, and from time to time, manabeasts arrived, seeking healing or other services. A trickle at first, but Newt promised it would be more and more as time went by.

  Rose couldn’t imagine the consequences of it all. It was beyond her. She was a simple healer, looking for a way to survive in a clash of powers whose level she would never reach.

  She jumped out the open door, onto the streets of Soaring Freedom. The streets weren’t paved. Instead, a series of suspension bridges, three feet above the ground, formed the walkways everyone used to move about.

  The occasional heavy rainfall made normal streets impractical, and the exalts feared that blocking the water or changing the climate would’ve impacted the natural treasures growing all around. So, instead of adapting their environment, the humans had adapted instead.

  Rose followed the familiar path until she reached an alchemist’s workshop. The chime tinkled as she entered, and a familiar voice sounded from the back.

  “With you in a blink!”

  “Relax, Ruby, it’s just me.”

  Ruby Dewdrop was an alchemist who had come with the Tidebreakers. She had been a part of their court, but her red hair and darker complexion made it obvious she wasn’t originally from the winter kingdoms.

  “You’re early. I need to focus a bit, so give me half an hour.”

  Rose stood there, taking in the small, quaint shop, which almost exclusively sold two types of potions - those that increased the odds of awakening, and those that gave those who failed another chance.

  It was hard to tell what the exact reason was, but the odds of awakening had grown drastically since they had moved to the weald. Rose heard conflicting rumors, but apparently it was between one in two to two in three.

  A pleasant strawberry smell wafted in from the workshop area.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  “Phew,” Ruby came in, smiling brightly as she wiped the sweat off her brow. She was a fifth realm mage on the cusp of reaching the sixth, and she was still feeling out the barrier, trying to figure out how to crack it.

  Rose didn’t struggle with it quite as much, but it was the most resistance she had ever faced when advancing her realm. She intuitively knew the barrier would’ve been a whole lot tougher had she been a mage or a knight.

  “I think I’ve made what I’ve been trying to create.” The alchemist positively radiated the need for someone to congratulate her and, more importantly, to ask what it was that she had achieved.

  “What were you trying to make?” Rose obliged, and Ruby stood just a bit taller.

  “A potion to help with realm advancement. Different people have been reporting different levels of resistance when breaking through, so I’ve spent seventeen years trying to figure it out. And I finally did it!”

  The usually calm and collected woman burst into laughter, and Rose couldn’t help but give her a strange look.

  The door chimed, and another person walked in.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Ah, Everlast!” Ruby beamed. “I’ve made something you’ll give me an arm and a leg for.”

  Ruby ushered the two of them into the back room and prepared tea all the while chattering about her glorious, new, extremely expensive potion.

  “I expect it will give diminishing results each time you take it, but we would need to experiment. The breakthrough from the fifth to the sixth realm is the great barrier. If we can remove it for those stuck there with enough remaining longevity, we would double their remaining time.”

  Even Rose, who wasn’t interested in politics, could see how far-reaching the invention was. The potions that assist with the awakening greatly enhanced everyone’s odds, to say nothing of the one that gave them a second chance at it, and, assuming a sound mind, everyone could reach the third or the fourth realm. Add on Ruby’s newest potion, when they fought the imperials, even the lowest of the low would join the battle as fifth realm combatants.

  Rose’s eyes went wide. “Will the potion work on those stuck at the ninth realm?”

  Ruby grinned like a dreadwalker. “I don’t know. I’ll need a lot of volunteers for the experiment. But if it does, it can completely change the power balance.”

  Everlast shook her head. “I still can’t believe he’s gone.”

  “What?” Rose frowned, trying to follow the fifth realm mageknight’s train of thought.

  “I was just thinking how everything Ruby has now is thanks to Dandelion. And that made me think… Well, you get it.”

  Rose nodded. She had briefly met the man. His connections and the way he seemed to know everything bewildered her nearly as much as his erratic behavior.

  “Anyone thought about going out?” she asked, completely changing the obviously sour topic for the others.

  Ruby and Everlast scoffed at the same time.

  “The mines!” Rose shouted. “I’m talking about the mines. There’s a recruitment drive for miners and support staff. Apparently, whichever high-realm people had done the land surveys have found several valuable mineral deposits. I was thinking of volunteering as the healer, and it would be more manageable if one of you came over too.”

  Ruby shook her head. “Not interested. Alchemy pays much more than mining rocks, but I wish you the best of luck.”

  Everlast, on the other hand, seemed torn.

  “I’ve heard about it, but the pay isn’t that great.”

  “Are you earning more now?” Rose asked, fully aware that Everlast didn’t have any special talents, and with solo hunting too difficult for her, she needed to find an alternate means of supporting her growth.

  “I miss the good old days,” Everlast muttered. “Back at the order, the chance to get another sixth realm valiant was enough for them to assist my rise. While here—”

  She stopped and shook her head. “I know it sounds crazy with everything we’ve been told, but I miss simply signing over my freedom to someone, having them think about all the difficult things and just point me in the right direction when the time comes.”

  There wasn’t any resentment in Everlast’s voice, just the despondency of someone who had once been highly valued, but had suddenly become very, very ordinary with no desirable skills.

  “Don’t lose hope,” Ruby said with a kind smile.

  “I won’t,” Everlast said with the sad tone of someone who had already lost it. “I just think that having the one-on-one rule about fighting saurians is unfair. They are stronger and tougher than us, and while their techniques are lacking, they more than make up for it with ferociousness.”

  Rose nodded and placed her tea back down without taking a sip.

  “The standard has changed. Before we got here, the standard for a warrior was to be able to fight in a team, and now, while not quite as high, the requirement for a successful warrior is nearly that of what we once considered a slayer. And the scary thing is, I think this place is promoting the growth of people like that. Fighting with their lives on the line has toughened up our elites.”

  Ruby shrugged, but Everlast nodded. She had also noticed it in her order’s geniuses.

  For better or worse, the world had changed. This change polished some and ground the others to dust.