Kian’s smile became watery, and he glanced away, blinking hard.
“Thank you,” he said softly, and the conversation ended there.
So Adrissu left Gennemont alone, having paid for another week of boarding, so Kian would not have to worry about where to stay. He also left behind plenty of gold and stern instructions as to who at the College could contact him most quickly, should Kian need him for whatever reason. It unsettled him, but he trusted Kian; and it would be unfair of him to treat the human like a child forever, regardless of how much older Adrissu was. But it was not as difficult as he had feared. After all, he was used to solitude, and in a way it made him nostalgic for those early years with Ruan, when they would often be apart for weeks at a time. At least when Kian was in Gennemont, he told himself, his life was not at risk the way Ruan’s had been. At the very least, he had that.
With this, they settled into something of a new routine all over again. Kian loved the freedom of being an independent scholar: able to visit schools and libraries across the continent to study under transmutation experts. Adrissu would travel alongside him when he could, but mostly, he would remain behind to attend to his responsibilities at the school and to his own studies, which were never-ending. When they could visit new places together, Adrissu would spare no expense to spoil Kian with sights to see and delicious food; when they were apart, he still made sure that Kian had more than enough to live comfortably while he was away. Sometimes Kian would protest, giving back a handful of gold coins and complaining that Adrissu gave him too much; but after insisting long enough, his protests mostly stopped.
When Adrissu could not join him, he remained home in Polimnos and kept busy with his own work to avoid worrying too much about the human, fragile and mortal as they all were. Sometimes he would fly Kian to and from his destination, but sometimes the timing was simply too inconvenient. The first time Kian returned from a trip by carriage, he complained of how much time it wasted, how much bumpier the ride was, how tedious it had felt to spend days on the road—he never complained about flying again, though it was not the last carriage ride that he had to take.
The worst thing about being apart from each other, Adrissu decided, was not being able to contact Kian or have Kian contact him if something were to happen. Long-distance verbal communication was still a problem that he had yet to unravel, and to his knowledge, no one else had worked out a simple method of such magic, either. But he had seen firsthand how some students would place enchantments on slips of paper to share notes, without needing to physically pass paper between them. He had found the mirroring charm quite clever, though against the school rules.
It took a bit of trial and error, but before long, he had a set of blank scrolls that would reflect anything written on the other. Of course, only so much could fit on the finite space of the scroll itself, but that would be a problem for another day. When Kian returned from his most recent trip, Adrissu presented the enchanted scroll to him and explained its purpose.
“Clever!” Kian exclaimed, bright green eyes flashing between the scroll in his hand and Adrissu’s pleased smile. “You think it’ll work across a long distance?”
“I believe it should,” Adrissu said, nodding. “The only limitation is how much text can fit on the scroll. Distance shouldn’t affect it, but if we find it does, I can keep working on it.”
“It’ll be nice to be able to keep you updated on everything,” Kian continued.
“Don’t use it frivolously,” Adrissu said, despite his own longing for the same. If he could have written an entire letter to Kian on the scroll every night that they were apart, he would have done so gladly, and still missed him. “Until I can figure out something a bit more robust, let’s try to limit it to emergencies, change of plans... That sort of thing.
“So I can’t write you a dirty letter on this?” Kian asked with an exaggerated frown. Adrissu let out a huff of a laugh, shaking his head.
“I’m afraid not, no,” he said wryly. “I’ll take it into consideration for the next time.”
Kian most often went to Gennemont, since its library was the largest, and it had the widest network of scholars and professors for Kian to contact or study under. But there were a handful of transmutation specialists in other places throughout the continent, and even a small cluster of researchers working out of the castle library in Aefraya. Kian met an elf with connections there through the college at Gennemont and eventually received an invitation to study under them for a month. This, Adrissu was most hesitant over—to go to another country entirely felt different from traveling around the Federation of Autreth.
Plus, the stability Aefraya had recently enjoyed was proving to be unsurprisingly short-lived; its unification with the northern orc territories was crumbling, following the recent death of their first orcish king, who had reigned for nearly eighty years before dying of old age. Now, the widower elven king and their heiress, the eldest daughter of their half-elf half-orc children (a combination Adrissu would never had expected to see at any point in time, yet they did indeed exist), were struggling to keep their hold on the northwestern territories, which had historically been the most reticent to unification. Rumors claimed their rebellion, though it was as yet non-violent, was gaining ground further south—closer to the historical border between the orc territories and the elven kingdom—and the further it spread, the less likely it seemed to remain peaceful.
It was difficult to get an accurate idea of the situation when it was half a world away; but from everything Adrissu could gather, Aefraya was perhaps not the safest place to be at the moment, especially the capital. But he was also acutely aware of how deep the elven study of magic went, and how much more there might be to glean under the tutelage of an elven expert in transmutation. There seemed to be no imminent danger, and Kian very much wanted to go. Aefraya was very far, and Adrissu couldn’t be away for too terribly long, but he could at least take him there.
It had been several decades since Adrissu had been in Aefraya at all; his last visit had been to see Braern’s family, celebrating the birth of his great-niece. The Rolastra family was mainly situated in Menserine, so Adrissu did not expect to encounter anyone in the capital whom he might know; still, when they arrived a few hours walk from Castle Aefraya, he decided that his illusory form should be slightly different, just in case.
Kian did a double-take as his elven form appeared, frowning as he shouldered his heavy rucksack.
“What’s going on with this?” he said, gesturing up and down the length of Adrissu’s body. He had made himself scrawnier and given himself a different nose entirely.
“I shouldn’t be too easily recognizable,” he replied lightly, adjusting his robes, which didn’t fit quite so well now. “Just a precautionary measure. I don’t think there will be anyone I once knew here, but on the off-chance there is, I don’t want to deal with any difficult questions.”
“Huh,” Kian replied, blinking; the thought clearly had not occurred to him. He was silent as they headed toward the road, but after a little while he asked, “It would be weird to try to see any of, well, Braern’s family, wouldn’t it?”
“Hmm,” Adrissu replied, pursing his lips. Much of Braern’s extended familywasstill alive: his parents were long deceased, but one sibling remained alive at the time of Braern’s death. Surely most, if not all, of his nieces and nephews and their children—and possibly even their grandchildren now, considering how long it had been—were still alive and well. But how could he explain his presence, looking as young as he did for anelfof his age? If they even knew who he was at all; and if they did not remember him, then what reason would he have to see them in the first place? “I don’t think it would be wise, love. Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize,” Kian said quickly, waving a hand dismissively. “I get it. It was just a thought. I only sort of remember them myself, anyway. I just thought it would be... Well, I don’t know. Strange, but interesting.”
They did not speak of it again as they walked along the packed dirt road, the early morning sun illuminating their way. But he could tell Kian continued to think about it; he had a particular expression that only appeared when he was thinking of his past lives, trying to bring up memories that were often foggy at best. Adrissu did not press, though. If Kian wanted to talk about it, he would.
But they made much of the walk in amicable silence, and Adrissu watched as Kian’s pensive expression melted away into the familiar look of curiosity that he often wore when they went somewhere new. And Aefraya was quite different from the places in Autreth that they’d been together, especially here in the more central part of the elven kingdom. Everything from the plant life to the architecture of the farmhouses that they passed seemed uniquely elven, and entirely unlike what they were used to in Polimnos and the rest of Autreth.
When they arrived at the city gates, Kian presented his letter of invitation to the elves who stood guard there. They looked Adrissu up and down, then waved both of them through, much to his relief. He had his own fake documents, of course, but avoiding scrutiny in the first place was always ideal.
“Have you been here before?” Kian asked, self-consciously shifting the weight of his backpack to smooth out the front of his robe. He had asked Adrissu to help him find a few that would suit the elven fashion for the time he was in Aefraya—he confessed that he was not much of a fan of the elven style of clothes, but Adrissu had loaned him one of the loose, flowy robes that had been more in fashion perhaps a decade ago or so, and Kian had liked it best. He always gravitated toward looser clothing, things that would disguise the shape of his body. Sometimes he would use illusions if he were wearing something a little more form-fitting; but simple illusions like that were easy to see through when observed by other magic-users, and Castle Aefraya was sure to be full of them, so he’d packed loose, comfortable clothing for his trip.
“I have only been in the capital once before, a long time ago,” Adrissu replied, his eyes drifting up and down Kian’s form, before settling on his eyes again. “But I have visited other parts of Aefraya, of course. The inn you’ll be staying at is one I visited briefly while I was here. It’s among the nicest in the capital, so you’ll be comfortable and safe.”
“I don’t need luxury rooms, you know,” Kian teased with a grin, leaning closer to him as he spoke. “You could just get me a regular room at a regular tavern.”
Adrissu shook his head. “Not with times being what they are. The better the inn, the safer you’ll be.”
