42nd of Season of Air, 85th year of the 32nd cycle

  A season had passed since Newt had attained fifth realm, and he had family to visit.

  “I’m so glad to see you, Teacher.” Newt greeted Stronggrow after dropping in on his residence shortly after sunset. “I see your resplendent robe is as fluffy as ever.”

  The old man’s lip twitched, and Newt had a feeling the fluffy robe was done with. Stronggrow would still wear it, but he would change out of it before answering the door. Just as he was about to continue teasing, Stronggrow spoke.

  “Your mother paid a messenger to bring us her letter through the jungle, Prince Consort Salamandra.”

  Newt winced at the words, and Stronggrow’s strained face turned into a smile.

  “Need I bow to you, Your Royal Majesty?”

  Newt was about to tell him to cut it out, but Stronggrow had the right to fight back. “Engagement doesn’t make me a prince.”

  “To tell you the truth, I was surprised when I heard the news.” Stronggrow showed mercy and didn’t press with the royal honorifics. “Would you like to come in? I can brew some tea, and we can discuss what’s changed. I see you’re at the fifth realm now. I’m sure everyone would be proud of you, and I’m certain you sent a wonderful letter to your father to rub it in his nose.”

  “I’m sure he’ll get there eventually.” Newt smiled, not bothering to deny the accusations. “All he has to do is ask, and I’ll send him the resources he needs.”

  “He’d sooner eat his own foot. But while it’s funny, what you’re doing is bordering on unfilial.”

  Newt shrugged.

  “I sent a letter to Mother years ago and deposited a decent sum on her name at the adventurers’ guild. Enough for both of them to buy their freedom, and to reach the fifth realm. She decided to stay with her order despite everything, but she said she would pay me a visit once she reached the fifth realm and attained enough status to move around alone.”

  “And your father?”

  Newt grinned again. “You know how he is, spontaneous, impulsive, he might have spent it. Best to keep the manarium with Mother.”

  Stronggrow shook his head. “You have grown more relaxed about them despite not seeing them for years. I guess the letters help?”

  Newt wanted to shrug and feign indifference, but he had no reason to act around his teacher. “Father’s have remained short, but mother writes about them both in more depth. He was wounded once in the arena, a heavy injury, but by the time she got the news and sent it to me and I to him… well, more than a year had passed, and he was fine. That’s about it from my side—”

  “Newstar, you somehow became a prince…” Stronggrow cocked his eyebrow, and Newt started talking about the Sage’s realm and the tournament, but left out the ominous matters regarding the cults.

  In Newt’s mind, the story was short, but somehow it took the better part of the night as he got into the details.

  “So, Hailstown’s former townlord has risen to such heights?” Stronggrow shook his head. “There’s no justice in this world.”

  “He’s really a good guy,” Newt defended his big brother.

  “Newstar, Blackfist bandits were a scourge of the region for over a decade. They never dared come close to our clanhold; we had a pair of peak third realm mages, but villages and traders outside our sphere of influence suffered greatly.”

  Stronggrow strangled the conversation with that, realizing his mistake too late. The silence suffocated the room, and finally, the old man relented.

  “You’re here to visit the mines,” he tried to spark the conversation, and Newt’s breath caught.

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  He knows. His stomach fell. When did he figure it out? The last time I visited? Some time before that? When I first escaped the mines?

  “Yes,” Newt said casually, conversation not pausing, his mind so fast those thoughts happened in the space of time a lightning took to flash. “I’ll probably stay there for a day or two to meditate.”

  Stronggrow nodded, and the conversation ended. Newt left with a simple goodbye and stalked around the clanhold, making sure nobody else saw him.

  He smiled when he saw Plowson and the clan’s guards. Like Stronggrow and Marrow, the knights were at the third realm, something the clan wouldn’t have wasted the resources on when Newt was a child.

  I guess being surrounded by the Summersweald did the clan good. The danger forced them to invest in everyone they had to defend their lands. The bounty granted them enough resources to pull it off.

  The fact that Newt had left his share of the loot from the onslaught also helped.

  Strength breeds strength, wealth breeds wealth. The clan was brought to ruin because they hoarded resources instead of investing them in people, who would bring in more resources.

  Newt hopped into the middle of the training yard, startling Plowson and the others.

  “Patriarch!” They bowed when they realized who he was.

  “Relax.” Newt smiled. “I just wanted to tell you how happy I am with your progress, and how glad I am you're taking your opportunities and your duties seriously. The clan will have a bright future with you to support it. Thank you.”

  Plowson went on one knee, the men and women following his lead. “Thank you, Patriarch. But this is all because of you. You and the friends from your order came to our rescue before the onslaught, and even before that you were the one who earned the resources we used to awaken. What you are seeing is the fruit of your labors, and our sincere wish not to let you down.”

  Newt’s chest felt full ‘til bursting. “Come on, stand. Don’t embarrass me like that.”

  The clan’s awakened stood, then talked with Newt for a bit. None mentioned anything about his being a prince in waiting, though Plowson and Miller offered congratulations on his engagement, followed by more formal congratulations by the younger clansmen, people Newt didn’t know, and faces so young they must have awakened after he had left for Explorer’s Gate, some perhaps too young to remember the onslaught.

  Miller was telling him about his experiences working for the adventurers’ guild. The clan’s suddenly unique location allowed them to harvest resources from the jungle more easily than just about anyone else. Newt suddenly realized something.

  I’m old. The thought frightened him. He didn’t feel old. Where did all those years go?

  He slept, ate, trained, and meditated. Sometimes he spent time with other elites, had dinners with his teachers or tea with his new master, but that was it.

  How did so much time pass so quickly?

  He was merely a handful of years older than he was at the Sage’s realm tournament. There he was one of the younger participants, a kid, but suddenly thrust amongst normal people of his clanhold, Newt realized the terrifying truth.

  To those around him, he wasn’t an easygoing youth, but a serious elder, the pillar of the clan, and the one behind their power and fortune.

  He blinked and processed those thoughts. They were uncomfortable, the burden heavy, but nothing had changed for him. Soon he would return to his order, and there, he will once more be Newt, the new kid.

  And how long will that last? Overseers already have to bow to me, champions consider me their peer, but what happens in fifty-one years? When the stars align for my experiment and my ascension into the sixth realm?

  The youth of the surrounding clansmen, the faint wrinkles on Plowson’s face, they told Newt something he was aware of but had never taken to heart. Something Lady Woodhopper had told him years ago, but never really touched his conscious mind. People around him, people he cared about, were going to start dying of old age, and there was nothing he could do about it.

  Stronggrow was old. Newt had bought him time by helping him reach the third realm, but would he be alive the next time Newt came to visit? Unless he reached the fourth realm, he wouldn’t live long enough to see Newt enter the seventh.

  “I apologize, but I need to leave.” Newt headed back to his teacher’s residence. This time, Stronggrow opened the door properly dressed.

  “I was about to head into the keep,” the old man said. “What’s wrong, Newstar?”

  “Teacher, how is your sculpting going? Are you making progress towards the fourth realm?”

  He gave Newt a sad smile and shook his head.

  “Resources would be wasted on me. I’m too old, and I won’t manage in time.”

  “I can give you the resources—”

  “Newstar, I’m a mage. My body is old and aching. Whatever you have to offer, give it to the young ones; they will do more with what you give them than I ever will.”

  Newt stared blankly at him, seeing Stronggrow clearly perhaps for the first time. He was wrinkled, too skinny, his skin sagging. His eyes were bright, his spirit willing to meet the challenges, his body, unfortunately, too weak to help him through them.

  There was a man who had given his all for his clan, for the community, and Newt was suddenly ashamed he got mad with him over a difference of opinion.