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I depress the jelly like comicay on my wrist and report in, to the lieutenant. The device works for communication among other things. It sends thought to thought messages. The parents had an expired restorative potion the child drank. The Aradian realm walker has the bottle. The rest is up to her.
Good job. Berker responds in an irritated brain voice. He means the words but hates how I didn’t drop at his command or follow the realm rules.
Realm walkers are the most powerful inhabitants in any realm, and we are relegated to frivolous missions and don’t even have our own realm. We don’t even get our own homes. Instead, we have to share a “family home”, meaning we live with our parents until we find a mate, then we are expected to have at least one child to continue the realm walker curse.
I slice the matter open and step into the inbetween. Any realm walker can do it, but they have little knowledge of how much power they each contain in a pinky finger and never use. I created my own world, fashioned it from the teal matter of the universe. It is here I come to escape. One wall is covered in shelves and filled with various objects I’ve found in the realms. All of them have a use and connection to magic. On the opposite wall are more shelves filled with books. Some commoner, others family grimoires, scrolls of ancient times. There is so much more to the realms. History lost with time.
As a child, I played sick and spent my days exploring each realm. When I got older, I took the brave step to visit the Land of Lost Souls. The prison realm. Only it didn’t seem much like a prison. It had green trees, valleys, highlands, large bodies of water extending from huge land masses. Our power is a beautiful thing.
Dropping onto the red armchair, I study the spine of the texts for the next one to read. I fill my mind with magic from all the realms. My aspirations are to take realm walkers into the future, show them all they can do, but I need to be well read and versed, able to defend my position.
My finger circles the round metal object on the lamp table. I spin it beneath my finger before choosing a book whose writing on the spine is absent. The soft cover melts in my hands as I lean back in the chair and open it to the first page. It is a personal journal from a dragon queen, Myovi, the ink on the pages faint from the passing of hundreds of years.
Dragon queens held little power, as male dragons ruled the realm until after the great war. The secrets of her life revealed as my eyes scour each page. Her husband took on another wife and she wallowed in her self-pity until she met a troll servant who showed her affection. Their dalliances unknown to the king. When she became pregnant she sent a servant to Navarin for a fae potion that would abort the fetus.
The servant was caught and executed, but not before blurting everything in fear of death. I squirm at the method of execution: a sharp talon was ripped across the chest and the servant was disemboweled. Myovi was forced to watch. The last entry in her journal reads: My true love will not face death as I take my life to protect his. I can’t recall exactly where I found the journal as I’d searched so many caves in Sier, the dragon realm.
If I was a more compassionate person, I’d have felt pity for Myovi and her fate, but it was a fate of her choosing. She always knew the repercussions, not only because she was cheating on the King, but hybrids weren’t welcome. Some existed and hid, most were banished to Lols, the prison realm.
In the current age, subspecies can’t travel from realm to realm. They have a single passport on their chests that ties them to their birth and subspecies realm. It hasn’t stopped hybrids from being born. The only ones who can legally travel from realm to realm are realm walkers. We were created for that purpose. A passport for each realm imprinted on our chests after we enter and exit a realm for the first time.
Stuffing the book onto the shelf, I grab the bag lying beside the table and unzip the matter, leaving my inbetween world and entering Thraves. I’m not happy with my lot in life but have acquaintances. Calling them friends would be an overstatement. Metford, a young harvester and beginning fledgling instructor in the art of harvesting, is one of those acquaintances. His legs hang over the cliff as I stride toward him.
Chestnut hair flows over his back, the sleeves of his plaid button-up shirt rolled to his elbows. I sit next to him, my legs dangling over the cliff with his. Chilly air sweeps over us and a dusting of snow covers the higher peaks of the realm. The drop isn’t far before the valley rises into more midland mountains. The range spreads for miles. Slanted trees with sparse leaves dot the landscape. The sun setting, purple and pink break through the gray daytime sky and spread, giving way to shades of red and gold. Birds fly over the mountains, settling in the valley for the evening.
I unzip my bag and pull out a drink made from the hops of Canida. One of the best perks to being a realm walker is the ability to not only go to any realm but to go anywhere in any realm. Canida is the realm of the lycans, powerful and large wolves, and their alcoholic beverages are made for large people, meaning we only need one a piece to feel the buzz. Two and we’d be stumbling home.
He takes the drink from my hand. “I successfully walked my first fledgling through harvesting their first soul today,” he says without joy, unscrewing the lid. “A child. He died of a disease that caused festering blisters all over his little body.” He takes a large gulp followed by a second before he drops the drink between his legs. I think maybe today should have been a two a piece drink day.
“Did he go to Tranquility?”
Metford’s head swivels and color swirls in his eyes as he meets my gaze. “Of course. He was just a kid.” The colors in harvesters’ eyes make it possible for them to see spirits. They don’t harvest in their physical form but in spirit form. Not only can their physical form not pass through the veil between realms but they are safer from evil entities doing it in their spirit form.
“I saved a child, too. His careless parents had an expired fae potion in their medicine cabinet. They were lucky it didn’t explode or implode. Fae potions aren’t stable past their expiration.” I shake my head, both hands gripped around my drink.
He nods. Our conversation gets lighter as the Canidan drink loosens our speech. I lay back on the thin, mostly frozen golden grass cover and watch the stars, the moon emitting its usual orchid shade. We need to talk now! my mother’s bitter words filter into my head. I sit up and swallow the last of my drink. “I gotta go.”
“It’s about that time for me too,” he responds, scooting his legs over the side of the cliff and scrambling to his feet.
“You want a portal home?”
His eyes shift as if deep in thought. Usually he turns me down. “Actually, I will. Thanks.”
With a wave of my hands a portal opens around his tall frame then swallows him as it vanishes. I open another portal for myself that lands me in my living room with an angry mom, hands on her hips and a scowl on her face.