Nick felt the windstream rock the boat as the mirror swerved, along with everything else in the cabin. He slammed his hand against the nearest wall to brace himself as the shaking continued. His other hand held tight on the sole source of light in the room, a ruby gemstone.

The turbulence subsided, the shaking dying to a whimper, and Nick sighed in relief.

Around the room, everything was scattered everywhere. Once coiled ropes were now sprawled in snake-like masses on the floor. Spare emeralds, rubies, and quartz were flung out of their sacks onto the floor. Rolling and clinking against each other and the wooden boards. Books that were resting atop his straw bed were flopped across distant corners. Pages from the wind filtering between the boards. Not that it was well kept before, but the harpy windstorm had thrown everything asunder.

He’d get to cleaning up the mess, but first he needed to check himself.

Nick peered at his face in the mirror, hanging by string around a nail against the wall. Black hair cut in usual Vislandan fare. Short, clipped, and an unkempt length on top. Brown eyes, a taut nose smeared with dried blood, and chapped lips from exposure to the dry winds above the clouds. He was shabby, but knew if he cleaned himself up, he didn’t look half-bad. At least judging by the few glances thrown his way from the ladies. During the one time he pulled into an Imperium dock.

However, in Vislanda, land of the Nephilim, he was plain. Both in looks and ability.

Nick moved the string holding up the mirror down one nail, bringing it to his chest. Three red lines from shoulder to shoulder. A parting gift from the aberration. The wound was but skin-deep, otherwise he would have been dead. At the moment, all he felt was a dull ache. Nick hadn’t even bothered to check until he noticed the front part of his wool jacket was completely shredded. Maybe it was battle frenzy. The phenomenon where people shrugged off pain from anything less than a mortal injury in the midst of the excitement of a fight.

He tapped the edge of the red line with a finger and bit down as it stung. Patching it up was going to hurt a lot. However, it was better than risking rot settling into the wound, and he had neither the time or coin to spare for a proper healer.

Nick bent down to pick up a rolled-up cloth bandage as well as a bottle of clear grain liquor. When he uncorked the flask, he could smell both its cheapness and its strength. The merchant he picked it up from said drinking it would be like traveling a day into the future, everything in between forgotten in alcoholic stupor.

He dabbed the brew onto the bandage, drenching it lengthwise. With the bottle emptied, he took a deep breath and began wrapping it around his chest.

It was like fire and ice at once. Nick heaved, biting his lips, squeezing the ruby in his hand, and clenching his toes. He strained as he looped his shaking hands around his chest, tears of pain dripping from his eyes. When the whole chest was encased, he tied the remainder into a knot to finish the ordeal and took a seat.

That was one of the more painful experiences he had to endure. Another step on the long road ahead.

He grabbed a scuffed-up shirt, one of his few spare clothes, and stuffed it over himself. The remnants of the wool jacket lay to the side, bloodied, torn, and likely beyond repair. Shame. Miri bought it for him as a gift last winter. One of her more thoughtful gifts.

His stomach growled, as if it sensed the complete absence of food in the small shack.

He picked up an emerald rolling to and fro across the floor. He didn’t need to worry about keeping this one charged since the aether extracted from the auroral currents earlier would keep the engines running till he made it home.

Nick squeezed and willed. Green light pulsed out as aether was drawn out of the gemstone and into his body. Hunger, thirst, and even tiredness vanished with each passing moment. Injuries such as the chest wound however, remained.

As far as Nick knew, he was the only person in the world who could absorb aether like this, without consuming it as mana. None of the books he read mentioned such an ability. No human, Innatum, or Nephilim.

With his needs taken care of, Nick was left to the humming of the passing wind, the occasional clink of scattered gemstones on the floor, and the contemplation of his thoughts.

Even though the battle was long past, he was giddy with excitement. He had beaten monsters from the old continent, and an aberration at that. All with nothing but his own natural skills and abilities. He thought of what he would be able to do once he became a Bracer. He remembered Eric’s own abilities, and saw it was a precursor of the power within his grasp. He recalled the looks on men’s faces. Looks of awe… and fear. His father taught him fame and attention were vicious addictions, but he couldn’t help but want to see those looks again.

On the other hand, he was terrified. The madness was getting worse. He remembered the first time the urges rose, when he was ten, during a fight with one of the other children. It consumed him. Valdric and another adult had to pull him off the other child before he caused fatal harm.

His father thought it was just natural impulses and gave Nick his usual spiel on discipline and self-control.

However, Nick was now twenty, and knew these weren’t normal feelings. Every year, every month, their intensity and frequency grew. The madness even started to take on new forms. Like moments where it seemed like his head was about to burst from its seams, from millions of things writhing to escape. Not even sleep was an escape. His dreams were haunted by the same unnatural things. Beings of black and violet moving forward with inhuman precision. Their eyes soulless and empty, displaying apathy to the destruction they wrought in their wake.

And just as before, none of the books he read knew of such a malady. Not even healers could help him. He stopped asking, lest he gain a reputation as a future madman.

Both the madness and his ability to absorb aether was part of the same mystery that was himself. He knew the key remained in the ancient capital of the old continent. The place where he was found.

His foot brushed against the page of a book on the floor.

“Probably best to clear them out,” he thought.

Nick reached around, gathering the books in his arms. As he did, he noticed excess papers stuffed between the pages. Notes he had scrawled on with ink, whenever he thought he found something that could shed light on himself, mainly in titles such as Chalder’s Bestiary IV Edition on Creatures of the Old Continent or Collected Theories on the Ancients. Other times it was something that just caught his interest such as A Brief History of the Western World (With Annotations) or Great Feats of the Reclamation War. One book in particular Principles of Human Rights by infamous Adrestan writer Charles Diderot had hundreds of notes. That book was one of his greatest influences, second only to his father.

The stack on his arm was reaching his chin, but they were only a small part of the collection left to him by Valdric. All of them read and studied with thorough intensity.

However, the reason why, all started with the last book on the floor of the cabin. A small leather-bound green journal sitting on the floor.

Nick picked it up. This was no lengthy tome or treatise. Rather, a simple recording of the life and thoughts of one man. Valdric Wendier, better known as Valdric Thunderfury. One of the most famous Reclaimers and Bracers of the century. Fabled member of the Eight Companions who breached the Outer Wall, progressing the Reclamation War more in a period of ten years than the last two millennia combined.

It was here Nick discovered the true history of the man who raised him, who seemed little more than a crippled arms instructor whose main hobbies were fishing and drinking. It was the story of a man who overcame the circumstances of birth, who rallied and spearheaded others to fight on and free the old continent of the aether-monstrosities which drove out humanity’s ancestors.

It was here Nick read about the final desperate moment as Valdric sallied past the Outer Wall, pushing past horrors the likes of which had never before been seen. A valiant effort, only to be end in betrayal and abandonment, as the other Reclaimer Guilds abandoned their pledge. The Companions, surrounded and encircled by enemies, escaped only through Valdric’s own efforts. An effort which cost him wounds that forever ended his days of fighting. Valdric made it out alive, carrying little more than the sword sheathed on Nick’s belt and a black pod the size of a sack which he retrieved from one of the temples. A black pod that later opened to reveal a little baby boy.

Valdric raised that boy as his own, who was joined later by two other children. His reputation ruined by the guilds, he reluctantly withdrew to live out the rest of his remaining days in Vislanda, birthplace of his Nephilim Companions. However, blame and anger seethed among them, and even here, Valdric received the brunt of it. His former friends abandoned him to his life in obscurity as they moved on to take their place as the rulers of the country.

Nick could feel anguish and rage simmer just remembering the words, during a time he was twisted with grief at his father’s death. The man he knew did not deserve this treatment. Valdric was kind. One who had no meanness in spirit. Strong yet slow to anger. A man of character who walked with a cocky smile on his face, who never raised his voice lest to impart an important lesson. Gentle to the last minute with even his dying wish staying true to that nature.

Nick couldn’t help but see himself as he read the story. He well understood it all. The guilt, the outrage, the anger, and the resentment. However, Nick would not let fate dictate his life, not like how Valdric accepted his own fate at the end.

Death was preferable to what he did now, bowing before the whims of an antiquated world. A world where the circumstances of birth dictated one’s place. A world where the gifted Nephilim and Innatum ruled over the common stock. A world that couldn’t distinguish between physical strength and strength of character. Not realizing one depended on the other.

He picked up the journal, placing it atop the other books. He picked up one of the unstrung ropes on the floor and bound the stack together, setting it by his straw bed.

Nick would fulfill Valdric’s wish tomorrow, and afterwards he would set out on his own path.

He turned his eyes to the wall opposite the mirror. The ruby cast a red glow upon the parchment straddled against the boards. A partial map of the world.

In the west, a single continent dominated the page, split in three by Nephilim-ruled Vislanda in the North, the Adrestan Republic to the south, and the vast fractured Imperium at the center. It was almost poetic, when he looked at it. A battleground of ideas. The old ways entrenched in the north, with the new ways rising from the south. The two clashing in the middle in a conflict that had raged for half a decade.

To the south stretched the long dry landmass, ruled by two civilizations older than nearly all the others. The Barkhan Sultanate and the Pythian Shahdom. Nick only knew fragments of them, but was aware the two were plagued by enough internal issues to worry about anything beyond their coastlines.

Fractured Islands dominated the middle of the map. The three largest were clustered south of the Imperium and east of Adresta. This was the Kingdom of the Isles, renown for the freedoms granted to their citizens and the land of human innovation. It was in their forges where the first Bracers were created a century ago. Countless other useful inventions came out every year.

North of the Isles were the Voratian City-states, civilizations built on island clusters. Nick would make a stop by one of them, to reach his ultimate destination as his eyes moved to the east.

The eastern half of the map was covered by a massive landmass. The old continent, whose borders extended well beyond the paper.

The mapmaker even drew lines illustrating the zones. The Fringe, The Outskirts, The Interior, and the Outer Walls of the Ancient Capital. Each extending deeper and deeper inland. Each zone possessed a species of aether-monsters, described in the bestiary and Valdric’s journals. Harpy swarms, Giant arachnids whose venom melted through steel, flesh-eating goblin packs, and hulking cyclopes whose eyes lanced petrifying beams. Monsters who grew in strength the further one drove inland, to the source of the calamity, the Ancient Capital.

A swath of ocean, known as the Spearhead, cut in an unnatural straight line to the center of the continent from the southwest. Deep into the Spearhead, the artist had marked out a semi-circle for Reclaimer City. Nick’s ultimate destination.

It was originally a settlement founded by the Paragons eons ago. A rallying point to reclaim humanity’s homeland from the aether-monsters which drove them out long ago. Now it was a bustling city who stayed true to its original purpose, to be the staging ground of the Reclamation War. A place where one’s life was always on the line. Where no matter their station, one rose upon their wits and abilities or fell with the rest of the middling crowd, joining the names of those who perished in service to the great good.

Nick touched the map. This was where he belonged.

It was a place where he wouldn’t be throttled by an archaic hierarchy. Where he could reject physical limitations by becoming a Bracer and earn strength by slaying monsters. Where he could earn and enjoy the splendors of wealth. Where he could see and enjoy the greatest of humanity’s inventions. Where he could find glory in battle, fighting a war not for the whims of state or man, but for the greater good of all.

It was a place where he could find answers to questions still remaining. Where he could solve the mystery of the madness within, before he succumbed to become a raving lunatic. To know who he was or what he was.

And most importantly, the place from which he would fulfill the promise he made to himself, when he finished reading Valdric’s journal. To honor the man who raised him by accomplishing what Valdric could not. Bring an end to the Reclamation War.

And Nick was a man of his word.

All of these goals, were the purpose for the last five years. Five years of preparation. Five years of training.

To become a Reclaimer was to pledge one’s life to a minimum of four years in service to the war. Most perished their first day. However, Nick knew he had it in himself to not just survive but thrive. After all he had taken on a group of monsters, and not just any fringe creature but an aberration. And he had won.

Nick eased his eyes off the map, putting his thoughts to rest. For now, he had more pressing matters at bay.