There was also the ornately framed oil painting of the Governor hanging proudly behind him. And a small polished plaque engraved with Governor that sat in front of his paperwork.
Still, Kai—as he sat with his hands folded—radiated such calm command that no one questioned it. Not even the Governor, who had shifted slightly to the left to accommodate, but leaned in just enough to appear centered.
Nico sat off to the side with the rest of the officials. He wasn’t sure how Kai had ended up in the big chair, only that it happened so naturally the others adjusted without comment.
Kai tapped his stack of documents against the desk until the edges aligned.
“So,” he said evenly, “about the rift Alchemist Yun and I had to unravel just to cross the border.”
At the mention of his name, Nico gave a small wave.
“That’s not the kind of anomaly that appears overnight,” Kai went on.
The room shifted in quiet discomfort. Throats were cleared. Papers were shuffled. Every pair of eyes found somewhere else to look.
Technically, the alchemists were there to conduct an ambient mana survey—documenting unstable mana levels and assessing environmental hazards. It was procedural busywork meant to maintain diplomacy between the central city of Nireya and its neighboring territories. A low stakes mission to a swampy, politically neutral region that was, at least on record, free of active rifts.
So on paper, it was a little excessive for Central to contract the Eclipse Guild. The fact that two A-Class alchemists were sent out meant Central wanted to go beyond surveying for problems. They wanted the problem to be beaten dead.
The Governor leaned forward, his singular garnet horn catching the light above eyes that gleamed with the same gem-like red. He offered a broad smile with teeth and folded his hands in front of him, as Kai did.
“Ah yes, unfortunate timing! A local phenomenon, I assure you. Nothing to worry over. Nature is unpredictable but resilient, my dear esteemed alchemists. I’m sure it was one of those minor swamp mana pulses. But there’s no need for concern. Our marshes restore themselves faster than any land in the region.”
Kai nodded thoughtfully. “A minor swamp mana pulse.”
Several of the Arcanite officials followed suit, each nodding with serene agreement. Their irises shimmered with gem tones that matched the crystallized horns crowning their heads: deep sapphire, pale peridot, sunfire topaz. Their smiles shone as brightly as the embellishment on their coats, heavy with gold trim.
“Exactly,” the Governor’s aide tagged in. “Atmospheric inversion from seasonal activity. We’ve had a rather wet year. These things happen.”
Kai hummed as if satisfied by the logic, then turned the page in front of him. His eyes drifted along the table, taking stock of its occupants. Aside from the two Lycan alchemists and a single Virid, the rest of the officials were Arcanites. Not exactly a balanced representation of Tellur. They appeared to have migrated from the Forged Nation, where most Arcanites—gemfolk who channeled mana through their crystalline hearts—made their home.
The lone Virid was small, nearly swallowed by her chair. Oversized copper glasses framed her face, and a crown of marsh marigolds bloomed bright along her hairline. The yellow petals opened and closed with the draft of the room. Two cattail reeds arched upward like antennae, swaying gently each time she sighed. In front of her sat a binder so swollen with documents it barely shut.
Kai’s gaze lingered on the color-coded tabs jutting out from its edge. The one marked Ambient Mana Report sat notably thicker than everything the governor’s aides had provided combined. He flipped through his own thin packet again. ‘Low anomalies; further action not required.’
In reality, or not, the Tellur borderlands were deeply altered by rifts that had somehow gone entirely undocumented. The result was a warped swamp in need of foreign rift aid. Only alchemists, licensed in both elemental and inscription arts, were authorized to navigate rifts, unravel their cores, and restore reality—and afterward, complete the tedious amount of documentation that followed.
“It seems that Sage Aster has been signing off on these annual reports?” Kai asked rhetorically, his expression unenthused. He had read the Sage’s name from the packet.
“Ah! Yes, as you know, Tellur is a nation without an alchemic faction of its own.” The Governor waited for Kai’s acknowledgement before continuing. “Not many guilds are interested in providing support for our small nation, but Sage Aster has kindly been sending his familiars to conduct annual mana surveys.”
“It’s unfortunate the rifts chose to form not long after the annual survey,” Kai mused, “though that makes our timing quite convenient.”
Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.
“We’re truly grateful you arrived when you did,” the Governor continued in a buttered voice. “This survey is a wonderful opportunity to showcase the progress Tellur has made. You’ll find that our numbers speak for themselves.”
“Progress is always worth showcasing,” Kai replied, his tone gracious and unreadable. He closed the meeting with well-polished words about collaboration and mutual trust. As he stood, the Governor clasped his shoulder, slipping something deftly into his breast pocket. Kai acknowledged the gesture with a polite nod. The man’s smile distorted the moment Kai turned away.
Nico stood a second later.
Oh, right. Nico was here too.
***
Outside the office, the two alchemists weaved through the outer halls of the administrative building.
“So, the swamp is having issues from being wet,” Nico summarized with professional gravity.
“Just a swamp mana pulse,” Kai replied, not slowing to check a single hallway sign. He walked with a decisiveness that suggested he knew where he was going.
“Remind me what that is,” Nico said, matching his pace, but with much less conviction. He was fairly sure this was Kai’s first visit to Tellur too.
“Must be a local phenomenon.”
They turned another corner. The air carried the same faint sweetness that had guided their path since the meeting. The fox’s nose twitched in delayed recognition— marigolds. That’s who the wolf was trailing.
At the end of the corridor stood a door made of tall glass panels set in a steel frame. Warm light diffused through the mist, carrying the soft, earthy scent of mature bark and soft blooms. Every pane was completely fogged over from the inside with humidity. Nico could only look forward to it.
***
Inside the greenhouse, planters overflowed with native herbs and flowering perennials that hung from beams wrapped in vines. A thin layer of moss crept up the stone steps, dotted with tiny delicate white blossoms. Somewhere overhead, the misting system clicked on. The dew shimmered under green-gold filter lights.
A stout Virid greeted them with mild surprise. Pink milkweed flowers bloomed suddenly along her hair, betraying her flustered state. As she led them deeper inside, presumably to someone higher up, Nico admired the stained-glass mosaics that patterned the windows in bursts of color.
Alerted by her assistant, the assumedly higher ranked Virid turned to face them. And following her momentum, so did her antennae a second later.
Kai politely angled his ears back with a slight bow of his head. “Director Effie, pardon the intrusion.”
Director of Ambient Mana Oversight, Effie Anith—“but call me Effie,” as she had introduced herself at the meeting.
“…Oh, Alchemist Vuong! Y-you are very welcome to intrude!” Her cattails bobbed with her nodding.
Effie stood beside a stone-slab desk cluttered with binders, documents and tools. Her skin looked fresh and dewy in the humidity, leaving no doubt she was a Virid bloomed from these marshes. Kai, too, looked fresh in this humidity, regulating it only for himself as usual. Nico, present, was still not thriving in this climate.
Kai’s ears eased back as he set the meeting packet on her desk. “The mana reports submitted to Central seem a bit scarce.”
“Mmm… that’s not what it looks like when I send it out,” Effie’s antennae wilted as she located a thick binder already sprawled across the desk. She flipped through pages marked with neatly colored tabs.
Kai thumbed through the documents himself and asked, “How often do you submit these?”
“Every quarter,” Effie answered with a small bounce of antennae. “… But it seems Central only receives what flatters the Governor. "
Kai raised one ear slightly as he skimmed through pages. “I haven’t seen these before. Central’s records have Tellur flagged as low-risk for rift formation. Their database only has generic annual updates.”
Effie leaned over the desk, gesturing toward several graphs that all trended upwards. Kai listened without interruption. “I submit detailed reports on environmental rift indicators every quarter,” she said in an impassioned rush, her cattails bouncing with each word. “And that’s only part of the data! There’s also mana turbulence, water acidity, soil erosion, biodiversity loss—” Her cattails dimmed mid-list, confidence faltering. “They get scrubbed before they leave here, I guess.”
Rifts formed naturally where mana flows collided, but any concentrated release of unstable mana could trigger one. Every living thing held mana, so when life was disrupted, that energy scattered into instability. That meant deforestation, war, extinction— anything that disrupted life carried that risk. Undocumented rifts weren’t just oversights.
Kai’s ears perked as he paused on a page. His expression didn’t shift, but his tone softened. “What areas concern you the most?”
“The eastern ridgeline. I suspect…” Effie trailed off. Something seemed to catch in her memory. She adjusted her glasses and glanced away from the glint in Kai’s breast pocket. Her antennae drew in close.
Kai withdrew the gold ingot that was slid into his coat, gave it a casual once over, and set it onto the stone desk. “My job is to unravel distortions of reality.” He followed with a gentle tone, “Thank you for preparing these reports.”
Effie’s antennae regained life. “I’ve seen fumes, light distortion, and strange creatures along the eastern ridgeline…” One cattail drooped as her voice dimmed. “But I can’t get it surveyed. I’ve put in requests, but they’re always denied. Not enough cause. Waste of resources. No alchemists available. Whatever excuse they can come up with.”
Rifts appeared often enough that entire guilds had formed to deal with them. Governments kept their own in-house alchemists, but were perpetually short-staffed; notorious for too much bureaucracy for too little pay. Most work went to contracted guilds that additionally sustained themselves on what they pulled from inside— mana-imbued items, craftable resources, elemental relics— all valuable enough to keep the trade running. When a region destabilized, bids were opened, and whichever guild won took jurisdiction over its rifts.
“You’re not sure if it’s a rift?” Kai asked, one ear angling upward.
“I’m just a civilian.” Effie’s antennae shook back and forth, “I know what I see, but I’m not authorized to call it a rift.”
Tellur received assistance from neighboring alchemic cities rather than opening bids of its own. As an officially low-anomaly nation, it offered little incentive and even less payout for guilds to glean interest. Naturally, the work was pushed into a backlog handled by government alchemists who’d drawn the short assignment. For a time, that suited everyone— until the only reports leaving Tellur were for missing alchemists.
Eventually, someone important must have gone missing, because the situation reached higher ears in Central. Not long after, the price tag grew large enough to matter.
Kai nodded, eyes moving between the altered reports and their originals. “We’ll go,” he said after sorting through the relevant pages.
Relief spread across Effie’s face; her antennae lifted, spirited and bright. “Let me know what information would be helpful. I’m well versed in this region’s manaprint!”
Nico, still present, leaned in to finally contribute to the conversation.
Governor