Book One – Chapter 15

In the first instance, that blow took the breath out of his lungs, then Yu’s anger surged. “Is that what you told them? That I am wizard? You did, didn’t you? Yes, why else would they agree? Why else would they want me? Why else would they take me off your claws?”

She knew that he was many things, but not a wizard. They both knew. Everyone knew. Yu was no ker-born. He was a bastard by any measure of bloodline or fate. He should not have survived birth, let alone reached adolescence. He only did because a healer had fixed him — apparently fixed him to the best of his abilities. It was a sadistic joke. He had turned Yu into a species of his own, neither humanoid nor avian. To call him a wizard was cruel mockery at best and a blatant insult for any true wizard at worst. Most of all, it was a lie.

“Oh, grow up,” she sneered.

“How can I?” he shot back, the rawness of his frustration laid bare. “You’re sending me there to fucking die!”

“The guild still stands, doesn’t it? They’ve lasted this long. They won’t collapse, even under the weight of your melodrama.”

Well.

This exchange was, more or less, the last meaningful conversation they had shared before Tria kicked him out. She had marched him to the gate of her estate within the human habitat, where she had handed him over to his escort without so much as a glance back.

From the adventuring party that had escorted him – eight fighters plus the other traveller, a real Worldbender wizard – Yu had since then learned a thing or two about the Albweiss Mountain Guild: The guild’s position had been carefully chosen, situated in a region untouched by the larger beasts that roamed the higher peaks or the fetid swamps below. Predators rarely ventured into the aligning stretch of the Snowtrail. Prey was scarce, save for the occasional travellers that wandered the trail. The terrain itself was said to be the ultimate deterrent. Narrow ravines that were permanently overrun by gushes of melting snow, steep cliffs, and an unrelenting cold created a natural fortress, dissuading even the boldest creatures from trespassing. It was this very isolation, they claimed, that had allowed humanoid peoples to establish a foothold, turning the uninhabited emptiness into a strategic advantage.