2412, Rab 17, Briss

Kennen did his best to stay out of the way as Dalan bustled around the Infirmary, absorbed in his job. As the lead healer in this floor, he seemed so devoted into the role so much that he didn't have time to even talk to the Crown Prince who dropped out of his usual way to go to the hundred-something floor.

"Drink this brew three times a day after every meal, and you should be good," he heard Dalan say to a woman suffering from what seemed to be the golden allergy. Even Kennen knew how to treat himself when he felt the coughs and heat rashes arrive. Better yet, he wasn't venturing to the surface so he wouldn't get exposed to the changing temperatures, the foreign pollen, and the sunny atmosphere at all. She must be in the foraging team or in the patrol division.

"Remember to rest plenty," Dalan called after her when she strode towards the door as fast as her shaky legs could take her. "It'll go away on its own after a few days."

Kennen sidled next to Dalan on the healer's way back to his supply station at the end of the room. "You've warmed up to this place, I see," he said, bumping his shoulder against Dalan's.

The half-blood winced. "If anything, my blood froze a thousand times over," he replied before inclining his head in Kennen's direction. Since their first meeting, Kennen had shot up and reached Dalan's nose-level. And that's saying something, because the half-blood had in himself some tall trails. "What brings you here, Your Highness?"

It was Kennen's turn to frown. "I thought we agreed on the use of the title," he said. "Does my visit need to have a reason? Can't I just visit a friend?"

A scoff flitted off Dalan's nostrils. His hands started arranging the packets of freeze-dried leaves and amber bottles of medicinal potions. Metal tools whose names Kennen wasn't familiar with fell in neat arrays on respective trays through Dalan's prodding.

"With both of us so busy during this season, I doubt you're here for a chat, Kennen," the healer answered, resting his hands on the sides of a tray made of woven leaves.

Kennen scanned the neat rows of beds and lounge chairs. Most of them sat empty. "Busy, you say?" He raised an eyebrow in Dalan's direction. "You might need to provide justification for that, Head Healer."

A sigh rattled off Dalan's mouth. "Fine, Your Highness, since we're using each other's titles now," he propped a finger in the air and added more as he went on with his list. "One—I am in charge of procuring the raw ingredients from the foraging department. Two—I have to brew potions for our supply cabinets in case of emergencies. Three—I have to go to the upper floors for some in-room patient care. Most of them are too weak to survive the trip down here without aid. Four—"

"You made your point," Kennen snapped despite the smile itching to rip his lips apart. As usual, he couldn't win against Dalan when it came to verbal wrestling. The half-blood was just too smart for his own good. "And you're right. I came here for your thoughts on something."

Dalan grunted a bit when he hefted a woven tray off the supply table. He swayed a while before regaining his bearings. His non-verbal gesture invited Kennen to walk with him on his way towards the next patient. "Something got you in a hailstorm?"

"You can say that," Kennen said. He watched Dalan lay the tray by the foot of the patient's bed. This time, a man's eyes followed their every movement. That's when it sank. The Crown Prince chatting with a healer in front of a normal citizen must have been an unusual sight.

"Oh? And what can an old healer like me can help you with?" Dalan asked, turning the patient's leg to the side. His face curled in distaste, betraying the severity of his sickness. Veins glowed red against the bulge swelling on the man's leg. It's a common disease for those working in the infrastructure department. Was it some parasite? Maybe.

Something rustled, and Dalan drew out a bag of water wrapped in cloth from an old robe. He started pressing it against the swollen leg, but the patient recoiled. Dalan put his arms forward. "It's fine, sir!" he said in his best voice for placation. "I just heated the water with a rysteme spell. Air Limbs won't be treated unless it's exposed to heat!"

Kennen was no healer, but he knew that those small parasites were addicted to the cold seeping off the ice walls. Being exposed to them on a daily basis was dangerous, especially if they got into one's skin. Hence, the swelling. To kill those vermin, heat was needed.

"It's just a little heat," Kennen added, either to deescalate the situation or drive it to chaos. "It won't kill you."

As if struck by an invisible spell, the man perked up and allowed Dalan to press the hot compress into his leg. Silence reigned between the three of them, with Kennen unsure if he should spout his heartaches with a third party involved. But both of them didn't have a lot of time to goof around, did they? In just thirty minutes, Kennen's presence was requested in one of the tribunals about potential spies being spotted inside the Ice Capital. Goons from an invisible enemy? Maybe.

"Actually, there's this thing I am researching regarding one of the objects in the Hall of Symbols," he started, keeping the patient in his periphery. The man was respectful enough to pretend he wasn't interested in their topic. Kennen wouldn't be so careless, though. "Knowledge about it isn't mainstream, so understanding its secrets has driven me up the wall so many times. It's frustrating, you know? I was hoping you'd give me another idea to try or even reorient my perspective."

The healer hummed, moving the patient's leg to the other side and repeating the duration of the process. "If this object is part of the Hall of Symbols, then it must be connected to our people, right?" he said. "Or our history, at least."

It didn't slip Kennen's notice how Dalan casually referred to himself as part of the ice sprite collective. As much as it delighted him that the half-blood had assimilated well into the crowd, it drove a pang into his gut. Was it really that easy to infiltrate their community?

"The lack of data in the archives really bugs me," Kennen scratched his chin in thought. "If it's important to our people and our history, should it have some sort of prominence in our culture, as well as our records?"

Dalan stuck his lip out as he drew out another strip of cloth from his tray. He started winding it around the compress, sticking it against the patient's skin without having to hold it for a long time. "Maybe it's that important that just the mere knowledge of its presence can be dangerous?" the healer ventured. "It seems like someone took great care in erasing any recollection of this object, and so far, they succeeded."

Remryn said the same thing—that someone wanted the Warseeker's existence to be nothing but a fragment of Umazure's faded history. But...why? Apart from it being a throne, and with its destruction came the entire race of humans disappearing with it, what's so dangerous about it to warrant such measures?

Why was it called Warseeker in the first place? Even that simple answer eluded Kennen.

"Take a step back and try to think of other ways memories can be stored," Dalan said, yanking the tray from the patient's bed and striding back to the supply desk once more. "Putting it into writing is just one of them."

Kennen's eyes widened when it clicked. Of course. Parchment and graphite sticks were just one method of preserving events. There was another method, which was...oral tradition and witness accounts.

"That's another problem," Kennen looked at his boots in defeat. The staff he used to prod the walls tapped against his leg when he turned away from Dalan. "There's no one here who was alive during the Cardinic Wars. That's about the time the ice sprites went underground, right?"

When he looked up, a smirk played at the edges of Dalan's lips. "That's where you're wrong, Your Highness," he said. "You have one last witness in the Ice Capital."

Kennen's eyes bugged until they're the size of kalta selmeis. "We have?!" he demanded, his voice rising up a notch. It bounced and echoed along the walls of the Infirmary. His hands flew to his mouth. Then, in a softer voice, he leaned over to Dalan in a conspiratorial whisper. "Where can I find them?"

In retrospect, Dalan's treacherous smile should have been the one Kennen engraved in his mind instead of the name of the oldest sprite in the Capital—Dain Glyron.

2412, Rab 30, Daleth

He sat inside the dim cavern serving as Dain's room. After pestering the head healer about the oldest sprite's floor of residence, the truth came flitting out. It turned out that Dalan wouldn't know Dain if not for his rounds of in-room patient care. So, Kennen tracked down the Glyron rooms in search of the great matriarch, and came to the deep recesses of the fiftieth floor.

This high up, and they would have been the ones sacrificed to the enemies first. What were the Chief's and Grand Marshal's Courts doing about this? Dain Glyron was a living heritage of their people, and she was neglected even by the state? Unbelievable.

Kennen wouldn't even be alerted of her presence in the Capital if not for Dalan's kindness and him needing her memories with regards to the Warseeker. According to the healer, when the Glyron clan, consisting of generations of sons, nieces, and nephews, heard the presence of a head healer, they couldn't have been faster in issuing a house-call to Dalan and shove the responsibility of caring for the aged matriarch to him. Disgusting louts, the lot of them.

Still, Kennen has no political and legislative might to bring this to the two courts' attention with both occupied with things benefitting the majority and the working class. He saw that with his surface relocation debacle. None of the nobles and the generals believed in his capability in governance. Even Lydin didn't think he was ready.

It was of no consequence, though. Kennen was used to being underestimated. He even did that to himself.

That's why he didn't erase the smile plastered on his face when he listened to Dain get derailed for the nth time.

His leg, cramped under the weight of his form in this awkward sitting-kneeling position he adopted, started feeling dead. It would be a different kind of hell later on, once he got up and started walking. And gods of Calaris, he has a lot of stairs to go through.

Their talk started well enough, with the eldest Glyron matriarch after Dain welcoming him into their wing. Over the course of time, the Glyron name had grown well enough to be a clan on their own. Kennen was shoved nicely into a dim room with a withered woman with snow-white hair sitting in the shadows.

After the initial greetings, to which Dain responded with a toothless grin and squinted eyes, Kennen sank into the square but flat cushion provided by the Glyron clan and started the interrogation. "How much do you remember from your childhood?"

Then came the barrage of stories, told in a more profound version of Keijula, leaving Kennen's brain sputtering to catch up. But the gist was that Dain was a child when the Ice Capital was established, and she had to grow up as the first generation of children underground.

"It is of no concern to me to have lived through such a time," Dain had said, fanning her face and graying hair off the back of her neck. "We have had pleasant memories to treasure of this hulking behemoth of ice and glass. I remember how Timi and I frolicked with such elation. For once, we are not told to keep quiet. No sprite soldier will come to get us in the middle of the night, so we can sleep it away. Oh, and when Timi held my hand in his, when he asked me to join him in sickness and health, in life or in Pidmena's bosom—"

"That's very nice, indeed," Kennen bobbed his head in such a speed it made him dizzy for a second. He didn't come here to endure hearing a person's private love story. "But do you know something about the Warseeker? Or something connected to it?"

Dain's gaze became unfocused. The next Glyron matriarch warned Kennen of Dain's condition. She was old, and now that her form has declined and aged, it would only be a matter of time before she entered the Land of Wonders. But to the surprise and confusion of many, Dain stayed alive, going nowhere near the afterlife. If Kennen was to endure the wild detours with every question he asked, maybe the long life was for the better.

"I remember. Oh, I remember. We arrived in this place, with its elegant vibrance, and the adults talked about something of the sort. I have no idea—I was occupied with playing with Timi," Dain rambled. "And Timi possessed a ball woven from the dried barks of the tree near our enclosure, and he would strike it with his feet in such an artful manner which enamored me at such a tender year. But I remember. The General wore a cloak that day when he spoke to the congregation. Something about refuge. And safety. Rules..."

"Cloak? General?" Kennen prodded, no doubt spooking the woman. "Who are they? Do you recall what the cloak looked like?"

"They only bring it out during ceremonies requiring the presence of the first Chief," she answered with a brief nod as if it's all coming back now. "It's as black as midnight, but also as bright as the sun. They said...they said—"

"Said what?" he inclined his head at the old woman's direction, impatient of what she's going to say. It's nowhere near the information on the Warseeker, but it's information nonetheless. "What did they say?"

"That the cloak cannot merely hide things," Dain said, the haze in her eyes clearing a bit. "It can reveal what was hidden as well. No secret is safe from it. No, no no..."

The gears in Kennen's head started turning at that. "Thank you for your time, Dain," he ducked his head at her. She probably had no inkling about who he was. To her, the current Chiefdom and Grand Marshal Court must be as trivial as yesterday's fairy potion flavor. "I shall be off."

Kennen was out of the room before the old woman could add anything more about whoever Timmi was. His boots scratched against the ice floor as easily as sliding across; he might as well be wearing skates. His mind joined the mundane cacophony, coiling and recoiling at the beginning of a plan.

No secret would be safe from the Cloak. Kennen was not a fool. He knew what that thing was. It could only be the Bloodspeaker, the throne connecting the Ice Sprites to the Arbotro Fentimanis. His people's auvarsel.

At this moment, a new step appeared in Kennen's list—find the Cloak. Once he did, the Warseeker's mysteries would be his to peruse.