Initially upon landing at Icarus, Cira thought there was going to be tons of work to do. She hadn’t known what, but a hassle was expected.

  Then when Fitzgeralt introduced her, she thought she was going to have to deal with arbiters far more frequently. Cira almost couldn’t believe how little she was bothered over the past week. Eliza was the only one, and she had no qualms playing the student.

  Today was a day off, of which the class received two a week. The lessons Cira attended had been quite fruitful, and her understanding of aethereal metaphysics grew by the day. At first it was disturbing, but each lesson resonated with a long-forgotten muscle-memory-esque figment of her childhood. Not with Gazen, but with that demon.

  Of course, the subject matter ran far deeper than essential entropy and conditions leading to or resulting from it, that just happened to be the unit they were covering last week.

  Evenings were spent within the core of Icarus, and Cira had made precious little progress resolving her father’s arrays. She had, however, made great progress in unraveling Daedilus’ secrets. It was exhilarating to inspect glyphs she didn’t think she could reproduce on the first try, and this island was chock full of them. Naturally, this was the first step to fixing the barrier’s vulnerability—something else she would get to next week or soon enough.

  During this time Cira was practically a resident of the Village of the First Mark. She had made a few new friends and there were regulars she would read near. There was even a small group that returned to her light to read each evening.

  Things were going great. Cira finally found the vacation she so desperately needed. During, in a very unvacation-like manner, there was much time to ponder. Her father’s teachings, as well as his transgressions. The sky and everywhere within it she had travelled, the experiences she had and the people she met.

  Without Lomp, Nanri, Nina, her expansive crew of pirate pals, Undina, Io, or anyone else along the way she wouldn’t have made it this far. If she had, Cira suspected she may not be the same sorcerer she is today. The very fact that she escaped Kazali and cast herself into the dead skies following Gazen’s passing only to end up relaxing here in this very village was a luxury in itself.

  She could have been eaten by that red dragon. Things could easily have gone wrong on Fount Salt. The island may have fallen like Lazulei, or she could easily have killed thousands of innocents with a single miscalculation. Then there were countless ways to die while she was without aura and down a leg. Had Jimbo not been at the gates of Hangman’s Cove, for instance, she definitely would have died.

  Imagine a sorcerer of my caliber dying of an aneurism… Then a stray bullet could have ended her life before she even knew what happened, or a particularly accurate rifleman for that matter. A hungry slime, even. Eliza on a bad day. A starved sprite. An irate necromancer.

  The list goes on.

  Now death closes in again in the form of Kazali’s undying grasp, and Cira made sure the Gandeux saw her as a problem. Directly threatening a multi-sky spanning government was not something she did every day, but it was undoubtedly a serious matter.

  So how could she find it in her volatile heart to sit on her ass and read all day? The answer was simple.

  Wisdom.

  On one hand, something she severely lacked. Cira was young, especially compared to the likes of Eliza or Fitzgeralt, or especially Io. She had not lived long enough to experience enough to consider herself wise. This kept biting her in the ass every time she didn’t realize how reckless she was being. If Cira were looking in from the outside, she would think this stupid sorcerer was overdoing everything on purpose. That she had never learned restraint nor common sense.

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  On the other hand, Cira possessed the wisdom to know that much was true. It just wasn’t part of her father’s syllabus. She was not raised to stand still, but to move forward. To step over the horizon and reach the stars. Perhaps even place them in Breeze Haven’s wake one day. One does not attain power unreasonable enough to escape her fate while staring at the ceiling, after all.

  While Cira had largely come to terms with the logic behind why her father had carefully laid out a path before her, she was still upset with him for one simple, if not petty, fact. A tidbit of his own words even.

  Boiling down his presumed course for her life, it could be said Cira’s father thought she needed to reach a certain point before she would be strong enough to stand up against Kazali. Knowing him, she had to ask herself, when does it end? In truth, the endpoint was always supposed to be when the demon Kazali finally left the cycle. Well, when he officially died, but Cira had different plans.

  How could she waste her whole life working toward one day beginning her life of her own accord?

  I will not spend eternity in search of a beginning.

  I have to kill that demon. This is clear.

  Only then may I consider the world beyond, he says.

  It went against everything Cira thought she now understood about her upbringing. Unlike Gazen, Cira couldn’t just enchant a cliffside and fly away. She was already flying away in perpetuity. That demon bastard found her in a dream of a memory far removed from any sky she’d ever known. It was almost like Gazen’s first chapter.

  The sea wasn’t the problem. No, the azure expanse had always sat right there, at the furthest edge of her vision. But Cira had never really left that little cabin where she turned humans into monsters. Even now, she sat with her elbows hanging over the windowsill, a yearning gaze resting on the same dim horizon.

  I’m sorry, Dad, but I still think your first book is nonsense. Now more than ever. You had some points, but… just like your own father, you succumbed to a dreadful misconception in your old age. Not that he could be faulted for his decades of effort and care, but Cira needed a hill to die on.

  My own life doesn’t start when that false father passes, no… It started when you died.

  Cira wished desperately that he had prepared her for that eventuality rather than the former, but such was life.

  And live her life she would. Cira would not budge on this matter. To hell with the demons and to hell with Gazen’s path. She refused to let her fate go one of two ways. That was not the kind of sorcerer Cira was.

  Porta Bora was still the destination, but now for purely selfish reasons. Sure, she would pick up work as she saw fit, but there was only one reason she wanted to go to the city.

  To live the life of a normal girl. There she would find who Cira really was and what she wanted to do. That spark of a dream she saw in her head when the old man at the trading post first told her of the city. It was almost poetic how much trouble she pointed in her direction in that specific place, and in this specific forge she intended to ascend to the heights of ‘Proficient Sorcerer’.

  Long gone were the days of elementary caliber and she could hardly call herself a sorcerer with moderate capabilities. Intermediate was starting to push it with how profound her thoughts had become over the past couple days.

  Yes, to finally become a sorcerer of proficient caliber, I must find purpose. And I don’t know if I can accomplish that doing the same thing my father did for the past couple hundred years or so. Or more…?

  That’s why I’m here.

  The nameless second mark’s words rang again through her head

  “Never lose sight of whatever star it is you follow.”

  No matter how powerful Kazali was, there’s no way he could predict Cira’s own will. She had little understanding of causality, but it was a force which affected events. Cira may feel or think a certain way based on her experiences and especially recent events, but how could even a primordial demon predict her decisions and course from an indeterminate period wherein nothing happened and during which she thought deeply about a future free from all who loom above.

  It was foolproof. Her sights were set far beyond those very same walls which enclosed her true father and lazing about as long as possible was the only feasible path to climb.

  What separated father and daughter was a matter of perspective. He was born within the walls, whereas Cira came to realize the walls in her path, and they would fall in a similar manner to Icarus’ own as she arrived in a deep slumber.

  The same sun which burned shackles into the back of Gazen’s neck gave Cira life. Perhaps that was the star she followed. One of unyielding light and hope which awoke anew after each good rest. One which always illuminated the path forward.

  Cira had spent all afternoon pondering her own agency within these skies when a book with no spine caught her eye. Dust drifted off in the sunlight and she found herself curious about its contents.

  “The Tragedy of Gilfast. Alright.” There was no author listed, but Cira found herself ready to skip out on the core for an evening. “Don’t mind if I do.”