The Chimera

Chapter Thirty-Three: Two Birds

Summer spills over, the world held in its haze.

Lionel spends the days sunning his wings as he soars across the length of Sunset Citadel. It's something to do, at least.

Since Kalila, Araceli, and Fallon came back from their run-in with the erratic sage, there have been no new doors. How can they hunt the chimera without some means of going into its world? And how are they to follow the sage's advice of baiting it instead? To set a trap for catching the chimera, they'd have to have some sort of lure. Something it cares about. What that could be, though, leaves those at the citadel at a loss.

Except for Lionel. He's never at a loss.

As the courier, he gets around more than most. Those at the Beledon city council or residents within the other outposts of Ciro's Tower or Dagger Grove need only to call out for him, and he'll feel the tug to take flight to them. He doesn't find their messages to be of much interest, though. There are very few variations on the usual list of topics: Still alive? Any more specters? Did you kill them all? No, you can't come back yet. How's the weather out there?

The purported emergence of Aedus Kade is an avenue of potential excitement, but Lionel can never quite convince the city council to let him meet the man.

"They keep him hidden. Even when I fly by all the windows of the town hall, I can never spot him," he complains one afternoon, the sunlight spreading a sea around them.

Zahara looks up from the paper she's laid out on her bedroom floor. The red and gold of her paint stands out clearly on the parchment. It's a painting of Giada holding a brush against a wall, meant to be gifted as a belated thank you for spending so much time helping Zahara embellish her new room. She knows that Giada treasures the small sketches and paintings that Zahara has given her over the years. She had even brought a bundle of them with her to the citadel, to keep in her new home.

"What does he spend all his time doing? We hear about new specter sightings or attacks every month. If he's meant to be our savior, why do they keep him so removed?" she asks.

Lionel pushes himself off the wall he had been leaning on, and comes to sit by her instead. "I convinced a councilman to talk to me about him a little more. He said that Aedus Kade trains from dawn to dusk with an old soldier. But it's not going very well."

"Why not?" Zahara brings her brush back to the paper, adding bits of gold to the ruby-red fall of Giada's hair.

"He's too impatient. Unpracticed."

"Of course he is. He grew up on a farm," she says, eyes on her work. Then she frowns, saying, "But didn't he singlehandedly defeat a whole horde of specters already? If he can do that, how much more training does he really need?"

Lionel shrugs. The councilman had said something about humility, about their savior needing to learn how to discipline the boundlessness of his power. He couldn't say he understood much of it. Instead, he focuses on Zahara.

"I like that one a lot," he says, gesturing to her picture of Giada. "You really caught the color of her hair well."

Zahara smiles at him. An easygoing beauty.

It morphs into something wistful. "Thank you," she says. "I just wish I could do a little more than paint all day."

"You do well at training," Lionel points out. Marikit and even Tai praise her often; she's one of the faster learners.

"But I haven't made any progress with my gift. Any time Giada helps me with practicing my shield, I end up exhausted after the first few tries. Meanwhile, Kalila's always been fine with her key, your transformations are much quicker than they used to be, and we all see how Jasper's gotten used to his bell. Tai's learned the trick of his sand, Fallon figured out his book, and Giada has shown us all multiple times that fire can't hurt her anymore. I've fallen so far behind."