Grey Realmheart 2,7

“What will you be doing?” Caera asked, her eyes jumping to the blurred figure of a small child as they dashed past the alley mouth.

“Regis and I will search the city for any sign of the Wraiths.”

Sylvie took my hand and squeezed it gently before letting it go. “Reach out to me if you get into trouble. Yes, I know you’ve faced Wraiths before, but don’t get complacent.”

“Be careful in the palace,” I said in answer. “It’s certain to be a political quagmire.”

Caera and Sylvie made their way out of the alley, heading across the city toward the palace, while I leapt to the townhouse roof and activated Realmheart, Regis once again sheltering inside my core. I watched them forge their way into Etistin’s city streets until they’d disappeared from view, then I turned my focus to the task at hand.

Atmospheric mana shone everywhere, with the specific elements closely aligned to where the mana lingered, such as earth-attribute mana clinging to the ground and stone walls while air-attribute mana whirled and danced along on the wind. These mana particles were nearly always in motion, being drawn toward a meditating mage or pushed away from the source of some spell, or just winding their way through the world in accordance with some inborn mechanical property of the mana itself.

The aether in the atmosphere was much less dense. Only a thin curtain of purple particles could be seen filling in the spaces between mana particles.

It was exactly the interplay between those two forces that I was concerned with.

The Wraiths couldn’t influence aether, and so they couldn’t manipulate it to help mask their presence. I couldn’t be sure just how effectively they could do so with mana, and so I couldn’t rely on Realmheart alone in my search. Although the godrune let me see even the clustered mana of an invisible or illusioned mage, I theorized that a magic user with suitably refined control over mana could smooth away even that to make themselves truly undetectable, especially if they also balanced the input and output of their mana with a technique similar to mana rotation.

Missing my ability to fly more than I had in quite a long time, I leapt from one roof to the next, needing to stay as high as I could get for maximum visibility. The interplay between aether and mana was very subtle and easily missed.

And we have a whole city to search, I thought, my mood sour. Still, a proactive approach seemed better than waiting at the palace for something to happen.

With aether enhancing my senses and Realmheart granting me vision of mana particles, I proceeded to navigate from one neighborhood to the next, searching for any condensed mana without an obvious source, a hint of suppressed mana signature, or changes in the atmospheric aether than might indicate a powerful source of condensed but hidden mana.