A Wolf's Howl, A Fairy's Wing

Hearing Erik's question, Eira quickly separated herself from him and nodded again with a bright smile, having already regained much of her enthusiasm. "Okay! Uhm, well, mistress's name is Audumla," she started, clearly a little unsure on where to start. "And… And she's a minotaur, like me!"

As soon as the name Audumla rolled of her tongue, Elora sounded in Erik's head. "Didn't that name appear in your dream as well?"

"It did," Erik nodded inwardly. "Do you think Audumla is the one that talked to me in the dream? The voice I heard could have belonged to either a man or a woman."

"Maybe, but I doubt it," Elora pondered while chewing on her metaphysical hair. "If it was, why would she tell you to go to Africa in pursuit of Edda, rather than here, where your power can grow a little first? No I think that dream was sent by someone else. Someone who is perhaps on the same side as Audumla, but is unable to communicate with her properly…"

"Ymir…" Erik mumbled in response.

"Possibly, yes," Elora, who had all of Erik's memories, nodded.

"Wait, who is Ymir?" Emma asked, slightly curious.

"In Earth legends, the giant Ymir and the primordial cow Audumla appear together," Erik explained. "They are actually part of the Norse creation myth, so it would stand to reason that the old man Eira wants me to save is the giant from my dream, and also Ymir from the legends."

"Although that would mean he is somehow still alive, despite his clear death in that dream…" he finally mumbled thoughtfully. Only on m v|le|mp|yr

Meanwhile, due the speed of their mental conversation, Eira was still wrecking her brain on anything else she knew about Audumla.

"Is that… all you know about her?" Erik asked with a raised eyebrow. Just her name and race was a little meager.

Eira grew a little panicky again and started to think even harder. "I, uhm… she's very pretty, and… really kind as well? She was always so nice when she talked to me…" her expression became a little sorrowful again as she was reminded that she hadn't been able to talk to Audumla for two years, and also realized she knew awfully little about the woman.

Erik decided to pull her out of her misery and held up his hands. "Alright, alright. You can just tell me if you think of something else later. How about we focus on how I'm supposed to find her? Did she never simply tell you her location in the past—however many years? I'm assuming she's at least on Earth?"

Seemingly glad to move on from the previous topic, Eira quickly nodded. "Yeah, she's on Earth!" But then shook her head, "Although she's been unsure of her location for the past two thousand or so years."

This caught Erik's attention. "Hold on, this whole plan of hers came into motion when aetherium somehow disappeared from Earth eight thousand years ago, but she knew her location for only six thousand of those years? So what happened two thousand years ago?"

At the same time, he addressed the fairy in his soul as well. "And Elora, didn't you say that the alterations to the genetic makeup of Emma and Emily's ancestors happened about two thousand years ago?"

Erik had told Emma some time ago about what Elora discovered back in London, but she still shifted a little uncomfortably at the mentioning of those events.

"I did," Elora nodded thoughtfully. "It has to be related somehow."

Surprisingly, anger flared in Eira's eyes when Erik asked about the events from two thousand years ago.

'So she can actually get angry,' Erik chuckled to himself.

"That's when those bastards revolted!" she growled angrily, with eyes narrowed and nostrils flared, in complete contrast to the expressive, and energetic girl she had been so far.

"Okay, now were getting somewhere," Elora mumbled inwardly.

"Who revolted, Eira?" Erik asked with furrowed brows. "And how could someone with Audumla's presumable power not stop them? Calm down a little, and tell me everything you know, alright?"

Erik's words pulled her out of her anger, and she actually seemed to be a little startled at her own emotions. "I— I uh, yeah. I'll tell you what I know," she quickly nodded.

"Mistress actually created two separate dimensions, this one, and the one that she lives in. The only difference is, that this one currently can't be moved, as it is tethered to the spatial orb over there," she explained while pointing to the orb in the middle of the circular hallway. "Our only link to the outside is that portal you came through."

"But Mistress's dimension can be moved, because it is tethered to an item outside the dimension. She did this on purpose so that the guardians could move her in case of emergency," she continued.

"Okay, you can explain the guardians later, first tell me why she needed a dimension to live in?" Erik wondered.

"I'm… not sure," Eira mumbled doubtfully. "I just know she couldn't leave it."

Suddenly, Elora's voice sounded in his head. "Actually, I think I can answer that one.

As you know, there are almost no storage methods that can keep aetherium completely loss-free. Luckily, in an aetherium-rich environment, the loss is barely noticeable due to more or less equal pressure. Only in an unawakened environment, or aetherium vacuum, does it truly become a problem. Unfortunately, the same counts for Arcanists."

Feeling that Erik and Emma were still a little unclear, she tried to explain more clearly. "Imagine… Imagine a tank of air with a minuscule hole in it, just large enough to let out a single molecule of air at a time. This is basically any Arcanists body. You don't really notice it, because even the unconscious intake of aetherium is large enough to compensate for this tiny hole."

"But!" she continued, "The more aetherium you have in your body, or in other words, the higher your rank, the higher the pressure, and thus, the faster aetherium escapes through that tiny hole. In an aetherium-rich environment this makes no difference, regardless of your rank, because unconscious intake also increase with power.

Yet, it's a whole other story in a vacuum."

Having fully entered teacher mode, she continued. "In a vacuum, a high ranking Arcanist like this Audumla would lose aetherium so quickly, that she would actually start losing ranks as her aetherium storage shrivels up to almost nothing. In contrast, a mere first-ranker would still lose aetherium, but due to the lower pressure, it would be far slower."

Now grasping what Elora was saying, Erik continued where she left of. "So Audumla protects herself by living in the separate dimension, while the first-rankers that existed before the awakening were able to keep their ranks despite the vacuum because they were weak enough, and could compensate with whatever method they used to reach rank one in the first place."

"A method we still need to ask Eira about, by the way," Elora quickly reminded him. "But otherwise, yeah. Exactly."

"You also have to remember," Elora quickly added. "That no Arcanist species besides humans is able to survive without aetherium, including minotaurs. Thus, for Audumla, losing her ranks would not only mean a loss in power, but a potential threat to her life as well."