Chapter 82 - Chapter 83

After thanking him for the gift one last time, Alistar left the modest cabin and began the long walk back to Caedmon's estate, though he stopped along the path by the Hanging Hill to store the little crystal inside of his mother's locket so that it sat side-by-side with the translucent, rosy memento of his time with his family in Crystellum. He made sure to wrap the second stone with a strip of cloth that he tore from his trousers, which were already tattered in many places from all of the day's training, to make sure that it would be safe to use on somebody else should one of his loved ones fall into a perilous situation in the future. As far as he knew, anybody that touched the original crystal would die almost instantaneously from the overload of magical energies that the strange stone contained and he didn't want to risk contaminating Mr. Herst's gift by letting the stones come into direct contact with one another.