Wren Kain IV
I watched the lesser boy, Arthur Leywin, as he mowed down another dozen golems. His hair was a deep white, yellow runes tracing all along his body as he flourished Dawn's Ballad. The boy threw an arcing current of black lightning, the tendrils snapping between different mana constructs. When one of them neared, throwing a fist that could pulp boulders, he simply sidestepped, coating his blade in white fire and decapitating it with ease.
I lounged inside a cozy nook in the crater, scribbling down notes as the boy worked through the army with deadly efficiency. There was a coldness to his aura that made even me shudder sometimes.
Was he ever loved as a child? I wondered. I don't see why else he'd be so strange for a lesser.
I snorted with irritation as I marked down his mana output. Absolutely astounding for a human, I supposed. But it should be far higher, especially as the legacy holder of Lady Sylvia's Will.
"Arrogant dragons," I said, scratching my hair with a bit of irritation. I flashed back to Lord Indrath's lofty order to train the boy. "Can't train him properly if you don't even tell him all there is to his Will now, can I?"
Part of me truly wondered what this Dicathian lesser would be able to do if Lady Myre had allowed him full access to her daughter's powers. But no; Arthur Leywin was only allowed to dip into a fraction of his true abilities. The millennia of condensed insight he might be able to tap into would be truly worth the study.
The boy had asked me a while ago if it was possible for a lesser to match an asura in magical strength with enough practice, and I found my self-control wavering. The data I could gather would be absurd!
And all I would need to do would be to defy a direct order from Lord Indrath.
No thanks. Many of my fellow titans called me various words that were all synonyms to "batshit insane," but I wasn't that insane yet.
I suspected Lord Indrath would wait for the lesser boy to die of old age before coercing him into passing the Will back to Lady Sylvie. Truly a waste of an opportunity, if I were to say.
I pulled myself to my feet, strolling over to a nearby device I crafted over the course of a few weeks. I narrowed my eyes as I inspected its deep ochre surface, noting the slot at the top that was perfectly shaped for a blade. The last time that sword of Arthur's had burned–this time white-hot–I'd swiped it from him, thrusting Dawn's Ballad into the rigid stone. And I'd been able to isolate the signal; where the resonance originated from.
Dawn's Ballad.
I thought once more of Aurora Asclepius. The sister of the Lost Prince was considered cool and aloof by many before the Asclepius Clan's disappearance, only burning hotly when it came to matters of battle. She was one of the prime targets for marriage of the generation for her beauty, her strength, and her perfect poise.
I ground my teeth as I looked down at the device I'd used to track the phoenix.
Early in my many millennia of life, I had been somewhat ostracized, even amidst my own race. For a titan, I was… different. Our race's mana arts were maximized for creativity and craftsmanship. Our blacksmiths were the eminent workers of all asura; our hammers primed to make the best weapons and tools in any world.
Because our clan alone had made a pact with the Sacred Fire. That impossible flame; kept secret in the deepest tunnels of our sanctum. While the other clans of titans could craft wondrous marvels, none could ever hope to match those of the clan of Kain.
Youths in the clan of Kain were gifted a single ember of that impossible flame once they reached their majority: an ember that would follow them for all their lives. That would grow as they focused their mana through it, imbuing each strike of a forgehammer with impossible heat and using the resonance to create true marvels.
But I was born small and weak. My mind was sharper than any blade my clan ever forged, but what use was the mind when you needed pure, brute strength to exercise your clan's arts? And by the standards of a clan renowned for their blacksmiths and metalworkers, where every hammer stroke and pulse of Sacred Fire pushed a weapon closer to perfection? I was less than nothing. A… a lesser.
I did not remember why I had been along the great cliffs west of the Starbrand Sanctum that day, the floating home of the Asclepius Clan looming far in the distance. I simply remembered my anger. The cretins that called themselves my family couldn't appreciate what I could do, if just given the chance.
And then I'd heard it. That wondrous, beautiful singing had pulled on my soul. I'd flowed as if in a trance toward the source, weaving through the Charwood forests to a hidden glade.
And when I'd seen the woman within singing from the depths of her soul, something in me changed.
I had researched every emotion I could. The best I could tell, emotions such as 'love' boiled down to signals fired in the brain due to distinct chemicals. Oxytocin and dopamine worked in concert to stimulate the brain's attraction and reward systems. That was all there was to it. My elders had mocked me for that, too. Saying I'd clearly never loved someone before.
And for the first time, as I stared at the beautiful phoenix as she sang a haunting tune through the glade, I realized that they might have been right. Surely, what I'd felt couldn't just be… Just be chemicals. It didn't make logical sense. There had to be something deeper there; something more.
But then she'd caught my small, lanky person staring at her. In the moment, I'd shied away. Expecting disgust or cruelty. After all, I was defective. What could the beauty of the Asclepius Clan ever see in me?
Instead, she'd chuckled lightly, inviting me to try and sing with her.
My voice was scratchy, raw, and altogether unpleasant. I had a better chance making a device that could turn my voice into a deadly weapon of war than to create anything beautiful. I learned that day that I would not sing, and I never would be able to. I think that was what made her seem even more beautiful to me. That even as she held all the talent in the world in her hands, she did not belittle me for the lack of it.
I remembered spending the day in that glade, talking to the woman with a comfort I'd never experienced before. She listened to me as I spoke of my plans; of how I wanted to alter the arts of my clan to suit my weakened stature. I had not revealed the depths of the Pact or of the Sacred Fire, but I said all I could. Her burning eyes had asked questions all on their own as I continued.
I remembered her words. "If you cannot hammer a weapon, splintering away material and honing it further as the arts of your clan require," she'd asked, "What stops you from growing one yourself? Nurture the craft as you need, taking the time you surely have to slowly cultivate a true result?"
I'd paused, my brain hitching at the simple suggestion. "Like a plant?" I'd asked, not quite understanding yet.
Lady Dawn–for she had not yet allowed me the use of her name–had simply shaken her head. "No. Like a child."
An entire world opened before me as she uttered those words. My mind had immediately jumped to acclorite. The material was rare for its ductility and ability to absorb mana imprints. In the wilds of Epheotus, miners had to be extremely careful in its extraction for fear their mana would mutate the structure in exponential waves. The volatile metal was mostly used to demonstrate mana theory to young asura, but if I could somehow control how the absorption was funneled…
Above all, the Sacred Fire of Kain desired to be molded; shifted and used to create impossibly great works. But while it could burn hot, it was not a fire of war or destruction. What else could tame the wild absorption of acclorite? What else could bring the rampant absorption of the ductile acclorite to a calm, temperate flow?
My first creation using this idea, so many millennia ago, had been Dawn's Ballad. Of all the suitors Aurora Asclepius met, all were turned away.
But they went about it wrong. They didn't know her. Didn't know her passions, her love for the world. They didn't understand how she wished to see a child grow.
And so I'd created a child of my own. Dawn's Ballad, at first glance, was a pathetic blade. Against even the weakest of asura, it would shatter and drift to the wind. But if it were to be given the slightest drop of Aurora's blood, then… Then, just like a mother cultivating her child, it would become something more.
But before I could offer my betrothal gift and ask for her hand in marriage, the entire Asclepius Clan had disappeared. Vanished as if off the face of the planet. Rumors circulated that they'd gone to join Agrona in his rule over the lessers. But I knew better.
One time, and only once, did Dawn's Ballad shine with orange-purple light. The signal it left was faint and broken, and I'd barely managed to track it to the depths of the Beast Glades in Dicathen. But there was nothing.
I'd left the sword in the forest in despair. I would never see that signal again; that sign of life.
I fell away from the memories, looking at the device I'd created. The High Sovereign of Alacrya had layered his continent in a hundred and one different obscuring webs, masking his presence from all who would try and scry through them.
But I was Wren Kain the Fourth. I was the greatest mind the Clan of Kain had ever developed. It was my genius that elevated our weapons to treasured artifacts. It was my mana arts that pushed the bounds of what truly separated science from magic.
And no mere wards would stop me from finding Aurora. Agrona Vritra thought himself wry and conniving, but his genius was nothing to mine.
The device finally gave a set of precise coordinates, automatically showing their location on my map of the world.
Fiachra.
Chul Asclepius
I marched through the tunnel, feeling quiet fury trailing in my wake. I ignored the unsure looks I saw from the many phoenixes I passed, exchanging looks with their companions. They were accustomed to their lives of luxury and relaxation. They could not fathom the fury I carried like a deep bonfire in my chest.
Months before this time, the last gift of my mother–one of her true feathers, engraved with her unique spell so that I may always know her state–had been consumed by darkness. It was a sign that her inner fire had been extinguished; swept away to the void beyond. It was presumed by the phoenixes of the Hearth that my mother was dead, but they had long thrust her from their hearts. Once word of her capture by the Vritra had become known, they'd left her behind, unwilling to even retaliate.
And yet her feather had rekindled not long after as if by true magic. My mother somehow, impossibly, lived once more. And since then, the memento of my mother had sparked alive with more activity than in the past century.
But still, the others took no action.
I bullied my way into the large meeting room. From a wider perspective, it appeared to be some sort of theatre, with black columns of wood supporting balconies of gray marble. The autumn leaves coated the fringes of the wood, adding an air of calm that was impossible for me to feel.
Down at the central platform, the phoenixes of the Hearth deliberated their next course of action. The central table–depicting the lost city-scape of Zhoroa–held court to some of the most powerful beings in this world.
My uncle, Mordain, calmly watched the quiet debate with his leisurely posture. Soleil Asclepius offered a counterpoint to something Aurora–another phoenix named in honor of my mother–said. They all lounged in conjured seats, speaking in even tones. In tones devoid of passion.
Mordain's eyes found mine first. They held my mismatched gaze as I stomped into the meeting, disrupting what chat they were having.
"It has come to my attention that discussion has been called on the topic of my mother," I said, crossing my arms over my chest. "But I was not included in the roster of attendants."
Soleil was the first to talk. "We merely wished to discuss her current likely state," he said dismissively. He was one of the older Asclepius members, and his disregard for my anger was clear. "It seems to us that the reactions you receive from her feather may be a fluke of some sort. An error in her spellcraft."
Mordain shook his head. "You knew my sister better than that, Soleil," he chided calmly. "Chul simply wishes to know what actions may be taken and be included in those decisions."
Soleil looked down at the table, a hand brushing his deep orange beard.
Aurora of the Vine–for that was her moniker–quietly raised a hand. "We know what you wish, Chul," she said, shaking her head, "But it is impossible. As we have said many times. The safety of the Hearth is imperative. To send any sort of force out, even to search for signs of your mother, would endanger the sanctity of this home."
"So you shall continue to hide?" I said, feeling another beat of fire. I frowned with anger, though I knew the result of this conversation anyway. "The treacherous Vritra must be punished for their actions. There will be no justice otherwise," I said, feeling my core thrum.
"What is justice, Chul?" Soleil countered. "When you say the Vritra must be punished, what do you mean?"
I blinked, surprised by this course of inquiry. "A life was taken," I said with fervor. "So it is only just recompense that blood is spilled in turn."
"How much blood?" Soleil prodded. I opened my mouth to reply, but the phoenix continued on. "One life's worth? You could measure the exact amount of blood in your mother's body, Chul, and spill that exactly. But your mother is worth more than one life, is she not? So how many bodies–how many basilisks–will it take to equal the worth of your mother?"
I responded brusquely, irritated by this pointless divergence from the point at hand. "As many as are needed," I snapped, my muscles flexing. The part of me that was honed for battle sensed some sort of trap, but I ignored it. "The Vritra took my mother from me. They must pay for that act!"
"But when does it stop, Chul?" Soleil said sternly, meeting my eyes. "Will you commit genocide, as Lord Indrath did?"
I took a step back, his words striking me as if a blow.
"How many children will you deprive of their mothers?" Soleil pushed. "How many will equal Aurora's life?"
I opened my mouth again, ready to answer. As many as I need to cool the fire in my heart, I thought.
My mouth clicked shut. I turned on my feet, stomping from the large room. My fist cratered the gray marble walls of the tunnels, fire burning along my knuckles. I wanted to scream and rage. To vent my fire. But every tree in the Hearth would burn.
That was by design. To force what were once the greatest hunters in Epheotus to become peaceful songbirds, unable to light even a spark.
My feet carried me while my mind churned. I didn't know how much time had passed as I stalked through the Hearth, but when my head cleared enough for conscious thought, I was before a familiar stream.
Our stream, I thought, glaring at the pristine waters.
Memories flashed through my head, faster than I could bury them. Of my mother's cool hands on my shoulders as she taught me my martial forms along these banks. Where I would play at hunting wraiths with her, and my father would teach me the many details of the stars.
I was named after the greatest patch of stars in the sky. The Chulsen Cluster was only visible during the Aurora Constellate, but when those stars shone, they were brighter than anything else.
"A small, beautiful window of time," my mother would lament when she was truly sorrowful. "A small window of time where you became a truth. A wonderful, wonderful possibility."
Why could none grieve for my mother as I did? Why did none hold her in their hearts any longer?
"I suspected I would find you here," a calm voice said from the side, breaking me from my grief.
I turned, seeing Mordain as he strolled to the stream, his hands clasped leisurely behind his back. The runes that glowed underneath his eyes flared.
"Are you here to mock me too, uncle?" I asked, puffing out my chest as I faced him. "I was bested in a battle of words. Must you press your victory further?" I accused.
My uncle did not respond. Instead, he walked up beside me, his long, flowing locks of fiery orange shifting slightly in a breeze I could not sense.
"You have your mother's fire," my uncle said. "It burns hot and bright, but too easily can it become blinding." Mordain looked at me solemnly. "Soleil meant well, but he can be overbearing. Moderation is not in his veins."
"I am not blind," I said, though my voice was not loud. "I am the only one who sees."
"So you say," Mordain said lightly. "But light changes everything we perceive. What you believe to be true is not nearly as clear as you may think."
He treats you like a child, I thought, feeling my anger rise again. Speaks in riddles meant to confuse and confound.
Then my anger fell once more. Because you are one, Chul Asclepius, a dark voice whispered. You have not undergone your First Sculpting. And without the assistance of your mother, you never shall. Forever shall you be viewed as a child of the Asclepius.
"Will nothing be done?" I asked, following the stream with my eyes. "Will no vengeance be wrought?"
Mordain was quiet for a long, long time. "I have not told you of how my clairvoyance functions, have I?"
I blinked, turning to look at my uncle with surprise. Mordain was one of the minuscule few phoenixes to truly absorb the lessons taught by the remaining djinn before they perished due to their lesser lifespan. Rarely did he speak of his gifts, the last time I could remember being the young Ladies Darcassan. And that was many, many years ago.
"You have not. Do you not peer into the future?"
Mordain chuckled, his fiery eyes dancing. "Perhaps you could claim my abilities are thus. But in truth, I can grasp a sense of possibility. Should I put my mind toward the chances of an event, I can divine the likelihood of its occurrence. Using this, I can work backward, noting what may increase the chances of said event. For my unique understanding of aether, it is a balance of probability rather than true future sight."
He looked up, staring at the autumn leaves that sprouted from a myriad of boughs of silver in the cave ceiling far above. "But around the time your mother's fate became uncertain, every single thread changed."
I tilted my head. My uncle seemed to put great weight on these words, but I was too slow to understand. "I do not comprehend the significance of changing paths," I said, feeling as though my wit were as slow as an engorged tunnel worm.
Mordain turned to me, and for the first time in the long, long years I had known him, I saw a true spark of passion in the depths of his eyes. "Chul, whatever happened around your mother defied Fate. I know not what action she took, nor if the action was done unto her. My sight is fogged and uncertain now. There was a time when I knew the likelihood of the Hearth's discovery. A time when the outcome of the Dicathian war with Alacrya was all but certain. A time when I knew my own Fate. But no longer."
"My mother," I said quietly. "Does this mean that she still lives? Truly?"
My uncle exhaled lightly through his nose. "I do not know in truth. But know that when I can make sense of the paths once more, something will be done."
My shoulders slumped as I looked weakly down at the water. "How long will it take to understand these paths?" I asked, my blustering voice but a weak whimper. I truly sounded like a child.
Mordain rested a comforting hand on my shoulder. "I do not know. But you have my word that you shall be the first to know when I find certainty again."
He left me not long after, the gurgling of the stream my only companion. I felt reinvigorated by my uncle's words, as if air had been blown over the weakening fire in my veins. But more than that, I felt another path open before me.
The Dicathians warred with the Vritra-blooded monsters of Alacrya. If my uncle did not move, there was one place where I could make a change. Where Suncrusher could reap basilisk blood.
Toren Daen
I stared down at the corpse of the final boss of this Relictombs zone. A monstrous creature composed of grim shadow melted away in the aftermath of my fire, revealing a small, small body.
The Relictombs zone I'd carved my way through emulated massive caverns bordered with pillars of rising granite. At every turn, monsters made of shadow tried to pull me into the earth, the ground itself swallowing me whole. Like a demented horror game, I was forced to hone in on every sense but sight, listening for the scrape of beasts. Furthermore, they had some way of partially masking their heartfire that I didn't fully understand.
But in the end, I'd pushed through every ambush. Slaughtered every creature from a horror movie. And not far away from me, an ascension portal loomed.
I felt my limbs loosen as the adrenaline left my body. Even at my current level of strength, the Relictombs provided more than enough challenge to keep me on my toes. But today, I wasn't here for the challenge.
"We're safe here," I said quietly. "This dimension is cut off from everything else."
Nothing. The room stayed its dark, dark self, the only light a splash of purple from the portal behind me.
I closed my eyes. I allowed myself to remember the events in the Central Cathedral. Of Agrona's appearance. Of what he'd done to Greahd, trying to send a brutal message to me. Of the wrenching horror of having my mind invaded.
"He can't reach us here," I whispered. "You're safe. We're safe."
The room stayed silent.
I exhaled through my nose, looking down at the floor. "I felt it," I said, allowing myself to truly speak of this for the first time. "I felt his horrible, wrenching touch on my mind. I felt the scraping sensation it left behind. For barely an instant, I felt what it was like to be violated in the worst way imaginable."
I held Inversion in my hands, the white horn emitting faint light. I'd wrapped light leather around the base, turning it into a true grip for the dagger-like horn. The pulses of orange-purple along its length thrummed comfortingly. But that was not the sound I wished to hear.
My breath shuddered as I relived the memory. The mind should never, ever be touched in such a way. I understood her fears now. Understood her reservations. Understood her revulsion.
"So I can't imagine the hell you must have gone through for so, so long," I said aloud, my voice choking. "For every day to consist of defilement after wrenching defilement. And the only thing you could expect the next day was further invasion of everything that made you you."
"I'm so sorry, Aurora," I said weakly, looking down. "I'm so, so sorry."
Slowly, almost painfully, I felt the reemergence of our bond. It slowly spread like water through drought-ridden earth, seeping into my mind in meek return.
I looked up, meeting Lady Dawn's burning eyes.
She was crying. Tears like liquid fire trailed down her cheeks as she looked at me, her normally strong shoulders hung in utter defeat. The Unseen World itself seemed to reject my bond's phantasmal shade.
"I left you to him," she wept. "I left my child to him," she said, falling to her knees in the dark, dark zone. "I let him touch you."
I moved forward, kneeling down in front of the phoenix. I felt the wrenching guilt over our mental tether, ripping and overflowing in exponential pain. I accepted it as I accepted her, wrapping my bond in a tight embrace as her emotions flowed like a river breaching a dam.
"It's okay," I whispered, threading my fingers through Aurora's feather-red hair. She sobbed weakly as she clung to my back, her fingers digging into it as if I were the last thing on earth. "We're okay."
"No," Lady Dawn cried, her shade shaking in my arms. "No. I shouldn't have left you. I let him rape your mind, Toren. I ran from him! I let him have my son!"
"I'm still here," I said, rubbing circles into her back as I tried to hold back my own tears. "We're both whole. There's room for tomorrow."
I held my bond for a quiet eternity as she bled her guilt into me. In place of the void I'd felt in the wake of Greahd's death, I absorbed every emotion my bond expelled. Guilt at leaving me when faced with Agrona Vritra. Horror for what I had witnessed him do. Anger and self-hatred for her own cowardice. The fear that everything we had worked for was doomed once and for all. Each emotion stretched wider than a sea.
I matched it with my own care. How I understood her terror. Her guilt. And her self-hatred. I'd felt all of those before; known them in my soul. Our mental tether was alive with more activity than it had ever experienced as Aurora lamented her woes and I returned it with as much compassion as I could.
A long time later, when my bond had wrung herself dry, I gently pushed her away. Those fire-streaked tears had burned small tracks along her martial robes, and where they'd hit me, my own clothes had smoldered.
"Agrona did not seem to notice our bond," I said quietly. "He seemed to think you had merely attempted to possess my body, leaving your Will behind in failure."
Aurora sniffed lightly as she pressed her forehead into my own, using the act as a measure of support. "He is a creature of schemes, Toren," she said weakly. "Agrona does not lie, but he does not tell the truth either."
It was true that in the aftermath of that confrontation, I'd felt distinctly that I'd been set free. Like a dog that was allowed off its leash. I remembered Agrona's words.
"It would be interesting to see the effects he has on the participants of this war."
The question was, who were the participants that he referred to? Kezess Indrath? Arthur Leywin? Or perhaps Seris Vritra herself?
"He may even know all of the future your world divined," Aurora said weakly, squeezing her eyes shut. "All may be lost already. A pointless endeavor. No better future awaits us."
Yet even as my bond said the words, we both knew it was unlikely. There was a difference between playing with pawns on a board and allowing an enemy messenger to carry away top-secret knowledge on all your plans.
No. If Agrona knew the depths of my knowledge, I'd be lashed to the walls of Taegrin Caelum myself.
But that brought to mind another truth. I remembered the words of Norgan's ghost, further reinforced by the last djinn in the world as he lay dying. The burning drive that pulsed in the heart of every East Fiachran as they pushed back against their oppressors. Naereni's refusal to cave under the crippling losses she continued to experience.
And that long, final stare I held with Greahd, where her hope was foremost above all.
Seris' words feathered across my mind. I need only change my perspective. Peel away the darkness others tried to layer me with, revealing the sun beneath.
"I've had knowledge of this world's future for a long, long time," I said, pushing my bond slightly so she could look me in the eyes. "But I haven't used it. I've been too afraid of the changes I could make; of diverting away from a predestined path."
I clasped Aurora's hand between my own, feeling the warmth as it spread through me. "But I helped change a city. I helped bring understanding between mage and nonmage. And it's time I set my sights beyond just killing Nico Sever."
I inhaled, feeling a burgeoning star kindle in my breast. "I'm going to change this world's future."
[End of Book 3: Spellsong]