Chapter 10: Becoming One of the Few

Year of Pride 1211, season of Heat, D.21, Emily

“I need you to take it! Please Emily, you are the only one capable of using it. Your master said you had learned almost everything he could have possibly taught you. There is nothing left that is arcane that you haven't heard.” He held out his blood covered gauntlet, I could still see the Archon Stone through his hand, the depth of the cerulean I could not have imagined. “Emily, look at me.”

I pried my eyes away from the stone to look at his haggard and worried face. The boom of the Cannons shook the wall beneath us as it struck the gates like a doom drum. “The city will fall to the Caliphate if you don’t intervene, morale is low, the city is nervous, I need you.” He pushed the stone in my hand, and closed my fingers around it in a tight grip. He turned to look at the men on the walls and spared only a brief glance back at me as he ran off to bark orders at the men.

The battle was not going well, the defenders of the City were tired from months on campaign, battle lost after battle lost. We started this war so strongly, pushed the Caliphate all the way back to the Song of Bhal. We nearly had them routed, until their god Bhal stepped in and turned the tide of war. A rallying cry, they got their second wind. Our numbers were thin, the defenders looking over at me with some last shred of hope in their eyes. I understood that plea in their eyes, this was my home too.

I was told by my father all my life that the Archon stones were an evil thing, that even the gods feared them. When I began learning magic, my father also told me to never use one, to not be like those filthy Glaion mages. I felt the stones under my feet shake again with another salvo of the cannons. The thought quickly fading from my mind as the reality around me pressed inward.

My master had used one before well over a decade ago to bring down a mountainside to protect the rear guard of the retreating army; they had to redraw the maps because of that. Trying to think back to what he had told me about the stones. He had told me they were impossibly rare. You could never hide them when in mortal hands, they appeared to the mind as if nothing was blocking it from sight. They were conduits of immense power. That many Casters would sell their pride and soul to have one. I never thought in my wildest dreams that my King would have one.

I closed my eyes and whispered a soft prayer to my father to forgive me. Clenching my hands as I probed the stone with my magic, trying to pry it open. It was like trying to punch through a wall, turgid and unrelenting. I thought back to Master Atrimir and what he had told me.

“It was more of a feeling than a systematic breakdown. I just felt I needed it, and it responded. Though I was never prepared for the other part…” Master Atrimir’s words flitted through my mind, I wondered what he meant. Another boom from the gate house, snapped me out of my memories.

Hands trembling, what was this thing? Idle thoughts as I tried to focus on the stone and prying it open. Though, my focus was quickly broken as the drum beat of the cannons hit the gates again, only now the mechanical staccato of the rotary guns on the battlements filled the air. The yells from the defenders distract me, as smoke and the smell of blood filled my senses again. Sitting down and delving deep into my mind, shielding my consciousness out of my surroundings as my master had taught me to do.

Sound became distant first, focused only on my own breathing. I tuned out, and told myself to not feel the tips of my fingers against the stone. Like a mantra, over and over until nothing else mattered. The vibration of the gates rumbling through the walls was next. I tried not to feel the humidity in the air, the gentle gust of wind, the feeling of my hair on my neck.

A few moments later, that well practiced trance overtook the world. Only vaguely aware of the battle going on around me, my King fought off four opponents as he tried to hold the gate tower staircase on his own. The defenders clashing steel as they fought off the invaders climbing the walls. The smell of smoke and fear in the air.

I knew my people, I knew my King would rather die than lose the City. As would I. Crawling deeper into my mind as I made a wind shield around my body to keep everything away, the gusts of wind tossing loose stones around. I completely disassociated with the situation around me as I continued to probe at the stone. It felt like it was challenging me, daring me to try force all I wanted. It felt prideful and sure in its denial of me.

I thought back to when I was first learning magic, back when my Master Atrimir had found that I had a talent for the air and sky. The memories flashing through the scapes of mind, the stunned response from the University and my peers when the Sage of Huron interrupted the entire lecture just to find me. Those hot summer days were spent practicing over and over the steps to just summon that power. As a young girl, we had found that sky was my Domain.

The days we spent making clouds in the air and laughing at the shapes we could come up with. My Master was patient with me as I fumbled the shapes and made them far more entertaining. An elephant with an extra trunk, or a frog that somehow had wings. When we would call storms over farms dusty fields, the looks of gratitude on their faces. The lightning we called from cloudless skies. 

The countless hours spent reading ancient tomes in dark library halls. Eyes tired from the dim candle light, the stifling stone walls that had absorbed the day's heat. But, My Master, he would always find a book that held my interest. Or the conversations had over the information held within them. The thoughtful way he challenged every last assumption I made from every lesson. Questioning even the most basic things, making me understand. The feeling of gaining a second father in my life.

I felt the stone sink into my skin and a well of power rise in my chest. Breath caught, and my eyes snapped open. I was aware, but my meditation was not broken. A surreal feeling of attentiveness and disassociation. Like I was watching the mechanics of this world for me and only me to understand. I saw the air in the stones, I saw the skies move in great currents like the sea. The way the breath moves in and out of the lungs, the oxygen flowing in their blood. Beyond that, I could see the clouds of the heavens move with the same principles, passing the sky in this noonday sun. The planets visible to me, the energy of the sun and the countless stars. 

A small voice in my head spoke “Oh sweet child of the Fae, oh dear child of air, my darling.” I felt someone hug me from behind as I felt the ghost of soft hair brush against my cheek. My vision shifted to see eight sets of shadowed eyes staring, in a perfect circle around me. “Sweet child untouched by shadow.” As all eight sets blinked in unison, an unearthly tension filled the air. I felt something wrap around my waist.

My King on one knee with his sword plunged through an opponent, blood streaking into his eyes from a cut above his brow. He had lost his crown somewhere, my thoughts vapid. Saw the defenders cutting away at the Caliphates men climbing the ladders that they had landed against the walls. The voice spoke again, only this time in my ear, a melodious voice, soft and sweet “Let me show you the magic from before time, from before this world and all worlds before next.” My vision faded.

I was on a different battlefield, but still the sounds were the same. The clash of steel, the thuds of arrows in the ground, the roars of men and beasts. Someone grabbed my hand and I snapped my head to the side to see a woman next to me. She smiled sweetly, her eyes left her face in great waves, the same color as a perfect night sky. I could see the night there, not just a reflection or mimicry, but actually in her eyes. “Sweet child, you are of my blood, my child, my creation.” She pointed out, and I followed her motion.

I saw that this was indeed a different fight altogether. Not just men, but Giants, Fae creatures with wings like Monarchs set ablaze, and those with long tails like this woman next to me. All fighting in harmony, against a great challenge. Fighting a colossal Shadow, reminiscent in shape of man, the distant memory of a mockery of what a human should look like. She waved her hand, the wind weaved around everything and took the feet from under the Shadow.

I didn’t realize anyone could have that control over the air. My Master had told me that the sky was a sea, and to try and force the air to move like a solid was an impossible task. He had always told me that air was an area of magic that dealt in wide arcs not pinpoint accuracy. That was why everything we did was done with caution, to limit collateral damage.

She solidified the air and sliced at the shadow with the atmosphere itself, she gave it life of its own and it did as she asked. “Darling, sometimes you must unlearn what you know, sometimes you must accept that the world itself is not as it is. That Spark in your soul is not as rigid as you seem to believe, let yourself feel that magic and you will see there is very little separation. You are one of my children, so as my power runs through you, will the world do as you need.” She cupped one of my cheeks with her hand, and a wave of knowledge flooded in my mind as I snapped back to reality.

My head felt as if it was split open from the vision, my eyes burned as if they were bloodshot. Lifting my head, hands over my ears an ethereal song filling them. I saw a second opponent, my King was fighting, down. He was huffing from the exertion. The others backed away as they noticed me, their shadows aimed away from like I was a second sunrise. Time felt sluggish, the defenders all looking at me with a strange sense of awe on their faces. The Invaders all had a look of abject terror. My head felt foggy as everything moved slowly around me.

I think I understood what that woman had said, and moved the power from my chest to my hands. The sensation of it, not dissimilar to being set on fire. “It’s cloudy, I could use that”, I thought to myself. Using the wind to amplify my voice, though I don’t ever recall my Master telling me I could do that with air and spoke. “Defenders of the City take cover immediately, all left in the open will not be spared. My King, please hide.” It was the woman’s voice, not mine, soft and sonorous, but full of authority I did not possess. As if Azu herself had graced me with her divine authority. 

Pulling on the clouds and felt their immense weight with the air resistance moving around them. I pulled harder and faster, and felt the temperature drop as frost spread on all surfaces. Quickly coating everything on the walls in a thin sheet of ice. The ambient moisture in the air turned to snow, then the moisture in the stones broke open from the sheer lack of heat. Dry ice forming in the corners of the battlements of the atmosphere forced its energy here at my command.

The clouds bolted toward the walls we stood atop, great waves of winds crashed against the stone and ripped the shingles off the roofs of the homes behind me. I saw more than a few of the defenders ejected from the battlements, far more than a few of the Caliphates soldiers fall from the ladders, to the uncaring earth below. Though I felt bad for our men, I did try to warn everyone. Odd, it didn’t seem to bother me at the moment.

I felt the energy start to swell in the clouds as they condensed around me. “I need to vent that or the energy will go where it pleases” I thought to myself. Cracks of lightning sounded in the clouds as they gathered, flick of the wrists toward the artillery arrangements in the enemy lines. Immense booms of thunder sounded as the lightning struck and burned them. Everywhere I looked, people were blinded by the intense light. Cracks formed in the walls from the force of the impacts, and knocked over many on the battlefield. Their clothing immolated from the concussive blasts as the air rushed to meet with itself in grand shockwaves. 

Giving the defenders a moment to seek shelter as I felt the clouds break from the moisture in the air just before the rain fell. My King came running up to me and flung his cloak out to catch a bolt that was shot at me from an invader on the top of a ladder. I saw it move in slow motion, flicking my hand out and a gust of wind knocked it and my King to the ground. I looked at him to see the surprise in his eyes as I pushed another burst of wind, flinging him into an alcove under the gate tower. I felt only a small bit of shame for making his act meaningless, having felt the bolt leave its string long before he flung his cloak. 

Dropping the temperature more as the rain tried to hit the ground. I wouldn’t allow it to, and raised my hands to the air and felt my knee give out as I fell to a kneeling position. I was exhausted, I could see now that the defenders were hiding, that the Caliphate had decided now was the time to charge. Seeing an apparent opening in the defense, I would make them regret charging into open ground.

“Darling, I know it is hard, but I know you can do it. Protect your family, your home. Your father is still inside the City.” I heard her sweet voice again.

Huffing from the effort, the rain collected in a million different points and condensed them. I dropped the temperature again across the entire area, and felt the ice form on my clothes and skin. Millions of small spears of ice hovered in the air above the battlefield and over the walls, waiting. An avatar of death, given the ability to reap this field of souls. Their blood, on my hands. I would not allow them to destroy my home, my country, my family.

The area went silent, not even a breath of wind as I held the sky in my hands. A colossal gust of wind as I pulled air from the upper atmosphere, down. Its roar deafening all across the city. Shattering the glass of the buildings, opening the cracks in the walls so that a few sections slumped off into the invading army. Stronger than anything that this planet had ever felt before, stronger than the most viscous hurricane. More venom in it than the tornadoes that laid waste to everything in their paths. My wind wall crushed thousands of them before the main event even came. 

I pushed on each and every one of the spears and shot them toward the earth in a cataclysmic hail storm. I felt the spears pincushion each and every one of the bodies on the field below. Something in my mind broke, vision beginning to fade from my peripherals, quickly starting to black out. The woman appeared before me again, she looked sad but happy. Like a mother proud of her child who had just won a fight with a bully.

My chin touched my chest as I felt the Archon stone fade away, and felt the woman lower me down to the ground, feeling the rivers of blood on the field below. Some were my people, most were the invaders. War horns sounding the retreat of the surviving army as a distant echo, reverberating around the inside of my skull. Dimly aware of my king running over to me yelling my name. I noticed one final detail, those eight sets of eyes, had never stopped looking at me.

The woman whispered to me before I blacked out completely. “I am proud of you, my sweet child…” As she slipped her tail from my waist. 

***

Year of Pride 1211, season of Heat, D.51

The dusty smell of the old tomes filled my nose, the air thick and humid. The book in front of me laid open on a section I had reread a few times and retained nothing. Leaning back and felt my back crack a few times and closed my eyes. Thinking back to the idea that was beginning to form, an idea on magic, it didn't feel right anymore.

"Master" I said with my eyes still closed.

"Yes, Emily?" Atrimir said without ever looking up from his book, his pipe hanging loosely from his teeth as he was trying to read out of a few different tomes at once, keeping pace with a finger in each one.

"About the battle..." I trailed off, not really wanting to ask what I wanted. I heard Master's teeth click on his pipe. "That stone, that experience..."

"You still feel dirty about it, no?" He turned a page in one of the books. "I know you have your reservations, but you turned the tide of the battle, the war. You accomplished something very few have ever done. Why, the King has made a holiday after you!"

"No, it's not that, I don't feel unclean about it anymore. Did..." I hesitated but continued "did you see someone when you used the stone?"

I looked over at him. His monocle catching the light from the lantern on the desk, he was looking at me. Taking his old tattered hat off, that he got from a witch decades ago, he sighed heavily. He ran his hand over his hair and set his elbows on the desk. Steepling his fingers and closing his eyes. "Yes, I did. Felt as if someone grabbed my hand, though no one was there. A woman spoke into my ear and told me to remember the ones I'd leave behind if I failed. My vision faded and we were looking up at the sky as new constellations were being formed. The woman told me I was one of her own and flooded my mind with information. When my vision came back, I was able to crumble to that mountain side. It occurred to me that the air we breathe, the gases that flow through the atmosphere, are part of the stones. Once I understood that, I took the air from the stones and collapsed that mountain. " He paused and took a breath, rubbing the space between his eyes. "Emily, who did you see, and why do you ask?"

"I wasn't expecting it. She just appeared, she was simultaneously terrifying in her might and as soothing as a mothers touch." I told him, the words falling out of my mouth without me being able to stop myself.

"I had that experience as well." He said, his teeth clacking against the pipe again. That curious look in his eyes, the kind that always came when he was onto something. 

"It's after that something occurred to me, after all that power I had, after all I could do with it." My voice shook a little as I spoke.

He looked around, into the darkness just outside of our lantern light. It was only me and him here. "And what is that, pupil?"

"It seems that I think we are not actually in control of magic, or maybe we are a much more marginal degree than we think. Everything I do with my magic now, it feels insubstantial. Almost like I'm asking for permission rather than being in control. That woman, who was she? I think she might be a god of some kind." I was breathless by the time I stopped talking, Master had that look in his eyes, the kind he only had when he felt a discussion was in order.

"Let's break this down, why do you feel like you aren't in control? Your magic is as flawless as it has ever been." He relit his pipe with a small stream of fire he conjured from the tip of his finger. 

"Well, I." I began, but he only lifted one of his brows in that all too familiar expression. "Because now it feels like I'm asking the world and its forces to obey, rather than a command. It feels looser, more like there is just a millisecond delay that I never noticed before. Like something is looking at my intent and then doing it for me."

"Hmm?, and I suppose you feel this talk of gods is relevant because of this feeling? You think that the gods are this source of power?" He asked me.

"To a degree, we were always told that the gods fear the stones. Why?" The question laid out with more intent behind it that I meant.

"I do not know. From my vast experience, no one has ever found where the stones come from. Or what they are actually made of, no one's history goes back far enough to answer that. The only ones that might know are the Fae or their Queen." Atrimir responded, making a swirling motion with his hand. A small image of the world appearing in it.

"You never told me the Fae and their GODDESS were real!" My eyes practically feel out of my head at that bit of news. "How do you know?"

"A young and interesting wayfarer named Odeza, beyond that King Gjorn would be furious with me for telling you even that much." He said with a small smirk.

"That's it? You aren't going to tell me more?" I set my elbows on the table, staring at him with those puppy dog eyes that made him melt.

"She would prefer I don't. She is a valuable resource to me and I won't betray her trust for this. Beyond that, I also do not wish to invoke the Ire of The Endsong. Gjorn is a far more patent Caster than I, or anyone else that is alive to hear the song that drips from his lips." He stated flatly, lowering his gaze at me and that line of inquiry was over wordlessly. 

"Well back to the original question" I said with a huff.

"Why do you think you are not in control?"

"It's all that woman. Her form was blurry to me, but she looked human enough, with some oddities that I’m not entirely sure of." 

"She was vaguely Goblin-like to me." He said without any type of inflection.

I stared at him, trying to see if his expression changed, but it didn't. "Goblin-like. What do you mean?"

"Very long ears flared out, greenish tan skin. Only she had a tail and her eyes were a reflection of the night sky, stars and all. She was also taller than me from what I remember. Which doesn’t fit the description, but we are discussing possibilities at the moment." He waved his hand at the question. "You're getting somewhere, We both had an experience with presumably the same woman. We were both given an extraordinary amount of power for a while. I still feel control over my magic, and you don't. You notice there is the smallest delay in your magic, and you think there are other forces at play here."

"The long and short of it, yes. Do you know of any gods in any account being able to interact with the stones?" I asked, he was interested now.

"From every account we have of holy men trying to gift a stone to the gods, terrible things happen. Most of the time the holy man is burned alive or the building collapses, regardless of the god being prayed to. So, either they are afraid of them, or furious about them." He spoke in between puffs on his pipe. "Maybe both. There are known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns. Maybe there is a pattern here, maybe there is quite a bit missing for it to make any sense."

"What did you do to make the stone work for you? I thought back to my father, and the training I had with you. Also" A slight tint to my face appeared "I thought about how you have become like a second father to me... the stone just sunk into my skin after that."

There was a very long silence, a space where my words hung in the air. He wheeled his chair over to sit next to me. He straightened his back and rested his hand on mine. "You never told me you felt that way. Emily, I don't know what to say to that. I..." I hugged him and cut his words off.

He didn't need to say anything to it, he knew. He spoke again, letting go of my hand. "I thought of my family back home, and my students. Like you said, the stone just sank into my skin."

"So we have another commonality, thoughts of family seems to be related to the stones." I ran my hand through my hair.

"You know, in the Glaion region there is a smaller set of gods that doesn't get talked about much outside of funerals, even here in Huron they are spoken of a little. The Forgotten Family. They are a trio of gods, that are the gods of friendship and family. They might be worth some further study? Some lesser known gods that reflect something we went through." He stated pensively, scratching his chin. 

"I think she is a god, of some kind. Very few have clearly ever seen her though. Not many who have ever used a stone successfully. But, to my last point. It doesn't really feel like I'm in control of magic, because I feel like I'm asking, not commanding. But, when I was using the stone, it was a definitive command. Like the world quite literally couldn't say no. So, I guess it feels more like a prayer than casting magic." I looked over at him to see him nodding.

He cast a spell that illuminated the dark library we were in, he frowned. "Maybe you are right in that delay theory. I notice it now too..."