18 years later—1388 France

“Show me your hand, father.”

My son splays his own out on the table. A Knight, a King, a Priest—the Hierarchy.

“Well played, Premi.” I lay my own—the Falconer, the Jester, the Herald. I turn my head to consult the Table, which holds the different combinations of three; but after a few seconds I find none to match. “That’s another game to you, then.”

He nods and gathers up the cards, and returns them to the small card stand by the lamp, which is still burning.

“And where will you go today?” I ask him.

“My friends,” he replies. “Here on the grounds.”

“Orion Medici?”

“Yes.” He reaches down to the floor by the table for his knapsack, which he slings over his shoulders as he stands.

I stand as well.

My son grows taller by the day—and I stay the same.

“Premi—”

“I’ll bring the horses back, you don’t have to tell me.” He grins, and again hefting his knapsack, turns and walks out of the study.

I walk after—I watch him head down the stone steps. His knapsack bobs up and down.

His joke. Although the grounds are vast, and the Medicis live adjacent to the University, not directly within like we do, there is no need for us to bring out the horses.

But I am uncertain as to whether the Medicis are good for him. They do not attend the University or its secondary schools and, as far as I am aware, do not take a liking for education, dabbling in the arts and fine learning as per their own discretion. Orion especially—with his locks of silver, that I swear I find Premi staring at with a more than platonic fascination—

But at least Premi does attend the school, and does well.

“Did Premi leave?” asks a voice, and I turn around to see Octavia—my wife of these past near two decades—and the mother to our son. The first of a generation to inherit what we call “traits.” The first scion.

Although Premi discarded all use of his once they ostracized him from his friends at school, shortly after discovering them in that tent on that day when he changed the cards.

But at least these past twenty years, with no sign of the Magy’cal, things have been as steady as they could be. Other than my body’s lack of aging… even if my son has only recently begun to notice, Octavia now looks definitively older than I…

“Yes, to the Medicis again.”

“It’s good that he has a steady group, Ren,” Octavia says. “Unlike you.”

I nod. Things are steady. After Quoi’s passing at the hands of bandits five years ago, I could not find it within myself to discover the bonds of friendship anew. A feeling that I once knew in strength and numbers, but having since long forgotten their source.

“Why don’t you meet with them as well?” she asks, and I pause while pushing the chairs in. “You’re physically close with them in age.”

“But not in my mind,” I tell her, and she shakes her head. Her own locks of brown now have streaks of grey. “Have you truly aged?” she asks. “In the twenty years—longer—I’ve known you, you still really do feel to me like Reddus.”

Reddus Neralt. My previous self. Things certainly had been different then. I was more inquisitive, more calm… and there was something different about the way I lived. Or the way I walked the earth.

I shake my head. “Or, at least, after it all started,” she says, and she pulls out my own knapsack from where it had been sitting beneath my chair. “The memories are strange but in many ways you are still the same Render I met in that tavern.”

“That’s where we first met, Octavia,” I reply.

She nods. “That’s where we first met.” I notice her now putting things into the knapsack, but I soon put my hands over hers. I gently take hers off the bag, and hold her at arm’s length—she looks at me, and smiles, some more creased than before, but still the same, and I return the expression. We move together, slowly, in the dance we do to simply let each other know that we’re both still here. That we’re only an arm’s length away.

Some moments pass…

I take my hands off, and allow her to finish packing my knapsack.

“You’re going today,” she says. “Actually get to know Orion. He’s inquisitive. He still asks questions of the world—unlike someone here.” But she says it gently and she is right. I take the bag up in my arms.

“Thank you, Octavia,” I tell her. She smiles back, and I now take my steps out of the house; out of the study and down the same stone steps. I feel the breeze of the morning, and sigh.

“Okay, but what if you change the colors, like this,” says a voice.

“Oh, I like that,” says another.

I am just behind the window, and I slowly crane my head to peer in.

A group of young people is seated together. Among them I sight Premi, sitting immediately next to Orion, recognizable by his silver curls; both are seated on ornate red pillows that the Medicis have because of their wealth. Or rather because of Orion’s father, who pays loyalty to the young Charles VI.

As such, the room too is decorated with paintings on the wall, hangings by the four-poster bed that sits at the far end of the space, and furniture that Octavia would never be able to make and that which we could never afford.

Across from them is the first speaker, a girl who looks a few years younger than them both. She has hair of a deep ochre, is holding her hands out, and a thing is in them. It is of the same color as her hair. The thing is moving, wavering; and the girl is concentrated upon it, her eyes—brown—focused.

“That’s very good, Crux,” Orion says, almost conversationally putting an arm around my son’s shoulders. Premi does not withdraw. I peer around the window a bit further.

Two more sit right beneath it, a youth of around twelve years, with hair shaded somewhere between silver and ochre, holding a baby with only a few curls of his own, of more than two colors I cannot easily name. A wisp of fog, like that we breathe during winter, comes out of his mouth.

The one holding him shifts in his seat.

“Did we invite Premi’s father?” he asks, and then I realize that the first girl, Crux Medici, is holding fire in her palms. She now looks up straight at me, and the flame vanishes.

“It’s okay, you can come in,” someone says from behind me, and I turn around quickly—it is a girl around Orion’s age, or a year older, with hair of a darker silver, but her eyes are clear and welcoming. “I’m the oldest, Carina,” she says, extending a hand, which I have to shake, briefly; and she goes in and opens the door. I enter, reluctantly—and the rest of the Medicis turn towards me.

I look at Crux first, for if my eyes did not forget in this moment she was scion, meaning child of one of the original races not human, and the use of fire indicated—

“Messire Restor,” Orion says, beckoning to an empty, blue pillow which lies on the floor between him and the Medici holding the baby. “You can sit there. Dorado, introduce—”

“I know I’m Dorado,” the boy of twelve or thirteen says, without looking at me; he holds the baby still, but is moving him back and forth slowly, arms almost not moving. “Our youngest Medici is Lacerta.”

“And I’m Crux, as you probably overheard,” says the girl with fire, or who had been holding it, and this whole time Premi had not been saying anything, just sitting there; but he has shaken off the arm around his shoulders. He clasps his fingers together.

“It’s nice of you to join us,” Carina Medici tells me, choosing her own pillow to sit on. The six on the floor now form a nearly complete circle, short of the one blue pillow; the rest are red.

However, I do not move to sit on it. I look at my son.

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“Premi, is this all of them?”

“We’re all of the Medicis, yes, if that’s what you’re asking,” Orion answers. I do not like his shirt.

“My son can answer his father,” I tell him, and Orion smiles. “Son of the phoenix?” he states.

I shoot a look at Premi. So he has told them!

“And you must all be scions yourselves. Children of the dragon?” I nod towards Crux. “Has Premi been using his traits with you?”

“You’re asking a lot of questions, Messire Restor,” Dorado Medici says. “Now Lacerta’s awake.”

The baby’s eyes are wide open and a vivid green. The curl of smoke is gone, and in its place a solidified wisp of burnished orange—it has too much form to be fire. Seeing it again, my chest clenches like that of an ache, but I know with certainty that it is not that.

I gesture with my right arm towards the baby.

“What is—”

“He’s still spewing smoke,” Crux interrupts. “And yes, we’re all scions of dragon but it’s not our wealthy father, it’s actually our mom. So—”

“I know.” Given their ages their mother has to have been one of us originals, before it all happened. In the form of a human as all of us. Or something like that; but it plagues my mind to think further on this, so I find the nearest open pillow and sit on it.

Orion moves his arm behind him to pull out a hat with a feather on it, which he puts on his head. If I’m not mistaken, there is a creature depicted on the hat, but it’s hard to make out, other than its strangely shaped feet.

“All scions of the dragon. Crux, can you summon—you can summon fire?”

“He’s asking as if he truly did not see it with his own eyes,” Dorado says. “Crux can summon fire. Lacerta’s breathing it. Carina’s been using hers the longest so she summons these little animals made out of it. Orion’s a braggart and not quite the oldest and he can do—”

“Okay, Dorado, that’s enough,” and the second-oldest Medici looks at me.

“I’m more curious about what you can do,” but then Dorado sets the baby down on his pillow, and stands up. He points down at his older brother, and I cannot help but feel my mouth open when I see that the bottom strands of his hair are curling upwards, the way that… as if they’re flames.

“I may be younger than you, but I can move my body like fire,” he says.

Carina across from me claps softly. “You’re brilliant, Dorado, you are a genuine prodigy,” she teases and Dorado mumbles some things before awkwardly sitting back down and picking Lacerta back up.

“Premi, you’re not talking,” Crux says.

Premi tries to say something, but looks down at his hands.

I focus my gaze on Orion and make it stern.

“Premi is the first Scion,” I tell him. “Or rather, the first I knew.” I switch my look to Carina, the oldest. “Your older sister was born first, so she came before.”

“I know, it’s amazing,” Orion responds. “I know there aren’t too many of us, but there are also a lot of us out there. We’re actually—”

And my son puts a hand on Orion’s, in his lap. “We’re not having my father involved in this.”

Orion gives him a look that, from where I’m sitting, I cannot fully see but I can discern from Carina and Dorado that it is a look he has given before and that it is a look my son is beginning to return. Orion Medici, I will not let you.

I clap my hands a few times, and with distinctly pristine movements, open my knapsack. I remove the deck of cards.

“Father!” Premi exclaims, and I am now smiling. I will show Orion just what my son can do.

“Look here, Orion,” and I beckon to them as I start shuffling.

I notice that Crux and Carina are moving closer on their pillows, and Dorado is trying not to look.

“Oh, it’s the Hierarchy deck,” Crux says, leaning in and taking a Priest. “I don’t like this one.” She tosses it down on the floor. “Where’s the Dancer?”

I almost break the smoothness of my movements as I return the Priest to the cards, fanned out on the floor in front of myself and my pillow. “That’s not a card in this deck. Do you mean the Jester?” and I pull it cleanly out from the middle. A depiction of one such court riddler, full with bobs and yellow ringlets and pointed shoes.

A hand moves like an arrow over and takes the Jester away.

Almost an instant later, the hand returns, holding the card face up; but the Jester’s expression is joyful, not grinning; and the hat is gone, his limbs are facing the wrong way, one arm is lifted and the feet—

“There’s the Dancer, thanks Premi,” says Crux.

Premi is fidgeting with his hands. He just—he just—

“I feel like if your mouth got any wider, you could swallow Lacerta in it,” Dorado remarks. He now moves over, carrying the baby dragon child with him and pointing to a card face down in the fan. “I’m just pointing to a random spot. But I want Premi to change this to the Clown.”

“The clowns aren’t very different from jesters, Dorado,” Orion says laughing but I find my hands shaking over the layout of cards. My son—

“Premi, you just used your power in front of others.”

I’m looking at him directly but I can tell that Carina is trying to smile.

Before my son can answer, she speaks. “He should, if we are showing ours to him.”

“How about others. Do you all show your traits in front of others?”

Orion looks at me curiously, but does not answer when his siblings look at him.

Premi shakes his head. “I only change cards around the Medicis, father.”

Crux nods. “I sometimes show the servants. But only when Father’s not around.”

“You show the servants.” Octavia and I had discussed this at length.

That to show others, not Scions, our power, would be to let the Magy’cal know…

But it has been eighteen years. Surely, in a world replete with human beings, they have ignored us, and allowed us to live.

I let my shoulders fall. Perhaps I have been too pent, in watching Premi grow, and continuing to deny the truth about myself that the Magy’cal had given me that day.

Δ

That I cannot age. It had taken these eighteen years to recollect the totality of my memory but of this I am certain. For the form I used to be, long life was assured; but still, my former race would age. Slowly, but still. And I have not aged at all. And Premi is slowly realizing it, as he frolics about with others who do.

“We were born to use fire, to use it with our minds and bodies,” Orion answers instead. “Now before you say anything Messire Restor—” Orion’s speech becomes speckled with laughter—“and so were you. Although not in quite the same way, if I understand it well—from what Premi tells me.”

He looks pointedly at him.

“What did—”

“When I was a baby,” Premi blurts. “You’d tell me about the Flames, fire in your eyes, flying through the night…”

Flying over the town of Aquitaine.

My memory blurs.

“Premi, let’s go,” I say as I get up. The movement sends pangs through my knees as they remember how they once strode.

Those silver curls shake.

“I knew it. Premi, your father can’t use it,” Orion tells my son.

My son shakes his head. “But he’s—” I step on the blue pillow. “Premi—”

Orion’s eyes light up—“immortal,” my son finishes.

My foot slips, and without striking any of them, I fall back on the tapestried floor, my head hitting it and I let out a groan.

“Gack,” utters the baby.

As I slowly rise, I look. Carina's eyes are wide. Dorado and Lacerta are both looking straight into my own. Crux is rubbing her hands into her eyes, and then making eye contact, as if she’s peering into a great distance; but Orion is beaming, and I watch as his silver hair becomes irradiant.

“Why—Premi, why didn’t you tell us earlier!” he exclaims, and his siblings let out a collective sigh. “He has to help us,” he says, and Carina, seemingly without noticing, has allowed her fingers to wander over the floor, moving the index and middle fingers like a miniature person, and in its shadow simmers a fiery duplicate, a small tongue of fire shaped like a walking phoenix.

I sigh . . .

Looking at the ones here with me, I really do feel of an age with them, and see the way my son sits with his friends. I wonder why the Magy’cal let me live that day, if only to live in this future. It makes me imagine others like them, other children of dragons, lightbearers, thoughtless, undiers, elves, and my own. Wandering this world. Spots of fire and color and identity. Sitting gathered together. Scenes.

I remember the time before, but its color is different.

It is in my mind a different place. Our world’s history has changed. Its beginning is forgotten.

It is a dawn obsolete.

And you will behold the new time to come.

END OF ACT V

Exeunt.