What am I?

* * *

While Feychilde – Raz – spoke to the king, Jaroan and his sister were relegated to the dungeons. As much as Jar wanted to see this as an insult, he had to admit that the caverns were the best bit of Telior he’d witnessed so far. This was no dungeon – it was a maze beyond comprehension. A dozen tunnels opened into darkness from the first vast space they entered – their guides picked one, seemingly at random, and within two minutes Jaroan had counted a dozen more openings. They took the eighth left, the third right, the fourth left… It went on and on. Some passageways were crawl-spaces, low ceilings or high floors forcing them all to climb, crouch, slip and slide.

Frost caked everything down here. Jaroan almost got lost at one point, becoming distracted by a spider’s web in a corner as the others moved on. It was frozen thick and solid, which had produced a most-pleasing array of geometric shapes, all enclosed within the translucent white cords. If it weren’t for the female guests of the prince stopping for him, he would’ve been left behind.

“This place… predates? Yes. Predates ze iron mines.” Prince Lathenskar’s Mundic was pretty flawless, Jar had to admit, as the noble-born natives led the twins deeper under the earth. “Nobody knows who or vot made these tunnels. It is said zey span miles, going beneath ze bay. Zere are sunken chambers of living crystal, lost to men’s eyes, vhich only vizardry can find. Dark spaces of salt vater zat sink upon ze tide to reveal grottos viz floors of gold.”

Jaid made no sound, but when Jar spared her a glance he caught her with her head turned and her eyes far off, lost in contemplation.

She was only four or five yards off, well-lit by the prince’s torch, yet he’d never quite felt so far from her.

“Ve haf not… not found any… qvite like zat,” one of the prince’s two male companions huffed in an apologetic tone. This was a rotund lad in cream-coloured furs, blighted with an angry boil on his nose; he was apparently thirteen years old, but he only came up to Jaroan’s chin. The exertions of the expedition were weighing on him, going off the boy’s breathing.

Jar mostly ignored him – all of them. He was doing his best to impress the three young ladies of the entourage, of course, and this necessitated keeping his awareness focussed on the precision of his body posture, the confidence of his facial expressions. The cold was fading the deeper they travelled, for whatever reason, and it was easier to look self-assured when your teeth weren’t trying their best to chatter.

He didn’t know the ways of love, nor did they interest him, and yet the prettiest of his doting audience could’ve been a dark-haired angel sent from Celestium. She barely spoke any Mundic, and her voice was a gargling sound that made him almost physically ill to listen to. The one with the best Mundic was as plain as they came, her face seeming almost too small for her head, floating there above her chins. And the third, the eldest at twelve, just smiled mysteriously at him, still silent – he had no idea what to make of her. She was almost his height; her brown hair was pulled back in a short ponytail leaving fringe-trails at either side of her face, framing the button nose and knowing eyes.

Each of them was dressed in what probably passed for finery in a place like this, but was Hilltown-fashionable at best in his opinion. Still, he was keeping his options open at this point. He wasn’t stupid, and while the jealousy experienced by grown-ups was quite beyond him, he understood the concept. He could be friends with all of them, couldn’t he? Just friends?

Another of the prince’s male friends, a twelve-year-old who would’ve been handsome if he could’ve stopped scowling, kept shooting Jaroan poisonous looks.

“Back in Mund,” he said for what had to be the tenth time, “our brother knew a wizard. Got to go in the sea, once.”

“Under ze vater?” the prince asked, turning his head back, his open curiosity disarming.

Jar remembered the sensation, the high-speed motion that excited his stomach and left him breathless despite the water-breathing spells. The loss of self in the languid darkness, not hot or cold or even warm or cool.

It was something he couldn’t put into words.

Gone.

Forever.

He just nodded curtly instead. He already hated the prince.

Perhaps it was better that he couldn’t voice his thoughts – his reticence seemed to be mistaken for nonchalance, and the pretty, jarring-voiced girl tried to coo in awe, producing a nasal bleat.

“Arhhh yesz, ze zea of Munt! Ze vater is varm as ze coltron?”

Cauldron, his mind filled in for him after a moment’s consternation.

“Ha,” he said in acknowledgement, hoping her question was rhetorical, doing his best to smile at her.

“That sounds splendid!” gushed the round one. “You must tell us more, Vintilar of Mund. Could you communicate with the fish? Oh!”

He found himself looking once more to the silent one, snatching a glimpse of her chewing on a bit of her fringe before she noticed his gaze.

Slowly, deliberately, the girl withdrew her hair from her mouth and tucked the strand neatly behind her ear.

She then did her best to smile at him.

Maybe it’s a good thing, he reminded himself, struggling to move his eyes once more to his sister and the prince at the fore of the group. If it makes Jaid – if it makes Shirya want to stay…

I want her approval, he realised. After what I did – after what I became – I want to stay. And I want her to want to stay too. If she doesn’t – if she doesn’t, I’ll go with her.

But the dream had come too late and too early, and there was still something lacking. Unbeknownst to him, his fate was behind and before him, towering above, not a wave but a glacier, creeping across the plane of his future. He would never taste the lips of the mysterious girl as he thought he would one day want to. He would never taste any lips, never want to know the ways of love for himself.

Never grow up.

Unbeknownst to him, despite his youth and the burden of his potential on the fabric of reality, he bore the high doom of the Mundian. There would be no escaping this, no bird flying free to save him, any of them, from destiny.

The burden of the Crucible approached, and death would only be as an unburdening, in the end.

The dark elves are trying to break me, he thinks, feeling the distant sensation as his bones are pulped, over and over. I’m broken already.

We’re all broken.

* * *

“Vhen I was told zat my bride vould be the sister of a sorcerer, I voz… abrupt with Father. I imagined…” Lathenskar put on a tight, winsome grin. “I imagined an ugly, dark thing.”

“And I’m not ugly and dark enough for you.”

His smile only broadened, and he gave her that look, that look she sometimes saw.

“You are very beautiful,” he replied quietly.

The response she’d given was something the old Jaid never would’ve come out and said like that. The old Jaid would’ve been overawed at having a prince at her elbow, having his attentions showered down upon her. But Shirya? Shirya had washed the bodies of the dead. Shirya was the self she’d made, only to have been denied, killed permanently, she’d thought, by Kas’s return from Zyger.

But he was a necromancer from the very start, and he’d brought Shirya back, named her, thrust her into being. Now, if she couldn’t be Jaid, she had to be the girl who risked death, the girl who stood in the valley of Mortiforn’s door and was unafraid.

She smiled at the prince, smiled just as winsomely as him, moulding her face like clay. She was capable of this and more. She could snigger and cry in alarm, she could wince and whoop and babble and frown. It wasn’t fun, playing at being Shirya in name only, like Jaid still existed. But it wasn’t un-fun, either. It was just… necessary.

Shirya didn’t care what the prince thought of her. Yes, he was rich and powerful, and would be handsome some day. But he was just a boy, still, and she just a girl. Talk of marriage? The Jaid who’d wanted to ride Princess would’ve leapt at the opportunity just because that was the done thing for her, but Shirya, whose interest in the unicorn extended now only to the manner of its obliteration – Shirya didn’t care one whit about husbands and weddings. She was the god’s. There was no escaping her destiny in immortal bondage to this young man, whatever a seer had told him. There had to be other sorcerers with sisters in Telior. There would be no becoming the princess, as much as it sounded like everything she’d said she’d ever dreamed of.

The hearths blazed, servants piling on the wood until the voices of the fires became a crackling choir. The table was long, awash in delicacies and scents, some repulsive, others virtually demanding that she try them. She ate neither. The conversation between guests often took the form of bastardised Mundic, perhaps out of sympathy for their foreign newcomers; or perhaps in an effort to impress the Mundians with their educations.

She noted the girls eyeing her and whispering, her would-be foes, those who should’ve been her enemies – if that had been what her story was about.

Shirya was not impressed. Shirya was not insulted. Shirya was not much of anything, anymore.

For a time, she’d moved as though she were a statue. The flesh dimpled under pressure but she didn’t feel it. The tongue moved in her mouth, jaw swinging on its hinges as it performed for the benefit of those around her. Eyes and ears drank in everything, filing away the useful and separating articles of interest from the dross – but there was no internal impression, nothing working in the statue’s brain. She wasn’t alive, not really. There were rare moments when she felt the light burst into being within her once more, when she saw, she heard, she tasted… But such a flight of fancy was doomed, shovelled straight from the womb of its birth into its grave. The statue did not think. It did not feel. It only played its part, unchanging.

Telior was too close to home. Jaid’s brothers seemed to believe that they had enacted some great act of contrition. Moving from the haven of death and debauchery that was Mund to Telior was hardly a formidable feat. Mund at its fairest was far fairer than Telior, and at its ugliest, far uglier. But that was no achievement. She supposed the same could be said of all places, when you saw them from the inside. Her home – she would always think of it that way – was the greatest place in Materium. Everything else rose and fell in the shadow of Mund. And this place was as filled with shadows as any other.

I’m homesick, Jaid knew – and for the millionth time Shirya let that thought melt, let the statue become stone once more. It was her part to suffer, suffer for what happened to Nighteye most of all, and the self-petrification was the best she could do.

It was the evening of a fancy dinner in the palace, the celebration of the Ocean’s Eve, and Raz brought his new girlfriend. Nafala appeared to be as uncomfortable as Shirya, but she wasn’t half as good at hiding it. The sorceress barely nibbled her food, and, despite this being a gathering of her fellow countrymen, she kept looking at Raz for reassurance.

She’s adrift here, Shirya realised. They may be her countrymen but this is to her what dining in the Arrealbord would’ve been to Jaid. It’s… daunting to her.

How curious.

They didn’t get chance to talk, thanks to the prince and his friends. Instead, Shirya was forced to settle for throwing her some serene smiles of encouragement across the table. It was only what she was supposed to do. It gave her ample opportunity to study Raz’s latest trophy.

The woman – quite obviously no longer a girl, in spite of her height – was an open book. Nafala wore every emotion she felt on her face – either that, or she was a skilled actress, feigning vulnerability for some reason.

Why did she come in the first place? Shirya wondered. Is it just for him?

Nafala did seem infatuated with Jaid’s brother. She held his wrist from time to time, between mouthfuls, and he would pat the back of her hand with his free one until, a few moments later, she would release him and return her halting fingers to her cutlery. Her gaze when she looked at the archmage was that of a supplicant, like she was begging for him to excuse them.

She glanced at her twin. It was interesting. Jaroan had never liked Emrelet, not really, but he seemed to approve of Raz’s new partner. Perhaps it was just that they’d entered into a new world.

A world filled with Telese.

One where Shirya felt increasingly alone.

Telior itself was appealing to her, with its wanton wildness, the crash of storms out beyond the bay in whose tumultuous winds she would stand, hair streaming, void-lunged. She’d made her decision in the bowels of the palace: she would stay, for Jaroan and for Raz; she would pay the toll.

But Telior’s appeal was that of the grave. It felt like home, but it was still wrong.

Here I will live, and cease to live, and seek your embrace, my Lord.

She knew all the words, the catechisms to dispel her foul temper. She knew them, and that only made it worse. Her emotions only had the substance of an illusion. It was conscious belief that gave them a support structure and yet she believed. She believed in her frustration. She believed in her loneliness. She believed her life was already over.

“Vhen summer comes, zis squid vill no longer be in our vater,” the prince was saying to her – or perhaps across her. It was hard to tell sometimes, especially when she was only listening with ten percent of her brain. “You should make ze most out of it vhile ve have it!”

He forked a pile of gelatinous white tendrils and sucked them into his mouth with relish, like they were soft candies.

She forked her own mouthful, chewed –

Put down the nausea, swallowed –

Smiled, and asked some banal question about where the squid went in summer.

Lathenskar beamed, and continued to splurge his knowledge and opinions across the table, as, she supposed, princes were wont to do. Meanwhile, she returned to her thoughts.

We were never meant to be here. We were never meant to be these people.

The sensation is akin to weightlessness, so great is the agony. She floats, close-enough to annihilation that spirit is separating from flesh. Everything inside is ground paste and jelly and the fear, the fear is something she can’t comprehend.

She retreats. She hears the reflected echo and replies.

Yes, broken. Never to be made whole again. That is life.

* * *

“It doesn’t make sense!” Jaroan snapped, throwing the book on the floor.

Over four hundred symbolic templates for the binding of magic into an item. Thousands of different ways to summon an eldritch. So many geometries for force-lines that he wouldn’t expect even a mathematician to be capable of assigning the number. Yet each dropping one had a spell, a verse or two of ridiculous Netheric or Etheric or Infernal. Sometimes the reagent-list was the only difference between two spells and yet the rarer ingredients didn’t always produce more powerful creatures. Sometimes spells invoked gods, but it clearly wasn’t a requirement; they seemed to be mentioned more as an afterthought, and even then only one in ten incantations bothered.

There was no rhythm. No underlying order beneath the tangled chaos. No key to hold in the mind, unlock all the mysteries.

It all had to be learned, by rote. The shortcuts his fledgling genius wanted to seize upon simply weren’t there. At least not to his eyes. And the last thing he wanted to do was to ask for help. The Lord Warlock of Telior himself was asleep upstairs – or, more likely, off kissing his girlfriend… But he was hardly going to impress Raz with his sorcery when it was Raz himself who supplied the answers…

“It’s okay, Vin,” Jaid called softly from her room. She sounded as though she were asleep, or half-asleep at least.

Distracted.

“I’ve told you not to call me that, not when it’s just the two of us!”

Jar pushed down hard on the overly-comfy pillows behind him, propping him up on the low, wide bed he called his own. He swung over his legs, bent his knees, and hoisted himself up to his feet. Kicking on his ‘slippers’, a few steps brought him to the door, the corner of the frame where he could look in at his sister.

She wasn’t reading. Her candles and lanterns, braziers and globes – nothing was lit. Her eyes were open, unblinking, shining in the darkness. She’d wrapped herself tight in her quilt like a corpse in its death-shroud, the bed-sheets on either side of her smoothed perfectly flat.

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“What’s wrong with you?” he asked. He tried to be as gentle as he could, but he could hear the sharpness of his own concern there in his voice.

“Wrong with me? Nothing. I’m just… trying to go to sleep.”

He assessed her. She’d seemed increasingly removed from things, recently – removed from him. She laughed and smiled just as often, but over the last few weeks there’d been an ever-growing mania behind her eyes.

Does she not want to marry the prince? he wondered for the first time.

Then, on the heels of that: How come I never asked her?

The answer to that was obvious. They no longer slept in the same room. The late-night incidental conversations had been reduced to minimal interactions, like this one right now. Jaid had her princely consort; Jaroan had his princesses always trying to get in his face while he did his best to study. At meal-times and in the classroom – the only times they really saw their elder brother – there were always piles of lore-filled scrolls and instructional books between them, many of them open, being actively interrogated as the mouth mindlessly chewed. The only conversations taking place around the dinner-table were happening inside brains where the self took both sides in the discourse, a consciousness-stream of high-concept terms and deceptively-plain language, sometimes not even occurring in mortal tongues…

Increasingly, Jaid no longer read while they ate. Often, she was just eating in silence.

A thousand memories rushed through him then. He remembered the fortify set Kas insisted they play, gathering dust on the shelf in the fifth floor’s communal area. The thing wasn’t a knock-off; it was a true diamond-inlaid import from Mund and had probably cost the warlock a year’s rent at Mud Lane rates.

I could talk to her… couldn’t I?

He spoke haltingly.

“Hey. Do you want – do you think a game of fortify would help?”

“Fortify.” She echoed the word without inflection.

“Come on… I practised my Sow Matriarch game…” That’s so long ago, now. “Jaid? You remember fortify, right?”

“Forti…fy. Yes. Let’s have a game, Vin.”

She wasn’t moving, still talking in the same trance-voice.

“Jaid!” he snapped, feeling scared as much as irritated by her continued use of the fake name.

She didn’t react at all.

“Jaid?”

He exhaled. Drew a deep breath. Exhaled again.

“Shirya?”

“Sorry!” Jaid finally sprang into action, jerking upright, fixing the wide staring eyes on him. “Sorry, I’m ready!”

He went down ahead of her to turn on the lights and flameless heater, set up the board. Nestled snugly in his bed-robe of thick greyish wool, he slumped down in the armchair, gazing over the Northern and Southern Holds he was honour-bound to protect. He structured his battle-plans, getting the strategy out of the way so that he’d be able to use his quick-wittedness on the conversation.

He knew the vague form of attack he wanted to use. Start by discussing the illogic of sorcery. Move into asking her about her own studies. Ask about the prince. Her mood.

Apologise, if he could. Her own repeated apologies when he broke her out of her reverie – they wounded him. It was his apology that was needed. It was his fault. If he’d stayed stronger when Feychilde went to Zyger – if he’d just stayed, in general.

But no. He too had abandoned her. Feychilde’s return tore her away from their adopted family.

Maybe – when Xan gets here. Maybe everything will be okay again…

But he knew it was futile. He knew Xan wasn’t going to work some miracle. What had already happened couldn’t be undone, not without Chraunator’s pocket-watch. There was no going back.

The first time the floorboards squeaked, he turned his head expectantly towards the staircase.

The second time they squeaked he knew better than to get his hopes up. It was just the tower creaking.

The third time, he was asleep, and when he awoke to the dull dawn-light behind the curtains it only reflected the dullness of his thoughts.

Rejection.

Inside, she retreats, and retreats, until she backs into him.

No. Being broken, unfixable – that’s death! he insists. It’s death, and you know it! Mortiforn!

Yes. Mortiforn. Just… not for us.

He thinks he is dying, and then realises he knows the truth already. The tuning rod is just a simple implement.

The truth exists in the minds of the dark elves in the room with him and his sister. A few of them – not the ones holding the long metal sticks – actually understand something of the tools’ ensorcellments.

He understands the ensorcellments. The truth exists in his mind.

And – and in her –

Our mind, Jaid Mortenn corrects.

Our mind, Jaroan Mortenn accepts.

It’s our time now.

* * *

The alarm was being sounded, a shrill clanging that brought her awake as readily as any Mourning Bells in Mund. In the darkness of her room in Telior, Shirya suddenly found herself floundering, and it was Jaid, Jaid that came through, leading her blindly from the bed and into her brother’s room.

“Vin!” she cried, finding him already putting his boots on. “Vin, what is it?”

“Get dressed!” he snapped – then, seeming to catch himself, he reached out and hugged her briefly.

The spontaneity of the physical contact – it struck her like lightning. The closest she’d been to another human being in weeks was when the prince took her by the elbow.

Tears practically leapt down her face. She stood perfectly still as he slowly released her.

“Please, Jaid, get your things on!” he pleaded.

His eyes – his – he still –

Cared – care. Yes, of course I care about you!

You’re sorry.

… Yes.

It wasn’t a question.

You feel it?

I know.

The statue-self went, and she shuddered back to life right there in front of him.

“Please?”

“I’m g-going. I’m going… Jaroan.”

He smiled at her, and it was a blow from a blade of confusion that pierced her at the temple, overwhelming her with its agonising bluntness.

Why is he smiling at me?

It’s not always an easy thing to tell, is it, sister?

No, and it was something so simple, to lead you astray. They were smiling in sadness – sympathy.

You know I know that now! But then…

It let you smile with the –

Yes. With the knife in my hand. I wanted –

To kill.

We aren’t going to kill the dark elves. I can’t kill.

You know I know that. I can’t either.

But Kas will.

They didn’t even think to look through a window, and didn’t see the ominous hulks anchored in Telior’s waters until they were already outside the tower, clutching their warmest clothing tight about them, standing together in the predawn breeze. Their brother was already gone. The night-shift workers were running amok – old Menild went shrieking off towards his family home, cursing in Telese, using a variety of words they didn’t yet understand. The streets were emptying, but, casting about, she saw pale faces at many windows. All eyes were staring at the purple-pulsing shapes of the dark elf vessels. All recognised the imminent danger.

She counted the glowing harbingers of destruction.

Eight of them. Eight ships.

“It’s an Incursion,” she muttered.

“It might as well be.”

“Ka… Raz will fight them.”

Her twin cast her a strange look, then swivelled to face the palace.

“Should we go find out what’s happening?”

He set off, but she returned her gaze to the elven armada. Within a few moments he returned to her side, sharing the moment with her.

The wind. The chimes.

The darkness. The canopy of stars.

The overbearing sense of impending doom.

She was afraid, and yet somehow she wasn’t.

“Do you think he’s out there, already?”

Jaroan drew a deep breath then sighed. “You’re jealous, too.”

The dark elf vessels lost her attention. She returned her focus to Jaroan.

“Jealous?”

He nodded glumly. “Isn’t that what this has been about, all along?”

“That might be how it started,” she admitted. “But – the night of the Incursion. The way everything changed –“

“It was scary –“

“It was dropping terrifying, Jar!”

“It was scary,” he repeated, “but we didn’t want to run, did we? Remember – when he was fighting the Bone Ring. It was Kas that scared us, not some necromancers, and I thought it was pretty exciting –“

“He left us,” she said icily.

“Em took him from us,” he retorted.

“No – he shouldn’t have – he shouldn’t have gone.” Tears stood in the corners of her eyes now, and when a burst of breeze next came pushing at her face they were send streaming down her cheeks, freezing as they went. “He stopped – stopped being our brother, and I thought – he was our protector –“

“But it’s not the same,” Jaroan finished for her in a grim voice. “It’s never been the same, and it’s never been right.”

She shook her head. “When he didn’t come back – when he wasn’t there for us… I felt like the world ended.”

“Is Telior any better?”

She looked back at him, completely nonplussed by the question.

“Telior…”

She slowly turned, taking in the city she had come to recognise, seeing it anew, as if for the first time.

The last time. It’s gone, Jaid. Telior’s gone. That’s what that sound is. That’s what was deafening Kas. We’ve got to snap out of it. Whatever they did to us, our minds, it’s done.

No, she replies. Not yet. Soon. It’s… it’s not complete yet.

Our story?

Our power.

Telior hadn’t improved anything, but she couldn’t pretend that Shirya only came into being after they crossed Northril. No, Shirya was born under the guidance of Brother Porsico, right there in Sticktown, under the nose of her brother, Xan, everyone. No one had seen what was happening to her. And here, across the sea, things had been no different. She had languished. She’d been allowed to become a non-entity, doing nothing more or less than what was expected of her.

I might as well have been dead. I was supposed to learn my worth in helping others. I learned I could risk my life to help others, yes. But I drew the wrong conclusions.

He had no place taking you into Mortiforn’s service, that priest. That wasn’t what you needed. You’re not worthless, Jaid. Your life has meaning.

It does now!

That’s not what I meant and you know it. You can’t just take your purpose from a god. What’s to make you choose Mortiforn and not Vaahn?

That’s meaningless! The world’s too big. There’s nothing!

Meanings don’t have to be big. They can just be –

Putting your hand on your belt, to remind yourself that you threw it away. It’s not under someone else’s ownership. It’s really gone. You really are the stronger person.

I wish to be.

Like Shirya?

Have you really thrown her away?

“No,” she answered heavily. “Telior’s no better. I –“

“We’ll tell him. We’ll be honest. We… We’re unimportant.”

Jaid was scared to do it, but instinct compelled her – she put her arms around her twin, clung to him.

He put his around her.

For the first time in half a year, they were themselves again.

Halfway across the courtyard, one of the brusque nobles stopped them.

“You!” he cried, pointing at them. “You! You must come! Come!”

Do you think he knew?

Yes. Of course.

Of course.

The courtier practically galloped them up the steps, guiding them wordlessly to Prince Lathenskar in an antechamber.

The room was lit only by a smattering of candles, but to Jaid the prince looked like he’d just finished crying. His cheeks were puffy, his eyes red – but he wore his usual smile, slowing and stopping his pacing as they entered.

“My friends – my good friends…” He squinted at them, as though the sight of them was a painful ordeal. “We must go to ze safe places now. You vill follow me?”

“Where’s Raz?” Jar demanded. “Is he… Will he fight them?”

Lathenskar lifted his head strangely, as if to look into the corner of the room behind them.

Jaid turned, followed his gaze – the corner was empty, a nest of shadows.

“I do not know,” Lathenskar admitted glumly. “I… know only vhere ve must go.”

Seeming to take their failure to produce further questions as acceptance, the prince gestured to the guard at the door – soon they were being escorted back into the maze of tunnels.

As they followed their past selves into the confusing network of dark twists and turns, the twins finally explored the dungeons of Telior together, hand in hand, mind in mind.

“Father will be pleased with me. I have done all they asked of me. I have brought honour to our kingdom. I have played my part, as prince, to defend the people from the evil. The warlock brought down the death upon his own head, upon those of his brother and sister. It’s not my fault. Father knows. He will be satisfied I’ve done it. Telior will remain. We shall be strong. Thanks to me. Thanks to this. This… sacrifice.”

There we go. He could see the dark elf in the room with us all along, and he knew what was going to happen.

What? Jaid? How can we hear what he thought? We aren’t there with him. I mean – we couldn’t hear it when we were there…

He remembers an approximation, obviously. And he’s still alive.

We can hear his thoughts – from Telior?

We can hear his thoughts from Telior. We can hear them all now, Jar.

Hear…?

The voices are self-translating, thousands of consciousness-streams opening to their fragile inner ears. In addition to the human-thought, their burgeoning powers are assaulted by frigid blasts of elf-thought, steeped in an ancient culture of degradation and necromancy.

One thousand, eight hundred and four of them.

Yet base potency provides a level of defence beyond requirements.

Instincts sift the worst thoughts, purging the obscene, rendering it all into information while isolating articles of interest for deeper scrutiny – pertinent facts are like words written in gold jumping off a page of blue ink.

The incoherence of the following events falls away – the little cove beneath the city where the dark elves await in the darkness – the face of the prince as he turns back with his escort – the twins’ contrite acceptance of their captors as the first enchantments settle upon them, spells commanding them to step out willingly onto the elf-wizard’s ice-floe – bidding them to be silent, and still, and afraid.

They had been brought back to themselves in what seemed to be seconds, sitting all of a sudden in metal chairs, still paralysed by magic, children beneath the need for bonds at wrist or ankle. Despite the fact there was no diviner’s speed-swoon, they knew instantly that they were now below decks. The luxuriously-appointed room could’ve been taken from the interior of a Treetown mansion had it not been swaying. Everything was black, to the point that they couldn’t make out the edges of the objects in the room.

Their minds were violated.

The tuning rods had been employed.

And it had begun.

They experienced agony – true agony – for the first time – the only time ever.

Then it was gone, as if it’d never happened. Stopping their bodies from reacting was a nuance temporarily beyond their grasp but even the first basic flexing of their wills as archmages released their sentience from the whims of broken bones. They’d never imagined sensation so complete, never anticipated the way their minds would retract, opening the flesh to pure unfiltered fire. Their coats of meat blackened and fell away, exposing – exposing –

The true self. The concealed insides.

The true world. The concealed outside.

We lost Mum and Dad. We lost our big brother. I thought I was going to lose you. I thought I had lost you.

I’m sorry. I forgive you.

After a few moments, sharing the bliss of unconditional reacceptance, one of them commented:

It’s unbelievable!

Not quite.

Colloquially. That day, when we went to the Giltergrove – what Kas said about enchanters…

You don’t think he had any idea, do you?

No. No way.

But he – he did have some idea. Look!

Oh yeah. There are… others.

The dream.

That was… a dragon… It wasn’t him. It didn’t happen – see, the Arrealbord… the dream…

I know, but… look at them! The ten of us!

He thought it would happen when Wyre took us, if it was going to.

It could’ve! It could’ve! But we – we had this between us.

But we’re still ourselves! I mean, we still have the same…

We want to be important. We want to be somebody.

Agency had been their craving. Its realisation was more than they could’ve ever expected.

Are we ready for this?

You mean, can we be trusted?

It’s…

Tempting?

To order the world to our liking? Of course!

But, the gods… Everything would fight us!

Oh, gods. What’ve they done to him…

Well, what has…

M-Mal Malas done to him…

Everything wants a piece of the sorcerer.

Vistas of imagination and dream, memory and nightmare, it all opened, unfurling, peeling back in innumerable layers – not the infinite mindscape of a single soul or even hundreds but thousands, tens of thousands…

The observing self, content for so long to exist as a solitary creature, was now embedded within an amalgamated consciousness, stretching out like a fresh shoot in exploration where before there had been only driftwood on the river’s water. Little did they doubt that to an ordinary arch-enchanter the process of awakening (thank you, Emrelet Reyd) would be a distracting, even uncomfortable experience. For this dual-moded creature, however, the replicative effect felt natural. To have one pair of eyes meant to have a singular focus, but the effect of having two pairs of eyes was not merely additive; no physical connection existed between their bodies. Their range was boundless. A million miles apart, planes between them, none of it mattered. There was an unending plenitude to see, smell, touch, taste, hear. Two pairs of eyes gave them infinite scope.

You were wrong! I didn’t – I never understood you. Never understood… love. I do now.

We never understood each other, Jaroan.

We’re twins. We’re supposed to understand each other!

Maybe that’s why we were chosen for this. Maybe this is what we needed.

It’s what we should’ve been.

Imseperble.

They shared their souls, and were like one.

It wasn’t a full subsumption of personae, but it took less than a moment for the symbiosis to form. Identity didn’t fracture, but along those borders where their minds met they melted into one another. The blend in those places was complete, two paints merged to form a new colour, strong and vibrant.

The stretched-out shoot found its Wellspring, and drank deep.

They accepted the souls of the others, and were many. Both partook in equal measure.

A goblet, bottomless and forever filled to the brim.

An elixir of wisdom, knowledge.

An elixir of prejudice. Attitude.

What – what is he doing?

It was hidden, but not from them. They saw it, through his eyes – the confrontation aboard the Scaleshaker – the destruction of the dark elves on the empty seas of Northril. They saw the ghosts he enveloped in waves of energy, their tall, iridescent shapes flickering, white and silver. Magenta rays inside the spirits’ throats poured like mage-light from their mouths, gushing between their pearly teeth – their magenta irises winked out, barely-discernible features wincing as Feychilde’s stronger, amethyst waves consumed them, whisking their wills away.

They cringed together, watching.

Yet they were not truly his eyes. The wraith. He’d relied upon it for his potency, and it’d undone him right at the centre of his being.

They saw through his eyes as he slipped back aboard the Scaleshaker, taking care to remain invisible to them until he was back under his covers.

No! – what is he doing right now?

They see through his eyes as Telior is brought to ruin in a matter of seconds, listen from inside his skull as that awful voice comes bubbling up within him.

We have to stop him! Change it! We can’t die!

We can’t! This is his memory!

What? No! Where’s the reality?

When? When is it now?

We’ve fallen prey to it too. They call it fatalism. Look what we did! We wouldn’t kill them, wouldn’t delete their minds, but we stopped them finding out…

What do you mean? What did we do? Oh…

Their minds were pulled in. They were…

Slaughtered.

Like animals.

They lived it, and shivered, moaning.

Every horrified last gasp.

Every cold final touch.

It’s worse than fatalism! It’s… nihilism. It’s in both of us.

Oh gods, yes… in almost everyone.

But this isn’t what Kas wanted, not really! Look! He’s good!

No – it is! Look again! Deep down here. Illodin’s tears…

Oh! Princess!

I know. I know…

What… what is that?

The part of him the wraith changed. That’s what he’d call it. But it’s not just that, is it? He’s like us.

Wall it off! Dam it and damn it!

Keep it walled off. His darkness with our own.

Yes!

The impetus was enough. The vague direction of their conjoined thought was like a river-gate rising, cutting off all flow in certain areas of their elder brother’s mind.

Look at that. The weakness. He would’ve fought after Zyger, but –

Emrelet… She was under a spell?

I can’t see.

Oh! Look what he could be if…

If we just…

But –

What was that? What have we done?

It’s not like we could help it! We want what’s best for him!

We gave him what he needed, that’s all.

In just the right places, yes… yes!

We can keep him afloat. Just the right places.

Can we go back to our bodies now?

Do we have to?

It’s over…

We’ll get better at it.

We have to.

They opened their eyes, beholding the carnage. The tuning rod had fallen from wet, nerveless fingers.

We really do.

Through Kas’s mind, they could sense the elven spectres thronging about them, as motionless as the bodies above which they floated, all awaiting their master’s call.

Can we touch their minds?

Now?

Kas has seen it done before.

But do you want to?

They didn’t need access to the ghosts’ thoughts – the twins both knew where the stairs were: the dark elves had known, before the ruthless creatures crossed over the one-way border into their shadowland-suits.

The twins picked their way between the bodies, noting details with neither detachment nor over-investment. There was an awful lot of highly-charged material floating around in their shared mindscape, and, despite the fact they weren’t actively seeking it out, it was still there. They still knew it. They were just hiding it from themselves. This array of rent-apart bodies was just one more element they added to the mix as they headed for the way up.

Better open a notch in the gate.

Already?

It’s our only way out of here.

Yeah, but…

Should he use it?

Yes.

We can’t keep using our powers like this.

Exactly.

What would you rather do? Swim?

Their brother complied with their thought, instantly starting the summoning on the top deck – they had to swiftly modify the pressure their desires exerted on him. This only led to him becoming confused about his own mental processes, and they had to learn how to edit out their mistakes as they went.

This really is going to be interesting, isn’t it?

It will be once we get there.

Home…

Mund.