Toren Daen

I groaned, shifting as my consciousness pulled itself to the surface. My mind felt bleary and weak, as if I’d spent the last dozen hours painstakingly studying for an exam. My thoughts were hazy and indistinct, my brain struggling to hold onto each fleeting moment. I rolled, feeling the warm sunlight against my eyelids.

Sunlight, I thought hazily. That means it’s time for me to get up. Go to class.

I opened my eyes, feeling my body ache as I shifted. There was a gentle, lulling hum that brushed against my ears. It was a powerful, resonant thrum that seemed to seep from my ears all the way to the tips of my toes. Like the warm water from a shower that slowly trickled down an exercise-sore body, the tone that caressed my ear was soothing in a way I found difficult to ignore.

I was in a large, sunlit room in a lavish bed. It had an almost sterile atmosphere, though that was slightly ruined by the relatively lavish furnishings throughout. It was as if the interior designer couldn’t decide between a hospital room or a five-star hotel suite when laying out his plans.

My thoughts were immediately drawn away from my surroundings and back to that effervescent hum. I automatically traced where I felt the tone emanating from, looking down at my hands.

A long, white horn was clutched tightly in my hands. Pulsing striations of fuschia, magenta, and deep ochre radiated in tune with the rhythm in my ears. I could feel a connection between the horn and me, not unlike the puppet strings Aurora used to pilot her djinni relic.

Memories came flooding back to the forefront of my mind, wiping away the fog of the morning in a flash of adrenaline. My frantic rush from Bloodstone Elixirs as dread, terrible realization set in. How I’d barreled through the teleportation gates around Fiachra, then headed in a beeline for the most concentrated source of mana I could find.

My breathing hitched as the memories of my fight with Mardeth replayed, each recollection speeding up as it came. The use of the Second Phase of my Phoenix Will, nearly being subsumed by Aurora’s weight of experience, and the final destruction of Mardeth’s crystal.

And then our brawl in the depths of the Doctrination temple, where I’d staked the wretched creature’s body to the mosaic of his gods. Just as I’d promised so many months ago.

And after that…

“You have been asleep for some time, Toren,” my bond said, the Unseen World washing over my vision. She sat neatly in a nearby chair, her arms folded primly across your lap. “I had some… worries as to your mental state in the aftermath of the battle. But it appears as if all is in order, aside from some lingering effects.”

I twisted to look at the phoenix shade, wincing as the movement made my body twinge with a dull ache. She looked the same as ever: flowing martial robes, windswept hair the color of fire, and twin suns for eyes that looked at me with a motherly cast. The hole over her translucent chest did not bleed.

“How–” I swallowed, thinking of the devastation all across my city. The many fires, raging mists of blithe, and the vicars that bore down on it. The Rats, alongside Sevren and Caera, had destroyed the source of Mardeth’s power. But were they okay? What had happened afterward? “I mean–”

My throat clenched. So many questions broiled at the forefront of my mind that I found it difficult to voice a single one.

Thankfully, Aurora seemed to understand the churning turmoil in my gut. “You were unconscious for a few days, my son,” she said soothingly, standing and moving to the side of my bed in a silent glide. “As far as I have been able to gather, the spread of that wretched monster’s toxin has been staunched and destroyed. You were taken to a safe place to rest and recover in the aftermath of your fight. I believe you are currently in the Fiachran Ascender’s Association.”

My hands clenched tighter around the horn in my palm, the effervescent hum seeming to dim and dull as I finally recalled the dark, dark power that had approached in the wake of my battle. Of who had settled down into the temple, looking at me with deep, onyx eyes.

I opened my mouth to speak, but the door at the far end of my room creaked open. My gaze snapped to the man who entered, a tray of food in his hands.

Xander, the mossy-haired spy, stepped in. When he made eye contact with me, he froze for only a step, before sighing deeply. I watched him like a hawk as he slowly approached, a deep, uncomfortable silence stretching through the room like thick tar.

Xander had always accompanied Renea as a personal bodyguard and a direct aide. But as I thought of the aftermath of my fight, where all I’d known of the woman had been turned on its head, I found myself inspecting him more critically.

His green hair–like reeds–had always struck me as a seaweed color. But hadn’t Haedrig, Caera’s alter ego, also borne similar features? Xander was certainly wearing some sort of cloaking artifact. He always had been. At first, I’d simply assumed it was something similar to his employer’s artifact.

But now…

Thoughts of Renea Shorn–of Seris Vritra–pounded against the inside of my skull like a drum. My mind flashed back to every one of our testing, teasing interactions, each cast in a new light. Questions I didn’t want to voice; didn’t want to ask simmered to the forefront of my mind.

So I buried them. There were more important things I needed to ask. Needed to know. And in the long time since I’d come to this world, I’d grown adept at burying questions I didn’t want answers to. Of compartmentalizing my thoughts away from the truly terrible realities that I may face. I could ignore my problems like no other; dismissing the glaring iron hyrax in the room with a poker face of stone.

“What happened while I was asleep?” I asked, my voice surprisingly steady. “I remember the fires that burned. The blithe that spread through the streets, and the vicars that attacked everyone in sight.” I thought of the Rats once more. Xander had interacted with the Rats barely by circumstance. I felt my heartbeat pick up slightly as I pondered their fate, but I’d have to discover that on my own. “What can you tell me?”

The green-haired man’s shoulders tensed. He set down the tray of steaming food by my bedside without a word. “That blithe concoction managed to infect an absurd amount of Fiachra’s population. It’s only been a day since the spread, so the true results aren’t yet clear. But the teleportation gates in and out of the city have been put into lockdown, just in case the plague could still be active.” He paused. “Those still alive have taken to calling it the Plaguefire Incursion.”

I exhaled, then began to pull myself from the bed. My body protested each movement and my core pulsed in mute pain from my bare escape from backlash.

But what I needed to do wasn’t reliant on my mana core. My reserve of heartfire was brimming with energy, the energy I’d wrenched from Mardeth’s lifespan far beyond anything else I’d touched.

I lurched as I recalled what I’d done to the vicar in vivid detail. How I’d slowly, slowly drained him of his essential life, cannibalizing his base of existence.

There were few things more intimate than watching as an enemy’s life left their eyes in the aftermath of battle. But there was something deeply twisted about what I’d subjected Mardeth to. It was akin to stabbing them deep in the throat and watching the blood leak out. I’d acted in the heat of the moment; moving purely on instinct. And while it was true that mankind constantly consumed beasts for sustenance, pushing their own life further through digestion, there was something fundamentally dehumanizing in ripping another’s life from them against their will.

I’d bled Mardeth like cattle.

I rose to my feet, flexing my fingers as I processed my brutal execution of the vicar. Did I regret it? No. Would I have killed him any other way?

Probably not. For all Mardeth had done, he’d forfeited any right to be treated as a human being. As a thinking, breathing, sapient creature. He’d tried to become a god, but he was lesser than simple livestock for the actions he took in the attempt.

I pushed Mardeth from my mind, doing a rundown of my possessions. I frowned as I realized my dimension ring bore deep, melted sections where the heat of my Second Phase had presumably damaged it. I felt a flash of anxiety as I realized that the small ring–which held every material item I cared for–might be damaged beyond repair. I could sense the barest mana fluctuation from it, but I felt hesitant to try and delve into the sub-dimensional space.

Would my clarwood violin be safe? What about my notes on The Beginning After the End? And what of Of Mana and Minds, the book I’d been annotating for so long?

I shook my head. One thing at a time. I could worry about my dimension ring later. Right now, there were people that I needed to treat.

I was wearing light, breathable clothing that had clearly been designed for comfort. The pajama-esque shirt and pants felt alien to me, as I’d always focused on efficiency and pragmatic dress over luxury experience. I would need to find something more akin to my style before I left the building.

“Is there a hospital set up somewhere nearby?” I asked Xander. I looked through a nearby dresser, finding nice sets of clothes that seemed tailor-made for my measurements. Their colors, too, matched the bronze and maroon aesthetic I’d fallen into wearing. “A place where all the wounded and hurt from the attack went to be treated?”

Xander answered frankly. “Not far from West Orlaeth Street, there’s a huge medical camp set up for the wounded. They’ve been overrun since the Incursion with injured and people in critical condition.” His eyes widened as he watched me pull a shirt from the dresser. “Lord Daen, you can’t leave! Not right now!”

I turned critical eyes to the spy, my hands clenching around the shirt in my hands. I felt those buried questions dig themselves up within my psyche, the burning feeling that I’d been lied to for so long. They wrenched themselves from the ground like the undead claws of the zombies I’d fought so long ago in the Relictombs.

“And what right do you have to stop me from helping my city?” I asked, restraining my anger. My intent.

Xander paled, seeming to recognize the carrallian he had just poked with a stick. “Not me, Lord Daen. My master. She wants you safe and healthy. She–”

I engaged the Acquire Phase of my Phoenix Will, ignoring the clawing coldness that radiated from my core. I narrowed my eyes, pulling on my own heartfire. I felt the spy’s cloaking artifact buckle and cave under the burning inspection of my power.

I centered on the man’s terrified lifeforce, grasped the signature in my mind, and then ripped his cloaking mask aside.

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It fell apart like water, illusory particles seeping away to reveal a young man–not much older than Caera–with eyes of mismatched colors. Wary features watched me as he stumbled backward, fumbling for something at his belt.

What was I trying to do? I asked myself absently as I pinned the spy to the floor with my gaze. Bully this man into submission because of the master he serves?

I hissed, then turned away, allowing my Acquire Phase to sink back into the depths of my psyche. I felt lied to. Deceived. And I was taking that anger out on the person in front of me instead of dealing with it.

“Tell Seris that she won’t stop me from helping the people in my city,” I ground out, looking back at the shirt in my hands. Small holes smoked in the fabric from where I’d been clenching the pristine material. “I failed to stop this in time. To predict this. So I’m going to start making it right, regardless of her wishes.”

“My orders were not to stop you from helping those in Fiachra, Lord Daen,” a cool, even voice said from not far away. “But to keep you healthy and safe, as Xander attested. With your core barely past backlash, it could not be overruled that some remnant of the blithe plague could take root while you were weakened–nor that skulking vicars might seek to finish the task their leader failed to do in ending your life.”

My shoulders tensed as I registered the voice. I hadn’t heard it in person before, only over old recordings. I remembered watching the October Decree, listening as the Scythe of Sehz-Clar declared blithe illegal in her Dominion. As she set her sights on every peddler who distributed it, big or small.

I turned robotically. Now that the words had caressed my ears, I realized it was a wonder I had not sensed the woman earlier. Her cloaking artifact still masked her heartfire and mana from my senses, but no longer did it alter her physical appearance.

Scythe Seris Vritra stood in the doorway, her pearlescent locks cascading along her dark dress. Her face was a mask as it looked me up and down, though a single brow was raised in obvious appraisal.

I stood still, like a rabbit that had been caught in a trap. For all my planning, I hadn’t considered what I’d do when I came face to face with a Scythe.

Seris strode into the room with a graceful gait, her eyes flicking momentarily to the unmasked Xander. “I trust that the artifact was not damaged in your… unveiling?” she said, raising that pristine silver eyebrow a bit higher. “There are very few such cloaking artifacts in my possession. I would be displeased to hear the first thing you did after your rescue was to break something.”

I worked my tongue in my mouth, allowing her words to wash over me. Did I bow? Did I kneel? What was the proper show of respect? Considering how quickly Xander–or whoever he was–went to a single knee, I felt that was what was expected.

“It shouldn’t have broken,” I said, a turbulent mix of emotions in my chest. “It was… immature of me,” I acknowledged, turning away from the Scythe. “I apologize if I have offended you, Scythe Seris.”

Seris’ onyx eyes–those familiar eyes, each as deep as an ocean–stayed trained on me. “Xander, the attendants on the ground floor are in need of direction.”

Xander did something to a pendant around his neck that I couldn’t detect, and the illusion of a mossy-haired mage overlaid him once more. He nodded quickly, eyes darting between the two of us, before scurrying out the door behind his master.

I watched him go with a deepening frown. It was only Seris and I remaining in the room.

It suddenly occurred to me that, were this woman to try and enforce any sort of demand on me, extract any information, I would not be able to resist. From what I’d sensed, even the depths of my Second Phase would not be enough to see me through a head-on battle. And right now, my mana core was practically empty.

I didn’t think she was an enemy, but–

Seris floated closer to me, making me take a nervous step back. She held out a hand, gesturing to something.

I blinked, looking down at the white horn I clutched so tightly in my hands. I didn’t truly understand how Brahmos’ horn had undergone this transformation, but it felt fundamentally connected to me in a way I couldn’t put into words.

All the same, I wordlessly handed the horn over to the woman in front of me.

She took it deftly, and I was shocked to see her hands begin to blacken at the touch. The thrum of the horn increased in my mind, and I felt that if I just reached out to grasp at the connection…

I reached my hand out, an instinctive cry on my lips, before the Scythe shook her head. She simply hovered a ways away, inspecting the horn even as it continued to singe her skin.

“Do you remember the first day we met in this city?” Seris asked, her tone questioning but nonchalant.

I swallowed the urge to swipe the horn back from the Scythe. That was the healer in me; the nurturing surgeon that couldn’t stand to see others hurt. But even as her pristine, marble-colored skin darkened under some strange sort of rejection by the horn, she didn’t seem to feel a lick of pain or care.

“I remember meeting Renea Shorn,” I said slowly, “And talking with her about what could be done to push Mardeth from our gates. And why Scythe Seris could not intervene directly.”

Seris turned imperceptibly, holding the horn up to the streaming sunlight that refracted through the blinds of the room. The rays of light cast strange colors over the long horn. The look of restrained curiosity and intrigue on her face was something I wouldn’t soon forget.

“Renea Shorn is but a name,” Scythe Seris said, not turning to me. “I have adopted many monikers as I move across the great board, seeking my goals and moving my own pieces. Lady Renea Shorn of Bloodstone Elixirs is not the first, and nor shall she be the last.”

Seris turned to look at me. Her aura was condensed beyond what I could actively sense, yet I felt an uncomfortable urge to do something. She spoke to me as if she were still Lady Shorn and I Lord Daen.

But that was not the case, was it? Should I kneel, as Xander did? Or avert my eyes to maintain respect?

“When you asked me if Scythe Seris were to be alerted to what happened in your district and if she would truly follow through on your principles, do you remember what Renea Shorn said in response?”

I felt my breath catch, my mind flitting back to that day. On the grim walk to the Doctrination Temple with Sevren in tow, I had indeed asked that fateful question.

“I cannot speak for those so far above me,” she had said in response. “But I would like to think that Scythe Seris would bring justice to this place, even if it were dangerous to her own self.”

“I do,” I breathed, feeling something in my chest tighten at the words.

Seris looked down at the razor-sharp point, then flipped it so that she held only the tip in blackened fingers. Dark, purple-tinged soulfire raced along her palms, the healing fire washing away every trace of injury. She held it out to me, her eyes quietly commanding.

I stepped forward, grasping the base of the horn. If I wished, I could simply drive my palm forward, the sharpened point poised to pierce the austere Scythe’s chest.

Instead, I took the horn back, feeling as if I were adrift in a storm. Aurora held back during this conversation for reasons I could not understand, but I found myself desperately wishing for her keen insight into each sentence. Were there hidden messages here? Was I missing some sort of context due to my political inability?

As I stepped away from the Scythe, inadvertently treating her as if she were a live bomb, I tried to find something to anchor myself. Feeling the constant thrum of the horn in my hand, I decided to use that. Hone in on it.

But Scythe Seris’ next words made me focus on her instead, an intent like a razor keeping my eyes glued to her near-perfect form.

“I failed this city, Lord Daen,” she said quietly, meeting my eyes. “Indeed, I should have brought justice to these people. It was in my power to do so. And now we face the aftermath of one of the worst disasters in Alacrya’s recent memory, all due to my inaction.”

I shut my eyes, my thoughts a perfect mirror of Seris’ words. I’d failed these people, hadn’t I? It was my duty to face the Vicar of Plague. That was my purpose in all of this, wasn’t it? And I’d been too late to stop his plan.

Yet for all the blame I placed on myself, I could leverage none against the Scythe in front of me. My work to try and assist the people of East Fiachra enlightened me to the true difficulty of making this world a better place; the true complexity and aftermath each action had. During my first meeting with Renea Shorn, I’d felt a restrained distaste for the woman. She had power, didn’t she? So why didn’t she wave her hand and use it?!

Yet only after I’d felt High Vicar Varadoth’s thundering heartfire as it boomed like a death drum did I truly understand this Scythe’s cautious maneuvering around the Vicar of Plague. Some part of me wanted to blame her for the utter devastation my home city had experienced. If only she had intervened sooner. If only she had slit Mardeth’s throat when she had the chance inside the temple in East Fiachra months ago.

But I saw those for what they were: projections of my personal anger onto an easy target.

“You didn’t fail this city, Lady Seris,” I said quietly. “I did. He only attacked Fiachra because it was my home.”

I thought of the vicar’s origins as they were revealed during the battle. He’d been a slum rat, maybe not much different from Naereni, Wade, or Karsien. The uplifting of East Fiachra had been a personal affront to what he viewed as the natural order. A rejection of pain could not be allowed.

“I thought he would wait to fulfill his promises until…” My words caught in my throat. Until you were to go off to war. “Until it would be easier to move against you,” I decided on.

Seris moved to the wide window, pulling up the blinds so that sunlight truly streamed into the room. I winced, shielding my eyes as the change in light blinded me momentarily. She stood there quietly, standing resolute with her eyes trained on whatever was outside.

“Attend me, Lord Daen,” she ordered smoothly.

I hesitantly inched closer, feeling uncertain of standing so close to the Scythe. But the target of her gaze drew my attention in turn.

I exhaled in surprise. Dozens of buildings had been utterly obliterated all around the Fiachra Ascender’s Association, but what took their place was far more eye-catching. Hundreds of tents dotted the area all around the Association, all in different mismatched colors as they reflected the sun. People–mage and not–hurried back and forth in a chaotic jumble that somehow maintained base cohesion. I watched as a blithe-stained man–presumably a former addict from East Fiachra–helped haul a heavy crate of what I presumed were supplies alongside a mage. A contingent of young women washed bloody garments on the banks of a canal, a nearby water caster assisting in cleaning the linen bandages.

Near the edge was Greahd, working in tandem with mages bearing Scythe Seris’ personal sigil. She commanded them back and forth just as she did during her regular cookfire meetings, and surprisingly, the mages complied without a word of complaint.

But not all was well. The nervous intent in the air was almost overwhelming, the deep, painful uncertainty of every mage made clear over the ambient mana. And even more were the cries of resonant pain I felt as men wailed. I saw people being wheeled in and out of medical tents, their injuries too distant for me to see. Others were clearly deceased, a somber cast to their movements as the bodies were carted beyond my sight.

“I made a promise to you,” Seris said, her eyes tracking someone as they hovered over the crowd, maintaining an iron presence that seemed to bolster the confidence of all the workers. Was that Cylrit? “That whenever I sought to shift you along the great board, I would inform you beforehand.”

My mouth felt suddenly dry, Aurora’s words in the aftermath of that conversation ringing in my head.

Renea Shorn moves like Agrona.

I supposed that made a grim, ironic sort of sense now, didn’t it?

“It was Renea–Lady Shorn–who made that promise,” I said. “I do not see how I can hold you to anything.”

“You hold oaths close to your heart, Lord Daen,” Seris said, still watching that figure in the sky. “Were I to break a promise made even under guise, it would be in violation of the spirit of our agreements, would it not? And you yourself said that it was promises that separated us from beasts.” She glanced at me coolly from the side of her eye. “I find I agree with that sentiment.”

A dark, angry part of me whispered something else. Agrona doesn’t lie either, does he?

“How do you wish to move me?” I asked at last, seeing the logical conclusion of this vein of questioning.

Seris silently considered the anxiously milling people for a long moment. “I alone am not enough to give these people a sense of hope and security,” she started. “They have been through a hell that is difficult to pull themselves from, yet they need to rebuild and grow once more. Yet they are uncertain and terrified. What is to stop another incursion from powers as great as the Doctrination?”

Are you speaking of Fiachra, I wondered absently, listening to the woman speak, Or of Alacrya as a whole?

“The people of Fiachra need something to look toward. I failed them, Lord Daen,” she said, focusing intently on me in a way that made goosebumps rise along my arms, “Yet you did not. You were the one to end the Vicar of Plague. You were the one seen clashing with him over the streets, protecting people and keeping Mardeth from doing more harm. They call this incident the Plaguefire Incursion for this reason.”

I felt my breathing slow. “What is it you need me to do?”