Circe Milview

I walked in a daze, each footstep seeming to echo a hundred times in my mind. Questions upon questions seeped through my mind as water rises through cracks in a river. Who was the strange mage that was following behind me, a cool poise to their every step that seemed to push away the dark aura surrounding the Central Cathedral? Why did they offer to heal my brother?

And why was the only stipulation keeping out of the Dicathian war?

I turned down a street, feeling a nervous energy coursing along my veins. While I had many questions, one of the many things the Doctrination enforced was to trust your unanswered thoughts to the Sovereigns. Things may not make sense at the moment, but there was a grand plan the leader of Alacrya was laying. I had a part to play in it, too. I just needed to let that part play out.

He’s wearing an ancient vicar’s mask, I thought, chancing a glance back at the strange mage with orange eyes. Is he from the Doctrination? Rewarding faithful servants of the Vritra in the aftermath of the Central Cathedral’s destruction?

I’d known that the Doctrination’s official place within Alacrya was… unstable after Scythe Seris executed Varadoth. But if they were rewarding those who had always believed–

The man seemed to sense my gaze, his calm eyes shifting to meet mine. I looked away quickly, my throat constricting as we finally reached my home.

Unlike the many upper-class homes near Khaernian Academy, my own home was a small house that had been passed down through my Blood for over a century. Though it had once been far more accommodating, now the small cottage–lawn included–looked overgrown and shabby. Tall grass belied its lack of care, and a few roots spread over the path leading toward the door.

I felt shame as the mage behind me observed the dilapidated state of my home.

“I–I don’t ever get enough time to clean or make it look nice,” I said quickly, making excuses as I scurried for the door. “I’ll get around to making it nice again.”

The strange hooded mage shrugged. “One day, you’ll have the time you need,” he said, seemingly nonchalant.

The man followed me all the way up the stairs as I beelined for Seth’s room. I felt a strange sort of anticipation as the floorboards creaked under our weight. Seth can be healed, I thought, energy running along my body. Though my core ached and I still felt the effects of using True Sense, I felt more alive than I ever had been.

But then I paused at the top of the stairs, just outside of Seth’s room. As I thought of my use of True Sense, the reality of it all started constricting me from all sides. This man had been watching Khaernian Academy. At the time, my muddled mind simply assumed he was a spy from Central Academy, or perhaps another power in Cardigan.

But he seemed to be after me. He claimed his only stipulation was that I not enter the Dicathian war, but what if that was a lie? He could ask me to spy on my academy. Or he could hurt Seth. I couldn’t explain why I trusted the man so easily earlier, but as I stared at Seth’s old, oaken door, I recognized the folly of my actions.

I felt my breathing accelerate nervously. The man waited patiently a few stairs down, clearly just fine with letting me sort through my internal turmoil.

“I’m sorry,” I finally forced out, pushing myself up higher. “I can’t–”

“Circe?” Seth’s voice said from his room, calling out weakly. He was barely ten years old, and it showed in his high-pitched tone. “Are you home already?”

From how the man tilted his head, I knew he heard my brother’s words. I felt a pit open in my stomach.

“I promise I won’t hurt you or your brother,” the masked man said quietly, taking the next few steps up. I instinctually moved backward as he ascended, a dark shadow slowly being covered in light. Once he was near the door, he paused. “I had a brother, once,” he said quietly. “I know what you feel.”

And the surprising part was, I felt that he somehow did know what I felt. Understood it. That same gut feeling that always gave me the clues I needed to piece apart what people felt about me resonated with this. He truly did understand.

I shakily turned the doorknob, opening the door to my brother’s sickroom.

Seth was sitting up in the sheets, his eyes wide and inquisitive as he spotted me. His dark, unruly hair fell around his ears in waves–I hadn’t been able to find time enough to cut it for him, and had planned to tonight–and those wonderful eyes of his held the strangest amount of concern.

“Hey, Seth,” I said lightly, moving into the room. “How’ve you been holding up?”

Seth slumped slightly. “Well, it’s been really hot in here,” he said sadly. “The heat’s been really bad with summer coming along. I hate June. Spring is better. My limbs don’t feel like wet twigs.”

My mood soured slightly. It was sweltering in Seth’s room, the air conditioning artifacts working to keep up. Unfortunately, we didn’t have the best of services for our little home.

“I’ll get better artifacts for that, soon,” I promised. Then hesitated. “Well…”

Seth looked at me innocently. “What is it, Circe?”

I decided to leave my reservations behind. I could do this. “I met someone who said they could heal you.”

I stepped inside, feeling my heart inside my chest. My reservations rose again, but I squashed them. The man in the dark metal mask stepped in, his eyes narrowing in a friendly way as he looked at Seth.

Seth turned uncertain eyes to me, before focusing on the man. His fists clenched around his bedsheets. “Why are you wearing a mask?” he asked, his childish voice laced with suspicion.

“Well,” the man said, sounding a bit sheepish, “I snuck away from the person I was with earlier. And I’ll be honest with you: they’ve got a really good chance of finding me if I’m not careful. So I have to wear a mask.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Sorry about that.”

I blinked, surprised by the… honesty? It didn’t seem like a lie, but who knew?

“Oh,” Seth said simply, as if this explained everything.

“Mind if I take a look at you?” the man asked, stepping forward a bit.

“Oh, uh…” Seth looked nervously down at his hands. “Yeah. But the doctors all said I can’t be cured. It won’t do any good. You can try though, mister.”

The man simply chuckled. “I’m not like other doctors,” he said, moving to Seth’s bedside. He laid a gloved hand over my brother’s sternum, then closed his eyes.

I nearly gasped as orange-purple light flickered between the man’s fingertips, pulsing in a way that almost made it seem alive. The happy light flicked and surged wherever it moved, drawing my eyes and holding my absolute focus. It looked so alive!

And I couldn’t sense it. The man’s control of mana must have been absolute as I stood, transfixed by the beauty. The strange healer lowered his fingers over my brother’s body.

The light seeped into his sickly, thin frame, seeming to be absorbed without issue. Seth gasped in surprise, his eyes widening in surprise but not pain. The man’s posture became more relaxed as that light streamed from his fingers.

“I can heal your brother,” the man’s cool baritone cut through my fascinated reverie. He sounded somewhat relieved, a tension I hadn’t noticed before seeping from his voice. He pulled back his hands, looking at me meaningfully. “His lifeforce is unusually weak. That should be expected, but it’s not beyond my ability.”

His… lifeforce?

The man stood, stretching his arms slightly. The casual, unbothered way in which he did so was in stark contrast to his attire. Shouldn’t a man cloaked in shadows act… I didn’t know. Suspicious? Tense? Shady? “I’ll give you two a minute to talk. It’ll be a big change that’s coming. To you and your life after this.” He tapped a finger against his leg, his glove matching the dark tone of his pants.

Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

He gave me a curt nod, then swept out of the room like a phantom.

I blinked as the man finally left the room, seeming to finally come back to myself.

“Circe,” Seth said weakly. “What… what did you promise him? To do this? I know we don’t have any money,” he said, looking at me with a trace of fear.

I forcibly settled myself, moving closer and holding my brother’s hand. Despite the sweltering heat of the room, his fingers were cold. “I just can’t participate in the war,” I said. “That’s all he promised.”

Seth’s fingers tightened around my own. “Okay, Circe,” he said quietly. “I mean… he feels so warm. There’s this… fire in his chest. I can’t explain it, but–”

“I know,” I said, feeling tears well up along the edges of my eyes. I thought of all that Seth would be able to do after this. All we could experience together, no longer burdened by the horrible sickness in his blood.

“When this is over,” I said, smiling shakily, “Want to go swimming in the Heart’s Blood River? You won’t be nearly as hot there,” I said. “All that cool, cool water?”

Seth’s eyes, laced with a bit of worry, immediately brightened as I pulled his thoughts away from the strange mage who’d come to help us. Then it darkened again, a sadness almost comically deep stretching across his face. “But I don’t know how to swim,” he said forlornly. “I shouldn’t go into a river if I can’t swim.”

“I can teach you,” I asserted, feeling my smile stretch more truly. “One step at a time, brother. One step at a time.”

Seth opened his mouth, then a familiar shake went throughout his body. He coughed fitfully as I moved to his side, hacking and wheezing as his own body burdened him. I patted him on the back as the fit subsided into weaker sputters, but it only served to push my desires higher.

My brother would be free.

The man seemed to sense when we were ready, stepping back into the room as our little chat finished. He looked at me once, nodded, and then knelt by Seth’s side.

“Seth, have you ever put your hand near a fire?” he asked gently, laying his gloved hands over Seth’s chest once more.

Seth hesitantly nodded. “Once,” he acknowledged sheepishly. “When I was really, really little. I was cold and couldn’t get warm.”

That strange light seeped from the masked mage’s hands as he chuckled. “Well, what did you learn to do instead? Getting burned isn’t fun, but you can’t be cold, either.”

Seth shivered lightly. “It’s not good being cold. I guess… I guess you keep your hand just far away enough?”

The masked man nodded. “That’s right,” he said, and I felt as if he were smiling underneath that mask. “Too far away, and you’ll be far too cold. Too close, and you’ll burn up. So you need to find the exact… right… distance.”

The room flashed with pressure. I gasped, stumbling back as sudden power emanated from the masked mage in front of me. I nearly tripped as the breath was stolen from my lungs, but my thoughts immediately went to Seth. My vision swam, not unlike how it had once I had witnessed this man with True Sense.

I fell to my knees under the pressure, but I couldn’t find a place in my heart to care for my own body. Seth was at the epicenter of this! I’d led this man to Seth, and now he was going to–

I looked up, feeling fear and panic and terror and guilt thrum through my veins.

Except, instead of being flattened into his sheets as I expected, Seth seemed entirely fine. No, he seemed more than fine. His body glowed slightly as he looked at the man in front of him with wide, wide eyes. The masked man’s left arm flared with red chain tattoos, and the pulsing thrum of power seemed to caress my brother’s body. Instead of the dominating force that pushed me to my knees, I noticed as something changed in my brother.

That orange-purple light flowed and pulsed in tune with a heartbeat I could almost hear. A thrum on the edges of my perception grew and grew and grew, nearing a crescendo.

Seth’s body twitched, and then the buildup of power winked out.

The red chains superimposed along the man’s arm disappeared, that overwhelming pressure relenting at once. I gasped, sweat dripping onto the floorboards beneath me.

And I knew who the man was. In my search for potential healers for my brother’s sickness, there were very few who might have stood a chance against his pain. And one of the newest sources–the one who was all over the news in the aftermath of the Plaguefire Incursion–was the White Flame of Fiachra. A man whose arm glowed with red chains. Who had faced Mardeth, the Vicar of Plague, and emerged victorious.

Who had slain High Vicar Varadoth alongside Scythe Seris Vritra.

But this truth fled from my mind as Seth sat up from his bed, flexing his hands and moving his arms in awe. Spellsong stepped back from the bed, huffing slightly, but Seth didn’t seem to notice. He shot his arms out quickly, in a testing manner. When he didn’t immediately collapse, he started to do more wild movements.

From the outside, it might have looked like wild thrashing. But not five minutes ago, my brother would have collapsed from exhaustion from those simple movements. And then his eyes fell on me, a wide, wide smile stretching across his face.

“Circe–”

I threw myself at him, wrapping my baby brother in my arms and weeping. The sobs tore themselves free from my throat as I held Seth in my grip.

He seemed shocked for a moment. I hadn’t ever been able to hug him this tight. He’d never known how warm a person could feel.

He hesitantly returned the hug. He wouldn’t have been able to do that before, either. But as he realized the wonderful, wonderful truth, his arms clenched tighter around me. “It’s okay, Circe,” he said, sounding so, so pure. “I’m good now. You don’t have to cry.”

I only cried harder.

Toren Daen

I stepped back from the pair of brother and sister, feeling the thrum of my heartfire settle and the roaring fury of my Will retreat. Aurora mutely hummed in the back of my mind, observing my work.

The source of the boy’s sickness had surprised even me. It turned out, Seth had djinn blood, and a surprisingly potent strain in his genes as well. Except his basilisk blood was reacting poorly with the more docile part of his body.

Where my Phoenix Will thrashed and tore at the basilisk blood in my veins, what Seth experienced was more akin to crashing waves smashing against a decrepit castle wall. The djinni side of his self sat still, gradually being washed away by his darker–yet still weaker–basilisk blood.

What I’d done was twofold: I gave Seth’s mute Vritra blood something else to target–namely, my Phoenix Will–simultaneously revving his heartfire to heal the weakness he’d experienced.

I suspected that having been faced with this inner conflict since birth, Seth’s body was never given a chance to ever truly be healthy. And one of the concrete truths of medicine is that a healthy body would resist toxins, damage, and other maladies nigh infinitely better than a weakened one.

His basilisk blood would still chafe against his djinni heritage, but no longer would that show any effect. I may need to check up on him every now and then should he become deathly sick, as that may serve to reignite the sickness, but otherwise…

I smiled beneath my mask, feeling a bundle of warmth in my heart as Seth–confused by his sister’s tears–did his best to comfort her.

I remembered what it was like, once. To have a brother.

I turned around, slowly walking out of the door as I gave the two time to come to terms with their new lives. I walked down the creaky steps, then stood in the light of the sun as I entered the overgrown lawn.

Aurora was quiet. Our bond wasn’t empty and vacant as it had been a couple of weeks ago, but the phoenix shade felt an almost instinctual fear of making her presence known in any way this close to Taegrin Caelum.

I understood that. My confrontation with Agrona forced me to change my perspective; to shift my view of what I could–what I should do.

That was why I was here, forbidding Circe Milview’s involvement in the Dicathian war. It was she who allowed the Alacryan army to thread their way into the Elshire Forest, ripping apart the protective fog and felling their kingdom in one fell swoop.

But if she never joined the war? Then Elshire would not fall so easily.

And Aldir would never use the World Eater technique, erasing millions of elven lives in a pointless genocide.

Far in the distance, I could see the towering peaks of the Central Cathedral. A grim, decrepit aura still stretched over everything in that horrible place. The stench of Varadoth’s blood coated everything nearby, and even several miles away, I felt I could still smell it.

“Spellsong,” a trembling voice said behind me.

I turned, finding Circe Milview standing in the doorway of her home. The rims of her eyes were puffy from tears, her hands trembling slightly. “I– I searched everywhere. Trying to find someone who could help my brother. I heard about you. About how you healed so many after the Plaguefire Incursion.”

I stayed silent as Circe Milvew tried to find the right words. Her intent fluctuated between awe, gratefulness, and trepidation. She wore her emotions bare.

“Are my prayers being answered?” she finally asked, her voice small. She looked at me with something deeply imploring.

I exhaled lightly. I raised a hand, touching the mask on my face. I slowly lowered it from my face, staring at the metal. I felt as Circe’s intent jumped, no doubt recognizing my features.

“It is not your faith that healed your brother,” I eventually said, looking at the old Doctrination mask.

“Why?” Circe said, almost begging. “Then why me? Just to stop me from entering the war?”

I looked up from my mask. I felt my eyes harden as I stared into the young girl’s soul. “I’m going to prevent as much loss of life as I possibly can,” I said sternly, my words radiating out with a palpable aura. The sound mana in the air trembled violently before I willed it back under control. “I can’t tell you the full truth, Milview,” I said quietly into the silence. “Just… enjoy your life. Treasure your brother. And keep your hands clean.”

Circe was quiet for a long moment. “Is there nothing I can do to repay you?” she asked weakly.

“There is nothing you need to do for me,” I said, turning around and preparing to leave. After all, without the blood on her hands–

My footsteps halted erratically as my eyes widened, connections appearing as if a light had streamed into my mind. Seth had djinn blood, which meant Circe did, too. And she’d only been able to complete her three-point array spells in The Beginning After the End by using her blood.

Her lifeforce.

I turned around robotically. “Actually, there might be something you can do.”