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Toren Daen
“Toren Daen!” a voice snapped angrily, cutting through my broken thoughts. The rising of another power–dark and turbulent–forced my mind from its downward spiral.
My gaze darted from the pictures–from the glaring accusation written in ink and blood–to Seris. She was standing now, her face a mask of anger as she stared at me. Her power was spreading through the room, suffusing the air as it pushed back against my intent.
I didn’t realize it, but my breathing had increased. The pictures in my hands felt heavier than lead as I swallowed, belatedly recognizing that I’d nearly caused the mages in this room to have heart attacks from the outpouring of my aura.
“I… I’m sorry. I lost control,” I said quickly, my gaze darting to Aurora’s shade where it hovered by my side, her sunlit eyes wide with shock, recognition, and a strange sense of hope. “I need to go. To process this.”
It wasn’t a question. Seris might technically be my superior, but no command of hers could keep me in this room right now. The cavern felt infinitely more stifling with every second I stayed there.
Seris, thankfully, seemed to understand. Her expression hardened as she nodded slowly. The many men and dwarves around us gradually pulled themselves back to their wits, more than a few shying away from me in terror, I allowed my thoughts to centralize on something.
I needed to be under the sky so I could think. So I could process this–process what it meant.
“Is there any other action that needs to be taken, Toren?” she asked, a subtle bite in her tone. She said nothing else, only allowing her head to tilt ever-so-slightly to the side.
Toward Rahdeas.
She’s asking me if he needs to be accosted, I realized, forcing my hands not to clench around the pictures in my hands. If what he showed me was worth punishment.
But it wasn’t. Not really. “I'll be fine. I was shown something disturbing,” I said, sending a covert look at Rahdeas, who only smiled lightly in turn. The council was silent as I was allowed to speak. “I need time to sort it out, but it is nothing worth any more action. For now.”
At least not yet. Not until I’d thought it through more. I couldn’t afford to push for actions if I hadn’t given them thought.
Seris nodded slowly, and from the questioning glance she gave the papers in my hands, I knew she wanted to look at them. But as I strode away from the council table, Aurora following mutely by my side, I didn’t allow her the chance to peek.
As I stalked through the halls, I was able to rein my emotions in more thoroughly. Anger and horror evened out into more temperate lines of irritation and uncertainty. But still, as I reached an equilibrium of thoughts, I didn’t speak.
I stepped off the Divot’s landing pad, allowing the ambient mana to carry me toward the cavernous exit of Burim. It was late afternoon now, and the city’s industry was gradually winding down. I spied the many soldiers out and about along the stalactite-bound city, and it was clear that the tension they felt wouldn’t set with the sun.
I welcomed the sun as I finally exited the massive cavern. Like the brush of an inviting campfire, the joyful yellow dot encouraged me as it gradually dipped lower in the sky.
I floated over the Bay of Burim for a few minutes, allowing my thoughts to flow and my emotions to settle. I wasn’t quite meditating, but acknowledging all I felt in the wake of the letter. Now, though, I pushed it all aside as I let myself go for a moment.
Aurora hovered at my side, a contrasting set of emotions radiating over our bond. After all, we both knew who had sent that letter.
“You said that your brother would eventually contact us when he was ready,” I said, staring into the distance as sunlight reflected off the glittering ocean. “But I didn’t think he’d be so…”
I trailed off, not really having any words to describe it. Accusatory? Sharp? Confrontational?
“Mordain was always a calm and composed man, Toren,” Aurora said beside me, her shade’s hair flowing with the wind. “But he was also one to present the facts as he saw them. He did not shy away from professing his views when he believed it necessary.”
I held up the last slip of paper I’d received, tracing over the words. Behold the outcome of meddling with time. -M. Compounded by the images before it, it sent a message deeper than just presenting the facts.
“So this is from your brother, then?” I said aloud, staring numbly at the emblazoned phoenix feather. “Not some sort of trick or ruse, designed to confuse me or throw me off balance?”
Aurora turned to me slightly, and there was a strange sort of anticipation in her emotions. “No, it is not. It may not be my brother’s handwriting, but these are his words. That is his symbol. And beyond that, Toren… The contents of the message could only bear weight if spoken from the mouth of one with his wisdom.”
I exhaled through my nose, looking at the pictures once more. Pictures of brutal massacres and horrendous sacrifice, all stamped with the number of lives lost.
Mordain Asclepius was one of the precious few asura who showed care for the lessers in this world: care enough to flee Epheotus with his clan, sheltering them all away in the deepest reaches of the Beast Glades, and sheltering what was left of the djinn from the wrathful clutches of Kezess Indrath.
And because of his care for them, the djinn granted him knowledge. Knowledge few ever learned. Few could learn.
The patriarch of the Asclepius Clan was indeed wise. But he was also a seer–a man who could peer into the weaves of aether that made the foundations of this world, and in turn divine some measure of the future.
And with that context–the context that I had immediately grasped when I cycled through these photos for the first time–I knew what it was meant to do. Because I’d been meddling with the timeline, hadn’t I? I’d been pushing for a better future.
The implications of the letter were not lost on me. By healing Tessia Eralith, by sparing Seth Milview, or whatever hundred other actions I’d taken, Mordain accused me of these massacres. He laid the price of these poor, innocent souls at my feet.
I knew that massacres like the ones depicted in the photos never occurred in that otherworld novel.
No, there was no mistaking the accusation scrawled across this paper.
“We’ll have to meet him soon, then,” I said with a sigh, tracing the horizon as a solemn resolve settled in my stomach. “It’s far from the worst invitation I’ve ever received,” I said without humor, thinking of a letter Mardeth had sent me long ago.
Aurora, for her part, felt far less pensive than I. “It will be good for you, Toren,” she said, her voice uncharacteristically light. “You will meet your family at last. The Asclepius will welcome you with open arms, I am certain. It will be good for you to meet your clan members.”
I felt a slight smile stretch across my face at the thought, but it was dampened by the words on the page. The idea that I was somehow responsible for the tens of thousands of souls lost in some sort of massacre darkened any sort of hope I could feel.
Because that did open up more possibilities. If Agrona was playing so casually with the lives of Dicathians, then that showed a significant change in what I expected of his modus operandi.
I took a deep breath, allowing the fear I felt at that name to simmer through my system. I acknowledged it as I traced the logical paths of these massacres.
In canon, Agrona refrained from targeting civilians and the average Dicathian intentionally. He even made the point to Arthur explicitly, if I recalled correctly. He used it as leverage to convince Arthur to switch sides in the war.
I felt my brow furrow as my brain worked toward an unnerving conclusion. If Agrona was massacring Dicathians–I took a deep breath, centering my emotions as I registered that thought–then that meant the High Sovereign wasn’t holding back in this war anymore for the sake of recruiting Arthur.
All that I’d seen so far slotted into place around this. The introduction of Viessa and the two retainers. The increased presence of Alacryan troops on this continent.
I squeezed my eyes shut as the realization coursed through me. Agrona wasn’t going to pull his punches with the innocent anymore. No, he was intentionally laying out these massacres. To instill terror, maybe? To mock the Dicathians?
I felt as Aurora’s mood dipped lower as well, my morose and troubled thoughts affecting her in turn. Thoughts of family, reuniting, and a hopeful future bled away as the grim reality settled in. “Your insights bear weight, my son,” she thought sadly, her blowing hair slowing. “I am sorry. I did not consider this aspect of my brother’s message.”
It is okay, Aurora, I thought sadly. I have always been asking myself if the events I prevent push this world towards a better future, or if I only send those I care for toward the jaws of oblivion.
I asked myself every night. I’d vowed to make this world better. In the wake of Greahd’s murder at Agrona’s hands, I couldn’t pretend anymore. I couldn’t pretend that I didn’t have a duty to those I loved to try and stop the tyrant that prodded us all like pawns.
On some level, there would always be innocent life lost. It was my duty to try and minimize it, trapped as I was between two impossibilities.
Even if acknowledging it made part of me crack, I’d long since prepared my hands for the blood that would stain them. That was what drove me through the assault on Burim. It was what pushed me through as I ended Skarn and Hornfels Earthborn’s lives. What made me fight Arthur Leywin after I healed Tessia Eralith.
I remembered, not long ago, when a spar between Cylrit and I had nearly ended in my death. I’d hesitated at the brink of duty, fearing the crimson that would stain my hands. But I’d realized it, then. I couldn’t hesitate at every crossroad. I couldn’t second-guess and doubt my every action.
In that direction laid madness.
My hands clenched around the papers in my hands, and a slow, smoldering fire grew across the papers as I settled my emotions. Those tens of thousands of lives… I didn’t know if their blood was on my hands, or if I was to blame for what had happened. What would happen.
I’ll talk to you, Mordain, I thought, and I’ll show you how you are wrong.
Part of me wondered how Elder Rahdeas had any sort of contact with Mordain. Another part of me didn’t particularly care. If Mordain was hoping to dissuade my actions, to shame me somehow, he only did the opposite.
The fact that Agrona was so ready to massacre thousands only proved why his throat needed to be slit.
“My brother is a wise man, Toren,” Aurora said slowly as I settled myself. “I will have words with him for how he has pushed you today, but I cannot imagine his motives being anything but just.”
You know him better than I do, Aurora, I thought back. But I hope we can work something out.
And as I sensed the attention of a familiar person on me, I allowed myself to push these thoughts away for now. I would have to revisit them, and soon. But for right now? Right now, I needed to remind myself of the good I had done. Of the positive impacts I’d had on this world–not just the negative ones.
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On the docks far below, a familiar couple stood, mostly shadowed from the light. A dark-skinned man was pointing up toward me, saying something in hushed whispers to the woman at his side. Her hands shook slightly, but not from fear. My eyebrows rose as I recognized them.
I slowly lowered in the air, approaching the couple. I couldn’t sense any intent from the young woman–she was clearly a nonmage–but I could hear as her heartbeat spiked with worry. Her hands fidgeted nervously with the folds of her dress as I finally tapped down on the pier not far away.
Lusul Hercross calmly worked to explain something to his Dicathian lover, gesturing animatedly to me as I slowly approached. The shy girl’s blue eyes averted from mine as she sought comfort in the dark-skinned Named Blood’s arms, clearly fearful at my approach.
I slowed slightly as I neared, not wanting to make the young girl any more afraid. “Hello there, Lusul,” I said, smiling slightly as I saw him turn toward me. His almost-pink eyes were calm now. Far, far calmer than when I’d confronted him regarding his illicit affair before. “Am I okay to approach? I don’t want to interrupt the moment.”
Lusul shared a look with his curly-haired lover–I’d never learned her name–some silent communication occurring between them. Finally, he nodded. “We’re good, Toren,” he said. “Anasia was just surprised to see someone flying over the bay. That’s not normal, you know.”
I snorted slightly as I approached. “Sorry about that. I had something I needed to ponder, and I’ve always thought best beneath the open sky.” I shook my head, dismissing those dark thoughts. “How goes your training? Any progress?”
These past few weeks, I’d done my best to instruct Lusul Hercross in the art of my intent-based music. It was there that my talent for the art was truly revealed, because despite Lusul’s constant efforts, he struggled at the first step.
The dark-skinned orchestra member sighed. “I’ve been stuck,” he admitted, a slump to his shoulders. “I don’t understand how I’m supposed to feel at ‘intent,’ Toren. It’s just all gray. I know you’ve told me that there’s more to it, but I’m struggling to find it.”
I nodded slowly. Before I even started showing the man how to effectively manipulate his own mana signature, I’d started by telling him of the intricacies of mana signatures and intent–but he hadn’t been able to grasp it as instinctively as I. It was a unique experience for me, too, trying to put into words what I’d first grasped by happenstance.
Lusul's lover–whose calloused hands still fidgeted with her curly, nut-brown hair–looked between us with wide eyes. “So you really weren’t lying,” she said, her voice deeper than I expected. “I thought you were pulling my leg again, saying that you knew Spellsong.”
The young Hercross man’s brows rose slightly as he stared down at Anasia. “I told you that he’s my direct superior,” he said, sounding confused. “Why would I lie about that?”
Anasia visibly deflated as she turned away from Lusul. “You said that in Alacrya, you ate… that you ate bugs every day. Giant centipedes.” She shivered slightly despite the spring breeze. “And I believed you!”
Lusul cringed, immediately going into damage control mode. “I was teasing you, okay?” he said, trying to get the curly-haired young woman to look at him again. “Maybe that was a joke, but I’ll never lie to you. I promise!”
Anasia smiled slightly as she heard the words, clearly contented with herself. “You say you promise?”
“I do,” Lusul said stalwartly, both seeming to forget I was watching with a bemused expression. “I’m a man of Blood Hercross, and Blood Hercross would never go back on their words.”
I watched fondly as the two exchanged a few more words, falling into their own little world as they became engrossed with each other.
They’re good for each other, I thought. Though it would be nice if they remembered I was here.
That thought was immediately cut off by Aurora’s laughter as it echoed over our bond. I turned to the side, feeling surprise wash through my system as I watched the asuran shade laugh loudly. I blinked, shocked that she could laugh so purely.
“That may be the greatest thing I have ever heard you say, my son,” Aurora said as she finally cooled down, her boisterous laughter becoming a few chuckles instead. “Imagine for a moment that the two across from you are a certain Ascender and Sorceress, and you shall find the amusement I do.”
I felt my face grow hot as I found more embarrassment than amusement. She made a really valid point.
Score one to Aurora. Toren at zero, I thought sardonically as I allowed the two across from me to finish their little conversation.
“I think I should probably leave,” I said, interrupting the two for a moment. “You two seem to have everything handled here.”
I turned around, ready to surge back into the sky, when Anasia’s voice echoed out. “Wait, Spellsong,” she said, her heartbeat telling me she was more than nervous.
I turned back slowly as she stepped forward, a strange sort of determination in her aquamarine eyes as she stared at me with steel in her bones. “Lus told me that your Sovereigns don’t allow this. That they’re supposed to keep their blood pure, or something. Like the Houses with their magic lineages. Or how people are in the Undercroft.” Her eyes darted to Lusul’s, and I could feel a bit of his uncertainty rise at whatever she was about to ask. “Lus said that you… well, you found us. After he played his music. Your music. Your song, but his music,” she corrected nervously, her hands fidgeting with her dress.
“I don’t punish questions,” I said slowly, sensing the young woman’s nervousness as she inched instinctively closer to her lover. “You’re safe to ask me whatever you need.”
“Why didn’t you… well, stop it?” she finally pushed out, her eyes imploring. “They say you’re the Scythe’s lover. That you’ve got control of all the dwarves in Burim. You could blink, and I’d never see Lus again.”
I felt my expression soften as I stared at the nervous girl. Lusul himself tensed as the question that had loomed between us was finally asked, his nervous eyes flicking to me.
And then I slipped away from the slight happiness I’d experienced earlier, toward something serious and resolved. “The High Sovereign is far from these shores, Lady Anasia,” I said with a slight bow of respect. “And we all must find our happiness. We all must find what brings us fulfillment, even if those above us detest it. There are things worth braving the deepest soulfire for, if you’ve found them.”
I gave Lusul a knowing look. He swallowed slightly, before looking away as he radiated quiet gratitude. I didn’t give the two a chance to respond. I lifted into the air, feeling more myself than I had in a long time.
—
The meeting, apparently, was going on far longer than expected. I didn’t feel comfortable returning, especially not after the atrocious way I’d handled myself in front of those present. I’d allowed myself to lose my grip on my emotions, and that was far from my best moment.
I’ll need to talk to both Seris and Rahdeas later. Seris needs to know what measures we can take if the Hearth is factored into the equation. And I need to know how Rahdeas received a message from Mordain, I thought.
“My brother’s magics are great and powerful,” Aurora thought as I sat cross-legged on my bed. “Among our clan, his abilities were the only ones to eclipse my own. If he wished to contact you more directly, I have no doubt he could. But I suspect there is a deeper motive beneath utilizing the dwarven elder as a messenger.”
I acknowledged that as I slowly settled my emotions. So much to do and so little time.
Is there an aether art, I wondered distantly as I closed my eyes, that could allow me to bend aevum so I may have the time for all I needed to do?
Those fanciful thoughts and more drifted across my mind, before I finally pulled everything inward. I allowed my very consciousness itself to become a singularity as I followed the path of my beating heart, the lifeforce pervasive and all-encompassing as it led me through unseen paths.
I opened my eyes, feeling that pervasive sense of peace and wholeness as I emerged within my very soul.
The Sea of my Soul was vast as always. The reflective mirror lake defied physics as it bounced the all-encompassing sun of Aurora’s light across my body, giving me a supernatural warmth that suffused the deepest reaches of my essence.
Every time I returned to this ethereal plane, I struggled not to just drift on the eddies of pure concept and thought. The waves of expression and deepest knowledge.
I inhaled, then exhaled deeply. The water around me rippled in response to my movement, the small waves of water traveling supernaturally far as if there were no air resistance to equalize their flow.
It wasn’t often that I truly believed something to be magical. To me, everything that my earthen self would have deemed supernatural was just a sideways kind of normal to me now. But as I soaked in the endless void and contrasting sunlit sky on either end of my soul, I felt I was truly witnessing something beyond nature. Beyond sensation. Beyond science. Beyond mortality.
But I couldn’t let myself drift away.
“It is a beautiful place,” Aurora said beside me, her eyes–eyes no longer backlit by a sun as I gazed at her soul–wrinkling in contentment. Except it wasn’t really speech. I heard it more as a conveyance of deepest concepts.
I chuckled lightly. In this soulspace, speech was such an inadequate form of communication. Even… paltry. Even as I heard Aurora’s words, ideas and emotions and the entire intent of my bond’s essence washed over me like calming fire.
Indeed. With speech, you couldn’t comprehend the deepest inflections of sensation. Or the subtle dips and weaves of ephemeral care. Nor could you divine the deepest underlying passion from each shift in sound.
But I wasn’t here to bask in my bond’s light, or the closeness of our souls. I was here to learn.
I’d made a plan before I’d entered soulspace this time. I remembered the first ever time I’d caught a glimpse of this place, way back when I’d first formed my bond with Aurora. The flashes of insight as parts of Toren and the me from earth intertwined, becoming more than the sum of our parts.
I stared down at the reflective lake, my expression thoughtful. I remembered swimming on eddies of thought, all the little bits that made me whole coalescing under the forging iron of Aurora’s soul. The violin, the computer, The Beginning After the End…
Souls were great, immeasurable things. But I knew the depths of my own. How else could I have reached this place of my own volition? So I acted on a hunch.
I focused on a concept. On an idea. Driven by both instinct and preformed ideas, I grasped it.
I thought of sound. Not just sound, but music. And all the concepts and things connected to it. Community, emotion, fulfillment of self. I remembered the first time I’d played my violin. My first use of intent-based music as I professed my desire for companionship and understanding to the men and women of East Fiachra.
And further on. The concerts I’d played for the upper echelons of Alacrya. The journey my music had taken me through this strange, wonderful, and horrible world I called home.
My soul shifted, the very space around me twisting as if by a magnet. Little eddies of water rose as they circled me, pulled inward by an invisible hand. In each bit of water, I could divine something of myself.
As I thought of my music, parts of my soul resonated in turn. They gravitated inward like moths drawn to a flame, each floating sphere of water seeming to twist and warp in my mind’s eye.
If I stared long at the water, I would see memories. Of all the parts of me that was drawn to the very concept of music.
Souls gravitate toward what they know, I thought, watching as the water of memories flowed around me. Each drop of purest liquid seemed to carry the weight of emotion as a small tide gradually built around me. They are drawn to what they understand.
There was a push here. A push and a pull, just like my telekinesis. A natural back and forth, as the moon drew on the tides. But even those analogies fell apart.
It wasn’t exactly something I could truly put into words, but I understood.
“In my previous life, people were fond of saying that music was a pathway to the soul,” I said aloud, my voice resonating. I clenched my fist, watching as the water gradually returned to the endless mirror as I let the concept leave my immediate thoughts. “I do not know if they understood the gravity of their words.”
At my side, Aurora chuckled lightly. “Surely not, my son,” she said. “But I also wonder how many value the miracle of sound as deeply as you.”
I hummed. She was right, after all. I doubted many others would experience such a communion of essence from the concept of music, but this was my soul.
For the next length of time–it was hard to determine the flow of time here–I cycled through a few ideas and concepts, watching how my soul reacted. Flight. Fire. Healing. Companionship.
My flow of consciousness slowed as I reached that concept. Because there was something else I could use to try out the effect.
I turned to the side, staring into the void where distant souls waited. My eyes focused on the shadowed moon of Seris’ soul. And before I even tried, I knew the truth.
Souls gravitated towards concepts. Ideas. But beyond all that, souls gravitated toward other souls.
My eyes widened as the insight settled through me. I remembered the last time I’d entered this place, as I’d reached an arm out to the haunting outline of Seris’ soul. Of how my very essence seemed to rise to meet hers.
“Anchors,” I said lowly, turning to stare at Aurora’s sun-bright soul. “That is what they are. The souls that we hold closest, most dear. The ones with the greatest pull on our destiny.”
Aurora watched from the sidelines, smiling fondly as I gradually discovered more and more. I could feel over our bond–even more prevalent here–her emotions. I could almost see myself as a chick venturing beyond the safety of the nest. Testing my wings. Pushing my limits.
I stared up at the void of endless black beyond the waterfall of my soul. I can sense my Anchors, I thought. Can I see others?
With a flex of intent, the entire world shifted. Like the great model observatories of my past life, the very space warped and moved as more souls appeared before my sight. Naereni. Sevren. Caera.
Indeed, if I focused, I thought I could sense it. Sense how these souls influenced each other in tiny ways, pushing and pulling on each other.
These people I know the closest, I thought, waving my hand as I prepared to shift my vision toward the next group, are they all–
The next few souls came into sight. Arthur Leywin’s–the crown of family and steel. The cracks along its surface had widened, and the Grey light seeped through despite the efforts of all the other influences that tried to press it inward. The tapestry of memories was fracturing as the seeping nothingness tried to push past those splinters.
The opal egg–Sylvie–clung desperately to Arthur’s soul. But despite that, I found my widening eyes focusing on the silver-blossomed vine of duty and desire. The last time I’d seen it, it had been probing and pressing at Arthur’s fractured soul, layering memories like surgical twine over every chasm in his steel-forged soul, suturing them shut.
But no longer. I watched with horror as the silver vine withered, despair and hopelessness condemning it to darkness.