Seed 10
June 13th, 2032.
I woke up to the crashing of waves. Not powerful ones. Gentle. Peaceful. The sound of a tide waiting to recede.
I stood up, staring through the trees, to the golden skies. Something instinctual quailed at the sight, and I breathed in ashes. I knew this place, knew it like the back of my hand, knew it like the scars from scrapes and falls, from accidents with machinery and tools. Knew it like the suffering I felt whenever I saw photos of them, and saw traces of them in my features.
I looked to the sea, lapping gently against ashen sand, left dry because the flowing liquid was not water, it was something else. Within those waters I saw something vast, bodies so large they boggled the mind, with heads the size of moons and bodies the length of worlds. Rotting corpses, parting the vast sea under their weight.
The trees were see-through, leaves and branches with light passing through them. A reflection of an echo. A ghost of a memory.
Something so long dead, it didn’t remember being alive.
“Where am I?” I spoke and the waves stilled for just a moment, and I swore I saw those vast bodies move, just for a moment, a single slice of time.
I looked up and paled as the golden sky parted, and I craned my neck just to see a six limbed figure. Great, powerful, immense in scale and scope. They spread wide, and I was thrown back by a blunt finger flashing with blacker than black skin, cracking to reveal an impossible brightness, brighter than a supernova, naked singularities dancing inside the limitless dark.
SEE THIS THROUGH.
I fell through the world, and that impossible sea became transparent, covered by a mist of colors out of space and tesseract diamond dust. I stepped sideways and heard something, just at the edge of my hearing.
Crying.
“Is someone there?” I said instead, calling out to the void. The same ashy sand, but no ocean, simply a flat plain of dark mud where that great body of liquid once was. I could see stars hanging in the firmament above, silent as the grave, souls long since sundered, silenced, erased.
The crying ceased, but not quietly, it ceased with the scream of static, with the thud of tortured metal, with the resounding meaty drum beat of ruptured stars, and ended with the whimpering whip of hydrogen atoms sliding against each other in the disk of a quasar.
I turned, and I saw. I froze in place, chest gripped by terror, mind, body and soul singing of The Things Unknown. My breath became shallow, heart hammering in my chest, sweat dripping down my back.
Oh god what is that, oh god what is that—
I could see dust scatter in the light as if hanging on mirrors and glass, as something emerges from shadows of ghostly trees and unearthly scenes a billion years dead. It was almost human at a glance, maybe the height of a child, taller than Arali but shorter than I was.
My eye twitches and that human form is human no more, something else. The being is all the colors of the light, nacre and opal and capiz, whites and blues and reds and oranges and yellows, all the colors of the stars twinkling in a humanoid cage of night. An immortal starchild crossing into a kaleidoscopic nightmare.
Pearlescence shines at the edge of the starchild’s cosmic skin, dancing along claws and fangs, swimming with demiurgic aura, tusks curling unforgivably within a too-large mouth. A caricature of humanity, a prismatic mirror containing unfathomable power and might, skin and flesh twisted wrongly, more like wrappings of ribbons made of starlight and endless void.
For a moment I felt my sight pulse, my sense of magic flare and I See.
Radiance. Paragon. Godling.
So blinding it was like I forgot how to see, that my heart forgot to beat. But a sound hung in the air, almost pitched too low for a human to hear it.
But I did. I stared with lidded eyes at the being, as a mandala spun quietly behind the creature’s back. This was not the sound of a mature godling, it was the sound of something young in spirit and soul, perhaps closer to myself in truth, bearing a bequest unimaginable.
And so very alone.
I crouched, meeting eye to the eye with the starchild, eyes like white dwarf stars widening against the literal constellation of freckles along their face. I offered a hand despite my lizard brain screaming in terror, despite my own anxiety, despite my inability to read the thousand and one signals given off by others.
“What’s your name?”
The starchild worked their jaw, which crunched with the scrape of glaciers and the whirling sand of desert winds. They… she spoke a name, and it was distorted. Whispered and warped along with so many meanings, a song of a star within a cage of a body.
I am joy, I am beloved, I am darling-dear-gladness, and I shine with glory and grace.
“Chara huh?” My tongue burned with the name of a neighboring star, but I didn’t stop. “That’s a nice name. My name is Celia Safar Esteban.” I reciprocated her honesty.
She responded back, and I shook at how my name warped along the throne worlds of the Light.
You are heavenly void, the travel and journey, you are crown, you are honor, you are martyr, you are victory, the one who will encircle all.
Those starry eyes widened and she smiled warmly, a glimmer of starlight tears dripping down. I hesitantly reached out, and placed my hand on her head, gently ruffling hair as soft as down, scattering faint puffs of stellar gas and wisps of solar wind with my action.
And the Dawn began to break, as my soul was pulled back by a greater force. The starchild let out a faint whine like the diamond storms of Neptune, and I reached down to their hands, mouthing a promise. She looked so lonely.
I never heard what she said next…
Because I woke up.
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I frowned as I gripped the pendant the dark spirits had been feeding off of. I had noted more features of the pendant. The chain was a gold-silver color. A goldish metallic gray metal dense as platinum, and heavily resistant to magic.
As in immune in every respect, from blasts of fire bordering on plasma to bolts of warpfire and gravity pulses shrugged off like a plinky cantrip. The pendant itself was a core of polished and reflective carbon ado. Black as night with speckles of light scattered across its facets, with a ring of mystery metal utterly covered in strange geometric writing, layered on top of each other in strange angles that gave me a faint headache.
Ultima had said it was best to keep the boon on my person. As it had bonded with me when I had killed the spirit that had been growing stronger from the magic that had clung to it. Unraveled by the void I wielded. The artifact itself didn’t seem to possess any source of magic. But it had been cloaked in a vast amount of energy from what was likely a previous attempt to destroy it.
I sat down, letting my knee bounce as I checked my phone for videos from Florida. “Lincoln Road Mall really has lost a lot of luster after getting flooded.” I remember as a kid that I once went to that shopping district with my parents… that was over a decade ago.
Now it and the southern tip of Florida were underwater after a foot of sea level rise. Most of the barrier islands along with Miami Beach were ghost towns after the aquifers were contaminated with saltwater and chemicals from flooded superfund sites. Dozens of cities across the world were being lost to the sea with the gigantic pulse in sea level rise.
Climate change really was a bitch. Though it was largely a result of the state’s own denialism and incompetence that had led to the utter ravaging and hollowing out of the state. Plus the most powerful hurricane in US history utterly crippling the entire state along with eighteen other states.
Trillions of dollars in damages tended to be… rather horrific in terms of recovery time… that was back in 2024. Then followed two years later by ARKStorm causing a trillion dollars in damages to my own state.
And that flood was just a prelude to the horrors that followed…
The door to the house opened by itself as Ultima walked in with a sigh. I smiled to myself as Arali scrambled in like the little pájaro he was.
He was an odd duck, with his lizard-like body covered in dark feathery down with hints of color, and his snake face made me want to boop him on his nose. His face reminded me of a mask, covered in a smooth pliable material of airglow purple. The difference between his upper and lower jaw is only notable due to faint striations of light purple. His tail trailed behind him for about five feet, so he usually rolled his tail up like a fuzzy chameleon.
He slammed into me with all one hundred and forty pounds worth of weight. I groaned at the force.
“Watch the tits please!” I whined as my chest utterly ached after getting body slammed by an eleven year old with delusions of grandeur.
Arali blanched. “Sorry! I forget you have those sometimes.”
“I would ask how but one you’re not human, two you’re a baby.” I booped him on his snoot with a grin and he hissed.
“Not a baby.” Arali groaned and I let out a giggle as I adjusted him to sit on my lap. I offered him a little scratch on his chin, and Ultima grinned.
“Maybe not but I do need you to be babysat by Celia here, I’m delivering some custom work to a client that’ll earn me plenty of coin. Thirty thousand peca is some sizable dough.”
“That’s about fifteen hundred dollars isn’t it?” A single peca was made out of about two grams of zirconium… so it was worth about five cents?
“More or less?” Ultima shrugged, and I smiled. “Regardless it means you’re in charge until I get back, remember to feed and water Arali, and if you want to go into town take the money I left on the counter.”
Arali scowled and I snorted. “Got it, I'll make sure to keep him alive,” I said dryly. Ultima just beamed with a quick wave before grabbing a box to the right of the door and stepping out.
…
Arali smirked. “So we’re definitely going out into town then?”
“Yes, yes we are.”
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I adjusted my cloak, tightening the clasp that held it together with a faint grin. Arali was wearing his own dark little toga. Less for modesty and more for the sewn-in pockets.
This applied to me too. My utility belt had plenty of glyph papers along with a few potions. Healing tonics, blasting jelly potions, and a strengthening potion.
Blasting jelly was made out of fire slime… slime dissolved in glycerol and mixed with wood pulp and saltpeter. It was a ridiculously stable high explosive, more energy dense than the hypothetical octaazacubane. But wouldn't explode without intent whether from a device or a witch.
Potions were incredible when it came to their applications. Allowing for full-blown cellular regeneration with the use of healing substances. There were dozens of different kinds of plants, often berries or fruit capable of accelerating the healing process. Idunn berries provided an instantly digested source of energy and had antiviral, bacterial, and immune system healing properties.
Pomona fruit could induce cellular regeneration and could restore one’s khi with their own store of energies. Just taking a bite of it was good enough but turning it into a potion was far more effective.
“Hello again!” I chirped a greeting towards Hakim who was brandishing a baton covered in cyfrin chains. I narrowed my eyes as I read the linked letters.
Lightning-arc-two-beats-on-press.
So I suppose our talk on creating welding technology had been fruitful if he had built the basis for a welding machine. I hadn't expected him to opt for written spell chains, however. Enchantment is the art of crafting magical items, infusing them with purpose and power.
Modern enchantment involves essentially weaving a spell into an object, and linking it to a source of magic as a focus, engraving very specific runic inscriptions to activate and channel the spell. The main issue came from the fact it apparently required highly rarefied sources of manifested magic under the control of the Chantry and the Clans that allied with them.
Hakim snapped me out of my musing with a happy flounce of his own, practically vibrating with energy. “Celia! You weren't kidding about this… arc-welding technique, and I'm glad you told me to wear protective goggles! I also need to see if I can work out rune threads for a welding spell.”
“Of course, though I feel like metal-bending magic would be far more effective,” I said, curious about how rarely I had seen it among witches.
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“That’s because metal is a more refined element, natural elements are far easier to manipulate with khi. Lightning is… difficult to manage but metal is just as hard. We can infuse spells into metal, give it power and unique effects, but shaping it is surprisingly hard.” Hakim was a fellow nerd and it showed with his response.
“Celia! Look at this!” I turned around to find Arali picking up a two-headed snake, which squirmed and writhed as it circled around his arm.
“That’s really neat but can you put that down please, I have my fair share of picking up venomous or poisonous animals and don't want you poisoned on my watch.”
“Fine. It is cool though.” I smiled at the fact he was picking up some slang from me.
“Yes, it is you little goober,” he dropped the snake on the ground and it slid away with a whistling of dirt and sand. “But I do want to enjoy Cruorpool since it's fairly different from my home.”
But it wasn't that different either. It was a sizable settlement for this region, though it would barely be considered above a village back home, a small town basically. Several thousand people all living within a few miles of each other.
“I can walk the two of you around, if you'd like?” Hakim offered with a bounce. “I've been everywhere with my father, so I can show you some of the best spots.”
Arali’s eyes narrowed into slits. “The witch boy speaks sense.”
I snorted. “Sure. Why not?”
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I bit into a piece of birote with glee, walking away from a local bakery that Hakim had pointed out. “Glad to know your food tastes delicious, even if some of it would probably kill me dead.”
They had a lot of foods that would likely be deadly to my fragile human palate, they had two stomachs for a reason. The first was essentially a pitcher plant designed to smash and mash living prey and break down toxins into suitable nutrients. Members of the nightshade family were harder to eat for me for example.
“Really?” Hakim asked with a curious look, hands gliding across his makeshift welder.
“The Human Realm is a little less extreme when it comes to deadly toxins, magical or not,” I shrugged at his dubiousness. “Ultima had a bitch and a half figuring out what I could eat. Turkey griffin meat and eggs are edible, gargoyle meat makes me puke up rocks. Teosinte-buckwheat is pretty good.” I wonder where they got the names for their foods…
He smiled lazily. “Ultima really cares about you huh?”
I turned red. “Where did that come from?” I was ruffled by his words and Arali giggled.
“Ultima literally feeds and clothes you, just like me!” The little demon was laughing at my growing flush, wiggling in place as I growled. “She even grows some of the safer potato-chokes for you to eat.”
“Potato-chokes are odd.” Was all I said, focusing on the strange crop more than my own embarrassment.
Potato-chokes are a kind of nightshade, a weird cross between potatoes and artichokes with an edible bud and root. While most variants are toxic to me, a few were safe enough when cooked, or grown in the right places. Delicious though.
Hakim whistled, a quiet haunting sound coming from a ghoul of all things. “I've heard of human potatoes and artichokes. I can see why that would be strange? I've also heard of some mystical human drink known as... chocolate? Xocatl?”
I blinked. “Oh wow, you guys are way out of date when it comes to chocolate news.” Did the Woven Realm interact with Mesoamerica at some point? Maybe involving interactions between Calafia and Cipactli?
Cipactli was the second most intact Titan. Comparable in size with Calafia and surrounded by hundreds of smaller Titans, largely serpentine, missing her limbs. It was ruled by a large singular empire known as Excanta, an alliance of city-states who had partnered with the Chantry to conquer the region two centuries ago. With an estimated population of around twenty million, it was certainly denser than the mainland or Calafia.
But it was also an ocean away, even flight for the fastest of beings would take hours. Sustained flight was also a very different matter from burst speeds.
“You don't drink it then?” Hakim asked with a fanged grin.
“Oh we do but we’ve also figured out how to render it into solid bars which are often blended with different ingredients to form candy. Sugar, vanilla, milk, or milk powder, with different types depending on the amount of cocoa liquor.”
“Are you some kind of scholar?” Hamim asked with a polite hum.
“Not trained. But most of that kind of stuff is publically accessible, especially with the internet. Which is uhh… like a library housed within special thinking machines, storing vast amounts of information and allowing for near-instant communication.” I explained to the best of my ability. Calafia had some experience with instant communication but the range was limited to dozens of miles without the invention of signal boosting.
“Your world seems so amazing and magical,” Hakim said earnestly, dirt shifting like sand under his feet.
I snorted. “Same. No human can throw around the elements or see the future, or cast illusions and pull at the connections of reality. But we’ve certainly refined our understanding of the physical world which is almost as good.”
I wonder what both sides could do combined.
I paused as I noted Arali’s sudden lack of words and presence… oh no.
“Fuck. Where did he go?” My eyes widened in panic as I noted how Arali had disappeared from sight in a single blink. Like the shadow of the void…
I clutched my pendant with a grimace. “We’re going to have to find him, Arali is a real trouble magnet. Doesn't help that his natural talents are inclined towards attracting danger.” That his voice could naturally attract powerful spirits and otherkind was just a tad concerning.
“I'll help.”
Hakim was a sweet guy, and I hoped he didn't suffer for it.
It should be fine right?
Right?
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It was not fine.
Arali had sent us on a wild goose chase up and down the compact settlement. I had ended up looking through various shops and other such places for the little dastard.
“I've searched for him in three bakeries, two local restaurants, the local library, your place, a tailor shop, one of the local millers that he likes, and a grocer.” I walked back and forth as I folded my arms behind my back with a scowl.
“I looked for him at a few places too, one of the stonemasons, and one of the local schools… but nothing.” Hakim sounded as worried as I felt.
“God, Ultima is going to kill me,” I groaned aloud, pinching the bridge of my nose to hold back a stress headache. “At least I know Arali is a tough kid, there's not a lot that can hurt him in a town.”
The little guy had immense resistance against damage, was tough as nails, and was twice as sharp. He was a pain.
“Well, at least we’ve managed to explore all over Cruorpool right?” Hakim tried to comfort me and I giggled lamely.
“I really hope we find him, and we haven't even attempted to speak with any of the guards, with who my Mentor is.” Fortunately, the main policing force in the taifa was the Clan members and the clanless under their command. Other kingdoms still had their clans, but many were also higher-up members of the Chantry, which meant they were far more obliged to bring lawless witches under their fold.
“Well it should be—” I winced as a cry forced itself through the air like a shockwave, and the sound of a roar followed.
Arali.
We got moving quickly. I blanched as we turned a corner on a street which was being filled up by a local animal.
Beowulf.
The beast was massive, some fifteen feet tall as it stood on its hind limb. Like a cross between a bear and a wolf, bulky like a bear with long robust limbs, and an enormous, thick skull shaped like a wolf… and a long fluffy wolf tail swaying back and forth. It was also covered in scutes of bone, like a fine chain mail.
I swallowed my awe and terror. My eyes darting up and down the fierce features of the deadly beast. A monster like this had to weigh at least a ton. With swipes able to go through steel as easily as a knife through butter.
The beowulf was the largest and most fearsome of the bear-wolves. Massive canines known for jaws able to crack even the hardest of bones reinforced with khi and dense metals. They had access to potent fire magic, and I was seeing that for myself.
Flames swirled and twisted around the beast like a living thing. Eyes shining amber as the beowulf let out a roaring howl so deep it made the air vibrate. It slashed with one paw, the air bursting as it struck a large abandoned cart in half.
And in the remaining half of the cart, I saw Arali cowering under it, his coat fluffed up as he crawled away from the massive canine.
Oh… fuck.
My body moved without thinking as I pulled out a glyph, casting a barrier around myself with a stuttering flick of my wrist. A second pulse of void from the glyph was shaped and molded into a raw kinetic kick.
The beowulf was thrown back half a dozen meters before using a burst of flame to counter the kinetic push.
“Arali!” I ran towards him with a scream, tapping my glyph a third time and reducing my own mass to a quarter of normal… and doubling my speed in an instant.
I dove into a roll, grabbing Arali on the way down. Avoiding the scorching plasma blasted from the beowulf’s gaping maw. I could see Hakim being ready to dive in and—
Someone else stepped in from the crowd, and moved in an instant, meeting the plasma blast head-on, an invisible barrier flashing into existence to block the attack.
“Hello there!” A deep gruff voice let out a fierce roar. The unknown cast out an arm, and swept away the dust and ash with a pulse of magic.
“Oh.” I held Arali close to my chest as I backed away from the beowulf, wrapping my barrier around my buddy.
The witch responsible… he was a wapuk… likely mixed with an ogre from his robust frame. With his porcine head, and two pairs of tusks jutting from his snout. His green-brown hide was covered in thick dark fur. His aardvark-like tails swayed lazily as he folded his furred wings.
And pants… held up by his tail?
“Curious thing ain't he? My cousin enjoys learning from their magic, I'm sure she’ll demonstrate for you at some point.”
“Cousin?” I croaked.
“Little Dinah of course,” he shouted aloud as the beowulf sized him up. He shrugged his shoulders, wings flaring out with his motion. “You really riled her up. And I can see why.”
I blinked. “What?”
“Hmm?” He tilted his head.
And the beowulf struck.
The dragon simply reached out, grabbed the monster by the neck, and slammed it down.
A crater formed underneath the canine, and he lunged with his fists, striking at select points. In a single instant, the canine went limp, foam spilling from the mouth of the insensate beast.
My teeth clicked as I shut my mouth, holding Arali even tighter.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
If he was a member of the Frazoiyo clan then I was in for a world of trouble, especially when he was this powerful.
“Hey, human!” He called me out and I paled in reaction. “You better retreat now, or my cousin will be on you in a heartbeat. Don't need a town block burned down.”
…
What?
“Okay?” I was so confused. “What's going on?”
He snorted. “It's her mission, not mine, she needs the hunting experience. Just remember the name Farrow clan Frazoiyo! Got it?”
Am I having a stroke?
I swallowed my concerns and nodded. “U-Understood.”
I immediately retreated, Hakim pulling me away from the thankfully inattentive crowd, distracted by panic.
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I hummed quietly as I inspected Arali. Checking him over for injuries, because he was tough but not invulnerable. I pulled at his joints, checked his eyes for any discoloration or even a minor scratch, counted his teeth to see if he had lost any in the fight. Which happens fairly often due to his own recklessness, but they always grew back in.
After that mess Hakim had snuck us out of the town. So I ended up with his golm-speaker info. Turns out golems are a more general form of magical construct, a kind of artificial spirit animating a chosen substance. Something like a robot… with golm-speakers being little devices able to project the voice of a user up to twenty miles in good conditions to another device.
Very neat little guys.
Arali was being quiet. His claws clicking together as he nervously let out a soft whining chirp.
“I'm… I'm sorry.” His voice sounded hoarse, a low song like chiptunes and wind chimes pressing into the air. Huh, that's new, isn't it?
“About leaving my sight, sending me on a wild goose chase, or almost getting yourself killed by practicing your powers without supervision?” He flinched with each question I labeled off of my fingers with a raised brow.
Arali sagged. “Ultima said today was supposed to be about practicing my talent,” he looked very small at the moment, and I noted he had tufts of feathers like ears right below his curling horns. “But then her client came up and she said I wasn't allowed to practice without her supervision.”
“Your talent?” I asked, having read some books on inherent abilities but not knowing every detail.
“An inherent magical ability, like the shifting abilities of werewolves, the hypnotic abilities of succubi and sirens.”
“Oh, your talent has something to do with your voice doesn't it?” It was an odd sort of magic, one which pulled on the strings of reality and made my head hurt.
“Ultima says it's a lot like bard magic but… more powerful, more primal, and harder to control. I was practicing… and ended up pulling on a beowulf using my magic.”
“Oh. I can see why you need supervision… How does your talent feel for you? How does magic feel for you?” I asked gently as I wiped away some dirt from his face with a napkin.
“It feels like I'm pulling on what makes up the world, trying to weave it into shape with my… voice, my song, my words.” Arali sounded confused, and I didn't know how to reassure him. “Ultima says magic is energy, the energy within the soul and spirit. Like conceptual strands that can be shaped with materials, shapes, thoughts, movements. My… song, it's all power and brute force, no control.”
“Maybe you need a way to focus your Voice to cause a specific outcome. Try to limit what you do when you project your power?” If he was channeling too much power, maybe he needed a way to visualize using less.
He blinked. “You’re not mad?”
I smiled. “Oh no I'm absolutely livid, but I'm also too burnt out to want to scream at a preteen. And I expect Ultima to do most of her job as your mama.”
His feather ears wiggled and I almost giggled at his embarrassment at calling him out. “I'm still sorry.”
“You’re a kid. God knows I've made plenty of impulsive and destructive decisions before. Like that time I unleashed hordes of lizards on a school trip. Right after he…” I trailed off and kept going. “I wanted to keep the little guys safe… And they slipped out of my backpack.”
Arali laughed. “Least none of them ate each other right?”
He flinched at my haunted reply. “No, I didn't get to experience that peace of mind,” I shook my head of traumatic childhood memories. “Anyways I'm glad you're safe… you just need to think things through better you know. Eres hermoso pero tontito.” I patted his head with a soft grin as the two of us leaned against the couch.
“I'll try.” Was all he said, staring up at me with eyes darker than night.
“You’ll have to before Ultima kills you dead,” I said with no hesitation.
“Nooo…”
I laughed.