Aria ran through the forest, the morning sun peeking through the treetops. After finishing the journal that Nic had brought with him, she ran towards the Verilo household in the distance. While most people didn’t know the name of the old house in the forest, it was easy to figure it out after reading the journal.
She understood why Nic had gone there. It was painfully obvious why he had lied multiple times to her. Why he had withheld the truth. He was scared. Scared of rejection. Why wouldn’t he be? He was one of the hated “Verilos” whose progenitor, Noah Verilo, caused the first Irradiated Winter and created Irradiation itself.
If Aria was being honest with herself, she should’ve run away when she read the book. Yet after two years of working with Nic, trying to teach him magic, she had grown to understand something important about him. He wasn’t a bad guy. There was something in her that warmed up whenever she was with him. She couldn’t explain it. But she knew that it was there.
She was near the blackened area that surrounded the house. As she grew closer, a gruesome sight stopped her in her tracks. In front of her was a stone platform with three stone spikes jutting out of it. However, the thing that stopped her was the monster atop the spikes.
A Gigant Bear had been impaled. Whoever had done this was a pro. Even Aria could tell that. The kill had been clean. Three impales was all it took. Just a few mer away was a 3-way room created by stone.
Her heart beat in her chest, harder than it had been before. Sweat trickled down her forehead as she cautiously moved around the scene. The blackened clearing was just in front of her now. Maybe 20 mer. She could easily cross the threshold. At least. She would have been if not for the man standing at the edge of it.
“Who’re you?” Aria posed her question with ice in her voice. No matter who stood in her way, she was going to find Nic.
“I should be the one asking that question, miss. Only select people are allowed beyond this point.”
“You’re one of them?”
“That’s right. I'm the caretaker of these grounds. I decide who comes in and who leaves.” As the man finished his statement, the ground around the clearing became massive, 5 mer tall, with walls made of stone. It perfectly aligned itself with the edges, creating a smooth wall. It was clear that this man was an expert at Earthen Magic. Aria thought him to be either a Dwarf or the Earthen Spirit King of the current era. Only someone of that caliber would be able to manipulate rocks so smoothly, so quickly. “The name’s Rust. What’s yours?”
“Aria.” Threatened by the massive stone walls, and the impaled Gigant Bear she had seen earlier, Aria had begun weaving the air around her. Rocks of all shapes and sizes lifted up in her vicinity. Directly behind her, she readied the largest rock that she could pick up.
“So, Aria, why are you here?”
“I have reason to believe someone that I care about is in that building doing something very stupid. Stand aside and neither of us has to get hurt.” Her mouth was dry. Dryer than a hot desert. Despite that, she stood her ground.
“And do you know who that young man is? Or I guess I should ask ‘do you know what he is?’”
Aria sucked in her breath.
“Nic. Nic Verilo.”
“So you know what he is. And yet you are willing to risk everything to stop him from doing what he is supposed to do?”
“Suppose to do?! If he goes through with what he is planning, the only thing that will happen is he will become a slave to the wishes of his ancestors! What about his own wishes, his own desires!” Aria’s hands shook as she talked. Her voice rose higher with each word. Her heart beat against her breasts with the force of a mad cow. Every part of her rejected the idea that Nic wanted this to happen. Even if it was a lie, Aria couldn’t believe that his wish to bring his future offspring a better future was completely false. If he went through with this plan, that wish would be forfeit.
“How do you know this isn’t his wish as well?”
The man, Rust, continued to verbally deny her truth. No matter what she said, he would continue to deny it, to deny her. So she made up her mind. If he wouldn’t move voluntarily, she would move past him by her own methods.
In an instant, the rocks that had all been floating around Aria shot toward Rust. Each one covered the distance between the two in a mere second, propelled by the wind Aria commanded. Every single one that hit Rust drew blood, whether it was in a straight line from a grazed shot or the holes left by the rocks that hit him dead on. The biggest rock that she had lifted stayed behind her.
The ground beneath Aria’s feet rumbled. Sensing imminent danger beneath her, Aria propelled her legs forward, sprinting at Rust. Three spikes made of stone, similar to the ones that had impaled the Gigant Bear, sprouted from the ground beneath where she had been just moments prior.
The larger stone that had been floating behind Aria now suddenly appeared in between her and Rust. Instead of using it for offense, Aria used it as a foothold instead. Jumping onto the rock, she propelled herself up. Jumping at the zenith of the rock's trajectory, Aria soon found herself falling behind Rust.
Catching her own fall with a cushion made of air, Aria stood up on the ground. Without a moment's notice, she had begun moving toward the dilapidated house once again.
Upon reaching the door, her breath was ragged. Her muscles were tired. Her mind was foggy. She raised one arm to push open the door, only to stop once she saw her arm. Black veins ran across her arms, running the entirety under her skin. She knew what this was. Black veins were a clear sign of Irradiation Sickness. And yet, she shouldn’t have gotten it so quickly.
Aria pushed on, hoping that it was a mere hallucination on her end. She pushed through the main hallway, coming into a large family-type room. The much nicer wall on the backside caught her eye. In its center was a clean door.
She pushed through the door, stumbling down the staircase behind it. At the bottom she found a much smaller room. The person she was searching for was laid out on the bed. Two circular wooden items were attached to his right arm. Her legs gave out as she reached the bed. Her upper body lay across Nic as she struggled to keep her eyes open.
“Nic…”
The Irradiation Sickness quickly took over her body, rendering her unconscious.
When Nic opened his eyes, he was in an unfamiliar place. It was blindingly bright, everything a pure white as far as the eye could see. Every step he took resounded like he was walking on stone, yet underneath him was simply more pure white.
The only hint of color in the entire space was Nic himself and the clothes that he was wearing. Not a speck of color could be seen anywhere else in this strange place.
“Hello?” Nic’s voice rang out. He awaited a response only to receive none. His voice simply echoed an answer to itself over and over again.
Nic walked forward. He had no sense of direction, so it was the only way he could truly go.
Thud.
A wall. This space was finite. The wall was the same pure white as the floor, making them indistinguishable from each other. Keeping one hand on the wall he had found, Nic walked to his left until he hit another wall. Turning around, he walked in the other direction until he hit a third wall. Following that wall, he found a fourth wall. It seemed that the place was an enclosed cube.
Looking around again, Nic saw a small black sphere floating in the enclosed space. The fact that it was black contrasted with the pure white all around them had made it stand out too much for Nic to ignore.
He walked up to the sphere. His heart beat faster the closer that he got to it. He started to feel some sweat beads on his forehead as he reached out for the sphere.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
Standing across from Nic was an older gentleman. He looked vaguely like Nic’s father if he had been ten to twenty years older.
“Who… are you?”
“Noah Verilo.” Nic stood there, mouth agape, as he tried to process what the man had said. While he could accept it based solely on his appearance, Noah Verilo died nearly three centuries ago. Nic wondered if this was the work of this weird space he had found himself in. But if that was the case, what was this place truly?
“Well, I can see you’re confused, so let me explain a bit more. To be accurate, I am like a memory of Noah Verilo. I was locked into the Verilo blood that is passed down through the generations. Once one of my descendants learned to use magic, like you, and put their hand on the magical implement I left with Rust, I would become conscious again.”
“So you are… a memory of my ancestor? What purpose do you serve? Why are we in this place? What is this black orb?” Nic fired off his questions rapidly, trying to gain some knowledge that made sense.
“That’s right. As for my purpose, well that and this black orb are tied to my life’s story. As for this plane, it’s basically a small room inside your head that I created so we could talk freely. Now, let me ask you this, what do you know about me?”
“About you? As in Noah Verilo?” The memory of Noah nodded. “You were the creator of Irradiation, around three hundred years ago. You were born with no magic and wished for it every day. When you eventually got magic, it wasn’t like you wanted. You were unable to control the massive amount of Irradiation that was growing in your body, so it was forcefully expelled out of you. It went on to cover most of the world, creating the first Irradiated Winter.”
“That’s right. And what about what happened after that Irradiated Winter?”
“After that… I only know this from the journal you kept, but you regret what happened right? You wanted to fix your mistakes. Eventually, you met a few people that were able to stand near you without getting acute Irradiation Sickness. With their help, you set out to find a way to get rid of Irradiation right? But at some point, the group split apart for some reason.”
“One of the members of my group, the Wind Spirit Progenitor, Aeriel, stated that humanity must survive five hundred years of Irradiation before they could be freed. That is what broke us apart.”
“Five hundred years? But it’s only been three hundred right? Then why am I able to be here?” Nic was confused by that small difference. Why had he been allowed in two whole centuries before the stated time?
“Can you try using your magic?”
“Huh, ok.” Nic was unsure why the memory was asking this of him. His magical capabilities should already be approved thanks to the magical apparatus in the real world. He held out his hand and tried to push the air in front of it. He only tried because it didn’t work. He pushed once again to find the same results waiting for him.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
“Why won’t it work?”
“That’s simple. It’s not your magic that you are using.” The memory’s statement confused Nic. How had he gotten here if it wasn’t his magic? Whose magic was it? Where did it come from?
“The magic you used to get in here was a spirit’s magic. It was most likely a lesser wind spirit that was told to help you.”
“A… spirit’s magic? But then, shouldn’t I have been barred from entering this place?” Everything the memory said confused Nic. He thought it all contradictory.
“Remember what we just went over? Three hundred years ago, the Wind Spirit Progenitor, Aeriel, said that humanity would need to wait a full five hundred years before the Irradiation would be removed.” The memory began to move while he talked. His hands became a second way of communication as he used them to emphasize certain words.
“I remember that, yes.”
“Well, Aeriel said that we would know that it was time because he would give us a sign.” The memory’s eyes peered at Nic, digging straight through his soul. “And what did I just say about your magic?”
Nic raised his hand to his head as he mentally went through everything the memory had said in the past few minutes.
“Uh, you said it was a lesser spirits magic… And that it was… told to help me? Told to?” As he said it out loud, the cogs in Nic’s mind began turning, faster and faster as he began making the links. “If a lesser wind spirit was told to help me… then the person or thing that told it to, that would have to be a greater wind spirit or the wind spirit progenitor.”
“Correct. That is why you are here. Even if the magic may not be yours, Rust and I believe this to be the sign that Aeriel said he would give. Even if it is a few hundred years early.”
That was the answer. As he heard that, Nic let out a long breath, relieved to have learned the truth.
Eventually, his eyes once again came to lay upon the black orb floating in front of him. It was the final mystery involved with this space that Nic and the Memory of Noah were meeting in.
“So, this orb… it has to do with the fact that Aeriel sent me as his sign that it was time?”
“That’s right.” The memory finally put his hand out, resting it under the orb. His face was contorted, multiple emotions flashing across it at the same time. Resentment, anger, loathing. But also relief and acceptance. Nic had a feeling he knew what it was. “This orb right here is a small orb of Irradiation.”
Nic had assumed right. While he had never seen Irradiation before, it normally was invisible to the naked eye, he imagined that it would look something like this. Nic was unsure as to why he could see it though. The easiest answer was that this was all in his mind. But it might be possible that enough Irradiation packed into a small area would look like this to everyone.
“What should I do?”
“Reach out your hand. Grab it. Once you do, it will be like pulling something in with the wind magic you have been using. Absorb the Irradiation into your body.”
Nic extended his hand. As his fingers touched the orb of Irradiation, there was resistance. It felt like a ball made of wood, hard to the touch. Maybe it was due to this being his mind. He was subconsciously not letting himself absorb Irradiation, even if it was weak. Or maybe it was his body and blood. Maybe that stopped him from absorbing it. Either explanation worked, and worked against him at that.
He gripped the orb. It fit snugly into his hand. He felt the flow of the orb in his hand. He closed his eyes and pulled on the orb, just like he had brought his knife back to him. The orb in his hand softened, then began to shrink. He felt something foreign enter his hand. It quickly moved up his arm before dissipating.
By the time the foreign substance in his body had dissipated, the orb was gone from within Nic’s hand. He opened his hand to find nothing but emptiness there. He looked over his arm, finding nothing out of the place visually.
“Good. Now for t-- ---d p--t.” The memory started talking, only to begin cutting out. In front of Nic’s eyes, he was wavering in and out of thin air. Even the memory seemed confused as he looked at his own hands, confusion covering his face.
A black shadow covered the two, forcing them to simultaneously look up. The once pure white ceiling was now marbled with black stains running throughout it. The stains were blotting out the whiteness of the room. It wouldn’t be long before they had covered everything.
“S--one i- -nterr---ing us?” The memory turned to Nic and stepped towards him. His outstretched hand passed through Nic as it turned incorporeal once again. The memory stopped moving, his mouth shut as his eyes were glued to his hand. “Go!” The moment he was corporeal he shouted that single word at Nic with as much force as he could. His face was twisted, from what, Nic didn’t know.
“What about the rest? Weren’t you going to show me everything?” Nic refused to believe what he had been shown was it. That foreign substance in his body, Irradiation, was most likely still there even if he didn’t feel it. No matter what he did, there was bound to be a limit to how much he could hold within his own body.
“T--re i- -ore --me. Yo- -ust le--n th- -est on yo-re ow-. --od Luc-.” With a final broken sentence, the memory faded away. Nic reached out after him only to catch nothing. Once again he had been left alone.
His entire life, no one supported him, no one taught him, and no one cared about him. Not even his parents. They had always been against Nic trying to learn magic. They said it was easier to live a lie of a life than to try for the impossible. Even them, the people he wanted to support him the most, the people who should have; knowing just how much they had gone through because of their blood, refused to.
No one was on his side.
Brown hair passed by his face, causing him to look up. He looked around for a vision of Aria, only to find the darkening emptiness around him. He heaved a sigh as his chest tightened.
He had a single person on his side. One person that he felt comfortable saying he trusted. One person that he felt would support him. Listen to him. Wait for him.
Nic looked around for the exit from his own mind. He wanted to leave. To find her. To tell her the truth, finally. He believed she would help him find a way to finish what had been started here.
Slowly, his vision blackened and he lost consciousness for just a second.
When he opened his eyes again, he was back in the room in the Verilo house. The bed underneath him was the same, the walls and ceiling had yet to change. The only change in the room was the fact that there was a weight on top of Nic’s chest.
Sitting next to the bed was Aria. She was leaning over the side of it, her head resting on Nic’s chest. She was facing away from Nic, so he could only see the light brown hair on the back of her head. But even that was enough for him to know.
“Aria…?” Nic’s first thoughts were questioning what he was seeing. Why was she there? She should have been back at the campsite on the hill. How was she staying safe? If what Rust had said was true, she shouldn’t have been able to survive in the vicinity of the house. Where was Rust? The caretaker of the house was nowhere to be seen.
Aria softly stirred as he said her name. Pushing herself up on shaking arms, she looked around randomly, like she couldn’t see a thing.
“Nic?” Her voice wavered, a whisper Nic barely heard above the pounding of his own heart as he saw her face. Black lines, dark as the darkest nights, covered her body. Each one was a blood vein under her skin. Nic knew what it was. Irradiation Sickness. Bad Irradiation Sickness at that. At this stage, it would result in her death within the hour if something wasn’t done.
Why was she like this? The last time Nic had seen her before he left the campsite, she had been perfectly fine. The only change that had happened in that time was the house they were in. The area around it had been killed, similar to what happened in areas known for Irradiation.
Nic caught Aria as she collapsed once again. Her breathing was ragged, her body light as a feather yet heavy as a brick. Nic grabbed her, forcing himself out of the bed. He had to get her out of the vicinity of the house.
As he ran up the stairs, into the broken main room of the house, the two wooden rings on his arm snapped in half, clattering to the floor.
Outside of the house, Nic was met with a stone dome covering the entire dead area. It was the work of Rust. At some point he had to have created the dome to stop someone from entering the premises. There was no discernable exit to the dome.
Nic ran out to the stone itself. He had to find an exit so he could leave. Even if it meant running the outer edge in its entirety. He could feel Aria’s breath getting weaker every second she was in the dome. If he could just get out of the dome, he could absorb the Irradiation from her. Just like he had learned from the memory of his ancestor.
Like it had read his thoughts, the stone in front of him broke away from the rest of the dome, sliding back into the ground. A door now stood in front of him. Nic took the opportunity to leave. He ran away from the dome for a while longer, making sure to put a good amount of distance between Aria and the source of the Irradiation now flowing through her body.
“Ughhh.” Aria let out a small groan as Nic gently laid her down on the ground. Kneeling next to her, Nic put his hands on her stomach. Her body felt just like the orb of Irradiation Nic felt inside his mind.
He repeated what he had done there, pulling the Irradiation into his body. Aria had much more within her than the small orb he had absorbed earlier. A sickly feeling ran through his body. It was the Irradiation, Nic knew that. But even still, how it felt to absorb Irradiation unsettled him. He wondered if he would be able to absorb it all without going into the same state that Aria was currently in.
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Aria tried to remember what she had been doing just a few seconds ago. Everything was a jumble in her brain. Nic and her had been traveling to the hill where she first awakened her magic, she remembered that. She also remembered that Nic had left. She had found a black book, an old diary of Noah Verilo’s, in his possessions. That was when she learned that Nic was a Verilo himself.
It had been a shock to realize that. It really had. But at the same time, for Aria, it explained a lot about how Nic acted. It also let her know that he had lied to her multiple times in the past two years that they had spent together. No matter how one looks at it, she should have left him to do his own thing and gone back to the village.
When, well if he returned, she would simply ignore him and continue to live out her life as she planned. She would turn seventeen in less than two weeks. At that point, she would head back to Sanum, where she had once lived, and be reunited with her childhood friends. They would go to school at the Sanum University. They would stay a group forever, this time no one being forced to leave the other two.
Yet she hadn’t. She had run to him. That’s right. That’s what happened. She had run to Nic. And in doing so, she had entered an area she shouldn’t have. Her body had quickly gotten unwieldy and as she had found Nic, she had collapsed.
A sigh escaped her… lips? Wherever she was now, it seemed like she had a body. She tried to get up, only to find her body far heavier than it had any right to be. It was like an entire house was tying her down. She was stuck.
“Ah, so another one succumbs to Irradiation? I do wish more would come to meet me from other means, it’s so annoying removing Irradiation from one's soul. Alas, I guess it can’t be helped.” A female spoke from somewhere nearby. She had a deep voice, one that carried with it the weight of many lifetimes. Whoever was speaking, they had seen or done a lot.
“I’m ‘fraid I can’t let you take this one. She’s under my protection.” This time a male's voice spoke. Aria somehow felt reassured hearing him. She felt like she had heard this voice before, but she couldn’t place where. When he spoke, a verdant green light filled the space that Aria was in.
“Under your protection… Really? I thought you weren’t supposed to do that for a while longer?”
“I decided to go against my father's wishes. It's as simple as that.” The two continued to talk to each other. Aria wondered if they even knew that she could hear them. She craned her neck, trying to catch a glimpse of the two. She saw two things in the distance. One seemed to be human, but they wore a large cloak that obfuscated their looks. The other… Aria didn’t know what to call the other. It was a green orb that was floating in front of the cloaked individual.
“Ha ha ha ha! You plan to go against him? That’s great. That really is. Fine, if that’s what you want, I won’t get in your way.” The one who laughed was the cloaked individual. Which means that they were the female voice. That also meant that the other one, the orb, was the male voice.
“Really? I somehow don’t trust you.”
“Really, I promise! I won’t even say anything to him either. All I ask is that I start to see non Irradiated individuals more often soon. Got it?”
“Yeah yeah. I got it.” As the orb was speaking once again, the area seemed to get brighter. “It looks like this is it for this conversation.” The area got brighter and brighter until Aria could no longer see anything but whiteness.
When Aria could see again, she could also hear. The sounds of many insects and the trees of a forest filled her ears. She was back in the forest. And above her, with a tear in his eye and a twisted expression on his face, was Nic. She was glad that he was here. He was worried about her. She knew he hadn’t changed at all.
She reached up to wipe away the tear from his eye. It was only then that she learned how wrong she was.
“Why?!” Her hand was slapped away. The twisted expression on his face had never been worry. It was anger. “Why were you there?!”
“Huh?”