A new morning dawned on Pentaburgh with a cloudless sky and the acrid scent of smoke lingering in the air. A yellowish haze had settled over the city, and its silhouette was subtly different. Only four towers loomed now. What remained of the dome that had once been majestic even after decades of disrepair looked like a broken egg shell. The rest of the city was as it ever was, a mass of undulating green, eternal.
Lucas was sitting cross legged in the grass of one of the sprawling plains to the city’s north, feeling groggy and exhausted. He hadn’t been able to sleep last night, pumped up on adrenaline, his mind turning over and over. He’d mellowed out over long hours, but his brain had filled with cotton instead, and sleep continued to elude him. Thus, he was left a shirtless, unkempt mess as the sun crested the horizon and burned the night sky away. He was sure his hair was gross, but he couldn’t even bring himself to run his fingers through it.
Though part of the reason for that was because one of his hands was made of fire now, and he didn’t know how to change it back. He was irrationally afraid he’d use the wrong hand and burn his hair off. Anything he touched with the firehand seemed to catch alight, after all, bringing with it a stinging sensation in his flaming limb like he was the one touching something hot and not the hot thing doing the touching.
That aside, the firehand was tough to control, sluggish. It was like there was a split second of lag between his brain and his hand, which he supposed made sense. The limb was a magical construct, and it wasn’t necessarily being maintained by just his own will anymore.
The tabby cat rumbled with satisfied purrs in his lap as Lucas reached up to absently scratch it behind the ears with his firehand. Jamie seemed to prefer his burning limb, and Lucas was right there with him; touching the cat was the only way for it to feel a sensation that wasn’t mild burning. It wasn't a regular feeling, nothing like his flesh-and-blood left hand. More like touching something cool with a thick glove on. It was better than nothing. Or burning.
Letting Jamie devour his heart’s flame had worked as he’d hoped, but it wasn’t a perfect solution. Pyromancy was still somewhat available to him, but magma no longer coursed through his pathways; his mana had settled back to its default state within minutes of going through with the plan.
There was a disconnect, just like with his hand. His heart’s flame didn’t respond to him as easily as his own mana did; it felt muted, distant, compared to how it had before. He had to actively connect himself to Jamie like when he shared the cat’s senses to use it, and only then would fire-attuned mana warm his pathways once more.
It meant he could use his floramancy without issue again, but his potential for pyromancy had been weakened significantly, and the two couldn’t be wielded simultaneously. A frustrating outcome, but he hadn’t seen any other ways around it in the moment.
If he had to choose between losing pyromancy and weakening his control of it, he’d choose the latter every time. If his hand had reverted and the pain of the burns had returned, he probably would’ve passed out.
“I mistrust that thing, Lord Lucas,” Wick said for the millionth time, eyeing the cat from where he was sitting nearby in his blackened armour. He’d tried to wipe the soot, but only succeeded in streaking it across his breastplate before giving up. His black hair was a matted, tangled mop.
The shieldmaster had insisted on sticking around despite Jyn’s unpleasant death, and he’d gotten as little sleep as Lucas had. He’d claimed he wanted to make sure someone was up to keep an eye on Jamie, but Lucas suspected the man was still haunted by the previous day’s events. He hadn’t said anything about it, but his eyes had a dark, despairing look to them.
Lucas couldn’t blame him. He was struggling to keep certain images out of his mind, too.
It was going to be hard to look at Jamie the same way ever again. It was one thing to feel the abnormality of the monstercat’s body. Beholding its true form—if that even was its true form—was another matter entirely.
The way Jamie had eaten Jyn’s fire had been unexpected, to say the least. Even hours later, he radiated satisfaction for a good meal. Apparently eating Lucas' heart's flame had given the creature a taste for fire. That hadn't been part of the plan.
“Oh, he’s harmless,” Lucas said despite all that, scratching the cat under the chin and earning more appreciative purrs. Then he realised what he’d said and grimaced. “Well, not harmless, exactly. But he’s no threat to me. I’d been travelling with him for days before I met you.”
“Soulbonding with a creature of unknown origin may not have been wise,” Valerie said, also eyeing the cat. In the light of morning, her cloak seemed closer to black than blue, draped around her like a blanket where she was kneeling with her hands folded on her lap. The cloak was the only thing out of place about her; she’d tamed her blond hair back into its braid, wiped all hint of soot and dirt off her cloak, armour, and skin, and her expression was just as placid as it usually was. She’d been the only one to get any sleep, and had seemed embarrassed about it when she woke just before sunrise.
“It’s not like I meant to,” Lucas said, a touch defensively. He’d already explained how he’d met the cat and the connection that had been made between them. Apparently, such things weren’t unheard of. Many people bonded their souls to creatures, magical or otherwise, for a variety of reasons and a wide range of benefits.
There were downsides to it, of course. Valerie had told him that a portion of one’s soul would forever be dedicated to the bonded creature, and the effects were hard to predict. “The heart has only so much room,” she’d said.
Bonding with something demonic was, however, quite unheard of indeed. Valerie was being diplomatic with the whole ‘unknown origin’ wording, and Wick’s mistrust was rather an understatement. He knew what they were both really thinking. It was hard to blame them.
But just as the plant network in Pentaburgh had turned out not to be a demon after all, he didn’t think that was the case with Jamie, either. This wasn’t so much a gut feeling as a deduction. Demons were creatures that birthed beasts through chaos, and Jamie had never shown a hint of anything like what he’d felt from beasts.
Lucas could feel Jamie’s mana network through their bond. He could sense the unnatural twist of too much mass packed into a tiny frame, and he’d seen with his own eyes what the creature could become. It was obvious Jamie was an eldritch abomination of some description.
Just… not a demon. Probably. Hopefully. It would be a bit embarrassing if he was, so Lucas was going to insist that he wasn’t, even if the difference turned out to be academic.
“Besides, he helped us out back there, didn’t he?” Lucas said in his monstercat’s defence.
“I would have dealt with Ser Jyn,” Valerie said.
Wick’s countenance darkened at that, his lips twisting. The two of them were spaced far apart, and each seemed determined to pretend the other didn’t exist. Lucas had been worried that Valerie would insist on silencing Wick, but she’d barely acknowledged him at all.
“I’m sure you would have,” Lucas said. Judging from the way Jyn had reacted to the revelation of her identity, there must have been something well known about her skill set that had him worried. “But you have to admit that was a much easier end to the battle, right? No big elaborate fight where you had to worry about protecting me from whatever else Jyn had been setting up all day. And hey, now we know Jamie can handle it if we run into any more hostile pyromancers in the future.”
He really hoped they didn’t run into any hostile pyromancers in the future.
Valerie stared at him. “I’m detecting a concerning tendency toward recklessness within you, Lord Lucas.”
“Just Lucas, please.”
“Soulbonding a strange creature, engaging beasts with a stick, sticking your hand in a fire in order to speed up your learning of pyromancy,” she said, ignoring him. “Eventually, these kinds of risky actions will not go your way.”
“There were extenuating circumstances in all of those,” Lucas said.
“I, for one, am pleased you engaged the beasts when you did,” Wick said. He huffed, shooting another distrustful glance at Jamie. “Regardless, my shields will be there to protect you from danger, whatever direction that may come from. Useless shieldmaster though I may be, though my promises may be broken, I will give my all.”
“Thanks, Wick,” Lucas said, unsure how else to handle that.
Silence settled on them for a moment. The morning was crisp, their breaths fogging the air. His heart’s flame wasn’t in his own heart anymore, but he could draw on it with some concentration, pushing warmth into his body. It made him keenly aware of his firehand, tingling where it connected to the flesh of his arm.
Jamie looked up at him curiously as he cycled the fiery mana through his pathways, drawing it right to the fingertips of his firehand. They glowed brighter, and left a faint afterimage in the air when he moved his hand. With some concentration, he kept the fire-attuned mana in his hand and let it build. Soon, the fire broke the contains of his fingers, a tongue of flame licking up like he’d lit a candle and radiating waves of heat into the air.
Activating his heat vision, he watched the little flame, stoking it with his fire mana. It was different from feeding a natural fire his regular, pure mana; though it had no pathways, he could feel it in that same strange sense that linked him to plants when he was performing floramancy. Any fire mana he fed to the flame became a part of the flame, and the flame became a part of him.
With a flex of will, he manipulated the heat around the fire until it was floating a centimetre off the tip of his finger. The connection remained. Shaping it took more control, but he managed to mould it into a shaky, flickering line. Next, he compressed it into a sphere the size of a marble and let it float down the length of his finger and across his raised palm.
Then he clenched his fiery fist, snuffing it out. It didn’t burn a bit. If anything, it felt cold. Compared to the blazing white heat signature of his hand, he supposed it was.
Triumph was surging through him as he let go of his connection to Jamie, letting his heart’s flame fade back into its now-default distant state. It had been a small working, little more than a trick. The mental delay caused by having to use Jamie as an intermediary for his magic made it far more laborious than it needed to be.
But it was confirmation that he could still work with more than one magic.
As if to prove it to himself, he pulsed his mana in a sphere around him once it had returned to purity. The surrounding plants lit up in his sorcerous eye, and he commanded a hundred blades of grass at random to grow as fast as they could. They obeyed. His heart soared.
Valerie was watching him curiously when he returned his attention to his surroundings.
“I must remind you I have some rudimentary knowledge of pyromancy and several other disciplines as part of my role. Enough to get you started on many of them,” she said. “If you want to continue discovering things for yourself for now, that’s your prerogative. You’ve shown results as an autodidact so far. But know that you may not always have the luxury.”
Lucas smiled at her. “I’ll ask for help if I really need it. Yesterday, I just… I needed to skip ahead.”
“I believe,” Valerie said, “we should go over some of yesterday’s events. I’m sure we’d all like some clarification on a few points.”
Lucas nodded hesitantly. “I have questions, yeah.”
A singular question, really. One he wasn’t sure how to ask.
“Firstly, just to ensure I’m understanding this correctly: your familiar now contains your heart’s flame?” Valerie asked, her eyes straying down to the tabby cat in Lucas' lap. She seemed like she was waiting for him to burst into his monstrous form and attack at any moment.
“Kind of,” Lucas said. “Maybe it would be more accurate to say he is my heart’s flame now?”
Valerie stared at him. “I’ve never heard of such a thing. It goes against the commonly understood principles of magic, and pyromancy in particular.”
“The Great Star evidently grants unique paths to power,” Wick said. “How many impossible, unreplicable feats are attributed to the Heroes? I fail to see how this is any different.”
Valerie sighed. “I’ve seen Lady Claire work magic a thousand times. It merely surprised me that something like this wouldn’t occur to her.”
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“Well,” Lucas said, a little thrown off balance by the casual mention of one of his best friends as some incredible wandmaiden. Her becoming great didn’t surprise him. It was just… It was hitting him now that she’d been around for a hundred years. What would she even think of him, when they met? He cleared his throat, banishing the thought. “She probably found a better solution for, uh, multimagicking than I have.”
“Practise and experience,” Valerie said.
“Right. But I didn’t exactly have time to gain either of those.” Lucas smiled wryly. “Well, the point is she never would’ve needed to pursue this path I’ve started. I guess we can only find out what it brings.” He scratched under Jamie’s chin with his burning fingers. “It’ll do for right now.”
“I can’t argue with the results,” Valerie said. “Along a similar line: the floramancy you displayed.”
“Ah,” Lucas said, frowning. “Yeah, don’t expect anything like that out of me away from the city. Not for a few years, at least. Hard to say for sure how advanced the plant network is in terms of magical skill required, but I’d guess it’s pretty much as top tier as it gets, and it did most of the heavy lifting.”
Valerie glanced at the city. “You’re saying it’s a work of floramancy, not a demon?”
“It’s like a super basic artificial intelligence imprinted into the plants using mana. It’s absolutely incredible. Seriously."
“You’re certain of this?”
“It’s my best guess.”
Her eyes turned distant. “If you’re certain it’s not demonic, there’s only one person I can think of who could achieve that.”
“Yeah,” Lucas said. “I think we're maybe on the same page there.”
Partially because he could only name one magic user at all, now that Jyn was dead.
“The question,” Valerie said slowly, “is why Lady Claire would do such a thing.”
“Honestly, I suspect you know her better than I do. I last talked to her over a hundred years ago, apparently.”
And wasn’t that a horrible idea to confront?
Valerie frowned—an extremely strong expression by her usual standards, yesterday’s demonic fury notwithstanding. “The reason for the initial creation of the plant network is transparent: preventing the city from being breached by the Demon Lord’s forces. By anyone’s forces.” Her frown deepened, brows furrowing. “But why stop anyone approaching the city in perpetuity? Why the secrecy? Why the lies? Why the condemnation of floramancers? There are multiple records of serious incidents involving plant magic in the wake of Pentaburgh’s fall. Did she orchestrate that?”
Wick was looking between them both, brow furrowed, but he said nothing.
“Lots of questions for her, then,” Lucas murmured. What kind of person had Claire become, over the course of a century?
“Easier said than done,” Valerie said. “She’s currently on an expedition into the Blighted Lands, attempting to break through to Aeyem for reasons she wouldn’t divulge. I don’t know when she’ll return. She wouldn’t let me come with her.”
“You’d usually be involved with a quest like that?”
"My name would typically be close to the top of the list for such missions."
Lucas frowned. "And Jyn said you've been fighting on the frontlines since you were fourteen, didn't he? How old are you now?"
“We’ll table this discussion for the time being.” Valerie shook her head once as if to dislodge the troubling thoughts. “You don’t think you could replicate yesterday’s feats without the plant network?”
Lucas stared at her for a long moment. What was that about? “Not as I am now,” he said slowly, searching for the right words. All he could come up with were Earth references. They’d have to do. “Look, the plant network basically gave me a temporary cheat code that let me use a level 100+ technique when my floramancy is level… I dunno, maybe 10? In comparison?”
He was prepared to explain what the hell he was on about, but Valerie just shook her head and said, “I would strongly advise you not to think in gaming terms.”
“Huh?” Lucas said, blinking.
“Lady Aarya wrote of video games extensively in her diaries, and I’m given to understand she tasked the Guild of Iconomancers, among others, with trying to replicate the concept. The results did not satisfy her,” Valerie said with a flat look. “Most importantly, she spoke of the difficulties Lady Claire had early on when the two of them took a gamified approach to growing their skills. It led to some dangerous misconceptions. Underestimating enemies and such.”
Lucas gaped at her for a moment, his mouth flapping soundlessly. “Yeah, Aarya was pretty big into games. I don’t know why I’m surprised.” The knowledge that that hadn’t changed even in a new universe warmed him a little, overriding his shock. Suddenly, with a burning ferocity that took him off guard, he dearly wished to speak with her. His eyes stung, and he had to blink away the onset of blurriness in his vision.
“Anyway, just don’t expect me to be spawning any giant vines,” he said, suppressing any upsetting notions before they could consume him. “The plant network in Pentaburgh stores a massive amount of information about the plants in its mana, which even a novice floramancer like me can tap into to transform plants in ways I wouldn’t usually be able to. And that’s not even talking about the amount it offsets the mana cost. Hopefully I’ll figure something out one day, though.”
“We’ll endeavour to ensure your skills rise as high as they can in any and every discipline you desire,” Valerie agreed.
“Cool,” Lucas said. He hesitated, trying and failing to find a tactful way to phrase the question on his mind. “And… I guess I have something I'm curious about—”
“My time spent on the frontlines of and within the Blighted Lands from a young age has had negative effects on my psyche, but it is a manageable problem,” Valerie said immediately. “I will explain further if you request it of me, but know that I do not wish to.”
“Okay,” Lucas said, taken aback. “If you have it handled, then I’ve got no problems.”
He wasn’t sure that was true, but it felt like one of those situations where he had to back down.
“I have a question for you,” Wick said, his nostrils flaring as he shot a glare at Valerie. “Were you truly planning to kill Jyn the entire time?”
“He was a peripheral member—or perhaps merely an ally; it’s hard to be sure—of a cabal who call themselves the Darkstar,” Valerie said. “They are one of the many groups who seek to usurp Lady Claire’s position, though their intent is more radical than most. I wished to know more about them, so I accepted his application for the commission I’d posted with the express intent of interrogating him, yes.”
“Torture him, you mean,” Wick spat.
“I am willing to go to great lengths for the good of Aerth and its people.”
Wick scoffed.
“Your scorn means nothing to me. I do what needs to be done, and sometimes there are people who need to die.”
“Oh? Are you going to tell me that Rena Luos deserved to die, too?”
“Yes.”
Wick gaped at her for a moment. “You cannot honestly tell me you believe that?”
“She raised her bow against Lord Lucas with lethal intent, and thus showed that she could not be trusted to put the fate of the world above her petty emotions. Her life was forfeit at that moment.”
“And your actions had nothing to do with her provocations towards you on our journey?” Wick scoffed. “I could see you practically burning to draw your sword on her, at times.”
Valerie sent him a withering look. “If I was the type to kill people for disparaging the Order, half the world’s remaining population would be in the grave. I’ve heard far worse than anything that passed her lips.”
“She could have been persuaded to stop,” Wick said.
“I was not willing to risk the prophesied hero's life to spare some average bowmaiden,” Valerie said, with the tone of finality.
Wick looked away with a sneer of disgust, crossing his armoured arms.
“If there are no more questions for one another, we need to discuss our future course of action,” Valerie said after a moment, looking at Lucas. “In the short term, our aim should be to get you to the Moontower in Dawnguard. There would be nowhere safer for you to grow and learn.”
Wick spoke before Lucas could, “Are you certain? Rena may have been trying to provoke you, but she wasn’t wrong in her constant taunts about the Order’s lack of belief in Lucas’ eventual arrival.”
“With the man himself right in front of them, it would no longer be a question of belief.” Valerie sighed. “Regardless, we won’t immediately be revealing Lord Lucas’ arrival to the world at large, just some select individuals I trust.”
“Will you listen if I order you to stop calling me ‘Lord?’” Lucas asked.
Valerie’s eyes narrowed the slightest fraction. “I will act as you desire, but I must reiterate that you’ll need to get used to such treatment.”
“Let me put it off for now,” Lucas pleaded. He gestured to himself, an ungroomed man with a scraggly beard and a bare sunburned upper body. Even his plant fibre trousers looked shabby, not even accounting for the tears they’d picked up in the last day or so. “Look at me, Valerie. I’m no hero yet. I’ve barely gotten started on that journey. Doesn’t feel right to go around calling me Lord.”
“And,” Wick added mildly, “if we are to conceal his identity for the time being, referring to him with such deference may not be wise.”
Valerie but bowed her head to concede the point. Her hands briefly tensed then relaxed in her lap before she continued, “Are we agreed on heading to Dawnguard?”
“Tentatively,” Lucas said. “What’s our long term goal?”
“Defeating the Demon Lord and saving the people of Aerth from plunging into the fifth circle of Damnation,” Valerie said.
Lucas held back a groan through force of will. No pressure or anything. “Okay, but what’s our roadmap to that? How do we get from here to there? It just seems too big to wrap my head around. Need to break it down into more achievable goals.”
Valerie’s eyes lit up. “You grow. You train your body until it's at peak condition; strength, endurance, dexterity, reflexes. No aspect of physical ability left imperfect. At the same time, you train your mind until you’re as far above the common man as a dragon is from an ant. Knowledge, wisdom, memory, intelligence. You’ll grow your mana system as you have been doing until it runs through your entire body. You gain skills, magic, and, most of all, experience.
“I’ve seen talented warriors lose their lives in their first battle because they made mistakes that are only obvious to a veteran. We won’t let that happen to you. There will be quests and commissions in Dawnguard, posted by guilds and other organisations. We’ll start as small as we can and build our way up, always ensuring we’re cautious and mindful and as covert as we can reasonably be.
“We’ll train your swordplay to the level of a Captain of the Order and beyond, and do the same for every other handheld weapon. Shields and Bows, too. We’ll get you mastery in as many different fields of magic as we can. You’ll learn strategy, tactics, administration, logistics, politics, negotiation, and so much more.
“And throughout it all, we’ll gather allies. Not just teachers and mentors, but advisors. People at the top of their fields who can help ease the weight of leadership from your shoulders and ensure your decisions are the right ones. We’ll assemble warriors. Starting with a party for our quest, we’ll go on to build an army.
“Eventually your skills will surpass all of those people, and in time you’ll be training us, forming a force that can face the Demon Lord’s and bring us all into a new era in which we can rebuild.”
Silence fell like a million tonne weight. Lucas stared at her, wide-eyed, his lips moving but no sound passing them. That was… That was a lot. He’d known for some time that he’d have a heavy burden of expectation placed on him and a map to his future planned out before he could even get a word in. He’d expected it, even told himself he welcomed the pressure of important decisions being taken off his hands. But now that it was actually happening, it was still filling him with a cold dread that turned his skin clammy.
“I think our most important question here,” Wick said, “should be what you want, Lucas?”
Lucas had been overwhelmed enough by Valerie’s speech. Somehow, Wick’s question was worse. There was just so damn much pulling his mind in different directions, it was making his head spin.
“I want to go home,” Lucas said, staring at his hands. One fire, the other flesh. “I want to meet up with my friends for lunch as I was supposed to, and go on about my day in the kind of good mood only a chat with those guys can bring out of me. I want to go to my boring bloody classes at uni and wonder if I even want this stupid history degree. I want to go to my part time job at Waitrose and despair at my horrible, mundane life the entire time I’m there. I want to have a hot shower and brush my teeth and sleep in my bed and wear my clothes and browse some brain-melting social media sites and do pointless shit until I fall asleep.”
Lucas looked up, meeting the gazes of his two new companions. Valerie’s face was devoid of emotion, but Wick’s eyes were deeply understanding. “But I can’t have any of that, can I?”
“Those are worthy goals,” Wick said, even though he surely didn’t know what a lot of those goals even meant.
Lucas drew in a deep breath and held it in his chest for a moment. He swallowed past the lump in his throat.
“I want to find my friends,” he said. “All of them. Claire, Jamie, Rian, and even Aarya. Even if it just means finding out what happened to them. I want to know all about their adventures, where they went, how they felt, who they loved, and what they wanted. If I can hear it from their own mouths, great. If not… I’ll take anything. Books. Stories from people who met them. Whatever.”
“We’ll do everything we can to ensure that happens,” Valerie said solemnly.
“And, goddamnit, I want to use this insane Gift your people have given me. Magic is fucking awesome. And the kind of things I was doing with just a stick… I want to learn every discipline there is. Every artform, every skill. I’ve been mediocre my whole life, and I’m not gonna pass up the opportunity to do amazing things.
“Fuck it, I’ll even farm beasts until I’m so dense with mana I fall through the planet.”
Valerie had been nodding along, but she paused and gave him an odd look at that. “What do you mean?”
“Hm? Part of the Gift is, apparently, sucking up the mana from things I kill. It first happened with the weak beast I killed with my stick I told you all about. Then again on that hilltop.” Lucas grimaced. “It works on people, too. When Jamie killed Jyn, it must have registered to the Gift as me doing it, with our connection.”
Valerie was wide-eyed now. “I’ve never heard of such a thing, Lucas. Nothing like that is mentioned in any of the records of the Great Summoning.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“The Great Star is only supposed to give you the ability to learn any skill at a prodigious rate,” Valerie said. “As far as I'm aware, it has nothing to do with devouring mana.”
“Oh,” Lucas said, because how else was he supposed to react to that?
END OF ACT ONE: 'ARRIVAL'