16. The Birth of an Avatar I

Kal could hear his heart beat. His blood had trailed in all directions across the ground like veins, and he was breathing so very slowly.

Out of the corner of his eye, someone was approaching. That stranger was dragging an unconscious Pria by her hair, humming and looking around.

Lady Rei—where was she? Why couldn’t he hear her? Then he saw her being dragged by the man by her leg.

That man stopped in front of him and knelt down. “You might be asking yourself,” he said. “Why I did all of these. Why I sent a monkey dragon to you, but you wouldn’t know that. Well—now you do. But why would I do all of this?” He enthusiastically gestured. “You three were supposed to die in a rogue accident attack. But that bald woman there, she was supposed to be a cultivator, but now she wasn’t. And Pria somehow suddenly kissed being a mortal goodbye.” He peered closer, until he was inches away from Kal. “I talked to a new friend I’ve made. A Sarnasia art? No, my friend. You’re an Almorian. Transmigrated.”

Kal looked up. The man looked familiar, but he couldn’t quite place his face. The man reminded him of someone so very close.

“You’re an avatar,” he sputtered out weakly. “Ceremonial tattoos,” he added. “For a newly birthed avatar.”

That man clenched his fist, stretching the veins and the muscles and then punched clean through his ribs, striking his heart, and there was a splatter behind him.

“She made it too obvious, but who could complain if she did? There are no almorians left. The emperor killed the rest of our kind and yet he did spare a few that could be used by the cultivators. That rather upsets me, you see. You’re not supposed to know these tattoos.”

----------------------------------------

Kal remembered when Art Sorvenn, his brother, found him atop that tower.

His brother had his finger cut off, wrapped in cloth dyed red from his blood. Kal had been controlling aspects, and at the time, he never entertained the idea that he might have been more talented than his peers. It was the only thing he was good it, and one of the few things he loved.

Kal stared at the young Kallarius from the corner of teh room, watching the scene unfold as though he was an observer—an audience member seeing a play for the hundredth time.

The child panicked, and all the aspects fell.

“You saw us, didn’t you, Kal?” His brother said, walking closer. “Father isn’t a very compassionate man. Mother always had to constrain him, and I wished she was there, but I found only him. His iron. And a little shadow cast by the torches.”

He knelt down. “You must have heard our conversation as well. Don’t be so frightened now. Come here.”

And, hesitantly—Kal did.

That night was the catalyst that changed his world. It was the spark that lit a fire, when his brother stayed with him, and the two of them played aspects together.

The child Kallarius was so happy that he blurted out one of the secrets he’d only ever kept to himself. “I like seeing blood,” he told his brother. “And I’m not frightened.”

There was a game here. You would control a wooden aspect and wrestle the other down to the ground. His brother couldn’t control one, so Kal made him watch, and came up with a story.

A story of a child who caught a golden sparrow. Bright, shining and its beak made of fire, it burned everything it pecked. That child was so fascinated by all of this he locked the sparrow in the iron cage and showed it off to all the other people.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

But the sparrow, gold and fire, was meant to fly, not rot in the cage. It struck the iron until it burned so hot it melted off, and it flew away.

That could’ve been the end of the story. But the sparrow had seen all these people, and they did not help it. They praised the child and clamored over the sparrow, but they let it in its cage.

The sparrow wanted vengeance. He burned the wood and the clothes and the fire burned brighter until a sun surfaced at the heart of the city in the middle of the night. And that same very night, the boy died with a small peck through its ribcage, at the center of its heart.

Kal was the sparrow of gold and a beak made of fire. His brother, having heard of his passing comment about liking to see blood, told him they both should go and see mother. Not father—no, he might be too enthusiastic of forcing Kal to do his bidding.

And yet, father found out about it.

Art Sorvenn was taken to the front to be rasied as an officer. Kal was cloaked in his father’s attention, sworn to be a “good” son—molded and hammered into sharp steel.

“Blood is the essence of all living beings,” his father had told him.

Kal loved his brother and mother and father very much. But when his brother tried to keep him away from his father, the child Kallarius kept another secret.

He loved the attention. He loved being paraded around as the bright, golden child.

He was the sparrow of gold and a beak made of fire—he was fed by the child and kept safe from the dangers and the predators of the world.

The cage wasn’t a cage. It was home.

But eventually, even the sparrow realized that the child was only a child, chasing after a dream so selfishly, and that his cage would be his home until he dies.

----------------------------------------

Kal blinked, and the scene shifted. He was in a familiar place. An emptiness of black sands and a blinding, white light streaked across the sky. He remembered this place. He came here once, and of his own volition.

This was where he created his first Avatar. It did not end well that time. He wondered why he was here, and how he would like to stay here before he dies. Was this what people saw before their death? Was it an act of mercy?

He spotted something in the distance. It was a black dot over a white overcast sky. Time was meaningless inside his soul. It felt like a dream and he had no other choice but to drift. He saw it as nothing more than an unusual thing, but as he walked toward it, be it for minutes or hours or years, he saw the black demon, stretching its roots across the ground.

“When I died, you…” he started, then the words caught on his throat. He knew it then—the avatar was calling to him. His own avatar, trying to sift through his memories to grab hold onto.

Avatars are fickle—they weren’t human. They possess human qualities, but ultimately they were personalities born out of the memories and the soul of the person.

It was looking at his memories—his love of attention, and from here he could feel the demon’s desire to be feared. Just as a different him had once loved that.

The creature changed, slowly morphing into somethign resembling a human. Kal had already known what it was like to summon an avatar. He was taught, trained, and the entirety of his military service was designed for it.

Somewhere, deep in his mind, he was shaping this thing to someone he knew. A small girl, then. But why a child?

The scene changed, and sands twirled around him. Gently at first, then it began to spin violently, and through the shifting black sands he remembered—Elesia Matrimarra. His brothed.

She was expecting a child.

“Oh. But—“ he choked on his throat. “I was going to die. I can’t return now.”

In all the cold. Surrounded by enemies and threats. He wanted to see home again, but they were all dead, all of them. A few may have survived, but what difference does it make?

The child had black, long hair. She continued to change and shift until she looked like a young woman, but this time he couldn’t envision her face. It was marred by a black splotch. She was wrapped in black, mourning clothes, and her nails were painted black. She had black horns, curled around her head like a circlet which she assumed was the properties of that demon.

But any of that—avatar or not, he would die here because he wanted to end all fo this.

He forced her everything away. The black sands, the light, and he tried to push her away too, and distance himself as much as possible. He blinked, but she was behind him. She was a child again, looking at him with eyes were as pure as fire.

“Father?”

And suddenly, the weight of the world willed itself on him, and he anguished wordlessly. “You can’t do this to me,” he whispered.

Avatars—what are they? Personalities, memories, desires. They were born from them, and from the soul of their host. He wanted to deny it, but he couldn’t look away.

She was an illusion, but she was here. When they brough the news that his daughter died, he knew this avatar was nothing more than the outflow of his desire.

What if the soul of his dead daughter came to find him? To possess this avatar here? What if she was his daughter?

No. His daughter died.

But she was here.

“Father?” She said again.

Kal smiled, and he imagined how cracked of a smile that was. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I am.”

He could live for her.