WE ARRIVED NEAR THE RUINS after nearly three days of walking eastward. “It’s not nearly as dusty this time,” Corbal mentioned. Upon further inspection, he was right; the Harvest churned the earth and disturbed so much soil it covered everything. The air was also fresher. The smothering atmosphere of the endless veil gave way to fresh and gentle wind at some point after my escape. The giant chasms seemed to have closed themselves, or were stitched closed somehow.
As we neared the Elder’s house, I was expecting some grand answer to my many questions, any scrap of confirmation to make sense of this world I’d been dropped in. The stone has been here for centuries at least. Its rock had risen from the granite deep below, like how I imagine a pillar breaching the open air for fresh breath would erupt. The ground directly around it was kept meticulously clean until that day I burned its protective walls, and even still, unmarred.
“What does it say?” I asked, voice shaking. I felt suspiciously pensive in its presence. I moved some rubble to help Corbal get closer; the text was small and high above him. With one look, he expertly announced it was written in a very old style of writing.
“Thank you, Corbal, I could have guessed that one myself.” My jab went unnoticed as he studied closer, at first only moving his lips, then after some time, sat down and produced his large book. He began carefully copying the text, making adjustments, crossing out his list as quickly as he made it, and other academic gestures I had no ties to. It would take him some time to figure out, so I resigned myself to searching the rubble.
The charred supports of the Elder’s house had already revealed their secrets, but I wondered if the floor held anything else I wasn’t meant to see. The Elder’s position granted him a sturdy wood floor, unlike my house with a floor made of dirt. I was sure to find something if I removed some of it. With a focused glance, some boards in the corner lit and burned, and instead of unearthing some long-forgotten secret, I was surprised by Corbal’s shout to be careful. I apologized and resorted to pulling the boards by hand.
They were unwieldy, especially with one arm, but after checking that Corbal wasn’t looking, I quietly focused my fire on wood joints and tough parts anyway. I quickly grew tired, or at least my arm did. The nature of my fire was still unknown to me, and I especially didn’t understand how drawing from its power didn’t wear me out like animatic skills would Corbal. I wondered if they were even similar at all. I had never trained for this, and Corbal has decades of practice for his animatic arts.
“Efrit, I may have something here,” Corbal said, waving me over. I looked over his shoulder at the vandalized parchment. “By the shape, I can assume this was written around the time of the Divide. It’s incredibly well-preserved. Though it’s particularly puzzling because it appears to have been written like someone would to a lover, but why take the effort to engrave a stone for a small message? This craftsmanship is far beyond a mere gravestone, almost natural.” To emphasize, he slid his hand over the immaculately smooth surface.
“So it’s old, but what does it say?” I asked.
“I don’t know, but I do have a connection to the south who might,” he said while pulling out his book. He began to copy the passage when he paused and turned to me, “You’ve never seen this before, have you?”
“No, the Elder’s house was for his use only. Disputes were settled inside, but nobody ever told me this was here. From my birth from the Field and, before now, I never got to see the inside.”
Corbal stared into space for a moment, lost in thought.
“What else were you forbidden to see?” I hadn’t actually thought about that before. The boundary past the fields wasn’t technically guarded or blocked, but everybody knew to never pass over the fence.
Then it hit me.
“I wasn’t allowed to see the ritual site until the night I was set to be slaughtered, when I…”
Midsentence I realized I was entranced by the fragile shimmer of a blocky charcoal pillar, one of the main supports of the Elder’s house. Its ashy chasms, deeper and darker into the inky blackness between the raised squares became a depth I’d known somewhere before and been familiar with. The blackest black, the deepest dark, malice lingering beneath…
“It’s in the largest hill, we need to go,” I said, bringing me back to the present. Corbal nodded and gathered his things.
“Is it far from here? The sheer size of these hills can distort distance.”
“I’ve never actually seen it, but I have a feeling I’ll know it when I see it.”
We reached the main firepit when a small whisper became overbearing. Anna. Where is she… her body? I had to see for myself. I shouted for Corbal to wait a moment as I retraced my steps when I first found her.
The sooty wall became less so as I walked, and while time and weather had washed away my previous footprints, their spots on my mind were still there. My current steps wouldn’t match, anyway. Losing an arm changed my gait a noticeable amount. I listened for her breath– nothing. I took a deep breath of my own and rounded the corner– nothing.
An uninteresting patch of grass had grown where Anna and her mother lay dying months ago. This empty space, what I was hoping to give me closure, gave me no sense of ending or peace. Instead, I grew restlessly bewildered. The treecats only ate freshly killed meat, so they wouldn’t have… stolen their bodies. There was nobody else to take their bones for whatever nefarious purpose, either. This sick idea must be disproven.
I ran to the remnants of my own house, to the doorway where I knew I’d find three corpses, only to again find nothing but dirt. Corbal ran to meet me.
“Corbal, their bodies are missing. Anna’s, her mother’s– Helini, Marc, Gerdi– and I haven’t seen the Elder’s either! They’re gone!” Hearing myself say their names again brought my knees to the ground. “Corbal– oh, Fields– I slaughtered them, and I can’t even tell them I’m sorry.”
This caught him off guard. He was hiding his excitement for discovery to better match my solemness, but now he seemed truthfully distraught. He stood beside me and put his hands on my elbow. With a shaky voice feigning strength, he told me to look at him. I did, and saw his eyes were bubbling up with tears. “You did what you felt you needed to in that moment to survive, and you did survive.”
He pulled my head to his. “You’re here, you’re alive, and it’s going to be okay. You’re going to be okay.” Hearing his words under the incredible weight I carried, I finally broke, and cried out in weighty sobs. His hair felt wet across my face, but he still held me. After a while of this, my eyes stopped stinging and my breath came steadier. Finding my recovery a good time for sage advice, Corbal suggested we sleep in the woods tonight instead of in the village. I agreed. “We can make camp on the way to the ritual site. It shouldn’t be more than half a day’s travel away.”
* * *
I stepped over the fallen walls to make my way to the site, nearly catching my foot as the sun’s closeness over the mountain caught my attention. I exclaimed, “It’s evening already?”
Corbal reminded me, “No, still morning. What makes you say that?” I stepped over a small log.
“It always sets over there. Wait…” I remembered that this wasn’t the first confusion we’ve shared. “What does your compass say?”
Corbal hesitantly pulled it from his pocket. “The mountain is east of here, so it’s the sunrise.”
“Mountain?” For the first time, I saw far behind the tree-creature a jagged uprising of rock and trees. “What happened to the treeline? I’ve never seen that before. There’s no way that just appeared while I was away.”
“I’m unsure, but it might have something to do with the veil I broke. The sun’s direction may be connected as well- the Headmaster’s notes mentioned something strange about the veil. I wonder if it could mask the world around it as well as conceal what’s within.”
In the distance the forest darkened. Far too thick to be natural, tree trunks pressed against one another in clusters I’d never seen before now. This unusual darkness fell faster the further we walked; at first, we were unaware of the subtle gradient which began almost unnoticeably, but eventually grew too shady to ignore. I likened it to boiling a frog. Corbal disapproved of the simile, citing inhumane treatment should not be used so casually. I didn’t say anything in my defense, being so occupied by the encroaching dark.
The longer we walked the more my nerves tangled into anxiety, growing reliably shaken with each step. My stomach turned itself into knots as we approached the base of the tree. The sky had become obscured by the labyrinthine mesh of wood and bark above us, dark as the dusty twilight when this thing emerged from the earth. The air stank of mildewy soil, with an occasional wafting of something like metal. Windless and stagnant, the stink grew more potent in the next half hour, and I turned to see Corbal holding a flower to his wrinkled nose. The forest became a dense jungle of intertwined roots radiating from our destination, almost tunnel-like with a navigable path. The stench in the air seemed to gather and ferment beneath the thick canopy. Eventually it grew too dark to see, so I sparked a flame in my hand to distance us from whatever horrors lie lurking just beyond the reach of the flickering light. As I did so, I swore I saw roots curl away from me.
This maze became a single path with trees enmeshing closer to form walls– a narrowing throat to guide us to whatever sickness this tree-creature manifested. At some point, the forest floor gave way to broken rock and gravel, and the air grew chilled. I felt that same stifling horror as being buried in dirt. We were underground.
Empowering one another with fearful, half-faith reassurances, we stayed the course through the darkness of the tunnel, each footstep an echoless crunch of gravel muted by the dirt walls lined with what I thought to be twisted roots. I assumed they were dirt, but reaching out to touch them yielded no recognizable form. A low rumbling– no, groaning filled the fetid air. This tunnel was not carved by human tools. Corbal turned to me, unsettled, and admitted, “I never read about this place. I had no idea this was even here, after all these centuries…” His usual scholarly curiosity was gone. “Though it feels heavy. There’s a tingling in the air, like a pull. My heart aches. There must be a huge animatic presence somewhere. It’s making me feel ill, and not just by the smell.”
I pressed onward despite every instinct screaming at me to flee and never return. Corbal felt the same, I assumed, because each step had slightly more time between the next. He forced himself to march on, same as me. If he wasn’t here with me, I would lack the courage to brave whatever lay ahead.
Before us the tunnel opened to a massive open chamber lit only by my flame, and dimly; endless, with a thousand screams bleeding into one cacophonic chorus, and the thick stench of rotten blood and dirt filled my nose. It filled my lungs, my mind, and all I could do to stay upright was channel my fire to distract me from what I saw.
Hundreds of emaciated corpses writhed in steep-walled ditches, splashing and drowning in a muddy slurry of what might be dirt and blood, each with sliced skin more open than sealed; thrashing and clawing each other to climb even another inch out of the mess. They clambered over one another, pushing others below the surface only to slide back down the steep wet walls. Howling screams garbled by the popping gurgle of an obstructed airway assaulted my ears; all my senses were overpowered and stifled with repulsion, and I felt this repulsion deep within my heart as well. Disgust grew to rage. A sinister injustice had been carried out here, amassing hundreds of wretched bodies to swim in viscera and torment.
“How are they alive? There’s no somatic fix for this. My gods, is this necromancy? No, it’s impossible. This is… sick.” Corbal pondered aloud. I realized that thinking aloud must be a way for him to focus and steel himself.
I tore my gaze away from the pits, averting my eyes toward the ceiling, searching for anything else to see besides the tormented souls. On the rocky ceiling was the remnant of a huge explosion, its ashy tendrils sprayed around it. The charred lines appeared to come not from a bonfire below, but through the ceiling downward, spreading from a point in its epicenter: a vaguely humanoid shadow.
Is that where I was saved? I could have been down here, trapped with the rest of them… I was down here!
“Efrit, we need to tell someone this is here. Modarres could help with… whatever we should do. They carry the strength of the earth. There’s no way these people can be rescued.”
Near the center of the chamber, a pile of blackened bones lay on a pile of fresh dirt. I ran up to it, scared to touch them despite feeling obligated to bury them in the earth. I stood there, mind racing trying to work out a plan, when I caught a single note within the maelstrom of sound; my hearing focused on one whisper beneath the pile. Everything else faded and I was alone with what was more a pained sigh than words:
“…it hurts…”
My heart sank. That voice returned to me, seemingly to give me guilt, unchanged from her half-dead state in the village.
Anna.
She begged me to kill her and I ran like a coward, and she’s been here, buried in this bloody cesspit, suffering since that day. “Anna, you’re… alive, oh Fields, I’m so sorry- Fields above- let me think…” Corbal was carefully wading through shallow puddles in my direction, disgusted by the liquid soaking into his robes.
I should have done this already. I need to end her pain. “A-Anna, listen, okay? It won’t hurt. I’m so sorry, oh, Fields…” With how she was positioned, I had access to her chest and face. Elder Barne would scold me for looking, even in this moment. I stared at my hand, then at her, searching for any reason to not do what I was thinking. “Anna I’m sorry, I should have helped you…”
I closed my eyes. My eyelids were briefly turned red by a burst of fire as I gave her whatever mercy I should have given her months ago. She died without dignity at my hand, again. I didn’t open my eyes until I faced the other way. I didn’t dare disrespect her again.
A pale, bloodless face surfaced from the muck of a pit beside me, bobbing silently upward, with eyes pried open from muddy buildup. Its open mouth housed crumbling, dry dirt, which fell out onto small piles before sinking into the muck. I stumbled closer to slide into the pit, wading through mud and viscera.
It was the face of my father, framed in soil, just as old as last I saw him as a child.
“Father..?”
I began digging through the sludge, trying to lift him from the back. My motions became frenzied, and I couldn’t seem to find a handhold with my one arm. “Corbal, help!” He came bounding to the edge of the pit, and even through his rush, stopped at the edge.
“Efrit, it’s too deep for me-”
“It’s my father!” I yelled. I found something to wrap my hand behind, and I lifted my father out of the mud. It was unnaturally easy. I overjudged the effort, and as I freed my father from the viscous mud, the nature of his state became clear: he had no body.
I screamed, or wept, or maybe something else entirely as the shock penetrated my heart. I fell to my knees cradling his head, splashing the muck and in that moment I felt I might have died. Agony flooded my veins and I let myself mourn in violent cries. My movements became automatic, instinctual. Through my clouded mind, I allowed myself to grieve for my father for the second time.
“I couldn’t scry here, I had no idea… It had to have been that veil. This place and its evil was hidden for a reason. I’m so sorry, Efrit.” Corbal sobbed and shook with a twisted face, mirroring my disgust. He held himself; it appeared he also couldn’t comprehend this. I couldn’t see anything except the preserved face of my father in my hand. All the world grew less important and I was alone with him. I cried harder than when I lost my village. I felt sicker than ever before, worse than when I lost my arm.
My thoughts were frozen until a vision from my dreams formed before my eyes. From around my father’s head, tongues of fire flickered and grew, shifting and stretching into the forked and twisting branches of a tree set ablaze.
“Father, I’m sorry. But hear me; I will avenge you. I will bring desolation to those who caused this, to haunt those who have tainted your soul with their clandestine violence you witnessed here long ago.”
Stuck on the image of my father before the burning tree, my head grew hot.
My blood became like fire and steamed. A hate exploded deep in my chest and overtook my being. I knew what did this. I knew what had been slaughtering my people and taking our dead.
That terrible wooden creature above.
It must have been that vile thing that carved burial pits into the land I was promised to renew, that disgusting creature of bark and branches that took my father from me- that horrible figure risen from below, crushing and mutilating my people for centuries for its own twisted games.
I knew what must happen. I must stop the thing from stealing even more that I loved.
My destiny upended months ago, I was free to do with my life whatever I may do; and yet, in a sick irony, it brought me back to this place I was doomed to die, to join the roiling corpses of my ancestors.
I kissed my father’s forehead and lowered him onto the dirt. Climbing out of the pit, I put my hand on Corbal’s shoulder, who was still a mess of tears and communal anguish. He looked up at me, and started to speak, but I didn’t hear him. I could hear nothing but the beating fury in my ears and the uneven crunch of tread bones among the all-encompassing groans.
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
Bubbling from the crevices of my broken heart rose a churning fury; a rage, brought into this deceitful world like a bastard child, stolen and thrust upon a new existence without a hint of absolute truth or mercy.
* * *
I exited the tunnel and found myself standing in the center of an uneven stone platform riddled with roots and undergrowth. This was hidden above the thick canopy, invisible from the forest below. Disfigured beyond normal weathering, the mislaid stone blocks were shoved upon one another like some protruding vine sought to climb through and toppled them in its hurry. The stone was a ruin, some ancient pedestal to honor the maliciousness I came here to destroy.
The earthen effigy grew from the cracks between these stones, thousands of smaller snakelike roots twisting and forcing themselves into others to grow and form larger veins that ran up and along the thick trunk.
I ran and caught my feet on the masses of fibrous wood several times, and finally tripped. Up close to the root-fingers, I noticed crimson vines through and along them, and felt a faint pulse. Horrified, I pulled my knife from my belt and began frantically sawing at one. I had to be certain. Red wood finally split, and burst out with deep red blood that quickly pooled in the makeshift basin of roots. My face and shirt were splattered with the effigy’s lifeblood. It had a revoltingly warm quality. Those bodies below, were they…?
This is my father’s blood. Anna’s. The blood of everyone I knew. This thing was feeding on their flesh, using it to grow– the chamber below, a churning stomach of melted flesh and viscera. It was keeping them alive just to torture them for centuries to fuel its own sadism.
So this is the Field we all return to.
I spat at the base of the giant tree-creature. I marched the cadence of a man bent on curing a grave wrongdoing, and with each crooked step I trampled centuries’ worth of my ancestors’ bodies– evidence of the effigy’s crime– spilling whatever viscera had yet to be unearthed and fed to this cancer.
I screamed threats and grievances with a burning throat toward the thing, “You caused all of this. It was by your malice I lost everything I knew and held dear, wasn’t it?!” I expected an answer, but the wind near-silently whistled between giant branches. “There is no real Field we go to, is there? Death is not the end for us, we rot and become rich soil for this horrible thing to feed from!” My hand felt that same fire, just as strong as the day my village burned.
Any concept of empathy or mirrored compassion was met with glowing rage: I became fury, unleashing a world’s worth of brewed suffering and anger upon the root of this malefactor.
The effigy had no pleas for mercy; it was silent, and somehow even through my rage, I saw it lean away from me. This disgusting, pitiful creature would receive my judgement. I would avenge my pride and strike first against this monument of insubordination. “Such a tremendous display of gluttony. You aren’t deserving of my sacrifice, or anyone’s! The sky is mine alone!”
Flame exploded from the air around me and shot across the stone floor, roaring as it swept up the massive roots with a crackle as leaves and smaller branches combusted and burst. The twisted branches harbored a sickness, and putrefaction welled from sickly ichor spilled from between giant wood limbs as my flame’s molten claws tore between them, transforming their grandiose bark into shimmering gashes across the thousands of appendages. The roots grasping the stone curled back on themselves, dried and crunching, their grip forever broken as they crackled into ash in a flurry upward. The fire was deafening, screaming into my ears as well as my heart. I could only feel the throbbing of my quickened burning blood in my skull.
Despite the towering inferno, my vision grew dim and the flames started to rotate and burn sideways. I felt light, gliding… held, maybe. The golden flames grew fainter until I saw only darkness.
* * *
In the otherwise cave-dark blackness shone a flickering of firelight, illuminating the darkness yet revealing nothing more about its source. I felt that same invigorating fire within me, in my chest, in my arm– no, both arms! In a rushed experiment, my fingers grasped, and I turned over my palm, testing my working digits. My left hand remained of mortal flesh, but my right glowed with its own light within; it was formed from compressed flame in the shape of my hand. Each digit moved naturally, releasing a dazzle of embers with every quick movement. With physical form, I rubbed my hands together. It had been months since one hand felt another. I was ecstatic, but in my happiness I neglected my new surroundings.
I was standing on a formless cliff, before me a great span of darkness broken by a great flickering light. Warmth surrounded me; surrounded all of my senses, bathed me in comfortable heat.
Familiar sounds that I interpreted as language pervaded those same senses, encompassing them in a universal understanding, their language intrinsic despite newness. In an ancient tongue that sparked and crackled with each syllable, I felt and heard from all around me what I understood as:
Yet Hale be the form mine Kiln takes today; and every day that follows this in which Efrit, Saved from Soil honors the Ælder Flame Agnistreya’s waking dominion: who now invites into His Vessel whensoever need demands, to further gift into mine Vessel mine greater Flame.
"Fear not the dark; ne’er mine burning light shall fade,
So long as mine Vessel’s honor remains in reverence and true unto the Ælder Flame Agnistreya;
that mine Vessel seeks to gather within it hunger; the avarice and boon of commanding Fire’s rage, and break with it the hinderance of shackles forged from remorse and doubt.
Thus guilt be freed from Efrit, Saved from Soil, that mine Vessel may further prove the worth Agnistreya begat when thine namesake procured from certain Death.
Nary shall mine Vessel doubt the flicker of Flame, ye stolen Kiln, and nary might any covetous other seek its power lest ye speak of it.
Such; Privy none to the Ælder Flame ‘til mine Agnistreyan Kiln decrees to alight both Land and Sea.
Rise, now, Efrit Saved from Soil, that ye may persevere;
Rise that ye hold true to the Ælder Flame, Agnistreya."
I did as I was told. My eyes opened, revealing what would be a beautiful and smoky dawning sky if Corbal’s face wasn’t blocking most of my vision. He shouted far too close to my ear for comfort, “I thought I’d lost you, Efrit!” He took his hands from my chest and held my face. “You spent so much on that, I thought you’d overexerted yourself to death!”
I brought myself to sitting and accepted the water he handed me with my right hand– but to my surprise, it was gone once again.
The sensation of wholeness was, to my disappointment, fleeting. The temporary completeness had passed. To be regifted what I had lost only to torment me upon waking dropped a stone in my stomach. I wanted to cry for myself, but I had no time to lament as Corbal broke my concentration, “Efrit, you’re covered in blood. Fresh blood, not like below. Where are you hurt?” and after pulling his hands from my soaked shirt, “Take your shirt off, you’re hurt. We need to stop the bleeding.”
“It’s not my blood.” It could have been. Thank you, Agnistreya.
That didn’t stop him. His body worked on its own, ignoring what was right in front of him to focus on what he thought he saw. He frisked around my torso in growing panic until I gripped his hands in my own. It was only then that he remembered to breathe. He had forgotten himself in his panic.
“It’s not your blood…? But where did it come from?”
“That thing, that smoldering tree. It was feeding on my village. I cut into a root. Look around.”
With great effort, Corbal dragged his gaze from me to view the spectacle of blood oozing up from between the stone tiles, spurting in some spots; with no other place to go, it was rerouted from its final destination somewhere in the trunk.
After heaving onto the bloody mess, Corbal was speechless for a time, probably lost in thought, formulating ideas and hypotheses and ruling them out just as quickly. Meanwhile I watched my handiwork burn with a sense of praise.
“What time is it?” I asked. With the smoke in the sky, I couldn’t tell.
“I don’t know.”
“How long have we been here?”
“I… I don’t know. No more than two hours. But it’s dawn. I don’t know what’s happening. By all accounts, none of this should be happening. I’ve yet to see records of anything like this. The Great Divide was the last major geological event in Lyvik’s history, but this… This is notable. And that no one’s even noticed this being here this whole time, that’s a mystery on its own.”
“I noticed. I was probably the first one.”
“I meant scholars. No offense.”
“I have a friend to the south who may be able to figure this out. She’s a historian who has been keeping ancient carapede records since the invention of recordkeeping.”
Corbal turned from me to watch the smoldering skeletal behemoth. Some structural center shifted and the remains fell onto itself in chunks, releasing plumes of new ash. Something in him made him become restless, beginning with tapping his foot and further manifesting into adjusting and readjusting his belt. I watched his anxiety spike while he looked around for a physical explanation for his unease. Shortly after, he turned to me and stared through me with that absent look I’ve seen the diviners do.
“I can’t feel your anima. It’s so weak.” Corbal began to panic. Could it really be that I lost my anima? Then I should be dead, right? Is this the cost of strengthening Agnistreya’s blessing?
“What do you mean you can’t feel my anima, I’m alive, aren’t I?” I muttered, trying to calm him down. “You worry too much.”
He wasn’t accepting my answer.
“I just don’t understand it. Such a massive display, but you’re alive. There’s no way someone could survive expending that much anima at once. Even I get exhausted after just one far scrying.”
After proving to him I wasn’t about to keel over, a reluctant calmness spread across his face, and all but his furrowed brow relaxed. I didn’t think he’d ever stop worrying. Why he was so invested in my trials, I didn’t know, but I didn’t question his motives for a moment. I relished the thought of being so cared for. Despite his concern, I was compelled to conceal what I was promised.
I held the water bag for another sip, but there was none to be found. Repositioning and finagling the bag other ways proved unsuccessful. Corbal’s face tightened, and he sought an answer for a question we were both quietly thinking: Where do we go from here? I chuckled and answered the mutual request with what I thought he would call a satisfying answer, “Wherever we want to.”
Unenthused, he replied, “You’re suspiciously chipper considering all that happened. A lifetime of research suggests you should be dead. Proves, actually. Even Wesley noticed something strange about your anima, but he’s particularly attuned. My inexperience in that field is apparent, but for someone untrained such as myself to notice it… Something happened to you, and for the life of me I can’t figure out what. I don’t know where to begin. It must be progressive. I’ve felt your anima before. If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was being removed over time. You don’t feel like you did when we first met.”
I’d never been privy to witnessing him stuck on a problem before, only thinking of the right word when writing. It was clear he wouldn’t rest until he dug up any answers he could find. I wondered what it would be like to be so analytical.
“See, even if you spent most of your anima and rested, you’d still get that amount back.”
Pacing back and forth facilitated his scholarly process, as did putting a hand on his chin, I assumed. I stayed quiet while he thought aloud.
“But there’s no person who could possess an animatic well of that scale. They’ve done studies. I’ve done studies. The average human has enough anima to break a large boulder and stay on their feet, but they’d be exhausted immediately following. If they push to dangerous levels, maybe throw a boulder, but that’s if they’re trained. Modarres could, I’m sure, but they’d have to sleep for a day after.”
I recalled Professor Calder’s lithe body and imagined how they could shatter a boulder without touching it. I thought it absurd before comparing it to my own ability. Mine was obviously stronger. I had decimated a gargantuan tree in its entirety and survived.
A thought occurred to me after hearing Corbal’s theories about anima: Where did my power come from? Does Agnistreya loan me his? I understood what he meant a moment ago in the dream. Was he sending me messages the entire time I’ve had this flame? Did the Elder’s Stone do the same for him?
Memory still fresh from my dream, I turned to see the still-burning outline of the tree. That crackling voice, it spoke to me again, much clearer than the last. I felt and heard the words equally, much stronger than before, much more verbose. I felt closer to whatever it was. Agnistreya? The god of fire? My patron, the one who pulled me from the earth? He saved me from my death. He saved me from joining my undead ancestors churning in the gut of the earth. And further, empowered me, gifted me ignimancy strong enough to cause a master animancer to be covetous. I would become even greater still, as long as my actions aligned with Agnistreya’s vision. And I should tell no one.
It had to have been Agnistreya this whole time. He took notice and spared me the fate of my village. For a god to see such potential in me… I will live up to his name. I have to. I decided I would serve the Ælder Flame.
I held out my arms and examined where my right hand would be to mirror my left. The guiding ember that led me to the stone dais emerged from deep within my skin, that much I remember.
Corbal sighed and regarded the dried mess of his robes. “Regardless, we can’t go far anywhere without fresh water. We should wash our clothes as well. Leaving them soaked with…” his voice trailed off before he mentioned the visceral liquid. Restoring himself, he continued, “We just need to wash them.”
Corbal helped me to my feet, by which I mean he supervised while I steadied myself. There wasn’t much he could do to assist someone of my stature. I watched the smoldering ashy remains of the terrible creature, pleased that I had reduced it to a charred skeleton of segmented charcoal. The air was fresher on the platform, renewed by a small breeze, and the view more remarkable than I imagined. The budding sunrise cast orange light over the massive forest below, creeping over miles of treetops. Golden rays pierced the forest and revealed a new absence of the cancer that ruined the trees.
We made our way down the steep foothill using the natural trees to climb down. The early morning sky held an orange glow and embers floated in the wind before disappearing, and for once I felt at peace despite the situation.
We followed the telltale trickling of water and drank from it, me using a bowl while Corbal drank directly from the stream. The sparkling water created a fear within me I couldn’t overcome. Corbal washed our clothes one piece at a time and set them to dry on a sunbathed rock. The RASA’s garb dried fast unlike the wool garments from my village.
“I’m sorry for my panic earlier. I saw you there, covered in blood, and it reminded me of Avery’s ritual. I couldn’t bear to lose you again.”
I suppose we had grown closer with time, but for him to care for me more than I considered was all but alarming. He was there. His care felt genuine.
“However, the enigmatic nature of your firewielding certainly warrants further exploration, and though I hesitate to say it, Avery noticed it immediately. However, her… uncouth method was needlessly barbaric.”
“Which part, her cutting my arm off or me dying?”
Corbal’s long ears sank, nearly tucking themselves behind his neck.
“Though I must admit– and please don’t assume the worst of me– I wonder what might have been accomplished by her ritual. I’m curious about the somatic and psychosomatic aspects of paranimancy; purely academically, mind you.”
“She wanted my flame. Didn’t her journal make her seem jealous?”
“It did, yeah. She’s- was- mostly somatically-inclined. As to why she was so suddenly interested in ignimancy is curious. She often entertained the idea of teaching ignimancy, but, for lack of a better phrase, it was never popular. Potential students were often turned away and told to never pursue ignimancy.”
“I guess the only way to get it was to steal it.”
“How exactly did you obtain it? You never trained. I’ve been stuck on it since we met. I’ve never heard of someone accidentally performing elemancy. Sensing it is one thing, performance is another. I’ve estimated about half of Lyvik’s population can sense anima in varying degrees, from none whatsoever to savants like Professor Piers. If you’re willing to talk about your ignimancy, that is. We can talk about anything else.”
As I thought of a way to organize my story, an overwhelming panic held my heart. Stones weighed heavy in my throat and made my breathing difficult. I can’t tell him. I can’t fall from Agnistreya’s favor. My usual compulsion to hide the secret source overpowered me and I couldn’t make myself speak.
“Hey, we don’t have to talk about it. Let’s think about dinner.”
“No,” I replied, “I haven’t talked to anyone about it.” Of the parts I was free to share. “I think it’d be nice to share, and who better than a professor of animancy?”
I’m not sure what empowered me to speak so freely about the start of my torture, but something about Corbal’s constant reassurance and empathy made recalling the trauma bearable. Those big ears made him a good listener. He held soft eye contact and touched my hand when appropriate. After all we’d both seen it was refreshing to connect.
He left his book in his bag until I laid down to sleep, where I caught a glimpse of his furious writing, likely trying to write what he could before he forgot. I didn’t think he’d ever stop studying me. I slipped into a dream about the world burning, like every dream would be from then on.
* * *
In the desaturated pastels before the sun rose, we awoke to rumbling in the ground, at first barely noticeable, but as we gathered our things the trees began to sway unnaturally, and a low growl of shifting earth was made clear.
“What’s that rumbling?” Corbal asked. Panic gripped my throat and hasted my body.
“We need to get far away from here,” I said. Corbal jumped when I spoke and it occurred to me I was yelling. “This is just like when I was taken.”
Then suddenly, the deafening boom-crash of tree limbs snapped to breaking and repeated crackling thunderclaps filled the sky from the direction of the shrine. The dense trees absorbed none of it, and every bang! and boom! pierced my skull and left my ears ringing. Corbal folded his onto his head to try to mute the cacophony. A massive ripple through the forest marked a wave of force, traveling faster than anything I thought possible. The trees waved like withered celery, the invisible wave approaching closer and closer until it reached our camp. The moment it loosed the topsoil , my footing was lost and I fell to the quivering ground. We were both knocked to the forest floor, curled up to protect ourselves from whatever else may come.
I don’t know how long it lasted, but when the land finally settled, my body felt weak from being so tense. Fresh breath was impossible through the clouded air, and there was dirt and ash all over me. My eyes watered and my mouth was dry. I tried to call out to Corbal but entered a coughing fit. Somehow, he found me, and pulled me toward the ground. Right in front of me, I knew he was speaking, but his voice sounded farther away than it should have; muffled and almost distorted. A high-pitched whine overrode everything else I heard.
Corbal pulled my shirt over my mouth and I understood what he meant. He repeated once I could focus, “The air is thick with ash- cover your mouth with your shirt,” Corbal instructed, “The air grows even more stifling with anima. It’s worse than in the cavern, even with the open air.”
Skeletal wood shook as it sunk into the soil, jutting into the sky at weird angles as though reaching for aid before succumbing to the gravity of the earth and vanishing in plumes of dirt. Wood splitting and cracking was all I heard over the rumbling that vibrated my own bones. The dirt beneath our feet became unstable. I thought of the only way to stay afloat as I saw a normal tree lying on its side.
Corbal won’t be able to make it. I thieved him up from the sinking ground as respectfully as I could and ran toward the tree that would hopefully keep us above the churning earth. If he complained, I couldn’t hear. He was surprisingly light. I held him as close to me as I could single-handed. Jumping over quickly widening chasms made my legs burn with the effort. I caught a glance of the holes; it was like the ground was pulled out from beneath and whatever was above tumbled straight down into whatever godforsaken horror lie below. I couldn’t stop running until I reached safety, which I did and immediately held fast as best as I could.
We remained trapped on that log until the rumbling grew quieter and quieter as whatever force retreated back underground. We waited for far longer after the world calmed, mouths covered by cloth, watching fearfully at the sheer destruction of the earthquake.
The earth itself was threshed much like the way Gerdi would process the wheat, tearing through each sheaf and keeping only the valuable grains and dropping them into a sack. The rest was ground to be reused as fertilizer. Collateral trees lay splintered between standing brethren. I looked over the carnage in spite of my burning, dust-invaded eyes.
The roots of the tree-creature had vanished. Rushing embers and black ash filled the entirety of the sky and darkened the forest like nightfall, and the barreling clouds of dust overtook us and coated every leaf and surface in foamy, lightweight piles of ash and dust. Beautiful, billowing clouds of ash dotted with dashing embers covered the sun. My eyes watered and stung but I couldn’t make myself look away.
This is my vision. The bridge-tree decimated, the sky alight…
“Fields, it’s so beautiful. It’s so natural.”
Corbal uncovered one ear and asked me to repeat myself. He hadn’t heard me.
I shook my head, brushing off the thought. “Nothing,” I told him.
We waited in the clearing until we could see daylight again, no more than an hour.
“The tree– it’s gone!”
“I can’t see it anywhere. It’s like every root was pulled underground. What in Field’s name happened?”
Corbal coughed and brushed off whatever dirt he could from his robes. “We should get home. This is more dangerous that I’d planned for.
Over three days we made the journey back to the RASA, stopping only to sleep for whatever short spans we were able to put that day from our minds.