It has been my life’s work to learn everything I can about the immortal creatures who have come to this world from beyond, and to record that knowledge here, for the benefit of future generations. I can admit, now, as an old man, that what began as an order from General Aurelius has consumed my life. I have no family, no surviving friends. This work is my legacy - but it is only a hollow legacy. Where do they truly come from? What is their essential nature? I am no closer to grasping that now than I was during the Cataclysm.

* The Marian Codex

☀

16th Day of New Summer’s Moon, 297 AC

“How are you here,” Enid De Lancey asked the spirit of her father, and Trist could tell she was crying from the breaking of her voice. He set his longsword down on the ground, reached out for the wine barrel he was leaning against, and got to his feet.

“Let us give them a moment,” he murmured, in the direction of Dame Margaret, and she led him to the far end of the cellar, where the four Exarchs reconvened. “My portals and shadows to get us in,” Trist began, once he’d found another seat. “I know you have all worked together for years, but I must admit I do not know your capabilities.”

“I can’t drown,” Margaret began. “You could knock me over the head and dump me over the side of a ship in the outer ocean, and I’d float to shore safe and sound. Might take a while. If there’s water in the area, I can send it in a wave to knock our enemies over, but the Cathedral isn’t close enough to the river for that to matter. If I submerge someone in the ocean, I can disinfect their wounds, heal them a bit. Not as impressive as your wine trick. I can also call creatures of the ocean, and talk to them - again, not much use for what we’re doing. There’s a reason the King kept me at Court, unless there was some sort of pirate crisis or something. How powerful I am is really very dependent on the environment.”

“Do seagulls count?” Trist asked, after thinking a moment.

“They do,” Margaret confirmed. “And yes, I can use them to scout our way to the Cathedral. It will help us avoid patrols, at least. Cynric, your turn.”

“I can see emotional connections between people,” Cynric said. “What they’re feeling, even when they try to hide it. The spark of desire when two lovers gaze at each other across a room. King Lothair usually kept me at his side during audiences, so that I could advise him on what people left unsaid. I can speed the growth of crops, or quicken a woman’s barren womb. I can fight, of course, but it isn’t my specialty.”

“Saint Veischax,” Lorengel began, without needing a prompt, “is the Angelus of the Seal. I can tell at a glance the strength of a binding, and whether there are any weak points. If you give me enough time, I can bind a daemon to a place, and I can renew or even break a binding. My power extends to more esoteric meanings of the word, as well: I can seal an oath, for instance, so that I immediately know when someone breaks it.”

“I can see why the King kept you three close by,” Trist said. “And why Bors was the one he sent south.”

“Aye, Bors is good for breaking things, and not much else,” Cynric said, in good humor.

“So,” Margaret said, getting them back to the point. “We get cleaned up, and wait for most of the city to go to sleep. We use gulls to scout our way to the Cathedral. Otherwise, it’s as I said before. Trist cloaks our passage, portals us in and Lorengel checks the bindings. Trist, how many Tithes would you need to improve that Boon? To try to heal your eyes again?”

“Four,” Trist said, “which means twelve, once I pay Acrasia and the King of Shadows their shares.”

“Too many,” Margaret said, discarding the idea. “Just give us room to fight as best you can, and we’ll try to keep them off you.” There was a thump at the door to the cellar. “That’ll be Ma with the tub,” she said. “I’ll let her in.”

“Ladies first,” Cynric said. “We’ll stay right here until the two of you are done.”

“Trist,” Acrasia said, appearing opposite him like the stroke of lightning at night. To Trist’s surprise, he could see every piece of her: those winter-blue eyes, the pale hair, her delicate pointed ears, and the black dress she wore.

“How can I see you?” Trist murmured. “Everything else is darkness.” He heard Cynric and Lorengel shuffling away, clearly giving him privacy.

“You aren’t seeing my body,” Acrasia explained. “I haven’t manifested it. I’m using illusions, again, to affect your mind. You don’t need eyes for me to make you think you can see me.”

Ironic, Trist considered, that the beautiful faerie he’d rejected might be the only woman he’d ever see again. “Can you use your illusions to show me other things, as well?” he asked. He doubted there was much chance of it, or she would have already done it.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“Not in any way that will be useful to you,” Acrasia said. “I could conjure an illusion of whatever I wanted, but I couldn’t move it fast enough to let you fight. I would be half a step behind, and that would get you killed.”

Trist nodded. “I understand. It was too much to hope for.”

“But you don’t need me to do that, Trist,” she continued. “That’s why I came to speak to you.”

“What do you mean?” he asked. While they spoke, the thread of Tor De Lancey’s presence finally slipped through his grasp, and warmth returned to the cellar.

“Listen,” Acrasia said. “Do I need eyes to see?”

“No,” Trist said immediately. “You seem to do just fine without a physical body - but you are a faerie. I get glimpses of you, from time to time - the rest of you. Stretching back to wherever your body actually is. But I am not a faerie. I cannot do what you can.”

“You can, though,” Acrasia insisted. “You’re already starting too, Trist. Most Exarchs never see our real bodies, and if they get a glimpse, it’s after years in the service of their Angelus. Do you think Sir Baylin would have left me alive if he could have seen enough of me to kill me for true?”

“So what, I have a talent for it, then?” Trist asked. He couldn’t help smiling. The only other thing he’d ever had a talent for was swordplay.

“It’s more than that,” the faerie pressed him. “Why do you think I didn’t Tithe you in the woods that first day, Trist?”

His smile melted. “I thought it was because we liked each other.”

“That came later,” Acrasia said, and though Trist had tried to put aside his past feelings for her long since, it still hurt to hear. “You caught my attention because you were different than any other mortal I’d ever seen. It made me curious, and I had to know why. And then as I spent more time with you, that’s when I began to care for you. But if you’d been any ordinary boy, I would have Tithed you then and there. That’s why I was singing in the first place - you just happened to be the first person to follow the sound of my voice.”

Trist turned away, forced to re-examine everything he’d thought to be true about his childhood love. There had been no chance encounter in the forest: he’d been her prey. Acrasia, the wolf, and young Trist, the hare. He would never have been able to stop her. “There is nothing different about me,” he said finally. “I am a man like any other.”

“Are you?” she raised her perfectly arched eyebrows. “I heard the story your father told you, when you summoned his ghost.” From the other end of the cellar, the splashing of water came, but Trist was focused entirely on his conversation with Acrasia.

“About my mother,” he said.

“Yes.” Acrasia nodded, pale hair shifting about her shoulders. “You are the son of an Exarch, Trist. A daemonic Exarch, yes, but an Exarch all the same. How long were you growing in your mother’s womb, before she cast off Agrat?”

“I do not know,” Trist admitted. “Long enough to ride from the Tower of Tears, north through the pass, into the Arden, and to Vellatesia.”

“Vellatesia,” Acrasia repeated. “The city where Avitus made his bargain with the Sun Eater. Where he let them all into our world, Trist. And what, exactly, did your mother and father do there, to break Agrat’s hold on her? All while she carried you, Trist. I’ve never heard of any other Exarch who was a mother. Centuries of power, those Boons she’d built upon scores of Tithes - did they move through you, as well as her? I think they did.”

“This is all guesses, then,” Trist challenged her.

“Not all of it. I saw the barest spark within you, when you were a child,” Acrasia said. “Now I think I understand why it was there. Perhaps Agrat is as much a mother to you as Cecilia. I think, sweet boy, that you have never been entirely mortal. But you were starved, until I took you as my own. Only in the past few months has the power within you been able to feed, and grow.”

“That monster is not my mother,” Trist said, angrily, and the sound of splashing stopped.

“Is everything alright, Sir Trist?” Dame Margaret called back to him.

“Yes,” Trist said. “My apologies. I am speaking to Acrasia.”

“Put that aside, for a moment,” the faerie continued. “Perhaps it was only your mother’s Boons that touched you, and made you something more. But the fact that you can see me, Trist - and you’ve been fighting today by seeing the cores of the daemons, haven’t you? I’ve never heard of any other Exarch doing something like that.”

“Fine,” Trist said. “Let us say for a moment that my mother’s power changed me, somehow. It is enough to keep me alive against a daemon, if there is no other choice, but I still can’t fight as I did before.”

“That’s because you haven’t truly opened yourself up to the world, yet,” Acrasia said. “I don’t think you need eyes at all, Trist. I think you need to learn to see as faeries do.”

“Can you teach me?” he asked.

“I believe I can.” She sighed. “Whether I can do it before you leave for the Cathedral is another matter, entirely. You’ve learned how to use your Boons more easily than most, I believe. I remember how Aurelius’ first seven Exarchs stumbled their way through it, like blind idiots in a thicket of briars. But you take to this power like a fish born in the water.”

“Let us at least try, then,” Trist decided. His heart leapt at the idea of seeing again, of being able to fight instead of being a useless cripple who needed to be protected. He tried not to get too excited, to tell himself that it was only a slim chance, that he would be a fool to build up his hopes, but he had to know. He had to make the attempt.

Acrasia smiled. “I’ve never been much of a teacher,” she admitted. “But I will do my best.” She reached out with her hand, extended a delicate finger, and drew in the dark, on a cellar floor that Trist could not see. Where the faerie touched, a trail of light remained behind, until Trist, leaning forward, could see a picture.

“Two circles,” he said. She’d drawn them side by side.

“Yes. Imagine that those circles are your world,” Acrasia said. “Here, we can add to it. I’ll make a square - that’s a castle. And these dots are people. And looking at them from above, we can see the picture. If we care to look closely, we can see all sorts of detail, but I won’t draw it now.”

“I’m not certain I understand,” Trist admitted, frowning.

“I see your world like I am looking at a picture.” Acrasia stood. “Here. If I stand in this circle-” she stepped into the left circle she’d drawn. “All those little dots there, those mortal people, they see my foot and they think that it’s me. But they don’t see this.” She waved a hand up and down her body, to indicate the rest of her.

“That’s your world, Trist,” she continued. “They think I’m standing in their castle, but it’s only ever my toe, or my finger. And the real me is looking down at them, from above, beyond anything they can comprehend. This is how you need to learn to see, and it has nothing to do with your eyes.”