“Beryn!” Arit was all but barking up at her on the northern wall. “Beryn! I need you up here, right now!”

There was so much urgency in his voice that she did not become cross at him for addressing her with so much informality in public. She instead ran up the steps and onto the wall.

In the forest, not far from them, there were dead trees, raining down leaves and spring buds on two creatures clashing. Neither of them were bigger than a horse. One of them reminded her of a wolf, but the glowing yellow eye against the wispy darkness that killed everything it touched, made the wolf into something that would, by itself, set the hair standing on the back of her neck.

It was not even the worst thing she could see. It was the thing that seemed to be battering against the wolf that made her feel sick. White bones, dripping darkness like congealed blood off of its frame. It ran down the incline of the hill, puddling and killing what it touched. Like when the rabbit mystic died with that first dose. I wonder if any of the other mystics we have it have done this? I do not remember any… horse things? She could not decide what she was looking at.

“Before the wolf engaged it, it was coming our way. What do we do?” Arit said after a couple heartbeats of silence as she took in the sight of the two monsters fighting.

A cold feeling went through her. We cannot leave, she thought with eyes that grew quite large, unless Lady Carnelian adjusts the spell for us.

Leave seemed the smartest thing to do to her. She felt like they were looking at some being of death itself, white skull leering at her from even the distance it was away. “Get all the mages on this wall, build it up. I will call for Lady Carnelian to adjust the spell.”

Arit was looking at her with terror in his eyes. She looked away.

She activated her brand, but there was no answer. She waited a few minutes and tried again. Please, she thought, we need your help. Please. Again…

Had something happened to their dragon? Would there be any way to activate the brand if something had?

***

Rosalea didn’t get an answer from the creature, it instead started to rear up in front of her and try to kick at her and slam into her. She kept having to move side to side to avoid it, and even though she had bit through the horn, it left a jagged edge that split her shoulder when it struck her. It wasn’t a deep wound, but it bloomed black fire that was hard to push off of herself.

I need to understand this magic. I need to understand what I am supposed to do. There was a rune hanging in the air, in the bottom right of her vision. It reminded her of the dragon runes in the cave that they had to break to free Nakai. She thought it was something coming off of the creature, but as she focused on it, it expanded, growing, and words started to form.

She heard, before she fully felt, a hoof clack against her skull. It came with sparks in her vision, and she was on the ground as pain radiated through her body from the blow. She tried to move, expecting the monster to rear up again and strike her hard, but he made a motion like he would like to run her through, but the bulk of his horn was still in Rosalea’s mouth.

There was a shifting of the ground somewhere distantly, and the monster stopped, turning his blood-black eyes toward the town. Rosalea could hardly focus on it, but the creature that was not dead but also not really alive was drawn toward it.

She sat there dazed for a moment, seeing a big earthen wall trying to draw a line between herself and the monster and she knew the town had seen them. This is a mess. Those people probably cannot leave, and this creature is going to kill them.

She tried to get up, but her head swam. The rune stayed in the corner of her vision as she sat again, even though the creature was floating away.

She focused on it again. It was curled, like a circle of moving energy. Blessings from Rayale, she heard a voice as she took in the words. It was familiar as the words then divided into two lines.

God’s Language: You can comprehend and speak the same language of forest gods and true gods.

As the words formed, the voice read them to her. She recognized it now as the voice of the Chained God. She had forgotten about him giving her this gift the night that Ulric died.

Then again, they had been maneuvering her here, so of course they knew she would need it, she supposed.

The second line read:

Moryshin’s heir: The connection between you and Jahra is active. Use this to gain wisdom to help you take on the mantle of Moryshin.

It did not have more explanation than that, but the line remained clear to Rosalea as the creature walked away. She imagined her hand, well, the human hand she was used to, grabbing onto that cord. There was more that she had to know. She pulled on it, Tell me about Fen

The creature froze, and the world around Rosalea, with all the dead plants, faded.

Around her, the forest dwindled.

She was laying beneath the willow tree. She had laid here now for seasons, with no strength to act, only endure. No, it was not her, it was… Jahra?

He called Fen from her pack, reaching out to her individually. The Gods had spoken to him, “Fen, you must accept an assignment as a liana,” he said, getting straight to it. “She remains my heir, her magic will flow out of control if there is nowhere for it to flow to. You must make a bond with her and anchor her back to her true shape. If you do not, she may never have an opportunity to make her way back here.”

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Fen closed her eyes, “I… will be honored to try and help her.”

Rosalea saw herself burning the floor of Kaylar’s barn with her hands; magic inside of her building up like it was toxic. There was nowhere for it to go, and she had almost died.

She felt a little like throwing up. I didn’t die when I lost Fen, or go mad. I was always designed for bonds to come and go? She closed her eyes. She did not like the idea that the Gods or Moryshin had seen Fen as disposable. The way that hurt me, how insane has this thing been going with the deaths happening? Or does he even care anymore?

She could not tell, once she had gotten the bit of information, the creature had started to make its way toward the town. She didn’t want it doing that. Tell me about… she needed anything to delay. Tell me about how you became the Moryshin.

The forest around them fell away. The cliffs became just two hills that had a waterfall and a running river. The trees were all smaller. Rosalea had an impression they were back in time a long time ago.

She was Jahra again, “I do not understand. What am I to do?”

The entity that spoke to her had two clear sets of essences. One was silver, one was hard to classify as any particular color. The silver side of this entity reached out touching different animals. Magic that she could see in their core grew, not just the magic of life within them, but magic they could wield.

But it was magic with less limits, it had elements of both terra and vitae, or terra and air, instead of trying to keep it contained in a single-element orderly fashion. “This is an argument we have had many times,” it said, from the darker side, reaching out and blocking those tentacles. “Simplicity.”

“Diversity!”

There was a sick and unsettled feeling at hearing the many-voiced figure have two reactions. With one hand, it tried to open up magic, to make new things, to add vibrancy to the world, and with the other hand, it tried to stop it, to build in order, unity…

And here was Jahra, facing the two-faced ultimate power in this world, trying to understand what it wanted.

“This magic is not… natural,” the many-voice boomed down at him. “It must be contained. You have been chosen for that. You will hold each creature here to wherever you have decided to live, and they will grow and prosper, only as long as they are part of you. If they dare to leave you, they will lose their voice, their magic, their superior qualities. I name you Moryshin, or magic-heart.”

There was a pause in the actions of both entities, “Is that what we really want?”

“No shimmers. Remember?”

“Right…”

And so connection after connection was laden on Jahra, numerous, hard to track, painful to lose, and meant to act as a prison to keep these new creatures confined to a single forest. Others like him were made, pockets of mystics all over the world, chained to one creature to keep them from flowing out.

Rosalea was wobbling back to her feet in the real world. The living dead Moryshin was advancing again toward the town. The stone wall that formed bloomed with plants shaped like spikes. They cannot leave, so they are doing anything they can think of to save themselves.

Rosalea still did not really understand what she was supposed to do to stop it. She was not sure… she wanted to stop it. A literal anchor point? It felt really wrong to her.

Wait, tell me… she gripped onto the magical tether between them.

The thing stopped, turning back to look at her with its horrible hole in its skull. “Do not stop me again.”

It turned back toward the town. “I will stop you,” Rosalea thought at it, tugging again, pulling herself up to her feet, her skull still radiating pain. “Tell me about Uryans and liana.” She yanked on the tether.

Jahra was looking at the Gods from a meadow. There was a willow tree that was not grown yet. It was Gods now, there was a clear shape of the silver one against the other one. They were not really quite one.

“I am granting humans familiars. They will be mystics.”

As Jahra, she was silent a moment. “We are forest gods now. We rule over all that falls in our domain, including humans. It is well-established. What would being a familiar even help or entail?”

“I want humans to have enhanced vitae magic. I insist on it.” The silver entity said.

“Body magic is a forbidden magic. The familiars will dictate the shape, and the familiars will lose their own words and wisdom, bound to the human.”

Jahra frowned, “But that is a horrible, steep price to pay. For a human?”

Energy crackled through him with pain.

“Stop,” the silver clump of essences demanded of the more chaotically colored essences burning him. It stopped.

There was silence. “The other Moryshin are feeling similar.”

“You may make your new human magic, but it must have ways of controlling it,” the rigid essences insisted.

And so, with time, it was agreed that the mystics would be familiars, liana in the god’s tongue, to the humans. They would not be considered mystics anymore, but take on a new role. It would alleviate burdens on the Moryshin in a way that was peaceful feeling as the populations of mystics grew in each domain. It was a necessary thing, the mystics generally could not be killed anything. The mystics would not be allowed to return home with the humans they were bound to. No mystic would be forced to answer a liana-call. Humans would heal and take the shape of their liana, so they could bring good magic into the world.

But the more severe essences did not like even this many concessions between mystics, which it did not want, or humans possessing powerful magic, or any creature having it. It wanted these powers for itself and no one else.

So while one side of it worked to create healers and shape shifters, it created shape shifters that could take any shape and got its own additional forbidden magic of mind control. It would give them advantage over the existing shape changers, and eventually exterminate them.

Rosalea let go of the bond. She could not bare to see any more. A two faced God that feel apart, into the chained God… and the one that had many voices that made her almost kill Kaylar and attacked her family.

The creature she was trying to hold back surged forward, released once more, and Rosalea was feeling anxiety bubbling up. She had offered forgiveness for Ieshans to Ulric.

But they are basically a poison pill for everything made meant to be… unique. She did not grant the word good to describe the mystics or Uryans, but… she felt it. I told Ulric I forgave them, but… She closed her eyes. How can I? They are literally a force for destruction, set on the world by a repressive God.

She grew a little calmer, “But I am not the One. I was never the One.” She walked toward the Moryshin, not sure who she was telling that to - the departed spirit of Ulric, the monster she was trying to figure out how to control in front of her, herself, or the Gods.

The skeleton did not stop, but it glanced back, “But you are. Which is why you too, you too will fail to save this forest,” his voice mocked her.