This island had been made to shelter them. To provide what they needed.
Today, Pyrrhus needed to heal, and to think. The gardens were full of medicines and elixirs. Pyrrhus picked a few herbs, sliced them down the stems, and pounded the remains into a thick, bitter green pulp that he brushed onto rolls of fresh bandages. And for good measure, he made a cup of good strong tea, setting it all on a wooden tray.
The whole time his fingers were almost shaking, although his arm was already healed enough to be used. The outside world had come to him. This was his chance to, somehow, slip away from Egran and out into the heavens beyond. Or at least to hear about them from someone who’d actually seen the outside world in the last twenty years.
Egran sat by the fire, the reflected flicker of the coals turning his face into a red mask, filling his wrinkles and his sunken eyes up with shadows. “Careful.” He cautioned, as Pyrrhus departed for the hut where they’d left their ‘guest.’
The man was awake when he entered; Pyrrhus had given in to Egran's nagging and tied his arms to a post within the small hut, leaving the stranger's weapons set out of reach. A long, thin saber, a knife in his boot and, curiously, a curved grip of wood extending into an iron barrel.
Egran had no idea what it was. Even Wisdom seemed less than sure.
Infantry Sidearm || Device Mechanika (Mortal)
Meant for killing, the barrel is fed with alchemical powders and the load ignited with a fall of the hammer. A fearsome thing, making thunder and smoke, leaving killing wounds no wider than a finger.
The man stared up at him, his eyes cautious and calculating. A ghost of a grin on his face. He wore a charred jumpsuit with a heavy reinforced weave and leather padding, his shoulder marked with red epaulets, a pair of goggles hanging around his neck. Fire had done its work on him too. His face was marked with ragged burns, and Pyrrhus could tell it hurt to talk. Smoke and cinders had turned his voice raw when they tore into his throat.
"Let's start with your name?" Pyrrhus said, meeting the man’s gaze without any fear. There were a few things he needed to hide, chiefly his gift of Wisdom, but in the end this broken soldier had more to lose than he did. Wisdom could see into his soul.
Calner Loas || Pilot
A seasoned soldier, hands heavy with blood, heart made cold by the death of those who stood beside. His mind resembles the machines he serves, cold and calculating.
Coin and wine, wind and smoke, these are his only gods.
“I’m Calner. Air Sergeant in the Revenant Legion.” He turned, staring up at Pyrrhus. “This island isn’t on any of our maps, you know. On anyone’s maps I’d think. Couldn’t even see it until I crashed.”
“It’s hidden.” The wards surrounding the island did more than keep it enclosed. Nobody below could even see there was anything here, only another patch of sky.
“Mm. Which makes me wonder if I’m going to be allowed to leave?” The man, Calner, had a jovial tone that never changed, but something about the way he held himself made Pyrrhus think of a wild animal. Sure, Calner was bound, but already thinking of how to talk or fight his way free, and Pyrrhus was less than confident in the knots he'd tied.
“Don’t worry. I’m leaving soon, and you can come with me. Will you let me patch you up?" The truth was Pyrrhus had a million questions. Egran knew the outer world twenty years ago, before the sky had started to light up with massive infernos. Before the islands beyond the dome were covered in armies; it was like watching swarms of ants, from this high up, but Pyrrhus had seen how they swarmed and fought.
"Can't stop you, can I?" A shrug, and a groan as the motion made his clothes chafe against his burns.
"I mean, if I untie you-" Pyrrhus glanced meaningfully towards the weapons. "You won't try anything unwise?"
"Ah." A chuckle. "You're pretty badly ripped up yourself, though. I figure you're the one pulled me free of the wreck?"
"That’s not an answer.”
"You have my word and my bond. On the King of Atteru, and the White Flame in the Forge."
Pyrrhus wanted to ask what that was - but he could already guess. One of the new pantheon, the gods who replaced Wisdom and her sisters. Keeping a steady eye on Calner he pulled at the knots, and the man slid down, sighing happily as he stretched out his arms and rubbed at where the ropes had chaffed his burnt skin.
He wasn't trustworthy. The instinct was a sharp twinge in Pyrrhus' gut, a recognition of something lurking in the back of his brain. He didn't trust this man. That was why he couldn't ask about this Flame, for fear of giving away how little he knew.
"Thanks." Calner mumbled.
"Take your shirt off and I'll bandage you up."
"So what am I supposed to make of this? You two, you're just happy islanders, hidden away from the world - but pleased as punch to have guests over? The old man doesn't look happy. I figure he'd kill me if he could, so… you're in charge?”
He was back on the offensive again, probing away for answers. Even then that wasn't why Pyrrhus distrusted him. The reason was deeper, something harder to name. Anyone in Calner's position would want to know who'd captured him.
"You must be about my son's age." Calner continued. "You live up here long?" As he talked he slipped down his uniform, exposing a broad back, the tanned skin cut apart by huge, wriggling lines of upraised scar tissue shedding the burnt skin in crumbling flakes.
"Since I was a child. I barely remember the world outside." That much it seemed safe to tell him, and honestly, Pyrrhus couldn’t really hide it. Not if he wanted to learn anything about the outside world. “Tell me about it.”
“The whole world? Gods, I haven’t seen it myself. Just wherever the fight takes me. One island after another, all scarred up with pockmarks from the artillery, big craters where towns used to be. Seen some beautiful things though-”
He winced, breaking his flow of words, as Pyrrhus ran a bandage over the worst of his wounds, the paste holding it in place as he went around and around and tied the length of gauze tight.
“Like?” Pyrrhus prompted. There was so much he wanted to know, things that would be completely ordinary to anyone else. What the cities looked like, how they traveled the islands, where the grandest libraries and oldest churches stood.
“The fire-fields. Strangest thing.” Calner grinned in a big, clumsy way that struck Pyrrhus as the first genuine thing about him. “Just- trees as far as the eye can see, normal trees, I guess, maybe oaks? But their leaves are all fire. Not like, big masses of fire on top. No, tiny little leaves, but flame, and every one of them a little bit different, different colors, all moving in the wind, flickering and getting smaller and bigger so the whole world is dancing with those colors of flame and the smell is like candlewax, kind of sweet and smoky, the leaves that break off the trees shattering into little puffs of sparks. Magnificent.”
“Where is it?” Pyrrhus couldn’t help but let a note of longing creep into his voice.
“Oh, a long, long ways away kid. Past the Tumult. But, if you want, I could get you on a ship going that way by, oh, tomorrow I imagine. If you have a way off this island…” There it was. First the lure and then the hook.
Stolen novel; please report.
Honestly, Pyrrhus was relieved the scheme was so clumsy.
“Maybe.” He didn’t exactly say no. No sense in making his own position clear. Straightening up, he left Calner on the floor. “Drink your tea and then I’ll have to tie you back up, for now.”
“Mm.” Grunting, Calner lifted the cup in his hands - until a sudden shaking tremble made it fall from his fingers, crashing to the floor in pieces and spilling hot tea across his legs. “Damn! Sorry for the cup.” He was already reaching to clear it away.
“It’s no matter.” Pyrrus said, his mind lost in the thought of the fire-fields, and trying to imagine what lay even further than that, beyond the maps. He dropped the broken fragments of the cup back onto the tray, and made sure to shake himself back to reality, focusing his mind before he retied the knots holding Calner to the post. Sloppy work there could let a foreign soldier loose in his home.
Oddly, the man didn’t even try to resist being tied up. Or protest when Pyrrhus left with his weapons.
---
Pyrhus stood in front of the lake with a cup of tea to warm his hands, perched on the small balcony of Egran's dwelling that overlooked the waters. They were clear and cool, colored in amber by the light falling from the island barrier, and he stared into his own reflection on the calm waters.
His skin was normally a deep red color, saturated with stripes of black that curled around his shoulders and waist. Now, burns spread across his arms and chest, some as small as a coin, little circles where the flesh had boiled and risen up into raw, shiny patches, others long streaks of wriggling scar tissue like worms burrowing into his skin. The backs of his arms were the worst. There, the flesh had been turned to ash, a thin coating of blackened skin that was cracking open to show blood beneath.
But he'd grown up pitted against twenty-seven brothers, each a prodigy. He'd fought tooth and nail to earn a place among them.
Solus, the youngest, had left at fourteen. The next few when they were fifteen. Now only Pyrrhus remained, and he didn't understand why.
"Wisdom."
Pyrrhus Vetra-Born
Demon-Kin, Seventeenth Generation
Final son of a broken heaven. The fate of the sky lies heavy on his shoulders.
Ideal
Ego
Id
227/227
0/183
97/97
Spellcraft
(I) Flame Blast, Thunderclap, Leeching Well
Class
---
Skills
Black Iron Staff (Unranked), Sage-Discipline (Unranked), Thunder-Feather Leap (Crude).
Blessing of the Goddess Wisdom (Inheritor), Bloodright of the Tyrant-Monarch (Outcast).
Ideal. Ego. Id. The Three Pillars of the Ancient Path. The three parts of his soul, each following their own intricate rules, each able to grow into a blinding power.
The Three Pillars were the rules the Primordials had set down, creating the system, Logos, so that all could grow powerful and prosper. Ideal, sometimes called Wisdom or Arcana, was the power to manipulate mana beyond the body. It was the core of spellwork and the larger your pool grew, the wider an area of mana you could control and draw upon from the surrounding world.
A powerful spellcaster's area of influence could be called a domain, and weaker mages would struggle to cast within as the greater power drew all available mana like a whirlpool. This was the first restriction of spellcraft; you could be absolutely overpowered if you allowed a stronger caster to close the distance.
The second was that casting created a disrupting in your body, impure mana that had to be expelled before you could create another spell. The stronger the magic the slower the recovery.
Ego, also called Vitae, was the second and simpler form of energy. It was your sense of self and the life that flowed from your soul. As long as your Ego remained strong attacks would struggle to pierce your flesh, and damage would heal, allowing you to survive until the last drop was depleted. Unlike the vibrant Ideal, Ego couldn't be used to attack directly, but a large Ego pool was necessary to absorb a Class Brand.
The fact that his was at zero was more than a little terrifying. It meant the single strike from the Slave had utterly depleted him, and he’d survived on the raw strength of his body. Even now, all the Ego he generated was being drained away to speed up his recovery.
Finally, there was Id. The raw strength of desire that existed as mana within the body. Id fueled Skills, born of constant practice and sincere faith in your own abilities. Unlike Spellcraft which could be suppressed, and forced moments of vulnerability between each attack, Skills could flow together into relentless volleys and shifting, unpredictable combat styles, drawing from the Id until it was completely spent.
And yet, for all the faults of Spellcraft, Pyrrhus had focused on it almost entirely. It seemed to him that raw force and endurance were preferable to flexibility. So long as he controlled when and where he fought his confidence lay with his magic.
These three schools had been chosen long ago as the core of all strength, and written into both the heavens themselves and the souls of all mortal beings. Lesser paths existed, and children could sometimes be born with a fourth stat, usually Anima, but these were dead ends. Noble parents would pay a great deal to have deviancies cleansed from their children's souls so their growth wasn't limited by the presence of heretic paths.
Pyrrhus hadn’t had rich parents. Hadn’t arrived with the legacies and tricks the other children were born to. So he’d set his mind on mastering a few simple spells, and taking the
Flame Blast || First-Circle Spell
43% Efficiency || 0.5 Second Recovery
Fire, Strike, Sphere
This simple and powerful evocation produces a deadly flame.
Thunderclap || First-Circle Spell
17% Efficiency || 1.2 Second Recovery
Wind, Destruction, Ward
A violent burst of thunder that radiates in all directions, best used for pushing back foes.
Leeching Well || First-Circle Spell
9% Efficiency || 3.0 Second Recovery
Vitality, Rot, Hunger
Domain-Cast. Steals away the life of all within, healing the caster.
Oddly, his Flame Blast hadn’t advanced at all from being used in battle. Instead it was Thunderclap where he’d gained experience, despite going unused. Perhaps the nature of the elemental…
The final portion of his power was Wisdom itself. The Divine Brand set into his soul by the Goddess' mercy, marking him as her chosen. It was Wisdom that let him understand the world around him in clear terms, dividing everything into numbers. His self reflection - the ability to see the fundamental units of the Three Pillars within - was simply turning that power onto his own flesh and spirit.
He paused.
Was that what had kept sawing away at the back of his mind when he spoke to Calner? Wisdom’s gift?
Maybe he should’ve listened more, been more cautious. His ability to read the world around him was his greatest talent, even greater than his magic. But he’d failed to trust those instincts. The loss to Egran, the fear of never escaping, the hope of finding this messenger from the outside world - he’d let his doubt cloud his judgement.
So what was Wisdom trying to tell him?
His gaze dipped into the green tea in his hands. No, no, he was looking at the cup. If he cracked it in his hands - the shards would be sharp enough to cut through a rope, given enough time to saw away.
Just one shard, cupped in a hand, a hidden weapon.
He turned back for the house, but already, instinct told him he’d find Calner gone, the ropes left broke around the pillar. Turning, Pyrrhus ran towards Egran’s hut-
And arrived just in time to see the old man’s blood warm on the ground, a fat stain of red-black drooling out onto the floor from where his neck had been slashed open. All the grace had left his limbs. Egran looked fragile now, in death, worn and leathery skin stretched tight over knobs of bone, his eyes clouded over.
The kitchen knife was missing from the cutting board.