Day 420
The letters from Magdalena give me a lot to think about. The Seeing Stone enclosed shows me a view from atop a cliff overlooking seemingly endless forest and lone mountains erupting from the earth with no sense of reason. Rivers of magic wind between the mountains hundreds of feet in the air, luminescent energy pouring off of them. At the intersection of some of these magicways I can just make out villages and cities that seem to tame the flow of magic around them. I see boats floating above the magic...boats that drift over them like water. I can't fathom who might live her. I wonder if this is where Kaie is.
Don't test me. The included book should help with your magical puzzle - use it to practice your Auldrich Fae. Mindful of the vowel shifts, the cheat sheet I've inserted should help somewhat. Homework - the space in your heart is a place to keep things that are sacred and important. Use this text to construct a more appropriate treasure trove of compressed space.
This is extremely helpful, if delivered with a tone I find grating. But any frustrating with her writing dissipates through further letters as I recognize it for fear and anxiety rather than anger. It hardens my resolve to keep Jerun safe and see them reunited. Three weeks in the grotto, two weeks' return to Dreamfall, leaving one week for the inevitable unexpected. After that, I don't know if I should wait for him to wake and bring him with me or if I can entrust him to my family but at least I have time before that decision comes.
My heart twinges a little to hear her wish that both Kaide and I could be with her in such different ways. For me, an experience to share; for Kaide, a job to do. They have their own understanding between themselves - one that I hope evolves as much as Magdalena herself will. When I share this with Kaide she seems a little confused.
In her past with Magdalena they travelled together for so long with Magdalena often leaving Kaide somewhere for a decade before eventually flitting back and asking if she's ready to start working again. Kaide felt like a tool more than anything else. Especially now that Magdalena has a different sort of relationship with the Empress she worries that Kaide is just a tool again, and probably just a vague memory of a person.
At least I'm a tool she wants.
Her last memory of her life before me is of travelling without Magdalena, searching for something important that she herself had lost. She remembers being injured and then only blackness as something heavy descended on her heart. When she woke and found me before her she can't quite place how she became so cold and imperious.
As we reflect on the Empress and who she must be now, I again find myself speaking of her like just another colleague. I wonder what she gets up to when she's not directly managing the Empire; I wonder if she has a house or if she dwells in some other space. Kaide remarks that if she knows herself, she is likely continuing to work at returning the Osyr to the sea, something she clearly has not yet accomplished. I think, perhaps, that the Empress is closer than even she realizes considering the Crystal Spires and the work I'm now doing.
This is the first Kaide has heard of the awoken Crystal Spires! I promise her that we will visit when we head South. I am eager to check in on Ava and send word back to Kadia and the others. I want Ikshafael to know that not only were his kin laid to rest but others have awoken.
Finally we turn our attention to Jerun, looking a little sheepish and enraptured by our conversation. Over breakfast and for the rest of the day as we travel he asks Kaide to tell him about her people and her story.
Day 422
A full day of travel passes easily with Kaide and I teaching Jerun the basics of our preferred magic. He is so curious and fresh that it's a joy to return to the fundamentals of magic and see him piece it together. The way Kaide explains her own fundamentals reminds me of how chaotic elemental magic can be - she envisions six spheres with overlaps between them: Air, water, fire, earth, as well as positive and negative charges. Everything is about the intersection between spheres and considering them independently as well as overlayed. It is such a contrast to the clarity of manipulating energy the way I do with my arcane works.
But both of us are blood mages, having shared a teacher. For her it makes sense as an intersection of water and metal. For me...I don't think I've ever thought about blood magic as truly arcane. When I tie it up with magic circles and runes I'm channelling its strength into a separate framework to give it the structure necessary to interact with arcane magic. Having awoken as a mystic I now understand that Magdalena taught me blood magic as mysticism and I learned it that way as well, whereas Kaide transformed it into something she understood better.
Now Jerun watches with concern as she excitedly tells me to consider freezing blood in someone's veins to rupture them. Not only do you have to focus on the crystal structure and the expansion but properly shape the expansion to actually damage a person's elastic veins. She thinks that I could use blood as a bridge to accessing elemental magic, something that has long eluded me at any useful level. Despite her urging I am reluctant to attempt it. I find the elements so frustrating and I certainly don't think that freezing blood in someone's veins is the best bridge for me. Perhaps later I can work on manipulating loose blood. I can't muster in myself the same brutal practicality I have heard from both Magdalena and now Kaide: Dead is dead. Ruptured veins, poison, burned, drowned, it's all the same. It's a philosophy I once would have agreed with. Certainly I still wouldn't hesitate at a painful death over a merciful one so long as an enemy
died but nor would I choose the pain over a simple lack of existence. Dead is dead and there's no pleasure or point in prolonging it.
This thought is cut off as the three of us find ourselves staring at our own reflection in the mirrorlike surface of the barrier protecting the grotto. With a wave, Kaide disappears and leaves Jerun and me to navigate our worthiness without her. Probably for the best, I think.
The process of entering is not so scary as it might have been. We walk hand-in-hand through a thick, silvery barrier before emerging to the sound of loud rushing water and birdsong from a species we had thought extinct. The air is cooler here, like stepping into the shade. Eldritch trees soar upwards and fifteen waterfalls cascade in various paths into an enormous round chasm before us. Again, Jerun and I simply tumble over the edge and let ourselves glide down towards the still lake at the bottom. Beside it is what seems like a ruined shrine, draped in wisteria and vines that nearly obscure the lack of roof or walls. An enormous stone basin sits empty nearby.
From far above us I hear the snap of wings and glance up to see a
dragon circling down towards us! She is shimmery and iridescent with colours playing over her body, smaller than Haze but several times larger than Crag. She lands beside us and I greet her with the words Tira taught me: I am humble in your presence, venerable scaled one!
But she waves this off much the same way the I wave off elvish formality. Instead, she introduces herself as Hue and transforms into a tiny fae-sized person with draconic wings and speckled iridescent scales down her arms. All of her pastel colours condense into a beautiful dress and her silvery-white hair - she's androgynous in a splendid way.
We sit and rest for a moment, consuming nectar from trumpet flowers that evaporates before it can really be swallowed. Anxious and somewhat overwhelmed, I fill the silence with comments about dragons - does she know Rainbow? Yes, a distant cousin. And she knows Haze and is pleased to hear that there are riders again. My unusual size has evidently not really struck her because she asks if my apprentice, Tira, happens to be an elf. She nods sagely and agrees that she did feel a sense of leaf and vine from me when I tell her that she is and so am I.
Ah, both elf and fae? So such things are happening now?
She is sympathetic to hear that the two pairs have not been able to swear oaths to one another as the rites are not known to any of us, telling me that if they are unable to find what they seek across the Barrier they are welcome to come speak with her, as she still recalls these things. Privately I resolve not to tell Tira this before she leaves. I want she and Haze to seek the knowledge themselves and all the better if they actually find it.
Finally, she asks if we have come to learn the magic of life from this place. Jerun deflects his presence as simply accompanying me, and I am caught in a moment of indecision.
Of course I am here to learn the magic of life. I am also here to seek protection for a Treeborn, to study the magic of the heart, to try to understand more of what it means to be fae, and to ask something I probably do not have the right to ask for. Concealed in Magdalena's list of components is the awareness that asking for any of these would be a great boon, particularly one she described as being obtainable also by killing an eldritch spirit. She didn't tell my anything further and I didn't ask; It was a choice to remain uncertain.
Now, it must be the first thing I say. To be welcomed under false pretenses would not be right. Hue's face hardens as soon as I finish. I gather from this response that I was right: To ask such a thing is inappropriate and probably cruel. I voice this concern and she ignores it to ask why I want this thing.
I tell her plainly - a member of my family had died and I want him back. It sounds crass to say it that way, like I'm railing against the inevitability of something everyone else must face. Parted from the gravity of my work, my teacher, the future I think I have to walk towards, and how very much I need him in order to succeed...it sounds like something anyone would want. Hue asks who is guiding me in this magic and I hesitate again...I don't know if Magdalena is a villain to her. I avoid it a little - my teacher is a Treeborn. She seems to soften a little and asks me simply to tell her the story of the person I'm missing.
When I was young and first beginning to form a family he was just always there. He showed up whenever I needed him, sometimes before I knew I needed him. Sometimes I thought I needed him but instead he was elsewhere doing something I needed even more. So of course when I was ready to start my own house he was there, along with two others. I had quite a small family back then, just the four of us together. We were a military family and fought together, always had each other's backs. When our war seemed endless and desperate I sent them one after the other across a Barrier to scout ahead and search for answers. In the meantime the war continued - I still had my other family but it wasn't quite the same. I don't know if the fighting really got worse but it felt harder without them.
When it was time for me to join them I landed on this side and he was already gone.
She softens further and asks if I blame myself for his death. It's a complicated question...I know full well that all the actions my family members take are their own choice and borne of love and a belief in what we are doing. Still, it is hard to feel absolved of responsibility when it is
my family,
my house. Tears stream down my face and splash against the underlit clouds across my chest. Of course I blame myself.
But still, I was given a hope to bring him back and I
have to try. I had to come here and ask without even knowing entirely what I'm asking for. If the answer is no...well then my journey ends sooner than I had hoped. It is clear that I don't fully understand what the essence of an eldritch spirit is - Hue remarks that the barrier would not have let me through if I had any ill intent.
And then she asks me to sing Thalien's song. I think of Alec hoping to sing Rit's song back to their trees. Thalien, to me, is easy. He came with his own songs and it felt like the world was always eager to sing back to him. This is so much easier than singing the story of the fae to the humans in the Witch Queen's village, easier than singing someone else's story back to those tortured trees, easier than trying to put my elvish memories to music. Thalien is all the starts and stops as he flew in and out of my life chasing whatever thread drew him onwards. He's melodies that drop off and pick up again as though the gap was a secret to make the resolution sweeter. He is one horrible, jolting and halting stop to the song as the tiniest thread of a melody continues on with the apprentice he sent to take his place with me.
I feel like anyone could read my entire life story from my face when I finish. I'm scrubbed raw. From across the lake a girl steps out across the water and comes to join us, gesturing for Hue to take Jerun on a tour of the grotto while she and I speak. I follow her to one of the waterfalls and we sit together, feet in the water as I twist my fingers together in my lap.
"Do you know what eldritch spirits are?"
"Absolutely not"
Ipthina explains that the eldritch spirits came before fae. They are manifestations of the eldritch trees and each spirit is bound to a particular tree. All of the trees I have seen have been ones without spirits - the tree can continue to live and grow once the spirit is gone but if the tree dies, so does the spirit. In the Pruning the spirits were slaughtered not just to gain their power but to prevent others from gaining their power. The Treeborn killed hundreds of them. Now all the groves are surrounded by the dead and the remaining spirits have sequestered themselves here in hiding. The grove trees are just eldritch trees whose spirit can no longer leave them; instead they send out fae to do and live what they no longer can.
I feel drained of the ability to react to this; all my grief is so near the surface that I can't tell if the tears are a continuation or a fresh realization of the scars that every war has left on the people and places that remain. Again and again, proof that no matter how noble a cause might seem that it will seem senseless in just a few generations.
I'm grateful that she doesn't ask for a reaction. Instead she gestures to my wings and asks how the fae of Day and Night walk the earth again, about our grove and about how we treat the eldritch trees. She is the first to have recognized my people and a smile bursts through the tears unbidden. The story spills out of me - that I'm only the second fae of Day and Night and all but one of us are in our first cycle. I tell her of our one tree and how perhaps by now my sister has been able to harvest fruit to transform Dreamfall. I tell her of the Vanguard waking with clear memories and of Andstella and I leading them to Dreamfall, a place I woke from its dormancy. I can't tell her how my people treat the eldritch trees - we don't have any. Dreamfall is open to the surrounding land. At this she stops me and asks if this is why the Reaper sent me. I bristle and say that I cannot possibly know her intentions but that she is the one who brought back the fae of Day and Night and that she has been my trusted teacher for centuries now. She waves off my defensiveness.
To reap one must also sow.
I'm reassured that the spirits don't consider her a villain. I suppose she and any other Treeborn who worked against the Pruning must have also opposed the slaughter of the eldritch spirits. I wonder how Temira has changed over the years, whether her choices in the Pruning are things she regrets or things she views as necessary evils or a product of another time in her life.
Before I can formulate such a question Ipthina gestures for me to rise and walk with her again.
"The thing you ask for has a price."
"All things do."
She leads me to a small eldritch tree where she tells me that she wishes to test me with mystery. Success or failure here is irrelevant; it is the journey I take that matters. The tree is a young eldritch spirit and she suggests that I befriend him, that's he's shy and might need to be coaxed out.
She leaves me orange blossoms in my hair after I tell her that oranges are special to me because they feel like home.
I find myself alone with this small tree, raw with saltwater and aching for a home I won't see for who knows how long. I wonder whether some of that feeling is Kaide pressing against my heart in sympathy.
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