Spoiler: Plot work; Illy's real ability

!Major Spoilers! Seriously.

"Are you sure? This is dangerous, I've never encouraged my children to try this" This was getting old, Villy had been coddling me for weeks now as we set this up. Ever since Anlyth had noticed that the shadows anchored to my soul let go during the last test, he wanted commanded the Arcana to assist me in setting up a new experiment. "Are you sure?"

Setting the soapstone down, my knees hurt from the amount of time I had been mindlessly scrawling the repeating runes, I turned and hugged Mother tightly. "Please, shut. up." The few people around us shot me aghast looks, the ones that reeked of disrespect. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Anlyth give an amused grin. "I know you are worried, I know that you've never asked us to play with our own souls. I want to keep that ability close to your chest. I get it, the Brownies fell because they were able to and that put a target on their backs. But, Mother. I am a Brownie. I might not be in the same form as one, I might still be chained to Bhal, I still haven't seen this power everyone claims to think I have. You are still healing." Letting go of her, I looked her in the eyes.
Still weary, still not healthy even after all this time. Her eyes still had yet to burn again like Syn's and Alnya's, she was still dependant on me as I was her. I didn't want to admit it, I didn't want her to know that I wanted to do this to speed her recovery along. That's the way that Tethering ritual worked, it was reciprocal. The stronger I became, the more she would. "I know there is a risk involved, but please. This pestering is getting old, I know you are worried. But, I can't help that, you need to let me do this."
Her eyes began to swim with unshed tears, holding her hands to her chest, I could feel her tail begin to unwrap around my waist. "No no M'Ma. It's going to be alright, I'm not the helpless little girl you found back in caves."

That did the trick, throwing her arms around me again, that tail like a vice now. "No, no you're not. You've grown strong, you've done things I haven't seen since the beginning. You're right, I need to stop."

"Well then let us begin!" I said, putting away from her fully, walking to the center of that circle. Six days, it took six days to write all this out, thirty some people directed by the Goddesses to correct any grammar issues. This song I had to do perfectly, or I might just become something else entirely.

"What? Now!?" She yelled back at me, the worry instantly back on her face. But, I had already started the song, low, an upward crescendo, back down to a thrumming melody. The internal rhymes melding together with a subtly I didn't quite appreciate at the time, struggling to just keep in time as each rune around me began to glow in step with each word.

Closing my eyes, words coming without me having to try and remember them. Like a song from my own soul, well literally. This was the song Vilorlith had sung to bring us into creation, breaking it down piece by piece in my mind. I could feel Mother assisting as concepts, metaphysics, properties and anchors to the pillars dashed through my head, it was too much without her help. But, it got easier as I delved deeper, sinking into the sound of my heartbeat.

Dimly aware, like falling backwards into warm water. Filling my lungs without panic, feeling the thickness of the fluid move effortlessly with each breath. The song changed in pitch as I sank deeper, somber. The world fading, like seeing a mountain through the mists. A bird to take flight through cooling clouds, to know that feeling again. It filled my veins like ice as I reached the part of the song that describes the powers she wished us to have.

My voice thunder, my breath a hurricane. The wind through my hair was mine, I knew it to be. Not a feeling, an absolute. The fires of the world existed because of the air we gave it, the stones on each vast planet held together by the bonds we gave them. Water and endless seas were ours, just given different forms. It was all ours, she wrote us to be what she was. She wanted us to... my back touched soft silty earth finally reaching the bottom of this endless sea.

This wasn't right? A sea of water? No... I think I comprehend. The rhythm changed, I didn't notice it. Opening my eyes I saw the skies empty. Devoid of light, devoid of creation, a blank slate. So what did you want us to write, Mother? Sigh like a whispering breeze escaping the mouthpiece, my instrument to play. Mine and mine alone, my face breaking the surface of the waters again.

A gasp for air, struggling on the surface, how did I get here? Don't let the song slip, don't forget where we are. Heartbeat racing, the jolts of nervous energy as the adrenaline coursed through my body. The thrill of the symphony that left my lips, intricate and vast. As vast nebulae formed in the skies as I sang, bright and colorful. Reaching up, waving my hand through them as I laid back in the water. Hair floating out around me, face above the surface playing with the skies.

The song picked up pace, exciting, exalting. The more I played with the heavens the more stars began to form, learning that moving the clouds together made them. Moving the winds together made storms, moving storms together made the weather. Moving songs together made new ones, the ones with broken notes fixed by rethinking them. Broken notes...

I was supposed to be fixing something, beginning to get lost in the reverie. The creations I had weaved right at my finger tips, moving like a fish swimming through muddy water. Each swipe of the tail creates new galaxies in the eddies of it all. Still my song brought me upward, I wanted to fly.

Tail sailing behind me, rising high into the skies I had made. Dazzled by the colors I had thought in my mind, things with no names, shapes beyond description, notes never yet sung. When I had reached out to touch another star I felt my own finger tips touch. A vast mirror, reflecting everything back to me. Each thing I had done, each note I sang, each memory I had made. My soul staring back at me, smiling. Telling me memories of different times from before I touched the bottom of the sea, names I remembered. Feelings I had felt, loves I had made, my failures, my flaws, my anger and fury at myself for not being strong enough.

I saw it then. I saw the difference in the songs, the one being sung back to me through this reflection. Broken notes... the song was different, but not quite broken. Darker, bassier, not as complex. The internal rhymes I had been singing were gone, but the melody was the same. I grabbed my reflection’s hands, trying to teach her the right tune. It was beautiful, but not the same. An imbalance in my mind, the slightest difference to tip the scales. She struggled trying to get away, screaming all my failures back at me. Yorms death, Kari's death. The loss of the battles by Dwarves in our defence, Vilorlith still not well. Shadows constantly finding us, hunting me. My depression kept me from moving when I needed to, the anger I felt in my soul as I couldn't save myself from falling.

With a movement she couldn't react fast enough to, I changed the song to match hers. Pulling her into a tight embrace, the feeling of the fur running the tops of our ears standing on end. Chest to chest, feeling the goosebumps rise on my skins. I sang softly into my ears. "I forgive myself, I am allowed to be broken. We will heal in our own way." The tune using the darker version but to the cadence of the original.

I wrapped my tail around the reflection, she finally wrapping her arms around me. Thinking back to all the people I wanted to help, thinking back to all the people I had healed despite it being the worst thing at the time. The amount of energy I spent chasing after that feeling of being helpful. I wanted to help those who suffered, without realizing with each small cut to myself, I never healed myself. Never allowed myself to forgive Yorm's death. Never cauterizing the wound left behind by my inability to heal Kari.

The skies sang back at us, at me. As ocean drank the horizon spilling off into the endless stars. Only to spill into me, only to spill into my soul. The song wasn't broken, as I broke the tether connecting myself to Bhal. A spider's silk, an impossible to notice thread hidden in the dark of that tune. I needed to heal myself and where to start rather than the source. Kari had always taught me to get rid of the infection before treating anything else, a festering wound will stay that way until you cleaned it.

A sunrise on the dark skies, a bright light in my chest. Justified in my fury as I saw the scars and bruises across my reflection. Like a prayer said without thought for the countless times it left my lips, I placed my hand over my own heart and pulsed power throughout myself. A stronger force, one I hadn't felt before. Somewhere in the back of my mind I wondered where Vilorlith had gone? The scars smoothed away, the bruises faded away as I smoothed out my reflections tangled mess of hair. The skies filling her skin as it did mine, our eyes began to burn the way theirs did. So this was it?

These were the chains? A thread and to be kept in the dark? To hide what he had done, to keep us from seeing the truth. To keep us dwelling on the wrongs, to keep us angry? To bury our tattered worlds apart, I won't look away. I see now, I see it.

Blinking in the bright sunlight of The Elsewhere, the runes dancing around me having lifted from the stones where I drew them. Though my voice was silent I still heard the song in my ears, and one I didn't know until now. I heard Mother's song, several things clicking into place as I realized a few things all at once. First, I could think a lot faster, deeper, with various perspectives all at once. The second major one was what Odeza had talked about, Song's Afterglow and how it affected just about every conceivable branch of magic. Her song made everything, the same way mine did. A tune as the base melody and drumbeat for the world, everything else just built off our songs.

I felt something strange, a muscle I didn't have before as it pulled at the small of my back. Looking back, a long starry sky colored tail swished behind me, feet off the ground only that tail holding me to the earth. My tail, I corrected myself. The joy I felt as something was lifted from my chest, a freedom like being unyoked to the plow. The weight of shackles being released from wrists, I somersaulted mid-air my own joyous laugh sounded echoey.

I dived down to Vilorlith, feet never once touching the earth. Tackling her into a hug I wouldn't let go. "I hear it now. I hear your song."

"I'll be damned..." Anlyth said awed. Slack-jawed and open mouthed. "I didn't think it could be done. I never thought I'd see a Brownie again. I had almost forgotten what they looked like, I forgot they could levitate."

"I think you're missing the point here, Arch Valkyrie" Alnya said without emotion, though she looked just as shocked as everyone else watching Vilolith recompose herself. Already looking far more hale than she had been even with the more stringent assistance. "She just cured herself, she just cured the Shadow's Touch."

Anlyth felt a chill run down his spine. The flames in his wings burning bright with hopeful caution. She was a Goblin just a few moments ago, the cursed tribe. The Family forsaken, the ones thought extinct beyond help. "Do you think she can do it for others? Or teach us what she just did?" He asked, voice hesitant, full of the memory of thousands of failed attempts to do the same.

Syn's husky voice cut through their conversation like a glowing knife through butter. "I think you should allow them, as well as yourselves, the moment of joy they feel right now. Thinking of only how you can use this as fast as possible, as if those two haven't earned the right to feel the elation of being unchained by the dark. Something I so wish to be free of as well."
Anlyth at least had the good decorum to look ashamed, Alnya only met her gaze with the same ferocity. "Let them have a few days of peace... Sister." Syn's voice practically burned with the implications as Alyna backed down.

---

I'm working on solidfying quite a bit of the later plot beats. I've spent so much time working on arc 1 without giving much thought to the direction I want to take the story, I just know where I want to end up. So I'm trying to figure out for myself the Dynamic between Ilgor and Vilorlith how their Mother-Daughter relationship is going to turn out. Trying to show the disconnect between the Elsewhere and how the Quartet minus Alnya feels about making progress. Anlya and everyone else want action, they want to take back their world, they want to save those trapped in the Shattered lands.
Syn in this Scene is also a Shadow Touched victim having spent so much time sharing the body of Azu. Her infection if far more difficult, being an actual divine entity. She wants to point out that there is much they don't know, they may have witnessed those who changed, those they killed and those they tried to cure. But, they were never infected by that darkness like they were. Also, I really wanted to talk about what Brownies are, and what they can do, how they percieve the world is different than the other races. They can see and hear the songs woven into reality and how they work. They had an intimate understanding of how to change those notes in the songs to make reality do what they wanted.