Chapter 10: Becoming One of the Few
Year of Pride 1311, season of Heat, D.21, Emily
“I need you to take it! Please Emily, you are the only one capable of using it. Your master said you had learned almost everything he could have possibly taught you. There is nothing left that is arcane that you haven't heard.” He held out his blood covered gauntlet, I could still see the Archon stone of sky through his hand, the depth of the Cerulian I could not have imagined. “Emily, look at me.”
I pried my eyes away from the stone to look at his haggard and worried face. The boom of the siege engine shook the wall beneath us as it struck the gates like a doom drum. “The city will fall to the Caliphate if you don’t intervene, morale is low, the city is nervous, I need you.” He pushed the stone in my hand, and closed my fingers around it in a tight grip. He turned to look at the men on the walls and spared only a brief glance back at me as he ran off to bark orders at the men.
The battle was not going well, the defenders of the City were tired from months on campaign, battle lost after battle lost. Our numbers were thin, the defenders looking over at me with some last shred of hope in their eyes. I understood that plea in their eyes, this was my home too.
I was told by my father all my life that the Archon stones were an evil thing, that even the gods feared them. When I began learning magic, my father also told me to never use one, to not be like those filthy Glaion mages. I felt the stones under my feet shake again with another hammer of the siege engine. The thought quickly fading from my mind as the reality around me pressed inward.
My master had used one before well over a decade ago to bring down a mountainside to protect the rear guard of the retreating army. I tried to think back to what he had told me about the stones. He had told me they were impossibly rare. You could never hide them when in mortal hands. They were conduits of immense power. That many magic casters would sell their pride and soul to have one. I never thought in my wildest dreams that my King would have one.
I closed my eyes and whispered a soft prayer to my father to forgive me. Clenching my hands as I probed the stone with my magic, trying to pry it open. It was like trying to punch through a wall, turgid and unrelenting. I thought back to my Master and what he had told me.
“It was more of a feeling than a systematic breakdown. I just felt I needed it, and it responded. Though I was never prepared for the other part…” I wondered what he meant. Another boom from the gate house, snapped me out of my memories.
I was scared of it. What was this thing? Idle thoughts as I tried to focus on the stone and prying it open. Though, my focus was quickly broken as the drum beat of the siege engine hit the gates again. The yells from the defenders distracting me, as smoke and the smell of blood filled my senses again. I sat down and delved deep into my mind as I took my consciousness out of my surroundings as my master had taught me to do.
I receded my hearing first, focused only on my own breathing. I tuned out, and told myself to not feel the tips of my fingers against the stone. The vibration of the gates rumbling through the walls was next. I tried not to feel the humidity in the air, the gentle gust of wind, the feeling of my hair on my neck.
A few moments later I was deep in a trance like meditation. I was only vaguely aware of the battle going on around me, my King fighting off four opponents as he tried to hold the gate tower staircase on his own. The defenders clashing steel as they fought off the invaders climbing the walls. The smell of smoke and fear in the air.
I knew my people, I knew my King would rather die than lose the city. As would I. Crawling deeper into my mind as I made a wind shield around my body to keep everything away, the gusts of wind tossing loose stones around. I completely disassociated with the situation around me as I continued to probe at the stone. It felt like it was challenging me, daring me to try force all I wanted. It felt prideful and sure in its denial of me.
I thought back to when I was first learning magic, back when my Master had found that I had a talent for the air and sky. Those hot summer days were spent practicing over and over the steps to just summon that power. As a young girl, we had found that sky was my domain.
The days we spent making clouds in the air and laughing at the shapes we could make. My Master was patient with me as I fumbled the shapes and made them far more entertaining. An elephant with an extra trunk, or a frog that somehow had wings.
The countless hours spent reading ancient tomes in dark library halls. Eyes tired from the dim candle light, the stifling stone walls that had absorbed the day's heat. But, My Master, he would always find a book that held my interest. Or the conversations had over the information held within them. The feeling of gaining a second father in my life.
I felt the stone sink into my skin and a well of power rise in my chest. My breath caught, and my eyes snapped open. I was aware, but my meditation was not broken. A surreal feeling of attentiveness and disassociation.
A small voice in my head spoke “Oh sweet child of the Fae, oh dear child of air, my darling.” I felt someone hug me from behind as I felt the ghost of soft hair brush against my cheek. My vision shifted to see eight sets of shadowed eyes staring, in a perfect circle around me. “Sweet child untouched by shadow.” As all eight sets blinked in unison, an unearthly tension filled the air.
I saw my King on one knee with his sword plunged through an opponent, blood streaking into his eyes from a cut above his brow. He had lost his crown somewhere, I thought vapidly. Saw the defenders cutting away at the Caliphates men climbing the ladders that they had landed against the walls. The voice spoke again, only this time in my ear, a melodious voice, soft and sweet “Let me show you the magic from before time, from before this world and all worlds before next.” I felt my vision fade.
I was on a different battlefield, but still the sounds were the same. The clash of steel, the thuds of arrows in the ground, the roars of men and beasts. Someone grabbed my hand and I snapped my head to the side to see a woman next to me. She smiled sweetly at me, her eyes left her face in great waves, the same color as a perfect night sky. I could see the night there, not just a reflection or mimicry, but actually in her eyes. “Sweet child, you are of my blood, my child, my creation.” She pointed out, and I followed her motion.
I saw that this was indeed a different fight altogether. Not just men, but giants, winged people, and those with long tails. All fighting in harmony, against a great challenge. Fighting a colossal shadow, reminiscent in shape of man, the distant memory of a mockery of what a human should look like. She waved her hand, the wind weaved around everyone except the shadow and knocked it down.
I didn’t realize anyone could have that control over the air. My Master had told me that the sky was a sea, and to try and force the air to move like a solid was an impossible task. He had always told me that air was an area of magic that dealt in wide arcs not pinpoint accuracy.
She solidified the air and sliced at the shadow with the atmosphere itself, she gave it life of its own and it did as she asked. “Darling, sometimes you must unlearn what you know, sometimes you must accept that the world itself is not as it is. Magic in your life is not as rigid as you seem to believe, let yourself feel that magic and you will see there is very little separation. You are one of my children, so as my power runs through you, will the world do as you need.” She cupped one of my cheeks with her hand, and a wave of knowledge flooded in my mind as I snapped back to reality.
My head felt as if it was split open from the vision, my eyes burned as if they were bloodshot. Lifting my head, hands over my ears, I saw a second opponent, my King was fighting, down. He was huffing from the exertion. The others backed away as they noticed me. Time felt sluggish, I looked around to see the defenders all looking at me with a strange sense of awe on their faces. The Invaders all had a look of abject terror. My head felt foggy as everything moved slowly around me.
I think I understood what that woman had said, and moved the power from my chest to my hands. The sensation of it, not dissimilar to being set on fire. “It’s cloudy, I could use that”, I thought to myself. I let the wind amplify my voice, though I don’t ever recall my Master telling me I could do that with air and spoke. “Defenders of the City take cover immediately, all left in the open will not be spared. My King, please hide.” It was the woman’s voice, not mine, soft and sonorous, but full of authority I did not possess.
I raised my hands and pulled on the clouds and felt their immense weight with the air resistance moving around them. I pulled harder and faster, and felt the temperature drop as frost spread on all surfaces. Quickly coating everything on the walls in a thin sheet of ice. The ambient moisture in the air turned to snow.
The clouds bolted toward the walls we stood atop, great waves of winds crashed against the stone and ripped the shingles off the roofs of the homes behind me. I saw more than a few of the defenders ejected from the battlements, far more than a few of the Caliphates soldiers fall from the ladders, to the uncaring earth below.
I felt the energy start to swell in the clouds as they condensed around me. “I need to vent that or the energy will go where it pleases” I thought to myself. Cracks of lightning sounded in the clouds as they gathered, I flicked my wrists toward the siege engines. Immense booms of thunder sounded as the lightning struck and burned them. Everywhere I looked, people were blinded by the intense light. I saw cracks form in the walls from the force of the impacts, and knocked over many on the battlefield.
I gave the defenders a moment to seek shelter as I felt the clouds break from the moisture in the air just before the rain fell. My King came running up to me and flung his cloak out to catch a bolt that was shot at me from an invader on the top of a ladder. I saw it move in slow motion as I flicked my hand out and a gust of wind knocked it and my King to the ground. I looked at him to see the surprise in his eyes as I pushed another burst of wind, flinging him into an alcove under the gate tower. I felt only a small bit of shame for making his act meaningless.
I dropped the temperature more as the rain tried to hit the ground. I didn’t allow it to, and raised my hands to the air and felt my knee give out as I fell to a kneeling position. I was exhausted, I could see now that the defenders were hiding, that the Caliphate had decided now was the time to charge. Seeing an apparent opening in the defense.
“Darling, I know it is hard, but I know you can do it. Protect your family, your home. Your father is still inside the City.” I heard her sweet voice again.
Huffing from the effort, I made the rain collect in a million different points and condensed them. I dropped the temperature again across the entire area, and felt the ice form on my clothes and skin. Millions of small spears of ice hovered in the air above the battlefield and over the walls, waiting. An avatar of death, given the ability to reap this field of souls. Their blood, on my hands.
The area went silent, not even a breath of wind as I held the sky in my hands. A colossal gust of wind as I pulled air from the upper atmosphere, down. Its roar deafening all across the city. Shattering the glass of the buildings, opening the cracks in the walls so that a few sections slumped off into the invading army.
I pushed on each and everyone of the spears and shot them toward the earth in a cataclysmic hail storm. I felt the spears pincushion each and everyone of the bodies on the field below. Something in my mind broke, and my vision began to fade from my peripherals, quickly starting to black out. The woman appeared before me again, she looked sad but happy. Like a mother proud of her child who had just won a fight with a bully.
My chin touched my chest as I felt the Archon stone fade away, and felt the woman lower me down to the ground, I saw the rivers of blood on the field below. Some were my people, most were the invaders. I heard the war horns sound the retreat of the surviving army as a distant echo, reverberating around the inside of my skull. I was dimly aware of my king running over to me yelling my name. I noticed one final detail, those eight sets of eyes, had never stopped looking at me.
The woman whispered to me before I blacked out completely. “I am proud of you, my sweet child…”
