by Jade Alters
Then comes the woman I can’t believe is real. I’ve heard her names in whispered stories. Even Horace and Deliah spoke very little of her to the other older members of the Dalshak clan. A merciless master of light and shadow. A scion of trickery that other Magicians aspire to be. Yet here she is now, back hunched over, wispy white hair pulled back in a simple bun and a smile on her face. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Dalshak smile like that, aside from my brother and myself. Even then, it’s rare. She smiles at me, with her smoky slate eyes. With her long, simple black dress and veil pulled back over her bun. With her wrinkles that set her apart from the other two elders. My great-grandmother. Ori. Her lips tremble open to commence the meeting, though her voice emerges resolute.
“Please, eat. Get comfortable. Your foremost job is to listen, as ours was to read. Sasoen, Cain, and I were more than happy to do this for you. To dedicate a skill not often needed to a cause of unity. But our time as leaders has long since passed,” Ori announces. Everyone eyes their steaming broth and bread, but even the most brash of us hesitates in the presence of such legends. Elders of the Big Three. Tomes of the Forbidden Shelves. The most polarizing forces of both the Academy and Kyrie. To have it all in one spot, so densely packed, it’s like eating a bowl of soup on the sun. Still, Ori insists, “What you decide when we’re done is out of our hands. But be comfortable while you can. Let us help, while our limited ability has use. Eat. Listen.” She coaxes us all with waving hands.
Her eyes hang on me in particular, and I lift a spoonful of the tastiest, unidentifiable, salty-sweet soup I’ve ever had to my lips. Ori smiles as everyone follows suit, one at a time. She nods to Sasoen, who flops open a tome before him to begin. We expect the story of the Fiends, at least, but none of us could be prepared for the odyssey that unfolds.
“The records retrieved from the Forbidden Shelves date back as early as the Age of Legends. Well before the system of time we use now was put in place,” Sasoen explains. The Age of Legends? I’m almost immediately tempted to put down my spoon and just listen. Only the expectant gaze of Ori keeps me eating, slowly. “Most of us have come to believe, over generations, that this Age was just that. Legend. But the existence of the Fiends… and their accuracy to what we see described in these tomes… it’s too exact to be an approximation. It’s true. There was a time when these Fiends were not the sole threat of their caliber. In fact, the monsters of myth from every culture, Norman or supernatural, most likely existed in some form at this time.”
“In the Age of Legends, all Realms were one. The Blue Plane, Hell, Thornegarde, and every mysterious dimension on the other side of a Runic Gate or mirror dimension. It all existed together, in a level of chaos that isn’t precedented in the world where we currently live. This was called the True Realm,” Cain’s haggard, but cavernous voice takes over. Every head at the table turns, a mouthful of soup carefully balanced in their spoons. “There were two sentient humanoid races. There were sapiens, as inter predecessors to what we recognize as modern humans - or rather, Normans. The other race was known as the Origas, according to these texts. It is described as a being… bordering on all-powerful.” Here, the stream of information flows from the lips of former Sorceror Cain to my great-grandmother, Ori.
“All of the powers of the Magician, Shifter, and Witch-Warlock bloodlines come from the Origas. They were able to channel all three. They took any form. They manipulated light, shadow, and the mind itself. They commanded mastery over all nature’s forces,” Ori tells us. She gives us a minute to chew on the thought, all the while knowing damn well a minute isn’t long enough. A whole week isn’t long enough! A borderline omniscient being with the powers of a Magician, Shifter, and Witch? What ever could have eradicated such beings from the world? But the smile deep in the wrinkles of her face tell me the answer lies deeper in the story. “The Origas saw themselves as protectors of the Sapiens, a fragile race that was much younger than them. They saw potential in the Sapiens that was worth protecting, nurturing.”
“Therein laid the Origas’ biggest problem,” the power of the speaker comes full circle, back to Sasoen. Only in the presence of these three old souls could the leaders of the two most powerful supernatural organizations of our time be reduced to pensive, awe-filled students. “The True Realm was teeming with beasts not unlike our Fiends. In fact, it appears, according to the records we have here, that we’ve been using incorrect terminology for them all this time. The beasts we know are Gray Fiends. It appears there are - or were - a number of other types afoot during the Age of Legends. Though, only the Gray Fiends appear in these tomes in any sort of detail. The proliferation of all these Fiends was one of the reasons the Origas decided it was time for the Age of Legends to come to a close.” My head is spinning almost too fast to breathe, let alone eat. There are more types of Fiends? My brain cannot fathom the struggles the Origas faced in protecting the Normans of their time - the sapiens - or the raw power they must have had to do it.
“Another reason was that some of the Origas began to see the protection of the sapiens as a pointless chore,” says Ori. “You can imagine how easily the Fiends of the time could wipe out normal humans, without the protection of even a sect of the Origas. So they set their sights on the most powerful celestial event they could, a Planetary Alignment, and bided their time to harness its great power. When all of our solar system’s planets shared one sky, however briefly, the Origas channeled every ounce of natural power they could to rend the True Realm into many. Many prisons for many different Fiends, our Gray Fiends included.”
“It isn’t explicitly stated in this collection,” says Cain, “but we all shared the conclusion that this separation of Realms is what ripped the Origas’ abilities into three pieces. Mastery of perception in Magicians. Mastery of form in Shifters. Mastery of nature’s energy in Witches and Warlocks.” His old eyes float between members of this massive gathering who still carry on the legacy of the Origas with their very natures. “After the separation of Realms, all mention of the Gray Fiends goes cold for several hundred years. Until we found… this one.” Cain pulls over a momentous tome about half the size of the Guidelight Almanac from within the Forbidden Shelves. It takes both him and Ori to flip the cover.
“It seems the Norman’s discovery of harnessable electricity wasn’t the first time our kind dabbled in the art of Runic Gates. Several hundred years before that, there is mention of a hidden gateway opened by my predecessor Magicians. Several men and women ventured inside, and were attacked by…” Ori strains her eyes down at the dried out canvas pages to read, “Lengthy, pale men as fast as lightning. Those who survived the attacks were reported… changed. They thirsted for more than food, and their affliction spread with each loss of control. Before the Magicians were able to contain the crisis, Vampirism had spread too far.”
“Between what we read and what we discussed,” Sasoen puts forth, before any of the uncomfortably shifting Vampires amongst us can pipe up, “it seems that Vampires, as we know them, only exist in this Realm. When the Origas divied up the True Realm into many, this one was intentionally left with less magic, for the sapien’s protection. In a sense, this is really the sapien, or Norman Realm. Though the Fiends can exist here, they cannot be made here. There simply isn’t enough magic. So what we get is… a diluted version.” I sense a few uncomfortable eyes flit to Bart, Lucidous, and Darius. I clench my fists over my kneecaps. No one deserves to feel so shamed for origins beyond their control. Thankfully, Cain picks up the slack in the story, to call all eyes back.
“After that, the Gray Fiends vanish from mention entirely. A door was never opened, to what is called the Gray Realm in these books, again. Not until very recently,” Ori says. Her eyes, which somehow retain a hint of the Dalshak edge even in her ancient age, wander to Dorian.
He takes her scrutiny with a certain respectable dignity, at least, or several seconds. But, when the silence persists, and eyes begin to follow Ori’s, he says, “Is… is that all?” Whether or not a
nyone can really pin all the blame on Dorian Darkscale, he’s not alone in his disappointment here. Ori, Sasoen, and Cain’s story had a certain continuous nature to it, which seems to have broken off. That can’t be all… we can’t have risked our lives and sanity beside friend and foe for that. A vague, albeit intriguing, history lesson from an age so far back, most of it has been regarded as legend until now.
“Unfortunately… yes,” Ori tells him, and by extension, all of us. I’ve never seen a group so large, so proud, deflate so quickly. Everyone’s shoulders slump so far over, we almost faceplant in what soup we have left. Little as I wanted to eat, I find I slurped down more than I realized, so engrossed in the abruptly broken off tale of the Origas, the sapiens, and their many adversaries. “The collection we have here… is incomplete. The rest of it remains with two other powerful families - direct descendants of the Origas themselves.”
“What?” Finally, Deliah blurts something out. I’m downright astonished it took this long. I’m doubly flabbergasted, yet simultaneously elated, when Ori fires two eye daggers straight at Deliah.
“Did my daughter fail you as a mother? Blurting out so crassly at a gathering of such great minds and statures… if you have nothing within you but the sound of your own pompous voice, remain silent, Deliah!” Ori bites. I bite too, the insides of both my lips to keep from bursting out in hysteria. I catch Serge’s eye down the table to find him looking down to hide his red cheeks. Between the two of us, we’re caging an atom bomb of laughter. Ori straightens up in her seat, flattens out the wrinkles of stress in her elegant black dress, and says, “It may surprise you and Horace to learn something even I was unaware of. We have all failed in familial duties that were lost in the ages. All the tomes we see before us, from the Forbidden Shelves… was only the Dalshak share of the Origas’ knowledge. You’ll all recall the Broken Academy was once the Dalshak Academy. These tomes describe an alliance that existed once, so long ago, between three families who were direct descendants from the Origas. The Dalshaks, the Bartos Witches and Warlocks, and the Ahwahneechee Shifters.”
“Generations ago, just before the creation of the Academy, our three families divided up the knowledge we had inherited from the Origas,” Sasoen explains. “The Dalshak records have their limits, but they do describe forgotten locations in both Six Rivers and Yosemite, where the remaining two-thirds of this ancient knowledge is sealed.”
“But these seals are not like the one on the Forbidden Shelves,” Cain warns. “They will only be opened by the youngest blood in the splintered lines of the Origas,” he reads from the last page of one of the musty tomes.
“One can imply this means the Ahwahneechee Chief’s lineage, and the Core Lines of Six Rivers. Young Stonebreak and Helena will do fine,” Ori announces. A few heads turn at the sound of the second name, so rarely used by its bearer. The second he hears it, Rock looks like he feels every pound of the weight of the world on his shoulders. Him and Helena both. “But this is all we can offer you for now. Until the other pieces of this most ancient collection are retrieved.”
“May I make a suggestion,” Dorian’s voice rises from the void of quiet that takes the place of the wildest, most winding story any of us have ever heard. Heads turn to one another, shoulders shrug, but Dorian waits for the signalling nod from Ori, Cain, and Sasoen before he continues. “Both of the people capable of breaking these seals are in your group,” Dorian says to the whole of the Academy representation across from him. “It would make the most sense for you to send as many of your best as you can. The Kyrie will contain the Gray Fiends… contain our mistake, as best we can. We’ll buy you time to do what you have to.”
It is Thise that takes charge of the response, by glancing to each and every one of us. The Council and the ASTF. She’s met from every angle, besides a numb shrug from Darius, with resounding nods of approval. It would make no sense for the Kyrie to betray us now, knowing how much still needs doing to even have a chance at stopping the Gray Fiends. Dorian’s trust of two massive sources of ancient knowledge goes a long way, too. Thise turns back to him with the resolution of all of us behind her.
“We’ll send a party right away.”
Mastery of Form
Rock,
Yosemite, Ahwahneechee Village
I take the front of the group, but I hardly feel in charge. As a matter of fact, I feel more lost than ever. Damn that meeting. Damn the long line of Chiefs before me who let the secret of the Origas die, while so many other pointless stories lived on. Now I don’t just carry the weight of the village with me. I carry the weight of magical blood, the only kind that can unseal a door that could save us all. It’s all I can do not to drag my heels, heavy as I feel.
But it only makes sense that I lead us here. The Kyrie shipped off their best to track down the Gray Fiends. The Council returned to the Academy to maintain some semblance of normalcy for the staff and students. And we, the ASTF, we came here. To the land where I was born and raised. The land I vowed on the blood of my ancestors to protect through war and famine in ceremony, years ago. If only I’d known then just how far back my ancestry stretches. I might have looked at things a little differently. Maybe I’d have run away. Now, instead, I’m running back home to literally shed blood for not just my people, but all of us. Blood of the Origas.
I catch everyone looking at me out of the corner of their eye as we cross the narrow canyon to the village. They all have some kind of expectation. Some kind of doubt. I’m sure if my position was switched with any one of them, I’d look the same way. But none of it hurts so much as when I catch the look from Emery. She tries not to let me see, but her eyes share that same glint, of pity, of thankfulness it isn’t her, though she shares part of the bloody burden herself.
It hurts the most with Emery, because I still feel the tension between us. That magnetic force that pulls us together, that tells us to grab onto one another in times of trouble and hold tight. It hasn’t worked its way out of either of our systems, though we both know it was just physical. Mostly. She’s doing her best to hide it, but I still see it in the lines of the face she tries to hide. She wants to help, but helping with a touch would only hurt. It would only prolong the inevitable and reopen a door we closed together on the very cliffs above us.
“So… do you have an idea of where this sealed place is?” Hoster’s voice bounces around the inside of the canyon as I turn sideways to squeeze through a particularly tight section. He’s third in line behind me and Emery. Behind her is Helena, Fey Deller, and even Darius. Poor bastard isn’t allowed to be anywhere on his own.
“More than an idea,” I bite back with more hostility than I mean to. I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t at least in small part due to the suspicion that it’s him. That he’s the reason Emery grew distant.
“What place might it be?” Helena interjects. She’s only trying to curb the tension, I know, so I tame my bite. After all, none feel this weight like she and I do. Yet, behind those perfect blue eyes, you’d never know she was struggling. I wish I had her strength. Her undeniable dignity.
“A sacred site to the Ahwahneechee, rarely visited now and a little treacherous to get to,” I explain. In the breath it takes me to get the rest out, Hoster nudges in.
“I think we all kind of figured that,” he says. It’s meant to be playful, I think, but even the slightest hint of a smirk in his voice sets my fuse sparking.
“If you would shut up for two seconds, I could tell you. You’re lucky my people even tolerate you on our land.” It falls out of my mouth before I can stop myself. I cringe the second I say it. I can feel myself twisting under the strain, pulling me in a hundred different directions. What am I doing? Screams through my mind, but I know if I open my mouth the only thing that’ll come out is more anger. I can’t let it out any other way. Not with everyone watching, all the time. Not as future Chief of the Ahwahneechee. Not as Blood of the Origas.
“Rock,” Emery’s voice comes through as a whisper. It hurts, how wea
k and unsure it is. How she struggles. Can’t give me the wrong idea, now.
“It’s alright,” Hoster surprises me again. He’s almost laughing. “I suppose it’s owed. I’m sure my ancestors did something to Rock’s at some point. We’ll chalk it up to inter-generational karma.” In lighter circumstances, I might appreciate the joke. Here, I just bind up my fists so tight they shake.
All that calms me is a cool hand on the back of my arm. She runs her smooth fingers down my interlocked knots of muscle. Wrong signals be damned, I guess. But when I turn back, I’m immediately stricken with such surprise that the heat of a blush rushes to my cheeks. Helena has switched spots with Emery, and now holds onto me, cool, gentle. The calm in her eyes is a reminder of how I should be handling this, and myself. Shame turns my head back forward, and reinflates my sagging shoulders. They’re all depending on us, she reminds me with her silence. I have blood to shed.
We come out from the seam in a mountain wall to a village as scarce and lonely as I’ve ever seen it. It’s usually quiet around this time of year, just before the cusp of winter. The hunters are out scouring the land for the last big catches before we hunker down for the long cold. The farmers are all out in their fields, clearing out the last harvest. But there’s a bit more to it this year. The majority of those left behind, after the two aforementioned groups, aren’t here either. In this time of Fiends and uncanny alliances, even the rare in-between sets of the Ahwahneechee tribe have dispersed themselves somewhere they could be useful. They’ve lent their strength to the Academy as additional security. They’ve volunteered to help the Kyrie, which has very few Shifters of its own, to hold back the Fiends and the explosion of new Vampires in their wake.