Fallen Star

by Ivan Kal

  Kyarra nearly yelled at the woman, but she didn’t have any proof of the Grand Marshal being in the city after that first assault. There were a few sightings by commoners, but nothing concrete enough for this council. “Why did the Emperor, then, not act against these traitors?”

  Eleria responded calmly. “He explained that the situation had been extremely sensitive, that he had been formulating a response, but by the time he was ready to act, you had returned to Tourran and took it back yourself. I assure you, Your Majesty, the Emperor had promised that all those responsible will be caught and executed. He has given his word and asked that we pass it along.”

  Kyarra wasn’t sure if Eleria was an excellent liar, or if she really believed her own words. In the end, it didn’t even matter. “There is still the matter of the Arashan.”

  The Archmage waved his hand. “There is little proof that they are invaders from another world, aside from the words of a stranger to your lands. It is far more likely that these Arashan are Darji rebels, or even agents of some faraway land. The world is a vast place, and far from known. That is more likely than travelers from another world, considering such magic had never been seen before. This council does not even believe that such a feat could be accomplished.”

  “It doesn’t matter where they come from,” Kyarra said. “They are a threat, and the Lashian Empire had been making deals with them.”

  “There is no proof that they are in fact planning an invasion, aside from the few isolated sightings of a couple of powerful people and a word of an outlander,” the Archmage said.

  And there was the problem: they had no proof other than Vin’s word…except for one thing. “I do have one more piece of proof,” Kyarra said slowly as she took off her medallion. “I have the words of Vardun Con Aroch. A sending he made before he bound his soul to the cycle of reincarnation. His reasoning for why he did as he did.”

  Everyone in the room stared at the medallion in her palm. “Vardun was a seer. He could predict the possible futures, and he saw the Arashan coming. All that he did was to prepare for this time, when our world was in danger. The sending resides inside this medallion. See for yourselves.”

  The Archmage looked interested, but before he could speak, Master Temor spoke up again. “A seer?” he sneered, half laughingly. “There is no such thing. Seeing the future is impossible! It was proven so centuries ago. Just because the mages that lived thousands of years ago believed in it does not mean that it is true. You would want us to believe a sending made by a traitor and a thief?”

  The room looked divided, but most seemed to agree with Temor.

  The Archmage looked at her for a long moment. “Master Temor is correct. Seeing the future is impossible. No true prophecy had ever been found.”

  Kyarra extended her hand. “Watch Vardun’s sending, and then you may decide for yourselves.”

  She had nothing else to offer them. This was her last chance.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  ASHARA

  Five Years Ago

  Ashara walked with purpose through the palace, making her way to the gardens. She knew that Kyarra was there, as she liked to sit and relax most afternoons by watching the sun set over the bay. Ashara ordinarily wouldn’t intrude—she knew that Kyarra had enough on her mind and that she needed the time to rest—but she just couldn’t live like this anymore. She just felt so useless. She knew that she needed to do something, to make herself useful, and she knew that she wouldn’t be able to do that here, not in the shadows of Vin and Kyarra. She needed to be on her own, to make something of herself without their help. Only then would she feel worthy of standing next to her.

  So she had made a decision: she would leave Tourran. She wasn’t a warrior, and what Vin told her of the spirit artist, it required complete devotion. Ashara didn’t think that she could do that, even if Vin somehow figured out how to make her like him. And Kyarra… She didn’t need someone like Ashara sitting in her meetings, she needed people who were capable and knew what they were doing.

  So she would achieve greatness in her own way, even if she would need to use what she had been given by Kyarra.

  With the wealth she had now, she could go to Kahaldia, could go to schools and learn how to lead, how to be of use to Kyarra’s kingdom. She nodded to herself as she walked, trying to convince herself that it was the right decision. She reached the gardens and took a deep breath before she entered, passing the guards, who didn’t stop her. They knew her on sight, of course. She found Kyarra sitting on a small wooden bench and she made her way to her.

  “Ashara!” Kyarra turned when she heard someone coming and her face split into a wide smile when she saw it was her. That just made things harder. She felt her heart pound in her chest, but she knew that Kyarra had Vin. The two of them were good together, and perhaps one day she might be able to stand next to them without feeling inadequate. Perhaps by then it would be too late for her to be anything other than a friend, but she didn’t think that any relationship she started with Kyarra now could survive. Not when she was nothing but a pretty smile.

  “Hey, Kyarra,” Ashara said slowly.

  Kyarra noticed her mood immediately and stood up, walking over to her. She put her hands on Ashara’s shoulders and looked at her closely. “Is everything all right?”

  Ashara closed her eyes, feeling the heat of her hands, her closeness. Memorizing it all. She opened her eyes and smiled at Kyarra. “It is, I… I need to tell you something.”

  “Of course.” Kyarra tried to guide her to the bench, but Ashara took a step back, getting out of her reach.

  Kyarra looked at her, confused, but Ashara didn’t want to sit, didn’t want to let herself think about her decision lest she changed her mind. “I wanted to tell you that I am leaving.”

  “What? Leaving where?”

  “Leaving Tourran. I want to… I need to do something, make something of myself.”

  “What do you mean? You are my adviser, my friend!” Kyarra said.

  “You can’t understand. How could someone like you understand? You are the Eternal Soul! You are great—and I am just a little girl who knows nothing.”

  “Ashara…” Kyarra began, taking a step toward her, but Ashara raised her hand.

  “No. I know that you haven’t noticed, but I’m not a very good adviser. I don’t contribute to your meetings. You haven’t even asked me for advice in months.”

  Kyarra’s face scrunched up in a scowl, but Ashara could see that Kyarra realized it was the truth.

  “I’m not like you and Vin. I don’t have any skills that make me special. I am a good merchant, but there are better.”

  “That—”

  “It’s all right. I know it’s the truth. But I want to be something more—and to do that, I need to leave. I’m just holding you back.”

  Kyarra’s eyes went wide. “Ashara! That’s not true. You could never be a burden to us.”

  “How you feel doesn’t change the truth.” Ashara shook her head, and she gave Kyarra a small smile. “I just wanted to let you know.”

  “Ashara, wait!” Kyarra called out, but Ashara had already turned around and was walking away quickly. She didn’t turn back, and by the time she looked around herself she realized that she had run and that she was already at the palace gates. She shook her head letting everything go. She walked down the streets toward the docks, as she was already all set to go. She had enough coin for the trip in her purse, and she had deposited sufficient gold to the bank so that she would have something to start over once she reached her destination. The banks used magic to communicate between one another, so there would be no problems. She didn’t need anything else—she had already spoken to Haris and made arrangements for him to take over the business completely.

  She finally felt free. She was going to go and do something, what she had planned from the beginning before Vin fell from the sky and changed her life forever. Thinking on him, she felt a pang of guilt. She had decided on not saying goodbye to him—i
t was just too hard. She felt guilty about leaving him alone among the culture and people he didn’t understand. She remembered him clinging to her as tears came down his face. She knew that she was important to him, and he was important to her. She feared that she wouldn’t have the strength to leave if he asked her to stay.

  As she reached the harbor, she only felt her guilt increase. It just wasn’t fair for her to leave without explaining things to him; she was underestimating him. If there was one person in her life who could understand someone wanting to do things on their own, to achieve their own greatness, it was Vin. She stopped in a small alley, turning around and looking back the way she came.

  Vin didn’t deserve to be left without even a goodbye.

  She took a deep breath, deciding to go and speak with him as well.

  She turned around just in time to see a club come down on her face, and the side of her head exploded in pain.

  “Quickly, get her to the ship!” she heard someone whisper, and then darkness took her.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  VIN

  Present

  Vin stood on the stern of the ship, watching the water and the school of large fish that followed the ship. There were no such large water animals on Orb, but then again Orb didn’t have large oceans or seas—it had lakes. There were so many things on this world that were interesting, new, wondrous. He did not want to see what had happened to Orb happen here. But he understood the reality, that he was one man, alone. He couldn’t do enough on his own.

  They had been on the ocean for two months now, and were nearing their destination. Vin didn’t really know what he was going to do. The way he had left things, the things he had said to Kyarra… They were not what he had truly thought. He had been angry, had felt hopeless. He understood that reality of this world was not the same as his own. On Orb, the word of a highly respected master was trusted, and spirit artists did not lie to one another. To do so would be dishonorable. When the Arashan had invaded, the world came together. All the Clans united and fought against them, at least in their own ways. Vin knew that they made mistakes, that they had fought against the Arashan inefficiently, had fought against them as if they were another Clan.

  But Orb had never known war like what they had brought.

  That was why they’d lost. By the time they had learned their ways and assembled a true army, they had been so reduced in numbers and great masters that they’d had no chance.

  Vin closed his eyes and once again lamented the loss of his world. A part of him that had lived that life felt sad and disappointed in his people; the part that was the Hunter knew that the way of the world was that of prey and predators, that the strong survived and the weak died. He was one with the Hunter now, the beast’s life was his own, but the memories were strange; grayed out, almost dreamlike, and they came at different times. He remembered the battle with a great blue dragon, the way that its scales had parted against his claws. The way its blood tasted in his mouth. The Hunter had been powerful.

  The only reason Vin had managed to kill the beast was because it had been weakened. It had been caught in a massive storm, injured and nearly spent, at death’s door. It found the cave and hid inside it. But Vin knew from its last memories that it did not recognize the place it had ended up in. It had not lived in Tourran, and to the beast the very air smelled different.

  Vin knew from its memories that the Hunter had somehow traveled between worlds. Its home had three moons, which Enosia did not. Something in the storm had caused this, but neither Vin nor the Hunter knew how or why. In the end, it didn’t matter.

  He was brought out of his thoughts by someone climbing the steps behind him. He both heard her footsteps and felt her coming up. Teressa approached and stopped next to him, putting her hands on the railing. Vin had wondered when someone would come up to him for the talk. He was actually surprised that it took them so long, considering they had been on the ocean for two months. During all that time, he had been mostly ignored, respected—or, rather, feared. The crew had known him from a long time ago, and had been slightly fearful of him even then. Seeing him fight off a fragment-bearer had elevated that fear to a new level. He could imagine what it had looked like from the ship: seeing their battle on a distant hill as fire and power wrecked everything around them, and the sounds of battle probably echoed down to the town.

  His injuries had been nothing serious, but they did look rough. Ulyssa and Teressa had used their healing magic on him, and he had helped with a few healing techniques he knew. He had recovered quickly, although he had a scar on his shoulder now from the cuts and burns that the Arc Commander had inflicted.

  Solunwari and Corvo were the only ones that treated him the same, although they shot glances at him when they thought that he wasn’t looking. He didn’t blame them; they didn’t realize that his sensory body made it literally impossible for him to be unaware of his surroundings, not unless he was really distracted.

  Ulyssa was the only one who had commented on his display of power, simply by noting that he had gotten stronger, but the mage didn’t seem to care for much more these days than finding the bottom of a bottle. Teressa and Jirross, on the other hand, had stayed a bit distant. He had come to know the two well over the last few years. In a way, he would call them his friends, even though he was paying them. In truth he was even thinking on asking them to enter his service on a more official manner. He had more than enough coin to pay them, as the estates he had been given from Kyarra had made him wealthy, and Ashara had helped him divide some of that wealth over the various banks of this world before she had left. He would be able to draw from them anywhere he needed coin. He also had stakes in a few mines around Tourran that were making him coin, but he had left all of that in the hands of Haris Olos, Ashara’s merchant partner, to manage for him.

  Finally Teressa spoke up. “So, you are really powerful, huh?”

  Vin chuckled. “I am.”

  “So all those times I boasted about my magic power, you were laughing at me?”

  Vin turned to look at her, seeing that she wasn’t really serious. Still, he didn’t continue the joke, but rather spoke truthfully. “No, I would never laugh at others like that. You are a capable mage.” And she was—compared to the other Enosian mages, at least.

  “Capable, huh… Why do I feel like that is an insult?” She raised an eyebrow at him.

  Vin felt a bit bad. She was right of course. An ordinary Enosian mage was not anyone really worthy to his eyes, but that did not mean that he didn’t value her. She and her brother had helped him a lot as they traveled through the Lashian Empire. Vin knew very little of this world, and the two of them knew the language and the customs of the Lashian Empire. They had been his guides as he searched for the gate, and he would have never found it without them.

  “It is not,” Vin said, but he could see that she wasn’t really convinced.

  “Are you a fragment-bearer?” she blurted out.

  Vin shook his head. “No, I have no fragment, nor am I a mage. Not like what you are familiar with, anyway.”

  “You know, before we left Tourran I heard a few rumors about you. That you were a warrior from a distant land, one from across the ocean that practices a strange type of magic. It was said that you helped the Eternal Soul retake the city.”

  “I am from far away, yes,” Vin said. The siblings knew about the gate, but they believed that the Arashan were invaders from a land far away, not another world, and Vin didn’t really think that he could convince them with little proof other than his words. “But I do not use magic like you do. My power comes from cultivating my inner energy, what you call anima—only mine is far more potent and controlled. My people call it ki.”

  “Whatever it is, I guess it’s really strong if you can fight a fragment-bearer and survive,” Teressa said slowly.

  Vin didn’t say anything, but instead turned his eyes to the ocean. He never grew tired of watching the endless water. They stood there in silence for a while un
til she broke it again.

  “We’ll reach Tourran soon, and once we get there our contract is finished. We found your gate,” Teressa said nonchalantly.

  “We did,” Vin responded. “But I was hoping that you would consider staying with me for a while.”

  “Oh?” Teressa said, looking at him strangely. “You have another contract for us?”

  “No. I was thinking that we might agree to something more permanent. I am a stranger to these lands, and I will always have need of people who can keep an eye on me, make sure that I don’t do anything stupid. And, as you know, coin is not really an issue for me. You would be well paid.”

  “You thinking on making us your guardsmen? We aren’t really the types to stay around guarding mansions.”

  “Something like that, but you don’t need to worry about being stuck guarding anything. I do not plan on living a calm life. There will be danger. You will likely die.”

  “You really know how to give a pitch,” she said with a roll of her eyes.

  “Stay for a while after we reach Tourran, and then we’ll talk.”

  She looked at him, and then nodded. “All right, we’ll stay and see.”

  Teressa turned around and walked away, and he watched her go, noticing the sway in her hips. After she was gone, he turned his eyes back to the endless water surrounding them.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  VIN

  Five Years Ago

  Vin sat in Kyarra’s library, inside her former home, the Con Aroch manor. He was fuming, barely able to focus on reading the books in front of him. Earlier that day, Kyarra had told him that Ashara had left Tourran, and did so without even telling him. She told him that she felt like she didn’t belong with them, that she wanted to be something more. He understood that, but she didn’t need to go alone. He would’ve helped her. He had made good steps in figuring out how to force innate anima to condense and create a core. He had just been waiting to tell her until he had something more substantial.