The bench next to Artorian depressed as the Mage sat down on it. Something about Mages and mystery weight just kept making him want to ask questions, but that was a conversation for another time. “You passed out.”
Ember slid into a pose to copy the old man. Comfort wasn’t a luxury she had right now, and she was far too weary to play anything akin to the likes of ‘games’. “I did.”
“Thought you said you had that handled?” Ember grunted in response. It meant ‘I did’. She just didn’t want to repeat herself. “So, what happened?”
The old man’s pointed questions were bothersome. She could just walk away. Right now. Then she remembered that she couldn’t. She had to stay near the old man to protect… “Did you kill blight?”
Artorian mimicked her earlier grunt just to get back at her, and for a moment he saw Tibbins in her face. That irritable expression was just so uncanny. He let out a sizable sigh, and thought it best to set the direction of the conversation. “I do my best learning when I’ve seen an example, have been explained the theorem, and then am left to my own devices to develop something out of it.”
He leaned back a touch. “My methods may not be perfect, but I relish in figuring it out for myself. I’ve been stuck with you every day for nearly a year… I lost count of the time along the way. I can’t look at you and not be reminded of… well. You know. It’s been hampering my progress, and it’s certainly why I’ve been so aloof and difficult to work with. I know you’re just trying to help, but there are days where I don’t want to hear your voice, much less be around you.”
Ember swallowed. That bit deeper than she thought it would. A pressure around her heart cramped, and she didn’t understand it. “I thought… you had forgiven?”
The long beard nodded, “I am certainly trying to. You’re not making it easy. Granted, I apologize for making you storm off earlier. That was unkind of me. I also didn’t expect Olive to be such a clever boy and see that it was intentional.”
The Fire Mage squeezed her hands together in stress and displeasure. “So… it was on purpose, then.”
Artorian opened up about his inner plans. “It’s not a secret or hidden fact that the Phantom Blight tries to mob me when you’re not around, and I really needed you not to be around. I’ve been dying to try things without you telling me I should stop. That’s all you do to things that aren’t exactly on target. You tell me to stop, and I can’t fight you on it. It’s stifling. I’m a creative soul. I make things, test them, and abyss! I even enjoy some of the failures! You don’t know how to let me be. You also don’t know how to be honest with yourself, and I don’t know which of the two currently bothers me more.”
Ember looked away. “I’m honest with myself…”
A very accusing and disbelieving *Tsk* was given as a retort. “Are you? Are you really? Miss I’m-just-fine and collapses in the middle of talking? Lady I-can’t-be-ambushed yet totally got ambushed? You’ve been keeping the worries of centuries locked in a box, and now that box is cracked. Things keep leaking out, and anytime I try and nudge the conversation to open up about it, you throw the door in my face and sulk in your fortress.”
Ember crossed her arms and moved one of her legs across the other. Her facial expression unpleasant. “I do not sulk. I am a strong…”
“Fire Soul?” Artorian filled in the pointed detail before she had a chance to shell up. The hot flames that poured from her skin licked the stone table and oozed down her arms and legs with the consistency of pitch.
“Do not call me…”
“Why!” Artorian was standing to avoid the burning table, but had at the same time thrown the acorn he’d been fiddling with down upon it. It crashed into the stone and popped, dissolving in the fire. “You expect me to follow along, but you tell me nothing. It takes months to get a story or explanation out of you that isn’t ‘loop, twist, loop’, ’move that bit of Essence’, or ‘that’s still crooked’. Anything that isn’t a direct reference to something we’re doing in the now, because we need to do it then. Why is the title a bother? I call you Ember; make them call you that as well. It’s the name you asked me to use.”
He laid his hand on her shoulder after the pitch had cooled to a sooty grey. “You refuse to sleep. You’re exhausted all the time. You try and carry every burden. You’ve convinced yourself you’re the only one that can solve the problem, and in doing so… you’ve prevented me from actually solving it. You’re cross with everything, and I mean everything… what’s eating you, Ember?”
She grumbled, but didn’t shake his hand away. In fact, she sat perfectly still in order to not shake it off. “You mean aside from the Phantom Blight?”
Artorian nodded and empathized. “We can start there if you’d like. It’s gotten to me too, you know.”
She frowned, turned, and faced him enough to be seated closer. Her discomfort could be discerned through the shifting movements of her hands. It was clear that she couldn’t decide what to do with them. “It shouldn’t be getting to you. My barrier…”
“Tut, tut, tut, now.” She fell silent, and actually looked at him. He was such a thin, frail, old looking thing. He would break in a soft breeze, or if she sneezed in his vicinity. “It’s you, Ember. You’re the source of my discomfort, and the Blight is making that worse. You’ve made a part of me vulnerable, because I can’t cope with a regret I am trying not to bury and lock away. That’s not me. Not anymore. I understand it’s taxing to deal with something day in and day out, but unless we get to air those grievances, they’re only going to fester. When they do so, the Phantoms win. Do you want the phantoms to win?”
The Fire Mage again balled her hands into fists, her frown one of dissatisfied anger. She most certainly did not want them to win. That message was clear as day in her body language.
“I thought not.” Artorian held Ember’s shoulder as she calmed, and the flames briefly prickling her frame dissolved. He gripped her tightly and tugged. He couldn’t budge her if she didn’t want to move, so it was a nice surprise when she leaned in. He shifted to properly sit next to her, not letting go as he held her in support.
“I believe in your strength, Lass, but it’s not your power holding you back. It’s not, don’t give me that face. Be honest. Get it off your chest. Why is the name the woodies use such a bother? What’s really going on? You’re going to keep collapsing like this, and I don’t want to see it. Tell an old man another story.”
Ember shrugged. “Which one?”
Artorian beamed a smile at her. “Yours.”
A shiver passed over the Mage. Wasn’t he upset with her? She darn well knew he was forcing himself in order to make the corners of her own mouth turn up a little, but the support was… needed. The direct approach he’d used worked for her, but the burden of what she finally needed to say was too heavy. Ember felt as if bile gathered in her throat when she spoke about herself.
“I am Es-illian-Yaran. Daughter to a murdered father, wife to a butchered husband, and mother to none that live. I am army-slayer, kingdom-flayer, Blessed of Fire, and eternal Blade of War. I am the pursuer of the Fire Soul, ascended-in-waiting to the spiritual flame, and Archon of Destruction. As one of the fading fires, the embers of that which remains as all else turns to ash, I took Ember as my name.”
She swallowed. “I took the name to remind myself that this is all that’s left for a warrior who spent her entire life… easily a dozen centuries, locked in perpetual war. I possess no useful skills other than those demanded by cultivation, and the last candles of my life flicker as I stand by, waiting for a door that will never open.”
Since this was usually where people ran away from her, Ember grew quiet for a contemplative moment. A squeeze on her shoulder put her at ease. It was odd how such a small touch could do so much. “As a Blade of War, I cannot rest in a battle when the enemy remains unvanquished. This particular enemy eats at my thoughts. It knows of my losses and shows them to me again, and again.
“As a result, the phantoms find room in my bar
riers to seep through and assail me. No amount of my fire can burn away a mind, and sleep brings only night-haunts. I had told the Wood Elves I would defeat this blight for them, as there is no task other than endless fighting which suits me. While I know all there is to know about fire and flame, I possess not even a flicker that can finish this foe.”
She reached for her spatial pouch, pulling free her own waterskin to take a drink. Artorian instinctively moved some Essence to his Aura, and began to emit a soft, calming glow. He didn’t notice that it cleaned the surroundings while also adding to the illumination. Ember did, but said nothing. His fatigue was being stripped away, and some minor scrapes knitted themselves together as starlight Aura built on his being.
The last time Ember had begun to drink water, phantoms had been about. “It is one of my failures to have been unable to deal with this. Though it pales in comparison to the dread I feel that I am unable to ascend to the spiritual rank and become the fire soul.”
Artorian nodded as she spoke. He didn’t follow the details, but they’d come. “Why is that?”
Ember felt… calmer. Soothed. She didn’t pay much attention to the warm glow the old man was giving off, but speaking no longer felt as if the words were being punched out of her stomach.
“As an ascended. There is only so far ‘up’ one can go. Pursuing the path of power is a minor benefit to what the end goal brings. I have told you before that Laws are representations of ideas, and those that bind themselves to such Laws reinforce them. For every Law, there can be a single embodiment of that idea per rank. One at the S-rank, then another at Double-S, and one at Triple-S. A person who is so intrinsically bound to the idea that they and the idea are essentially the same.
“What the person learns is added to the Law. Each person seeking to pursue that law must now become aware of all new content the law has, for them to reach the apex. It is a self-cycling process of learning where both the world, and the people connecting to it, form a symbiotic relationship with the goal of understanding.” She took another drink, and passed it over to Artorian who did the same.
“At the apex of the Ascended stage, which is where I have been for a very long time, I await to step into the position of that embodiment. The axiom of the idea. My Essence is purely fire, and I am bound to the Fire Essence Law at the very base of the tower. The ‘Fire Soul’ is where I would have ended up, had someone else not already been in the position. Staying on top of the new information the Law requires for me to remain at the zenith is simple. Yet, since it was my ancient vow to fill that position, and given that age is not something one considers once at my stage… I fear I will never be able to… hold my vow.”
Artorian took her hand in his, and squeezed. “Who did you make the vow for?”
Ember tried not to cry, a colossal regret surfacing. Her face may have tried to remain still as stone, but the vapor lines that rose as her tears came and evaporated were plain to see.
“I had four children. Three were lost before the fourth graced me. The last was born with a temper and a strong will. But she was born far too early. The shamans said she was a mighty thing with a fiery spirit. A real Fire Soul. My little one died in my arms a few hours after, and I couldn’t bear it. My heart broke. I promised my little one that if she wasn’t going to be able to fulfill her namesake, her mother would.”
Ember squeezed Artorian’s hands back, breaking down hard as her face cracked and memories flooded her. She wept and wept, held by an old grandfather in the middle of a forest too vast to measure… as the opportunistic darkness once again collapsed around them.
Chapter Fifteen
Blight exploded from retaliatory fury. The blight could do nothing. Absolutely nothing! While the glow on Artorian had dimmed, the intensity of the lances it faced had strengthened in turn. None would interrupt this important moment of development for Ember. Artorian wouldn’t let even the world interfere during these precious minutes as he piled and piled starlight-combination Essence into his Aura while silent tears rolled down his cheeks.
Such pain. This is what the blight had been torturing her with? That… monster. Artorian was a mixture of sympathetic empathy and calm rage. He didn’t request the Essence to take a certain identity. He flooded it with his perspective, and his emotions.
See, and understand.
Feel, and understand.
In the great clock of the universe, a gear began to click. If starlight was too generic, too uncertain, too unwilling to decide on the features it was supposed to have… then he would knock on the sky and make the axiom pay attention. Starlight… improves.
He took the aspects he’d seen so far and pushed the mental image of the story Ember had just told him into the Essence combination. A story of something that should never come to pass. His encompassing Aura lanced all around as he poured himself into it. Shouting loud—not with his voice, but with the very essence of his being.
That which was dirty, be cleansed.
That which caused hurt, fade.
That which fell to harm, become restored.
The light erupting from Artorian dimmed completely as the complexity of it scaled upward, dipping into a spectrum not visible to the naked eye. A type of light that pierced solids and cared nothing for barriers. The effects he deemed necessary punched into the Essence’s feedback mechanism. There were no Mages of his type. No Law of starlight flickered in the Tower. No node other than the one of the correct Essence combinations even made a blip in the great Ascension webway. Yet higher, much, much higher… a Law took notice as an old man caused it to resonate. A Law that did not accept needless suffering. One that did not bend to pressure. One that felt the scream of a scion, and was touched by the intent it howled into the void.
Starlight would erase first no more. Starlight would welcome, and soothe. Gaining the understanding that it should flee, the masses of roiling smoky tar found themselves boxed in by pyroclastic walls containing the embodiment of ‘burn’. For the first time, Blight felt fear. This idea rippled through the twitchy, spastic cloud. Responding, the mass threw itself against the wall of flame. Even though it seemed solid, the caligene found gaps and splits to push itself through.
Ember’s sizzling tear-stained face burned as her outstretched hand caused centrifuges of ebon-orange flame to swarm through the dark, devouring the masses even as they picked at her mind and screamed the exposed memories back at her. She would have fallen there and then, had an unseen light not kept her propped up. A bright warmth that chipped away at her hoard of fatigue.
Artorian crumpled in on himself, gritting his jaws as his Aura itself was wracked with pain as something went through a qualitative change. He had no idea what was going on outside his own head as his hand blindly gripped tight on Ember’s—squeezing it to draw out all the comfort in the world, even as she encircled and entrapped enemy positions. She dragged the phantom into the thought-obliterating area of effect that Artorian’s invisible Aura created.
The blight beautifully exploded in vivacious rainbows when it came in contact with the Aura. It was easy for her to remember the rough size and shape the effect extended to, even if the old man’s Aura itself remained plastered within a thin layer on his frame.
All those Core-cultivation improvements were paying off. While Ember’s fire still couldn’t vanquish the phantoms—and their attacks were creating gaps to escape through—this was a turning point in the forest’s cold war. Their experiences had been that Ember could barely hold the Blight off, resulting in vague ‘victories’ even as more and more were lost in the fight.
At the destruction of the last remaining blight cloud, both Artorian and Ember collapsed on the carbonized grass. Artorian was heaving as he pulled back the monstrous amounts of starlight Essence he had invested. Ember’s vision swam from the torrent of mental and emotional trauma. Up until that point, she hadn’t really felt like living anymore. She’d been going through the gray days like going through the motions of a well-practiced gray dance.
/> Blind, rote, and mechanical. Her fire had been weak, not that anyone could tell. The severe apathy had slanted her ability to keep the clear mental image in her head. This had impaired the requisite fine control over her Mana. The Mage’s power had suffered as a result.
Now… now she felt like a part of the sky had cleared. It had, in fact, actually cleared. Both due to the fire making quite the sizable holes in the canopy, and the heat differential that had pushed all the clouds away. All that the physical representation did, was help her mental state.
Today marked her first real victory over the blight. A solid win. She hadn’t known just how badly she’d needed one of those. A long struggle, finally at a turning point. A losing battle tipped over the crux of the knife’s edge, and not in the direction she thought it was going to be.
Olive and Baobab pushed open a part of the charred forest floor like a trapdoor. Both of their heads poked up and out of it in surprise.
“We’re alive?” Bao stated the obvious.
Olive breathily mouthed the words they were both thinking, “We won…”
Baobab—not being one for subtlety—pulled herself from the underground bunker and screamed to the sky, fists punching the air. “We won!”
She stopped when half-amused chuckling erupted from an on-the-ground Ember, who didn’t seem to know whether to cry or smile. She was doing both. Olive helped the human up, but no amount of pats to the cheek were waking him. The old man had passed out from Essence overuse. That’s what it looked like at a glance, at least. He’d be fine after some rest. Rest they could finally afford to take.
“What happened?” Bao helped the Mage up, through really it was Ember getting herself up. Ember moved to wipe her face off, but all the grime had already bubbled and disincorporated. Only the fresh lines of tears were there to be wiped away, the rest had been erased into free-floating Essence. “Old man knocked on the sky, some blight came by and decided to die.”
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