GOSH Angela Aki's music is relaxing!!! Hahahaha. This might be the last update of the summer. I might, might, get another chapter done this weekend, but I'm not sure. Only nine chapters left to write after this one!!! So very close to being done! If you don't see any updates for quite a while, once again, sorry, but know that I'm not leaving this unfinished. I fully intend to finish it and move on. I'm the slow and steady plodder…

Chapter Twenty Five

She looked for weeks, scouring the pages of the library's books for clues about the Adrin, for anything about how they learned to control the abilities they had. There had to be something…

Still, as Black had said, there were so many books and just the two of them. They found very little of anything.

Two months had passed and the initial buzz of excitement had begun to die down to a simmering determination, or frustration, Rydia couldn't be sure which. The queen still hadn't come to speak with her again, and that being the case, Rydia didn't have much of an opportunity to ask questions about innate abilities and what the queen knew of them. She'd said they were alike, and that statement still baffled Rydia. How were her visions and the queen's spell anywhere near each other? The queen was simply the better master of magic. They were only similar in their pronounced use of it.

Rydia shut the last book for the day and threw herself back into her chair. She was exhausted. She'd been looking through so many volumes for more information aside from what she was already supposed to know for her regular lessons, that her head felt foggy with too much to process. She'd shooed Black out hours ago, complaining that he was giving her a headache with his nagging about her working on something else for a while. In fact, she'd been shooing him out for several days now. He remarked that she was becoming more snappish every day, but she refused to believe him. She was just tired, that was all. Granted, she was sore as well. Her arms and legs cramped now and again, and she knew she was still growing. It hurt to grow…

Shiva had altered yet another bunch of her garments, and Rydia didn't realize until then just how tall she'd gotten. When she first met Shiva, she'd only reached the ice summon's elbow, but now she was a little above her shoulder, still almost a full head shorter, but getting there.

She didn't want to think about growing up too much. For some reason, the idea terrified her. What was it like to be an adult? Was she going to change so much that she wouldn't even know herself anymore? She couldn't really account for her moodiness lately either. She just snapped at whoever was closest, and it only increased her aggravation. First she couldn't control the visions, and now she couldn't control her own moods.

Rydia sighed heavily, rubbing her eyes. Was there never going to be an end to this? This game of cat and mouse with her always looking for answers she never found?

She walked over to her bed and pulled back the covers. There was always tomorrow, she told herself.

The following morning greeted her with a sharp pain in her hip. She sat up only to lay back down again. Was she ever going to stop growing too? Maybe she'd become some fearsome giant, she imagined, then forced the thought out of her head. A green haired giant, now that would be something…

She rubbed her hip vigorously, trying to make the throbbing go away. She was supposed to go on her morning run with Black, but she didn't see that happening today. When her door slowly opened as if on cue, she knew without having to look who it would be.

"Out!" she commanded, not in the mood to deal with Black's comments and conjectures at all.

She glimpsed an angry tail flick before the door was pulled shut again and closed her eyes in relief. If he wasn't there to guilt her, she could rest in peace.

She just wasn't in the mood, or the physical condition. She'd rather just stay in bed. She'd rather read.

Realizing that she'd have to walk across the room to acquire a book, she groaned. She pulled herself out of bed reluctantly and trudged, or limped rather, to the table where the book she had intended to read that day was laying. It was a book in the summoner's language and she'd been meaning to read it for a while. It was a book of history, a journal in fact. It was large and heavy and she hoisted it up and carried it back to her bed. Leaning against the wall, she cracked it open, the smell of dust and old paper greeting her nose. The script was elegant and beautiful, and she began to read, wondering what this person had to say.

Herein lies the account of Ganrik Hadrifeld, high summoner of Myst. I write these words in an attempt to address the growing troubles among our people in this, the thirty third year of the eleventh century.

I have been training for months, searching for answers to the difficulties we now face. We've sealed the gods into our spell of containment in order to preserve them. The council had hoped to study them, to learn the secrets of their power, but for now they serve as useful allies. There have been uprisings among other peoples across this continent and fearing that they may try to invade our village in search of our work and our secrets of magic, we have employed the gods to help us. Wye insists I call them merely summons, since that is all they do these days, come once summoned; after all, can they really be called gods trapped within a spell made by mortals? With their assistance we have quelled the desire for our secrets among the Demcyns, whose desert spies tried to sneak into our library several weeks ago. From now on, we will be instructing those beneath us strictly by oral tradition. The powers we have discovered and learned to control are not fit for everyone's hands and we must guard them against misuse. We will be serving our texts to the summons, hidden by magic that will serve to confuse and discourage them from reading them. They will be safe there, away from other human eyes. This decision however, has caused divisions among us. We have already witnessed a split of beliefs. Forty of our scholars left and formed a colony of their own on another continent. We received word some time ago that they had formed their village around one of the crystals itself, wanting to study it more closely and help train the indigenous people there in the uses and applications of magic. I believe they wish to start a school there. They are more open with their ideas of sharing knowledge, but time will tell which of us chose the wiser path. In the meantime, our largest concern is a handful of individuals wielding wild magic. There have been reports of people with untamed magical abilities in many villages. It seems that they were failed transformations on their ways to becoming gods. Without the ability to control most of their powers, and without proper instruction, they use their powers indiscriminately. One such individual was found in a village near here that, in a bout of anger, released a variation of a fira spell and burned his house to the ground, killing his family inside it. These are the powers of instinct, dangerous in hands that do not know how to reign them in. I hate to admit, but they are very much like the monsters that now prowl the forests and mountains surrounding our village. They too were half steps between their beastial forms and the intelligence and power of the gods. Their instincts combined with these new strengths have been a cause of grief to us and forced us to guard our borders more diligently. Are the people who use their powers without knowledge no better than these monsters?

Even among our own, we have noticed unusualities. A young woman, a student of the white arts, who has spent years studying the writings of Hirion and become quite a master, has been showing an alarming touch of wild magic. Somehow she can ascertain events happening elsewhere with an uncanny efficiency that has baffled even the most skilled of our scryers. The scrying process, that took over fifty years to perfect and only with the help of special materials, is known to take many days to do. She has somehow managed to perform this within hours, perhaps minutes. Wye entered her home and found no materials necessary for scrying, rousing his suspicions at first. When asked, she would not answer directly how she had come to know this information. A person with such an ability is dangerous. We have no way of knowing if she has been connecting to the minds of others, and if so, if she is giving out information about us without realizing it. She cannot be trusted. Even with her training, there's no telling how she might develop this and use it, or worse, if someone else can exploit it and turn her against us. We will have to deal with her soon, before it manifests a greater danger to us as we've seen happen with others.

Rydia scanned farther along, and noticed a name that made her heart stop beating in her chest. She jumped to that entry and continued reading.

Asura has refused to comply with our requests to surrender her pursuit of magical studies. Her powers have grown tremendously and she can command most of our spells with simple gestures, without the aid of words. Her hiding of this ability from us was at first an insult, now a device of distrust. I believe she has gone beyond simple unorthodoxy, and been entirely transformed. She wields powerful spells with ease, but she seems burdened, as if she tires. Still, Asura is just as sharp as ever, and her control is without question. Even her physical appearance is changing. She can appear one way one day, and another way the next, as if she has multiple faces, multiple heads. I believe she may have become a god, and if this is the case, there is nothing we can do for her now besides place her with the others. Soon we will have no other choice, unless she wishes to die as the rest of the summons may have had we not assisted them.

This distresses me greatly. One of our own making such a journey and being unable to share the path with the rest of us. Strangely, I am relieved she completed her transformation. The solution for her is simple, place her within the spell and she will be bound to our commands, her powers within our control. Had she remained human with these heightened abilities the alternatives may have been grim. We cannot afford to have rogue magicians roaming the earth. There's no telling what might happen to the kingdoms and tribes of the world with wild magic on the loose. The gods have already been contained, but these humans must be dealt with as well…

Rydia's throat constricted with a wave of grief and nausea. There it was. This was what had been hidden from her since she'd arrived. This was who Asura really was.

"Not all humans embraced becoming summons," she remembered the queen telling her all those years ago.

No wonder, Rydia thought darkly. For the transition between human and magical being, sacrifices had been made, some without consideration to free will. Asura had only wanted to lead a normal life, not be trapped here for the rest of it.

The queen had been an Adrin, even if only for a short time before the magic completed its work with her. Not accepted by her own people for her unorthodox practices, betrayed by them in the end, and being trapped in a sanctuary turned prison. She'd been trapped here all these centuries, being forced to answer the calls of the very people who'd turned on her simply because she understood magic better, felt it more keenly.

Rydia wondered if she would have met a similar fate if her village knew what she was. Would they have turned on her as they had Asura if they knew? Would she have been forced to make the decision to keep the trust of others, or pursue the depth of her own abilities? Asura had tried to develop her skills and been marked as a traitor, a heretic. But no, all Rydia had to show of her heritage was her green hair and a curious sense of the elements. Her visions were a far-cry from Asura's, probably no more than a shred of the Adrin's abilities that had been passed on to her, if she was in fact, a descendent as she hoped. Rydia realized then that the lines between her own people and the Adrin ran deep. This had been a battle over who was worthy of using magic, those who'd studied, or those who'd naturally acquired the arts. If she wanted to mend the damage done, she'd have to perform a near miracle. What was my mother trying to do by having me and keeping me in secret? Maybe it was for her own protection, she thought. Maybe her mother had just wanted to keep her safe.

She set the journal aside, as if it was a dangerous acid that might burn her if she touched it any longer. Yet another dark chapter of the summoner's history, and here she was, trapped within the middle of what was and what could be. Her quiet day of reading hadn't turned out to be as quiet as she'd hoped.

Oh, Asura, she reflected sorrowfully, I think I understand what you meant now.

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Author's Note: This chapter was short, I know. There was a lot in it, though…

I'd also just like to state that the whole situation with Rydia's father and what she knows of the Adrin is incomplete. Remember, I'm writing this from her twelve year old perspective. It may sound entirely cliché, "I'm going to mend the rift between our two peoples!", but just know that this is not going to go the way you may expect. It was, however, a very convenient way to end that chapter :) I'm so evil…

But yes…angst. There must be angst. Therefore…there shall be angst. Probably won't bring this full circle for a while, but know that when it does it'll be a fairly large plot line.

Thanks for reading and till next chapter!

myth