Imagine a house. This house is the aether - the walls, the floor, the ceiling. The house contains all aether in its construction, for there is and shall always ever be only one aether, ubiquitous though it may be.
Now, this house of aether exists within time. Whether the time in question is past, present, or future, the house remains the same. Time means nothing to the aether, it is merely the landscape in which our house was constructed.
So, imagine this house, located in time. Time, in turn, is within and around the house. Inside the walls is the present, for that is where all of us must live. Outside is the past, but we cannot reach it. Our walls of aether have no doors. We can see the past, as if through a foggy window, but none of us can visit it.
Some people, however, can see the past with more clarity. While they live within the same aether as we all do, these people, these prophets and seers, observe the past as though through windows crisp and clean.
But while some may claim to see the future as well, this is merely an oversimplification, for the future is fluid. One may look out a window and see a fire in the distance. One may imagine that the fire might make its way to the house. Therefore, one might issue a warning and take steps to prepare, but one cannot truly know which way the wind may blow the flames until the wind comes.
On Prophets and Prophecies, pages 1-5
His mother fought the marilith. But something had changed. Jack was no longer a child, but a man grown. He fought now at his mother's side. He drew from her with his dark magic, her and the marilith both, and his mother shrieked in pain and horror when he did but Jack couldn't stop. He drew, and he drew, and when the power was more than he could hold, more than he could bear, it exploded out from him in a wave of black fire.
"No!" he screamed, knowing it was useless. Nothing could have survived that heat. Nothing, save himself. It scorched his skin, his hair, his clothes, but still he lived, a blackened husk. He screamed. He screamed and the fire died away, leaving him alone with the bodies.
And then the marilith moved, blistered skin cracking as she rose up on her tail. Of her six arms, three had been burned away, all on one side. Jack could see her ribs, the white of her skull where half of her face was missing. She looked at him with her remaining eye glazed white and dead, and she spoke with a voice like a death rattle:
"Maasssteeeeerrrrr..."
Jack shot up in bed, gasping for air. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't breathe! His heart pounded as he tried to make his lungs work. He was covered in sweat, sweat that even now was beginning to freeze on his skin. And then, just as his vision was going purple at the edges, as sparks swam before his eyes, his soul reached out, seeking relief.
In the floor nearby, Thad snorted in his sleep, his deep and even snores disturbed as Jack drew from him.
Jack's throat opened and a gulp of air rushed in. He fell back against his pillow, panting.
A dream. Only a dream.
He closed his eyes, feeling his surroundings through the aether. Thad continued to snore. Lena slept in the room below. He could sense Sarda and Lukahn. The sun would rise soon.
He tried to slow his breathing. When he felt steadier, he warmed himself with a spell, and when he felt he wouldn't immediately pass out, he sat up again. Thad snored on, but Jack could trace the line of the boy's aura leading into his own. I'm sorry, he thought, more ashamed now than he'd ever been. What does it do to them? If it's... If it's really necromancy...
He shuddered, then swung his legs to the floor and crept as silently as he could out of the attic room. Moving slowly, he passed Iris's old room. Lena slept with the door open. The curtains were closed, only a thin beam of moonlight filtered through a narrow gap, highlighting the red hair on her pillow in muted silver. He ripped his gaze away, continuing down the stairs and out of the house.
He walked beside the lake. He'd often done so over the years - in the night when the nightmares woke him, or first thing in the morning. He would pass through the quiet town, out the other side, and then circle the lake, the wooded shore away from the houses and people. He headed that way now, but he stopped, spying a figure in the distance, an aura that glowed through the trees in his aether sight like a lighthouse beacon. He knew that aura. He wove through the trees toward it.
The trees parted, revealing the swordsman on the empty hilltop, sun rising behind him as he worked through the forms. He knew it wasn't Cedric - Kane's bulky frame was different from the lean, wiry muscle Jack remembered Cedric having - but he'd seen Cedric practicing on this same hilltop. Seeing Kane like this, Jack remembered. This same hilltop, those same forms. All this time Kane had been teaching them to him. How had he not remembered?
Jack watched. He felt a smile come to his lips. He searched the ground, finding a long stick, then carried it up the hill. He took a stance beside Kane, awkwardly assuming the forms.
Kane turned his head, but didn't stop moving. "Hey," he said.
Jack nodded.
Kane smiled. "I'll bring an extra practice sword tomorrow. We can get some sparring in."
"Yes," Jack said, concentrating on his movements.
The sun climbed higher, illuminating them. More than once, Kane spoke, correcting Jack's form. Down the hill, through the trees, someone, a villager up and about their business of the day, looked up at them and stared.
Jack wondered if this was what it had felt like for Cedric. Cedric never did fit in here. The rigid practices of Black Hall's battle mages had often been at odds with the peaceful traditions of Crescent Lake, but Cedric had always insisted on keeping up with his swordwork.
But Cedric had also been a dark mage. And that was why he had left. There was no place for dark mages here.
I've tried too long to fit in with these people, Jack thought. He knew now that he never would.
He focused on the forms.
She woke abruptly. Someone was shaking her. She recognized Sarda's voice before she even opened her eyes. "Miss Lena! Miss Lena, wake up!"
"I'm awake!" she said, holding up a hand to ward off the forceful shaking. "What? What is it?"
"Oh, Miss Lena! It's today! I'm certain of it! You're needed at the clinic for sure. I know it this time! Hurry! Hurry!" He was smiling, excited, but still frantic. He crossed the room, throwing the fluttery curtains wide.
Lena groaned, squeezing her eyes shut against the sudden brightness. "Yes, alright!" she said, turning away from the window. She swung her legs out of the bed, wandering in a sleepy daze toward the door. She was nearly to the stairs when she realized she was still clad in only her shift. She turned back, nearly colliding with Sarda who had followed her making anxious faces. "I'm going! Just let me get dressed first!"
He waited in the hallway, ringing his hands. "Oh! But hurry! There isn't much time!"
She picked up on his distress, and it did speed her along. She had a moment of panic - his or hers, she couldn't tell - when she couldn't locate her left shoe. The sandal had been kicked under the bed, and she had to crawl most of the way under the iron bed frame to fetch it. But then she was down the stairs, passing Lukahn still asleep in his chair in the front room, and she was out the door.
"Good luck!" Sarda called after her from the threshold. He smiled and waved, calm now that she was on her way. "I believe in you!"
Lena smiled despite herself. The man was frantic, but he was nice. And if he was right this time, if the white mages really needed her today, maybe...
But it was far too early for that. The clinic was closed when she arrived, the door locked tight. She sighed and continued along the path toward the Randells' cottage. At least I'll be welcome there, she thought.
He lost track of time standing there on the threshold. Lena walked away and he could see she wouldn't be back until much later, but he could already see her coming back. He ignored that; that was hours from now. He watched an airship fly past overhead - that, he knew, was centuries old - and he enjoyed the arc of its flight as it vanished over the horizon. Such a shame not everyone can see them, he thought.
He heard the argument inside, a woman's voice, and he turned back in concern, wondering if perhaps he'd been mistaken about the day again and Lena hadn't gone off after all. It wouldn't be the first time he'd had an entire conversation with some past or future figure who wasn't really there.
But when he reached the room upstairs, he realized the voice wasn't Lena's after all. Of course it wasn't - it sounded nothing like her. She would never yell like that.
He stood in the doorway, watching, listening, an intruder on this moment. In the little room where Lena had been sleeping, the bed was made, the colorful quilt covered with clothes that a woman in a white robe was shoving furiously into a bag. She scrubbed at angry tears with the back of one hand but she didn't slow down.
"You're too late, I tell you!" Lukahn said from his place beside the open wardrobe, near the window showing a moonlit night outside. "The ship sailed hours ago!"
Nightfall when she found the letter on her pillow, Sarda thought, his mind filling in the details. He didn't know where the knowledge came from - he'd never questioned it - but some things he just knew. She almost hadn't read it, so tired, thinking it could wait until morning.
"I'll take the next one!" she snapped, still packing. She wore a green scarf over her shoulders, and as Sarda watched, she ripped it off and crammed it into her pack with her other clothes.
Lukahn rolled his eyes. "You know as well as I there are no other ships due from Cornelia for a week!"
"I'll board the ship to Melmond! I can book passage from there."
"Iris-"
"You could have stopped him!" the woman screamed. "You could have told me! How can you possibly hate him so much, father? How could you do this?"
"It had to be him, Iris," Lukahn said. "Regardless of how I feel about him, he's the only one who could have gone undercover among them."
Iris, like the story, Sarda thought. Ramuh's daughter. The little sister who lived. Ah, but this Iris was a sister too. The knowledge came to Sarda: that grief over a brother lost too young.
As if echoing Sarda's thoughts, this Iris said, "We can't leave him there, father! Benjamin died there!"
Lukahn's eyes pinch in pain. "Benjamin was a fool! Cedric is a warrior. Let him do his job."
"Why is the job his alone?" Iris said. "If there's to be a resistance, I'm going too! I won't let him do this without my help!" She shouldered the hastily packed bag, moved toward the door without seeing Sarda there. Sarda moved over to let her through, but Lukahn reached out and grabbed her arm, stopping her abruptly.
"Iris," he said, voice cold. "You listen to me: If you leave, I will toss little Ben out onto the street! So help me, I will."
The girl hesitated. Yes, only a girl, Sarda thought. So young at heart. So much love in it. He watched the emotions playing over her face, the momentary doubt, then the dawning horror.
"You... you wouldn't…" she said.
Lukahn's voice was perfectly calm, emotionless. "You know I would."
"Father!" she said, desperate now. "I can't take him with me! The Brotherhood would-"
"Oh? Are you going to tell me it's too dangerous for him but not for you?"
"But-"
"On the street, Iris."
He released her arm, and like a puppet with cut strings she sank onto the foot of the bed, looking up at Lukahn with dark, streaming eyes. "I would never forgive you!" she said at last, voice cracking.
Lukahn shrugged, but Sarda saw a trace of tears in his eyes too. "You'd be dead in a Cornelian ditch! What good would your forgiveness do me then?" He walked past Sarda out of the room.
Sarda watched the woman on the bed, watched her cover her mouth with first one hand and then the other, trying to hold back the voice of despair slowly building behind them. She squeezed her eyes shut but still the tears flowed down her cheeks. Her shoulders shook. The sounds she made as she suppressed her sobs tore at Sarda's heart.
He stepped forward. He wanted to go to her, to hold her, to offer some comfort. He knew she wasn't really there, but he still took that step.
He felt the hand on his shoulder, turned back to the hall, and found himself face to face with Lukahn, the real one, the older one, the one he'd met. But that was him too, back then, Sarda thought. He felt himself frowning at what the man had done. He glanced into the room once more and Iris was gone, the bed now a rumpled mess as Lena had left it, but he could still hear those anguished cries. He looked back at Lukahn.
"What did you see?" the old man asked. His eyes were red-rimmed in the now daylight streaming through the open curtains, as if he'd slept poorly, as if he'd been crying too.
Sarda needed a moment to bring his mind back, to form the words. When he spoke, he asked, "Would you really have done it? Would you really have thrown the boy out?"
Lukahn blinked, startled, confused, but then the confusion faded and his eyes flared. "Yes," he said. "Had it been up to me, I'd have left him on that mountain to die."
"You would have been wrong," Sarda said without thinking. He didn't know where the knowledge came from; some things he just knew.
Lukahn stepped back. He looked past Sarda into Iris's room, no longer making eye contact. He pointed down the hall, down the stairs. "Get out," he said, a cold whisper.
And now it was Sarda's turn to be confused. "Out? But I-"
"Get out," Lukahn hissed.
Sarda sighed, trudging down the stairs. He should have seen that coming.
Muscles warm and loose, a thin sheen of sweat on his forehead, Kane returned to the Randells' house. "Miss Dahlia said she was making eggs," he told Jack. "And she has this bread that tastes like lemons - it's practically a cake."
"I've had it before," Jack said without enthusiasm.
Kane sighed. Jack seemed off today, but Kane didn't particularly feel like getting to the bottom of it. He entered the Randells' front door, into the great room that held the kitchen and dining table and sitting room all at once. Miss Dahlia, as he'd expected, stood at the stove - the air smelled of bacon - while her husband sat at the table with Kane's father. Lena sat with them.
"Lena!" Kane said happily. "Good morning! You haven't joined us for breakfast before."
"Lukahn's wearing on her," Redden said.
"She lasted longer than most would," Master Randell said, shrugging.
"Hello," Lena said quietly. She smiled briefly at Kane, then lowered her eyes without acknowledging Jack.
Interesting, Kane thought. "Is Shipman with you?" he asked.
Lena shook her head. "No. I was up early. I assume he's still asleep."
"Wash up," Dahlia said, pointing with her spatula toward the back door.
"Come on," Kane said, shoving Jack ahead of him. He stopped to kiss Miss Dahlia's cheek as he passed her. "Thank you for breakfast!" He laughed as she slapped at him with the spatula.
At the pump outside, he lathered his hands on the cake of soap while Jack wiped his gloved hands with a wet cloth. "So," Kane said, "what did you do?"
"Do?" Jack asked, raising an eyebrow.
"To Lena," Kane added.
Jack froze - only for a second, but enough that Kane noticed - then resumed wiping, meticulously running the cloth over each finger with exaggerated concentration. "I don't know what you mean."
Kane snorted. "Seriously? If she ignored you any harder I'd think I'd hallucinated you."
Jack turned his back on him.
"Oh, sure, fine. Ignore me in turn. That's mature," Kane muttered, rinsing his hands. After he dried them, he threw the towel at Jack's head before stepping inside. Dahlia was just plating the bacon. A bowl of beaten eggs sat on the counter, ready to cook in the grease. "Smells great in here," Kane said, taking the seat beside Lena that Jack normally took.
Dahlia only grunted as she set the plate of bacon on the table.
"She doesn't cook any faster if you flatter her," Randell said. "I've tried it."
"But I can cook slower," she said.
"Only joking, dearest," Randell said quickly.
Jack came back in at last and took the empty chair between Master Randell and Kane's father. He might have glared at Kane - for taking his seat next to Lena, Kane was sure - but Kane was doing his idle best to ignore Jack now. It helped that Master Randell talked past him, addressing only Kane.
"Are you ready for today?"
"Sure," Kane said, shrugging. He reached for a slice of bacon at the same time Jack did and stole the slice Jack was going for. "It's just an interview, right? Lena and Shipman already told me how theirs went. It doesn't seem that bad."
From the stove, Dahlia gasped. Kane looked over to see her standing with her hands on her hips, glaring toward her husband. "You didn't tell him?" she snapped.
Randell sputtered indignantly. "When would I have told him, darling? You saw yourself that the boy just came in the door!"
"Last night?" Dahlia said, gesturing with the spatula as though it were a weapon. "When I told you to?"
"Oh, for pity's sake!"
"What?" Kane asked.
Randell sighed. "Your interview might be a bit more involved."
"They haven't been asking the right questions," Dahlia said. "That's about to change."
Randell threw her an aggrieved look. "We know what we're doing, woman! You weren't there! You don't know what we've been up to these past days!"
"I know enough!" Dahlia spat. "I know you're so focused on those orbs that you haven't been looking at the four who brought them!"
"We've been interviewing them!" Randell said defensively.
"Have you listened to a word they've said? Kane tells me Jack used that sword to break a whole cave open! And he's used the boy's necklace to steer their ship!"
"Yes, and we've been trying to replicate-"
"You're not listening!" Dahlia snapped. She stabbed a finger through the air, pointing at Kane. "I saw the aether move through him!"
"He's not a mage!" Randell argued.
Dahlia threw her hands up. "He didn't draw it in! It responded to him! They're the key! Not the orbs they carry!"
"It's almost like we're the Warriors of Light or something," Jack muttered from his place a few chairs over.
"That's enough sass from you!" Dahlia said, turning a sharp glare at him. "I'm on your side!"
Beside Kane, Lena spoke so quietly that her voice came out in a squeak. She never did like to step into confrontations like this. "Why?" she asked. She cleared her throat and tried again. "Why is it so hard to believe?"
Randell scrubbed a hand over his face. "Because the things you've described, the things the orbs are supposed to have done, they're not possible. Yes, the stories tell of Leifenish tools - aetherite, infused with spells - that people could use to perform great works, but even if that's what we're looking at here, for the orbs to work for you, only for you - that's not possible either!"
"But. It's. The. Truth!" Dahlia snapped, emphasizing each word.
"So put Jack in front of the sages and let him show them!" Kane said. "Sounds easy enough."
Jack choked, coughing into the hands that shielded his face from view as he ate his bacon.
"That is precisely our plan, young man," said Randell. "With one small amendment. We're going to put you in front of them first."
"Me? What am I supposed to do? Break rocks for them?"
Randell shrugged, clearly uncomfortable with the idea. "Seems a good place to start, yes."
"Seriously?" Kane asked. "Come on! If you'd seen what Jack-"
"It can't be me," Jack said softly, staring at the table.
"Like hell it can't!" Kane said.
"No," Randell agreed. "If we want the Circle to seriously consider that they need to be studying your connection to the orbs rather than the orbs themselves, we need to keep their focus away from Jack." He patted Jack's shoulder. "I'm sorry, lad."
"But that's stupid!" Kane said. "Jack is one of us! He's the only real mage among us! He knows more about the orbs than anyone!"
"No," Jack said sharply, interrupting him. He looked up at Kane. "If you put me in front of the sages, they'll never see past the fact that it's me standing there. We need them to listen to us. It has to be you."
"You bastard! You're not getting off as easily as that!" Kane said.
"Kane," Redden snapped. "Leave it. Randell's right. It has to be this way. At least for now."
"But-!" he said, stopping himself when he saw Jack's defeated look. "Fine," he growled. "So how does this change the interview?"
Randell shook his head. "I'm afraid I don't know. We'll start by having you use your sword in front of them. If the aether moves through you as Dahlia says it did, and if they see it, they might be more inclined to believe you're the ones from the prophecy. They may want to know more about your past than they did Lena and Thad, seeing as you're not a mage. They may even want to interview your father about the sword's history, since it's the only orb we can trace back more than a decade or so."
"I'm willing, if need be," Redden said. "I'll already be there, after all."
"As will I," Dahlia said, setting a bowl of scrambled eggs on the table, taking the empty seat beside her husband opposite Jack. She pointed at Kane. "I still need him to haul rocks for me. I can't let you jackals tear him apart."
The meal began in earnest after that. Nothing more was said of the interview as they ate. Kane's father and the Randells discussed politics, both Cornelian and local, but Kane sat silently with Lena and Jack. He didn't know what either of them were thinking. If he were honest, he couldn't pin his own thoughts down either.
Lena ate quickly, then excused herself. "I'm going to the clinic," she said. "Sarda said they had work for me to do."
"Very well," Randell said, nodding. He rose also. "I've a few things to see to before the Circle convenes. I trust the rest of you can conduct yourselves there." And he left.
"I'll want to wash this up before I go," Dahlia said, gathering her husband's and Lena's empty plates.
"I'll help you," Redden offered.
"Nonsense!" Dahlia said. "You're my guests."
Redden shrugged, picking up his own plate and Kane's. "'Guests' doesn't mean my hands don't work."
Kane started to protest, reaching for his plate - he hadn't finished yet - but Redden held it just out of reach.
"Go and put on a fresh shirt," he ordered. "I won't have you going before the sages smelling like you do."
Kane frowned, sniffing himself. It wasn't that bad. Still, he went into the spare room he'd been sharing with his father, the room that had been Wrede's before, and dug in his pack for a change of clothes.
"Kane?"
Kane jumped, not having realized Jack had followed him. "What?" he said, mildly annoyed to have been startled like that.
"When you speak to the sages," Jack said, shuffling his feet. His eyes were pinned to the floor. "It's just... when you tell your side of things, don't mention the book. Astos's book, I mean."
Kane didn't even have to think about it. "They'd take it from you, wouldn't they?"
Jack nodded.
"No problem," Kane said, selecting one of his spare shirts. He stripped off the one he was wearing - a bit sweaty, sure, but honestly it smelled fine - and started to pull the other over his head, when he noticed Jack had made no move to leave. "Was there something else?"
Jack looked down at the floor. "The ritual... Astos's ritual... Can you leave that part off?"
Kane cocked his head. "Why?" he asked.
Jack shook his head. "You wouldn't understand."
"Try me," he said.
Jack closed his eyes. "That ritual... it was horrible. If people knew I'd been a party to it-"
"That wasn't your fault," Kane said.
"I know," Jack said quickly. "I know that, but... They hate me here. They hate me enough as it is."
Kane hesitated, watching Jack, but Jack said nothing else. "Alright. I won't tell them. I'm not sure I could explain what happened that night anyway."
Jack nodded. He left the room without another word.
He was gone after Kane emerged in a clean shirt. "Off to the library, I expect," Redden said. "I can check on him later. Meanwhile, let's get you where you're supposed to be."
The clinic looked empty when Lena arrived. She worried it was still closed, but the door opened for her this time, revealing a single white mage. Lena's heart sank as she recognized Amandine. The woman hadn't seemed particularly friendly the day they'd met. Amandine stood at the counter, an array of bottles in front of her, rag in hand. The heady scent of a cleaning solution filled the room, overpowering even the smell of the healing potion that bubbled away in a fat cauldron in the corner fire pit.
Amandine glanced up, her eyes flicking up and down Lena's frame, then went back to cleaning her bottles. "Moira tells me I owe you an apology."
Lena paused just inside the doorway. "Whatever for?"
"She said I was short with you." Amandine shrugged. "I'm short with everyone. I'll be apologizing all day if you're that easily offended." She wiped out another bottle, set it aside. "Was there something you needed?"
"I... I was hoping you might have some work for me," Lena said.
"No," Amandine said, quick as a slap.
Lena blinked. Even if she hadn't been able to feel it, she would have known the lie in that one simple word. There was always something that needed to be done in a house of healing. "Oh?" she said, unsure how to proceed. "Could I... Perhaps I could help you clean the bottles? Your potion looks nearly ready. I could-"
"I don't need any help from you," Amandine said. "You want to be useful? Go back to Cornelia. Take your problems with you."
Lena stood, momentarily stunned by the weight of the woman's distrust. Amandine kept cleaning bottles, ignoring Lena altogether. She was still working at it when Lena backed out the door and fled.
Thad yawned, drifting in and out of sleep. There was an awareness to his sleep; more than once, his mind had said, "Oh, look! It's morning!" and his body had ignored it and got on with being heavy and motionless. He felt exhausted when he finally opened his eyes to true wakefulness. The sun streamed through the attic's tiny round window, telling him the morning was practically over.
Downstairs, he found Lukahn already taking a midday nap in his large armchair in front of the cold hearth. There was a loaf of bread on the table, and a bread knife, so Thad sliced himself off a few pieces. He looked for something to go with it - butter, jam, a honeypot - but he found nothing. He sighed, munching on the bread as he headed toward the town.
He found Sarda on the path, acting crazy again. The man was waving a small branch around the trunk of the large tree to which he was currently speaking. "Out, spirits!" he said, making the leaves on his little branch flutter. "Out! Begone!" He hit the tree trunk one last time, then nodded decisively. He tossed the branch aside, then patted the tree trunk. "There! That should do! You'll feel better now, I've no doubt!"
He turned and saw Thad watching, and he smiled. "Trees are no place for evil spirits, I say!"
"Sure," Thad said. "Right. That makes sense."
Sarda continued to smile, still patting the tree companionably.
Thad edged his way around the man, sticking to the far side of the path, and though Sarda tracked him with his eyes, the man made no move to follow him. "Well, I'll just be off then!" Thad said.
"Watch out for fairies!" Sarda called.
"Um... Yeah. I will," Thad replied, but to himself he grumbled, "Fairies? Honestly!" He shook his head. The man was crazy! Why, it was a wonder Thad hadn't found him halfway up that tree! Or injured from falling out of it! He...
He sighed and turned back. Sarda was still watching him, hand still on the tree trunk, patting away. Thad walked back and grabbed the old man's hand. "Come on. I don't want to have to rescue you later."
"Yes! Quite!" Sarda said, nodding as though Thad had just said the most clever thing. "That way we can look for fairies together!"
Thad sighed again, squinting against the bright, midday sun as it filtered through the trees. Despite that brightness, the weather was pleasantly cool. "Sure, fairies. Yeah. As long as they're not out of our way," he said, looking at Sarda who seemed to be intently examining another tree. "Right. Come on."
He walked into town, leading Sarda by the hand. The old man came along willingly, pointing out various plants in the wooded areas beside the path, chattering about the fairies that lived among them. Thad saw no evidence that fairies had ever been there, in the aether or otherwise. "They grant wishes, you know! When you do them a service, they owe you a boon!" Sarda said, nodding knowingly.
"You don't say?" Thad grumbled.
They reached town, entered the library. A few of the scribes looked up from their books as Thad and Sarda came in, but most - including Jack at his isolated table - kept their heads down. Some worked in pairs, or small groups, and Thad heard their whispered conversations in the stacks.
He led Sarda to the fiction shelves, the books of myths and legends. He traced his finger over the spines until he found a title that seemed promising, then he took Sarda to one of the empty tables near Jack's and sat him down with the book. "There's bound to be fairy stories in that one," Thad told him. "Stay here. Don't move."
Sarda smiled vacantly. "Where would I go?" he asked.
"I have no idea! That's the problem!" Thad said. "Stay!"
He turned toward the Aetherial Theory section, seeking the books he'd been looking at the day before, but the shelf where they belonged was empty. He wandered until he found Pearl standing between some shelves, an open book in one hand, a finger on the other hand keeping his place on the page. "'Scuse me?" Thad said. "What happened to the books on lesser prophecy?"
Pearl didn't look up from his reading, only waved a hand vaguely toward one of the tables where the scholars of Crescent Lake were deep in their studies. "I believe Myron selected a few of them for his apprentices to review. Something to do with the four of you, I imagine."
Thad pursed his lips, looking toward the table. "Think they'd share?"
Pearl shook his head. "I doubt that very much."
"Thought so," Thad said, glancing toward Sarda's table to make sure the old man hadn't wandered off. "Is Orin around?"
Pearl chuckled. "Off meditating in the woods somewhere, I expect." He closed the book he'd been reading. "Lesser prophecy, was it? Let's see if we can find you a volume they're not using." He led Thad back to the shelf with the empty space on it, searching nearby. Then he reached up, plucking a thin book off a shelf at head height, and held it out to Thad. "Here. This one may be of interest to you."
Thad took the book, read the title out loud. "'On Prophets and Prophecy'," He opened it, flipped through it. The text was large, accompanied by colorful diagrams, and Thad was surprised by how few pages there were. "Seems short..."
Pearl chuckled. "That's because it is. It's a student primer on aetheric probability, only the basics. If you can get through that, we'll see about finding you something with a little more heft to it."
"There's a picture of a house," Thad said, pointing derisively. "Is this a children's book?"
"Not at all!" Pearl said, smiling. "But it is for... younger students."
"You mean children," Thad said.
Pearl chuckled again. "Just because it's for children doesn't make it wrong. Go on. Study that one for an afternoon and when I feel you have a grasp of Trepe's Third Law of Chronology, we can talk about granting you access to the library's restricted section."
Thad frowned. The book did look childish, but on the other hand, he'd had no idea this library even had a restricted section. Intrigued, but vaguely dissatisfied, Thad took the book to the study tables. He noted that Sarda was still where he'd left him, still absorbed in the book of stories, grinning like an idiot. Thad walked past him to Jack's table and sat across from Jack. Jack barely looked up at Thad's arrival.
Thad read the prophecy book. Then read it again. It was short. He read it one more time, slowly, looking at each picture. Was that it? There was nothing about Tree... Trip? Trap's Laws of Chrono...mancy. He'd been had! He grumbled. Shoving the book aside, he sat back in his chair and looked at what Jack was reading across from him. "Isn't that the Astos book?" he asked. "I thought you'd read that one already."
"A couple of times now," Jack said dryly. "Can't seem to put it down."
"That good?"
Jack arched an eyebrow at him, then he sighed, closing his book and crossing his hands on the table over it. "What have you got there? Prophets and Prophecies?"
"Yeah," Thad said, showing him the cover. "You read it?"
"I have," Jack said.
Thad opened the book to the first colorful illustration, pointing. "So the house is supposed to be the aether?"
Jack nodded. "It's one way of looking at things. You leave the house, and instead of finding the outside, you find the inside of another house. A different present, and you're just as likely to be unable to come back through the door afterwards."
"The book said there weren't any doors," Thad said, confused.
Jack shrugged. "There aren't, I suppose. But we move aether all the time - that's what mages do. If the walls are made of aether, couldn't we move them?"
Thad thought about it. "That makes sense."
"I always thought so," Jack said. "Don't try to tell any of them that." He gestured toward the room at large, the various mages gathered in it, buried in their own studies. "They'll only laugh."
At the table behind them, Sarda laughed loudly. An angry shushing noise came from another table. A few of the other scribes glared at him, but he seemed oblivious as he brought his book over to Jack's table and sat with them. "Look!" he said, pointing at an illustration. "The rabbit in the moon! I knew it!"
"Why would there be a rabbit in the moon?" Thad asked.
"I predicted it!" Sarda said, eyes twinkling. "Ah, but did I predict I would read it in this story? Or the real thing?"
"I'm pretty sure that's not a real thing," Thad said. He reached across the table, grabbing the book so he could look at the picture. The rabbit was sitting in an armchair, a cup of tea beside him. He was wearing a waistcoat. Definitely not a real thing, Thad thought.
"It's a parable," Jack said. "It's supposed to represent man's search for himself."
"What's a parable?" Thad asked, flipping pages.
"It's..." Jack sighed, bending back over his notes. "It means it's not a real thing."
"Thought so," Thad said.
He started to return the book to Sarda, but Sarda had found a blank sheet of paper and a charcoal stick and was happily drawing what might have been a rabbit. Thad shrugged and flipped through the book Sarda had handed him.
He came to a picture that looked interesting: a man in gleaming armor, holding a sword in front of him, blade resting point down at his feet. He was older, but not frail-looking, more... distinguished, with silver hair and deep, dark eyes. He had a cape over his shoulder, a helmet under one arm. A beast sat at attention beside him, something not quite a dog, not quite a cat, but larger than any cat or dog Thad had ever seen, a sleek orange monster with a red mane. He knew who it was without even reading the caption: The Lion of Leifen, King Titus the Third. Thad held the book up to Jack. "Hey, look! Titus looks a bit like Redden."
Jack looked up from his notes and peered at the page. "Hmm," he said. "So he does."
"'One born of a dragon, bearing darkness and light, shall rise to the heavens over the still land...'" Sarda intoned, gesturing with his arms as though he were reciting poetry on a stage.
Jack nodded. "That's what they say about him, yes."
"A dragon?" Thad said. "But you said he was real!"
"Yes, well, it's a metaphor. They say he was descended from Bahamut in the same way the Sisters were descended from Ramuh. It's just a poetic way of saying he was devout in his beliefs."
"Oh," Thad said, disappointed. "So it's fake."
"You need to look up the meaning of 'metaphor', Thad," Jack said.
"I know what metaphor means!" Thad grumbled. Titus may have been real, but Thad's grandmother hadn't believed in Bahamut so Thad didn't either. Thad skimmed the text on the page opposite the picture, which described Titus's later years and eventual death by old age. He turned back a few pages, looking for the beginning of Titus's story, but it seemed to be a long one. And it included the rabbit. "It means it's fake."
"Thad," Jack sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose.
"No!" Sarda protested. "Titus was real! He fulfilled the Prophecy of Gaia!"
"Yeah?" said Thad, flipping pages. "And he had a talking lion, and he visited the moon... And here's where he invented the long-range airship, I guess?"
"He's also supposed to have trained Saint Ffamran in white magic," Jack said.
"And that's supposed to make me believe any of this?"
Jack shrugged. "I did tell you the stories about him are greatly exaggerated."
"He was real!" Sarda insisted.
"Yes," Jack said. "Multiple sources confirm it." He gestured toward the book Thad held. "That one was supposedly written by his own granddaughter after he died. You can hardly blame her for imagining her grandfather to have been larger than life."
Thad frowned. He flipped a few more pages, coming to another illustration of Titus, white-haired and dignified, locked in combat with a glowing-eyed mage. The orange beast was there too, mid-pounce, mouth open and snarling, claws extended. The page read, "With the faithful Griever by his side, Titus faced Diemetrius, who had been his friend, for the last time. For three days and nights, the force of their blows shook the land. And when at last Titus struck the final blow and his foe lay ruined upon the mountainside, Titus wept. And then Titan, whose kingdom it was, said unto Titus, 'Take him and entomb him far from my sight, for his crimes cannot be forgiven, even in death.'"
Thad surveyed the picture. Titus didn't look sad, only determined. His armor seemed to glow. Was that a spell? Did they put spells on books to make the pictures glow? He cupped his hands around the picture and bent his face right up to the page. Yes, the armor was glowing, as were Griever's tail, Diemetrius's eyes, his sword... Thad sat back, looking at the picture in the light again. Diemetrius's sword… Was that a jewel in the pommel? He studied the fight scene, Titus, Griever, the mage... Thin. Almost... skeletal?
"Say, Jack..."
"Hmm?" Jack said, disinterested, looking down at his own book again.
Thad pointed at the mage's sword. "Does this look familiar to you? Maybe?"
Jack looked up, eyebrow raised in annoyance, but then his eyes widened.
"Could Diemetrius be... Lord Eldieme?" Thad asked.
Jack lunged across the table, grabbing the book, ripping it from Thad's hands. He read the page with wide eyes for a moment. "It was a fiend..." he said, a stunned whisper. He leaped up from the table, dashing toward the stacks. A few scribes cried out in protest as he shot past them.
Thad had to hurry to catch up with Jack's long-legged strides. "What's a fiend? What are you talking about?"
They stopped in the history section. Jack began pulling books out one by one, looking at their covers, their titles, before tossing them aside.
"What is the meaning of this?" Pearl demanded from behind them, stomping forward, stopping beside Thad.
"It was a fiend!" Jack said. "It wasn't just a necromancer! It was a fiend! Titus's fiend!"
"What's a fiend?" Thad asked again, but no one answered him.
Pearl stilled. His eyes went distant, lips moving as he mumbled to himself, but he was close enough that Thad heard him. "Yes... That is a new angle..."
A few mages lingered behind him. They seemed worried about Jack's outburst, ready for trouble, but Pearl waved them off. "You lot!" he said. "Start there!" He pointed to another set of shelves, holding thick volumes interspersed with scrolls and loose pages.
A scribe cocked his head. "The histories? But there are no records of aether bursts happening before! Someone would have remembered such a thing, surely!"
"Not the aether burst, you upstart!" said Pearl. "The other thing! Fiends! The Unsent! That is something that's happened before!"
"When?" Thad asked. "What does that mean?"
"But..." another mage said, a young woman with an ink smudge on her cheek. "But no one's seen a fiend in four hundred years!"
"Wrong," Jack said, still plucking books from the shelf. He tossed one to Thad, and Thad caught it out of the air. "We've seen one. We've defeated one. The same one Titus fought before Leifen fell."
That set them off. The mages and scribes began to talk all at once, some protesting, some swarming the shelves. Pearl moved in beside Jack, grabbing more books, the two of them speaking as they searched. Pearl shoved more books into Thad's arms.
Thad nearly dropped them, and he scrambled to right the stack before he lost his grip. "Could someone please explain what's going on?"
At the table where they'd left him drawing, Sarda cackled.
The sun shone on the lake, warming the boards of the docks. Those boys were there again, about ten of them. Lena chose a dock away from theirs and sat on the edge of it, letting her feet dangle down to the near-icy water, letting it soothe her. She felt the need to cry, and she let herself, but the need passed quickly as the water lapped at her toes, her ankles.
She wanted to swim, but not while those boys were there. It was cold, but they were swimming anyway. They would set their little machina boats on the water two or three at a time, wind a key, and let them go, and the boats would putter out into the lake a ways before their engines died. Then the boys would cheer and the boats' owners would leap into the water, swimming out to fetch their devices. Lena watched them, unsure if they were racing for speed or distance or for no reason at all, but they were enjoying themselves, enjoying the water, and that joy wafted over to her like a trace of woodsmoke on a winter day.
The morning sun hung low in the sky, barely warming the air with its buttery yellow glow. The leaves rustled in the breeze, sounding crisp, smelling of autumn. A few blew by on every gust, landing on the lake to float alongside the little machina boats. Feet hanging in the water, Lena lay back on the dock and closed her eyes, listening to the leaves and the laughter.
She hadn't been there long when she heard the splashing of someone swimming nearby. It stopped somewhere near her feet. She lifted her head, shielding her eyes against the glare of the sun on the lake, and she saw one of the boys treading water there, a young man, perhaps a little older than herself. "Hi," he said, his voice deep and smooth. "I wasn't sure if you were awake."
"Just thinking of swimming," she said.
The boy smiled, a genuine, joyous smile. He kicked forward, catching the edge of the dock in his hands, and he hauled himself up, flipping around to sit beside her. He shook his shaggy blond hair back out of his eyes. Lena squeaked as a few random drops hit her in the face. "Sorry," the boy said sheepishly.
Lena smiled back, catching his happy mood. He was handsome, shirtless, all perfectly sculpted lean muscle like the boys back home - a swimmer's body. She stared at it longer than was polite, blushing as he caught her doing so and his smile widened. "Um, excuse me. Was there... was there something you needed?"
"Not at all," he said. "Just excited to meet an outsider. Especially a pretty one."
He winked at her. Actually winked. Lena looked down at the water, feeling the hot blush in her cheeks spreading to her whole face. "Oh. Th-thank you. I don't know what to say."
He laughed. He held out a hand to her. "Tylen Stokely. Everyone calls me Stokes."
"Lena Mateus," she said, taking the offered hand, cold as the lake water.
"Yes, I know. I was there for your interview - part of it, anyway."
"Oh!" she said, remembering. "Oh, yes! You were one of the water mages! I didn't recognize you with-"
"Without my shirt on?" he said, grinning.
Lena looked down at the lake again. "I was going to say with wet hair."
He laughed again. From the other dock, one of the boys called his name. He waved, acknowledging them, before he turned back to Lena. "Would you like to come meet my friends?"
She looked down at the water. "Are you sure your friends want to meet me?" she asked.
He smiled. "Why do you think they sent me over here?" he said. He twisted, climbing to his feet, and he held out a hand to help her up. "Come on! I'll even let you try one of my boats."
She hesitated, feeling the air between them, seeking his intentions, but he had none. He was... just being nice. A nice boy, having a nice time, inviting a stranger to join the fun. "Alright," she said, taking his hand, letting him pull her up.
Kane waited off to the side, seemingly forgotten, as the sages argued. He lay in the floor, arms and legs splayed out, not caring at all that the stone floor was hard and cold, only that he wasn't moving. The muscles in his arms burned. He was sure he'd tweaked something in his back. He groaned when someone approached him, but it was only his father.
"How are you holding up?" Redden asked.
"If I'd known this 'interview' was going to involve so much manual labor, I wouldn't have worked so hard for Miss Dahlia yesterday," Kane said without moving.
"That's hindsight for you," Redden said, squatting down next to him. "Did you get enough to eat?"
"Yeah," Kane said. It was just after lunch. The sages had fed him, at least, even if they had made him break rocks all morning. They'd watched him, watched how the aether affected him, as he'd broken huge stones with a sledgehammer, as he'd sliced them with his sword, only resting as some poor earth mage apprentices carried out the unenviable task of bringing in more rocks for him to break.
Slowly and with care, Kane sat up, looking about the room. Now, with lunch cleared away, the sages gathered around his sword, watching as various earth mages attempted to wield it as Kane had. Whatever the aether was doing to him, it seemed that not all of the sages could see it, not even all of the earth mages. Those who could, though, were so astounded to see him apparently using the aether, moving it like a mage, that they had spent half the morning looking for the trick.
The sword was currently in the hands of one of the earth mage apprentices, a skinny boy several years younger than Shipman. Kane had seen that boy, who struggled even to lift the sledgehammer, use his limited grasp of earth magic to break rocks as Kane had done, as Kane had seen Dahlia do. The boy looked like he'd fall over in a stiff breeze, but the rocks had broken for him as well as they had for Kane. Dahlia, who stood beside her husband, helped the boy lift the sword. The apprentice held it aloft a moment, then brought it down on a rock at his feet.
The metal clanged as it hit the stone. Kane winced at the sound. He couldn't see the stone from where he sat, but he knew without looking that the sword hadn't cut it. He heard one of the sages curse.
Redden chuckled. "It only works for you."
Kane sighed, rolling his shoulders. "I could have told them that to start with. It took them three hours to figure it out?"
Redden shook his head. "They knew. They just didn't want to believe it. Mages used to run the world, son. Here, they still do. It will be hard for them to see you as anything but an ordinary layman."
"Jack is a mage," Kane said. "The sword works for him too. Why aren't they running these tests on him?"
"They'll have to before all's said and done," Redden said. "And unfortunately, I think he'll have a harder time of it than you."
"They hate me enough as it is," Jack had said. Kane frowned. The sages hadn't asked him a single question yet, not about Astos or anything else, but he remembered Jack's request from earlier. "Why-" he started to say, but stopped as the chamber doors opened.
A pretty young woman came in, one of the scribes from the look of her. Although she wore no mage robes over her ink-stained gray dress, she crossed the room toward the sages as if she had every right to be there - Kane knew only the Circle and their apprentices were allowed in these meetings. The girl curtsied and passed a folded note to the white mage Phin, who must have been her master.
"Thank you," Phin said, dismissing her with a wave as he read the note's contents. The girl walked out the way she came, slippered feet quiet against the stone tiles.
"What does it say?" Randell asked as the girl closed the door behind her.
Phin stared down at the note, lips moving as he read. He flipped it over, checking the backside, and then looked at the front, reading it again.
"Phin?" Randelll said sharply.
Phin shook himself. "Pearl believes..." He looked down at the paper again. "The evidence suggests that the aether burst was caused by... by a fiend."
There was no outburst. The sages went silent. The only sound in the room was that of several in-drawn breaths echoing through the chamber.
Randell held his hand out for the note and Phin passed it over. No one spoke as Randell read it.
Finally, Randell said, "Return to your seats," and the gathered sages shuffled back to their places around the perimeter of the chamber. He added, "Apprentices, you are dismissed," and every young person who stood behind the sages' chairs made a hasty retreat. Among them were the two beefy young men who had guarded the door the day Kane arrived, the two he had beaten and humiliated. Randell nodded to them specifically, and they left last, closing the door behind them. Kane suspected they stood guard outside it once more.
"Come on, son," Redden said. "I think things just got interesting."
"You think?" Kane asked. His back protested as he rose.
Randell motioned toward the chairs in the middle of the room, the chairs that had been placed there for Kane and his father to sit in during the interview but which Kane had not yet had an opportunity to use. No one spoke as Kane and Redden crossed the room and took their places at the center of attention. No one spoke for several minutes. Kane scanned the room, noting that every sage in it, the smartest mages in the world, stared back at him.
At the head of the room, in her chair behind her husband's seat, only Dahlia looked at Kane with anything other than fear and awe. She nodded to him, an encouragement, and Kane nodded back. Whatever was happening, he was ready for it.
Finally, Randell cleared his throat. "We need you to tell us about the battle with the necromancer."
Author's Note: 10/2/20 - This story just gets more and more complicated to write. Or maybe I lack the experience to do it easily. There's a lot of information that fans of the game already know but that the characters don't know yet, and information that I know that the readers don't know yet. Every time I want the characters to discover a new facet of this quest they're on, I have to flip back through previous chapters like, "Wait… Have I mentioned that yet?" And as the story grows longer, I have more to flip through. It almost makes me wish I had written the whole thing before I ever started posting it, except that I thrive on your constant feedback. Please love me.
Ahem.
Just gonna take a moment to say October is my favorite month. Halloween is my favorite holiday. I think we can all agree 2020 has been a crappy year all around, but I have high hopes for October. Everything seems possible right now. Magic in the air and all that. We can be anyone (because costumes). Maybe we can do anything? Maybe we can take the rest of 2020 back? At any rate, I hope all of you have an amazing month.