Thank you to my beta reader and editor, GlassThreads!
Toren Daen
Oh, oh oh,
We are all here for you.
I flapped my wings, feeling the air part beneath them. My trueflame feathers skimmed the edges of infinity, buffeted forward by the wind. I could feel each and every syllable reverberate through my whistling form, brushing me onward.
I didn't… know what they meant. I just knew to fly. Fly and fly and fly. Always flying, burning against the infinite black.
We are masters of the sky,
Oh, oh oh.
It felt so cold, so near to the ground. It had been colder before. Before the words and whispers, singing into my ear and wrapping me in their love. And because of them, I could fly now, soar on the updraft as it pushed me up and up and up.
But this was no updraft. Wind was too small a thing in the endlessness, bound as it was by the ground and atmosphere and petty minds. Wind could not brush against my wings here in the dark, where things like the world had no sway.
Go kiss your young farewell, my dear,
Go sleep, my child, there's no need to fight.
Birds and wraiths dance without fear.
But song… Song was boundless. Music was the greatest language, undeterred by things like atoms and distance and death. Men could fight and quarrel and die over misunderstandings small and large, torn further and further apart by beat after beat of pain and sorrow.
Normal words were like the wind. When one wanted to convey their truest intent, the iron cage of the common tongue, forged over centuries and millennia of life and growth, could never capture it all. Man and asura alike struggled for a thousand thousand years, trying to make a language that wouldn't leave openings for meaning to escape, the truth echoing into the distance as the simplest gap caused the greatest of failures.
So many would return to the forge of their minds, trying to craft cages that would bundle their meaning and desire deep into constricting shapes of cold iron. And then they'd send out their jagged creations out again, unaware that it was not enough. Or perhaps they were aware, and toiled regardless.
How did one show it all? Was there nothing truly timeless, stalwart against the dark? Nothing that could reach into infinity?
They feel their joy while the day is bright,
And drift in silence when we are here.
There was a way. A way to weave tapestries of warmth and care that carried so much more than simple words.
When a lover spoke to another with a pull of a violin's chords, were they not closer than any other? When men sang their woes away around a campfire, did not dozens of rhythmic heartbeats align into something greater than the sum of their parts?
If you are happy, you'll find peace first,
You work your way to a life filled with gold.
When a mother sang a lullaby for her child, did that child not witness the face of truest love? Did that not touch the soul?
Love could never be fully captured by words. No… love needed song. It needed the chords and swells of every rise and fall like a beating heart.
I could feel it, enveloping me and holding me and pushing me onward. I almost thought I could grasp it with my talons, so real and true it was. Love seeped like warm honey through the burning wounds in my body.
I was… loved. So very loved. That was all I knew as I chased the stars, all motes of what I should be hazy in that afterglow. I knew that she loved me, whoever she was. I could feel it in that perfect lullaby.
If you have hope, it will quench your thirst,
No. As I flew through the great dark, the void rushing past my graceful avian form, I did not fly on wind. I flew on staves of music, drifting on their currents as they pushed me up and up and up. I could almost see the heartbeat-notes of each swell pushing against my weakened wings, heaving me toward the endless expanse.
And leave you well, that's what I'm told.
I flew for an age, chasing the distant stars.
I witnessed the birth of things I couldn't understand in the rippling cosmos. Lights grew, brightened, and died in the distance. A thousand and one eyes opened and closed, watching and waiting for something other. A supernova struggled at the corner of my eyes to rip its way from bondage.
But though I witnessed color and light and sound, wisdom reaching me when I was able to sit and listen, I was… alone, beating my wings wearily as I sought a distant goal. I was a bright red mourning dove flitting through the universe, small beneath the weight of emptiness. The light I sought was so, so far away.
I felt… afraid. I was so scared. I'd always been so very scared. In concepts of flesh and blood and thought and reason, I was scared. And fear was so… transcendent. Nearly as transcendent of the coils as love.
But I couldn't stop. I needed to beat my wings, hauling myself forward on anchors of love and connection and hope and need and life and light and song. I wondered what all of those were in as many directions as my spirit could chase them, even as I held onto the mists of their hold.
The flow of the lullaby had ceased long ago, but I still carried the white-hot drive it had instilled into my essence. I needed to reach the stars. If I let myself stop… If I let myself stop, I'd fall back to the ground. It was hard, sometimes, to flap my wings and keep my eyes forward. But the momentum that song had given me… The push from behind… I needed to keep going, finding my happiness.
That was what she had wanted, whoever she had been.
That thought drew out a cry from my deepest spirit. The cry of a phoenix became a melody of rising heartbeats, mournful and torn as I finally found the stars.
Each of those anchors focused, like a blurry image of family extending their hands. Take my hand, they all pleaded. Thread your fingers through ours. Join us again.
The unending contraption of oiled soulmetal chugged white smoke as it used its mechanical leverage to pull me in, like a fish caught on a line. The wealth leaking from the bag of sliced golden dust swirled about me, coating my wings and ornamenting me in reflective care. The egg of opalescent darkness stood in union with the Grey-purple crown and silverthorn vine, all of them reaching toward me in what ways they could.
On the periphery, dozens upon dozens of featherwing lanterns burned with a Brand of severed fire. They stood legion, granting me light where it was dark.
And a silver moon of bright shadow held my hand with a gentleness I had lost, pulling me forward.
Where once I had been flying upward, flapping my wings as I tried to reach these lights, now I found myself… falling. I was falling inward, careening downward in a spiral that made my burns ache. I screamed again, the jumbled chorus of heartbeats-turned-soul that escaped my beak lost in the rush of my loved ones' grasp.
I tumbled through the world, feathers torn from my wings and chest and face. They abandoned me as the sky took on color and shape and painful contrast. As my wings became arms again, covered in charred flesh and bright-blazing runes, I remembered my name. Toren Daen. As my beak fractured and broke away, becoming a mouth and nose that gasped in pain, I remembered what I was. I was human. I was phoenix and djinn. I was Spellsong. As my talons drifted away into reddened feet that ached against the press of the aether, I knew what it was to see and sense again.
And it all… It all hurt. Every inch of my flesh burned as I curled into a ball, shivering within the stinging agony of a million seared nerve endings. So much of what had been there was burned away by a Branded wildfire, leaving gaping holes still struggling to scar over.
I groaned in pain, feeling the agony crawl through my body. But… But that wasn't right. I blinked my sun-burning eyes, staring down at my hands. They were… translucent, revealing the hard stone beneath my knees.
But I couldn't feel the stones. I couldn't feel… Anything, beyond this soul-searing pain. I couldn't smell the ever-present scents of the world. I couldn't hear the sounds of nature or the rush of the wind. I remembered tasting blood, but now there was nothing.
Where… Where am I? What happened to me?
The thought drifted through my brand-burned psyche, tumbling through the crevices of lost understanding. It took me a few seconds to grasp the scattered pieces of each of those sentences, haphazardly crafting them into words with meaning.
I was curled in the fetal position, laid out on stone. And my body… I didn't have one. I was a translucent spirit, cloaked in flickering, feathered runes of dying coals. I was somehow a shade of the beyond, just like Aurora.
"Aurora," I muttered weakly, trying to understand why I was here. What was happening…? "Aurora, where are you?"
I felt so cold. So very cold after the burning heat of the ritual, where I'd thrust myself into the heart of a collapsing star. There was… There was the ritual, right? I'd been with Arthur, in Xyrus. The floating city had been under attack by…
Memories slowly seeped through the cracks in my soul like seeping tar. I remembered… Killing Nico. Rushing to the floating city, fighting the others, being flung from the tide of unending space… Rinia dying in my arms…
And I remembered embracing my Third Phase, welcoming the power of countless Asclepius that had flooded into every byway of my spirit.
Is that why I'm so… burned? I wondered drearily, looking at the endless marks of red and black that coated my singed shade. The red-hot light of the feathered runes adorning my flesh almost seemed to be the source of it all, but that didn't seem right.
"Aurora?" I croaked out again, moving to my knees. "Aurora, I can't… feel you."
I stumbled weakly to my feet, wavering with every shift of my translucent, dawnlit form. I couldn't feel where I placed my steps, but the ground acted like a barrier anyway as I turned to observe where I'd found myself.
All color was muted dark, shadows seeming to have more hold than they should. The Unseen World stretched all around me, coating my sight in taunting vapors. It was all so… colorless. So devoid of any sort of light of warmth.
I was in a large room. Arches of stone struggled to bear the weight of however-many-tons of rock far above. Glyphs shimmered a soft silver as they stood against the encroaching gray darkness. The room couldn't have been more than forty feet in each direction, but the ceiling felt exceptionally low, as if bending under some burden I couldn't see. Like Atlas holding up the world, the rock looked strained as it tried not to bend the knee.
I was in some sort of catacomb. There was a door on one end of the room, arching upward like a crypt's dusty mouth, but I couldn't see the end. Just countless stone squat blocks of rectangular stone stretching for forever. Some of them had items on them, some not, but it was hard to see in the shadows of the Unseen World.
And then I looked down, and saw my own face.
My attempts to understand what the hell was happening to me crumbled like glass as I beheld my own corpse, laid out on a prism of lifeless gray earth.
It didn't stare back at me. My sharp features looked gaunt and hollow, drained of all heartfire. My eyes were closed, my hands clasped over my chest in eternal rest. My body wasn't covered in burns like my shade was, but… There was a gaping void where my heart should have been. A yawning void stained with red streaked all across my pale flesh, almost as if my own heart had been torn from my chest. My strawberry-blonde hair looked sullen, devoid of its usual luster as every bit of saturation leaked from it.
I… I was dead. I was a ghost, staring at my own decimated corpse.
A tremble ran through my shade as I stared at my empty body. Some part of me that was still Toren remembered days long, long ago when I'd stared at another corpse, deep in a distant clinic. The very sight of that corpse so close to me had made two souls—mirrored across dimensions—collapse into one.
But even as I held out a trembling, horrified hand, brushing it against unresponsive flesh…
No such thing happened. My ghostly hands passed through my Vessel, uncaring. I did not collapse back into my body, merging perfectly. And why would I? There was no heartfire left to even anchor me to my own corpse. And I could feelsomething else wrong, wrenched out of alignment between my ghost and my corpse.
I shook violently, the purest of primal fears racing through me. The fear of the unknown. The fear of what I couldn't understand. The fear of the dark and death and being alone. "Aurora?!" I yelled, my voice hoarse as I swiveled about, searching and looking. I needed my bond. I needed someone who could tell me what was happening, and why I was dead. I needed warmth and light, and— "Can you hear me?"
I noticed a few more items splayed out across a nearby table. I saw my violin, resting leisurely, at the ready for a song. But it was charred and blackened, damaged beyond repair. It slumbered with the dull horn of Inversion. The pelts of the echo vespertion and timestop yeti gleamed tauntingly as I swiveled, searching for something. For anything.
I can't feel our bond! I realized with horror, my fear deepening. I can't sense it! But she must be here!
Aurora wouldn't leave me. If I were somehow cast out, she'd return, too. It would only take a little bit of time. She would—
I saw another body, laid like a broken angel across the stones.
She looked like me. She'd born sharp features in life. Sharp, beautiful features, with pale skin that seemed to absorb the darkness. If one looked just right, they might be able to see the lavender undertones from a distant sacrifice. Her feathered hair was white as campfire ash, the heat that had once subsumed her long burnt out.
"Aurora?" I asked for the dozenth time, my voice quiet and weak as I stared at her… her corpse. I'd never seen her body, but I knew it was hers. How was it here? How was I here? Was this some sort of…
The recollection of what had happened didn't return all at once. Instead, it took its sweet time as it drove blow after devastating blow into my sternum, like a hammer measuring the pace it took to squash a nail.
I'd entered the maelstrom with my mother, the two of us steady and stalwart against the torrent of sorrow. We'd held together, stronger than the mightiest castle. Hand in hand, we were greater than Taegrin Caelum. Greater than Mount Geolus itself. Greater than any and all who would dare try and tear us apart.
And as I'd gambled on Integration, just as my lover had not long before, I'd taken it all into myself. All the hatred and pain and misery of those distant spirits, slain in pointless sorrow, had flooded my Integrated Vessel, before being released to the void.
I'd fallen when it was all done. I'd fallen to the earth, my Integrated Vessel and Soul strained to the deepest reaches. I'd been talking with my mother, gazing up at the stars as—for a single moment—all was well.
And then… Then it was cold. Cold darkness as a maw approached, before searing pain and terrible fear, as a mother bird sheltered my seared soul.
"Do you see all those lights in the distance? The white moon, the gleaming crown, the clockwork cogs, and the pierced bag of gold? Do you see them all?"
"No," I whispered, tears blurring at the edges of my eyes. Redfire tears burned at the edges of my vision, tracking down across my charred spirit. Everywhere they touched hurt. But nothing could compare to the pain that slowly hammered its way through an empty void where something should have been.
"I want you to try and reach them, okay? You can pull on them. They won't let you drift away."
I'd pulled on every light I could, but it hadn't been enough. I was still slipping, adrift in the cosmic sea. So… So… So I'd been pushed. From behind.
"I'm behind you, Toren. I'll always be there, at your shoulder. My hand is always there. Just focus on my voice."
My translucent shoulders trembled. No hand rested there. No light streamed through my mind, soothing my thoughts and caressing my fears. Nobody whispered that it would be okay, that we'd do it together. It was just empty. Empty as the endless expanse of the Beyond itself. Where a voice should have been… Where a light should have been….
Tears fell freely from my eyes like dewdrops of fire, streaking across my charred spirit-flesh. They shattered like fiery comets along my arms as I held them up, looking at what I knew would be the case.
My oath-chains were gone. The oath-chains that promised that she was there. That she was anchored to me, as bond and spirit. That I could always hold to our goals.
My knees buckled. I didn't feel as they hit the stones, ghost as I was. Were I a man of flesh and blood, I might have tasted the salt of my tears as they streaked over my lips. Were I a man, I might have felt the shaking of my heart as it rose with adrenaline and horror, reinforcing the reality of my pain. Were I a man, every ounce of my flesh would have heaved in grief, expelling some of it into the wind.
In my journey back to the mortal plane, my soul had found the failure of words. Some part of me understood how petty and paltry words were for meaning and understanding. So much slipped through the faultlines of context and intent, unable to be grasped.
And some stupid fucking part of me thought that song could capture everything. That every emotion of a person's soul could be held in a basket of woven staves and notes, gripped in a nest of music, and given to one who could know it all.
But as I howled, my spirit shaking with grief that couldn't escape through a mortal Vessel, I realized how foolish I had been. I had no vocal cords to sing, no audience to hear, and no instrument to carry my sorrow in the low tones.
My charred violin was only a few feet away, resting plainly near my corpse. But so what? So what if it was there, waiting at the tableside? Even if I could pick it up with my hands, hold it close and pull on those chords, what difference would it make?
How could a song carry silence?
So I was left alone to scream. Unheard. Unknown. Unliving. Unseen.
And leave you well, that's what I'm told.
I didn't know how long I knelt on the stones, sobbing uncontrollably like a child. I didn't know how many times I begged the aether to give me my mother back, inconsolable through the two-fold pain of a burned soul and a long-gone bond. But it was the silence. The silence—that absence of any song—hurt more than any Brand-sear on my soul.
I could still feel the notes of her lullaby, caressing wings that were and were not. It felt so close, just at the recesses of my memory. But no matter how I reached or stretched or moved, I couldn't hold it again. Her voice was just… a memory, a distant collage of warm sunlight.
The chest of my burned shade—covered in charred garments that made me look like a scarecrow—expanded and contracted. I didn't need to breathe, but I felt that if I just let it go… If I just released my grip, I'd go back. I'd drift back to where my mother was, far in the distant cold.
And I could feel the cold, like misty fingers brushing across my charred shade. But that cold didn't soothe my wounds, simply drained the life from them. My emotion warred with that chill, and it was a struggle to keep a hold on the far-distant lights.
I craned my weary neck upward, staring at my body with hollow eyes. My gaze trailed down to where the blood-red chains would have been on my left arm, but they were unraveled.
I need to move, some part of me thought, my deadened eyes observing the body that could not accept me. Mom, she wanted me to live. She wanted me to keep on going.
But I stayed there, kneeling and defeated. The Unseen World sapped more and more color from the sole sense I had left to me, tempting me with the distance.
Then something did reach my ears. A tune that was just at the edges of my perception. It was just like the pull of my distant Anchors, but also something more corporeal and close. It was not abstracted by the Sea.
I felt life—or whatever equivalent I could call it—return to my limbs as I turned, centering like a startled hound on that noise. I couldn't hear anything except my own voice, and those heartbeats.
They make music, some part of me recognized. The heartbeats… They come together like the beating of drums.
In the silence that was my existence, I latched on like some sort of rabid beast to that noise. Hope swelled in my chest as I stumbled upward, gripping the nearby table. I couldn't feel the coarse stone—and part of me knew that if I but willed it, I'd sink right through—but the idea of solid ground gave me purpose.
I turned through the entombed room, barely aware of the dozens of other stone platforms cradling items and bodies. So many items and people and things, but none of them mattered.
Aurora, I thought, holding onto desperate hope. Aurora, is that you? That must be you.
Then several figures stepped through a stone door, each of them seeming to radiate color amidst the desaturated mists, and I felt cold again.
A tall man stepped with arrogant surety through the endless stone plinths. Arrogant was the truest description I could find for the way he moved. Though his lithe form radiated power, the heartbeats that made the song of his soul were accented with disdain and pompous undertones. His lustrous black hair tumbled across his shoulders in waves, contrasting the quartz silk of his embroidered robes. The soft lilac thread snaking through his robes matched his violet eyes as they coasted across the room with utter disdain.
I froze as I observed the figure, recognizing immediately what he was. An asura. A dragon. The sheer purple of his eyes and the way he moved told me the truth of his station.
But even as he marched through the endless lines of raised stone, his eyes never focused on me. No, they focused on Aurora's body.
The arrogant dragon thrust out his hand, gesturing dismissively at my mother's body. His mouth opened, and though words must have left them, I couldn't hear them.
It was only then that I recognized the other person who'd been hauled in the wake of the dark-haired dragon. Their hair wasn't as dark as the gilded asura in front of him. No, this figure's hair was like grease-matted reeds splattered across his face. His wiry body was hunched and near-lifeless, covered in blood and grime. The dark circles under his eyes accented a hopelessness I could understand.
I could hear the pulsesong of the dragon on my periphery, as well as the two armored guards who'd escorted this new man. But this asura who stared at Aurora's body: his soul sang a different tune, one far clearer.
I thought I recognized the husk of a titan asura as he muttered something in response to the gesturing dragon. Wren Kain the Fourth, crafter of Dawn's Ballad, a man who my bond suspected was trying to court her.
The spindly man must have been powerful, but here, he looked small and almost weaselly. Ages upon ages of wear seemed to have laid their weight across his shoulders, making him hunch low like the arches above. The rags adorning his body hung like tattered cloth from every vantage point.
Where am I? I wondered again, feeling a sharp pang of disorientation. Dragons and titans and—
Evidently, whatever Wren said displeased the dark-haired dragon. The man sneered, his disdainful eyes dismissing the battered titan. Then he strode toward the plinth where my mother's corpse was laid out, reaching with his hands.
A shock of sudden fury reignited what had once been cold as the dragon's hands descended toward my mother's face. My grief, still churning and roiling and fighting with the silence of the world, angled to the side.
I growled, moving forward as the asura's hands moved. I tried to grip his wrist, but my actions did nothing. I tried to push him away, tried to shove, scratch, claw, anything. I couldn't let this arrogant asura lay a single finger on my mother. Dead or not, the intent of desecration and disrespect radiated from him.
This arrogant bastard wanted to mar what was left of her. The only thing that was left. His wretched fingers, painted in soft lilacs and glinting like claws, whispered of malice as they descended toward her eyes.
But I was an empty specter, doomed to never interact with the world. No matter how much I wanted to stop this coming injustice, I was powerless.
I wasn't the only one possessed by anger. Wren surged forward, stretching out a hand as silence echoed from his moving mouth. His features contorted into those of disdain as he tried to get close to the lead dragon.
The guards who'd hauled the titan in didn't let him take a single step. Their gauntleted hands dug into Wren's slim shoulders, halting him in his angry attempts.
The dark-haired dragon's lilac eyes darted to the side, his hand halting in place from where it had been about to tear at my mother's face. A sneer that made my soul boil with hatred stretched across his lips.
The dragon turned slowly, observing Wren with that pulsesong of distaste. In turn, Wren's soul vibrated with contained anger and grief. The dragon shook his head, strolling back toward Wren's hunched form.
He leaned over, saying a few words into the distraught titan's ear, before driving a fist into the spindly man's stomach. Wren buckled, coughing and wheezing as a droplet of blood fell from his mouth.
The guards hauled Wren back to his feet, uncaring of his lolling head or his obvious pain. The leader dragon waved his hand, hissing some sort of order, before he marched back to the exit. Wren's feet dragged on the ground as the guards apathetically yanked him with them.
The slamming door made no sound, but I could feel it reverberate through me. It roiled there with all the other questions I had in my gut. Where was I? Where was everyone else, and what had happened?
But the anger—the hatred that dragon instilled in my soul as he used Aurora's corpse to provoke some sort of response from Wren Kain—it sharpened me. My legs still trembled from the silence, my mind still haphazardly searching for a voice that wouldn't answer.
Yet I couldn't wallow here, letting myself drift back to the Beyond. Aurora had sacrificed her life to send me back here, and every second I spent unanchored, it became harder and harder to remain here. I could feel Death calling me, but I had work to do.
I stumbled over to my body, my movements frantic and jerky as I looked down at it. I should be able to reincarnate into it, I thought, frustrated and afraid. I could feel the way my soul almost-not-quite aligned with my Vessel. The pieces were almost perfect, but it was missing a few things.
The pull became stronger, mist whispering across my Unseen form. Fuck! I thought, lurching to the nearby table. Aurora had sacrificed everything. She'd given every ounce of her very soul to give me the push I needed. And everyone else, too, whose souls I used as Anchors to remain. Cylrit, Sevren, Arthur, Sylvie, Tessia, Lusul, Seris, and so many others were counting on me. I couldn't just vanish again!
My eyes sharpened on Inversion as memories tumbled through my mind, the usually bright dagger dull and near-lifeless. My recollection and understanding of all that had happened during my Integration were hazy now, lacking brand-seared context and vision. But I could vaguely understand. My Vessel wasn't big enough to contain my merging soul, or it wasn't properly bound, or something.
So I'd used the Brand of the Banished as it staked my very soul as a resonant point. When I'd received it, the brand had driven a dagger deep into my soul, parting layers of spiritual flesh as it tore apart the heart of family.
And the me in that moment, as I'd been drowning in far, far more than my petty Vessel could reasonably hold, found synergy, driving Inversion into my own heart in a sort of counter-ritual. I'd created more resonance within my very soul and body at the last minute, preparing myself for what was to come.
But the dagger had been torn out. I didn't really remember it. Just flashes of darkness and hissing scales. But the sudden misalignment of Vessel and Soul made me drift to the beyond.
I tried to grab Inversion. If I could only grip it, and driveit into my own heart, I'd be able to align again. I'd be able to live, making good on everything I'd lost.
But Inversion, like everything else, ignored my pleas.
"Come on!" I snarled, trying whatever way I could to reach out with my soul. This inverted horn had journeyed with me through countless battles. In some way, it was an intrinsic part of my soul, humming in resonance with the Brand of the Banished that held everything together. "Come on! You can help me! Just this once, come on!"
But as my will faltered and the pull of the Beyond became greater and greater, Inversion didn't make well on our bond. In the end, it was just a knife meant to draw blood and end lives.
And even if I could lift it by some miracle, I thought, the words whispering through my head like acidic venom, what would it matter? You have no heartfire to tether yourself. You have no place to nestle and hide from reality.
I spun on my feet, my eyes wild and rabid as the pull grew more and more inexorable. I couldn't die. I couldn't let Aurora's sacrifice mean nothing. I couldn't leave Seris and Sevren and Naereni and Fiachra and everything.
I clung to the hope that burned somewhere deep in my soul, embracing it alongside my pain. That fire I'd reforged in the wake of Taci's defeat made me whirl about the endless stretches of stone tables, searching for a way through this. Maybe, if I could find some sort of heartfire reserve—
And then I halted, stuttering to a stop as Unseen mists seeped along my arms and legs and tried to drag me away. Because I could feel the strange resonant-not hum of my empty Vessel, but also…
There was another resonance. Far, far below, deep in the stones. If I really, really focused, I could almost hear the pulsesong of someone familiar in the deep dungeons.
My head turned downward, my faded fists clenching as I sensed how little time I had left.
Only one chance, I thought desperately, preparing to dive through the earth. That's all I have.