Thank you to my beta reader and editor, GlassThreads!
Toren Daen
Chul finally pulled himself up. It reminded me of an old, rusted machine from the Industrial Revolution chugging to life: all massive pumps, choked pipes, and struggling rust. Backlash coursed like venom through his mana veins, threatening to make him curl inward like a crushed aluminum can.
But somehow, despite the agony and restrictive pain coursing across him, the half-phoenix shrugged it off, stumbling blearily toward the too-gray water as it drifted like the appendages of some great worm.
Is this what Aurora felt? I wondered, watching in mute astonishment as Chul simply kept on moving despite his agony. When I suffered wounds and backlash, is this how she felt it? Like a shadow on the wall?
I could sense Chul's intent, his heartfire, his pulse, his pain. And through his senses, I could detect Wren's intent and heartfire, too, but all of it was muted. Like a shadow cast onto a wall, or a three-dimensional image compressed and forced into a painfully two-dimensional plane, I could feel what Chul did.
But I didn't really. The facsimile of life conveyed whispers of what should have been a great chorus. Yet I could tell that the pain from Vajrakor's beating, combined with his near-brush with backlash, was exceptional.
But the concept that physical pain should make you sit still and whimper was alien to this half-asura. Physical pain was a nuisance; something to be noted, then cast aside.
"Don't drink the water!" Wren suddenly snapped, leaning forward slightly as he noticed Chul reach one of the tributaries of the writhing river. "It's—"
Wren was too late. Chul had already shoved his face full-on into the water, soaking his dull hair. Part of me suspected steam would rise from the contact.
The young asura drank greedily, drinking the darkness like a sponge. He gulped mouthful after mouthful, filling his stomach in record time. And as the water seeped like black oil into his belly, I could sense why he'd done so in the first place. There was mana in the water. Not much at all, though. In fact, there was barely any more mana in that water than what would normally be found in a common Dicathian elixir.
But that was already far, far more than what floated in the atmosphere. And as Chul's core greedily sapped the grimy mana from the strange water, his near-backlash symptoms lessened. The wounds I'd given him months ago still bled, but not so terribly.
Wren scoffed. "Of course, you'd drink the water. Nobody listens to me when it matters, do they?"
The desaturated water dripped from Chul's face as he whipped it from the current, staring critically at Wren. "You," he said sharply. "Are you an enemy of the Indraths as well? Are we kin in injustice, strange titan?"
Wren visibly recoiled from the half-phoenix. Before, the battered titan hadn't been able to see Chul's face, covered as it was by his dimming hair. But something in the son of Dawn's features made Wren look as if he'd been slapped. His face contorted in what could have been disdain and disgust.
But his intent told me otherwise. Wren's heartbeat stuttered, and his intent whispered of pain.
Chul's eyes narrowed as the reaction flowed by like an attempted slap to the face. He raised a single hand to his face, brushing back his hair so that his pale, blue eye became like a star amidst the inverted cosmos of his face. "I see," he said, his teeth forged into a wolf's snarl. "Then you are like all the other asura I have met, appalled by a simple dot of blue."
I sighed, crossing my arms. "That's not the case, Chul," I said quietly. My mind flashed to Vajrakor's earlier powerplay as he threatened the stringy titan asura. If my fingers could, they'd dig into my burned arms deep enough to draw blood. "He feels grief when he looks at you, not disgust."
Chul blinked, then looked at me with confusion. "You must explain!" he demanded.
I opened my mouth to do so, but I was cut off by Wren. "As I was saying before you slammed your piehole into the water, the tributaries that flow through this prison are diluted from one of the Ten Mighties, the River Hosh. Extremely diluted, but that's the point. So drinking from them is a monumentally foolish idea."
I noted that the titan did not address Chul's earlier accusation.
"The River Hosh?" Chul echoed, his breath still heaving from exhaustion. There was a restrained glare on his face as he watched Wren, and it was clear to me he hadn't forgotten the way the stringy asura first recoiled from his face. "I have heard tales of this river since my childhood. It is said that all who bathe in its waters lose their identity, becoming souls lost to the winds. Worry not, Strange Titan. I will be free of this prison long before the water can strip me of my senses."
Wren—still sitting defeatedly on the cold stones—gave Chul a look that told me that he already thought Chul had lost his mind. "How much of that water have you drunk, you lumbering oaf?"
"Enough to fill my core for sprints to the top of that staircase," Chul said gravely, turning back to the water. "I thought I sensed the darkness of this mana, trying to shear at my mind. But I have not allowed it purchase. It only fuels me for my ascent!"
Wren barked a sardonic, hateful laugh. His intent twisted darkly, whispering poison into the mana. "You think your skull is thick enough to block out the water?" The titan stared out at Chul through the greasy reeds of his hair, quietly mocking as he looked the young asura up and down. The grief laced through his intent had been summarily suppressed. "Maybe it is… What's your name, boy?"
Chul eyed Wren warily, watching for any hint of deceit. "I am the son of Andravhor Alae-kal and Aurora Asclepius," he boasted, his eyes flashing. "I am Chul of the Hearth. Tell me, asura. Do you judge me for my heritage?"
Wren's lips pursed. "Aurora gave you everything but common sense," he muttered, and he did not know how true that was. "Listen, boy. That water probably won't affect you now, diluted as it is. It might not for months. But eventually, it will start to tear you away."
The titan's lanky arm pointed lazily at a distant item on the floor, something I hadn't noticed against the darkness. A pickaxe. "That pickaxe there is your only key to getting any sort of food. Mine the acclorite, pile the unprocessed crystal by the stairwell, and you might just get scraps. Like a pet silverwolf kept alive on display. That's what you're going to do for the rest of your days, however long they are."
Wren's eyes glimmered a little behind his bangs, like onyx catching a light. A pulse of curiosity radiated from him. "How long would you live, boy? I never got the chance to investigate lesser lifespans in Alacrya, but a true half-breed would pose interesting questions."
Wren was in Alacrya? I thought, suddenly intrigued. Why was he there? And what did—
The sudden fire of Chul's emotions, however, clipped the wings of all those thoughts. Wren had struck a nerve, solid as any hammer strikes hot iron. Chul ignored the Hoshwater, stalking toward the crumpled mess of a titan. Wren stared up with a single arched brow, unimpressed.
"I am the last of my kind, titan," Chul muttered lowly, a threatening undertone lacing his voice. "But if you think that makes me weak or lesser, then you are wrong. I will live for a thousand years more before my Sculpting, and then I shall persist for millennia more. I will not die in this cave. I will run through that stairwell as many times as it takes to reach the sky."
Wren's responding chortle was disdainful and nearly cruel. "You're a raptor squirrel caught in a box, given treats and told to chew wood! And then your captors put a wheel in front of you, and you just… what, run on it for eternity? In case you noticed, boy, there is no way out of this place. You can't even use spells in the air lest you set every node of acclorite off like a bomb and kill us all. You'll burn your life up doing that, asuran span or not."
"So you have already given up," Chul announced, staring down at the titan with visible disdain. "I have seen men like you, who call me foolish for daring to try. But my actions will always be my own, not yours to govern or judge. I will keep moving forward, and I will climb those stairs."
Chul turned away from the broken titan, his eyes hard as they passed over me. He stomped back to the gray Hoshwater. If anything, Wren's sarcastic attempt to dissuade Chul from doing the metaphorical equivalent of slamming his forehead into a brick wall until the bricks crumbled only made him more confident in how utterly thick his skull was.
Because—as much as I wanted to believe otherwise—I couldn't see a way to escape this place. This… This prison. I was a ghost, unable to affect the world, and Chul would never breach the aetheric barrier. He was another Sisyphus, cursed by the gods to roll a boulder forevermore.
I saw the pieces of this prison coalesce around me, looking at it not as the naive, foolish Chul, but with the shrewd cynicism that gripped the languid titan. This was a prison meant to leech all color from you, then leave your corpse covered in dust.
I'd heard from Aurora what unprocessed acclorite could do to an unaware asura. It was incredibly volatile, practically a bomb waiting to go off with a single application of mana. It would crystallize a mage's mana veins, siphoning the source of their power and ruining whatever foolish limb touched it. Using too much mana in this place, without a guaranteed path of exit, was tantamount to suicide for most.
The staircase cursed one with hope. It made you think there was a chance at victory if you ran far enough, climbed enough steps… Then maybe the sky would be waiting for you.
And then you'd be left to do nothing but mine. Swing the pickaxe, wait for food. Swing the pickaxe, wait for food. Lose more and more and more of what made you you over the decades… Centuries… Millennia…
At once, I realized that this was not a prison. Prisons contained threats, keeping them boxed in. For a prison, one only needed walls and bars. So far as the threat was contained, the prison had done its job.
But this? This was not containment. This was punishment. Slow, painful, inexorable punishment, levied out over ten thousand years. Human punishment was quick, brutal, and violent. A hand severed, a dozen lashes, or maybe a tongue cut out. Our lives were so often short, brutal, and brilliant fires. Our forms of torture and punishment reflected that.
But though the asura were as much people as the humans they called lesser, their lives were not human lives. They lived for ages upon ages, witnessing the rise and fall of civilizations that crumbled to the dusts of time.
How could one punish that? How did one punish a god who had seen it all?
I felt it deep in my soul. Like flintstone striking against rock. Sparks flew.
"I knew your mother!" Wren called out to Chul's back, his intent lurching with an off-color desperation. "I went to Alacrya to find her, Chul. I got a reading that she was alive. I knew the old bird wouldn't just perish. And I tried to get her back, but what I found was not…"
What he found? I wondered, feeling myself settle slightly. My mind worked to put together the puzzle pieces of all I'd seen and heard. Aurora's corpse was high above, when all reason should place it somewhere in Taegrin Caelum.
Chul turned halfway, looking at Wren with renewed interest. He looked over the titan, his eyes gleaming as if seeing him for the first time. "Wren Kain the Fourth," he said slowly. "I have heard tales of you. The titan craftsman, worker of wonders and tamer of acclorite. It was you who formed the methods of calling the wily crystal to heel, making it serve instead of sever!"
A grin stretched across Chul's face as he glanced about the cavern, an innocent sort of optimism radiating from him as he looked at the waiting acclorite. He laughed from his chest, the act rattling his cracked ribs. He didn't care. "See the arrogance of the Indraths, Worker of Wonders! They cast you down to the very pits you once conquered. All this crystal is but clay before your hands!"
"I can't, you buffoon!" Wren shouted, his face darkening with deeper emotion for the first time. "You think they tossed me in here because I could get out? I went to Taegrin Caelum and escaped, but it cost me. I made it back here just as that… Second Dawn split the sky.And now I don't have the tools I need to forge acclorite."
Wren's reedy gaze passed disdainfully across the jutting crystals. "Vajrakor is dumb as a bag of rocks, but he isn't that dumb. He put me down here purposefully. Something about hubris and thinking I can escape any prison in the world. I don't know. But the point is that there's no way out of here. So stop running on the wheel!"
I sensed the pain leaking from Wren's words, like the slow drip of water from a punctured sack. "Your mother is gone, Chul. Don't waste your life slamming your face into a brick wall." Then his face wrinkled, and I caught comprehension there. "Hmm. I think I get it now. Vajrakor is a fool, but I'll have to reassess his capacity for cruelty. This is unusual punishment. I wonder how many people he used to perfect it with what few brain cells he has?"
Cling. Another spark within my soul, flint crashing angrily against limestone. Because I'd realized it just as Wren had. The reason he was down here wasn't just because of 'hubris' or to mock him for his inability to use acclorite.
How do you punish a god? I thought, my fists clenching. How do you torture that which has known millennia?
You force one to slowly wither away to nothing, while making one who might care for them watch on, helpless.
"You would have me do nothing, Worker of Wonders?" Chul growled, his face dripping with disapproval. "I have met those such as you, who have given up before they tried. I rejected them once, venturing out into the great world to find my place. You think it is better to lie down and wait for the end? I say thee nay." Chul strode back toward the water, preparing to drink more to refill his core.
"You'll make me watch then, hmm? You'll just wear yourself away over time, while I languish? Kill yourself for all I care."
"Then languish," Chul muttered. "I will find my way from this place."
Wren had already given up. That much was painfully evident as the man slumped. He was broken, but he wasn't punished.
Cling. Another strike of the flint.
"When Aurora languished in Taegrin Caelum," I said quietly, my hands clenching into fists, "she didn't give up. For over a thousand years, she refused to break under Agrona's touch. For over a thousand years, she never faltered. And she never gave in."
Chul turned to look at me. He was weak. Pitifully, brokenly weak. Nothing before a creature like Vajrakor. Nothing to this water. Nothing to the acclorite. Nothing to Death. But in his eyes, I saw the fire that must have kept his mother alive and unbroken for thousands of years beneath a cruel taskmasters' claws. I saw a willingness to bathe in the wildfires of the world, never looking back and always rushing forward.
The son of Dawn marched past me and began to drink, recovering his mana at a pathetic rate as he absorbed what Hoshwater he could. When his core was full again, I knew he'd rush up the stairwell, trying desperately to pierce the aetheric spatial warp that kept us caged like rats.
And when he failed, he would try again. And again. And again. No matter how many times he failed, Aurora's son would never stop trying. When the Hoshwater eroded every ounce of his identity, stripping every name he had ever known from his head, he would keep on running. That fire would never go out.
I closed my eyes, gritting my teeth. I imagined I could feel the enamel crack, the shearing sounds of my teeth reminding me that I was alive. But I was not.
When I opened my eyes, I was in the Sea of my Soul.
Blood stretched as far as my eye could see. An ocean of scarlet insight lapped quietly at my burned avatar, quiet pain imbued into every mote. Once upon a time, half of the sky above me was illuminated by a distant sun, my mother casting light upon everything.
That wasn't the case anymore. Now there was only darkness extending into infinity. Shadow embraced every step along my burned spirit. I was alone in the void, a writhing amalgamation of man and Will.
My only light came from my Brand, staked through the core of my being, and the glimmering runes beneath my spirit.
I released a deep breath, kneeling over the strangely calm water. Beneath the surface of the blood that represented everything that I was, runes swirled. Feathers danced and nests wound and unwound themselves in burning-coal orange, letting little glimmers of hope.
My soul was massive. Burned and charred as I was, the weight and condensed insight of countless asura still flowed through me. During Integration, I'd taken the Will of the Asclepius, becoming more.
My hand drifted through the red, feeling at the condensed insight. It wouldn't have been possible any other way, becoming some sort of… Legacy. Some amalgamation of knowledge and power. Integration alone wasn't enough: it was the forge-fire crucible of Agrona's ritual as it bore down on me from all sides, trying to compress me inward. By creating an equilibrium against the weight of a collapsing star, I'd forced my ego into a place of overarching dominance with my Phoenix Will.
And when my core had finally shattered, I was remade. I was the Icarus who flew high and truly reached the sun. But only because the sun was with me, loving my feathers of wax instead of turning them to ash.
Aurora, I thought, my soul roiling to the truth of my agony. What happened to you, Mom?
My mind was weak and distant, too charred to remember what had happened in the wake of my ascension. The mind only remembered darkness, the feeling of shifting scales as they coiled about my throat. But the soul remembered more.
Long ago, I'd realized that souls gravitated to ideas. Concepts. Other souls. So I drew on my love for my distant mother. I called on my hatred for Agrona, and my pain from being burned. I drew everything that stitched the love of my mother to me.
My soul quaked, blood rising into the expanse and coating the sky with the paint of memories. The scene before me changed, an echo of the past crying into the present as I pulled it from my deepest subconscious. My vision shifted as the blood of my soul swirled about me like a riptide, taking on new colors that the human eye could never perceive.
The blood-sea of my Soul used the building blocks of my past, light refracting through the crimson as it became a simulation of the past. I could feel my Anchors in the distance, but the vision of the Abyss that stretched out before me now was the lingering scent of distant autumn as winter came.
My memories imprinted themselves onto my soul. And finally, I saw Aurora again. Burned and red-haired and beautiful in her love. But she was… kneeling, staring past me into the deep, dark abyss.
It hurt me to see her like this. The very moment my soul-self laid eyes upon the kneeling shade, the entire vision rippled, like a rock thrown into a pond. I nearly lost my hold of the memory-vision as the sheer misery and despair my once-bond felt impressed itself through the world.
This isn't right, I thought, trembling slightly as I stared at the husk of the past. Whispers of her final lullaby coasted through my ears.Her angular features seemed as if they'd been smashed against stones, every bit of inborn light snuffed out. My mother shouldn't look like this. She should have never looked like this.
I turned, inspecting the past of my soul. There was so much missing. Spaces of blank and pain, sending searing agony lancing through me whenever I cast my senses about what was once mine. These were the gaping voids where insight used to be, now leaving only pain and singed nerve endings.
A living maw leaned against the Brand of the Banished. It was all I could think to describe it as. An amalgamation of a black hole and utter despair, twisted into shape by the seared ends of my soul. The outline of what they should have been was clear enough, rippling with shadow. It spoke unintelligibly, my memory of the words burned away along with my insight. All I heard was the screeching of nails along a chalkboard, discordant and wrong.
My soul did not remember whatever had stood in this creature's place. It had been burned from me, but some part of me remembered what it had done to my mother. Because she looked so broken.
And at once, I knew who this was. Agrona. There could be no other.
The shattered husk of my mother stared out into the abyss, watching something approach that I could no longer remember. Something great and terrible, just on the edges of my perception.
I remembered this, deep inside. The painted simulation trembled and warped as my lips quivered, a buried cry pulling itself from my soul. I'd remembered my mother's despair. She'd been broken, her light snuffed out and torn apart. She'd been so hurt. Because… of me. I had been hurting her.
So I'd pushed at what I could, trying to burn myself. So that the hands that hurt my mother wouldn't hurt her any more.
On cue, the shadowed black hole that represented the void in my memories twitched, its hand lurching for the Brand just behind it.
My mother saw it, kneeling as she was. She saw as I pushed through Agrona's hold for a single, barest moment. And though her fire was dead, it remade itself. She burned brightly, her hair flaring as she recognized that I still lived beneath whatever amalgamation was inside.
I couldn't hear Agrona's words as my mother threw herself at Agrona, voidspace and long-lost insight barring me. But I knew they were daggers crafted to hurt, scythes meant to tear apart Aurora's wings. And true enough, as they slammed into my mother's surging shade, she fell.
They beat at her, winter winds against a summer flame. They beat and beat and tore. But my mother snarled, no longer broken.
"You gambled wrong. You made a mistake, Vritra. You miscalculated."
Light flared in the distance, a mellowing echo of Aurora's long-gone soul. It was like another sparking flintstone against rock, looking for tinder to catch.
"Parasite."
The words flowed as Aurora rose again, casting off her shackles. "Parasite!" she repeated, her fire burning ever higher.
The words struck Agrona like a blow, the null-light hole vibrating with rage. On and on the past continued. As the Lord of the Vritra cast my mother down again and again, failing to snuff out her fire, I felt one growing in my chest. The kindling refusal to never give in—hallmark of everything loved by the Dawn—smoldered deep in my soul.
"Dead, parasite?! You think a phoenix can die?!" my mother echoed, shifting. She grew, bathing in the light of her bloodright. Arms became wings, legs became talons, and hair became feathers that coated every inch of her.
And she flew, burning and bright and undaunted. My mother cast off the shackles of the Vritra, surging toward the one who had thought to burrow into my flesh, mind, and soul. Aurora Asclepius burned brightly till the very end, embodying everything that made her my morning star.
I didn't let the memory complete. I wouldn't watch Aurora sacrifice herself for me, but I watched her pin Agrona to the ground like the ant he was. I watched her loom triumphantly over the beast, crying her victory over his soul. I watched her deny the being that had kept her in such utter terror for millennia at a time.
The simulation seeped away, the cracks of reality bleeding red, before the droplets returned to the rune-swum Sea beneath me. The crafted vision—so beautifully bright as Aurora's soul had cast me in light—slowly bled away, returning its life to whence it had come.
I stood there, silent and still as I finally put together what had happened in the wake of my Ascension. Agrona had planted some sort of… parasite in my Will. When I'd Integrated, I'd drawn it within me, too, creating the opening he'd always been waiting for.
My sea rippled, pulsing. Changing. When my Sea had been water, it had been inordinately peaceful. I'd lost that in the Breaking as I became a bleeding thing instead of a summer spring. And as ripples reverberated through the endless scarlet, my pulsesong rising like a leviathan from the deep, I knew I was growing again.
Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
I stared out into the abyss. No light came from Aurora's soul, warming my back and convincing me that there was a sunrise somewhere in the world. Now, the cosmos were dark and lifeless, even as they held the countless reflections of those I loved.
Arthur was there, somewhere in the distance. So was Sylvie and Tessia. Seris and Cylrit waited somewhere far away. Olfred, Borzen, Gruhnd, Lusul, and every person I'd cared for in Darv hunkered against the shadow that crept from the Beyond.
Chul's soul stood not far from mine. He was a burning mace that smashed and smashed and smashed, carrying the light of his mother and using it to sear away things that might grow. And I was tied to him, lingering at his back as Aurora once had at mine.
"Then show him what it means to be better," Aurora's voice echoed in the old swirl of memories. "That is what you do, is it not? You lead by example. You show the world what ought to be, rather than what is. Show a broken sinner what it means to change, my son. You've done it so many times already."
That striking of flint became the rumble of a heartbeat. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Fire caught, life breathed into the little bits of fuel provided.
My teeth ground together as I stared past Chul's soul, seeing the hundred little lanterns of once-Asclepius light. The parts of the Hearth that had taken the choice of banishment, alive and captured somewhere in Epheotus. They weren't anywhere near here. Not in this rotting fruit of a prison, with the dregs and damned of Kezess Indrath's opponents. I could feel them, wherever they were in distant Epheotus, trying desperately to make their own little lights.
They weren't my mother, but they tried. Those lanterns were given life by a now-extinguished sun. They found power in my words. In her words, to change the world and find a path forward.
I stared at those lights, finding purpose again. Finding resolve. I was phoenix, a creature of the fires. Life always sought to snuff out my fire. Sometimes it succeeded. So often the world succeeded in tearing away my warmth.
When Norgan had died, I'd lost my fire. When Mardeth had seeded my city with blithe, taking life from children and the innocent, I'd lost my fire. When Agrona had taken Greahd from me, I'd lost my fire. When I'd slain Skarn and Hornfels Earthborn, I'd lost my fire. When I'd been banished from the Asclepius, I lost my fire. When Burim broke, I lost my fire.
When Aurora died, I lost my fire.
Golden flame rose from the depths of my blood, the runes of swimming insight catching alight. So, so gold. Sunlit power suffused my spirit, dancing on the scarlet. My very Brand of the Banished changed, the white-burned stake slowly subsumed into my power. Slowly, the golden fires of my scarlet soul seeped into the dagger of damnation, spreading yellow aureate across its veins.
I turned away from all the lantern lights of the Asclepius, trying so desperately to know what it was to be a star. I turned away from the crushing mace of Chul's soul as it used that same lantern-light to break what should be remade. I turned away from Seris' moon of bright shadow, her pale surface reflecting the sudden gold of my power. I turned away from all of those I loved and cared for in this world.
Not to leave them, no. But to stand between them and the distant dark so far away, yet close as a mother's kiss.
"Dead, parasite?!" Aurora's words of defiance roared through me, echoing in the crescendo of my pulsesong. "You think a phoenix can die?!"
"You think a phoenix can die?" I echoed, glaring balefully at the distant abyss. Somewhere beyond my reach was the Beyond, taking and taking and taking. It mocked me from the distance. "You think a phoenix can die?"
What was death to me? How many times had I died and been reborn? How many times had I lost my fire, only to be reignited in the pyres of resolve? How many more times would it happen before the World understood I would not stay broken?
"She doesn't belong to you," I whispered, glaring into the endless black. Once, I'd felt such fear staring into that distance. Now, I felt the defiance my mother had left behind as she faced the one who had taken everything from her.
The Beyond had not claimed my mother. It did not deserve her. It had no right to keep her light from me. From Chul. From all the lantern lights seeking her example.
"I'll take her back from you," I snarled, soul thundering with golden heartbeats. "I'll free my family. I'll take back my body. And I'll free her from your chains."
I spared Death one more disdainful stare, turning back to see all those I defied it for. Threads wove through my mind, my eyes drifting across Circe Milview's distant soul as it gave me ideas. The reality of what Seris had become fueled my footsteps.
My defiant eyes landed on the mace of Chul's soul. If there was anyone who would refuse to let the Beyond claim Aurora, it was Chul. In that, we were kindred.
I closed my eyes, and when they opened again, I was once again a shade within a too-gray cavern. But compared to the darkness of the abyss, it was still so paltry. A pathetic attempt to sap life from that which would never stay lifeless.
Wren moped in a corner, mumbling something to himself as he drew designs in the dust with a finger. His intent was one of calcified cynicism, a man who had let the smothering wind of the world turn his Hearth cold.
Chul was sitting again, meditating with his hands gripping his knees. I could feel the Hoshwater circulating to his core, refilling it at a meager pace. He would need to drink far, far more of it to refill his core to maximum capacity.
That was fine. We had time to put my burgeoning plan into motion.
The son of Dawn slowly opened his eyes as I loomed over him. The moment he saw me, an honest grin split his face, his eyes dancing. "Ah, brother!" he said, some tension in his shoulders loosening. "When you vanished, I worried for your safety! But all is well, and…"
He tilted his head like a curious bird, so much like my mother used to do. He blinked, momentarily surprised. "You bring morning with you," he whispered, quietly awed.
I spared a glance down at my shaded form, considering his words.
When Aurora's shade had first appeared to me, she'd been so bright. She was always backlit by a rising sun, casting dawnlight in shades of ochre and magenta through the not-light. She appeared like an ethereal angel, come with hope and light for a stumbling mortal.
I burned bright, and my colors were not so warm. I saw the light as it streamed from my spirit. I wasn't the Dawn, as my mother was. I was the sun high in the sky, ringed in gold. I was harsh, angry midday.
I was not the morning, but Chul was right. I would bring the morning back.
I exhaled through my nose. "We have work to do, Chul," I said quietly, staring into the half-phoenix's eyes. "Beyond these prison walls, Roa, Lithen, Diella, and a hundred others are captured by the Indraths. Seris works alone against the Vritra. And we—Lady Dawn's sons—are here. Trapped. Caged."
I knelt, leaning in close to the young phoenix. I pressed my hand onto his shoulder—not in the purely comforting way Aurora would have, but with a dose of steel and defiance. I stared into the young man's eyes, seeing my defiance mirrored back at me.
"Aurora never broke beneath Taegrin Caelum. And neither will we. We are going to escape this place. We're going to free the Hearth, and we're going to bring war to the false gods of Alacrya with phoenix fire and dawnlight. But beyond all that, there is one thing I can promise you."
My mind flashed to the bodies high above. Mine, lacking its anchoring stake of Inversion. And another, smuggled from the depths of Taegrin Caelum by a grieving titan who had lost his hope.
"The Beyond stole our mother from us. And we will take her back."