4.66: Dissection

1] Staffbreaker brings to hidden lair

2] Both scout and vessel, unprepared

3] Unaware of tribute thrice

4] He will be called to sacrifice.

5] They travel, lost, around the Heart,

6] Walk deep in shadows of old scars,

7] But when the soulless shades they find,

8] They’ll pay a part of their own minds.

9] Staffbreaker’s soul will be laid claim

10] By ghosts of spells that wax and wane;

11] Surrender brings with shocking ease

12] Truths no real person ever sees.

13] The shades will watch and act as one

14] And he will see what must be done –

15] The body of the New God’s home

16] When broken, also breaks his own.

17] The Heartbound has now made his choice,

18] And Destiny lives in his voice,

19] Restless and still settling –

20] He lacks the strength with which to sing.

21] He arrives early, circles brief

22] Within the ring of metal teeth

23] Marked, followed, by the speaker’s Kiss,

24] To call him back to what he’ll miss.

25] To imitate the ancient home

26] With hallways etched down to the bone

27] He bears the power locked in pearl

28] And carries it above the world.

29] The Airess carries in her blood

30] A power without room enough

31] And once the vessel is refined,

32] It’s grown too much for just one mind.

33] To stay alive so far from home

34] She must borrow another’s throne

35] A place she can open her mind

36] To truths hidden deep in time.

37] But foresight alone does not bring

38] Knowledge they need to climb and sing.

39] Assistance must the Airess find

40] To break a tooth and open an eye.

“Okay,” Kylie said. “Where do we start?”

We were back in the valley, staring down at the prophecy we’d copied onto physical paper. It just seemed right to analyse it that way. Max had always preferred paper.

“Well,” I said, “there’s a lot here that we can straight-up discard. Lines one to ten already happened, and lines eleven to sixteen are impossible.”

“What’s line two, though? Scout and vessel? The vessel’s mentioned later, so that’s something important.”

“Something incomplete that we brought down to the labyrinth, that’s a danger to your magic, according to thirty one and thirty two.”

“We brought a lot of supplies down. We should make a list later. It might be telling us that we need to make something out of what we had, to ‘prepare the heart in offering’.

“Hmm. Maybe. The first couple of Heartbound verses are pretty self-explanatory, too. That’s just me becoming your familiar, right?”

“And lacking the strength with which to sing.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“No idea, but it does tell us something very important. Remember the Hero and Child prophecy? ‘Prepare its heart in offering, and be the music; climb, and sing.’ Assuming they’re talking about the same thing, we know that’s specifically your job now. You need to sing.”

“So what the hell does ‘be the music’ mean? And it better not mean literal singing.”

“Unless your spell is activated that way.”

“… What?”

“Your spell’s bound up tight for now, but what if it needs to be awoken for any of this? What if you cast by singing?”

“I really, really hope not. I refuse to unlock the power within my heart by singing all of our problems away. I will not be a disney princess.”

“I know they tend to sing, but name one Disney princess who sang her problems away.”

“The little mermaid.”

“Pretty sure her Prince speared her problems away with the front of a ship.”

“Did he? It’s been awhile since I’ve seen the movie.”

“My point is, you have to do the climbing and singing, apparently. So that’s valuable information. Whatever it entails.”

“Well… it might just be an elemental designation thing.” I pointed at the mage mark on Kylie’s cheek. “It calls you the Airess, so we know it can use elemental designations to differentiate people. Maybe it means I have to do… something… to do with my elemental designation of sound. Be my true self in some way, or… oh man, that’s even more Disney.”

“Hmm. Possibly.”

“‘Sound travels best in air,’” I said.

“What?”

“It’s something I remember the spellthing from my initiation saying when we were down under the school. Well, no; I remember you saying that the spellthing said it. Apparently it harped on about it a bit. I don’t remember exactly what it said, but…”

“Sound and air.” Kylie nodded. “That sounds like it was probably giving us advice about the familiarity bond.”

“Yeah, probably. Ugh, this is so frustrating!”

“Tell me about it.”

“Anyway, it was harping on about sound and air, too. So it’s possible that these sound references are about my elemental designation. To ‘be the music, climb and sing’ probably has something to do with my body, or my personality, or my magic, or – ugh, I hate prophecies.”

“Yeah, sometimes I just want to stab myself in the face and cut the damn thing out. Where were we?”

“Out of the first twenty lines of this, we know there’s some kind of ‘scout’ and ‘vessel’, and that I’m the one who needs to ‘climb and sing’ but I’m not strong enough to do it. Or at least, I wasn’t strong enough to do it a year ago. That’s… not very much information, for such a long prophecy.”

“Well, it is a year old. It probably would’ve been a lot more useful if our memories hadn’t been wiped. So, the next verse?”

“We know about the speaker’s Kiss,” I said, rubbing the bite scars on my arm. “Those scars were used to tip us off to the memory wipe and bring back any memories of this in the first place. We’ve done that part.”

“And the ‘ring of metal teeth’?”

“Well, I mean, if we’re talking elemental designations…”

“Steel,” Kylie whispered, rubbing her arm where Max’s mage mark, with his elemental designation, had been tattooed. “But… wouldn’t it just have said ‘steel’?”

“Hmm. You’re right. And I don’t see what teeth – oh! I’m an idiot. It’s talking about the ‘speaker’s Kiss’, which was literally a bite. With teeth. I don’t know how metal fits into that, though.”

“Yeah, why would it call them metal?”

“It might be a reference to something we’ve forgotten.”

“Hmm. Maybe. Okay, next verse? Twenty five to twenty eight. Still talking about you, presumably. What do they mean by imitating an ancient home? And hallways etched in bone?”

“Well, we did find that skeleton with runes etched all over it.”

“True, but I’m not sure what that has to do with anything.”

“In one of my memory fragments, our friend says he needs the arm for something. I don’t know what, but the runes must have some kind of power. And higher up, in lines fifteen and sixteen…”

Kylie tapped the lines with a finger. “I see what you mean. It seems like ‘homes’ might be bodies? But I don’t see how that makes sense.”

“Fionnrath’s Destiny is a spell. They’re parasites. They infect and live inside human bodies.”

“That’s the absolute grossest possible way you could have phrased that, but fair – oh! Enchantments!”

“What about enchantments?”

“They’re how you house a spell outside of a human body! They imitate a spell’s traditional home! Our friend was building tools that Fionnrath’s Destiny said we needed, and he was using these ancient runes to do it, and he first discovered those runes on that skeleton!” She frowned. “But, if I’ve understood the flow of the prophecy correctly, this part of it is about you.”

“He made a lot of his progress experimenting on me,” I reminded her. “He’d paint the runes on my arms and use the interruptions in your magic to determine how the power was flowing. Not to mention the scarring over my heart from the lake monster thing.”

“Okay, so lines twenty five and twenty six are about your role in developing these tools. Which we don’t have, so they’re irrelevant. Which isn’t great, because the next couple of lines suggest that this role is important for carrying the power to the top of the world, and if we don’t have everything you need to do that part, then – ”

“Hang on.” I tapped line twenty seven. “‘He bears the power locked in pearl’. Have we heard that before?”

“I… don’t know? Another prophecy?”

“The only other mention of pearls in the prophecies in my mind is in the Hero and the Child prophecy – ‘breaks mirrors, chains and crushes pearls, to rise from the top of the world’. But I could’ve sworn I’d heard about powerful pearls somewhere else. Something I read, maybe?”

“Well, you read a lot of potion recipes. Are pearls used in potions?”

“Oh! Yes! They’re mostly calcium carbonate; they dissolve well in acids. I haven’t worked with them, but I definitely recall seeing a few recipes with them. Do you think that’s what that’s about?”

“Probably. The first line, talking about a ‘vessel unprepared’ – you were definitely carrying potions when we went down into the Labyrinth, right?”

“Oh, yeah. The healing potion we used, a couple of energy potions… you think the ‘vessel’ is a potion vial? We need the right potion?”

“Which is one with pearls in it!”

“Great!” I made a note to look through every pearl-containing potion recipe I could find. This was really coming together. “Okay, so for my last verse, I, uh… I was supposed to ascend with something enchanted, and some kind of pearl-containing magical potion, take them to the top of Duniyasar, and… ‘be the music’?”

“Honestly, that just sounds like you’re meant to get high. Maybe the world gets saved if we have a magical rave at the top of the tower at Duniyasar.”

“Ha, yeah. Let’s just do that. That sounds way more fun. Okay, onto the part about you.”

“Lines twenty nine to thirty two are pretty self explanatory,” Kylie said. “I think you might be right about them being a warning about the power of Fionnrath’s Destiny.”

“And thirty three and thirty four are about you being safe in Fionnrath,” I said.

“No, I don’t think so. It feels.. discordant, for the prophecy to include random advice about what to do after we save the world. This has to be about saving the world, and we know you need to be in the Duniyasar tower to do that, meaning I can’t be in Fionnrath. You’d have to be with me.”

“Not necessarily,” I said. “I have to be close to you for the familiarity link to work properly. Being apart for too long sucks, but it’s not like we die immediately if separated. Maybe Fionnrath’s Destiny needs to be away from the school while this is all happening.”

“Yeah… maybe. I still don’t think that’s the right read, though. How is going to Fionnrath ‘borrowing another’s throne’?”

“Your spell rightfully belongs to the Mac Fionn family. You don’t see yourself as one of them, do you?”

“I don’t, but they do. This prophecy was given by Fionnrath’s Destiny; I don’t think it’d characterise going back to its own locus as ‘borrowing’ a throne.”

“Hmm.” I chewed my cheek thoughtfully. “Maybe you need to overthrow someone. Political revolution, yeah! Take Alania’s place on the High Council, and get fired right afterwards for breaking society!”

Kylie giggled. “Sure, I’ll put that on my ‘to do’ list. “okay, lines thirty five and six – opening my mind to truths hidden deep in time.”

“Casting your spell,” I said. “Pretty straightforward. Why does it always have to make everything sound so fucking dramatic?”

“Its job is to be a prophet-god for a small town, I think drama is part of the job description. Last verse?”

“Fionnrath’s Destiny can’t give us all the answers and we need an alternate source of information, and it’s your job to find it, apparently,” I said. “And break a tooth.”

“I hope not literally. I hate my dentist. How the hell does breaking a tooth help open an eye?”

“I assume the opening an eye part is increasing the power of Fionnrath’s Destiny to – ”

“Well, yes, obviously, but how does breaking a tooth, metaphorically or literally, accomplish that?”

“No idea. But according to the prophecy, getting help for that is your job, not mine!”

“Some help you are.”

“If you’re still expecting me to be helpful then that’s on you.” I skimmed our notes. “So, in summary…”

Kylie started counting points off her fingers. “We know that you’re the one who needs to climb the tower do to… whatever. And to do that you need a pearl-containing potion, we think, and also some kind of enchanted thing – ”

“ – which is probably something our friend was supposed to make, so we’ll have to figure out exactly what it was supposed to be and find a substitute – ”

“ – right, so you need to identify the potion we need, which will probably give us a clearer idea of what we need to do, and that should give us some idea about what the enchanted object is for. Meanwhile, I need to overthrow someone in charge of something, I guess?”

“It says you ‘borrow’ a throne, so overthrowing might not be necessary. Also, they might just mean, like, a literal chair.”

“Boring, but possible. And I also need to acquire help in increasing my powers of prophecy so I can ‘see truths hidden deep in time’ when the time comes. And doing this will apparently involve breaking a tooth, so. Great. All in all, a prophecy that would’ve been far more useful a year ago, but it gives us some stuff to work with.”

“You forgot the last point,” I said.

“I did?”

“Yeah.” I counted off another finger for her. “There’s like an eighty per cent chance that we’ve wildly misinterpreted every single part of this.”

“Well, yeah. Obviously. I think that part probably goes without saying by now.”