4.65: Impulse

Staffbreaker brings to hidden lair

Both scout and vessel, unprepared

Unaware of tribute thrice

He will be called to sacrifice.

They travel, lost, around the Heart,

Walk deep in shadows of old scars,

But when the soulless shades they find,

They’ll pay a part of their own minds.

Staffbreaker’s soul will be laid claim

By ghosts of spells that wax and wane;

Surrender brings with shocking ease

Truths no real person ever sees.

The shades will watch and act as one

And he will see what must be done –

The body of the New God’s home

When broken, also breaks his own.

The Heartbound has now made his choice,

And Destiny lives in his voice,

Restless and still settling –

He lacks the strength with which to sing.

He arrives early, circles brief

Within the ring of metal teeth

Marked, followed, by the speaker’s Kiss,

To call him back to what he’ll miss.

To imitate the ancient home

With hallways etched down to the bone

He bears the power locked in pearl

And carries it above the world.

The Airess carries in her blood

A power without room enough

And once the vessel is refined,

It’s grown too much for just one mind.

To stay alive so far from home

She must borrow another’s throne

A place she can open her mind

To truths hidden deep in time.

But foresight alone does not bring

Knowledge they need to climb and sing.

Assistance must the Airess find

To break a tooth and open an eye.

Kylie carefully read the prophecy off my tablet one more time. “Hmm,” she said.

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s a lot. Some of this would’ve been super useful if we still had it in the months after it was given, and some of it’s pretty confusing, but either way it’s… a lot.”

We were back in the valley. I ran my fingers through the rushing water of the little stream while Kylie frowned at the tablet. “You sure this is accurate? I mean, it’s a lot to remember.”

“I remember it accurately,” I told her. “I always remember them accurately.”

“And how exactly does this relate to me dy – ?”

“Here.” I tapped the eighth paragraph. “All this stuff about your power being too much for your mind. See, we already knowthat about Fionnrath’s Destiny. It’s like the kuracar spells; it’s too big, too powerful, to be borne entirely by its host. It doesn’t work properly outside its locus.”

“Yeah, but it’s never been a risk to my life before. I mean, except for that one time in the Labyrinth of Dreams where we – oh.”

“Yeah. It’s smart, for a spell. It stayed… small enough? Dormant enough? I don’t know the right words, but it stayed nonfunctional enough not to kill you outright, like some spells do. It kept doing its very limited thing of short-term death prophecies for people close to you, until we went to Duniyasar and it had enough power to give half of the Hero and Child prophecy, but even then it stayed pretty calm until we ended up down there, in that place saturated by magic, for hours. If we hadn’t made that familiarity bond, there’s a decent chance it would have killed you.”

“Yeah. Probably. But that was ages ago; why are you suddenly now so – ”

“Because it’s getting stronger. It didn’t calm down, it didn’t stop being dangerous. It’s been pouring more and more magic into me! I’m not all that worried about that; it’s not giving me any more than I can handle, same as it doesn’t give you more than you can handle. But that’s only true for as long as this familiarity bond is stable. What if the bond breaks?” I pulled up my sleeve and flashed my familiarity mark, dragging a finger along the long slashed cut through it a failed effort to break the link. “We already tried to break it, right after it was made; it’s just, you know, magically sticky. What if something changes and it’s no longer so sticky, and we can’t predict it? It’s not going to suddenly shrink back down in power and activity again. If this bond breaks, it’ll kill you. Or what if I die? Or what if I do something stupid, like last night, and lose control of the power temporarily, and it washes back and kills you? Or what if you’re casting and there’s just a perfectly normal compatability problem, and the perfectly normal miscasting familiar backlash is too much power and kills you? There are three paragraphs here for each of us, and two of yours are warning you that your spell is too powerful for you and you need to ‘steal another’s throne’ to be safe, which I have to assume means taking the place normally reserved for a Mac Fionn and going to your locus.”

“Fionnrath.”

“Yeah. We received this warning a year ago, right after we first created the familiarity bond. I’m at the point where I can barely tolerate Malas’ scans any more; you could probably incapacitate me with just about any magical effect that gets in the body, no matter what it does. I’ve just been kind of assuming that we’ll be able to get the Council to reverse their decision, but I don’t think we should. I think we need to get you to Fionnrath as soon as possible, and that means saving the world as soon as possible. I won’t lose you as well.”

“By the Points, you are such a dick.”

“… What?”

“You think I want to lose you?! You want to just go jumping into a fucking enchanted lake with no plan and get yourself killed, exactly the same as what happened in that well in Duniyasar, because what, you got a bit spooked about me maybe dying? I’ve been worried about you, everyone’s been worried about you, ever since we made this fucking bond, and any time anyone shows any concern you brush us off like we’re being stupid. But oh, you get to be worried about losing people, and run off to do stupid shit because of it. And honestly, the justification for your worry about me is a lot vaguer than the worry about you! We misinterpret these prophecies every single time, but you’re banking everything on your first guess for this one?”

“The prophecy doesn’t matter! It’s outdated, it’s predicting futures that are no longer possible. The entire first third of this thing is irrelevant since M – since that well in Dinuyasar, and we don’t know how much of the other paragraphs is still relevant because of that. We can’t fulfil Destiny’s plan any more. But the thing is, even if I’m misinterpreting those paragraphs, everything I just said is still true. Your spell is definitely too big to hold on your own; we already know this. We already know that there’s a hundred ways you can get magical backlash from miscasting or problems with a familiarity link, we already know that our link is completely unpredictable and whatever’s holding it together isn’t this familiarity mark alone, we already know that Fionnrath’s Destiny needs to be within its locus to work properly and be safely handled at full power. I don’t see how my interpretation of that part of the prophecy can be wrong, but even if it is, that changes nothing. We need to hurry up and – ”

“Oh no, that’s just an excuse. You’re just doing what you always do when you’re in a bad mood; finding the first random urgent-sounding thing you can throw yourself into to distract yourself. We’re not going to endanger both our lives and the entire world just because you’re grieving – ”

“Well what do you want me to do?” I asked, throwing my hands up. “I just spent last night getting lectured by a busybody arsehole because everyone’s apparently so concerned that I’m ‘sulking’ and not doing anything, but if I come out and actually do something I’m being dangerously impulsive. How am I supposed to deal with this, exactly? What do you want me to do, Kylie? How do you want me to feel? Just tell me exactly what I’m supposed to – ”

“I don’t know! I don’t know, okay? Do you think I’m handling this any better than you are?”

“I wouldn’t know! You’re never around to talk about it, always off in classes or making out with Talbot or – ”

“You’re never around! You’re always off making potions or researching weird theories about runes that I know you have no actual interest in!”

“… Well, do you want to talk about it?”

“No. I don’t want to talk about it, and I don’t want to ignore it, and I don’t want to keep thinking about it and I don’t want to stop remembering. I just want the whole thing to never have happened. But I think a great way to get ourselves killed would be to run off with impulsive, half-cocked plans right now.”

“And where do you propose we get the information to fully cock our plans?”

“Well, we have this entire ten-verse prophecy to analyse. That might be a start.”

I flopped back onto the grass and stared up at the clouds. “Have you talked to your therapist about what happened yet?”

“No. You?”

“Not yet.”

“So, this prophecy...”

“Do we have to do it right now?” I asked. “I just...”

“Yeah,” Kylie sighed. “I can’t focus on important stuff right now either.” She handed my my tablet and stood up. “I have homework to do, anyway.”

“Anything I can help with?”

“How much do you like differential equations?”

“Ha! No.”

I watched her leave. Then I stood up. Stretched. Glanced back at the waterfall over the caves that lead to the Lake of Inquisition. And turned and headed back into the school.

For just a couple of minutes, I let myself plan it. Kylie would probably avoid me for a few hours, or at least assume I was avoiding her, meaning that if I didn’t come back to the room, she wouldn’t worry. I could go to the shop, buy an oxygen tank and whatever supplies I needed, jump into that lake and go get the answers we needed and probably be back before she had time to worry.

I reached a fork in the tunnels. Looked down the tunnel leading to the shops. Sighed. Turned down the other one.

About ten minutes later, I was knocking on a bedroom door. Saina’s muscular, tattooed bodyguard answered it and glared me down.

“Is the sparkle princess in?” I asked.

“Kayden!” Saina appeared under her bodyguard’s elbow, face lit with delighted surprise. “I haven’t seen you around, after… I thought… hey, are you okay?”

“Yeah,” I sniffed, rubbing away the tears that were just starting to form in my eyes.

“Hey,” Saina said. “Hey, it’s – ”

I burst into tears.

Saina ducked under her bodyguard’s arm, ignoring the woman’s protests, and threw her arms around me. I buried my head in her shoulder.

“Do you want to watch some really awful TV that doesn’t require any serious thought?” she asked gently.

I nodded into her shoulder.

“Have you ever seen an Indian soap opera?”

I shook my head.

“Fantastic, I have just the thing. You’re going to hate their cinematic conventions so much…”