4.37: The Path

We went straight to Duniyasar. Max wanted to talk to Fionnrath’s Destiny, and seemed determined not to waste any time. My presence wasn’t strictly required, but after certain events involving certain now-dead prophecy mentors, I was reluctant to leave Kylie channelling magic there. Duniyasar was essentially how I remembered it, although notably cleaner in some areas. It wasn’t hard to see which parts of the building had garnered Max’s academic interest and which hadn’t; you just had to look for sand and dust.

We didn’t even bother climbing the tower. As soon as we got to the conference room or assembly hall or whatever it was at the very bottom, Kylie started channelling. I took a seat on one of the rickety benches and reminded myself that there wasn’t any danger; Lydia was dead.

Well, there was danger. Kylie’s spell was pretty powerful, and she and I had fragile human bodies. But there wasn’t any unusual level of danger.

Kylie closed her eyes, and Fionnrath’s Destiny opened them.

Max didn’t waste time. “Faith. You said that if I was to break the world, I must first break myself three times. You said that I’d already broken my mind, and I had the body and soul to go. My question is this: if I am to break the world, which do I break next? My soul or my body?”

The Destiny cocked Kylie’s head. “There are many ways to break a world.”

“I want to do it as reliably as possible, and with the lowest number of human deaths possible.”

“To achieve the lowest number of human deaths, you should not break the world.”

“Yes, yes; I know, some people are going to die. But a lot more will die if we don’t, right? If the Child gets free, won’t that kill everyone?”

“If the Child is freed, everyone will die. If the Child is not freed, everyone will die. The Child being freed will result in the lowest number of human deaths.”

“Wait, what? Everyone’s going to die anyway?! I don’t – ”

“Oh,” I said. “I think I get it. Kylie’s spell is really bad at time, right? And the consequences of any action keep going into eternity.”

“So?”

“So, humanity has a one hundred per cent death rate. If the birth rate goes up, the eventual death rate goes up. You just told it that you want to wipe out humanity as quickly as possible.”

“That’s… I hate spells.”

“Yeah, maybe we should take anything this thing says with a grain of salt.”

“Okay, Faith. I want to break the world in a way that doesn’t cave in the school. Is that possible?”

The spell cocked Kylie’s head again, but said nothing.

“‘But jailers have a chance to choose just how much they wish to lose’,” I quoted.

“Right! Yes! Perfect! I want to break the world as reliably as possible, with jailers losing as little as possible.” He didn’t look too happy about the stipulation he’d just made. It was still pretty full of holes. We didn’t understand exactly what Fionnrath’s Destiny considered an asset that the jailers could ‘lose’, but it would have to do for now.

The Destiny seemed to understand, anyway. It put a finger to Max’s cheek, in the approximate spot where Kylie’s own mage mark was, and stared intensely into his eyes.

“To break the world, you must first break yourself three times. To break the world in this way, this is what will happen. The Staffbreaker will venture into the bowels of the world for secrets and fight its own demons. The Staffbreaker will learn great secrets and then sacrifice these treasures, breaking its own mind. The Heartbound and the Airess will walk in its footsteps and make these sacrifices also. This happens in a time that has already been.”

Max nodded. “Yeah, we’ve done that bit.”

“The secrets are lost but they are necessary. The Staffbreaker will not strike the final blow against the world. The Staffbreaker will make the tools. This happens in a time that has almost been. The Staffbreaker will make the tools and it will grow restless. It will go in search of the lost memories.”

“But… the memories weren’t recorded, right? With the potion we took. How can they be recovered?”

“A mind is not required to record a memory. The Staffbreaker will give its soul in payment without knowing what it is buying, but it will make the decision in full knowledge of the cost. Thus the soul is broken.”

“And the body?”

“The mind must be broken to be ready to make the tools. The soul must be broken to be worthy to regain the secrets known to no mage. The body must be broken to prepare the world for breaking. The Staffbreaker must be broken all three times, to break the world.”

“Hang on,” I said, “secrets known to no mage? What?”

I was ignored. “So the body and soul aren’t broken together. They’re separate events. Right?”

“Yes. The body will be needed to find the secrets.”

Max nodded. “So I’m on the right track. Good. I was wondering if I should just give up and cut off my arm or something.”

Wait, what?

“Okay,” Max said. “Let’s go.”

“You don’t want to ask it anything else? The secret purpose of all life or anything?”

“I don’t trust it with details. I just wanted to make sure I’d interpreted its last advice correctly.”

We woke Kylie up by just kind of… shaking her gently and waving hands in front of her face until she stopped channelling. I was thinking hard the whole time. I felt kind of dumb that I was only just now figuring out what Max’s plan was, and why he was so calm about the ‘break yourself three times’ thing. It was obvious!

If breaking his mind involved permanently losing some memories, it made sense that breaking his body might involve losing a limb or something. Man, that was… not great. Sure, fate of the world and all that, but that would really suck. Still, it was breaking the soul that had terrified me from the start, because there was no possible way to interpret that in any way that wasn’t super horrible. At least, no way that I’d noticed. Until now. Because I wasn’t a legacy mage.

Max had never espoused any kind of spiritual beliefs; I was pretty sure he didn’t believe in souls. Bht he was a legacy mage. And when you talk about ‘souls’ with a legacy mage who doesn’t believe in actual souls, the obvious connection is…

“So,” I said to Max as Kylie came back to herself, “you’re going to sacrifice your spell to break the world?”

“Yes,” he said. “You saw how much power was released that time we accidentally discharged Kylie’s magic through your arm. We cracked the floor.” He pulled something out of his pocket and brandished it a bit. I recognised it; it was his awl thing, with complicated runes on it. Stick the metal spike into a mage mark, touch the handle to something… and end up in the medical ward with an arm full of shattered bones. “Imagine,” he said, “how much power we can release if I can figure out how to draw out the entire spell.”

“So your plan is literally to just blow up everything with magic?”

“Not everything. But I assume explosions will be required.” He frowned at the awl. “At least, I did. According to Fionnrath’s Destiny, I have other stuff to do after discharging the spell and before the world breaks, so I guess it’s going to be a long, involved process? Anyway, it confirmed I was on the right track. I’m supposed to be making the tools and not just amputating my arm to get rid of it or something, so it’s good to know I’m not wasting our very limited time.”

“And when we do get to the part about breaking your body…?”

“Fate of the world. Sacrifices have to be made.”

“You’ve been pretty… blasé about this kind of thing lately.”

“Look who’s talking, Mr Reckless.” Max started heading out of the building. Kylie and I rushed to catch up.

“Seriously though, are you alright?” I asked.

“Am I alright? How are you alright? I know you’re trying not to freak out and all, but come on!”

I shrugged. “I mean, fate of the world is pretty scary, but remember when we thought we were going to have to kill me to save it? So, y’know, this is better – ”

“We’re on a time limit now.”

“There’s always been a time limit – whenever the Child is born. Now we just have a definite time limit. Maybe it’s a false one, maybe the Child will be born in three months, and we don’t even have the full seven months!”

“Well, thanks for that lovely thought. I’m definitely not freaking out even more now. Anyway, Kylie’s right in that fighting against the Council will bring more attention to us, so we need to make sure we know what we’re doing with the world breaking, and how much attention we can afford, before we can figure out how best to fight the Council’s rulings. And I am going to find a way to force them to remove that fucking geas.”

"It's fine."

“It’s not fine! They tricked you and then did the worst thing to you that they could, because Solus felt like being a bully! I bet he only did it to piss off Miratova or the Fiore, too; I bet he doesn’t even care about – ”

“You think this is the worst thing they could do to me?” I asked.

“In that kind of underhanded way, yeah. They couldn’t saddle you with a debt or sentence you to prison or anything without causing a stir, so they put a leash on you for the rest of your life, just to be cruel.”

“No, I… I don’t think that’s a fair interpretation of what happened,” I said. “I think this really was a warning. They wanted to show me and the rest of the coven that we should back off, before we did something that they’d have to respond to with something a lot worse. If they were trying to hurt me, they would’ve done worse than this.”

“They couldn’t, without – ”

“I meant, they would’ve put me under a far worse geas.”

“Contract spells have limits. If that Voice kid was the only one on hand – ”

“No, he could’ve done worse to me. I know that spell. I think I do, anyway, and if I’m right, I definitely got off lightly.”

Max stared.

“Wait,” Kylie spoke up. “You know that guy?”

“No. Just the spell. He looked about our age, right? Probably went through our Initiation, or the one right before or right after.”

“Yeah, probably?”

“Well, you know my friend Mae? Older than us? She told me about her Initiation once. She very nearly ended up with a contract spell that could compel people to do things. It lives in the tongue. And you need to know the target’s name. You call them by name, tell them what to do, and… they do it. She was able to avoid getting it, so it still would’ve been in the Pit when she left, ready for a new host in another Initiation.”

“Mmm,” Max said. “That is a lot of shared detail.”

“Exactly. And that spell could tell people what to do. It could also tell people what to feel. She told people… well, not people, but, it’s complicated… anyway. She told them to be happy about throwing themselves into a fire, and they went from tearful terror to absolute joy and flung themselves right in. If Solus had been interested in results, or in pissing off Miratova or Fiore, he would’ve punished my treason with expulsion and had the Voice tell Kylie and I to be happy about going to Fionnrath. They’d have to be careful with the wording so it didn’t look suspicious to anyone, but since they don’t know we’re trying to save the world, there’s no reason that people wouldn’t believe it. It’s a great career move for Kylie and it’s hardly a step backwards for me, especially if I were expelled. It would’ve been all neat and tidy, and Kylie and I would be so happy and excited about our futures.”

I was talking to the air, it seemed. Kylie and Max had stopped walking. I turned around. They were both staring at me, expressions unreadable.

“Ah,” Kylie said. “That’s. Um.”

I nodded. “They might not be playing fair, but they could be playing worse.”

We started walking again.

“Do you think they’d do something like that?” Kylie asked.

“No,” I said. “I mean, they could have, but they didn’t. That’s my point. I think this genuinely was a warning, and it’s one I intend to take seriously.”

We walked in silence, out of the building and toward the portal back to school. Just as we were about to enter the school, Max cleared his throat. “Right. I suppose I’ll… keep working on this, then,” he said, waving the awl, “and hopefully, when I’m finished, it’ll be a bit more apparent what specifically I need to do.”

Kylie nodded. “Kayden and I have a job we need to do, too.”

“We do?” I asked.

She nodded again. “We need to tell everyone that we’re leaving after next semester.”

Oh. Yeah.

There were a few conversations I wasn’t looking forward to.