"Would this be called a beginning, for the man was not born here, and he will die his death elsewhere? His greatest battle awaited on a distant rock smothered in ash, where he would greet his friends and at last face his foes. Yet the tale begins on a day most mundane, in a place so serene—for to study an avalanche, one must first heed the pebble that stirs the first fall of snow."
The man opened his eyes reluctantly. The chatter from the outer halls had risen to an unbearable frenzy, and the restless flutter of pigeons struggling for balance upon his window rail only worsened the noise. It was a warm morning at the Temple-Castle of Thablis. The grand edifice served as the permanent seat of a Padre and stood among the holiest sites of the man's faith. The temple was more library than shrine and more school than fortress, often coming to life in the hours before the first light of dawn.
This summer had been full of restless nights—three grand balls for the graduation of the new generation of Priest Templars, and a brawl between Silvion and Seluk had left the latter disgraced. To be expelled from Thablis overnight and denied entry thereafter was a stain no Padre could forgive. Still, Mirander thought, Padre Silvion had always been dismissive of Admiral Seluk.
The past week had been one of agony. At least now he could no longer smell the rot in his wounds—a sign, perhaps, of healing. Yet the itch beneath his skin remained raw.
A moon before Silvion led him to the cellar beneath the castle—
a cellar devoid of wine and filled instead with the gutted remains of a colossal, unknown machine whose roar never ceased—
she had acquainted him with the chained
man.
The figure had been impossible to forget: bald, colorless, his skull grotesquely oversized for the thin body it crowned, his skin stippled with black boils that wept down his neck.
Silvion had questioned him about Mirander's readiness for propinquity metamorphosis.
The chained man had answered with a rasping laugh and an assurance far too pleased for the subject at hand.
He declared Mirander ready—twice, slowly, as if tasting the word—and in that windowless chamber the repetition had carried a weight that made Mirander's stomach knot.
The other words the creature had muttered haunted him still.
They rose unbidden in his mind with every breath, curling like smoke:
Praise Mekan in His unending design…
He who shaped the world for men to end upon…
He who waits in shadow and strikes at light…
Mirander lay half-dead in his bed, his voice cracked and thin as he forced out a whisper—
a prayer, a mantra, or perhaps a plea to drown the memory:
"I am the cutting edge of light before which all shadows are held at bay."
He dragged himself from the bed and sat upright, his head bowed toward the floor. The skin of his left leg was still milky white; his toes, a feverish yellow. That leg had burned the worst. Those damn butterflies, he thought. They burned me clean past the skin. The fat had melted away, and much of the flesh had been surgically removed during recovery.
Nanomachines had since rebuilt muscle, fiber, and organ from charred bone—but the healing would take time.
He limped to the window. The draperies hung wide, letting the light spill in. Below, children played by the River Panticar. It was well past dawn. I've never had the habit of sloth, he murmured, opening the window. A gust of cool summer wind struck his face.
"I love the color in his eyes—Hassar green—and the way he smiles, oh, his round plump lips..." He heard the girl's thoughts clearly from where she sat beneath his window.
All that agony, he thought, just to learn what others think. A cheap trick.
He turned to the bedside table, reached for the pitcher of milk, and flexed his fingers around the handle. The tingling in his wrist grew to a sharp itch. The jug would not move. He dropped his hand, disgust heavy in his gaze. He could have called for servants—if not for his pride.
"What kind of man can't lift his own drink?" he muttered with a weary sigh.
Outside, a flock of birds took flight. In the beat of their wings he could hear the changing wind. Summer was ending. Fall would soon set in—those short, joyless days he despised. He never stayed for the season; he always found a mission, a planet, an excuse to leave before the gloom descended.
A sharp idea struck him.
He bent carefully at the waist, lowering his torso until it hovered parallel to the circular table. Then he gripped the pitcher's spout between his grinding teeth and tugged, inch by inch, until it teetered at the table's edge.
He knelt.
The motion tilted the jug, and milk spilled over. Most of it splashed across his face; the rest streaked down his robes. A few droplets slid down his throat and made him choke.
He straightened his neck with a gasp. The pitcher clattered back onto the table with a hollow sound.
Something else caught his attention—the sickly cooing at the window rail.
A pigeon, unsteady on its claws, bobbed its head. A thin white fluid dribbled from its beak and fell to the courtyard far below.
Bloody bastards didn't let me sleep all night, and they bleed bloody white, he thought bitterly. If I had the strength, I'd throw the cup at it. Not that it wouldn't dodge.
His gaze returned to the table, narrowing on the lightweight wooden cup. He reached for it with the same hand that had failed to lift the jug of milk, gnashing his teeth, and plunged it into the pitcher. Milk spilled in two streams—one to the floor, one across the table—before both joined in a slow drizzle down to the stone tiles. With effort he lifted the cup, now heavy and brimming.
The milk was cool and sweet.
Such a simple pleasure.
He drank deeply.
For a moment he felt strong enough to test his luck against the pigeons, but the sickly bird had already taken flight. It cooed from afar, the sound wobbling through the summer air. Mirander frowned, imagining mockery in the dying creature's cry.
Too bad I can't coo back, he thought. That would make me as stupid as drinking milk with my teeth.
He raised the cup again and took another gulp.
Then he turned to the door. Someone was coming. He could hear her mind before she entered: Padre Silvion had summoned him. Three soft knocks. The door opened.
"Master Mirander," the woman said, her voice wavering. "Padre Silvion has enjoined you to attend her in the book chamber."
She froze beneath his gaze—the kind of gaze that met her before she had even crossed the threshold. There was knowledge in it, quiet and unnerving; he had been waiting for her, as though he had sensed her presence long before she arrived. The fear that seized her was not born of his rank, but of unspoken awareness.
"There's no need for fear," Mirander said softly, a kindness in his tone that made the woman shiver all the more. "I will join her as soon as I'm out of these robes and into proper clothing," Mirander said, glancing at the blood crusted on the folds of his garment.
The woman whirled and left. The oak door closed behind her with a solid sharp thud.
Mirander drew upon the remnants of his will and crossed to the nearest door. Pulling the wardrobe open, he muttered, "Black, black, and black… what a choice." His voice carried a dry humor, but the reflection in the mirror offered none.
He took up a formal jacket, its hue as dark as his cropped hair, and held it before his face, comparing its shade to the pallor of his own visage. Then he tossed it toward the bed—missing by a wide margin.
In all his years of service to the Order, through every wound and hardship, he had never felt such desolation. It was almost like walking that damned street again.
The thought struck him like fire through oil; anger coursed through his blood, hot and relentless, burning most fiercely in his chest and gut. He seized a pair of trousers and let them fall to the floor, unheeding of their texture or color. His mind was already elsewhere—on that street again: the blood upon the stones, the panic in his heart, the wide eyes, the cold sweat that had stood upon his forehead.
Mirander raised his gaze to the mirror. His breath came unevenly. With the sleeve of his stained robe, he wiped the sweat from his brow. It was warm—the sweat of wrath, not of the frightened, lost child who had once stood upon that blood-stained street.
He donned the black elegant jerkin overtop a fine thin silk shirt with mismatched trousers. The effort fatigued him; he relied on the wall on his way to the door.
With a shift of his wrist, he pulled the door as the wind pushed his will. It was almost harder than lifting the jug of milk.
He evoked one of the lessons he had learned as a child: "We are all animals; no human can pass the limit of his pride. We are bound by humility of our will."
He pulled harder against the wind; he felt an increased tingling in the flesh of his hand with every twitch.
"We are all animals; no human eats only as much as he needs. We are bound by temperance of our will."
The tingling turned to an agonizing itch; the pain reached an excruciating frenzy.
"We are all animals; humans strive only for ascendancy to the corruptest form they can be. We are bound by chastity of our will."
He managed to push past his will; the door flung open, and he stepped out with a smile. Fortunately, he had dodged the chant just before his favorite sin.
Behind him, the door closed with a gust of wind.
The hall was a baffling mess. Children fenced with wooden swords. As the door closed, he glimpsed the stream of their thoughts—a noisy jumble he couldn't cipher into a single word, just a long continuous hiss. A couple passed him in a hurry, swinging their swords at each other's blades.
"Careful not to hurt each other," Mirander warned.
"Yes, Master," one of the children replied with an unfamiliar respect.
He passed the children through the arched corridors that viewed the lower, closed garden—packed with groups of children, some reading, some gossiping, and a few fencing among the long plantations.
Midway to the stairs, Mirander glimpsed an open entrance. A girl was brushing her hair. His onyx eyes met the amber in hers, and she flushed at once. She lifted a hand to hide the bloom of red along her cheekbone and, pretending to study the long mirror beside her bed, tried to glimpse him through its reflection.
Mirander felt the pull of her curiosity — the quiet longing she hoped to conceal — and the wrongness of sensing it. To pry would steal from her the right to guard her own heart. His conscience forced his gaze away, back into the constant hiss of children's thoughts drifting through the hall. Yet even as he walked on, he resented the urge as much as the desire that stirred it.
He took one step. His eyes drifted back to the corridor—its arches and the fine marbling on the floor. Fifty more steps, and there it was: the stairs.
Silvion's study lay in the East Wing, at the highest level of the temple walls. His hand gripped the railing, and he took a step to climb. Pain jumped through every vein. He nearly fainted as sweat dripped from every part of him. He felt a sharp knife cutting into his ankle—past flesh, cracking bone, reaching the marrow—with the very first step of the stairs.
One done, a thousand more to climb, he told himself.
And with each step he wished he could faint—but he could not. Waiting would be a sign of weakness, and fainting would be an admission. And he would not admit to himself that he was weak. No… weak I am not, he told himself. I am the cutting edge of light before which all shadows are held at bay, he repeated.
He renewed his tired breath, and his left leg lifted, followed by the right.
Once he reached the door, he heard the vociferous quibble. Silvion was arguing with a voice he recognized—Padre Seluk, he figured—as he crossed closer to the wooden gate of Silvion's study. Yet the voice he heard was younger and deeper than any living voice: a remembrance, not a true quarrel echoing now, an old scar aching in Silvion's heart.
The words Seluk pleaded and Silvion's replies seemed sensed rather than heard, for they had rhythm and moved like an opera in a tongue fluent to them both—its cadence infected by the intensity of her temper. In that mist-filled remembrance, he could only decipher Silvion's emotions: he sensed her anger; he sensed her desperation, sadness, despair, depression. He followed the warm tear that slid down her cheek, burning through her blistering complexion before losing its trace as it trickled from her jawline.
He tracked the heat in her pouting lips—heat that escalated each time Seluk pleaded, rising to the agonizing pitch of excruciating pain—as the flame of love in Silvion's unsteady heart burned into a fire of loathing, of purest, deepest hate.
He felt the numbness that started in her wrist and stretched to the tips of her fingers, even to her nails. He felt the same numbness in himself.
He gulped from behind the cracked door.
Silvion snapped, "Come in."
As she said those words, her mind shifted compulsively to a more lucid tranquility.
Mirander saw in her mind an image from a past long gone—when she had been a child no older than those playing now in the halls. In remembrance he saw her sneak out of the castle walls on a cold winter night. She had dressed poorly for the weather; only a red tippet wrapped her neck in warmth. A shadow of a child waited for her in the dark beneath a tall oak tree.
He crossed to the oak-carved door of Silvion's study chamber with steady, faltering steps and cracked it open with a creak.
"I've anticipated your arrival so long, I have grown weary to remain," he heard Silvion say as he entered the room.
Silvion sat in her tapestried chair. Long years had done their work on her, yet the Padre still lingered in the semblance of her youthful prowess as she rested at the rear of the chiseled podium—the room with one sealed entrance and three thin glass walls. In her oval face, in the gray hair still black at its tips, in the way it fell over her hazel eyes, he sensed her restless stare.
Mirander walked into the room with a slight bow.
"Forgive me, Padre, but the stairs are long, and I am spent," Mirander said.
"Ah—is that why you lingered so long at the knob?" Silvion sneered. "I've been told it is easier to discern in a motionless pond—and the most motionless ponds are the ones unaware."
With those deliberate sentences, Mirander realized his pry had not slipped past the aging Padre's vigilant insight.
"I sought not to spy on you, Padre."
"Dear child," Silvion said, "with what you have lurking and skulking, it comes as a given. It may not be your wish that wishes the verbatim of what others think—yet such lack of desire does not make your power any less potent."
She gestured toward the cushioned chair at the other end of the podium.
"Sit. We must articulate on pending matters."
"I dare not commit such transgressions," Mirander said reverently, overdrawing his tone. This sit was a Padre's seat, and he was a Mage—if he was even that.
"You are comfortable in a Padre's head but not in a Padre's chair?" Silvion sneered, smiling wide. "Sit, boy. I can hear your bones crack. A seat is only as good as the glutes that sit on it. I fit this sun-kissed chair for you. And wipe that frown away—you've been kissed by our God and yet you live. Rejoice. That is a rare upshot, even among the willing participants."
Mirander sat reluctantly. The antique armchair banqueting under the sunshine groaned in all four legs, apron, and rails as he settled into it. The chair was comfy and balmy, but the beam of sunlight swept across his stature—from his toes upward as he folded himself into the cushioned seat—until it reached his brow and struck his eyes. He flinched, shielding his face with his arms.
Through the interstice clefts between his long fingers, in the passing flood of light and pristine blue sky, he saw a fleet—numerous ships hovering in the heavens.
Was he seeing things right?
The walk and the climb had enervated his legs; needles pressed into every muscle, a shiver in every bone—even those not remotely used for movement. But his mind—he could swear—still toiled fine.
"What is the first lesson I ever gave you, boy?" Silvion asked.
"What you certainly can't hide from others, you can't hide from yourself," Mirander answered while measuring, in the strips of light, the distant fleet.
His stubbornness needled him more than the pain gnawed at his flesh and bone. His skin twisted and burned with every stir; his muscles itched with every twitch. He might have stood from the chair out of pride if he did not feel his legs reduced to hollowed bones.
"Yes, boy," Silvion said. "I can see your legs shaking. No need to feign strength—you are clearly spent… and obscurely nosy."
Padre Silvion tapped the beak of her nose thrice. As Mirander's eyes adjusted to the glare, he was now certain of what he saw.
"There is an armada tilting in space," Mirander said with a glance and a subtle flick of his head in the fleet's direction.
"You've slumbered long—they've been at it for a time," Silvion shrugged.
"They are so still?"
"Can't blame them—they are on display. Those hapless navigators petrifying the fleet… oh, those pitiable suspensor engines," Silvion smirked.
"Why on display? Whose fleet is that?" Mirander wondered, two queries at once.
"Ours—and for the most pitiful of reasons," Silvion replied as she heaved herself from the tapestried armchair and crossed the podium to his side.
"You mean Seluk's fleet?"
Silvion frowned at the wisecrack.
Mirander's gaze followed Silvion's orbit around the ellipsoid engraved table, then drifted across the room—its relocations, removals, and additions. The podium was still there, but the ink stains had been wiped clean, and their scent extinguished. The room whirled with the odor of dying summer mixing with sweet almond dust and aged leather tomes. The shelves were filled to the throat with books, many old and a few new—and one sealed, tattered brown-leather volume sat lazily at his left, at the podium's edge, ready to fall.
The glass walls had been polished spotless. Outside, children played, and the colossal statue of Karina laced the sky—dancing upon the dirt, her toes, arms, and wrists held in striking pose; her gown wrinkled in sculpted folds; her ample bosom and slender waist carved with reverent detail; her tattered stony hem revealing her bare foot.
His gaze drifted to the river Panticar and the fleeting boats that passed at dawn as the raging waters roared and shimmered in the late-morning glitter.
"Seluk has no fleet. This is Karina's fleet. These are Karina's swords. These are Karina's ships."
"Should we be afraid?"
"We'd be harmed faster by old age than by our own fleet. Seluk is many things—but to set siege to Thablis? I'd sooner expect him to settle into a gentle life," Silvion said.
"This whole fiasco could have been avoided if you would grant him entrance," Mirander complained.
"I would rather face his absent fleet than his excruciating presence," Silvion smirked, though she sighed with boredom. "You, now a Mage, must learn a new lesson: once one picks up a big rock, never fear the throw—it is most likely it will never come."
Silvion extended her gloved hand toward the ancient book.
"And know this: never make an empty threat—a promise you cannot uphold. A man is only as good as his word."
"Doesn't seem like an empty threat at this point," Mirander pointed out.
Silvion protruded her lip in anguish.
"Seems your lesson needs a personal touch. If I told you I would lunge you out of this glass wall and hurl you to the cold ground—would you have believed me?" Silvion questioned, stepping closer.
"No," Mirander smiled gently.
"And if I told you I would slap you for not learning your lesson at once?"
"Of course no—"
Silvion slapped Mirander from striking distance. Hard.
He traced the burning bloom where her fingers had struck his cheek.
"See now."
"Ouch…" Mirander rubbed his cheek and flexed his jaw, ignoring the stinging heat.
"A small rock, you dodge. A big rock, you must still. But enough of that—we have an urgent matter to attend to. An urgent matter that cannot wait."
Silvion crossed to the shelves to deposit the familiar book.
"Who is the lucky bard—Salmo or Baird?" Mirander asked as he eyed the title from afar: The City of Dim Lights.
"You don't know your poets," Silvion sighed as she crossed back to her seat. "This one is long dead, and her bones long cracked. They don't know her as a poet anymore; they don't know her for herself. They only know she was a maternal figure to some glorified, self-satisfied kings."
She waved the matter aside.
"As I said—enough of that. To the urgent matter at hand. Besides me, have you tested your talent on any other specimens?"
"No. Not successfully," Mirander replied, the resentment threading through his voice.
You have not yet learned finesse. Only the clearest thoughts reach you: the sharp ones of the focused and the slow, echoing ones of the old… though my stream of thought was as placid as a child's hissing mind, infected as it was with emotion, Silvion's voice whispered inside his head.
"You can—"
"Oh no, I can't," Silvion interrupted aloud. "I only send a signal, and you receive it. I can't receive anything back, nor siphon the clarity of your reception."
She reached beneath the podium.
"I would caution you, though—not all minds are as open-minded as mine. And a dull knife cuts its wielder more often than its foe. You must sharpen your skill."
Silvion placed a book on the podium and hurled it toward Mirander. The tome slithered across the air in a precise glide, following the path laid by steady nanite machines.
"There are two methods to learn," she said. "By your own experience, or at others' expense. Many lacking critical faculties mock the book—but a Mage must know learning from them is far more affordable than learning on his own."
Mirander extended his hands and felt the weight of the book as the steel nanites embedded in the stone podium stretched into dozens of thin, pillar-like support lines—like loose strands of marzipan—bolstering the book until he lifted it.
He read the title: The Guide of Precognition.
No mention of author or time, not even on the cover.
"This book serves only one purpose," Silvion said. "Written by many, each enhancing and hastening the next Mage's ascension. Be sure to add to it once you perfect your craft."
Mirander nodded and placed the book on his knees.
"You mentioned Salmo earlier," Silvion said abruptly. "Do you long for him?"
"No," Mirander answered presently.
"Why not? He is your only standing relative—he and his wife."
"Because I trust in your better judgment, Padre," Mirander replied.
"You do…?" She tilted her head. "Would you care to guess what my better judgment might be?"
"I resent what we do," Silvion said quietly. "What I did to you. At times I ponder whether you would have lived a better life with him. Whether simple Mirander would have lived better as Mirander Salmo."
Mirander wondered whether her words held truth, and he resented knowing that whatever he was, he had made himself to be—and backing down now would be foolish.
Respect and fear mingled within him, holding him back from entering his mentor's mind.
"That's a stupid name," Mirander muttered. "And I'm satisfied with this life. Why shouldn't I be? Why do you think I'm not?" he replied, unable to hide his clenched teeth in his tightening jaw.
"Try to read my mind," Silvion said boldly.
"Pardon?"
"Go ahead. Try. Don't be shy."
Mirander peeked into Silvion's mind—
A zesty smell.
A crunchy crust.
Creamy sweet raisins in every bite, the inside too soft.
A reenactment of a treat—a cookie… no, a cake—with a glass of hot white-white milk at its side.
A fragment of a memory, not whole; pieces entering the light before slipping into the dark.
The image made Mirander's stomach flutter with excitement. He could feel Silvion tasting every bite of the imaginary cake. He could not discern the true flavor—neither could Silvion—but both knew it was pleasant.
Beyond that, he saw nothing.
"Now, what do you see?" Silvion asked.
"A cake."
"Wrong. You see what I want you to see."
Mirander looked deeper, and found he could not decipher anything beyond the cake.
"There are two lessons in this experiment," Silvion said. "First, about the nature of your power. Second, about your life. We'll discuss your talent shortly—but I fear in all these years I have failed to evoke a memory you would wish to keep."
"If you fear I've eaten less cake than you, you're wrong," Mirander sneered.
"It would be nice to know my worries were unfounded," Silvion murmured, "but I doubt this lie."
Mirander stirred in the cushioned chair at her response.
"I don't lie," he said.
"I don't lie, eh? Not about that. But you still do," Silvion replied.
Mirander recalled the first lesson Silvion had taught: You can't hide from others what you can't hide from yourself. No one believes a lie whose teller does not believe it first.
"What's the other lesson?" Mirander asked, his breath flaring with anger.
"If you are in such a hurry," Silvion said, "then I shall inform you of your limits. Your talent can be blocked. You see what others think as though glancing inside a box—but it is their box you glance into, and you do not govern their box. They are the ones in command."
"Then this is as useless as I thought."
"Not quite." Silvion folded her hands. "They are in command and can manage their minds, yes—but they might not see the need to cover or hide anything if they perceive no threat. So secrecy is the key to your potency. They must not know your talent. Or they must not know your presence. Or they must not know you. Best a mingling of all."
"What if they know all three?" Mirander asked sharply.
"Then it depends on your innate faculty," Silvion replied. "You may still glimpse their thoughts—if you are devilishly intelligent. In time, you will learn to play with your toy."
"That's why I'm here," Mirander said. "To learn how to play with this toy."
"No. You are here so we can converse. To master this toy, you need only patience, practice, and time. Now tell me—why didn't you read the girl's mind?"
"Which girl?" Mirander asked, his face flushing.
"Oh… the one who eyed you as you came up the stairs—the one with bronze hair and gray eyes. You lingered at her door, traded glances, then fled." Silvion replied.
"Was that you?" Mirander snapped, imagining Silvion had instructed the girl to feign interest—to stir in him some unwanted attraction.
"Is it so unfathomable—so unfamiliar to you—to be liked?" Silvion sneered with a hidden frown. "The girl is in awe of you. You are now a Mage, and girls will fancy you. What do you think of the girl?"
"She is pretty."
"That's it? Just pretty?"
"Well… she is."
"'Well, she is'—is that all you can say of her? She has far more to say of you and your stare. I can hear her even now, three levels below, chattering with her friends—all about you," Silvion said, a motherly wrinkle touching her visage.
"What is she saying?" Mirander asked at once.
"Do you prefer her to Dorrin?" Silvion asked abruptly.
The question caught her apprentice off guard. "What does that have to do with this?" Mirander said.
"You cannot love two women at once. And she is as much a daughter to me as you are a son."
"I… I can't say."
"Then I can't say what she chats and chatters. It is improper to reveal a lover's love to an unwilling prospector—don't you think?"
Mirander could have read Silvion's mind to uncover what the girl had said—but he knew Silvion played his field far better than he ever played his own. Behind those hazel eyes he found only cracks—fragments—too sparse and too far apart.
He wondered back to his earlier encounter with the girl. She was unaware, easy to prey upon. What held him back then? Was it the virtue he claimed to himself—for her? Or was it because of what he was?
He was alone, and he wondered at that loneliness. He often pondered why he was alone. Out his window, he would glance at a singular tree and contrast himself against it—the lone tree standing in the clearing, away from the woods. For one, the tree was of a different breed; for the other, its immense size attracted thunder as rot attracts flies, and beneath its shade it killed the few branches that dared sprout from the dirt and survive the overarching current the sentinel directed into the ground. Was it the other trees that had displaced the sprout, or did he linger in loneliness by his own will? by his own design?
"Men are so hopeless," Silvion said. "They yearn for women who turn them down—as though the unattainable were some sacred prize. This girl soothes you far better than that snake, from whom you will see nothing but harm."
Her voice carried a ragged edge, resentment clinging to the name of the girl Mirander sought. Strangely, a rough pulse fluttered in his veins—his heart beating in uneven rhythm. What if Dorrin liked him as intensely as this girl did? Even separated by worlds, the thought clawed at him.
In those arrhythmic breaths, he recalled every advance Dorrin had declined. And now—with this gift, the ability to read minds—he could know for certain whether he was disliked. And even if he were, this new insight could prove enough to reshape her thoughts. To shift her will.
"Your blood jumps and jolts, I hear," Silvion said, slicing clean through the spiral of his thoughts. "You are thinking of a girl. Which one?"
Mirander glanced beyond her shoulder at the massive statue of Karina, who stood a hundred meters tall on account of the blade she held aloft. The infamous sword Blave lengthened her reach toward the heavens—forty meters of that hundred.
A crepuscular ray pierced the gleaming clouds, their corona emitting a golden edge. The star, the clouds, fate itself, seemed to bless his God with a beam of light.
His eyes drifted back as the clouds eclipsed the sun: dark at heart with the promise of coming rain, whiter further back, and gold at the rim.
Silvion shifted in her elegant chair and peered at the same sky. "Shifting weather. Fall is upon us—and you will no longer wish to frequent with us, I reckon."
A flock of pigeons swept past the castle wall and nearly collided with the left glass pane of Silvion's study. The chamber, with its three glacial walls, felt more like a balcony—one from which the outer plot could be seen, along with children playing on their day of rest. Yet aside from the light and the view, it offered only the bone-deep chill that soaked every corner. The thick carpet could not keep the warmth—how could it, with three yawning apertures for the heat to flee?
"We should kill those birds for their own sake," Mirander muttered, shivering, the cold bristling at his nape, slicing between his chattering teeth.
"Pigeons would contest the matter," Silvion replied. "If they did not cherish life, they would not dodge the walls."
Mirander could not detect in her tone the chatter he felt in the words.
"Damn things didn't let me sleep all night. And they're ridden with disease—they harm the children, harm themselves even. If they could think, they would ask for death. But they're dim-witted animals."
"How long have you nurtured this notion of pigeon genocide?" Silvion asked, lips wrinkling into a wry smile.
"Since I was ten. Fifteen years long—long enough. Their constant cooing, their filth, their flip-flopping across every wall. They are pests," Mirander grunted, watching the endless flock wheel across the sky.
"We can rid them, yes—but we, they, the cats, the rats, and the few stray dogs are the only animals that linger here. Pigeons are loud, lousy, irritating. Were they not, you would not have taken them for your nemesis."
Silvion gripped the arms of her chair. "But they are alive—and if we kill them, we kill the only creatures besides us that remain here. And not only that—we kill a part of ourselves, something we have endured for so long. Then we become alone. And an alone animal is a depressed animal; an irritated animal, however, is pleased—cheerful, even. Because it knows it is alive. Life comes with its ups and downs."
Silvion rose from her tapestried armchair and crossed to the central glass wall.
"Have I told you the story of the storks?"
"I've seen golden storks. The planet is teeming with them."
"Yes—but once they nested here too, for a brief while, during their journey south in mid-fall."
"What happened to them? Did we kill them?"
"No—not willingly." Silvion's voice softened. "I was nine that fall. A woman—Katrin—was to kiss Karina in propinquity metamorphosis, graduating from pious to Mage, much as you have now."
Mirander heard a faint sob in her tone.
"I've never heard of a Padre or Mage called Katrin."
"Because she did not make it." Silvion exhaled. "We often underestimate our God's metamorphosis. We think it a cheat to a power we cannot hold. But we shun the truth—that we cannot anticipate its results."
"That night, Karina took a full kiss from the poor girl—and she was pretty. Even for 'pretty,' she was pretty. Golden hair, hunting eyes, amber in color. She did her best to contain the agony. She only took the storks with her—all of them. Even the eggs. And nothing else but herself."
A chill crawled across Mirander's spine.
"Children saw butterflies that night," Silvion whispered. "We all know what that means. Had she failed to control it… the whole school, perhaps the planet, would have become—"
She drew a breath, released it as a tremor.
"Instead of feathers, we would have picked teeth. Hair. Whatever remained of us."
She turned to him. "Young Mage, I still miss the storks. Would you have this old heart yearn for pigeons too? To look upon a sky with no creature in sight?"
"Life could be more pleasant if it had no downs—only ups."
"Such a line would be plainly flat once its shape is realized," Silvion corrected, tracing the shape in the air. "Anyhow, I did not call you here to kill pigeons; we have a far more pressing matter."
Mirander's eyes drifted to the effigy once more. Karina's head tilted left. Her fitted stone gown bore cracks and mold, yet she still held the Blave firmly in her right hand. Her left palm faced upward at shoulder height. Her posture—her toes, her fingers—mirrored that of a ballet dancer. One could mistake her for such were it not for the sword and her frown.
"So what do you want to talk about?" Mirander asked, disinterested.
"The place you will frequent for the next couple of months."
"And where is that?"
"Have you ever heard of the planet MelasOon?" Silvion asked, stretching the name as though to give it weight.
"No," Mirander answered.
"It is a fringe world—fief under Sinderian dictate—often called a prison planet, under the fief-dome of one Kenta, Kenta Denn."
"And what is our subject of interest?" Mirander asked, nearly confused.
"Our sources report engaging occurrences which require our inquiry," Silvion said.
Mirander tried reading her mind: a sweet taste he could not place—crunchy yet soft—and beside it a glass of hot milk. A cookie… no, a cake. A memory fragmented, shaped to shroud her thoughts.
"You still think of the cake?" Mirander asked, grinding his teeth, the cold and a creeping fear meeting in his jaw.
"MelasOon has no living creature besides men—men bound on opposing sides of a ring of chains. So you need not worry about pigeons or other pests," Silvion answered, ignoring his query.
"Why are you still recalling the cake? What are you hiding? Is it deadly? A trap? Is this about Mekan—"
The moment he uttered the name, something in Silvion's mind cracked. A veil lifted—
A recording. A voice. Panicked beyond reason:
"It's not human, it's not human—"
The words tumbled in frantic bursts, each pronunciation warped by terror, every shriek carrying the truth of what was said.
"Keep your hands on your hilt, and your blade sharp and unsheathed, and you will be fine," Silvion said.
Mirander knew she recognized the exact moment he glimpsed too far.
"The planet is prone to birth events that could reshape the entirety of the Persean Sector if our sources are correct. Your mission is simple: descend to the mines of MelasOon, climb back up, and report solely to me. Understood?"
Mirander nodded.
"Is there anything else I should know?" he asked, desperation in his voice.
"Remain awake until you reach comfort. It is a pity to die in one's sleep, a folly to fall with dreaming eyes—a gritty finality to slumber into the endless night."
The words chilled him.
"Rest now, Mage. Soon you must depart."
Mirander's eyes narrowed back to the wielder's blade—Blave. Never had there been a more infamous sword: one that could kill a god and forge another with a single cut. In golden script, carved in an unfathomable tongue, the words glimmered in the light—words every Priest-Templar knew by heart:
I'm the cutting edge of light before which all shadows are held at bay.
I'm the sharp blade of the wielder.
I'm the hard chisel of the engraver.
I'm the true dowsing rod of the hydromancer.
I'm the ever-shifting shape of life that forever eludes demise, decay, and stagnation.
I'm the ever-shaping shift of death to which all life is bound.
I'm the constant of change—changing the constant.
I'm the mask behind the veil.
I'm the one unafraid to brave the darkness.
I am the final flare of dusk.
I'm the promise of the coming dawn—
the Daybreak that will fade the emptiness of night.