Discordant Note | The Beginning After the End SI

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Toren Daen

Cylrit was there nearly immediately as I stalked out of the vault, no doubt because of the rumbling of my aura and how I’d slammed Viessa into the vault floor. He suspected a fight of some sort and he was ready to throw himself into the metaphorical fire that could have erupted down below.

When the stalwart Retainer witnessed his master hauling Viessa Vritra out by her purple hair, trailing blood and unconscious, he didn’t even hesitate.

“Master,” he said, bending the knee, ”what must I do?”

Seris’ cool gaze passed over her Retainer, something there still disturbed by my actions in the vault. “Scythe Viessa encountered… complications,” she said, voicing the greatest understatement ever spoken aloud. “See that she is cared for before she awakes.”

Cylrit raised his head, opening his mouth to speak. When he saw the shadow marring my expression, however, he became more solemn.

I didn’t stay for their ensuing short conversation. I couldn’t stay for their conversation, not with the confusion and rage festering in my soul.

I swept past them, my aura pulsing like a distant star. Up and up I ascended the stairwell like a soldier marching to war. Each step of my boots on the stones sent my sound magic through the earth, Sonar Pulse returning me a detailed overview of the castle.

I tuned out the terrified pulses of the distant soldiers’ heartbeats. I snuffed out my sense of their terror as I struggled to contain my emotions.

Up and up and up I ascended, like a mortal man climbing towards the heavens in an act of utter hubris. My feet moved on their own, each step like the routine piston movement within an engine. I used the fuel of my anger and shame to push those pistons. Up, down. Up, down.

And suddenly, I was beneath the sky.

The night still gripped the world as I stood atop the castle ramparts. Her shadows stretched far and wide like rippling black silk across countless plains. To the north, just across the winding Sehz, I could see the Dicathian camps. Their cookfires sparkled merrily in the night, each like little fireflies captured from the night and superimposed over the vast canvas of the world. The light of artifacts and campfires stretched around this simple bastion far into the blackness, denying Night her due.

And high above, clouds blanketed out the stars.

I gritted my teeth in anger, my shrouded wings growing around me. They shivered with crystalline refractions as the torches across the ramparts cast light through them.

I bent my knees, glaring up at those clouds. And in an instant, I flew.

Up and up and up I went again, trying to capture that sense of vindictive pride and certainty I’d embraced when I’d fought Taci. The clouds had been my stepstools and my allies then, another visitor in my domain. But as the air burned around me and the sound barrier broke from my ascent, I could only see them as an obstacle.

I punched through them, water streaming off my shroud as I gnashed my teeth. The wind whipped and pulled at my long hair, creating a tapestry of golden blonde behind me. Higher and higher and higher I went, demanding the ambient mana take me above. Above all of this, where I didn’t have to worry about it all. Where I didn’t have to think about Aurora’s relic connected to me far below. Where I didn’t have to think about how she was talking with her son.

With my brother.

I emerged from the blanket of the clouds, finally able to feel the welcoming breath of the moon on my face. That distant body had just started in its journey towards fullness, and its light was a pale reflection of the sun.

And the stars—there were so, so many of them. So many stars, all twinkling merrily and with their own light.

The wind pulled at the clouds below me, drawing them on toward a destination I couldn’t comprehend. But I hovered there in the sky, my wings splayed out as I felt it building in my chest.

The actions I’d taken against Viessa burned in the back of my skull. I had torn at her mind in a manner I had only ever known Agrona to do.

Aurora and I had acted together, then. Our minds had melded and meshed in a way we had not experienced since that pinnacle in the Hearth, where we’d managed true equilibrium. And the rage that boiled from the depths of my soul had been just as true and scalding as my bond’s.

Because some part of me—when I had seen that illusion of a corpse—had seen Norgan.

He doesn’t deserve that spot in my soul, I seethed. Norgan had been my brother. He had been there for me, my partner in crime and best friend and everything. When everyone in my life had been gone, Norgan alone had been by my side in East Fiachra, working tirelessly with me for years. Our bond had been built upon sweat and blood.

Memories flickered in the back of my mind, returning me to one particular day. Trelza, stone-faced like a statue, had released me early, determining I was unfit to continue working that day. I remembered leaving the East Fiachran clinic, stumbling over my feet, my face pale.

He was right. Because someone we had been trying to save had died under our care.

I couldn’t remember the man’s face, what he looked like, or even his name. Only how my hand shook as Trelza’s cold, emotionless voice announced his death, and that there was nothing else we could do.

I’d nearly fallen in the canals of Fiachra on my way home. And when I’d finally reached the doors of our simple apartment, I had collapsed onto my bed.

And Norgan had stopped his training. His brow furrowed as he sensed that something was amiss. I’d stared up at the ceiling emptily for an hour, just… processing it all. Processing that I had failed. That a life was no longer in this world, and it was my fault.

Norgan hadn’t spoken. He knew—brothers as we were—that speaking wasn’t what was needed. What use were words like “It’s going to be okay?” Nothing would make that man’s death okay. Nothing would make the loss of life okay.

And he had understood that. Because he knew me. Because he was my brother.

What fucking right did Chul—murdering, genocidal, bastard—have to take that spot in my mind? What Fate-damned reason did he have to evoke memories of someone far better than he would ever be?

Those emotions didn’t belong to him. All he had ever done was take. And now he was taking my one solace away from me.

I erupted with a rabid roar that made the very clouds shiver around me. Sound magic flooded from me as I imposed every ounce of my anger upon the world around me. Resonant Flow pulsed, my veins alighting with heartfire as I professed my pent-up emotions.

The clouds parted from the expulsion of power, my body burning like a star as fires churned around me. My voice slowly grew ragged and broken, no longer a demon’s warcry.

When it was done, I felt like I had vomited up the very seas themselves. Despite this, my mouth was drier than the deserts of Darv below. I heaved for breath, my heart aching as the lights simmered away. My shoulders slumped as I continued to stare up at the moon.

“Does it help any? Yelling like that?” a familiar, feminine voice asked from not far away. “Does it release the burden on your shoulders?”

The wind blew harder for a moment, the breeze dragging her soft fingers across my face.

I didn’t turn away from the waxing crescent moon high above, its cool light soothing some of my aches and pains. “Sometimes it does,” I admitted, my voice hoarse. “But it’s not really working right now.”

Seris perched upon the clouds themselves, the wind pulling on the silver silk of her hair. The barest touch of the starlight high above reflected against her pale skin alluringly this high in the clouds. Her horns were nearly invisible in the night, only illuminated by the breath of the moon. She looked like some sort of storybook phantom, emerging from the highest clouds to bestow prophecies upon unwary travelers.

She didn’t say anything, the high wind pulling at her dark dress. Neither of us spoke as we stared up at the stars.

“I’ll need to leave,” I admitted. “I can’t go back to Alacrya when this war is over. I can’t ever go back, not until I’m powerful enough.”

Agrona wanted something from me. Part of me felt like half of this war had been designed with me at the center, an unwitting pawn. And with Rinia’s warnings and how Sylvie had barely spared me from the intervention of a true god, it was growing clearer than ever.

“Where will you go?” Seris asked, her voice quiet and sorrowful. She was brilliant. A genius of the highest caliber I had ever encountered. She didn’t contest that I needed to leave, just asked me how.

I clenched my hands, my eyes searching the distant cosmos. For some reason that none could comprehend, only the Aurora Constellate revealed the distant Chulsen Cluster. And no matter how much mana I imbued into my eyes, I couldn’t pierce whatever veil kept it hidden from mortal eyes.

Me, Chul, and our mother, I thought, gritting my teeth as I recalled the bare bones of the plan I’d been concocting. We can hide.

I withdrew a single item from my dimension ring. The silver djinni medallion, as big as my palm and glinting as it absorbed the starlight, floated about me under the weaves of my telekinetic magic.

With a bare effort of will, it drifted over to the distant Scythe. When it settled in her hands, she ran pale fingers over its intricate etchings, her silver brow rising with that inquisitive nature I loved so much.

“A relic of the ancient mages,” she said with intrigue. “Another secret you’ve kept from me?”

The words lacked any scorn or judgment, but I felt the sting of them nonetheless. The memory of Seris’ demands to see my notebook—that catalog of future knowledge—resurfaced in the back of my mind.

I forcibly quelled it, unable to bear that knowledge, too.

“In another potential future—one that has long since been banished to the wind—that relic facilitated the magical transfer of people to an ancient mage sanctuary. It would keep me safe. Me, and others who need protection from the asura, until I have the strength to fight back.” I paused, feeling something akin to shame. “And I didn’t keep that from you. I was given it by the Seer, Elder Rinia, when I infiltrated the Dicathians’ flying castle.”

Seris’ fingers closed around the medallion. “How close do you think you are to acquiring the power you will need?”

The way she said the words—the controlled mask that layered itself over the buried emotion—made something in me shift and creak.

I turned in the sky, facing the Scythe more fully. I stared at the woman as she hung there, her emotions a messy collage over her intent. She didn’t know what to feel, I realized. She kept her face serene and careful, the utmost depiction of a Scythe. But there were cracks, here and there. Her fingers clenched a bit too hard around the medallion. Her heart beat a little too much out of rhythm. Her lips remained parted, as if to call out or add another word that she feared she’d forgotten.

I took the time to really look at her. As weaves of misty clouds danced about her dark dress, it seemed like she was a part of them alone. I could imagine that water vapor rising and swallowing her whole, the Scythe dissolving into the world. “I don’t know,” I said honestly. “Integration… that is the key. I don’t know what it will entail. I don’t know how powerful I’ll be after I reach the next stage, either. Will I need to hunker down and train? Will I continue to grow so quickly? I… don’t know.”

That lack of knowing scared me. I’d been so reassured in my knowledge of the future. The idea that I could know. But no longer could I count on such.

I narrowed my eyes a bit as I observed the flow of mana about and around the Scythe. She was using mana rotation, one of the keys to the highest stage of magic. “I think you’re closer to the same plateau than you think, too,” I said, uncertain if the words would be a comfort or a detriment. Agrona would never suffer his tools to reach levels of power that could allow them to resist him.

And if Seris were close to Integration, too…

“Everything’s coming to a head. It does not feel as if it has been a scant six months since this war started in earnest,” Seris said softly. She hesitated for a second, as if watching a blazing fire. Then she steeled herself, and strolled along the clouds toward me.

When she finally reached me, she threaded an arm through mine with casual, easy grace. The Scythe busied herself with staring up at the stars alongside me, medallion clutched in her other hand. “I will need to accelerate my plans by decades at the very minimum,” she muttered to herself, her fingers lacing through mine. “This is incredibly frustrating. I expected to have much more time to prepare for the inevitable, but you just had to ruin it all.”

Her pink lips turned down into an ever-so-slightly annoyed frown, her intent radiating with annoyance and resignation. “And you seem so certain that we will part in the near future for an indeterminate time.”

Seris’ fingers—which had been softly running over the scars on the top of my hand—suddenly tensed, digging into my skin. Her intent warped with something deeper than her earlier annoyance, and I could not tell if it was feigned or true.

The Scythe held my hand in a vise grip, turning her chin up as she gazed at me with dark eyes. “Do you think you can escape us so simply?”

I chuckled at the intensity of Seris’ emotions, turning so I was facing her more directly. A slow smile stretched across my face as I wrapped my shrouded wings around us, sheltering us from the wind. “I’m confident in hiding away from Agrona and Kezess,” I said, leaning forward slightly. “But I’m not an idiot. I know I can’t hide from you, should you decide to chase me.”

Seris pressed her forehead to mine, both of us settling in the moment. “You still know your place,” she said quietly. She closed her eyes, her lips curving into that predatory, contented smile of hers. “I worried that fighting gods might make you forget it.”

I nodded slightly, as if these words were the wisest in the universe. “Of course,” I said in good nature, feeling my earlier anger and sorrow and turbulence slowly settle under the slow rhythm of Seris’ heart. “Out of curiosity, though, however would you chase me?”

Seris opened her eyes, inspecting my hopeful ones. The way the moonlight cast itself across her pale lips made it a bit difficult to focus on what I needed to. The Scythe was evidently amused by my distraction as her eyes turned into satisfied crescent moons. “This artifact of the ancient mages… Similar things have been discovered before. They are the basis for tempus warps across Alacrya.”

She shuffled slightly, raising her hand between us and pressing the medallion close to her chest. “If I am cautious and intelligent, then I may be able to key a tempus warp to these spatial coordinates.”

My heart skipped a beat.

“And because you are cautious and very intelligent, that would mean I wouldn’t be stranded there,” I said with immediate realization. “Meaning—”

“You would be unable to hide from me,” Seris interrupted. She blinked slowly in a way that accentuated how the pale moonlight was split by her lashes. “Correct?”

I coughed slightly. “I was going to say—”

Seris’ hand moved up to my shirt lapel. She grasped it tightly, pulling me a bit closer as a little spark burned in the back of her eyes. “Yes?”

“I was going to agree with you, of course,” I amended, recognizing a fight I could not win no matter how powerful a mage I became. “That is certainly what I was going to say.”

The Scythe’s eyes narrowed. I put on my most annoying smirk.

Sufficiently irritated by the overly smug look I’d plastered on my face, Seris scoffed, turning away as a slight blush worked its way to her pale cheeks. “Regardless of all this… It is all coming to an end, soon. I can taste it on the wind.”

My smile slowly fell as Seris pushed away from me. I felt as her mood was broken by something I didn’t understand, the pieces of it falling through my fingers like raindrops into the clouds far below.

The Scythe paced in the sky, the clouds swirling about her as she struggled to contain her growing agitation. There was something there, a strange mirror to my earlier pent-up emotions. “Cadell is off fulfilling his master’s wishes. I don’t know precisely what he’s doing, but I doubt he is anywhere within Darv. My sensors would have alerted me if he stayed too long within the dwarven kingdom.”

I swallowed. “Then that means he isn’t near Nico. If he isn’t near Nico, then the reincarnate is open right now.”

“You will have your chance at the Anchor soon,” Seris replied quietly. “Nico is impatient and rash, as is his nature. He has been placed so, so close to his goal, but he is bound by an inability to act. And unless he possesses your interference, he cannot hope to strike at Tessia Eralith.”

“And you’ll grant him my assistance, with the promise that I’ll break the Lance tether?” I asked, following her line of thought.

Seris waved a dismissive hand. “Absolutely not,” she said, utterly derailing what I had been suspecting. “That would be foolish.”

I blinked. “Then how is this going to go? You see much farther in this than I do.”

The Scythe sighed, a good-natured kind of faux disappointment lacing her tone. “Of course,” she said. “Nico will act rashly. It is not a matter of if, but of when. Interacting with you a day past has only exacerbated that. He’s a man with an itch that needs to be scratched, and he’ll never be able to scratch it. He’s going to make a mistake. And when he makes that critical mistake, that is when you will have your chance.”

I would have my chance.

I’d see to it that the Legacy would never descend.

I clenched my hands, then unclenched them. Plots within plots within plots wove around me, each and every one seeming beyond my control. When I thought for too long, I felt like a bird amidst currents of air that did not belong to me, each breath of wind pushing me toward an ever-approaching Fate I could not control.

“Things have changed so much from what I expected,” I mumbled, looking back down toward the clouds. “I didn’t know how much certainty that gave me until I lost it.”

I didn’t look at Seris, but I could sense her attention. I knew on some level that she had been guiding our conversation this way with those subtle manipulations of hers.

“In this future knowledge of yours, the Legacy did descend?” Seris queried, doing her best to sound utterly uninterested in the prospect. “I assume so, considering how certain you were of their danger.”

Seris was becoming less and less blatant with her little prods, now. And besides, I could taste her desire and uncertainty over her intent. I had the answers to the questions she held deep in her soul.

“You are a sly sorceress, Seris,” I mused with a dry laugh. “Sly, indeed.”

With a bare flourish of mana, I withdrew my notebook from my dimension ring. The leather was old and worn, showing a great deal of love and care. The outdated version of the sigil of Named Blood Daen was stamped proudly in the bottom corner, the runes leaking from the dagger professing its truth.

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Seris tensed imperceptibly as her eyes alighted upon the cover, her gaze flashing. She raised a hand, then lowered it slightly.

“I don’t know what this knowledge can do for you anymore, Seris,” I said honestly. “Too much has changed. I can give it to you, but…”

I considered all the existential implications of the little notebook in my hands. How would most people react if they knew their very thoughts and emotions and desires had been put to the page in another world? Some would go mad, questioning their free will. Others might ignore it entirely, or chalk it up to coincidence of some impossible sort.

But within this book, I held knowledge that shouldn’t exist. That couldn’t exist. If Seris saw this, what would she think of herself?

My fingers clenched around the pages.

“I don’t know if it would be good for you to read it, Seris. Even Aurora still suffers from the questions it brings her.”

Seris drifted closer to me again, her lips pursed as she looked me over. She absorbed every inch of me—my tensed shoulders, my nervous stare, my bone-white fingers as they clutched that notebook.

“You are still a poor liar, Toren,” she said slowly. She raised a hand, brushing a lock of my golden hair to the side. “You don’t hesitate because of that, do you?”

I chewed on my lip, struggling to meet Seris’ eyes.

Because she was right. It wasn’t just about some faux concern about her wellbeing. That was a justification. An excuse to push everything away. But the Scythe never permitted excuses.

“This is all that’s left,” I admitted weakly. “This is the last… piece of the puzzle, you might say.”

I swallowed, feeling a strange sort of pain from acknowledging these deep, underlying truths. Smoke seemed to claw at my lungs as I struggled and failed to deny the truth of why I wanted to keep this little book hidden.

If Seris were to read my journal, I would have no more secrets for her. Nothing truly. All the puzzle pieces that had drawn her to me would be finally assembled. The puzzle she’d enjoyed crafting in her mind would come to an end, at last.

And when that was done, would she still care? The drive and chase would be gone. Would she cast me aside like a toy that had lost its luster? Would I become a gadget that was no longer interesting? Those were stupid, foolish questions. I knew she wouldn’t. But she would….

She might understand me. That thing I had craved for so very long. Alluring and terrifying. I wouldn’t be Spellsong, a bringer of fire and hope. I wouldn’t be the master musician, a symphony for the people. I wouldn’t be this grand star in her sky.

I would be… just a man. Just a person. A lucky man who in another life had been nobody special.

It was a pathetic thing for me to be scared of. I was Spellsong. The soul and understanding were my domains, and yet I feared this small, silver slice of the distant moon catching a glimpse of me?

Seris absorbed every ounce of my indecision, her mask slowly falling as her face morphed into one of sympathy.

Her hand—which had been reaching for my face—retreated back to her side. A silence stretched between us as I held onto that asura-forsaken notebook like a sinner clings to a bible.

The Scythe turned away from me. “I think I understand,” she said softly.

That’s what I’m afraid of, I thought, but did not say. That’s what I’m afraid of.

“I am so accustomed to racing after every piece of these puzzles, Toren,” she muttered, barely audible this high in the sky. “So accustomed to just… clawing each one together. It is rare that I consider what might truly be once I reach that end.”

I didn’t respond, still struggling with the decision. I wanted to give her this notebook. I wanted to. But I was so… scared. So mortal. So human. So my hands stuck fast to that leather.

“I do not remember anything akin to a childhood,” Seris said abruptly. The words—uttered so simply—halted the train of my thoughts, derailing them completely and utterly.

“Huh?” I blurted with supreme intelligence, blinking in surprise as Seris’ emotions churned around her like a stirring pot.

“I think I was quite clear,” Seris retorted, sounding ever-so-slightly agitated. “I do not remember anything like a childhood.”

Seris’ fingers didn’t twitch, but I could see how the muscles on her thin, petite form flexed. Her mana and intent whirled about her at her clear reluctance to speak, each note punctuated with shadows upon shadows upon shadows.

“I don’t understand what—”

“Just shut up for a minute,” Seris interrupted. “Please, just let me… let me talk. I need to. For your sake, and for mine.”

Seris perched atop a throne of clouds, staring up at the moon. Her breath frosted in the chill air, her eyes distant. “I can remember nothing before the manifestation of my Vritra blood,” she admitted, lost in memories. “The first thing I remember is white walls. A white room. Kneeling in a pool of my own blood, barely at the age of six. And after that…”

The woman visibly shuddered. “Sovereign Orlaeth was there. He was always there, poking and prodding and tearing at my mind. He did something to me there, Toren, as I grew in those cells under his experimentation. ‘A Vritra in a lesser’s shell,’ he would always mutter when he looked at my mind.”

Silence reigned above the world for a time. Horror and disgust rose in the back of my throat. “Seris, I’m sorry.”

The Scythe shrugged, as if trying to let my words brush by her. “Do not be. He was right.”

“No, he couldn’t have—”

Then Seris turned to look at me, and her pupils were dark. Darker and emptier than anything I had ever seen, save for one horrendous being. And as I stared into Seris’ eyes, remembering the mocking scarlet of another’s cruel gaze within a decrepit Cathedral, I stiffened in instinctive fear. My hackles rose subconsciously as I beheld something that wanted nothing more than to just… pick me apart. Cut and rend and tear at my flesh without a care as it sought to understand. It hungered to know in the same way a hole swallows all thrown down into it. I looked into a gorging, unending pit. It wrapped around me, like a constricting hydraulic press as it slowed the pulse of my heart.

It didn’t end. It never ended, that hole. That need and desire and want for more understanding.

And then it was gone, receding back somewhere else. I exhaled a breath I hadn’t known I’d been holding back, sweat dripping down the back of my neck. I hadn’t even noticed it, but a shrouded saber now sat in my hands.

I let it dissipate hastily, disgusted that I would even hold such a thing between Seris and I. And to my shame, I could not conjure the words I should say next.

Seris inspected me with sad eyes as I struggled to form a response. I needed to reassure her, somehow. To tell her that this wasn’t what she was.

Evidently, the Scythe could read my mind, too. “My manifestation—something about it was altered by Sovereign Orlaeth,” Seris said simply, seeming strangely relieved by my reaction. “So I was kept in the depths of Agrona’s vaults for years as I grew. Always growing in power, before my mind would be inspected again. And I did everything that they set before me with utmost satisfaction.”

Seris’ gaze became distant as she stared past me, her body loosening as she fought to suppress the strange sort of disgusted longing she held in her heart. “There was so much to learn in there, Toren. So, so much. There was no end to what I could discover, working as a young girl. It didn’t matter who I picked apart and what I did to them. People were just meat, you know. Just a loose conglomeration of proteins and electrical impulses pretending to be something more.”

I worked my jaw, unnerved by what I was feeling. A note of quiet fear burned deep in the back of my psyche at what I had seen.

“Then what changed it?” I finally asked, forcing myself to drift forward. Some part of me—the phoenix inside—told me that I was passing my neck through a hangman’s noose. I took that small step of faith, suppressing that kindling flame.

I pushed past my reservations. I ignored the sweat adorning my palms and the racing of my heartbeat. I put my trust in what I knew.

I laid my arms on Seris’ slim shoulders, massaging them softly. My shrouded wings encircled us again as my telekinetic shroud melted away. Around us, my notebook floated on currents of telekinesis.

Seris’ dull eyes drifted to my heart. I could see flickers of that earlier hunger, trying to claw itself back from where she’d suppressed it. But I didn’t conjure my shroud again.

Her hand raised, poised and like a serpent’s fangs. And when she pressed it against my chest, I could sense her quiet solemnity.

“It was Scythe Kelagon,” she said quietly. “He was what changed everything. The Redfeud War was where it all broke.”

I swallowed slightly, nodding. “What happened, Seris?”

Seris’ fingers dug into my chest abruptly, drawing just a few drops of blood. “The first foray of Renea Shorn,” she said quietly. “Scythe Kelagon was far too powerful for me, Spellsong. I was but a newly crowned Scythe, and he had been in his position for nearly a century. The longest of any Scythe of his day. Any confrontation between us was a foregone conclusion. But he had… weaknesses.”

Seris’ hand drifted up from my heart, moving to settle fingers on my shoulder. “He had a… Retainer. A young, Vritra-blooded woman with ideas too big for her head, and naivete far, far too vast. She thought she could improve in strength, kill her own Scythe, and take his place. And in doing so, she could make things ‘better.’ ”

I shifted, sensing the depths of Seris’ emotions as she spoke. Each word was said as if she was surprised to be saying them at all. “It maddened me. This young girl was so insistent that the world should be a certain way, instead of how it was. I knew I was right. She had not been forged in Taegrin Caelum, as I had. She was a child.”

Seris’ fingers drifted around the seared red ink on my neck denoting the Brand of the Banished. If she wished, she could plunge those fingers deep into my flesh. “I decided to teach her the truth of the world.”

Goosebumps rose along the back of my neck at the simple way Seris said teach. “What did you do?”

“I approached as Renea Shorn,” the silver-haired mage said. “Or some variant of her. I offered my services in poisons and concoctions and every lowhanded method there was to overthrow her Scythe. She refused for so long, clinging to strange ideals of morality and virtue and justice and everything else. Foolish girl, she was. She wasn’t strong enough for the world.

“She cared for things, Toren. And once I had grown close enough as her mentor—I learned what they were. And so I took them from her, one by one.”

Those goosebumps trailed down the back of my spine as Seris continued to speak, her voice strangely soft. Her fingers moved higher, from my throat to my face. She allowed the pads of her fingers to brush across the scars there, finding something in their texture. “She never knew I did it, of course. But every time, that softness—that weakness—it only served to make her crack and crumble. She became…”

Seris tilted her head, her brow furrowing as she sought the right words to put to her intent.

“She became like you,” I whispered quietly, understanding.

The Scythe chuckled slightly, the sound alluring as any classical piece of music. “I suppose that is an apt way to put it,” she mused. “For a moment, I thought that she was the greatest masterpiece an artist could have created. She was made in my image. I was her god.”

Seris’ hands retracted from my face as she looked down at them. She inspected them with the inquisitive curiosity that I loved, but it had a… darker tint to it now. “She poisoned her master, of course. In secret and over time, in a way he would never expect. Kelagon had taken her as Retainer because he expected an assault from the front, not a dagger beneath the armpit. I had orchestrated it perfectly.

“And when I slew Kelagon, his Retainer—loyal to me—would take his place. And she would be everything that I needed to control the Dominion of Vechor alongside Sehz-Clar. I can’t remember when it was that I realized it. I remember very little of those days. But I remember… I remember looking at this masterpiece of mine—this sculpted pupil—and some part of me thought it was a broken thing.”

Seris was quiet for a long time, limp and boneless like a broken doll as the shroud of her past hung over her throat like her title. I didn’t say anything. I wasn’t certain there was anything I could say.

“Some part of me… some hidden part… saw what I had made of an innocent child, and I felt I had slit the throat of a bird for daring to sing. I had deprived the world of something, something I didn’t understand. But it was something good. I remember looking at what had once been a girl who had wished only for the world to be a better place, and thinking I had created something monstrous. I had perpetuated my rot.”

Seris’ words echoed around me like stones thrown into a pond, the last turned into a snarl, her once-pristine voice dipping into a demonic growl. Something in her lifeforce shifted alongside her features. Her skin became a little more gray. Her limbs just a bit more twisted. For a strange instant, she seemed more demon than mage.

But as swiftly as the subtle transformation had come, Seris regained control. She took a deep breath, her fingers shaking as she clenched them.

I inhaled deeply in turn, trying to imagine how this must have shaped the Scythe in front of me. Someone so fully like the Sovereigns she served… So fully one of them…

I thought I knew why she found so many young Vritra-blooded children across the continent, keeping them safe from Taegrin Caelum’s vaults. I thought I knew why she took her chances with a lone, Named Blood man in the depths of a Fiachran clinic because of his music.

I swallowed, clutching the Scythe’s hand with my own and squeezing. I didn’t want to see her shake. “What was her name?”

Seris looked up at me, quietly reassured by my presence. “I don’t remember,” she said, a distraught sort of laugh. “She was just my project. There was no person there worth remembering, in my mind.”

And the woman before me could easily learn. She could simply look through the old records for this woman’s name. But for some reason, she did not.

The Scythe wrapped her fingers through mine, finding solace in the weave and warmth of my skin. “And when all was said and done… Orlaeth approached me. He said what I had done was worthy of the Vritra themselves. He said that I was his greatest creation yet, and that was enough. So I killed her. Like a potter smashing their craft because it didn’t meet their specifications, I drove my blade through her core. But not before she had poisoned her master, and I was poised to put him down.”

I closed my eyes, processing it all. I could sense it in Seris’ intent, where this was going next.

Seris wasn’t the sort to weep. But as she melted into my chest, seeking solace in my warmth and my embrace, I thought that anyone else would. “It was all there, in that moment. I could see that trickle-down effect all the way from the top. The rot and decay that seeped through every inch of our society… It all started with them. I had conceived that I was some sort of god, for how I twisted and corrupted the things under my hands. But I was their demon.”

And as Seris’ quiet grief and hatred of all that had been made by the Sovereigns spilled out of her like tar from a pit, cloaking the night with a different kind of darkness. Not the absence of light. This was something that wanted to take the light and tear it apart.

Through it all, I held Seris’ hand as she quietly gnashed her teeth. She shifted, grasping my chin with a hand. She forced me to look at her so she could inspect every line of my face. “Do you understand?” she demanded forcefully. “Do you see what I’m trying to show you?”

Gently, I pushed her hand away, lowering it as one might a loaded gun. “I think I can,” I said quietly. “I think I understand.”

The Scythe released a great breath that seemed to contain her entire soul. “That’s what I was afraid of,” she said with quiet resignation, echoing my earlier thoughts.

I couldn’t help it. I laughed, deep from the hearty depths of my soul. It echoed through the world on eddies of sound magic, mingling with the fire of that primal energy. I wanted to weep as much as I did laugh as I held Seris close.

The Scythe accommodated my raucous outburst with her unique brand of contented annoyance, the kind I suspected was only present in cats.

Seris feared herself the most. She feared that deepest call of her basilisk blood, that darkness that she had suppressed. It was always there for her, always a hint in the back of her mind.

“You’re beautiful, Seris,” I said in a quiet breath. “Down to your soul, you are beautiful. In spite and because of that shadow. Do you understand that?”

Seris tilted her head, trapped as she was in my arms. Her eyes were narrowed at me as if I were some sort of madman hauled from the High Sovereign’s torture pits. “No, I don’t,” she replied succinctly. “It seems very foolish to me.”

“Is that a bad thing?” I asked, pressing my forehead to the Scythe’s.

Seris shuddered in my arms, a ripple going through her that intimately passed between us. “I still want to understand it,” she said, almost a pout. “But I can’t.”

We kissed there for a short time, immersing ourselves in the closeness. When we separated, the Scythe had completely and utterly lost her composure. I hadn’t noticed when it had happened, but somehow a few locks of her hair had managed to drift out of place. I readjusted them with an artist’s care.

“That just makes it my secret,” I whispered. “One you won’t be able to have.”

The Scythe scoffed in her normal way, turning away from me. But when my notebook drifted closer, her attention shifted.

The book held itself out in front of the Scythe, waiting for her to take it. I felt my heartbeat rising as I struggled to maintain the spell, some primal part of me still wanting to stow it away or burn it or something. Anything to keep me safe.

But when Seris gently plucked the notebook from the sky, I had no more recourse. She leisurely opened it, inspecting the pages with a raised eyebrow.

She looked at me, to the pages, then back to me. “Ciphered, Toren? Really?”

I gave her the most annoying and irritating smirk I thought I could manage. “Please, Seris. Did you ever think I’d make it that easy for you? You have to actually try.”

Seris rolled her eyes dismissively, before focusing on the mangled mash of words on the page. She hummed for a few seconds, a slight smile adorning her features that made her look truly beautiful.

And also really, really fucking terrifying. As Seris’ eyes slowly roamed over the very first page, the swell of content confidence that slowly leaked across her intent created an inverse reaction in my emotions. “Hey, uh, Seris? I don’t think it’s that easy to—”

“You are an idiot, Toren,” the Scythe interrupted, not looking away from her reading material. “Substitution ciphers are exceptionally weak to frequency analysis. Already, patterns arise across this first page. If I were to take a gander at all the methods used…”

“Now, hold on—”

“Knowing you, I’d wager a sort of block-shift cipher was involved,” the Scythe mused, making my face drain of color. “You’d want to use something that would make you feel intelligent, too. That’s in your character. A cipher method that is easy to memorize, does not hinder your ability to write swiftly, and would make use of knowledge from your Earth, then? A date-shift is likely, based on what I know of you. A date from Earth, though, because you would really like to feel like you’d pulled one over on anyone who got a hold of this. And considering what I know of the stories you’ve told me of your previous world… The early 2000s? What year was it that you died, again?”

Every sentence created more and more cracks in the depths of my ego. I could almost imagine the knives sinking deep into my very soul.

Seris looked back up at me, quietly savoring the utter corpse I had become as she casually obliterated any sense of pride I’d had in my makeshift encryption. “You are simple to understand, my dear Spellsong,” she said, enjoying every ounce of her victory.

“I didn’t get into any encryption classes before I got hit by a fucking truck,” I muttered, dejected. “I thought it was smart.”

I should’ve majored in cybersecurity, not computer science. Then she wouldn’t be so smug.

Seris shook her head in disappointment. “Ignorance is not an excuse for idiocy,” she said, the exact opposite of reassurance. She returned to studying the book, humming to herself as her eyes sparkled with interest and rising desire. “Though if I were to put this together…”

The woman stared at the book for a few seconds, running through calculations in her head. Then, she began to speak. “ ‘Three weeks ago, I awoke in a place I shouldn’t be,’ ” she started. “ ‘I was surrounded by the corpses of… skaunters. I thought I was dreaming, but it appears I am in the world of—’ ”

Seris had spoken every word with slow, deliberate enunciation as she worked through the deciphering in her mind. My first reaction bordered along the lines of “How the everloving fuck?” as I watched her decode it all in real-time in a very blatant flex of her utter genius.

Then the Scythe’s brow furrowed. “The Beginning… After the End?”

She looked at me, confused. After all, those words didn’t really make sense together, not without the context needed.

My second reaction very quickly became “Oh, fuck.”

I coughed slightly, moving my hand. I gently closed the notebook, allowing it to rest in her hands. “Do you have anything left of that Sandaerene Red?” I asked, remembering the wine Seris had drunk in the wake of my fight with Arthur and Wolfrum’s flight. “You might… need that.”

“And why might that be?” she pushed, honing in on this very different avenue of uncertainty like a cat sensing the movement of prey. Her horns glistened in the starlight as she leaned forward with restrained and characteristic interest.

I worked my jaw. “Look, it gave Aurora an existential crisis. I wasn’t lying about that. It might be… difficult? To read?” I offered. There were only so many ways one could take that information.

Though as I thought about it more, I suspected Seris would appreciate at least some parts of what my notes told me. Like how some version of her decapitated Sovereign Orlaeth. That would probably be satisfying to read.

“Was the future granted to you that horrendous in nature?” Seris asked, more intrigued than disturbed. “Is it lacking in parts that raise more questions?”

I winced, recalling precisely where I’d stopped reading. Before I’d been hit by a fucking truck.

I hate isekai rules, I cursed internally. Damn stupid.

Because I had died immediately before Arthur Leywin had been set to meet up with Seris’ rebellion hunkered inside the Relictombs. Seris would have probably really, really wanted that information on what had happened.

“It’s not really about that, but how the knowledge was conveyed,” I admitted, rubbing the bridge of my nose. I felt strangely ashamed for not knowing more. Why couldn’t that truck have hit me a couple of weeks later instead? “I, uh… Well, there are questions it brings up. Lots and lots and lots of them. That might not be able to be answered.”

Seris did not seem perturbed by my warnings. If anything, she looked even more invested. Fuck.

“Just promise me to read it sometime when you can afford to have an existential crisis?” I begged.

Seris laughed. It was a sound I had heard often, but the sheer volume and scale of it was not. She laughed so hard that tears started to burn at the edges of her eyes. “Vritra’s horns, Toren, you’re serious about this insistence, aren’t you? You think I will have an existential crisis?”

“You might!” I affirmed loudly, annoyed by how Seris wasn’t treating this seriously. “It’s weird and strange and outside of context!”

What even would Seris do if she decided that every moment of her life had been dictated by a book? She’d probably leave TurtleMe to a slow, agonizing death, I wagered.

Seris’ eyes rolled, and she swatted at me playfully with the book. “Very well, my dear, worrisome Spellsong. You’ll have my word that I’ll have a bottle of wine at the ready when I read your little secrets.”

“Again, it’s not lit—”

Seris cut off my words by pressing a finger to my lips. “Just hush for a time. I can only make so many promises in one night.”

Her smile was true and pure, wide and free as the sky around me. And I just… didn’t want that to go away. But nonetheless, my shoulders—which had been tensed in a sign of agitation—reluctantly slumped. Sensing my quiet acceptance, the moon-blessed mage retracted her finger, watching me as if I were a child who might misbehave.

Seris turned slightly in the sky. “I think we should go back to the castle,” she said after a moment. “Stay too long with your head above the clouds, and you might forget that there’s a ground below.”

I sighed in quiet agreement. “I suppose there’s merit in that,” I replied, feeling a bit lighter inside as Seris threaded her arm through mine. “And I don’t think Aurora’s going to be done with her talk for some time. We have some time to ourselves.”

Seris’ eyes flicked to me, a slight smile on her pale face as we drifted arm in arm back down through the clouds. And though any other night, I might feel anger rise from the mere mention of Lady Dawn’s son, right here? Right now?

I could feel nothing but that kindling fire of happiness and hope.