The Beginning After The End Chapter 502: Green in the gray

Chapter 502: Green in the gray

I blew steam across the surface of my mug part way to my lips as I let out a laugh. The wyvern, Avier, was standing in the middle of a small round table between Mordain, Lyra, and me. At that moment, the green-feathered, horned owl was hopping from one leg to the other and speaking rapidly.

“And then she looks up at me, head in her hands—I can only see her eyes through her splayed fingers at this point—and says, ‘I just don’t know what to do with the boy, Avier. I either need to hang him from a gibbet…or make him a professor!’ Well, we all know how that turned out.”

My shoulders shook as I laughed, and I had to set down my mug before I spilled. Lyra Dreide was looking between the wyvern and me bemusedly. Mordain chuckled softly, his gaze focused into the middle distance.

We were sitting together in Mordain’s private study. The round walls were covered in curved shelves full of books, strange crystals, and a variety of knick knacks I didn’t immediately recognize. He’d asked us to share tea with him once more before Lyra Dreide and I left the Hearth. Wren Kain had already returned to Darv, loath to leave his work behind any longer.

“She knew he was the boy Agrona searched for, of course, but Cynthia expected there was more to him, even then,” Avier continued more seriously. “Cynthia wasn’t a seer, mind you, but she was clever. Perhaps the most clever person that I ever met. Arthur was more than just quadra elemental. He understood mana on a level not possible for a boy of his age.” Avier hesitated, then continued more softly. “She even thought for a time he might be the Legacy.”

Lyra Dreide clicked her nails against the side of her gla.s.s. “Incredible, that she lived for so long after turning against Agrona. That one woman could hobble the information network of an entire continent—and against a deity no less.”

“Agrona is no deity,” I said harshly, then immediately felt the squirm of discomfort in my stomach as I realized who I was talking to. Glancing from Lyra to Mordain, I bowed my head. “Ah, sorry.”

Mordain gave me an easy smile and waved a hand dismissively. He was sitting sideways in a chair of woven gra.s.s, one leg crossed over the other, a green mug held loosely in his other hand. “The asura are no ‘deities,’ whatever rumors the agents of Kezess have fomented over the centuries. Ironically, though, Agrona himself is probably the closest thing to a deity this world has ever seen.”

Lyra’s face fell. “Because he created the Alacryans, you mean.”

“Indeed. Though mad and undoubtedly evil, his genius can’t be denied. To have created an entirely new race in his own image.” Mordain shook his head ruefully.

Avier ruffled his green feathers. “I saw firsthand the lengths Cynthia went to just to escape the reach of the Vritra clan. In her darker hours, she would break down and weep as she detailed the depravities that she had partic.i.p.ated in, all in Agrona’s name. Forgive me Lady Dreide, but I always struggled to see how anyone with a good heart could be born from such darkness.”

“Is anyone born evil?” Lyra asked, swirling her gla.s.s before draining it. “Cynthia Goodsky and I were both forged into bitter implements by cruel masters. If we did evil, we did so because we were told it was good. We learned it, just as we eventually learned better. I don’t know if all people are capable of such a change, but I have to believe they are.”

I felt myself frowning as I struggled to align the retainer’s words with my own experience of Alacrya. “I find that the ability—or maybe, the willingness—to admit you’ve been wrong and to truly change is pretty exceptional.”

Lyra’s answering look was uncertain; she didn’t know if I was complimenting her or disagreeing with her. I supposed I was doing both.

“You are both correct, in my mind,” Mordain answered, his blazing eyes suddenly piercing. “The older one is, the harder—the more exceptional—it becomes to change. And yet sometimes outside pressure requires a metamorphosis, lest those same pressures crush you.”

Avier fluttered, taking a couple of hop-steps toward Mordain. “You’re thinking of Chul.”

“I am,” Mordain answered absently. “I knew when I agreed to let him go what it would mean. Kezess will understand who and what he is immediately, I am certain. I can only hope that Arthur’s station will s.h.i.+eld young Chul from immediate reprisal.”

“So why let him carry the message?” I asked, still confused about this point and glad that Mordain had brought it up. “Since you know how to pa.s.s between the two worlds, you could have sent anyone, couldn’t you? Avier”—I reached out and stroked the owl’s feathers, only afterward did I remember that he was no mere bonded beast but a wyvern of great power—“s-surely would have been capable…”

He ruffled again, his large eyes soaking me in with an expression I couldn’t read.

Mordain’s smile turned wry. “Chul’s path is Arthur’s path, now. To keep him back would have been to steal his purpose from him.” Almost to himself, he continued, “Twice now I have put him at dire risk.” He blinked, shaking off some buried emotion. “There is no avoiding that danger. It does, though, force a very old man to rethink his decisions, both recent and past. Kezess knows that the Asclepius survive.”

I watched the ancient asura uncomfortably. Sometimes he would speak and it would feel like a different language entirely—like I was a child listening to adults talk and just not getting it.

Mordain had been generous with his time and the accommodations of his people within the Hearth over the last day. I couldn’t help but trust him, and I already considered him an ally. But I couldn’t claim to understand him.

He brightened suddenly, standing. “Which is, of course, why I’ll be sending one of my own to accompany you. There is no longer a point in hiding, and there is, perhaps, much we could offer this world, even if we cannot return home to Epheotus.”

Avier’s overly large eyes blinked twice. Before speaking, he gave a reptilian croak. “Mordain…are you certain? That is a large step, and so sudden.”

Taking a deep breath, Mordain closed his eyes and smiled up at the ceiling of the small, round study as if the sun were beaming down on us. “Even in Epheotus, where time stands still, things are suddenly changing. A dam has broken, Avier. Can you not feel it? If there has ever been a time to do things suddenly, it is now.”

We left Mordain’s study and flew along one of the wide tunnels that connected the various chambers of the Hearth. Pa.s.sing through a communal garden where food was grown, an arena of sorts where a handful of young phoenixes were wrestling, and a natural hot spring full of people lounging in the shallow water, we landed at the entrance of a narrow pa.s.sage with a smooth floor.

Mordain didn’t speak as he led us into the short pa.s.sage. The chamber beyond was bright and airy, covered with vents that I a.s.sumed allowed airflow from the surface. Fountains with constantly trickling clean water dominated one wall while orbs floated around emitting cool white light. Two phoenixes sat on a mossy log, one looking quite green while the other fawned over them protectively.

Kneeling in front of the ill phoenix, Mordain exchanged a few kindly words, then continued on through the outer room into a narrow corridor that branched off into small, private rooms.

“Is this a healer’s?” Lyra asked, peering inside one open room.

The only furniture was a cot, but the room’s interior was bright and clean in a way that reminded me of the sterile hospital rooms at Xyrus Academy.

“It is,” Mordain said without looking back.

At the end of the corridor, he opened a door—one of very few I’d seen in the Hearth—into a secondary room full of metal shelving, crates, and hanging plants. Two women were speaking quietly in the corner. Both looked up in surprise as we entered.

“Soleil, Aurora.” Mordain smiled brightly. “I come with a rather unusual request.”

***

Warm wind blew past us as we sped over the treetops, moving northward. Soleil, Lyra, and I clung to the golden frills that stuck out from Avier’s gleaming green hide. His long neck swiveled back and forth with each beat of his wings as he searched the Beast Glades for any threat.

As I considered the strength of the wyvern and phoenix, I couldn’t imagine what beast could threaten us.

“Oh, I haven’t been out hunting in ages,” Soleil said, her neck twisting and craning almost as much as Avier’s. The asuran woman’s gold-orange eyes flickered with internal light as her ashen blonde hair fluttered in the wind. “And I haven’t flown like this since I was just a child! Thank you for bringing me along.”

“Uh, thank you for coming,” I said stiffly. In truth, I hadn’t yet wrapped my head around the idea of escorting a phoenix out in the open. But Soleil’s presence was to be Mordain’s overture toward the rest of Dicathen. “Mordain must have a lot of trust in you.”

The asuran woman bit her lip thoughtfully. “I’ve been his student for thousands of years. I trusted him enough to leave behind our entire world and become a refugee here in Dicathen. But the trust he placed in each and every member of our clan who elected to come with him is difficult to quantify. Any one of us could have doomed the rest, and yet our clan and culture survived this long.”

Lyra let herself slide back the length of a few frills in order to hear better. “Do you think he’s right to come out of hiding now?”

A soft expression smoothed Soleil’s features. “No one can see all ends, and even the great lords can still make mistakes. But his intention is pure, and his gaze reaches longer than most. I’ve risked everything for his vision once before, and I am happy to do it again.”

I couldn’t explain it, but a melancholic silence descended on me like a great weight. Soleil seemed happy to watch the Beast Glades speed by, and Lyra was outwardly focused on returning to her people.

Neither complained when I receded into myself.

What is this pressure constricting my chest? I searched for a source to the rising fear, worry, and sadness, but the source was as formless as it was expansive. The world was changing—continuing to change—but I didn’t know if I could keep up with it. What if I fail again? The question was like a knife of anxiety sticking into my chest.

It was an old fear. Pervasive and gripping. Grown within the soil of my many errors and fertilized by the corpses of those I’d led into combat. I knew I couldn’t shake it off or pretend like it didn’t exist, and so I sat with the tired melancholy, accepting it as the necessary price of my experience. And it was no wonder.

Everything is changing, like Mordain said.

Avier landed on the strip of brown gra.s.s and fallen trees that separated Elenoir from the Beast Glades. There was a small Alacryan settlement a half mile or so to the west, but Lyra had asked that we not fly directly into it. The last time a giant flying beast had appeared in the sky over the refugee villages, many Alacryans had died.

Lyra led, her steps quick but not rushed. Avier transformed back into the comparatively small form of an owl and rode on Soleil’s shoulder. For her part, the phoenix woman looked almost nervous as we approached the gray village on the edge of the gray wasteland.

A shout went up from a pair of guards when we were still several hundred feet from the nearest building. A battle group formed, setting themselves before us. Once we were close enough to make out individual details, however, they relaxed. In the meantime, a bare-chested, bronze-skinned man had rushed out of the village, a wicked-looking glaive in both hands.

“Djimon,” Lyra said, picking up her pace slightly as we came within earshot. “Any news?”

The man with the chiseled features activated a dimensional storage artifact in the shape of a belt buckle and stowed his weapon. “We fought off a pack of black-fanged wolves yesterday. Their hides are already curing. A few of us have fallen ill with some kind of coughing sickness. Nothing else worth telling.” His dark eyes met my own briefly, then settled on Soleil. “What of your own task?”

Understanding his unasked question, Lyra said, “The message is sent. We have no way to know if it’ll reach Arthur, nor if he’ll be able to return. Still, we have our own tasks.” To me, she said, “Lady Tessia Eralith, princess of Elenoir. This is Djimon Gwede, once Named Blood and High Mage of the Ascenders Hall in Itri. And this…” She hesitated, choosing her words carefully. “Djimon, this is Soleil. One of the asura. A phoenix.”

Djimon, who has been closely inspecting the asura, didn’t seem surprised by this. I supposed the gold-orange eyes and the fiery mana signature did mark her as something other than human. “Tessia Eralith. I have heard your name, and that of your grandfather, Virion. An honor to have you among us.”

He bowed.

I felt a pang of grat.i.tude. This man no doubt knew me as Cecilia also—his enemy on both sides of the war. But he didn’t mention it. “I’ve heard a lot about what you’ve accomplished out here, but I wanted to see it for myself. We both did,” I added, gesturing to Soleil.

“Should Elenoir ever be habitable again, we’d be neighbors.”

He nodded seriously. “A relations.h.i.+p that we have already taken our first steps toward. Even now your people wander the wasteland, searching out places to plant new groves.”

“We are all restarting in one way or another.” Lyra took a deep breath. The wind blew from the east, carrying a subtle scent of the distant sea. “Come on. I’ll show you around.”

The settlement consisted of perhaps forty or fifty buildings. The Alacryans had ingeniously formed bricks from the ash, but this had the unfortunate side effect of giving everything a drab appearance. Still, against the backdrop of the vibrant green Beast Glades, and with large, square raised planting beds sprouting a variety of fruits and vegetables, the settlement had a homely air to it.

Two young women made a game of quickly harvesting bushy plants covered in purple berries, shouting as they raced to collect more than the other. A handful of children ran past, pulling kites in the shape of exaggerated mana beasts from the Beast Glades. Somewhere, a man was singing, and his melody floated through the town as if by magic, easing into the core of my anxiety and starting to break it apart.

“How many Alacryans remain here in the borderlands?” I asked, trying to do some quick math in my head.

“Four hundred and twenty eight,” Lyra answered casually, as if she knew the number by heart. “Less than a quarter of our original number. These are the people who wanted the promised new life Seris had offered them more than they yearned for a return to normalcy in Alacrya. Not that those who left received such a life. I expect there are many who now wish they hadn’t left, considering.”

A reverberant lowing from the other side of the village made my heart leap. “Moon oxen?”

Lyra smiled. “We’ve continued to expand our herd. Quite a few end up here. They’re incredibly useful, providing milk, fertilizer, and a warning system for when mana beasts get near the settlement. I suppose you already know that, though.”

“Have you tried to make cheese from the milk yet?” I asked, fondly remembering the first time my parents had forced me to try it. “It’s pretty pungent—an acquired taste, I suppose—but very hearty and lasts a long time.” An idea occurred to me. “You know, Elenoir was still closed off for most of my life, so trade was very limited, but I’ve had enough dwarven cuisine by now to bet they’d love it.”

Djimon snorted. “Our first export as a fledgling nation. Ox cheese…”

“Perhaps next time we have elves through, they can get us started with the process?” Lyra’s tone was serious, and a small line had formed between her brows as she concentrated on her thoughts. “We could even offer a few of the moon oxen in exchange.”

“Our first trade deal,” I suggested with a little laugh.

Lyra gave me a mock frown. “Do you have the authority to pen such a deal?”

I gave a very unladylike snort. “As you said, I’m princess of the wasteland.”

We were pa.s.sing by a small gray hut, and a wet cough issued from its open doorway. Soleil paused and peered into the shadows. “You mentioned a coughing sickness?”

Djimon hummed uncomfortably. “Seven have fallen ill over the last few days. We suspect it has something to do with the ash.”

Soleil looked questioningly at Lyra, who nodded. We followed the phoenix woman to the doorway, where she paused and knocked lightly against the wooden frame that supported the ash bricks. “h.e.l.lo? My name is Soleil of Clan Asclepius. I’m a healer.”

A tired voice invited Soleil in. Lyra and I followed, while Djimon waited outside.

It was dim inside the building. The sun was at the wrong angle to light the interior through the small windows, blocked by a taller building next door, and all the candles had gone out. I had seen lighting artifacts in other buildings, but it wasn’t surprising that there weren’t enough modern amenities for every house.

Besides being dim, the interior was also spa.r.s.ely furnished. A bed, little more than a cot, was pressed up against one wall, while half the small building was occupied by shelving and a table and chairs. A simple fireplace was built into the back wall, and a cooking pot hung above the dark, cold remains of a fire.

A woman in her middle years rested in the bed, covered by a patchwork fur blanket.

“How are you feeling, Allium?” Lyra said, approaching the bed and kneeling down on the rush-covered floor.

The woman coughed before answering. “My body aches from the coughing, Lady Lyra. I just”—she paused for a fit of coughing—“can’t seem to shake it.”

I noticed that, with each cough, the woman’s weak mana signature seemed to spasm. Lyra’s eyes flicked toward the woman’s core, then back to her face, telling me she’d noticed as well.

“Never did really—feel like myself again, after that wave smacked us when—Agrona was defeated.” The woman paused to cough every few words. “Weakened me, I think.”

Soleil hummed, her nostrils flaring. Her bright eyes were darting everywhere around the sick woman’s body, as if she could see not only through the blanket but right through the woman herself. “Have you been eating mana beast flesh?”

“We all have,” Lyra answered, a touch defensively. “We grow as much food as we can, but wildlife is rare aside from the mana beasts that sp.a.w.n in the Beast Glades.”

“Peace,” Soleil said with a smile that seemed to warm the room. “This is not an affliction of the lungs caused by ash exposure.” She turned her attention back to her patient. “You have picked up a parasite from consuming the flesh of a mana beast infected by some lesser form of a demon leech. Fatal if untreated, but the infection itself can be burned away harmlessly.”

The sick woman’s cheeks, already sallow, paled even further.

“Do I have your permission to do so?”

“Vritra’s horns, yes!” the sick woman gasped, almost choking as she struggled to hold back another cough.

Soleil drew aside the blanket, then bent over the bed, her hands extended. Warm light began to issue from her hands, and the room filled with mana. Fiery sparks danced over the sick woman’s exposed skin for several seconds before sinking into her flesh. She began to sweat and writhe. A weak cough burst from her, and red specks stained her lips.

Lyra took the woman’s clammy hand, holding it tight.

I tried to follow Soleil’s magic as it coursed through the coughing Alacryan. Like a thin veil of flame burning away the unwanted vegetation from a farmer’s field, Soleil’s mana scoured the woman’s body.

Something stirred inside my mind—a dim flash of insight, some learned but forgotten knowledge. It had been Cecilia who’d absorbed the last of Lady Dawn’s mana, not me. It was the Legacy who understood it. I’d only been a pa.s.senger, watching a more powerful mage manipulate mana in a way I couldn’t hope to comprehend. And yet, at the same time, my mind had been linked with hers, connected for every new spark of enlightenment. Seeing Soleil working her magic drew that insight just a bit closer to the surface…

The sick woman gasped, clutching her chest with her free hand. Mana condensed over her skin, roiling like storm-tossed waves back and forth as she instinctively conjured a weak s.h.i.+eld.

“Easy, now,” Lyra muttered.

The burning phoenix fire-attribute mana suddenly subsided, and Soleil straightened. She was beaming down at her patient. “And there you are. All gone!”

“R-really?” the woman asked. A weak cough followed her words.

Soleil patted the woman’s head comfortingly. “Yup. Your body can heal now, and then your mana levels should even right out. Just take it easy for a couple of days, okay?”

“Th-thank you!”

After several rounds of thankful praise, we stepped back out into the suns.h.i.+ne. Instead of looking pleased, however, Soleil was frowning. “You said there are others?” she asked Djimon.

He blinked, and his hardened expression noticeably softened. “A few in total, yes.”

“Take me to them.”

***

Big, sparkling silver eyes goggled at me as I scratched beneath the moon ox’s chin. “Take good care of the people here,” I said. It didn’t answer, but its long tongue snaked out and raked across my wrist scratchily.

With one more scuff of the curly hair of its forehead, I left the paddock and beelined across the nameless village for Soleil’s mana signature. She had spent the rest of the previous day a.s.sisting those infected by the demon leech poisoning, then we had been treated to a relative feast—demon leech-free, I was a.s.sured—around a bonfire with nearly the entire village in attendance.

I’d then spent the morning livening up some of their planting soil with a little bit of deviant plant-attribute mana arts.

My visit to the Alacryan border village had given me a lot to think about. They’d created a simple but functional life for themselves out here. It was difficult, with many dangers—as the demon leech poisoning had made immediately clear—and a clear downgrade from the comforts most had enjoyed back in Alacrya, but it was honest and, perhaps most of all, free.

If they could rebuild for themselves, I was certain the elves could, too.

I found Lyra and a few of the Alacryans I’d met over the last day standing around Soleil. The phoenix was bathing them in her bright smile as she gently shook hand after hand.

“Please, can’t you stay a bit longer?”

“—offer us your blessing, great phoenix—”

“—come with you, as your steward or a.s.sistant. I’ll do anything—”

“—do without you if we’re wounded or poisoned again?”

Soleil laughed, a sound like rustling wings. “You were strong before I came, and you will remain such after I leave. There is much of this continent for me to see, but you will always be special as the first of your kind to welcome the Asclepius clan back into the world.”

Lyra, seeing my approach, peeled away from the group. “As much as I’m loath to see you both leave, I think you should probably get the asura out of here before people start wors.h.i.+ping her. The hole left by the Vritra is hard to fill.”

I smiled, but the expression cracked, becoming something halfway to a frown. “Living like this will teach them self-reliance, I have no doubt.” I swallowed a lump in my throat. “I’m…glad to have really met you, Lyra Dreide.”

Her mouth fell open and she regarded me in wordless surprise.

I plowed on, only half knowing what I was trying to say.

“You’ve helped me find closure into a part of my life I didn’t even realize was a gaping wound. So much happened so quickly after my parents’ deaths, and I had no control over anything for so long. And then Agrona was gone and the war was over and I still have all this emotion seething inside of me, that…that…”

As words failed me, I shrugged helplessly. “I’m just…glad. That’s all.”

Lyra stepped forward, her arms opening as if she were about to hug me. I froze, and she stopped, easing back and bending smoothly into a deep bow instead. She held the bow for far longer than necessary before straightening. A lock of flame-orange hair fell across her face, which she swept aside with a practiced gesture. “Farewell, Tessia Eralith.”

Soleil waved her final goodbyes to the gathered Alacryans, and we lifted up into the air and turned north, shooting out over the gray wasteland. Avier, who had roosted silently over the last day, took wing from a nearby rooftop and fell in behind us.

“Thank you for humoring me,” I said, projecting my voice with mana to help myself be heard.

Soleil spun onto her back, flying with the ease of one floating on still water. “I am here to experience whatever you have to show me. I’m the eyes, ears, and voice for Clan Asclepius in Dicathen now, so wherever you want to lead me, I’ll follow!”

I chuckled into the wind.

Our flight picked up speed as I grew more comfortable, studying how Soleil did it but also just relaxing. It was mesmerizing, speeding across the rippling gray emptiness. The devastation of Elenoir was so complete that few features of the land even remained. Rivers had been wiped away, hills flattened, canyons collapsed. Rarely, we would see the remains of a few trees, or rocks protruding up through the ash.

Otherwise, it was just endless gray.

That and the lack of atmospheric mana made finding the first “grove” fairly easy. We flew for an hour, maybe two, before I sensed it in the distance. I was certain Soleil and Avier had felt it much sooner.

I stopped once we were close enough to have drawn the attention of the handful of elves working there. They’d planted seven trees. None were taller than perhaps eight feet, all of them spindly. The ground around the grove had been cleared of ash and tilled with fresh soil brought from beyond Elenoir—mixed with just a pinch of the Epheotan soil.

Green in the gray…

It was a childish thought, but it was all I could focus on. That little splash of green. Life fighting its way back from the absoluteness of death.

“It’s beautiful.”