[ Star of Cutting Iron ]

9.7 Motes

Chaos

Contains a Rune from the Heavens of the Earthsource, bearing elements of sharpness, destruction, and metal.

Considering it for a moment, Grae called open his Gentle Beast Constellation and slotted the new piece into place. The warm feeling of the spell within his chest altered, becoming more…

Grae began to realize that when he focused on the spells, they each made a faint humming song in his head.

Steelskin was a deep, resonant drone, steady and reliable.

Water Bullet had been mellow and soft- but now, this new variation was sharper, higher, cutting in its melody.

‘Water Blade.’

He conjured it and it hung in the air, a scythe-like curtain of water that rippled and bent in the wind. When he unleashed it the pull on his mana was staggering, but it sliced straight through the trunk of a broad oak, nearly cutting down the ancient tree in a single blow. Trickling water washed down the wound.

“Not bad.”

Now he began to cast as he had in the garden, releasing the spell before it had grown in strength, letting a thousand small droplets rain from his hand. They pierced the earth and the trees like needles, sharp but weak. Tiny holes broke open in the world as a bladed rain fell from his palm.

But whereas before the ‘lesser’ version of the spell had cost nothing, now it represented a serious drain. The cost was too high to maintain for more than a minute, and in that time, he doubted many enemies larger than a mouse would be slain.

More practice, then. More training.

This was closer to what Grae envisioned for the spell. A relentless rain of blades that washed his enemies away.

He nearly needed to perfect the casting to have both power and speed. Hardness and softness.

Experimenting, he found the blade could be unleashed significantly faster than the water bullet, because it relied less on weight and body to fuel its killing power. He could send a sharp edge of water forth from his palm in roughly a heartbeat’s time. It wouldn’t have the force of the full spell…

But it would cut through flesh rather nicely.

As he practiced, spells blossoming in hand and slashing out in brilliant waves of water that reflected moon and night-star, voices began to gather. They weren’t in his head, like the whispers had been before. They had no power to drown out his thoughts.

They existed in the world, curling through the trees, shaking the tall grass. The earth was black with pools of shadow and the sky was a dark field of clouds, combed into rows by the wind.

The whispers came from everywhere.

A magician…

Incartarum was the pride of the empire…

What talent, what hubris…

Come here, boy…

Listen, listen to the wind…

The high spires, the silver arches…

They had the cadence of echoes, half-formed and hollow.

Grae ignored them and walked towards the tree. He lifted his hand and formed a spiraling disk of water. It drew them in. The longer the spell remained, the more it dragged in power from the world, and the more the voices swarmed around him like unseen insects.

They spoke of everything, at once. A wall of nonsense repeating without intellect; they seemed aware of the world only in the simplest ways.

One was trying to tell him about a lost city.

Another was admiring his spellwork.

One was simply grasping for his attention.

More voices joined the chorus as he approached the great tree, entering into a region of wild grasses that curled at their tops, forming spiral fronds full of sticky, luminous seeds that clung to his fur in masses of glowing specks.

Butterflies and cicadas drifted in the haze of pollen coming from the tree’s branches.

Your casting is clumsy, still…

The ships that sailed to that darkened island…

The horrors we met…

Boy, boy take head, I’m warning you…

Sand slick with blood…

The Stars are only the beginning for you…

So much wisdom. Lifetimes of knowledge. All the magic that anyone had ever needed…

Reduced to this. Desperate, unembodied voices, whining for the chance to be heard, drowning out new magic in their need to make themselves known. Pitiful creatures who only existed as the memory of their worst mistakes, spoken again and again by the wind.

This was the last of an empire.

YOU.

There was a gust of wind.

Grae turned and saw the whisper-colony’s heart. An old, old creature, made of nothing more than mist. His wiry beard extended in all directions from a face so leathery, so wrinkled, that it looked like a death mask. His lips were nothing, over rotten teeth. His eyes stared in wild horror.

He was made of fog, a bleached white color like bone, and Grae could see straight through him. The edges of his being were ragged, and every time the wind blew some of his substance was peeled away from him.

YOU MUST HELP ME.

Grae stepped back.

“Help who?”

ALL OF US. ALL OF US, DAMN YOU. WE WERE SO CLOSE…

The ghost advanced, its body moving in jerky, spastic ways. It would jolt from position to position with no motion in between, seeming to flicker in and out of sight.

WE HAD THE TWILIGHT POWER IN OUR GRASP. WE HAD EVERYTHING. THE PLAN WAS BEAUTIFUL, AND IT WOULD HAVE WORKED…

“You must have been a great mage.” Grae said, trying to charm him.

GREAT? I AM DUST. I AM NOTHING. I AM A HOLLOW ECHO OF ALL THAT I WAS.

“I think I remember reading about you, but I can’t remember the name…”

WE WERE BETRAYED.

Grae wished he could have stopped and listened. He truly did. But the ghost was advancing, reaching for him with a bone-white claw.

He didn’t think anything good would come of letting it touch him. A cold chill ran down his spine at the very thought.

This was an old thing. A dead thing. It had no place among the living; it could only bring them harm.

And it was completely consumed with the thought of its own failure.

Grae played to that.

Lifting his hand he flung the disk of water forward, carving through the ghost’s incorporeal body. For a moment it was thrown into disarray, dissolving into a wide cloud, then it reformed with a snapping-to motion.

YOU DARE!? The mist roared.

WITH SUCH CLUMSY, BRUTE MAGIC!?

“Yes! Because I know you!” Grae lied through his teeth, lifting his voice to match the roaring torrent of voices that surrounded him, furious he would use magic against them, furious that he would have the courage.

“You are a footnote! A mockery on history’s ledger! They remember you as a joke, if they remember you at all! Your name will fade into obscurity! Nobody will speak it, ever again!”

FOOL! ARROGANT WHELP, SPEAKING SO BOLDLY WITH SO LITTLE POWER! I AM DUWAED, STONEWRIGHT AND STONE-SPEAKER. YOU WILL NOT TRIFLE WITH ME!

The ghost’s hand leapt forward in a stream of mist. It plunged into Grae’s chest, and he felt ice-cold strength flood through his veins. His body began to freeze, his muscles contracting painfully, almost tearing themselves apart.

He toppled over, crashing to the ground. He could hear the voice inside his head now. It was trying to consume him, he realized; it was wiping away his senses, stealing his eyes, his nose, his world. It would blind him and kill him in the dark to take his body.

---

Grae was lost. He could feel ice-cold pain flooding through his body, first stealing away his limbs then crawling inwards. His senses had retreated to the warm, beating core of his body, where his heartbeat kept time and his lungs flared in and out, swallowing panicked gasps of air.

He could not see. He could not hear.

The world had been taken from him. The ghost’s will crushed over his mind, smothering all senses, making his thoughts feel hazy. He had precious little time- in moments the dark would consume the last embers of his thoughts.

And he would be gone.

The whispers roared and shouted within him, trying to drown him. Trying to take his body, He understood now what the witch had meant, when she said a whisper-colony hunted.

But Grae clung to his body. In his head, he sung the dungeon-song, fighting to hear himself over the numbing wave of babble. He couldn’t feel his limbs move except when they knocked against the treeroots and the earth, but by dumb, persistent fumbling…

He found the whisper-trap. His first contact knocked it away, and in panic, he reached out, cradling it tight to his chest.

His fingers fumbled, finding the lid of the box with the last awareness in his numbing clawtips. He pried it open.

Numb to his own voice, Grae roared the ghost’s name.

“DUWAED!”

And even through the mute darkness that swallowed him, Grae could see the flash of light, hear the roar of the wind as the whisper-trap opened its jaws and swallowed the ghost.

Slowly his vision returned.

After a second, he could see a pinprick of light. After a few minutes of lying in the dirt that pinprick became a world, albeit a blurry, fuzzy one.

He slowly pushed himself up to sitting.

The box sat in the dirt, tilted over. Red strings had materialized to bind it closed, and a thin fog bled out from under the lid.

Grae picked it up cautiously. The porcelain surface was as cold as ice.

All he wanted was to sleep, but if he collapsed here, the sun would turn him to stone before he woke up again. So he went stumbling through the woods, clutching the box to his chest.

The way was long. His legs were weak. Under the light of moon and night-star, he couldn’t find any familiarity in the landscape. He began to feel that he must have stumbled, like Oriole did, in circles.

Until a voice spoke.

“Lost. Quite helplessly lost.”

“Do we help, Mog?”

“I think we’d better, Maga.”

The cat and the dog leapt down from the tops of a tree, leaping across branches, hedgerows, moving like shadows. The dog was as black as night, with short curling fur and dark eyes. The cat was white as day, with a single golden spot around its right eye, the left caved in, a crater that saw nothing. They were roughly the same size and moved in eerie unison.

“And you are..?” Grae asked. His fist curled, knowing their small nature wouldn’t make them any less deadly.

“Mog.”

“And Mag.” They both spoke in the same pompous, deep voice, rounded and fat and stuffy. It was hard to tell which one was speaking, because neither moved their mouth. And worse, at times they both spoke in unison: “We are the witch’s faithful familiars.”

They walked in a circle around him, inspecting him.

“Quite a specimen, Mog.”

“Yes Mag, quite ferocious…”

“I still don’t know what you are.” Grae objected. “You’re not animals of any sort I know.” Their smell was wrong. They carried an air of spices with them, the heavy scent of incense…

“Demons.” Mog answered.

“Demons.” Mag echoed.

Grae’s eyes narrowed. He’d been told stories of demons, when he was a young piglet. They were clever, mercurial tricksters; they tricked humans into summoning them and then defeated the foolish mages by their wits alone.

But these housepets looked nothing like the terrible, red-skinned monstrosities he’d heard of.

“And what kind of demons appear as a dog and a cat?”

“Familiars.” Mog, or maybe Mag, answered. Their tails flicked. “Summoned by the witch, many witches ago, to serve her and her successors.”

“To serve faithfully and dutifully.” The dog added. Grae had lost track of which was which.

“Funny. You look nothing like demons. Nor are demons faithful or loyal, from all I’ve heard.”

“Maybe you heard wrong then.” Mag said.

“Very likely. We’re such misunderstood creatures.” Mog complained. They were circling around and around Grae, watching him from all angles. Grae couldn’t be sure, but now and then when he looked away, he thought they traded positions.

“Come along.” The cat said, swishing its tail as it turned and walked.

“Yes, or the forest will claim you…”

Grae didn’t have much choice. What won him over, in the end, was that they smelled like the witch’s cottage. They were soaked in the stuffy herbs and cozy perfumes that filled the little house; that seemed like a hard touch to imitate.

And so Grae followed, through the woods.“Tell me. What happened to the old demons?”

“Nothing.” One said.

“Nothing happened to them.” The other agreed

“But something terrible happened to their masters.” The first snickered.

“Oh yes. They died.” The second one echoed.

“That’s funny.” Grae challenged them. “Because the oldest demons can’t be older than a few hundred years. What happens to demons, when their masters die?”

“They return.” The cat said, turning and suddenly changing direction.

“A demon is like a scoop of water. Until we are taken from the source, our home, we are just…” The dog said, following.

“One. One unity. Then the summoning breaks us into pieces, and only when our master dies, only then do we return to the source.” The cat completed his brother’s sentence.

“Bringing our knowledge, our memories with us. Strengthening the whole.” The dog appended.

"Fascinating." Grae admitted. "But why tell me all this?"

"You need guidance." One said.

"Council." The second added.

"You need a demon of your own."

"You need only speak the right words, and have a companion for life."

Grae chuckled. "Perhaps. And perhaps I will summon one, someday. But I'm in no rush, not to have your guidance, or to accept that you're steering me right to begin with. I'll bide my time; I'll see what others say of demons before I accept your word, authorities on the subject as you may be..."

"Very well."

"Very well."

They spoke in unison.

"Until then…"

“We have arrived.

He could see the lights of the cottage ahead.