“You realise how crazy you sound, right? A whole other world, magic, and monsters and heroes, all real? You’ve never been the type for pranks, Mom. Why start now?”

Mom just looks at me with a sad smile.

She lifts one hand and her face hardens into a focused expression. As she does, her hand seems to take on a silvery reflective sheen. I watch in stunned disbelief as the metal coating half the crystal ball she set on the coffee table peels away and floats into the air. The metal collapses into a small orb, then flattens to a disk, then shifts into a square, then an undersized knife.

Finally, Mom seems to tighten her focus, and after a moment the knife slowly shifts into a simple metal bracelet. The bracelet floats over to me and lands in my lap.

“Does that look like a prank to you?”

I spent a few moments staring at the bracelet. I thought the thing with the crystal ball was just a trick of the light, a hologram or something, anything really. But this? I watched her shape this bracelet right in front of me. It’s pretty hard to refute something like that.

At the same time, something tickled at the back of my head. What Mom just did reminded me of something, but for the life of me I couldn’t remember what.

“This is magic?” I asked.

“It is. Specifically Metal magic, focused through my Steelweaver Aspect. You remember what I told you about Aspects?” She replied.

“Yeah, they’re special abilities that refine how people’s magic works. Everyone has an Affinity for a certain type of magic, but not everyone has an Aspect. Those that do, will be better at some applications of their magic than others, but if they don’t, then they’re more generalised.”

I paused.

Then it clicked again.

“Wait. You said Steelweaver?”

Mom nodded, and gave a small smile, like she was expecting the realisation I just came to.

“That’s the same Aspect as the Warbreaker.”

“I never really liked that title. It always made me feel like everyone thought I was only good at breaking things, when I know I’m pretty good at making too.”

Mom is the Warbreaker? That threw me for a good few minutes. It wasn’t easy to reconcile my Mom, who is one of the calmest people I’d ever met, with the Warbreaker, a woman who could single handedly stop whole armies in their tracks. Though it does explain why she didn’t talk about her very often. But if that’s the case, why did she tell me those stories at all?

“Mom? Why did you tell me those stories? I mean, it’s pretty clear you didn’t like talking about yourself, but why even tell me at all? It’s pretty clear you didn’t want me to know magic was real, are you telling me now because I’m getting magic of my own? Is that what’s happening?”

Mom sighed.

“Yes Valerie, and I’ll get to why you having magic now matters in a bit. To answer your first question, I told you those stories because I felt you deserved to know where I am from, even if you thought it all fake, as well as the kind of man your father was.”

“My father?” I asked.

“Roland.”

Roland. The Fortress.

Where the Warbreaker (Mom? That still doesn’t fit right in my head.) was known for her ability to cut entire armies in half, Roland was famous for a wholly different reason. No matter how hard he was hit, or however many times, he did not go down. Giants, Dragons, that one time with the Greater Demon, it didn’t matter. If Mom was telling the truth, and even now I have a hard time believing she wasn’t, Roland’s shield never broke, never wavered.

But if he’s my father, where is he now? 16 years, and this is the first I hear about him?

“What happened to him?” I asked, though a part of me didn’t want to hear the answer.

Mom was quiet for a moment, seeming to steady herself against old memories.

“I may have never liked the title people called me, but Fortress fit your father like a glove. Unfortunately, we made the mistake of forgetting there is more than one way to breach a fortress. The assassin came for us in our sleep, and made the mistake of targeting Roland first. Long nights one the road taught me to sleep lightly, so I was easily woken by the struggle. By then it was too late. Roland’s wounds were too severe, and I couldn’t get a healer in time. Magic can do a lot of incredible things, Valerie. But it can’t bring back the dead.”

“What happened to the assassin?”

Mom gave me a cold smile, and in that moment, I wholeheartedly believed she and the Warbreaker could be one and the same.

“Roland and I were together for over thirty years. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to express how much losing him hurt, but I did my best before he died.”

“Oh. Right. I suppose that was a silly question,” I said, shocked at this new side of Mom.

We sit in silence for a few moments. It’s hard to imagine Mom inflicting that kind of pain on a person, but I wasn’t there. I’ll do my best not to judge.

Wait.

Did she say thirty years?

“Thirty years? That can’t be right,” I say incredulously.

Mom chuckles. “If you have enough magic it can slow your aging a little. Not to any extreme degree, but a few extra decades here and there is a nice plus. It’s why I look like I do even though I’m pushing seventy.”

“Se-seventy?! That’s insane!”

Mom just laughs.

“I think we’ll move on to a lighter topic, yeah? I’m not the best teacher in the world, but I should be able to at least show you how to feel your mana. How does that sound?”

“Really? Okay!” I say excitedly. I’m going to do magic!

“Alright then. Thankfully once you have it down it’s fairly intuitive, but the initial process works a little differently for everyone. I want you to close your eyes. Now, normally there’s a test to figure out what method would work best for you. Fortunately, I’ve spoken with a few people with Stellar Affinity over the years, and I know you quite well, so we should hopefully be able to skip that step. Imagine for me you’re on the roof at night. Yes Valerie, I know you’ve been sneaking up there, don’t give me that look.”

I look away sheepishly. I thought I was being careful, but apparently not. I close my eyes again and imagine the night sky where we live. Our area is fairly rural, so we don’t have the kind of light pollution like the major cities, so it lets me see far more than otherwise.

“Good. Now, imagine that one of those stars is a lot brighter than the others. It doesn’t matter which, you can choose. Focus on that star, and as you do, imagine all the other stars are winking out, one by one.”

I follow Mom’s instructions as best as I could, and as I do, I swear I could feel something gathering inside me. A warm silver glow, like threads of woven starlight, spreads throughout my body.

“Well done, Valerie, well done indeed! I was expecting that to take at least a few tries, but you managed on your first go. Now, slowly open your eyes, don’t lose focus though, and look at your hands.”

A little confused, I do as she says, and gasp.

The skin of my hands seems to have darkened slightly, not like they tanned, but rather as if the shadows had wrapped around them in a thin film. Suspended in that film are tiny points of light, stars in the sky projected on my hands.

“It’s good to see how well you’re handling this so far. It’s going to make the next few weeks easier on us both,” Mom says.

I actually wasn’t handling this well at all, but I don’t think it would help her to know that. Mom may be a powerful warrior-mage from another world (and wow is that weird to think in my own head) but something tells me she’s a little fragile at the moment. I’ll save my freakout time for when she won’t hear.

“What’s happening in the next few weeks?” I say in return, and as I do so I lose focus on my mana, and the shadowy film over my hands fades away, but I can still feel the threads of starlight within me. It’s strangely comforting.

“That brings me to what I mentioned earlier, about you having magic changes things for us. I told you I’m not a very good teacher, and that remains the case. Unfortunately, I know that the minute I turn my back you’ll start messing with what you can do, which I cannot express enough is a really bad idea. Young, untrained mages can, and often do, get themselves killed if they aren’t painfully careful with their magic. Do you understand?”

“Yes Mom. Now messing around with magic unsupervised. I get it,”

“Good. To continue, normally I wouldn’t be able to get you a teacher, given we’re on Earth and I’m ‘retired’ so to speak, which is just what people tell themselves when they don’t want to say ‘exiled’. And no, Valerie, I won’t be telling you why I’m here. Not yet anyway.”

I bite down the question we both know I wanted to ask. Why was Mom exiled to Earth? What could have caused her to leave a place I can tell she still considers home?

“Fortunately for us both, those dreams you mentioned you’ve been having are what are called Aspect Awakenings, which means you have an Aspect of your own. There’s no way to tell what it is yet, but having an Aspect at all makes you eligible to enroll at Cardinal Academy, the very best place to learn how to best use your powers. Enrolling at Cardinal also means that under the Hortell Accords, I am legally required to take you there myself. Given it’s an unofficial exile, the people responsible can’t outright stop me from coming. Do you understand so far?”

I take a moment to process it all.

“You can’t teach me, but because I have an Aspect, that means I can go to this special school with people who can, and because politics you get to go with me.”

Mom chuckles. “A touch simplified, but apt enough. Now, it just so happens the Headmaster at Cardinal is an old friend of mine. So in a minute I’ll get a message through to him to let him know we’ll be coming. The timing is fortunate in that the school year begins in a few weeks, so it’ll let us get settled in first. Whilst I do that, I’ll leave you with this.”

Mom reaches into a pocket and pulls out a necklace with an ornate crystal on it.

“This is an Awakening Stone. When you put it on, the enchantment will immediately put you to sleep and force another Aspect Awakening. Aspects can fully awaken on their own, but that could take anywhere from a week to a full month. So, we’ll just force things along a little. Don’t worry, it’s perfectly safe. I’ve used one myself.”

Mom stands up, and sits back down next to me. She leans in and hugs me tight.

“I’m sorry I never told you about any of this, sweetie. I didn’t want you to grow up feeling like you were missing out on all this because of my actions. I love you, and I know you’ll do well.”

She releases me, and places the Stone around my neck. Immediately I feel a drowsiness take over, but before I fully succumb I manage to get out a few words.

“I love you too.”

**********************

Ariel sighed as she looked down at her now sleeping daughter.

“I never wanted this for you Valerie. But if this is how things must go, then I’ll ensure you get the very best I can. I promise.”

With that, she laid a kiss on Valerie’s forehead, and stood up once more. She then walked out of the lounge room and headed to the basement, the one place in the house she never let Valerie go.

As she stepped down the stairs, Ariel reminisced on her time on Earth. She didn’t hate coming here. Not really. In a way, her exile was a good thing. It allowed her to take a step back from it all, and grieve Roland properly.

She didn’t tell Valerie everything about that night. How could she? After all, it wasn’t just the assassin she killed back then. She may have taken Roland’s death poorly, but if it was just that, it wouldn’t have come to this.

No. But killing him before he could learn of their child?

Even after sixteen years and a whole other world away, Ariel didn’t think she was quite over that.

She stepped into the basement, and gazed on the gate circle that led back to Aldor.

When she was exiled to Earth, the connections she had to those in power and her own personal record meant the Harpers were forced to concede to letting her have access to the plans for the circle back, even if they never expected her to need it.

Ariel’s gaze drifted to the simple desk on the other side of the room. On it lay her old storage ring, containing all the magical items she’d collected in her time as an adventurer, along with a few other things.

Laying a finger on the ring, with a twist of will and a small portion of mana Ariel pulled out a piece of paper, a pen, some sealing wax, and the signet ring Rodrick gave her case she needed to send a priority message.

She began to write.