“That’s what he decided to call ‘going out with a bang’?” Armsmaster asked incredulously. “Sophie, did he have anything more planned? Because that was hilariously lacking by his standards.”

Sophie, once again carrying the look of despondence I’ve begun to associate with mana deprivation, says, “He… says you interrupted him before he could finish. There was something about a tornado? I don’t know, he’s starting to rant, and he tends to mumble when he does that.”

Armsmaster snorts, “Yeah, that sounds about right. So, did you two learn anything from that?”

“Your mana control compared to mine makes me look like a toddler throwing paint at a wall up against a master painter,” I say.

“I noticed Huntsman was the same. I can’t even do some of the stuff he did yet, and he did it with only a fraction of my mana,” Sophie concurs.

Armsmaster nods. “Guides have an innate understanding of magic from the moment we come into being. The problem is, unless we’re magic focused like the Magister or such, we have a hard time explaining it properly. It comes in handy for the few times we get to tussle.”

“I can see how Valerie can have learned so well in just a little over a week, with someone like you.” Sophie says, “Huntsman never even got close to you.”

“Ehhh. He actually almost had me with the cloak. It’s been a while since we last sparred, and he didn’t do that the last few times. Part of me forgot it was a thing he bothered with and it caught me by surprise. If he’d been just a little quicker circling around, I would’ve been done for.”

“Oh.”

Armsmaster smiles faintly. “Don’t take his loss too seriously, Sophie. On an open battlefield, I’m his superior, sure, but in a dense forest? Where he can break sightlines and I’ll lose him easily? That’s his domain. Some of the only times I’ve lost a fight were against him in places where he can set a proper ambush. It’s his specialty.”

Sophie cheers up a little. “Right. Okay.”

Armsmaster turns to me. “I’m going to pop back for a bit, let you both recover your mana. Whilst you do, Huntsman and I can discuss where to work on your training. See you soon.”

With that, she disappears.

Sophie and I stand there awkwardly for a minute.

“So,” Sophie says, “She has the same hair as you?”

I rub the back of my head. “Yeah, I noticed it too, but I never really questioned it. Didn’t feel important.”

She looks at me quizzically. “You realise silver isn’t exactly a common colour? Like, at all? As in, I don’t think it normally happens?”

I sigh. “Yeah. I know.”

“And you never asked if there was a reason she shared hair colour with you?”

“Like I said, it never felt important.”

She chuckles, “You’re a weird one, Valerie.”

“Well, if that’s what it takes to help you over your funk, then I’ll take it. Yesterday hit you hard.”

She looks down. “I didn’t like seeing you hurt. I don’t really have any friends, you know? And right when I was finally starting to make one, she got hurt badly. Of course I didn’t like seeing that.”

I give her a hug. “I don’t really have any friends either. Back on Earth, the other kids got weird about my hair when I was younger, and I kind of withdrew into myself later on. I didn’t like it, but I didn’t like the teasing either, so it felt like my best option.”

She leans into it.

“So, how about it?” I say, a little nervously, “We friends?”

“I’d like that,” she says.

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

Roland Hesting

Shield unbroken, to the end.

I don’t really know why I hadn’t looked at the memorial sooner. I guess it just felt melancholic, like my father’s absence, whilst something I couldn’t see myself, became palpable when looking at it.

“I don’t really know why I’m doing this,” I say to the plaque on the plinth at the rear of the yard.

“Maybe I just want to feel closer to someone I’ve never met. Maybe I feel like it’ll fill a hole I can’t feel. Either way, here I am.”

Mom is supposed to return soon. After Sophie and I had recovered our mana yesterday, our Guides put us through some light training, so as not to aggravate my shoulder. It was mostly focused on teamwork, filling the gaps we both leave as we fight, so neither of us is open to attack for too long. We didn’t make much progress, but training alongside Sophie was a nice change of pace.

“Mom is… well, I’d guess you’d know her better than I. She’s off at Alex’s place, telling him about some trouble Sophie and I got into. Sophie’s his daughter, by the way. Anyway, we got into a fight. I got hurt, but Aunt Tamaya fixed me up pretty well. My shoulder should be fine by tomorrow, so that’s good.

“I’m starting Cardinal soon. I’m looking forward to it, but I’m nervous as well. I’ve learned a lot from my Guide, Armsmaster, but I’ve only been doing this for two weeks now. I know Mom and Armsmaster say I’m talented, and in a way I suppose I can see that, but it doesn’t feel like it. It feels… I don’t know. I just look at how far I’ve come and can only think of how much more there is to go.

“I’ve come to realize that I like the fighting. I don’t know if that’s good or bad, or whatever, but I do. I like the thrill of it, of facing someone who could challenge me and finding out how I stack up to them. I like the adrenaline rush I get, the teetering on the edge between victory and defeat, that careful balance I have to maintain if I want to win.”

I can admit that to myself, now that some time has passed. I didn’t like the pain, of course, but everything else? Every second of that fight against Sawyer sent my heart racing in a way that few things on Earth ever did, and the fire mage that was with him was a different kind of challenge I couldn’t help but enjoy, even with how much it hurt.

“I don’t know if there’s an afterlife or anything. There were so many back on Earth it made it hard to believe in any of them, and I’ve not been here long enough that I felt like asking about theology here. But if there is, I hope you’re watching, Dad.”

I can feel tears gather in the corners of my eyes, hot and heavy.

“You left a big hole when you died, and Mom can’t fill it on her own. She tries, but she’s hurt too much herself, even I can see it. I just… I wish I got to meet you, even once. The stories Mom told me, I didn’t even know they were about my own father until two weeks ago. Some of them feel too distant. Like she brushed over the hard parts. But I want to know the hard parts, even about what she did after you died. I know she did something, Armsmaster said that much, but no one will say anything.”

The tears fall. I can’t hold them back, even if I wanted to.

“I just want to know my own father.”

“He would be so proud of you, you know.”

Startled, I turn around. There, standing in the middle of the yard, is Mom.

She’s wearing that cloak she told me about in her stories. A cloak of feathers made of steel, all interlocked together by her magic, and allowing her easy access to readily available metal to manipulate. It reaches from the base of her neck, down to her ankles, and makes her look taller somehow, almost larger than life.

The Warbreaker in full.

Then the ring on her finger flashes and she’s just Mom again. She walks up next to me, looking at the memorial.

“I didn’t hear you coming,” I say.

“Subtlety may not be my strong suit, but I know how to be quiet when I need to. Besides, you were… occupied.”

“Yeah.”

She’s quiet for a moment, then says, “You’re a lot like him. You’d never even seen his face and still I look at you and see his touch. He was never one for words, preferring to let others speak unless he felt he had something that needed to be said. A lot of people mistook that for him being shy, or lacking in intelligence, but we all knew better. He was the rock I would steady myself on, in times my emotions were… volatile. He was careful, and considerate, but when things got rough it was Roland we’d gather around. The plans were mostly mine, but in the midst of battle he’d choose when and where to enact them.

“I thrive in chaos, Valerie. In times when things are uncertain I usually know how to find the path through, but I tend to get… caught up in the flow. I lose sight of the greater picture and it was always Roland that would keep me grounded. Remind me there were others beside me. Later in our careers that didn’t happen nearly as much, but early on?”

She chuckles mirthlessly.

“All too often I’d pull too far ahead. Too many times I’d fight through, only to realise I’d left the others behind. Usually it could be turned to an advantage. With Alex and Tamaya behind Roland’s shield I could smash whatever we were facing like a hammer and anvil. A number of our plans even accounted for it. But there were a few times that being separated from the others nearly cost me. It was those times that I needed him most.”

She takes a deep, shaky breath.

“I had fooled myself into thinking we were invincible. That no one would dare touch us, even if they wanted to. Then he died, and they called the month that followed the Steelwoven Massacre.”

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

Ariel had hoped to never tell Valerie this story.

She knew she was only fooling herself, now. Two A Grade mages for parents, and she convinced herself Valerie wouldn’t be a mage herself?

Lineage isn’t as much of a factor as some families believed, but it was a factor.

Regardless, the time had come for her to come clean. Better Valerie hear it from the source than from someone who didn’t know the full story.

A glance at her daughter showed Ariel that, whilst curious and concerned, she was withholding judgement. Like she could tell there was more.

Valerie always was insightful for her age.

“The full story is better told from the beginning. Numerous times throughout our journeys, we came across… strange characters around the few siphons yet to have cities built atop them. They would venture inside, and spend whole days at a time within, yet slay the bare minimum of monsters. It wasn’t until the third time we met such people that our curiosity got the better of us. When we went in to check on them, we found they were setting up a ritual inside the siphon. This is normally extremely difficult, as there is almost no ambient mana in siphons, and they have to be almost entirely powered by the mana in coins.

“But they had an obscene amount of money on hand, far more than they likely should. Alex, being the quietest of us, went ahead to find out what the ritual was for. He returned with grim news. The ritual was designed to turn every ounce of mana in the coins into waste, flooding the siphon beyond its normal capacity. Naturally, knowing the impact an unleashed horde of monsters could have, we killed the ritualists and ended the ritual.”

Valerie’s eyes widened slightly when Ariel mentioned killing the ritualists. She wasn’t surprised exactly, just… unprepared for the possibility of taking a life. She would have to get used to the idea eventually, Ariel knew, but for now she’d let her maintain her peace. It wouldn’t harm her.

“A few months later, we received word of a monster horde released from a siphon on the other end of the continent. The timing was… suspicious, but it slipped our minds. Eventually, we let it be, and moved on. But these people hadn’t forgotten us.

“I don’t know how they knew what we did. Maybe one of the ritualists managed to release a message, maybe one escaped, it's hard to say. But either way they knew we were responsible for halting the horde in that siphon. And they weren’t happy such long laid plans were disrupted. So they sent an assassin for us, starting with myself and Roland. You know what happened then, of course. The assassin killed Roland, I killed the assassin.”

Ariel took a moment to steady herself, long buried memories coming to the fore.

“The following weeks were… a bit of a blur. I tracked down who hired the assassin, then who hired each person in a string of intermediaries. Eventually, I learned of the ultimate culprit.”

She turned away from the memorial to face Valerie.

“They call themselves the Order of the Empty World. They believe this world is damaged, broken in some indefinable way, and they seek to end it so it can be started again. They attempted a trial run of their plans here on this continent, Nyen. Our actions foiled that attempt, and it angered them. So they sought vengeance, and to stop us from interfering again.

“When I learned of this, I also found they had infiltrated the upper echelon of Heron’s nobility. Three whole families, all members of the Order, and all not without a large share of influence in the kingdom. Not only were these families the ones who funded the Order, they were also the ones who hired the assassin, and they are why my home is considered a laughing stock by the rest of Nyen. They systematically convinced the other nobles that the common folk didn’t deserve to wield any significant degree of magical power, and thus spent over three hundred years breeding it out. It crippled Heron’s military power, and now it’s not much more than the nobles squabbling over the remains, with the common people forced to keep their heads down amidst it all.”

Ariel had to steady herself for a moment. She was proud of her home, despite its many flaws, and discovering that its fall from its previous glory was the work of a single organisation? Even now it rankled her.

“I did what I could to pull the Order out root and stem. 16 is the age of adulthood in most places here, so anyone under the age of 16 was spared, but the rest? I was very thorough, Valerie. I did everything I could to ensure the Order’s influence was severed, but what I did was not a nice thing. It wasn’t a good thing, and it might not even have been the right thing, but it’s what I did. I was hurting, so lost in my own grief and pain that bloodshed seemed the only option. Maybe it was, but it’s too late to say now.”

Valerie was looking at her in horror, but she wasn’t leaving. Even after hearing her own mother had killed that many people, some of whom could well have been innocent, she didn’t walk away.

Ariel didn’t know how to feel about that.

“Alex and Tamaya did their best to keep me from taking the wrong lives, and I thank them for it. Two other mages came in to stop me, both S Grade, and I left them bleeding but alive. Then four more came, with twice more As and Bs. I knew I had done as much as I could by that point. I was tired, nearing the end of my wits. In top condition I’d have managed it but I had hit the breaking point.

“There are ways to ascertain the truth through magic, a few enchantments and numerous rituals, so it wasn’t hard for them to learn that I wasn’t acting out a mindless slaughter. In most circumstances, my actions could even be considered applaudable. But I had almost single handedly destabilised an entire kingdom, decapitated its nobility, all out of a need for revenge. There had to be consequences. So, I was exiled to Earth. I was given the resources needed to pay for a home, to learn how to fit in there as a foreigner, and away I was sent. The connections I had were enough to secure a way back, and a clause that would release me from exile.”

Ariel gave Valerie a soft smile. “If my and Roland’s child proved to be a mage, of either A or S Grade, with an Aspect on top? Then I’d be allowed to return, on the condition that I not leave Hortell or its immediate surroundings for the entirety of your schooling. It’s based off of the Hortell Accords, one of its articles being about the safety of the family of students who stay here. It has happened in the past that powerful mages are blackmailed by their families being taken ransom, so it's a necessary precaution.”

They both were silent for a time, before Valerie asked a question of her own.

“Do you regret it?”

Ariel considered her response carefully. “My reasons? No. The Order was full of dangerously unstable people who were all beyond help. They needed to be put down. But… I do regret my methods. I could have gotten some help, there were favours I could have called in, I could have been more careful in my approach, ensuring no one who didn’t deserve it was caught in the crossfire. Instead, I gave in to the chaos of the moment. I stopped seeing beyond myself and my pain, and innocent people died.”

Valerie nodded slowly.

“Okay.”

Shocked, Ariel stared at her for a moment. “Okay?”

Valerie hugged her. “Okay. It’s not for me to forgive you for it. I don’t think you’ve forgiven yourself yet, Mom. So just, okay.”

She stepped back.

“Armsmaster told me you did something pretty bad, and my imagination kind of ran with it. A part of me had been worried you’d killed a bunch of kids or something. I think I can live with this though. You were going after bad people, and you did it alone. Others got hurt, but you did your best.”

Valerie began to walk back to the house, a small smile on her face. “Aunt Tamaya made a roast for dinner, it's almost time. You coming in?”

Ariel gestured to the memorial. “I’ll be in soon. I think I have my own things to say to him.”

Valerie nodded, and went on her way.

Ariel watched her daughter leave, and said under her breath, “Just like I said, Roland. So much like you it’s uncanny.”

Ariel felt a weight, sixteen years in the making, lift from her heart.

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

After dinner, when everyone else has gone to bed, I find myself on the roof like I would back home, watching the stars.

Mom’s story was… enlightening, I suppose. A wake up call, certainly.

A part of myself had forgotten that, like Earth, this is a real world, with it’s ups and downs. Tragedy and wonder in equal measure.

I won’t condemn her for what she did, this ‘Steelwoven Massacre’. Likely, she’s done more of that than I ever could. It also makes more sense of why she didn’t want to tell me about herself more until now.

I know my Mom. She’s not a rampant murderer, no matter what she might be telling herself in her own head. If she felt those people needed to die, then they likely did.

So I watch the stars, like back home. It gives me a sense of peace, at times, but now I can only focus on something else Mom mentioned.

The Order of the Empty World. Do you know anything about them, Armsmaster?

“Unfortunately not. It’s been over a thousand years since I last had a student, and my only other source of knowledge of the world was through other Guides. If they’re a recent development, it’s no surprise I’ve not heard of them. From what your Mom described, they’re similar to a few other groups I’ve tangled with before. They pop up every now and again, but I’m confident we’ll be able to handle them as long as we get your training finished before they start becoming a problem. If that’s what you want to do.”

I take a moment to think about that. I hadn’t considered the idea, but there is a kind of appeal to rooting out these people.

I think I do, yes.

“Okay. I’ll keep that in mind. In other news, we need to get your Mom’s cloak into the Armoury.”

Shocked by the sudden change in topic, I blurt out loud, “What?”

“I don’t get how, given it spent the last sixteen years on a world without magic, but it’s on the verge of becoming a Relic. If we can get it through the Armoury before then, then it’ll finish the process. And with a story like hers behind it’s development, it could become something powerful indeed.”

I stew on that. The only way she’d agree to that is if I told her about the Armoury. You said it needs to stay secret.

I get a sense of Armsmaster scoffing. “It was never going to stay secret for long. It’s powers and signs are too recognisable for that, those who knew to look would figure it out. But the longer it did stay hidden, the safer you’d be. Given you’re almost enrolled in Cardinal, you’ll be fairly safe until you finish your training, at which point you’ll be able to handle any typical problems that come your way. Besides, she already suspects somethings up with your Aspect, especially given that you’ve yet to tell her what it’s called. And I think Tamaya has already figured it out too, so it won’t matter much longer.”

Alright. Tell her tomorrow, then?

“Should be fine to, yeah.”

How long will it take?

“Build up like that one has? I give it a few days to sort itself out. Settling a Feral Relic takes much longer, but this will be fairly quick and easy. Should be finished by the time you enrol, barring complications.”

Okay. I’m going to sleep. See you in a bit.

I drop down from the roof, and head inside to my room.