A couple days later, Ranvir once more sat in the library reading through the books the old man had given him. Ankirian history was blood-soaked and morbid. The children’s tales might not necessarily be any more morbid than elusrian tales, he was just inured to stories of old monsters dragging children out to die in the cold winter. He’d grown callouses to those stories.

Stories of the First Daughter grabbing children off the street and leaving them to die in the desert felt a lot worse than it may have actually warranted. Then again, when he’d gone through the history books and found records of the First Daughter having actually lived and was supposed to have been the First Queen of Ankiria.

“What’s up?” Kirs asked, from opposite him. She’d had her nose buried in her notes all day for the last week, reluctant to show Ranvir what she was working on.

“It’s just these books.” Ranvir replied, gesturing to the volume before him. He’d been working his way through ‘United Alliance: Nations of the Alliance: Ankiria’, like the librarian had said it was very dry and it was taking him a while. “They have these horror stories about actual people, then flip them into stories for kids. Like, The First Daughter killed what is estimated to be almost three-thousand people in Bahad just before she was supposed to take her reign as Queen. It took multiple, multiple, triplet masters to kill her. Then here,” He gestured to children’s tales book. “It’s repeated as a story about staying true to the ankirian kings and queens.”

Kirs gave him a look he couldn’t quite interpret, sucking her upper lip into her mouth. Releasing it with a smack, she scooted a little closer. “You do realize that’s pretty common, right? Have you ever heard the story of ‘The Nightwraiths’?”

“Yeah.” Ranvir replied, rolling his eyes. “Everyone has.”

“Have you heard of the Night Rebellion? Back around the founding of Elusria? An entire rebellion found murdered, almost four-hundred people dying over the course of a single night after the Queen sent her tethered out to stop the rebellion? Like wraiths haunting the night…”

Ranvir blinked. No, “No… It…” His head fell into his hands, then shot up. “It makes sense, but that can’t actually be…” Kirs’ deadpan face left no prisoners. “But… Shit, really?” Ranvir leaned back on the bench, only stopping as he felt himself having to force himself to remain in the seat. “Damn.” She was right, it fit.

“Besides, The Sun King and The First Daughter were incredibly powerful tethered and there’s been tons of tethered, let alone ankirians, who’s tried to mimic their powers to greater and lesser success.”

“How? Like take their Concept and develop it into the same thing?”

Kirs nodded. “The First Daughter were meticulous in the accounting of her power. At least for a while. The Sun King we know less about, but his feats should be easier to figure out. Multiple stories tell of him ‘bringing the dawn’ to battlefields, during his conquering of the tribes.”

“I remember.” Ranvir said, tapping one of the history books. “Also says he ‘took away the sun’ from one of his enemy tribes, causing them to all wither and die, somehow. So just a light tethered with a concept related to the sun?”

“Most likely.”

“And The First Daughter?”

“Well, there are a few records, one of Ragnhild’s students actually did a study on them. Gathering all the information they could find into one place, I’ll see if I can find it for you. But the basics are essentially that either they fail somewhere along the way and only become mediocre, or they reach true power and become mad, like The First Daughter herself.”

“Become mad?”

“Normal people don’t kill an entire village.” Kirs replied.

Ranvir rubbed his forehead, resting his elbows on the table. “You can become mad from power? Or mad with power?”

“Something like that. Though from what I remember there aren’t a lot of cases and most weren’t powerful enough that they were worth mimicking.”

“And it wasn’t just regular madness? Maybe you can only gain her Concept if you actually are mad?”

“Maybe, we won’t know, though. None of us are space generators.”

Ranvir froze, hands in his hair, his breath stuck in his throat. “Space generator?”

“Yeah…” Kirs said, slowly.

His mind wandered involuntarily to the other night. Attacked by a smoke tethered. He’d been coughing for two days afterwards, but it was the event afterward that stuck in his mind. The ankirians. Yellow eyes, cracked with purple. Purple Space. At the time he’d just felt her enormous power, but now he recognized her as a generator.

“Is this about the other day?” Kirs asked, reaching over to touch his forearm.

He pulled away, crossing his arms. “One of the ankirians is a space generator.” He said, feeling eyes on his back. Reflexively, he turned looking for them, but found none. He wanted to embrace the pressure, but he was already tired from today’s training.

Still… He struggled through tether-space and letting the pressure pull him through.

“You think they have someone mimicking The First Daughter’s path with them?” Kirs asked.

“I don’t know, all I know is that she was really strong and didn’t seem right.” A shiver ran down Ranvir’s spine saying those words.

Kirs worried at her lower lip. He turned slightly, looking behind him again, he felt something looking at him, but he couldn’t be sure. Maybe I’m going mad? The thought struck him, before he dismissed it. He hadn’t taken a Concept, yet. He turned again, trying to find what was bothering him.

Kirs opened her mouth, starting to say something then changed her mind. “Ar- You should see what I’ve been working on.”

Ranvir knew she was trying to distract him, but he also felt the need to be distracted. And he’d been wondering what she’d been working on for days now.

“Obviously.” He replied, walking around their table to see her notebooks. And to cast a glance around the room. Still nothing. It felt like he was standing in the shadow of a building and was too stupid to understand why he couldn’t see the sun.

This time, Kirs was the one to shoot a glance around the library, causing Ranvir’s brows to shoot up. “I can’t go into too much detail, but…” she flipped through the pages of her notebook. “Last trimester, I found these books in the cathedral. Inside them were these ritual circles.” She stopped on one drawing in her notebook, depicting an array of two circles sitting the perimeter of a larger center circle. “There were all these materials related to them.” She continued, sifting through pages of these circles. “I found twenty of these ritual circles throughout all the books that I found.”

“Ritual circles as in our rituals?” Ranvir asked, tracing the curve of one circle with his eyes. She hadn’t drawn it completely even he noticed, the book’s binding messing with her lines.

“They’re definitely related, though these are for very specific effects. And…” She discretely reached a hand into her pocket, before offering whatever was in it to Ranvir.

He casually accepted it, feeling the warm stone in his fingers. Looking down to examine it, he cracked his fingers. A low orange light spilled from the stone. It wasn’t bright, he doubted he could even navigate a room with this light.

“It’s called a nightstone.” Kirs said. “I think it was for children who were afraid of the dark.”

“How did you make this?” Ranvir asked, looking the stone over for a glyph. “Did Grevor help you?”

Kirs shook her head. “No, I haven’t talked to anybody about this. Not even Es.”

Ranvir gave her a look.

“I haven’t talked about it a lot with Es.” She corrected. “I made that. No tethered, no powers. I just needed some starjute and the stone. It’s not even obsidian.”

“How did you choose the color?” Ranvir asked, offering her the stone, once more hidden in his fist.

“I think it depends on the sub-circle used in the ritual.” She pointed at a smaller circle sitting on the perimeter of the array. “More interesting than that is the pattern.”

“Pattern?” Ranvir asked, perking up. “In the rituals?” He leaned over to look closer at the circles in her notebook.

“Yeah, I think I’m seeing one at least.”

Ranvir rapidly sifted through the pages. Not all the circles lined up at the same point on the page, making the difference harder to notice, but most of the circles did seem to have similar additions.

“Like this… sub-circle?” Ranvir asked, pointing to a break in the ritual circle in the upper left corner, that repeated in more than ten of the circles.

“Yes, that’s what made me suspect it.” Kirs replied, shifting to a different page. “This is where I put the starjute for the ritual. I think this circle denotes an intake.” She seemed to collapse somewhat, almost theatrically so. “Unfortunately, I don’t have a space to attempt more experiments…” She looked at him with huge puppy eyes. “If only I had a huge sleeping room that already has more space than it needs, instead of my cramped room on the fourth floor…” She sighed loudly. “But I don’t…”

Ranvir narrowed his gaze. “I’m beginning to suspect ulterior motives…”