75 Winter 513
“Come then,” Shroud said, sharpening white nails against Crucible’s edge, “Let’s begin.”
Wren scarcely had time to react before Merlus stabbed him. His mind was just starting to grasp the complexities of what the old man had said. Crucible. The blade had always been ready to test him. Fool that he was, Wren had never considered the ramifications of what the Vault keeper had said. The blade entered him with the same ease as it would have passing through water. Wren reached up slowly, putting a hand on the hilt just as his world washed out with white, cascaded sterile brilliance into his mind and wiped his vision clean of the world around him. He only had time to half turn towards Fallon before his face went slack, his knees locked, and his hand pointlessly held the handle of the dagger, as if he had plunged it through his own chest.
When the white cleared, he stood in darkness, facing himself. It was as though he were gazing into a reflecting pool, but the clarity of the copy was so striking he could not help but feel it were real, more than real. Beside him, Zan occupied a body of shifting water, liquid and light. Reaching up, he ran a hand along rippling skin in a too-human way and sighed.
“Well then. First day back to dead-land and we’re already joining them. Well done, Wren. Well done.”
Wren reached up to where the dagger had plunged into his breast, found nothing but unmarred skin. But his reflection did not also reach up to touch the skin, instead it frowned, shrinking, reshaping, stepping out toward him with a sickly pallor and bony arms like winter tree branches. Wren stepped back, in spite of himself, starting in the face of the apparition. Calm brown eyes followed him, but did not menace.
“Hello Wren.”
He took a breath, the child held it for him, small chest rising, straining against the world that seemed so intent on ceasing that movement.
“Hello Egyptus.”
In seasons before, when the madness had flowed through Wren’s brain like blood and fever, he had many names for himself. This was among the first, wise and quiet, a voice of reason when Zan was not. Egyptus was that part of himself that always rose in defense of his moral high ground, long since lost beneath seasons of scarred landscape and boiling blood. Egyptus had rarely come out, to Wren’s knowledge, having been weaker than the wild Weaver and the brutal Shroud. Was this then his test? To deal with the parts of his splintered self? Rhysol’s manacle, invisible and pulsing on his right wrist should have repaired them…but really they just became shadows in the backdrop of his mind, inactive till now.
“We never got much of a chance to speak before,” the child said, surprisingly well spoken for his age, “But the dagger, the power of it…you’ll step willingly into any fire if there’s power for you at the end of it.”
“That’s not…”
“True?” Zan finished, his vocal intonation subbing for the raised eyebrows he didn’t have, “We both know that’s a lie. It’s always been about power, even before you had a convenient excuse to gather it.”
Egyptus smiled and curled his fingers at Zan, a small, shy wave, so different from his speech, measured and calm. It was a moment before he returned attention to Wren, reaching behind his back and pulling out the dagger. Crucible blazed in the boy’s hand and he pointed the end at Wren. “If you are so eager for power, I’ll unlock all you have. We were weak once, weak and dying. I think you’re still afraid. You’ll never let yourself be truly powerless again, never vulnerable…not truly.”
Pulsing light blazed from the end of the dagger and struck Wren in the chest, the force bringing him to his knees. “You’re a coward, aren’t you? Well. Fear no more. Have all the power you want.”
Coils of energy roiled through Wren’s veins, the heady madness of magic frothing in his body. The sorcerer screamed shockwaves, fire, earth, water, and blasts of air, the Void twisting and closing within the wild magic. His body collapsed, reformed, collapsed again. He bristled with masteries of any discipline he had ever studied. For a moment he could grasp them all, the limits of the power, the possibilities, the awe inspiring dominion of it all. For a moment, Crucible granted him the power he had so desperately sought.
Zan said nothing, twisting with the same wild energy. Egyptus was gone and Wren stood alone to look at his reflection, the pulsing half-thing with tentacles, fire, and madness written on his brow. With this body, with this power, he could accomplish his ends…he could build an empire. Only the gods and their children could rival him for power…and…
And.
He wasn’t human anymore.
Gingerly he reached towards his face, slithering flesh releasing fingers of molten energy to trace along his skin. So little of himself was left. Egyptus was gone, his body ruined, everything he was…everything he could be, enslaved for the cause. He stood like a purpose, he WAS a purpose…an ends to justify a means. “I…” He spoke the word in a thousand vocal chords, stopped, turned to Zan, “I…Is this what I’ve…” he broke again, his face growing and collapsing a hundred times before he spoke next, “What have I become?”
“You fleshbags have a lot of pride for what you are,” the Sarawanki said softly, caught in the cradle of colliding powers, “It isn’t for me, but then…I’m not changing who I am. I think we both know that the truth is that you don’t fear being weak…you fear being alone. Power brought you everyone you have now. Your strength inspired them, your plans fooled them. You’re afraid if there’s nothing special about you, nothing at all…that no one will care. That you’ll be nothing.”
Wren’s skin cried, his mind wrapping around the words even as his body shuddered beneath the magnitude of the change, “Being human has always been one of your greater strengths,” Zan finished, holding his arms out, as if to embrace, and then dropping them, “But if you continue. If this is all you’ll be…then you might as well always be lonely. There’s no one else here but you and me, partner. It’s lonely…being superior.”
The world inside the blade stopped, Crucible floating where Egyptus had vanished. As the child wrapped his hands around the hilt once more, he re-appeared, grave and frowning. “You have to be willing to give up all that you are, all that you could be…to embrace the one gift you’ve had from the beginning.” He reached out toward Wrenmae, his little hand pale, like the heavy snow that had almost silenced it. Wren blinked with a multitude of eyes, shuddered, as if shrugging off the monstrousness around him, and reached out to take the child’s hand.
Crucible clattered to the blank ground with the sound of stone on metal, Egyptus was gone and the magic with him. Wren held onto nothing, just the memory of a tiny hand pressed into his skin, like the fading kiss of a lover. The warmth remained, but the hand was gone.
“And my oh MY what an intervention that was.”
Crucible danced from hand to hand, held by the second of the personalities. Weaver, wide brim hat obscuring his features, flipped the dagger from hand to hand idly, twisting it between his fingers and flipping it from space to space across a smirk.
“Weaver.” Wren spoke the name he’d given the apparition. Not that they’d ever met before, but when Anna described this particular shade of Wren’s self, he’d known what it was in an instant. “Here to make some sort of speech?”
“Boyo, boyo, you mock me.” Weaver pulled the hat down low over his face, till jus the smirk glinted white in the strange space they occupied, “A good Storyteller never reveals the plot before the turn. We have to reach the climax yet.”
“You know,” Zan offered, his voice lilting, “I did rather like this side of you. But a bit too much like me to really get along…turns out I can be super insufferable when I’m not myself.”
“Wisdom from the mouth of the river-man,” Weaver laughed, clapping his hands together, “But let’s get down to the meat of it all. We call this an intervention, story-style, when the hero needs an outside force to set him right on his path to destiny. And here we are, your own like-faced cadre of wise-speakers, world-walkers, death-dealers. Just what any head needs to evaluate the worth of the soul.”
“This isn’t a story,” Wren muttered, crossing his arms, “I don’t have time for your games.” Despite himself, a smile rose, murky, from his mouth to spread across his cheeks.
“Spoilsport,” the apparition clucked, spinning the dagger and then clasping it harshly in his palm, “Consider yourself and your actions. Tell me you aren’t trying to be a story.”
Wren’s eyes narrowed, he said nothing.
“Plucked from despair by the mercy of a god…but oh! That mercy has a catch! Gone are those who can get close to you, gone are the family he lived with. Our hero snatches a name from a book and takes it as his own.” Weaver circled Wren, clacking the dagger against his nails, “Storyteller, adventurer, he seeks out measure in a journey cross the seas. All but he sinks and he washes up new in a new place, tortured, visited, torn, and then made anew. Now he seeks to bring the world back to a shining glory long past. You are a story. You even leave the most dangerous ones alive, just to give them the…second chance. But we both know you want a protagonist.”
“Why would I want an protagonist, Weaver?” But the storyteller didn’t answer, only stepped in and drove the blade into Wren’s shoulder, digging it in to the tendons and bone. Howling, Wren staggered backward, drawing his hands back to cast reimancy…too late to realize he had given it all to Egyptus. Weaver drew the dagger back again and drove it into Wren, drove it in again.
Rolling across the ground, Wren put up his hands to ward away the blows…but it wouldn’t have been enough, not till Zan stepped in, merging his hands together like a geyser and throwing Weaver off of Wren. The storyteller rolled across the ground, dropping the dagger before rocketing to his feet.
“Wren! The dagger!” Zan shouted and reaching out, Wren grabbed the hilt of the blade and drew it toward himself. Weaver hung in the space above him, paused mid jump as Wren’s grip shook, the dagger’s point askew.
“Can’t kill me, can you?” Weaver muttered from where he hung, suspended, “Want to ask if we can’t just get along. But not everyone you’re close to will be the same way. You need to make the hard choices. No second chances, no self defeating. You put yourself into a story because you hoped you’d be the antagonist. Someone big would stand up and stop you…big story finish, big happy end…a monster gets his. But can’t think like that anymore, can you buddy-o? No sir, the world is too mighty to be held up by such conventions and you can’t set yourself up for failure with the woman you love so close in tow.”
"Love?" Wren spat, tasting blood on his lips, “She’s my sister!”
Weaver only grinned, “So quick to assume I meant one kind of love, when it could have easily been another. Someone’s harboring dubious feelings.”
He fell, Wren stabbed, Weaver enveloped his assassin, bringing his lips down to whisper wetly in his ear, “Can’t afford to be the villain anymore Wren. Time to pull the rug out from under the audience. We’re talking hero stuff here. Big stuff. Can’t afford to cling to darkness anymore.”
And then he was gone.
And so was Crucible.
“Come then,” Shroud said, sharpening white nails against Crucible’s edge, “Let’s begin.”
The pale-faced phantom strode up to the slowly rising Wren, took Crucible and brought it into Wren’s stomach, out again and into his chest. Zan moved to intervene, but Shroud brought the blade up, slashed at the Sarawanki, forced a retreat, and shoved the blade into Wren’s neck. Wren scarcely had the strength to fight, twisting beneath the pressure as senseless cold rose up to grab him. He didn’t feel himself fall, not so much as he heard the crack of bone on something harder, and the ebbing of fading warmth.
Shroud stood above him. “You’re a killer. A murderer. You’ve done this and worse to more. We go round and round, don’t we? Always assuming we can take the high ground, that we are as good as the others. But Sunberth was our real home wasn’t it? You can kill there, you can rule. In the end, it’s the strong that devour the weak…isn’t that what Vayt always wanted? We kill, we lie, we cheat, we do what we must to keep surviving. You were weak, Wren. You still are. But fret not. Deep down you have me and every time you draw that blade, you can feel it there.”
He held out his arms, dropping Crucible, stepping in to spit in the sorcerer’s face, “You’re a monster, and you enjoy that. Denying what you are, shacking up with that Syliran girl, all your stupid plans…it’s all for power. This? Power. You’d sell Fallon out the moment you could if it meant advancing your plans. Look at me, Wren. Look and remember that THIS is who we are!”
“No.”
Wren croaked against the blood clogging his throat, against the darkness trying to overwhelm him. “No. I am not you…” Shroud took a step back, reached out for Crucible…but the dagger was in Wren’s hands, and he was standing again. Swaying on unsteady feet, the taste of iron and death on his tongue, the storyteller brought up the blade and stalked Shroud. The confidence, that arrogant hatred faded, edged with fear…he took a step back, then another.
“You were always the most troubling,” Wren coughed, “Always the worst of me. I feared you. I hated you, but you know what I’ve learned?” Shroud backed into a wall, his eyes flattening, lips curling back into a snarl. Wren kept coming. “The Strong Live. The Weak Die. I feared that ability of mine. I feared death. I killed to feel stronger, I killed to feel alive. It was them or me and I ALWAYS felt that. Once I thought you were the strongest part of me, that part that would do anything, BE anything that was necessary. But you’re just my shadow, shrinking from a fight, hiding in my wake. You are nothing. Not disciplined, not strong, not potent. And you know…you’re right about one thing.”
He drove the dagger into Shroud’s chest, right into his heart.
“The Strong live. The Weak die.”
Zan stood behind him, hands behind his back, “Not bad, Wrenny boy…couldn’t have said it better myself.”
There was light. There was energy like fire that coursed through him. The world around him cracked and shattered.
Wren turned to Zan and smiled, and it was one of the first genuine smiles he’d had since he’d been ten years old.
Common
Thought
"Speech"
Zan
