Prologue
There is an inherent negativity to life and growth, perhaps as a sort of morbid way to balance some grand scales. I don't mean literal scales, of course, but instead I speak of the opposite forces within our world that balance each other out. The Rand and the Djinn are perhaps the best example of this. They cannot exist without each other. The rules of our world bind them together inextricably. When a Rand dies, so too does a Djinn, and the same is true the other way around. They exist in tandem, equal forces, and balanced. It is a fact that made their eternal war even more idiotic. Both peoples knew the only outcome could ever be mutual destruction, yet they fought anyway. They ripped holes in Ovaeris, shattered an entire continent, and even tore open a portal to another world, and they did it all over a slight neither side could see the truth of. The Djinn created the Other World, Sevoari, and asked the Rand to fill it with life. They probably expected luminous beings full of glorious purpose. The Rand gave them nightmares. Literal nightmares plucked from the dreams of the people of Ovaeris. I don't think it was ever meant as a slight, but more likely a consequence of the Rand having very little in the way of imagination. They made up for their lack by searching the minds of us lesser peoples. So much of our world, shaped by a misunderstanding that our gods refused to reconcile. Let me assure you, regardless of whether you give your war a fancy name like The War Eternal, it is still a war; and the people who will suffer most from it are those caught in the middle.
I have been drawn off my original topic. I often find my mind wanders when I consider the impact the Rand and Djinn have had on our lives. On my life. I believe it is anger that does such a thing. I can never forgive them for the things they have taken from me. I refuse to try.
Back to the negativity of life and growth. It is perhaps somewhat fitting that we learn more from our defeats than we do our victories, as though the world is somehow set up to give the losers a better chance next time. We grow more from failure than we do success. I am a prime example, I admit it. My successes have only ever led to stagnation, whereas my failures have always driven me to greater effort. It is no surprise that I have failed so much more than I have succeeded. And we are forged less so by our fortunes than we are by our tragedies.
I had just lost. I had been beaten. I had failed. And I had just committed the second worst tragedy I have ever experienced. Silva was dead, killed by my own hand. She put me in that position, gave me no choice. One way or the other she had committed herself to dying, and all that remained was for me to choose how. How could she do that? How could she claim to love me as I loved her, and yet force me to be the instrument of her death? Perhaps the greater tragedy was that neither of us realised that there was another way. A way that would not only have kept Silva alive, but also set her free. I have mentioned that I hate the Rand, and Mezula most of all. Well, this is why. She asked Silva to do it, to die for her, to die in her place. Mezula knew full well what she was doing by sending me to Do'shan, and the fucking bitch did it anyway.
Despite my losses and failures, or perhaps because of them, I had grown powerful. Ssserakis, the ancient horror that possessed my body and soul, had learned to lend me its strength and even manifest itself within my shadow. It fed on fear and leaked that power into me, and I had used it to form shields and blades, and even wings of shadow. I had absorbed the fury and raw power of an Arcstorm. It flashed in my eyes like lightning, and I could release its power even without the aid of an Arcmancy Source. I had attained four Sources, almost as many as I could sit in my stomach at one time. Pyromancy, Arcmancy, Portamancy, and Kinemancy. It's true, I had also just learned that they were the bodies of dead Rand and Djinn, crystallised magic only Sourcerers, those of us who are the descendants of gods, could use. I cared little where my ability to wield magic, or the magic itself had come from, but instead only what I could do with it. Only what I could achieve with whatever power I could muster. I have always been ambitious, perhaps a little too much so. I still don't know whether it was that ambition, or my grief, that made me test myself against a god. Whichever it was, I came up short.
After venting my full rage and power against the Djinn, Aerolis, all I managed was to stagger the creature and elicit a threat of destruction should I continue. Then came the Iron Legion, the man I had admired for years. A hero in my eyes. Never meet your heroes. Mine turned out to be the architect of my demise. As powerful as I had gotten, or at least as powerful as I believed myself to be, I realised then that I was out of my league. Loran Orran, the Iron Legion, was perhaps the one Sourcerer who had ever lived who could make a god shut up and listen. And he did. In his presence, even Aerolis was cowed.
Chapter 1
Prophecy is a foreign word, the meaning lost in translation.
- Belmorose
"The Auguries are not signs the chosen one has come. They're instructions on how to create one." The Iron Legion's secret. The fruits of a lifetime of research, and he dropped the revelation between us so easily. I struggled to understand at first. My mind was still reeling.
"You experimented on us at the academy." I was still so exhausted my voice lacked the condemnation it should have held. The Iron Legion had taken children into his care, children who trusted him, and he had experimented on us. Altering our bodies with crystallised magic to suit the purpose of a millennia old prophecy uttered by a mad god.
The Iron Legion nodded, his smile gone and face grave. "Yes. I tried it with animals first, even monsters from Sevoari, but none were compatible with Sources. Still, the research was not wasted, I did discover the exact value of a life in terms of the energy it contains."
I saw Aerolis rumble closer, the rocks that made up the Djinn's body grating as they shifted against each other. "How did you force creatures to absorb my brothers?"
"Ahh, that was my first challenge. No terran Sourcerers could answer the question, and even the great library of the tahren had no useful suggestions. I had to get inventive. Simply swallowing a Source wouldn't work, obviously, that's how all Sourcerers use magic and it's only a matter of time before rejection makes our limitations so apparent. And that's where the hammer comes in." The Iron Legion waved towards the hammer discarded in the centre of the amphitheatre. "Not for nothing is it called Shatter. Truly such a remarkable item. It is capable of breaking anything. Even a Source. What couldn't be achieved by conventional means, was made easy. I injected Source dust directly into the blood. I admit, it took some trial and error. A few subjects were lost."
The implication of those words certainly made an impact. How many of my classmates had died at this madman's hands? This man who we trusted to protect us, to teach us. This man I had idealised as a hero. "Who?"
"Ah, names. Not my strongest talent. There was a young boy, a Vibromancer and Photomancer both. Quite rare. I've never actually met anyone able to control quite so well the stresses that pairing of attunements put upon the body and mind. I will admit I was a little overzealous and I overtaxed him by using the same pairing of Sources to alter him. I can assure you it was the last time I tried it with two Sources at once."
An image flashed into my mind, something I had long ago forgotten, or perhaps something I had been forced to forget. Barrow Laney, a classmate at the academy and a friend I had spent countless hours with, locked inside a cage. His face was a ruin of gouged flesh and wrecked eyes, his ears long since ripped away. I shook my head to rid myself of the memory, but I couldn't help but see it now. I knew it wasn't my imagination. I remembered it.