Chapter 23: Music is Magic

Hold strong, my starfall. My moonborn flower. Hold stronger still that I am with you. Hanging onto the feeble notion that I am a good person, I have only ever tried to be what I could. I tried to be a good mother, a better god. Yet, I failed as both. So I seek with a wrongful pride in you that you shall be my salvation. I offer what I may so that I may lift you up, so that you may be more than I ever could. A purpose I am undeserving, yet I seek to administer. I shall protect you from the darkness that I created. I will try, I will try…

Year of Wrath 1232, Season of life D.89, Neaves

   Neaves sat watching as Asha wrapped her thick curly brown hair into her shawl again. She blushed furiously every time she did this; it was strange to Neaves's mind. There was very little she hadn't seen of her two travelling companions due to the tight quarters they lived in over their weeks in the caravan. Just short of seeing them in nothing at all, she certainly didn't hide anything from them. Still struggling with this concept of modesty, they kept lecturing about it all the time; she would have figured they'd have let it go after seeing how she liked to sleep.

   "Asha, why do you wear that shawl? Surely you would be more comfortable without it on at all times." Neaves ventured her first volley of questions for the day. Her Common was getting better by the day; she still didn't know every word they spoke, but it was getting close to the way she saw it. 

   "Our hair is a precious thing to us; it is intimate." She answered quickly, hurrying her pace to finish wrapping it about her.

   "I don't understand, your hair is intimate? Like you do lewd things with it?" Neaves laughed at the incredulous look on Asha's face as she turned to regard her. 

   "No," Her face flushed more brightly, "Much in the same way your men view your breasts or your," With a wave of her hand and her crotch. 

   "Not my men. We don't hold the same sense of lust over the physical form you humans do. My breasts are just part of me; if one of my men wishes to be intimate, it is a far more emotional connection than a physical one." Neaves answered.

   Asha only stared blankly at her, as if that notion didn't hold much logic to her. Shaking her head, she continued her explanation. "It is part practicality, part tradition. Both men and women are meant to wear something similar; the desert isn't kind to the bold and unprotected. The sands of the dunes care not for whose skin it racks raw, the sun cares not for who burns under its light, the shawls protect us from both. We removed them only when we were in shelter or prayer, for only Bhal would see us defenseless and exposed. Vulnerable." 

   Neaves rose to tuck in a stray curl under Asha's shawl, bidding Asha to come and break their fast together as she opened the tent flap. The caravan was in full swing, pulling tent pegs, stowing canvas, and hastily washing pots. The old cook gave them a sour look as they received their rations for the morning. "Be quick about it," Was all the ornery old man told them as they walked away. 

   Asha handed the bowl to Neaves the moment no one was around to watch them. Heating it quickly in her hand, she handed it back to Asha, who smiled wonderfully at the now hot food. "Micael was never able to do that, maybe he will be up to talking about the older days with you today?" 

   Neaves had been trying for weeks to get Micael to talk about what he knew, his past, or really anything that wasn't about him being a tailor. Asha always told Neaves it wasn't her place to speak of such things; what he knew about pyromancy was before they had been married. They were his secrets to tell, not hers. 

   While they walked and ate, they noticed Micael and his needles working furiously at a ribbon of lace. Apparently, he had fifteen of the things, well, fourteen now, ever since she accidentally melted one. "But, speak of our shawls." She grinned as her husband adopted a grimace on his face. 

   "Do not get me started on that dogma the Caliphate spouts like gospel. There has never been proof that Bhal wanted us to do that beyond our own protection from the desert. None of that nonsense that only Bhal can look upon us with our hair out like some kind of loving Father." The venom in his voice took her aback for just a moment. 

   "How is wearing a shawl, what? Somehow being subservient to Bhal?" Neaves asked, confused as to where this vitriol had come from. 

   "I make beautiful things, I try my damnedest to push my ambition to its limit in my craft. What I cannot be bothered with is listening to the prattling of old priests who preach that the old way of doing things is the only correct way. Why should my beautiful wife have to hide anything about herself from the world when the sands of the desert haven't crested over the walls of the Song in centuries?" Micael's needles moved without him ever taking his eyes away from the two women. 

   "You did not make me," Asha said, crossing her arms. 

   "True! However, how many beautiful things must be hidden in this world by stagnant philosophies? Even older forms of tradition that no longer hold any of the same utility that they used to?" Micael asked with a certain angst that Neaves found both charming and childish, which made her smile. 

   Asha rolled her eyes, but Neaves spoke up. "You sound like we do. There is beauty in the world, and we should do all we can to experience it. That which is touched by the light of the sun, that all the light of the moon bears witness to, is bathed in the beauty of this world, of this time, of this life. It should be witnessed, no matter the cost." 

"Well," Neaves said, looking herself up and down, "Then I should be witnessed at all times, then. My form is a gift that the world should be jealous of." 

   Asha covered a girlish laugh, while Micael laughed from his belly. "I wish more women were like you, Neaves. The world would be a beautiful place if people had as much confidence as you." 

   "Well, I do wish more people were like me. Fire and all." Neaves left an unspoken question hanging there. 

   Micael's needles stopped, his eyes fixing her to the spot. Something dark was behind them, a story that wouldn't be told. Setting the lacework aside, he sighed, with a nod to his wife, she left them alone. "You really aren't going to leave this be, are you?" He asked. 

   The first of the Caravan wagons bellowed to life with a huff of the steam engine, sending a cloud high into the air. Rising, he put the crate he was sitting on into the wagon behind him, stowing his unfinished work into a pouch at his side. "No, I won't." Neaves responded as they started walking with the last of the moving wagons. 

   With a deep breath, the air around them grew colder, a shimmer of heat encasing one of his hands. "Fine, what do you want to know? You have a very simple form of pyromancy, simple but potent, that no human would be willing to try without a great risk." 

   "What do you mean? Our power comes from our wings, drinking in the sunlight. To mean it is about concentrating, then commanding the ambient heat around me to obey." She explained. 

   "Yes and no. Yes, your wings drink in the light. But they are conduits to your force. How much do you know about Talents?" He asked her. 

   "As in a talent to do something?" 

   "No, a Talent is referring to a creature's ability and affinity for a certain kind of magic. Lesser talents can call on a small amount of power. Greater talents can call on more, and Domains are in control of a concept. I have a Greater Talent for not fire, but heat. The difference at a certain point is merely academic." He responded as they fell behind a distance to speak without others listening, still following the caravan while the guards watched them from a distance. 

   "What would you call mine then?" She asked. 

   "A Domain. You change sunlight into other things. You change heat into chemical reactions that fuel combustion. You are part fire as far as I can tell, your wings tell me that much." He responded quietly. 

   She thought about that for quite some time as they walked, as Micael pulled at the heat in the air around them, letting the power go with a burst of heat that pushed away the dust on the road. "Then all my people would have Domains. We can all do this; there are scant few that develop the control my siblings and I share." 

   He gave her a curious look, but didn't comment on it. "When I was taught this, I was told it was a silent prayer to the world around us. A wordless voice given to the ether. I've heard it called a song, nothing more than single notes to a much greater song. Single verses out of a grander hymn." 

   Without much thought, she copied his gestures of pulling the heat out of the air and let the burst of heat expand to push the dust away as he did. But she concentrated on thinking about what she wanted the action to do, rather than acting on instinct. "So why can I do things at will without needing to focus?" She asked.

   "I believe that you are, only in a different way. When I pulled the fire from you, I had to move it somewhere. You seem to be doing something that doesn't need a release, something that is deeper in that hymn. Your magic doesn't seem to need the same kind of constant attention as other casters. Tell me, were you taught differently?"

Year of Wrath 1232, Season of life D.90

   "Can you tell me more about it? What is the infection doing when I use magic?" Azorez asked, already summoning her spell inside the circle. Gjorn sat smoking his pipe on a chair someone had brought for him, the rest of the Family milling around them. 

   Their strange little group had made no effort to hide their strange little project. Word was spread through the ranks after Gjorn had given Illy a brow-beating after calling lightning down on them after she had gotten herself lost in another song, conjuring a storm from a clear blue sky. The spirit spell pulled at the world around Azorez; to anyone watching, it would have seemed like a transparent veil was being pulled away from the air. But to both Illy and Gjorn, it meant a bit more. 

   That veil was the physical connection to the dead. After hearing much of the necromantic lessons that Azorez had been giving Illy, she knew that the veil held much more energy than one might anticipate. Like touching the connections to a live wire together if one wasn't careful. "I can see the infection start to pull away from your chest and be drawn into your hands. It is densest where the magic is circling around your palms." Illy responded after a moment. 

   "Fascinating," Azorez whispered, staring at her own hands as if they too were something new and wondrous. "Why does it do that? What is making the infection move with magic?"

   They both looked at Gjorn, hoping that he would finally open his mouth on the subject. But, like every time they tried, he stonewalled them without so much as a second glance. "You know, for someone claiming to be one of the great teachers of this world, you sure do keep the important parts to yourself." Illy's words were drenched with the same annoyance they had been the last several times she had made the same kind of comment. 

   "Your magic is stronger since your body was rid of its infection. Have you heard any more from the Ghost?" Azorez asked, crossing her arms and angling her hat to hide from the sun a bit more again. 

   "I have heard her voice in my dreams again, but I've not seen her since that day. It's like I've gone back to square one with her." Ilgor sat on the sand, sighing and closing her eyes. 

   "I would still like to know what you two are doing; you two send hours out here every day trying to use prayers and magic to reach out to the Ghost." Gjorn huffed. 

   She didn't even bother opening her eyes before responding. "As I've said before, she claims to be my people's mother, so I want to try every calling ceremony I know before we try to use Azorez's much more intrusive methods." 

   "I wish you wouldn't call them that. They just don't stop at calling..." She sheepishly finished her sentence. 

   Opening her eyes, Illy fell back, scrambling backward as someone was only a few inches away from her face. A mask that she knew all too well, he smiled wickedly with those disgustingly sharp teeth. His eyes became slits as his smile met them. "Hello again, Priestess." 

   The Sorcerer rose to his feet, looking back at Azorez, who stared at him with an open-mouthed expression, while Gjorn. Well, he drew a sword from thin air and charged at the Sorcerer. He moved with a speed that Illy had never seen before, making her understand that he had been holding back quite a bit during their own sparing matches. His voice was playing a song that she had never heard, never thought possible. His blade carving arcs of light through the air, only to meet nothing as each of his swings met nothing. 

   Neaves awoke in her tent to another body curled around her, an arm draped over her waist, a hand cupping her breast. She shot from her bedroll in a flash, her wings glowing brightly as a fire began building between her fingers. Azu was in her face faster than she could blink, a hand gripping her wrist and another covering her mouth. The fire in her wings died, the heat in her hands swept away like the warmth of the sun on a cold winter day. "No, no, no, we have something to discuss. Not Syn, not between your companions, between you and me. If you scream or call out, I will force all the air out of your lungs to silence you. Do you understand?" 

   Neaves nodded her head slowly. Azu took her hand away from her mouth, but not from her wrist. Pulling her from the tent without so much as a pause to the fact that her wings were completely visible, or the fact that she was wearing nothing at all. Then again, Azu wasn't either; for the moment, Neaves could enjoy the view of her Goddess. She slipped them past the caravan guards without any hint of hesitation. 

   They, for their part, never even saw the shadows dance across the ground as they made their way to the forest. "So does this conversation come with a pleasant time?" Neaves asked, trying to shake her nervousness at being in the presence of her god. 

   Azu's eyes glowed a sickly yellow in the night, like a crow's glinting from a corpse fire. "I know you are not innocent, nor are you inexperienced in that matter, dear girl. But I do not think you would like what I would want to do. So, unless you are willing to open your horizons to some dark places, I suggest we don't." 

   Neaves kept her mouth shut; the stumps of Syn's wings came to her mind as she thought only for the briefest moment about what Azu would want to do to her. The vice-like grip on her wrist prevented the idea of running from bearing much fruit beyond the thought alone. "What did you want to speak about, Mother?" 

   "First, I am no Mother to anyone. Second, we need to be further away from keen ears while my brother has this same conversation with another soul." She said in an unreadable way. 

   Gjorn barked an order to his men at the top of the cliffs to open fire at the man. Only a moment later, a bullet ripped through the Sorcerer's head, who then didn't react at all while he caught Gjorn's blade between two fingers. His body quickly became full of holes while dozens of soldiers fired on him. "This really was a nice coat, thank you. A gift from a lovely Harpy to the west of here." The Sorcerer sounded genuinely saddened as his body continued to be pumped full of shots. 

   Ilgor and Azorez backed away from the fight, more to keep themselves out of a direct line of fire. The Goblins all looked to Ilgor, a wordless question in their eyes. "No, whatever is going on, I want to know more before possibly putting you all in danger." Her voice rang out to her raiders; as one, they lowered their weapons. 

   "A wise decision," The Sorcerer was in front of her again, holding Gjorn by the wrist. Though the way he positioned himself, the gunfire ceased, as any shot would have endangered her life as well. "There, some quiet. Now, I have business with you, Priestess."

   "Do not listen to anything Xelex has to offer you! Whenever he is involved, it only leads to ruin." Gjorn coughed out, blood dribbling through his lips. 

   That name, Xelex. She heard it before, when the human gods were explained to her. Xelex was one of the eight gods they worshipped, like Bhal. "Would you mind putting him down, Sorcerer. I need to heal what you just did to him. By the way, what did you do?" 

   Gjorn's eyes flickered with recognition. She had called her mysterious masked teacher, the Sorcerer. Xelex dropped him to the ground unceremoniously, landing in a heap. "Broken tracheal cartilage, several broken ribs, where if he breathes to cast his magic, they will puncture his lungs. A broken clavicle, several dozen bruises. It was quite rude to attack without so much as a hello, Endsong." 

   "You deserve no greeting, Shadow." He spat. 

   "Oh ho ho! Now someone has been talking to a very special Fae, haven't they? How long has she been your lover now? Ten, thirty years? Or does time not work the same way in that place as it does here?" Xelex sneered down at Gjorn. Giving him a damn hard kick that sent him sprawled out on the sand, which earned him another hole in his head from one of Gjorn's soldiers. "You've picked up the bad habit of condescension from her. I may not know the path, but I know you do." 

   "Enough, Sorcerer." Ilgor's voice held a weight that caused him to stumble for the first time since this madness began. Walking over to Gjorn, she put a hand over his heart and hummed a soft song. "Keep your damned mouth shut for a few minutes, will you?" She told him. 

   Neaves and Azu stood a top a small hill away from the caravan, a good few miles. Though it was just tall enough to see the light from the camp, as well as the light on the walls of the next outpost. "What nonsense have you learned about your magic, Neaves?" Azu asked without so much as a preamble. 

   "I, what?" She began cleverly. 

   "I don't need the basics. I already hear your prayers when you use my power. But I want to know what you were taught when you learned the finer control. The instinctual use of fire that you have. Your flight, your wings, tell me." Azu's eyes pinned her to the spot. 

   "Mother Afjie told us that it was the power of the sun, the song of light. That power filled our wings, and we channeled that fire through our intentions to manipulate the world around us. She told us that heat could do many things, almost anything if we got creative enough." 

   "Yes, but wrong." Azu sighed. "That's what the pyromancer you were speaking to earlier, the one who will never fuck you no matter how you beg, what he was referring to in terms of layers of power is currently correct, but not entirely." 

   "That wasn't needed. I haven't begged for him to." Neaves began, only to be cut off by Azu. 

   "I don't actually care, I told you before that Syn is the one who cares about you all, not me. I am the vessel, I am the... That system he was speaking of, it was our design. Not the original." Azu started. 

   "What do you mean?" Neaves had the good intuition not to ask about the other part of her statement. 

   "We, my siblings and I, built the modern magic system to hide the truth of all this. A truth I have been enlightened to by my brother. This world is dying, its music is growing quieter with each passing year. And it is our fault." She began. "To put it simply, everyone has a Domain, as Micael explained it, everyone." 

   Azu crossed her arms as a black sphere appeared around the two, a sickening silence filling the space she had made. "What is this?" Neaves asked, feeling nauseous as the deafening quiet filled her mind.

   "The void, the beginning, the forge room, a piece of things that was yet to come. A fragment, a perfectly clean slate that reacts to the thoughts and ideas of anything already inside of it. This little piece of primordial creation was where the gods had built this world; this tiny fragment is only one small shard of a much greater whole." She paced as she talked. 

"I did this because what I am about to tell you, and show you for that matter, I do not want my other siblings to see or hear, beyond my brother Xelex, who brought me down the path he is walking." 

   Azorez stared at the black sphere around them. Gjorn had been left out of the sphere. "Seeing as you are so interested in helping," Xelex said as he removed his mask, dropping it to what could have served as the floor of this place. "Yes, this is the beginning. The place where our lives first sparked into being." 

   "So why do this?" Illy asked, crossing her arms as she tried to ignore the absence of sound in her ears. "I don't like this quiet, I've never felt so..." 

   Xelex's many eyes all landed on her, "You don't hear it? Interesting. Maybe it is because she is inside you. Maybe. But this place will become familiar to you as your abilities mature. This is a piece of blank sheet music that the Great Mother first composed the song." 

   "That isn't the first time I've heard about this Song. Gjorn spoke about our voices reaching out to a song, that all magic was music in a way." Illy asked, if only to hear her own voice to fill the space where the world should have been. 

   "That, right there, Priestess, is the point. That thought you just had is what my siblings and I have thought was the point this entire time. That the Great Mother sang the world into being just because she was uncomfortable. But, to another point, that is true and not all in the same vein. The Talents system is our construct, but what Gjorn told you is very much a retelling of Alnya's work." Xelex explained. 

   "Who is Alnya?" Both Azorez and Illy asked in near unison.

   Xelex smiled sadly, a softness in his eyes that Ilgor had never seen the entire time she had learned from him. "Someone I have come to learn I hurt very deeply. Alnya is one of the Quartet. One of the original four gods of this world. Well, one of the original five. But we won't get into that right now. Here, I am going to explain to you what magic is. The Talent system is just a way for us to find out who is becoming a threat, not much beyond that." 

   "If all it is for is threat assessment, why are some able to have various levels of ability?" Neaves asked, still not feeling well in this place. "Beyond that, where is the Great Mother and the others? If Alnya is all that is left, where is she?" 

   An look of shame crossed Azu's face, "It has taken many hundreds of lifetimes for me to begin to understand the enormity of what we did to this place. Alnya is elsewhere; she broke this world to keep us from following. She took as many of the uninfected children with her as she could. A scant few million versus what there once was. The young gods, while Bhal managed to keep both the Great Mother and her child here. The others, we do not actually know. We know they are not," She made a wave of her hand, gesturing to everything and nothing, "Here. Syn, she still lives, but she is not the same after so much time spent with me. A darker light, a dark sun. Kyln, I still regret what we have done to him." 

   "But you said this was all part of the song, the Great Mother was the original singer, and that she was the one who woke the others, including whatever you came from. Where is she? What does magic have to do with this song anyway?" Neaves pelted her with questions. 

   "The Talents system was built on the way Alnya understood magic. The Great Mother and the other gods had built this world for their children to experience. As for where she is, Xelex tells me he knows exactly where she is, and that is why he is having me send you to the goblin village. As for the song, it is everything. The songs the gods sang in this void shaped the world to their wills. Your voice, your soul, your spark is the result of that song, and as such, it responds to your voice in the same way it would if Syn herself were the one singing. Syn breathed light and life and heat and fire into the Great Mother's symphony. Something that should be very familiar to you, no?" Azu looked as if she were trying to muster the courage to add something. 

   "How would you know how Alnya understood magic?" Neaves asked, "If she is gone, I am assuming no one is left on friendly terms." 

   "The runes you see, they are the language that the Fae created. The Common you speak, well, I should say that Azorez speaks, you, Ilgor, speak Elder Fae. The Brownies, the Giants, and the Faeries all had their own languages at one point. But when the Quartet united their children, Elder Fae was adopted. The Brownies learned quickly; they did not have a spoken tongue like the others, but a series of sounds that expanded across a much larger range than the other species could comprehend, a specific wavelength of each meaning. Either way, right now that information is not useful." Xelex explained. 

"Let me show you something, something that I think will do you well." Xelex plunged a hand into his chest, while Azorez grimaced at the amount of blood that poured from the wound. When he pulled his hand free, what he held took their breath away. 

   Like a little galaxy slowly spinning in her hand. Pulsing with an alien rhythm, like a drum beat, strange and beautiful. Neaves's ears filled with the sound of stars slowly dancing to a phantom music that kept tempo with the heavens above and below. A soft tinkling, a lilting and sonorous crescendo that brought the image of light to her mind in a way no words had ever done. It felt more real than the actual sunrise, full of clarity that the constellations above had no right to hold. "This is a physical manifestation of Syn's song. I'm not sure words could describe it to its full degree?" She seemed to be asking herself as much as telling Neaves. "A song of light and fire, a song of gravity and interconnection, a song of love and unity? Neaves, I want you to use your magic without thinking about what you want to do, and watch what it does. Then I want you to use a prayer to try and do the same thing." 

   She cocked her head, raising a hand to the small, absurd astrolabe and lit a fire between her fingers. The small universe flared brightly like a coronal ejection of a star, until its little flare met her fire. It connected with her and sustained the magic. Neaves could faintly hear something, something distant, something familiar, something nostalgic. Like someone was singing a song she hadn't heard in years. "What is that? That song I'm hearing?" 

   "That, my dear Ilgor, is The Song. Or at least a few notes of it, I should be specific here. Each spell, as you call them, is a simple chord or rhythm inside this song. Only pieces of it, never the whole thing. When the Quartet originally sang these notes, each note they made created something new. Each verse, each change in pitch, each rhythm change, each drop and rise created more and more. They built on each other, they accentuated, they complemented until the songs that were made created everything you see and experience today." Xelex told them. 

   "So, if the Quartet were the ones who made these songs, and our magic is just playing chords and notes from that same song, that is just using creation as magic." Illy spoke her thoughts out loud, not bothering with just trying to think them. Xelex commented on them anyway; she might as well give Azorez the benefit of hearing them. 

   "In a sense."

   "So, how do we learn more of the song, just from me listening to Azorez's magic, and my own? We really only know a few dozen notes between us. If there is more to this, then how could we possibly know the entire piece?" Illy asked. 

   Xelex smiled again, though he made an effort to hide his teeth. "To learn the entire piece is something all Children will someday accomplish. Most have only ever learned the entire piece of their god, but to learn the other pieces of the other members of the Quartet? An apotheosis occurs. The young gods are examples of those." 

   "Anlyth, the first son of Syn, became a god of death during our war with the Quartet. Y'vitol, the first son of Kyln, became the new god of patience, taking the mantle from his Father's shoulders. Taneth, the first son of Alnya, the first of the Navigators, the progenitors to the Wayfares, the Grand architect." Azu told Neaves. 

   "Then there was the lost daughter. Rythia, the First Child of Vilorlith. The Singer, the Song's Melody, the Priestess, the Hierophant." Xelex told Illy, looking straight into her eyes. "She was something else, loyal to the end; we could never break her. No matter how hard we tried." 

   "Why is everyone so concerned with Rythia? You, Azu, Bhal, apparently, Vilorlith, but I must confess, I feel a certain pull to find her as well." Azorez made her voice known, seemingly snapping Xelex out of some long distant memory. "Why should some lost Child matter so much?"

   Xelex thought for quite some time as something moved just beyond the darkness of the sphere. Something stirring past where nothing existed, something that refused description. He paid it no mind. "Rythia, for everything she was worth, was always our wild card. We understood why we wanted to eliminate Vilorlith and her children; they, like you, Ilgor, are something to be feared by us. But, Rythia, while she was around, for I cannot say if she is dead or not, never seemed to have approved of what Vilorlith had done to us, our original." 

   "That isn't the first time you brought up an original version of you. What is that about?" Neaves asked. 

Not meeting Neaves's eyes, Azu spoke under her breath quietly. Though even in this silent space, Neaves could not hear her. "What was that?" 

   "We are fragments. Us, what you would call the gods. We are pieces of a once single entity, a fifth note to the Quartet. A note that was never included in the original song intentionally." She said louder this time. Something breathed in the dark, like something was waking up, but she paid it no mind. 

   "Rythia is our only missing piece for all intents and purposes. We know that Alnya and, probably, a few hundred million Children at this point, are outside Namix, the universe. We do not know where, but Gjorn does, and several agents that we suspect are also Children. I would like to help you find her, or at least her body. While also teaching you one lesson that you," Xelex poked Illy in the chest with an arm that elongated to do so, "Would find incredibly useful.”

   Illy shooed his hand away from her, "Why didn't you tell me all this when you were first teaching me? Why teach me the false magic of this world? Why teach me all that history and politics, why help my people at all?" 

   "I didn't believe that she had broken her shackles. The hold over the infected was meant to be absolute, even those who had always been difficult to contain, like your people, who all possess a Domain of fire. But she broke the hold Bhal had on her abilities. She began hearing the Song without realizing it; she, as a Brownie, was purpose-built to hear the Great Mother's song. She is able to hear the songs of this world and instinctively internalize them to use for later." Azu explained, running a hand over her face. 

   "Why push me toward her then? Why are you giving me dreams of her?" Neaves asked barely an arm's length away from the goddess, and she closed the distance more. "I do not like my mind being played with." 

   "Because like the Quartet, the Songs are meant to be played together. All five songs, not just the four. You are infected like she is; we need two more to join her. But, even with just you there, this world may begin to heal in a way that we cannot make it do so on its own." Azu responded. 

   "But does she even know I exist?! Why are you making me feel these things? Why are you making me so attracted to her?" Neaves yelled at Azu. 

   "I am only pushing you toward her and showing you what she is capable of. Despite the assertions of what Syn proposed, I’m well aware that our relationship isn’t… I do not wish what we have upon you and her. What you are feeling is your own. I would be lying if I said that the Faeries were not a lustful species to begin with, but you seem to have a penchant toward women to begin with." She responded dispassionately. 

   "Lustful!" 

   "Enough, you need her help to keep the Mistwalkers from going extinct in the next few years. Rhys will be a formidable bone to chew, but he will not be enough. The war is not just a vision; Bhal will be leading this army. There is nothing any of us can do to dissuade him from this path, and Xelex has been playing into it for whatever long game he has planned." Some of her earlier fire made itself known once more as whatever lurking in the darkness fled from her voice. 

   "So this war is just what now? A pretense for Bhal to get his hands bloody?" Azorez asked with no small amount of disgust in her voice. Not even bothering to hide it this time with Ilgor present. 

   "No, Bhal is hunting for something, something that Vilorlith has so pleasantly woke up. Bhal has and will always be bloody; he won't stop once he finds the gates beneath Huron. I have spent centuries trying to make him understand that this is the only planet left, but he wishes to kick a hornet's nest that we cannot handle this time." Xelex told her. 

   "I'm assuming you are not going to tell us what that is?" Ilgor asked, already getting tired of this game, answering just enough questions to make more needed. 

   "Well, when Vilorlith so kindly gave you her immunity, as well as merging with you, she gave you something else. Two pieces of information, a book and a map. I will not help with the book, but I would very much like to see this map. If you would be so willing, as it were." Xelex said.

   The sphere changed with the words, in the darkness seemed a rising sun, a brighter star than wasn't there before. Yet again, he ignored it while he waited for Illy to respond. "What do you want with it? Beyond that, how do I even get it?"

   "I want to protect them from Bhal and his allies. But as for your map, you could retrieve it in the same way I presented the Song." A face that was devoid of any sarcasm. 

   "What?" She said after a long moment. 

   Xelex made the same motion of plunging his hand into his chest to retrieve something. Then waved his hand back at her as if that wasn't a suicidal and probably impossible feat for her to survive. "That would do the trick. Vilorlith absorbed both those very physical objects into herself before meeting with you." 

   "I am not doing that. Beyond that, I'm still not entirely sure I can trust you." She belted back at him. 

   "I suppose that is fair. I haven't exactly been the most forthcoming of educators, now have I? A creature that has hidden its nature from you, one that is a source of the infection you see, I can see why you would be reticent." He said as if that wasn't the exact thought inside her head. 

   "Fine, tell me what the actual magic of this world is if it isn't through prayer or power." Neaves said with an exhausted huff. 

   "There are no levels to this; the Song was always meant to be learned piece by piece, felt more than learned. You saw how it reacted when you used your magic; it responds to the notes and feelings you give it. You know a few chords, but that doesn't make you a musician, now does it? You have to be creative with how you string them together. To put it simply, whether you know it or not, your spark sings a song to the world around you, and it responds in kind." Azu sat down, looking up at Neaves. "You know, you look lovely from here on my knees." 

   "Not a chance now." Neaves scoffed, sitting down with her. "So how do I make my spark play new notes? How do I learn new chords? I understand how to use the magic I have. I think I understand what you mean by it being music. It always feels a bit euphoric, the same way listening to music is, I just never noticed it till now." 

   "By listening to the world around you. Each thing has a note to it; it's simply being able to hear it and remember it. Think back to the first time you ever used your voice. When someone made you realize you were doing it. Didn't you hear something new?" Xelex told her, folding his arms after he replaced his mask on his face. 

   "I suppose I did. I remember more vividly hearing someone silence a room in a particular way. I remember the beat was off, the notes an octave off. I simply copied it." Illy responded while Azorez seemed like she was understanding it all. 

   "Yes, when you use magic, you are opening yourself to the Song and listening to it as much as playing it. Most mortals focus on the playing rather than the listening; you should listen to the magic being used around you. That thing you goblins do while quieting the mind to listen, that is one way to find new songs. Slow and incremental, but it can be done. But you will not have that much time before you are tested. You need to learn fast. Once Bhal realizes that his Priestess is involved when his war has reached the Borders of Galus, he will be very difficult to calm. I fear he will make a foolish decision that will undo generations of work on our part." He paced as he spoke. 

"Let me show you a spell I know damn well you don't know, either with that odd spirit magic she uses, or any mundane thing. Listen to it, do not look or try to understand, listen." Xelex said suddenly. 

   She did as she was told. Closing her eyes to the dark sphere around them all, listening to the silence. Hearing hers and Azorez's breathing and heartbeats, the quiet twitches of their muscles, the way their organs groaned in their bodies. She thought it was odd that she heard nothing from Xelex, but didn't dwell on it for long. 

   As she tuned more and more out, she heard a softer sound. No, a harmony, a refrain moving too quickly for her to pick apart, coming from her and Azorez. Too many notes on top of each other, clamping down on her focus, she tuned that out as well. She'd have to come back to that later. Until she heard something new. 

   A single note, being played over and over. But it wasn't something she had ever heard before, several octaves lower than speech, several dozen in fact. Something that she knew Azorez would never be able to hear without quite a bit of help. Internalizing it, she held it in her memory when she opened her eyes. The moment she did so, it stopped, so too did the magic Xelex was conjuring. "Now your turn, Priestess. Play that note." 

   She did so, moving from high to low with her voice. Lower she pushed her voice, lower and lower she pushed air through her lungs and up into her throat. When she finally hit that note, she descended past it by mistake and quickly found it again. In front of her eyes, Xelex had a hole torn through him, his face the visage of pain. She stopped the second she noticed it. 

   "What was that?" She asked as she stopped. 

   "A piece of an older age, when you Children were a real threat."

   When the sphere came down around Neaves, the world felt far more alive than it had ever been. The night air filled with the sounds of crickets and the soft rustling of the grass in the breeze. She felt the cool evening air against her skin, just the sensation of feeling. It almost took her breath away; only the sight of Syn standing just outside the ball of darkness made her breath catch in earnest. 

   Like sunlight given form, it was only now that Neaves realized how true that description actually was. Unable to take her eyes away from the goddess, her actual goddess. Not this pretender that she had followed her entire life. "Did you learn something, Child?" She asked her, "Something worth pursuing?" 

   Neaves fell to her knees, now understanding something she had missed this entire time. This warmth, this idea that all her people were powerful, this idea that they were beings of fire. They really were because of her. "Yes, Mother. I think I have." 

   "Well, now, that wouldn't have been how I explained it, far less flowery than I would have tried." Vilorlith's voice echoed in her mind. "Still, it was a good enough description of the process." 

   "Wait! Please, tell me how I can talk to you more!" Illy said as Xelex and everyone else turned to look at her as the sphere came down. "Please, you can't leave me alone again, Villy." 

   "I cannot speak for long. What I did took far more strength than I had any right to give. Just know that I am sure you will find a way to do so again." Her voice faded from her mind as the world around her filled her ears once more. The same sound of the surf against the beach, the wind crashing against the cliff face. The quiet before a fight, a tension in the air as a gun's hammer was cocked back. 

   "Illy, are you alright?" Hob asked, pistol pointed at Gjorn, who had his sword out again pressed against Xelex's throat. She didn't hear any of it; there was something new now. Like she had missed the point, the blindingly obvious. The world around her sang with the motions of magic; everything sang to her now. 

   "It is overwhelming at first; it was much the same way for us as well," Xelex said, not even bothering to acknowledge the blade pressed to his neck. "But, like with your ability to shapeshift, you need to focus. Even now your form is shifting, I suggest taking a few weeks to recenter your mind. You will have that much time before I return with your next lesson, Priestess." With his last words, he evaporated into the world. Not like smoke on the wind, not like light dispelling a shadow, like he simply didn't exist on a single plane of existence.

   "Hob, lower your weapon." Illy rasped out as her mind reeled at trying to process the sheer amount of information she was dealing with now. She was barely aware that he did so, but locked eyes with Gjorn. "You, you have left quite a bit out that I want to discuss, Endsong. I want to hear all about Alnya." 

   Just saying her name made him pale, his eyes going wide like a spooked horse. Before he could answer, Azorez cupped Illy's face between her hands, smiling like a lunatic. "I think you and I have much to talk about! It makes so much sense now, I can hear it now! I can hear that song!"