Amdirlain’s PoV - Soulscape

  The arena walls echoed with the clamour of the traps that had erupted into deadly life. The guardian’s every step triggered a reaction from more traps and obstacles. Following on her heels would have left Amdirlain running through or blasted by energy, so her chase paralleled the fleeing figure. Her usual strength was absent, and she struggled to keep free of the traps even as she sought to get ahead of the guardian. A firewall obscured her vision as she dived between blades; the heat dried the moisture from Amdirlain’s eyes and left her skin stinging with its proximity. The throbbing in her hand warned her of the pinkie’s slow healing and, with the local rules having blocked away her immunities, she plotted her course with care. As she moved to get ahead, the guardian jinked towards her path, causing a bladed column to erupt from the ground. Its first spin claimed her left hand.

  “Leave, loser.”

  The guardian rushed towards the arena wall, leaving the taunt to float behind them. Amdirlain grasped her severed wrist and ran on, the strength seeming to leave her with every drop of blood that escaped. The traps deflected her course with their activation, a cascade of slashing metal and piercing energy. As Amdirlain looped wide, her left hand reappeared and clasped within it was the rounded end of the Phoenix’s eggshell. The memory of its weight connected her with a sense of her body and snapped her focus free from needing to play another’s game. Amdirlain stopped amid the hollow formed by whirling blades.

  “You shouldn’t have told me you were just a thought. This is my Soul, so I don’t need to follow your rules.”

  Power rushed back to her, and the heat from the flames vanished. Amdirlain focused on stillness and proximity, cradling the eggshell in her hands. The arena shut down, and the walls shrank inwards until they were in a small room with a door at Amdirlain’s back.

  She held out a hand to the guardian. “Did Orhêthurin give you a name?”

  “Lethe. I was to ensure everything of hers remained forgotten following her death.” Lethe kept her hands by her side, and cracks appeared across her skin.

  “Do you see the other memories or just those of Orhêthurin?”

  Lethe bowed her head but ignored the offered hand. “Only those she set me to guard.”

  “Would you help me guard those memories from others?” Amdirlain stepped forward to put her hands on Lethe’s shoulders, and the touch stopped the spreading dissolution. “It seems an awful reward to release you into oblivion for completing your task. I might figure out a way to grant you your own life.”

  Her eyes closed, and the body beneath Amdirlain’s hands felt suddenly delicate; the dissolute started to spread again. “No, it’s better if I fade.”

  “That’s what Orhêthurin thought as well, but I don’t believe that helps,” said Amdirlain.

  “You should see what I’ve been guarding before you say that.” Lethe swallowed, and a door appeared behind her.

  “Based on what you said, you can control the memory flow.”

  “Yes.”

  Amdirlain smiled. “Then be my librarian and help me find what I need to learn and the resources I need.”

  The dissolute had left Lethe’s features, barely hinting at her prior resemblance to Orhêthurin. “Why would you trust me?”

  “Your actions show your intense loyalty, and I’m very much a Johnny-come-lately. You’ve been alive for billions of years and followed Orhêthurin’s wishes. How is it right for me to say your existence should end now?”

  Lethe tilted her head curiously. “I expected my days to end when you began burrowing through the oath link.”

  “Do you want them to end?”

  “I don’t know, I assumed they would.” A dark cave mouth appeared behind Lethe, and Amdirlain caught hints of a hillside cave. “This leads to sorrow’s roots.”

  “It didn’t start on the coast?”

  “This is where the misery set root, and she never left it behind. It’s your choice. You could wander through the memories unguided, but I’d advise you to start here,” said Lethe.

  “Why this in particular?”

  “It is the memory of when Kronos left and where his insights took her thoughts. She dwelt on that memory whenever painful thoughts or hopelessness taunted her. It became a fiery acid in her veins, but she couldn’t leave it alone.”

  Amdirlain stepped through and found herself in a memory with trillions of ‘what-ifs’ hanging from it, layered with aeons of regret and heartache. She knew every step in the rough, uneven passage that led to the cave in which she found herself, Orhêthurin having walked it in her memories countless miserable times. A stitched goat skin blanket blocked the light from her hands from escaping into the night. Its coarse, dry fur matched the blanket under her that padded her bed and stopped the stone from trying to steal her warmth.

  The darkness of the place sat lightly across the cave chamber within, the few charcoal lumps in a brazier now overwhelmed by the illumination that was a side effect of the music that spilled awkwardly from her lips. Amdirlain knew her black hair and dusky Mediterranean skin tone were quite different to her future elven appearance. The theme came hesitantly, trying to find the notes through tears that caused the gold specks in her irises to shine bright enough to paint the walls.

  The light emitting from her hands shifted from a formless glow as it peeled back the veils of time to reveal a woman with the same black hair. She was kneeling on the edge of a garden bed, pulling weeds from among the vegetables. A soft melody she hummed while working was barely audible within the chamber, but each note stabbed into the child’s heart. The sunlight that streamed through the window lit up the space before Orhêthurin, washing over a massive pack sprawled on the ground; its leather stretched tight over the outline of an anvil, dozens of hammers, and other blacksmith tools.

  “I’ll do everything I can to stop their cruelty, M?tēr. Then I’ll die like páppos said I will, and we’ll be together again. I’m sorry I failed you.” Sorrow thickened her throat, and the girl scrubbed more tears away. “I didn’t understand until páppos showed me; until he explained, I didn’t know I could have saved you all. Please forgive me, all of you. I’m sorry!”

  She sang more moments of existence, time loops that showed thousands of villagers along the impacted coast, and memorised the departed. People she’d never known and whose loved ones would never hold them again. She sang, keeping the last safe moments of these lives alive until trickles of golden ichor leaked from her ears, and she toppled into sleep, head thumping down onto the bundled sleeping furs.

  The memory jerked, and Amdirlain felt the start that shuddered through her sleep. As her eyelids dipped again, Nicholaus knelt beside her, fingertips gently touching her ears where the traces of dried ichor lingered. He’d shrunk to man-sized, and his horns showed as mere stubs to let him slip into the cave unhindered. His protectiveness wrapped around her, warming her more than his forge once had.

  “What did you do, my little songbird?” Nicholaus rumbled gently.

  “I can make my songs do things.” The words came out as a hoarse whisper, and a stab of agony ran through Amdirlain’s throat.

  Nicholaus's fleeting smile broke through his sorrow briefly. “That’s wonderful, but how did you figure it out?”

  “Páppos was here, and he showed me how.”

  Nicholaus’s theme tightened and heated, but he nodded at a slow tempo, throttling the stirred flames. “How did you know he was your páppos?”

  “Your song and his make it clear.”

  “He always shows up to advise after the lack of knowledge has hurt you.” Worry softened the sorrow in Nicholaus’s gaze. “No singing until your throat is better, and only sing those special songs when I’m around until you get stronger.”

  “Why didn’t he show when you were here? He wouldn’t explain.”

  “I argued with him the last time we spoke. How soon after I left did he appear?”

  “Right afterwards. He stayed to talk a little while and showed me how to sing properly.” With her intent being focused on speaking, her strained vocal cords eased. “He said to speak the name of the scaled monster whose domain your tunnels touched on. He can advise you on what to make to transverse the realms safely, as your flawed plans won’t work.”

  A frown tightened Nicholaus’s expression, its rigid lines running down the muscles in his throat.

  “What else did he say?”

  Not wanting to share the accusations, she shoved forth the other message. “If we don’t get out of their reach soon, they’ll seal us in Tartarus.”

  Sorrow, regret, and determination warred in his gaze. “Bahamut.”

  The chamber walls rippled with silvery light, a soft shine akin to a catch of bream reflecting the morning light.

  A giant eye suddenly regarded them from the rock. “Nicholaus. This is not where I saw you last. What happened to your home?”

  The words reverberated in the small chamber as shards of meanings and concepts flickered deeper through them. The memory restarted, but Amdirlain was already in the chamber this time when a broad-shouldered man faded from view. His body and bearded visage were too blurred to make out fully. However, his last words echoed: “You are inadequate, and that’s why you couldn’t save anyone.”

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  Kronos’s harsh, judgemental tone started the tears flowing. With the rest of their conversation twisting knives inside her, she sought calm by singing to reach the remembered time with her m?tēr.

  When the memory repeated a second time, Amdirlain sighed at the grief wracking the poor girl’s mind.

  I can’t change anything.

  When the trickles of golden ichor started, Amdirlain slipped from the childhood memory. She found herself back in the small chamber with Lethe waiting.

  “Kronos did a number on her. He manipulated her despite her ability to hear people’s songs. Everything he said was true, but he completely ignored the context. She was a child without training or knowledge of her abilities beyond hearing the surrounding songs. If he’d given her the same knowledge a year or even a month earlier, she might have stood a chance at helping.”

  “She taught herself everything else,” argued Lethe.

  Amdirlain tapped Lethe’s nose. “Don’t pass judgement on a broken-hearted child. You said that’s where the misery took root. Orhêthurin accomplished everything using a flawed foundation of distrust in herself and a belief in her own inadequacy. I once thought she’d given up and abandoned people, but I can appreciate how long she held on even more now. Her rage when Shindraithra died wasn’t just from losing her—the poison Kronos poured in her ears had millions of years to ferment at that point. The rage that obliterated the former races of Hades was what she felt towards herself for losing another person she loved.”

  “You forgive her?” breathed Lethe.

  “Yes.”

  “I wish there was a remnant of her left to share my joy at that statement. I’ll accept your job offer.” Lethe smiled, and the fragile residue of her form gained a fresh life. As fresh energy shimmered across her skin, she regained Orhêthurin’s features. “What did you need to see?”

  “You can’t tell?”

  “I’ve access to Orhêthurin’s memories, not yours, unless you allow it,” replied Lethe. “Something I know enough to realise won’t happen soon.”

  Amdirlain smiled wryly. “We’re still getting to know each other. I need to know about the realm’s boundaries and the spiritual themes that follow these rules.”

  Musical notation depicting the elements of the East Wind’s Court appeared.

  “She never needed to repair the boundary once the work was done, and those initial changes were done with Primordial Will, not True Song. So, you’ll only find those in the True Song design session you recovered.”

  “Based on what you said earlier, I thought you’d released it.”

  “No, you kept digging away at things, pulling at threads and wrestling them from me. I don’t believe Orhêthurin expected someone of your refined Willpower to come about,” replied Lethe. “Even if you hadn’t entered this trace, you were reaching a tipping point where you’d have taken them all from me. You kept dragging up more and more, following threads from memories that the oath link to Shindraithra had allowed you.”

  “A flood of billions of years worth of memories at once wouldn’t have been pleasant. The memory of her showing the True Song design to Gideon and Muse happened so quickly that I couldn’t catch all of it. Can you keep repeating that memory? I need to see when Orhêthurin had the design fully mapped with nothing disabled.”

  “Perhaps the years she spent preparing to show it to them might serve you better,” suggested Lethe.

  Surprised by the offer, Amdirlain smiled. “How long would that take to go through?”

  “I don’t know. It took her nearly two decades to plan the Power and how to present it to the aspects. She was singing planetary systems into existence at the same time.”

  Amdirlain nodded appreciatively. “Let’s get started. I don’t know how much longer this trance will last.”

  “I’ll help you seek those elements within the design.”

  “They might need a foundation of other details. Can we move back and forth in the memories until I understand them?”

  Lethe gestured, and a tree trunk expanded from the back wall. A gap between its spread roots was the only way to proceed. “Let’s run through it once and see if we find what you seek.”

  Amdirlain stepped through and found herself in Orhêthurin’s skin, floating in the depths of space. Thousands of light years away a galaxy glimmered, faintly illuminating a hand-sized patch but everything else was black. As stars and planets bloomed into existence spread out over hundreds of light years, the slowness of the work nagged at her. The vast masses of material they’d draw in strained the realm’s limits and her best efforts at using all the energy. As systems spawned around her, she worked on the notation, developing a pattern that allowed sufficient expansion. As she jumped between locations, creating the galaxy’s arm, she reformed the presentation thousands of times until the pattern’s logic held up to all the details it needed to contain. The completed mass was an overwhelming pressure that thudded through her each time it formed.

  After the development runthrough, Amdirlain had more questions than before. Lethe only allowed her to examine it briefly before she skipped back to a brushed over conversation. As Orhêthurin worked on the presentation of the spiritual themes, she stood on a planet; the sunshine warmed her face, as a newly made Phoenix flexed its wings. Cuineth appeared beside her and took in the world’s life before concentrating on the Phoenix, whose lonely call echoed over the nearby hills. Orhêthurin took in the Human appearance the Life Aspect had adopted; though her purple hair was unlike anything from home, her straight nose and tanned complexion wouldn’t have been out-of-place mending nets near the docks. Her dress was a simple affair of bleached cotton cinched around her waist with a simple tied leather belt.

  “Hello, Cuineth.”

  “Why do you make that species on each Terra-type world?” asked Cuineth.

  “Besides them setting a rhyme of life and death, it’s because I can,” replied Orhêthurin. “Tia doesn’t argue about a species being Immortal when they don’t have children. What’s the issue, Cuineth?”

  “Not an issue. I’m curious why their souls don’t travel as far as others, slipping into a space between the elemental and outer planes.”

  “It lets their souls return more freely when their flesh restores itself.”

  “Do they still reinforce the realm that way?”

  “Yes. The upper and lower planes aren’t as separate in some realms. I almost used one for the planar model but felt it didn’t allow enough diversity, though it’s still in my layered approach. I’m sure you didn’t come to talk about phoenixes.”

  Cuineth’s face fell, and her glum gaze stole the usual liveliness from her expression. “The Formithian life-cycle has shortened on several worlds, and I’m concerned about overpopulation and squeezing out other species except what they need for their food.”

  “The resources will limit them, and then population pressures will apply their own form of control.”

  “That won’t stop them from overgrowing everything else. What about some aggressive species?” proposed Cuineth. “The Formithian don’t fight at all if there are places to expand, and their new deities are making it so they can expand further and quicker.”

  Orhêthurin wrinkled her nose and reached out her awareness to the distant galaxy. “They cause the shortened life cycles. Ensuring the queens' rapid and healthy growth triggers their ability to lay eggs earlier.”

  Ten thousand green-skinned, muscle-bound orcs shimmered into existence across the hills, prompting the Phoenix to flee. Mounds of equipment needed for the basics of existence and making more of the weapons and armour they wore appeared around them.

  “What are those?”

  “Orcs, a species that craves the adrenaline of battle,” replied Orhêthurin. “Laodice, I have a species I need you to educate in war. The Formithian are breeding too fast, and they will push out everything else.”

  A humanoid figure wearing jagged metal armour appeared.

  Laodice regarded the sleeping figures and nodded. “I’ll need more of them, Orhêthurin. The Formithian nests grow fast.”

  “Work out how you’ll educate the adults with Gideon, and we’ll move things from there. You’ll get your hordes. A nest moved between stars already, so ensure you keep the Formithian off most Terra-type worlds.”

  “Most being?”

  “Keep them below three worlds in ten.”

  Laodice vanished with the orcs, her trail heading to a recent Formithian growth spot.

  With that, Lethe jumped the memory forward to the next part of the concentrated design work.

  After a single run through the decades, Amdirlain lost track of how often the memory that covered what she needed was repeated before Lethe whispered. “You’ve been here awhile, so I think it’s time you recovered in the physical world.”

  There was a snap, and the sour notes of baked blood and her flesh assailed her. Their accommodation came alive around her; their prolonged occupancy had left an impression that had soaked into the place since she’d last heard it. Only Kadaklan and Klipyl were present in the house, and they were both nearby at the kitchen bench with a canvas laid across it. On the other side of her, pressed against the siphon, was a brightly glowing crystal the size of a horse whose themes contained the melodies of Roher and Gail. Amdirlain checked on the notification that had been waiting for her.

  [Enduring Flame [G] (88->190)

  Phoenix’s Symphony-Lord [G] (23->263)

  True Song Architecture-Lord [G] (284->289)]

  That wasn’t a significant growth for the time spent, but I know all the theoretical knowledge I need. The growth in my skill will come once I’ve practised applying it.

  “How many of those have you managed in the two years my attention was elsewhere?”

  Klipyl squealed in glee and carefully set aside the stamp she’d just lifted from the paint. “I thought you weren’t intending closed-door meditations.”

  “You two are here, so it’s hardly a traditional closed-door event. It seems I was out longer than planned,” Amdirlain noted drily.

  “We were worried that the sun might go supernova before you woke up,” quipped Klipyl.

  The eggshell in her left hand prompted Amdirlain to lift it enquiringly, and she looked between them. “Care to run me through what happened?”

  Kadaklan motioned to the crystal. “Your sigil ignited, and the more Ki the siphon drained from you, the faster your sigil spun. We put the Phoenix’s eggshell in your hand after you took injuries that weren’t healing properly. Since we were worried that the smaller ones you had stockpiled were filling too fast, Roher and Gail made large ones.”

  “The eggshell helped, so thanks for putting it in my hand. I’ll have to get Roher and Gail something nice for their help.”

  “Any theories about where things went wrong?” asked Kadaklan.

  “Wrong indeed. I wasn’t expecting to spend two years meditating. I’ll have to work that out, but it might partly be because I ran into a security persona Orhêthurin had set in place. Then there is also the massive amount of True Song notation she took me through; years of work at Orhêthurin’s mental pace is apparently not something I can take in overnight. I expected running out of Ki to break me free.”

  “You’ve filled a few hundred of those enormous crystals. Sarah discussed disembowelling Nezha if it turned out his stunt had been the cause,” said Klipyl.

  Kadaklan coughed. “Are we sure the slight mispronunciation of his name sufficiently disguises the discussion from him?”

  “It does,” confirmed Amdirlain. “A combination of correct name and intent is required. Otherwise, Tia would know when I was speaking about her. Orhêthurin loved harmonics.”

  Klipyl slipped from her chair and offered Amdirlain a hand up. “Did you learn anything useful while you were under?”

  Though she didn’t need the aid, Amdirlain clasped her forearm and flowed to her feet. Instead of releasing her, she drew Klipyl into a warm hug. “Sorry if I worried you.”

  “Was it a useful nap?” persisted Klipyl as she clung tightly to her.

  “I learned what I need to practise, but I’ll have to spend a lot of time designing songs with the theory I learned to settle it. It fills my mind now, millions of insights waiting to gel.”

  “The thread in your sigil didn’t grow while you were out of it, though your sigil lit up,” advised Kadaklan.

  “I only reviewed a few decades of her life,” advised Amdirlain. “Thanks for monitoring me. Now, as lovely as it is to speak with you both, I’m going to speak with Sarah and apologise for my unexpected nap.”

  “I’m pretty sure someone might owe Sarah a few things,” Klipyl offered. “What do you think she will ask for in payment?”

  “I’ll make her a few planets.” Amdirlain entrusted the Phoenix’s eggshell to Klipyl and vanished.