Years ago, a timid young fae stepped with wobbly knees onto the Windhelm Castle grounds. To the surprise of his entire village, he'd passed the tests for detecting innate magic with flying colors. Most fae lose their innate magic by the time they can speak. Soon after, a letter was delivered to his mother from the Windhelm Magic Academy: he was being offered a chance to train under the region's Master mage, Bramble Honeyweather.
A gangly youth with arms and legs too long for his torso, his schoolmates had never thought much of him. What would they think of him now? Training under the queen's very own Master Mage! Maybe he'd be the next! He was the first young mage to be offered such an apprenticeship from Master Honeyweather.
He imagined their snide smirks wiped from their faces, replaced by jealousy and reverence. Their cruel jabs at his awkward mannerisms would be replaced with their own nervous stuttering the next time he saw them. These thoughts gave him the courage to hold his head high and march across the courtyard.
He, Finch Floravale, would finally prove his worth.
*****
"You need to practice harder," Master Honeyweather scolded. "Young mages of the city master these techniques by age twenty. You're ten years behind."
"Then why did you choose me?" an exhausted Finch asked resentfully, "Why not just choose one of them?"
"You passed nine of the eleven innate magic tests, something we haven't seen for generations. I, myself, only passed seven. None of the other fae we've tested have shown half the potential that you have."
Pride swelled within the young fae's chest, and he grasped the crystal orb in his hands, focusing intently. All he needed to do was produce the image of the princess. Scrying was a basic skill that any fae could do with the assistance of Dust. He just needed to do it with his own magic.
He stared into the orb, waiting for something, anything to appear in the dark mist. After a few moments, only the swirling smoke remained. Closing his eyes, he fought back the urge to give up. He bit his lip in frustration and opened his eyes, glaring into the orb.
"Perhaps," Honeyweather placed a hand on his shoulder, "we start with summoning the image of someone you're more familiar with. You've only known the princess for a few months. Try conjuring the image of your mother."
Finch closed his eyes. The gray mist instantly began to swirl faster inside the orb, turning to a pink color before his mother's careworn face came through. She was smiling, talking to someone. It was as if she were talking to him, but he could hear no sound.
"Am I seeing her through someone else's eyes?" he asked his master.
"You could be," he nodded, "Sometimes we scry through the eyes of animals, sometimes other fae. Many times the image comes to us from a mirror in the room with the subject."
"If I practice more, will I be able to hear her?" he held the orb up closer to his face. He longed to hear his mother's voice.
"It's not likely," Master Honeyweather told him, "But it's not impossible."
Finch stood tall, pulling his shoulders back.
"Someday I will," he promised.
*****
Finch sat solemnly outside his chambers, gripping a large crystal sphere in both hands.
"Mother," he whispered, and the mist instantly turned a deep purple before swirling away to reveal both his mother and father, asleep in their bed. In the silence of the corridor, Finch could just make out the sounds of his father's snores.
He watched them for a few minutes, wishing he could wake them and speak to them. But scrying only worked one way. A few times a year he had the opportunity to visit the village, but he felt emptier and emptier each time he had to bid them farewell.
Thirty-seven years, he'd been a flickering mirage in their lives. They sent their only child to the castle to have a better life. But was his life better? Certainly, he was always fed and clothed, and he did enjoy some advantages as Honeyweather's apprentice...
But even after all this time, he could tell that many within the castle still saw him as just the son of a fletcher and an apothecary from a tiny village that they'd never deign to visit.
"What am I supposed to do?" he whispered to the orb, imagining his mother could hear, "Honeyweather doesn't care if I kill those men. They aren't fae, and they shouldn't be here... but they're still people, aren't they?"
Finch wiped the tears from his stinging eyes and stood. The Queen and Master Honeyweather were already cross with him; he couldn't afford to make himself late. He hurried down to the dungeons, all the while praying to Dunfayne and Filrayna to steady his mind and to keep the humans alive.
*****
Meadow slammed her bedchamber door in a fury. Couldn't Finch understand why she needed to speak with the queen about this? This matter concerned the entire island, not just their own city.
She needed to know what her mother was doing about it. Did the other clans know about the problem with the magic?
And how could there be a problem with the magic in the first place?
Meadow sighed. If she wanted her mother to take her seriously, she needed to have a plan of her own when she spoke with her. She trudged over to the bookshelf, which took up the entire southern wall of her room. She let her wings spread, preparing to fly so that she could see the books on the highest shelf.
Meadow's wings appreciated the chance to be unfurled. She tucked them away more often than she should; they were sore from lack of usage. She slowly flapped them, once, twice to wake them up. Blue tendrils pulsated across her glorious wings, which started out green where they met her back but darkened to black near their tips.
She hovered several feet off the floor, perusing for a few moments before finding the volume she'd been looking for: The History of Braudrien. Allowing herself to drift down to the floor, she blew some dust off of the old leather and opened the massive tome.
The first page held a message to the reader:
This is the History of Our Great Race, from the vile beginnings of the arduous Wars between Humans, Elves, and Fae, to the Final Battle, in which Filrayna, the Ultimate Being of Magic, gifted Braudrien, a mortal fae, with the power to wield her magic. This detailed account is being written three hundred and fifty years after the Final Battle, to finally record in ink what our fathers have passed down through songs and tales.
Meadow rifled through the pages until she found the section about the Final Battle. Every faeling knew the story: Braudrien was the General of the Fae Army, back when the Three Clans fought under the same banner. The humans and elves were threatened by the fae because of their wings. They were jealous of the freedoms that wings gave fae, and feared that the fae would use their advantage to assert power over them.
The wars spanned four generations of fae; just two generations for the elves, and nearly ten generations for the humans. Born into a world where his grandfather's war was still waging, Braudrien had no doubts about growing up and becoming a fierce warrior for the cause.
