Discordant Note | TBATE

Chapter 112: The Relic

Sevren Denoir

The mock fire crackled and popped, spraying embers in a two-dimensional panorama. I stared at it mutely, my mind empty.

The light emanating from the strange, flat box mimicked a flame perfectly, down to the sounds and flares. It was like watching a painting move, except this was too real to be a painting. It was too bright to be oil on a canvas, too, and I felt no mana from the strange construct.

There were similar devices on the wealthier sections of Alacrya; where recorded images were displayed over a wall of pure mana.

Toren had called the box a 'tee vee,' and had briefly explained that my offhand guess on what it was doing was correct. Only instead of paintings, he'd called them 'frames.'

I thought that was foolish. A frame held a painting. It wasn't the painting in and of itself.

I slumped on the luxurious couch, devoid of energy. I watched one of the embers fly from the mock fire, tracing its path across the luminescent screen.

Toren walked in from the kitchen, a couple of those metal cans in his hands. From the labeling, I recognized them as that strange, bubbly drink he'd given me once before.

One of the cans floated over to me, outlined in Toren's white telekinesis. I stared at it for a long while, a quiet war raging within over to take the offered drink. Toren himself sat on a nearby leather couch, popping the tab of his drink with a hiss.

I eventually caved, taking the cold drink. While Toren practically chugged his vanilla Coke like an alcoholic, I had to take more measured sips. The bubbly sensation in my mouth was too strange to go all in like my friend.

"What's the point of that fire?" I asked, tapping my finger against the can. "Sure, it emits light, but there's those artifacts overhead that do that." I still hadn't figured out how those worked, exactly. There wasn't any mana in them. They probably worked through electricity, like those earmuffs from before. "And there's no warmth at all. Just a flat screen."

Toren crumpled the empty can in his hand, then tossed it into a wastebasket across the room with a casual gesture. He was the one who had put on the strange moving painting of fire after we'd buried the ancient mage, using a dark stick that allowed him to alter what was displayed on the tee vee. He navigated through this place like a natural, but it felt so alien to me.

My friend hummed for a moment, before holding out his palm. On it, a fire sputtered to life.

"There are some estates in Alacrya where the entire place is heated by artifacts rather than a hearth," he started. "Fire is a strange thing. So many people view it as a tool of destruction. But it's just as much–if not more so–a tool of life in its purest form. Don't tell me you don't find yourself missing a hearth every now and then?"

I ground my teeth, staring at that flickering mockery of fire. "But it'll never actually emit warmth," I said, my breath a knot in my chest. "It'll try and try to be a fire. But it fundamentally can't. It will keep popping away, sizzling like a flame. But it will never actually reach that goal. It's pointless. Empty."

Toren turned slowly to look at me, his light orange eyes peering into my own. I felt myself tense like a cat as he looked through me, not unlike the djinn I'd watched die.

"Do you think the emotions that faux-flame creates are meaningless, too?" the strange striker asked. "That there's nothing to be gained from it? Someone who can't light a fire can still feel a bit like they're gathered around a hearth."

I scoffed, crossing my arms. "But it will never be what it needs to be," I bit out. "That bit of comfort is meaningless then, isn't it? It's false. A mask for the emptiness."