Discordant Note | TBATE

Chapter 146: Soulplume

Toren Daen

After escaping from Mardeth along the Redwater, I'd asked my bond why she'd put her foot down regarding the Second Phase of my Phoenix Will. My core was more refined than Arthur's was when he had first trained with Realmheart, and though I certainly drew more direct insight from the depths of my will than Arthur did, Lady Dawn was there to ease the burden. My control of my Acquire Phase was impeccable; honed over the course of many months. What stopped me from delving deeper?

Aurora had explained to me that I was not the problem. It was her.

My mind grew closer with my bond's when I used my First Phase, and while comfortingly intimate and beyond useful for calming my mind during a fast-paced battle, we were still distinct. I knew who I was, and my bond knew herself in turn.

Yet as the Integrate Phase of my Phoenix Will washed out from my core, it became difficult to distinguish where Lady Dawn started and Toren ended. My bond's experiences outnumbered my own by a factor of a thousand thousands. She'd forgotten more than I would ever learn, and as that vastness encroached on my sense of self, I found myself being overwhelmed.

Even as I stared Mardeth down, the iron grip I kept on my own psyche was a greater strain than any other. Aurora's sentiments and emotions still bled over somewhat, accounting for the sense of arrogant disdain I felt for the vicar flying in the air. I realized that it was not my body that would give first under the effect of my Will.

It would be my mind.

I knelt to look Benny in the eye, whose trembling gradually ceased as he realized he was not drowning in a tide of Vritra acid. He looked up at me, his eyes impossibly wide as they took in my appearance.

The only things not darkened to my sight were the lingering spells that still burned through mana, alongside the churning heartfires all around. With my further enhanced sense of lifeforce, I could trace the path of Benny's veins through his body, a simmering stream of aetheric energy coursing along his blood.

"Are you an angel?" he asked, my burning eyes reflected in his own. They seared just like Aurora's phantom. In place of flesh, twin stars pulsed rhythmically.

"No," I said softly, allowing myself to smile at the boy's question. "Go to your mother, Benny," I said, brushing off a few chips of debris from his shoulder. "And have the rest of the refugees run while they can."

The boy opened his mouth, seeming just about ready to burst with a flurry of questions, but I stood, facing Mardeth's uncertain form. The entire world was blanketed in a misty haze from my perspective, the same darkening of my sight taking place as when I saw Lady Dawn's phantom form.

Benny scurried back to his mother. I could feel the sense of awe–and no little terror–coursing through the crowd behind me, but once the young boy reached them, it seemed to light a match. Legs remembered to move as bodies surged to run, a tide of people moving in the opposite direction.

As they ran muttering prayers to the High Sovereign, Mardeth's anger returned in full force.

"You think I'll let them go?" Mardeth sneered, pushing past his uncertainty. "You are naive as ever, little mage," he said, conjuring a dozen concentrated spheres of sickly green sludge. The spells hurtled toward the retreating civilians with a hiss. As they got close, each one popped open like a pimple, spraying even more of that caustic acid in a rain toward the retreating men and women.

Oath hovered by my ear as I pressed outward with my mana, summoning a wall of solid white fire behind me. I was backlit by the burning inferno, my stance cool and impassive.

And then Mardeth's spell slammed into my wall of white fire. A dozen petty raindrops pelted my stalwart protections, but they found no purchase. Holy fire gave the putrid lessuran filth no quarter. Only merciful cleansing.