Rotten Æther

//Author Note: I would strongly urge you to read Bloody Æther | Scribble Hub alongside this story. Shared world and setting, with crossovers coming!//

 

A home.

The others want to pursue this conspiracy. They want to uncover the secrets hidden in the ancient ruins and fight off these intruders that hunt the people of these lands.

I just want a home.

Nadia is obsessed, talking to herself, planning out a way to find the researchers that might crack open the hidden ruins. Theo and Lothar instead focus on the ‘shade’ conspiracy, talking about tactics we might use to survive.

Adeleya would normally be at my side, but instead, she floats between the others giving me distance. I want her back beside me, but it would just hurt more if she were.

She’s still smiling, but it no longer feels the same. Her eyes avoid mine whenever I look toward her.

After the stone mage covers the ruins for us, we travel back to Snowspring. Their home, the place that they want to protect, and I would fight just as hard but I can’t see the point.

I can’t see Snowspring becoming my home. Even if Theo and the others let me follow along as part of their merc group, I know that I’ll always be an unneeded extra to their group. Just like if I tried joining the wolven, I’d still never be one of them.

Ash still stains my clothes, even after I clean up. My heavy sword settles my feet into the dirt, but my bag is light. We carry no loot with us.

Why should I stay?

Snowspring is warm and friendly, but there are thousands of other places like it. Theo and the others are nice, but they aren’t family.

If I’m strong enough, can’t I make my own home? Maybe I can even find people who will accept me as I am, even with my magic. Why should I instead stay here with people who don’t actually want me?

Lifting my shoulders and strengthening my body to its limits I focus on each step. Steadying each breath. I need to be stronger.

Æther flows through my body, in turbid currents. I’ve felt what it’s like for the chants to direct the flows, smoothing out the process and making my magic slightly more pure. I can do the same without words. I have to because I don’t know the right words for my magics.

Days turn to night, colder for the distance between me and the others, before day comes again. I don’t talk as much anymore. The others are all too focused on their own thoughts and feelings, and I just don’t care.

My body constantly burns with magic, on the verge of collapsing. Nadia shoots down another bird for me when we cross them.

A black crow. He flies above, training just like me. Now that he’s no longer alive, he can move a little more recklessly. He can spin about a little faster, and he doesn’t need to be afraid of the bigger birds.

He’s already destined to become ash, so what is there to fear?

As we finish dinner, a stew of some sort, we sit by the fire. Nadia is still going on about the ruins and what we might find in there, and the others are eagerly joining in.

Adeleya is sitting opposite me her familiar smile gone.

It’s my fault.

I flush myself with magic, nearly pushing myself to the limits where I’ll pass out. Crow’s claws sink into my shoulder, and I heal the injury as quickly as I can. The others go to bed to get some rest, while I stay up on watch.

I barely sleep anymore. I can’t train very well while I’m asleep.

The few monsters out in the darkness keep far away from the light of the campfire. No bandits or ‘shades’ ambush us, though I sometimes wish that they would.

“You doing okay, kiddo?” Lothar says, taking a seat beside me, taking over my shift.

“Fine,” I shrug.

“You want to go get some sleep?”

“Can’t sleep,” I say.

Night’s creatures cry out, and the other mercs are breathing and snoring loudly. When I try to sleep, it’s all I can focus on.

I might as well get stronger.

Sitting by the fire, I close my eyes and channel magic all through me. Slowly, everything else slips away, and everything concentrates down to my burning æther veins. It’s almost like the abyss, but here I choose to condemn myself to the searing darkness.

We pass through one village, then another. Time continues flowing, but each day is no different from the one before it. I train, I walk, and I eat.

Sometimes Lothar or one of the others tries to talk with me, but I can never find anything I want to say in return. The longer we walk, the more certain I am that I don’t belong here.

When the day comes that I look up from the dirt path to see the familiar walls of Snowspring, I don’t feel the same excitement that I once did.

I know what’s hidden by those tall walls. I know of the baths on the side of the mountain. I know of the general happiness that spreads through the guild hall. I know what’s here.

I know that a necromancer doesn’t belong. I know that they’ll turn me away when they get to know who I really am.

I barely even look up as we march through to the guild, the others speak with Alice, Nadia proclaiming something about needing to head to the capital to look for the researchers. The others decide that we would have better odds together, the city is a big place and working alone could be dangerous. They settle upon leaving in a few weeks.

Alice tries to speak with me, but I put away my belongings and head right out for training. Maybe it’s rude.

I should probably apologise later.

The training grounds are empty at this time of the day, everyone is busy with their own work. They’re all part of this town, they belong here and work to make this town a better place.

That’s what I want.

I spin my adamant weapon above, swinging it left then right, barely keeping my feet settled on the ground. I keep my eyes open, staring at foes that aren’t here with me.

Balance.

Weight.

Spin.

Pull.

It seemed simple when I began to fight like this, so long ago, but now I’m starting to see the details of it. If I spin about madly, anyone can throw me off by deflecting my blade, the only thing that stops them is that they don’t realize just how easy it is to beat me.

If I pull the sword back over my chest I have better control but if I let it out further it hits much harder. If I firm my stance, I can better control the blade, but if I loosen my stance, I can let myself be pulled by it, becoming more mobile.

Stomping hard after a thrust and lifting the sword can help me reset the flow. I can then spin it up behind me and around into a sweeping strike, quickly building momentum again.

Stopping the blade is the biggest of troubles once I have momentum, striking the ground always sends me up into the air but slowing the momentum any other way just takes too much time.

Thrusts are only useful with a powerful charge and even then, cuts are easier to flow into the next attack.

I focus, build new streams of attacks and manipulate my momentum against imagined foes.

My blade lowers to the unsettled mud as I look up into the starry sky. At some point, the daylight has forsaken me.

I rest.

I rise.

I train.

Sometimes I go out hunting, and sometimes I go on a small quest with the others, but my mind is focused. If I want home. If I want acceptance. I need strength.

Adeleya floats to mind a few times during the passing weeks, my thoughts and feelings turn into a mess when I do, but I slowly come to accept that these feelings have no meaning. She won’t love me back, the way I love her. This new strength won’t change that. She can’t be what I want her to be, and I can’t be what she wants me to be.

I don’t know where that leaves us. I don’t know if we can ever be as close as we were before without it hurting like it does now. I don’t know anything.

Training in the early morning yard, I swing about back and forth, my body strengthening enough to send me spinning across the battlefield at high speeds. The locals have gotten used to me, but a few travellers still pause to watch. My fighting style is strange, even stranger considering I’m an elf wearing something that elves don’t wear.

A stone golem stands opposite me, sustaining blow after blow, as my sword trembles with the recoil. Anna has started to figure me out, and her golem is constantly pushing at me, keeping me from building up momentum.

 Anna stands to the side, sweating intensely as she swings the golem’s arm about. She’s faster than yesterday. Much faster than when we first practised.

She’s learning quick, and if I’m not careful she’ll be more powerful than me in a little while.

I kneel, setting my adamant blade against the ground and deflecting the next blow, before slipping under the offending limb. I set my feet firm while angling my sword around for the final blow. Using every ounce of force in my body I strike, my feet sink into the mud and my blade rises sharply, cutting right through the stone golem’s shoulder, but I don’t stop there.

My upward strike pulls me up off the ground. Floating in the air there’s nothing I can reach or kick against to control my flight.

While I spin through the air, slightly higher than the walls themselves, I try to see where I’m going to land only to see find a group of mages standing in the way. They’re going to be too slow to dodge me.

I shout, squeezing my lungs tight as I swing my sword back down into the training grounds, where there are no people I could accidentally hit.

Like an arrow my adamant blade pierces the earth right at the stone golem’s feet, raining mud down over the field.

It’s enough to give a little more distance, but I’m now spinning out of control. It’s all I can do to roll up in a ball and hope for the best.

“Syr!” Anna shakes me awake. “Syr!”

“I’m up,” I roll over staring up at the blank blue sky above. My arm burns with pain, and everything else hurts, too.

A chance to improve my healing magic.

I stagger back to my feet with Anna’s help. The rest of the people training, and the guards nearest us, are all looking at me for some reason.

“You win again.” Anna says, “But why did you try and kill him after I’d already lost?” She glares at me, her pointed ears practically quivering.

“I wasn’t trying to smash him,” I say. “I just didn’t want to land on the mages, and it’s not like I can fly. Throwing my sword was the only thing I could do.”

I pull out the adamant blade with my good hand leaning it on my shoulder.

“Besides, I think it was more of a draw. An arm for an arm.” I waved my broken arm about.

“Wait. Are you okay?” Her rage fades as suddenly as it’s appeared. “I’m so sorry!”

“It was all my fault, that new upward strike was a little too much for me,” I pull my hand out of her reach before she can fix it. “I can deal with it fine, I need to practice my healing magic anyway.”

“Let me help, at least,” she says, forcing herself closer and taking my injured arm. She adds her æther stream to my own. “I’m still better at healing than you are.”

“Thank you,” I say, repressing a sigh.

She carefully seizes control of the æther flow in my arm, taking over from my healing attempts as she carefully weaves bone and flesh, stitching it back together. Some people call her a genius healer, and I can understand why, but I disagree.

Her talent is in manipulating the flow of æther, effective healing is just a side effect. When fighting against her ‘titan’ I can nearly feel how beautifully the æther flows, how perfectly and wastelessly she moves her puppet. Her combat skills and awareness are still developing, but her talents make up for that and I know that she’d make for a competent merc already.

She heals my arm completely, using only a fraction of the time and æther that I’d use to do the same.

“It’s still weak, so keep flooding it with æther as you tend to do and it’ll be fine by tomorrow.”

“Thanks,” I smile, she silently stands close by, her version of an invitation. I step in close and give her a light hug, squeezing the slightest of grunts from her before I let her go again.

“You still okay with me hugging you?” I ask.

“Yeah, it’s just surprising every time,” she smiles awkwardly, “I hate that it’s so difficult.”

“It’s normal to struggle with things sometimes,” I say, leading her up to the baths. I’ve done all that I can for now, I have to meditate on what I’ve learned.

My fighting style is new and strange. I can’t find anyone who can train me, so I have to think things through for myself and make up new ways to attack and move.

I still use that time to train my magics while I think.

More and more, I’ve found that the baths are a great place to go when I want to think. I don’t always come up with solutions, but that doesn’t mean I can give up.

“I heard more about those Eastern wilds that you were talking about,” Anna says, as we settle into the hot waters. It’s nice to be clean again, even if it’s for just a few moments. I’ll be back out there training before too much longer.

“They’re not completely wild,” I say. “There’s a city there, a big walled city. It’s what that travelling merc said, anyway.”

“It’s violent and most people who go there don’t come back,” Anna shakes her head, sinking into the waters. “I don’t think it’s a good place to go. There are lots of other towns and villagers that need mercenaries, why not go to them instead?”

I shrug, splashing the water around.

“I think… I belong somewhere a little more dangerous,” I say. “I want to go somewhere that my strength is needed.”

“You aren’t going any time soon, are you?” Anna asks, sitting up. “You aren’t even a proper mercenary yet.”

“I don’t know,” I say.

I’m tempted to leave today, to just turn around and follow the roads somewhere new, but there are still things I have to deal with here. Even if they’re not family, I don’t want to abandon everyone while they’re all in trouble with the shades.

“You’re still coming to the capital with me, aren’t you?” Anna asks. “You’re not going to just disappear, or anything.”

“I’m still going to the capital,” I nod slowly. “I still have to settle things before I leave.”

 

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