FENRER

Annoyance brought anger; anger brought rage; rage brought violence. Intrusive emotions from others clogged his own. An impossible cipher of his own self. Frustration tore through auras and danced across his band and set the opal colours aflame on his skin. Anger collected on his throat, but it drowned underneath the current of someone else's. Auric aches hammered deeper into his skull when he placed his hand against his head and glared at the tension between the two royal siblings. He found his fury quelled under the sight of the Ancients whose tenants he followed as stringent as the auric law around his forearm. Freedom. Truth. Resolve. Absolution. Four of their creeds. Time proved cruel against each.

Worry fluttered in King Laucan's aura when he glanced at his older sister. I didn't doubt his testament — I saw the auric entanglement when I arrived... if it's as severe as they believe. He stopped when the king and princess faltered. "What?"

King Laucan inhaled and turned to him with a deep frown. Thoughts caught on the edges of cold flower petals, a word on his tongue. It bubbled into crimson fear. A crown cracked, splattered red. His fingers curled into his palm, and the puffy feathers around his ears fluffed further. "Pyren—"

Anger spiked against the pyretic current. "No." He came closer. "I don't want to hear an excuse." He chewed on his jaw and inched closer, and his large shadow engulfed Laucan. "I want to hear nothing. I want my Oathbound back, and it is for that reason I am willing to do this. Don't push me." He breathed out the plume of fire, and eyed Hayvala. "It is best we do this somewhere where you feel the most comfortable."

A soft laugh slipped past her lips, a wispy sound on the wind. "It is hard to feel comfortable anywhere here, Fenrer Pyren," she said when King Laucan lowered his head and gazed at his steel-ridged boots. "You know, you have a choice here. You do not need to help me, just as I have a choice to accept or refuse this. Just as I have a choice in everything. There is no excuse." Hayvala straightened herself out and met him in the eye.

"Ai, Siranaz'ma," Laucan whimpered, but stopped when Hayvala slammed her hand on his chest and her nostrils flared, though Fenrer tried to decipher the unfamiliar Navei.

"No, Laucan," she growled. "You have forced this upon them. You took away their choice, but not mine." Her fangs slipped over her lips, and her feathers stretched further past her ears. Hand out of the way, Hayvala glided through the royal wing and closed in on a snowflake shaped door. Fenrer waited for King Laucan to continue towards her, but he stopped once more in the middle of the corridor. Irritation slammed into his palm, but he outstretched his fingers in prevention of a lash out. Laucan shook his head in wild motions, then twisted to him with a soft gasp.

"Pyren—" he said.

"Pushing." Fenrer snarled through his wolven ways.

Laucan rasped, "It is about Yuven Traye. I must tell you. I know not of what Keeper Blackwall did to him apart from the memory extraction. Whatever he did, it caused an expulsion flash, he called it. I didn't understand it." He shuffled on his feet, and the auric skyshards shrank in terror. "No one would tell me what those phials with his things were except for Adara Sazaka. Yuven Traye nor Keeper Blackwall would tell me."

Those phials... Fenrer swallowed the tempest. "Explain." Tension slammed into his heels, a poised spring of magick. "The only thing you must be referring to is his—"

"Medication," Laucan's words drove pressure into his feet. "I didn't know what it was, so Yuven went without it for a while."

Fenrer drew in sharp, shallow breaths past the layer of phlegm in his chest. "Is that how Keeper Blackwall thought to break the Auric Law? It must be so easy to get it out of a sick man who's been told he's going to die anyway, right?" He drew the word off his tongue and past his teeth, inching closer.

King Laucan stared at him. "He didn't break the Auric Law, Pyren. He..." He curled his fingers together. "He convinced Yuven Traye by showing him some letter. It must have had something to do with his medication though and—"

Words fluttered into the ringing silence.

Maria.

Magick launched him forward when he grabbed Laucan's collar and shoved him into the wall closest to them. "Oh, yes!" Fenrer barked out a laugh. "Yes! Because a mind coerced is an agreeable mind, right?" He dove his fists deeper into King Laucan's shoulders, who trembled. "It's so much easier when you can just convince someone through words, right? Where have I heard that infernals' damned excuse before?" He pressed his face into Laucan's. "You have no idea what it's like. No idea what this means—" He shoved his band underneath Laucan's nose, who frowned at him. "We walk this hell's damned line time and time again and people fear the fact that with a blink, we can see the truth of them. Much better to keep us under lock and key, aye? Only right after they rip out our eyes and cut off the nerves so our own emotions disappear into the flow. So much easier to keep someone like your sister and I compliant, and someone like Keeper Blackwall seeking every loophole because the ends justifies the means." He bounced Laucan off the wall. "Just because you coerced a mind does not make it an agreeable mind. You do not get to throw the Auric Law in my face when I have to live with it breathing down my neck." Fumes drove into his mind, a mess of emotions, unsure of the source. Laucan's. Hayvala's. The entire world's fury. "All it took was words, how do you think this law came into being?" he hissed through his clenched jaw. "How do you think people like your sister and I ended up with these bands around our arms?"

Hayvala's shape came closer, her arm outstretched to reveal the white band covered in opal snowroses. "Pyren."

Fenrer checked on her, then let go of Laucan. He lifted his auric blinder from his belt, waving it. "This? The only relief I ever get from people, one step out of line, and I'd be locked in it. Unlike those who aren't Aurus, we can't not see the world this way." He tied it around his belt with his Resonator and watch then shook his head. "So don't. I am doing you a kindness, Your Grace, a kindness not many others would give after what you've done. Whatever happened here, you were complicit in this. Take my kindness because I'm half-tempted to not give it. That's my choice." He rolled up his sleeves with a scoff and left the king against the wall.

King Laucan looked between him and Hayvala. "I don't understand," he whispered. "It's a world law, not a Naveeran one. I didn't decide that law. Any reports of Auric deviance must be reported to the governing body and then the Elder Convocation." He lifted himself off the wall when Hayvala cupped his shoulders, then shook her head. "Anything within the confines of the law must be granted express permission by the receiver of the magick, because if the mind does not bend, the Aurus cannot intrude under threat of the punishment."

Weight slammed into his palm with the carved flames underneath a runestone, in front of a small house with a young child, confused to the truth of the world and its ostracization. "It's so easy to blame someone else, easy to ignore the more obvious answer," Fenrer mumbled under his breath and headed into Hayvala's room. Pressure cracked his skull when the two siblings followed him. "Let's get this done, and then I want Yuven Traye."

"You'll get Yuven Traye, I swear on my song."

An oath on the song. Fenrer studied his aura, then sighed when Laucan raised his hand over his heart. "Don't."

Laucan stopped.

"I know what you were just about to do," Fenrer said. "I am doing a kindness. I don't need an oath song." He motioned at Hayvala to take a seat on the lounge sofa. "Princess Hayvala, take a seat. If this is your wish, I will do my best, but remember that every moment you have a choice. If you decide against this, feel free to eject me." He stepped to the side when she fixed her dress and sat in front of him. He inhaled through the spiderwebs, then held out his shaking hands, where Hayvala placed her steady ones into his.

Auras swallowed the world. Moonscales rippled through his skin, and he jolted out of the connection of his mind to hers. Darkness webbed across sconces, where a sunny glyph flowed with molten textures underneath him. Pyretic flames bit at the air when he stood at the center.

"It is kind of you, Fenrer Pyren, to try and do something we both know isn't possible," her voice drew him to the source within his head instead of hers. Tough burrs bled a mirage hugged around her, where a wyvern tucked its wings closer to her, a deep embrace against the shimmering scales each time it breathed in its struggling life. "But now, we can speak freely. It is just our minds."

"I meant—"

"To bring me somewhere more comfortable?" Hayvala smiled at him and stepped over the lava and the pyre he stood in the middle of, in the tomb of his ancestor. "You are... truly powerful, Fenrer Pyren. And to behold it myself here..." Uncertainty coursed through her swirling eyes when she blinked the reflection of the twilight sea. "I shall only pose you a question, and then... you are free to try. I will not push you out, for my brother's hope, but I know I won't recover from this."

Anger ebbed back into the flow when he studied the growing burrs. "I can probably try to do something about it, at least to provide relief."

Hayvala chuckled softly. "You are powerful, Fenrer Pyren, but even you couldn't release me from this with all the power of an Anima behind you," she pointed out and leaned into the burrs in pure contentment. "What was done to me was my price. An ancient law above all others. Magick far out of our comprehension. To give, it must take in return." Tears ran down her face. "Many are less lucky than I, raised in a station of comfort — and my baby brother has lost so much, and I cannot blame him for his desperate desires, because I've been there myself. If I may be frank with you, Fenrer Pyren?" Her eyes opened to deep sadness. "It was I who killed our father."

Fenrer stopped a prod of the burrs to stretch his magick through it. "What?"

"I'm sure Keeper Blackwall already suspects this, but Laucan doesn't know," she said. "I touched the world sphere not to gain its knowledge, but for it to grant my wish. With my wish, it cast a death curse — and brought a demon back into the world when he deserved rest." Hayvala's fists clenched. "I betrayed the man who I saw as my father... he who was a lot like you when it came to kindness. He didn't have to show it, but still he tried to show it every time. And the reason he was killed? He missed his big brother."

Sadness crashed on him from all sides, and he shivered at the chill. "A death curse, Your Grace?"

"And now you know why this isn't possible to untangle," she whispered. "A life... for a life. That is all. It is just coming slower for me. I know my fate. I accept it. People do terrible things in the name of love. Far more than the people who do terrible things just because they can." A soft sob escaped her throat and she sank to her knees. "Our powers are a curse. Feared for the things we do, but for once in my life I had two people who didn't see that of me. This man I speak of... and Laucan, who, you are correct, never really grasped what it's like; to tread a fine line between the dark and the light. It's always blurry when we examine it with our sight on the flow. We don't realise which one we're on until we're lost in the temptation. To us?" Hayvala lifted her head, and the wyvern around her followed, speaking with a ripping voice. "The light and dark aren't so different."

Fenrer frowned at the growing tangles. "The Auric Slumber."

"Yes." Fenrer flinched from the pain which echoed from her, but she sat there, stronger than ever. "Such is my fate. Though I suppose maybe that doesn't make me so different from Yuven Traye." Her sob turned into a sigh. "Darkness of knowledge, or light of ignorance? I can sense your torment far better than you can sense mine. You..." Her eyes closed. "Who have known terror very few behold. War waged. Hillsides burned... I will return, son."

His words rippled across his skin, and he sank to the middle of the glyph.

Hayvala frowned at him. "You are... inconceivably powerful, Fenrer Pyren, this light remains in your heart. You fear this, you do, but you shouldn't. What happened was not in your control. We always tread that fine line — the burdens we carry when the world continues on."

His heart slammed into the points of his ribcage and the sun came to life below him.

"You are the dawn," Hayvala said through the wyvern's mouth. "Molvasolevu."

The tomb melted into white marble which protected a garden of graves covered in snowroses. "My baby brother, my foolish baby brother." Tears misted against the ice-blue glass. "He will keep his word. Harsh reality is all he's ever experienced. He stuck to those ideals and wished for this harsh truth to be nothing but another lie. It made him feel safe when he lived in fear." A calming sigh left her lips. "I know what awaits me — for silver light heralds the dawn."

Fenrer came closer to her, then knelt down. "Are you sure you're ready to accept this? It is true I cannot undo this, but I can extend it."

"I am ready. Make no mistake, I will not fall into the Slumber until I know my brother can go on," Hayvala said. "Yuven Traye is another matter. He doesn't accept the fate that's in store for him, you know that better than I do. He will not accept it until he's seen a distant sun, so close but so far out of reach.

The dream wasted into ash, and Fenrer pushed closer. "Please, let me do something. I can ease it."

He stretched out his hand to Neven's forearm when rivers of tears flowed through his aura, and he smiled down at him through the rage of grief.

Hayvala laughed, happier when she grasped his forearm. "Your kindness speaks endless volumes of who you are... who is that man you just thought about? And your first instinct was to ease his pain and he told you..."

Fenrer closed his eyes and tasted the wisdom of Neven Lotayrin. "There are some things you can't ease... nor should you... I must deal with this in full, with all its pain. For that is the light of life."

"Grief can be... something powerful, but he was quite right that grief cannot be eased or erased by an Aurus," Hayvala let him go with a smile. "Do what you need to, Fenrer Pyren."

Glyphs spiralled with oceanic songs and carved into the burrs, but Hayvala asked, "Can I pose you a question?"

"Yes."

"What keeps you standing, Fenrer Pyren? What prevents you from using the knowledge at your fingertips for great good or for great evil?"

Fenrer considered her. "The balance of the flow," he whispered, the perfect tenant of the Ancient scriptures. A power above all else. "Everything must stay in the balance. Souls are made of both the dark and the light. Derelicts are made of too much pure dark, from the void between the echoes. They hunger for the light because of this truth in the flow. In the very echoes. I must keep my mind to myself and give others the same, or else I am in danger of tipping my soul into the dark."

"Spoken like someone who keeps to the Ancient faith," Hayvala muttered. "I admire it, Fenrer, but I will warn you just once, as someone who's thrown themselves past the tipping point. For every dawn, there is a dusk, just as there is a dusk for every dawn."

Reality shimmered into an expanding swirl, and Hayvala's hands fell out of his. Laucan rushed to his sister's side with a soft whispered word. Laucan held onto her, then said, "You can have Yuven Traye. I'll have him brought to the throne room where Sazaka is waiting. I need to talk to my sister." He inhaled, then gazed at him. "Thank you."

His lungs burned, but he forced a smile on his face. "You are welcome."

Adara and Yuven will be safe, we'll get out of here and go home.

He left the room and the siblings in peace.