"I will now teach you the basics of enchanting." Liria told Seris, in her best approximation of Aethon's dignified voice.
The child stood at attention in the clearing, morning light falling warm across his shoulders, hanging on her every word with a solemn and serious expression. Liria felt the corners of her lips twitch.
So cute.
She resisted the urge to pinch his cheek. She was in her "serious professor" mode and had an image to maintain.
"Enchanting is no different from writing. The basis for both is communication," Liria began the lecture. "If writing is the art of communicating with other humans through letters and ink, then enchanting is communicating with the world through sigils and mana."
Liria took out Kaerthis' medallion and held it out for Seris to take. The morning light caught the metalwork as it passed between them, throwing tiny constellations across the backs of her hands.
"I will teach you the language of sigils later. For now, you only need to focus on the enchanting process itself. Engraved on that medallion is a prewritten thesis to the world. It is currently inert. What you need to do is make the sigils visible to the world by imbuing them with mana." She looked at him encouragingly. "Go ahead and give it a try."
For a long moment he fiddled with the medallion, turning it over in his small hands, brow furrowed in concentration. Then he looked back at her with an embarrassed expression.
"Big sister, how do I imbue the sigils with mana?"
Liria froze, desperately fighting back a blush. How could she have made such an amateur mistake?
In her defense, had Seris been a normal child, Liria would have just directly implanted whatever knowledge Seris needed in his mind and called it a day. That was what she had done all her life. Teaching the manual way was a fresh experience, and she had underestimated how much she relied on the shortcut.
Liria searched her mind for the right words.
"Picture yourself holding a pen made of your intent, and the green fire that sleeps inside you is its ink," she calmly instructed him, acting as if she had been waiting for his question all long. "Now trace the sequence of sigils in an unbroken line, from the first sigil to the last. Once the beginning connects with the end, and your mana forms a closed circuit, then the enchanting process is complete. Can you do this Seris?"
A line of green fire was already inching its way through the sigils etched on the medallion. Her question had been unnecessary. Liria smiled fondly. As expected of Seris. Such a talented child. Of course, this gets harder the closer the circuit is to completion, and a momentary slip of focus would mean starting over, but Liria had faith that Seris would succeed.
This medallion was her answer to the problem of their opposing attributes. Since she and her siblings could not use their magic on Seris without causing him pain, he would use his own instead. Once he completed the enchanting process, the medallion would constantly draw half of his mana and use it to power an isolation seal on the other half, creating a perpetually self-sustaining loop.
An imperfect solution, but it would let him live a normal life for the first time. She found herself looking forward to the day she could bring him back to civilization.
Contrary to Liria's expectations, Seris made no further progress despite his inspired start.
Initially, she had expected him to get it right on his first attempt, but after concentrating for an hour, his focus slipped with only two more sigils to go. Despite her reassurances that he did great for a first timer, Seris had shed tears of frustration while desperately apologizing. When she tried to comfort him, he had shied away from her touch for the very first time.
His subsequent attempts fared no better.
Seris tried again. And again. And again, his small hands white-knuckled around the medallion, his brow furrowed so hard it looked like it hurt. He threw himself into the work with the kind of obsessive focus that left no room for rest, pausing only briefly for lunch and dinner. His technical competence was genuinely impressive for a novice, but something always went wrong at the critical moment. His concentration would slip, or his mana would surge beyond his control just as the circuit was about to close. These were failures Liria had no way to prevent or fix for him, and standing by helplessly wore on her far more than she had expected.
Dinner was a quiet affair. Seris ate mechanically, his eyes on his bowl, and when Liria asked him gently if something was wrong, he only shook his head without looking up.
It was now late at night. Liria walked through the dark forest, her mind unsettled. Seris slept in her arms, crying and apologizing in his sleep. He had kept his distance from her throughout the day, and Liria could only approach him after he had fallen asleep from exhaustion.
Confusingly enough, the moment she picked him up, he had immediately snuggled into her embrace with a mumbled "I love you."
His touch burned.
Liria had hoped to hug him without needing to suppress pain by the day's end, but life never went as planned. Instead, she was only left with a deep sense of unease.
He had looked so desperate and scared each time he failed. The fear never went away, no matter how hard she tried to reassure him. Liria hadn't thought much of his failures at first. Seris may be brilliant, but he was still a child. Being a little lacking in focus and discipline was only to be expected.
By evening time though, she was beginning to feel that the situation was abnormal. The fear was too constant, too deep to be the simple fear of disappointing her.
Could there be more to his failures? Seris was a child who could become the Lich King. Even if he was truly innocent, the fact that he carried within him the main fragment of the dead god did not change. Liria must always assume the worst.
"I'm sorry big sister," Seris mumbled. "I'll get better. I promise. Please don't hate me."
The contrast from his cheerful appearance this morning was heartbreaking.
What happened to you, Seris? Why won't you talk to me?
"You have nothing to be sorry for, Seris," she reassured him. "You're doing great, and I would never hate you."
He stirred fitfully in her arms before falling back into a deep sleep.
Liria walked on, searching the forest until she found a towering oak near the edge of the wood, ancient and vast enough that its crown disappeared into the dark above. She stood at its roots and pressed a palm against the rough bark. Her breathing slowed until it matched something older and less urgent than a heartbeat.
Help me.
Its drowsy and lumbering consciousness welcomed her in. As they became one, she channeled mana through the oak's vast form, drawing on a deep and patient reservoir that her own frail vessel could not have managed alone. The light of a teleportation spell wrapped around her, and the Silverwoods gave way to the blasted gray expanse of the Ashen Wastes.
The air here was different, dry and faintly sulphurous, with a coldness beneath it that had nothing to do with temperature. Under her feet, the earth was pale and cracked, veined with the dim green luminescence of residual necromantic taint. No birds. No insects. The silence was the particular silence of a place where nothing lived by choice.
A hundred years ago, this was where the corpse of the dead god first fell, turning a prosperous and fertile realm into a barren wasteland. This was where the undead plague had first risen, and where the first necromancers had built their fortresses before being purged by paladins of the Church of Light. If the power within Seris possessed its own consciousness, then this was its chance to cause havoc.
Reveal yourself.
As if responding to her unspoken challenge, green fire blazed from the sleeping child.
She calmly readied her magic and waited.
Nothing of note happened.
Liria dodged a lunging skeleton. Her posture was perfectly steady, her movements smooth. Seris remained peacefully sleeping in her embrace, protected by a barrier that blocked all sounds. He never stirred.
With a flick of her hand, she cut off the skeleton's remaining arm with a blade of wind, then reached out and negated its existence with a light touch.
Was it a false alarm after all?
Liria wasn't sure whether she should be relieved or disappointed. She had prepared herself for the worst before making her teleport, prepped so many contingencies, but the undead coming at her were painfully mediocre. Their numbers were great due to the location, but their levels were no higher than the ones that had been guarding Seris when they first met.
Liria had gained almost a hundred levels since then; they barely qualified as practice dummies.
It had been a shot in the dark anyway. Lingering trauma from his rough life was a perfectly reasonable explanation for Seris' behavior. And for argument's sake, even if the dead god's remnants still possessed some form of reason and intellect like she suspected, there was no reason for it to care about her empty provocation.
At least she had several other objectives to fulfill by coming here.
In the Ashen Wastes, she could just sit back and let Seris' power go wild without having to worry about damaging the local ecosystem. The endless waves of undead he summoned in his sleep were convenient experimental subjects. And to be perfectly honest, after her long and frustrating day, Liria just wanted to hit something.
A hulking bone colossus hauled itself upright at the edge of her vision, assembled from the remains of dozens of bodies fused into a single mass. It stood four times her height, its multiple arms swinging in overlapping arcs that churned the ash into a rising cloud. The ground shuddered under its weight as it charged. Liria stood her ground and let it come, watching the angles, and at the last possible moment sent three wind blades in rapid sequence: one low, severing both legs at the knee; two high, taking its arms off at the shoulder. The colossus toppled forward with a sound like a collapsing wall, and she stepped aside as several tonnes of loosely-bound bone crashed into the earth where she had been standing, throwing up a choking cloud of gray dust. She reached into its dissolving mass and negated the animating will at the core.
It took her less than half a second. She was getting better at this.
Liria fell into a meditative rhythm. Encounter undead, delimb undead, negate undead, repeat.
With each repetition, the proficiency of her Necromancy Negation skill went up a little more. With each purged undead, her attempts became more effortless as the world harmonized with her will. Power filled her as Liria crossed an invisible threshold.
After a day of helplessly standing by as Seris struggled, the familiar rhythm of measurable progress was a quiet comfort.
She gazed at the surging waves of undead and commanded them to Cease.
The charging horde crumbled into ashes under her will. Silence fell over the Ashen Wastes.
Seris' green fire blazed brighter than ever in answer, attempting to summon more undead. The fire licked against her skin, cold and corrosive tendrils of corruption reaching for her soul. Liria seized that connection and dove.
Last night had been her first attempt, made at the end of a long and emotionally exhausting day. She had more experience now. It was worth trying again.
Doing this amidst the Ashen Wastes, in a brief lull in battle, was reckless. But it had to be now. The taint within Seris could most easily be traced when the green fire burned brightest, and the dead god's influence was at its strongest.
As demonstrated in their first meeting, the undead summoned by Seris' power wouldn't attack him, the only one in any danger was Liria.
She was willing to take the risk
…
She just didn't want to see Seris crying so miserably again.
Seris' mindscape was much brighter and more cheerful compared to last night, making her search that much easier.
Under a brightening dawn sky, Liria wandered through an endless field of golden wheat—the scenery of Seris' childhood. Countless motes of light and darkness floated around her: flickering points of light for half-remembered joy, dark blotches for recent trauma, dull gray patches of half-forgotten sorrow…
In the undead Liria had fought earlier tonight, the will of the dead god had embedded itself in the memory of a mortal's final moment. Liria theorized that in Seris, it would be found in his earliest defining trauma: the gray memory of when his parents abandoned him.
But contrary to her expectations, her instincts led her to a dark star floating amidst countless globes of light—the vivid memories of recent days.
Liria experimentally touched a globe of light. The memory made her blush and hastily withdraw her hand. Seeing herself patting Seris's head from the child's perspective was… odd. And the intensity of Seris' adoration was just too much. She made a mental note to introduce the child to new friends as soon as his necromantic taint was dealt with. Such single-minded devotion couldn't possibly be healthy.
The dark star beckoned to her, its eerie glow filling her with nameless dread. This must be the memory of today's failure.
When she reached for it, the texture of the memory felt like sandpaper scraping against her mind.
It started with joy and hope. Under the bright morning sun, Seris excitedly followed his big sister's instructions, dreaming of a brighter tomorrow. The song of forest birds sounded like freedom. Just two more sigils, and his long nightmare would be over.
The raspy and sibilant whisper came from deep within his soul, less a voice than a transmission of meaning and intent, a direct communion between souls that permitted no lies.
Foolish child, you cannot escape your own nature. Have you really not noticed? Or are you just pretending not to notice? The way your "Big Sister" tenses up each time she holds your hand?
Each word seared into his mind like unholy fire, the voice growing in volume until it was the only thing that remained in Seris' world.
You kill everything you touch, how could she not be in pain each time she hugs you? Evil child, how dare you seek happiness and comfort in her embrace? Accept your fate. Death is your only companion. You have no place among the living.
Seris' breath hitched. His almost-completed circuit sputtered and went dark.…
His mental world shook like an earthquake, ejecting Liria from the memory.
In the real world, a wave of concussive force blasted Liria away from Seris.
She hit the ground hard and lay still for a moment, the ashen sky wheeling above her. Her mind was still half-submerged in the warm golden wheat of Seris' childhood, and reality kept sliding off her like water off stone. She blinked. Then blinked again. The gray expanse of the Wastes assembled itself around her in pieces: the distant treeline, the pale sky, the soft crunch of ash beneath her palms as she pushed herself upright.
Seris lay in the distance, still sleeping, the barrier around him intact. The green fire blazing from him was brighter than she had ever seen it.
Liria rose to her feet, brushing ash from her robes. The last of the disorientation fell away.
The gray skies seemed to tremble as the Ashen Wastes stirred under a vast and malignant will. Her discovery had not gone unnoticed.