Dreadlords Earn your place

[Zana]

"You can guide it," Zana and the Being that spoke through her confirmed with a solemn nod. Pointedly they did not agree that it would stop at any moment; that, would be entirely down to her.

The Archon sucked in a breath as Livia threw them into the past. Once, she had only been able to perform this magic whilst drunk and she had only been seen the future. Over the course of winning back the trust of the Herald and her gifts once more the past had been as easy to see as the future. Especially when connected with a person.

The vision swam up to meet them and then they were there, little more than two ghosts as the scene played out in front of them before her fathers death.

"They cannot see you, nor hear you. Watch."

 

[Livia Quinnick]

It was strange to see the front gardens of her family's home, drenched in nightfall and rain that gave no sign of letting up. They were both dry as bone as Livia turned around to where the gates were. "I do not remember any of this besides waking up not too far away and listening to the call lead me to my father..."

She certainly did not remember rushing out from the rose bushes, petals littering the paved path as she followed her father Caelum Quinnick.

"Tell me Mother is lying!" She was fourteen, not much different than she was now besides being a few inches shorter and her hair all one healthy shade of brunette. Livia had been crying in the garden, hiding from her cruel mother and almost missed her father slipping past. She could hear her mother and father arguing for hours, well before the storm rolled in and drowned the sounds. House Quinnick was a dying name, a burden on her father since he was a boy, and the only heir.

Livia knew this tale, heard it plenty a time as she grew up and waited for her mother to arrange a marriage for her and slap the name Quinnick to her husband to be.

"I do not remember this..." Livia murmured once again, watching as younger Livia gave her father a sharp reckoning.

"Liv..." Her father sighed, barely audible over the rain but evident in the slouching of his shoulders. "You knew we would have to do what it takes... that you, my daughter, are still in the game for this inheritance. It is too late for me, little girl, but not for you." He was at his daughter's side immediately, heart almost breaking to subject her to this, but he was desperate. "You are important just the same as your brothers, Livia. That power you and I both share, it is a sign we are able to harness a power so great that the Great Houses will not look us over. Calm yourself, my little girl."

And the young Livia tore herself from her father's clutches. "You took away my choice! I am not ready for power! I do not want it and yet you had me at death's door before you corrupted me with power no one should ever wield!" Calm was not for this storm, dark clouds choking the moon and the stars away from the sky. It was too late, her father had sliced into her arm and drained blood to make room for the dark elixir he had come in possession of. The wound had healed, sealed by a skilled and discreet healer that had asked for a high price for their secrecy.

Caelum grabbed Livia's shoulders again, no longer gentle.

Livia stilled, her heart skipping as if a lost memory was whispering what happened next. "No... no I could... no..." Please do not be true, she begged silently, watching as the young Livia screamed a murder so violent that it made blood trickle from her father's ears, veins popping in his face and neck as he let her go.

Her father turned for the gate, struggling to open it and call attention to the guard making his rounds. Livia had already collapsed where she stood, although that only lasted a few moments before her memories were relived.

"That cannot be right. I was born with it... everyone said so." It made no sense to her father's character that he would do this to her, to make his pearl of a daughter into something meant to be feared.

"This is just my magic corrupting yours. That did not happen."

Young Livia had found her father, crying out for help. She remembered that. She remembered her desperate attempt to call upon every ounce of power she was in possession of and will her father's heart to beat once again. It was clumsy, foolish even to will that much power so soon and without guidance.

The world erupted around the two, a damning boom! sounding and with such force that the rain paused in its fall for a moment. It traveled over the battered flowers and plants that made the estate famous, and in the distance, windows shattering.

Livia watched her younger self scream to the raining heavens, her hair turned silver from root to end and slowly watched as the brunette synonymous with the Quinnicks returned but did not colour the last several inches of her hair.

"I killed him..." She waited to hear the Archon reassure her that she had not, but her eyes did not leave her father's corpse.

 

[Zana]

Zana had read the classified reports of course as she had for every member of the Taskforce. This memory was one of many she knew Livia needed to see and remember in order to move past the block in her magic. The block, she was convinced, that was entirely of her own making. She placed her hand upon the girls shoulder and gave it a phantom squeeze.

"Magic is so very often linked to emotions. You were young, Livia. Inexperienced in your magic. But this was the day you became afraid of your magic," the day the block first went into place. It had only grown since then to the wall her magic fought to get around today.

The vision shifted suddenly and then they were in a room, her father alive once more as he was about to bestow his magic upon her.

 

[Livia Quinnick]

Guilt rose up from the pit of her stomach, threatening to feed ugly thoughts to her mind before Zana spoke. Yes, she was incapable of dealing with such a power at that age, enough that she hid away from her family for days afterwards. Had she always known what she had done? What she was capable of?

The scene shifted once more, this time Livia was laid in her bed, skin so fair she looked near dead. Her father held her arm out as a healer did their work to drain the blood, making a light comment on thanking Caleum Quinnick for supplying them this blood for one of their research projects they had in mind. The Senior Quinnick ignored them, staring at the blue lips of his youngest child.

"What is that?" Livia moved this time, curious to get up close to the two bottles of dark liquid. With careful precision, the healer began to inject the near black contents back into the younger girl. Even during her education at the Academy she never came across something like it.

"There. It is done. Remember where to send the payment to, Quinnick. Now... she will feel it as soon as she wakes... but I assume you know how to take it from there." The healer cleaned their instruments as they spoke, packing their bag back up before running a finger over the skin to heal over the bruising that came from drawing blood.

"I do. I must go see my accountant before this storm passes. They say it will be a long one... I thank you for this service. We will remember your kindness when our time comes." Caelum then escorted the healer from the room.

"I remember... waking up and feeling as if I was burning underneath my skin. My blood felt thick too... like my heart could only work harder to pump it through my body and... even then it felt wrong."

 

[Zana]

As soon as Livia had mentioned her father giving her these dark gifts in the last memory, Zana had been curious to see what exactly the girl had meant. What unfolded before them however was... she could feel the bile rising in the back of her throat. To do that, to your child. Zana had cried when Lyra had come to her, eyes full of tears, over the first scrape on her knee. Talus had had to console her for days and remind her that she could not, in fact, remove every rock from their home so it might not happen again.

She had no idea how Livia's father had done this.

The visions faded and they returned once more to the training grounds. The golden light faded from Zana's eyes.

"Do you have any idea what your fathers magic was, Livia?" That he had passed his own gifts on to her was clear. But what, exactly, were they?

 

[Livia Quinnick]

Livia pulled her hands back into her lap once they returned to the familiarity of the training ground, not at all eager to return to the past. Her stare burned into the sand below them, her expression fixed into a stony expression. All these new revelations felt so odd, felt so far fetched to be her story.

"When he realised I was the same as him, he told me we were blessed to always find the answer... to find that missing thing in our lives. As I got older, he began to say that good fortune came to those with our power, that we attract what we desire... and nothing can truly be hidden from us." Looking back on all of this, it should have been clear how ambitious her father was. How much he had favoured Livia in comparison to his sons. What would have happened if she had not killed him?

She would not be here, that was certain.

"I have no clue what he... what that liquid put into me was." Livia moved her legs so that her arms could hug them to herself, closing her eyes and processing the image reaching to her. "I keep seeing his journals... mother had them stored but I think I know where they are being kept." And perhaps there would be more for Livia to learn about her bloodline. How many times had she heard 'Quinnicks love their pearls, so much it became a part of their family crest' and 'Quinnicks are quick to find the answer'? Liv felt sick, clearing her throat before opening her eyes to see Zana's eyes had lost their golden glow.

"If I killed my father... than I killed those Initiates that gave me a hard time in my first year." She had no connection to them, no debilitating guilt that matched the magnitude she felt for her father's loss. "I did not want it to make sense... but it is true. This magic... this corruption..." What the fuck was all of this?

 

[Zana]

"Your magic is not corrupted, Livia," Zana put her hand on the girls knee and gave it a squeeze. Even without magic it was warm, solid and comforting. "This... explains why the Proctors had such a hard time trying to figure out what your magic was though. You were not born with it, not like your compass magic, you were given it. It's a very different kind of magic to learn when it is not intrinsically yours," her lips pressed into a thin line as she thought about those journals, how she could ask the guards to have them brought to her so she might read them. Understand what had happened.

She knew what she should be doing was comforting the girl about her father, and those initiates, but Zana did not have the time to mend that hurt. That hole. Livia might not either if the dragons were right and Nassau was a step away from his next attack.

"You are not the first, nor will you be the last to kill someone with magic they didn't understand Livia. I've done it, several times. As have most Dreadlords I know. Nothing I or anyone can say, will ever make that guilt vanish. What you must do is not let it master you. Focus instead on learning how not to let it happen again, and to do that you cannot run from it. You must embrace it."

 

[Livia Quinnick]

Given it. Whether she accepted it or not, Livia had a power that... well, kill. She had no indication of what it was meant to do, what her father wished to mold her into to make the Quinnick name one to not be overlooked. Dropping her head to look at her hands at her lap, she moved them so that her palms faced upwards, calling to that stranger magic.

It responded, that familiar but strange feeling of her veins thrumming with the magic she had always thought to be basic commands that often went against her intentions.

"Well how does one embrace something like this? How do I tear down the block?" The magic was unseen, but the presence could be felt. As Liv spoke of the block, the magic greyed and darkened, until smoky tendrils reminiscent of ink curled and flared into an orb. It called to her, but the tone was equally as dark. "When I return to the Academy later... I will write to my brother. He will have the key to our late father's study... I can go retrieve them. I daresay the contents in those pages are not meant for eyes other than my own."

 

[Zana]

Zana hesitated. She would have liked to have read the books herself before Livia in case there were parts about her magic that she needed to know for the safety of others, but... Talus had told her the key to this Taskforce working would be trust. So she swallowed the order to bring them straight to her and nodded instead giving the girl a reassuring smile.

"If you need any... advice once you have read them you only need send a letter. I will offer what I can," she glanced up towards the sun making its movement across the sky. The memories had taken far longer than she had wanted. Standing she offered the girl a hand to her feet.

"For today, Livia I think that is enough. There is a lot you must process. Go, find those books and... do not be afraid of what you find. I was once given another's powers and fear... fear only makes it harder to control. You are its master now."

 

[Livia Quinnick]

Excitement at the words master caused Liv to grimace, feeling at odds with this foreign source of magic coursing through her.

"No doubt I will need your help deciphering my father's journals. I will be sure to act on this errand as quickly as I can..." The Initiate chewed at her cheek in thought. She was impatient and outraged, stewing in the realisation of what her father had planned for her. Liv took the Archon's hand and stood up.

"Thank you... for helping me see the truth." What had taken three years of her Initiate training was accomplished within half an hour with Zana. Despite the grim realities and the guilt waiting to consume her, Livia Quinnick was grateful for such insight and guidance. She would not tell anyone of her session, not wanting anyone to know about this new piece of information until she had a better understanding.

With a smile that tried to reach her olive eyes, Liv turned round and slowly made her way back to where she had waited earlier, walking right past those assembled and finding somewhere to sit alone.

 

[Henk]

No matter how he prepared, no matter how much time he spent steeling himself for battle, there was always some part of him that feared. Some nagging voice in the back of his head pleaded for him to restrain himself, to think of the pain he inflicted before he inflicted it. Henk had always been soft. The life of a Dreadlord was not the one he'd wished for, as was the case for so many of them before the Revolution brought some level of change.

He did not like to hurt. He did not like to cause anguish. His heart ached when he felt the splitting of flesh against his knuckles or the cracking of bone underneath his boot. It had made him a mediocre Initiate, one who seemed destined for the reserves, if not exile. There was something that held him to Vel Anir though, something that clashed with his pacifism, that drove him to endure the pain of violence.

For a boy who'd been whisked off of the streets as an orphan, his fellow classmates had become his family. Though Henk saw no justification for the mindless destruction the Academy sought to train him for, if he changed his thinking... if he looked at his training as a means to fight to defend his family, he could bear it. They were a team, were they not? That his strength was lent towards them made that ache in his chest lessen.

He no longer had that excuse.

Both Gilram and the ignorance of The Academy had divided his family and caused it to war against itself. Where Henk had once found his solace he now saw meadows of heartbreak and rivers of tears. Their group had not been perfect, but... given that they were the first slated to graduate under the new Republic, they were promising; Dreadlords that were not devoid of humanity, not entirely deprived of their hearts and souls. A new breed.

Faced with that, he'd broken. His will to continue fighting departed him, and he'd fled with his tail between his legs so that he did not have to confront the awful truth that he had failed to protect his family. No more. As the walls of Fort Astaerix loomed ahead of him, so too did a chance to redeem that very failure. In the sandpit awaiting him as he crossed underneath the gates of the fort, he would seize that restraint that choked his potential. With the help of the woman standing in the sands before him, waiting for his arrival, he would rip that last remaining weakness from his body and toss it to the wind.

Even with the power to take it into his body, he'd never been so aware of the hot sun on the back of his neck, of the sweat building on his brow. This was but the first step, but it would be the hardest he'd yet taken.
In an Archon, he'd found failure. In another, he would seek redemption.

"Lady Zana." Henk sank to one knee in the sandy pit, bowing his head for a moment before rising. "Thank you, for taking this time with me. You've no idea what it means to me, giving me this opportunity..."

Zana

 

[Zana]

A swig of water was all she had time for between Livia and her next student. She watched him stride across the sand with that tormented look, the bowed inwards shoulders, and the shadows beneath his eyes. Henk. She'd read his file several times and debated the merits of taking on a person who many among his own year group called a traitor and an exile. She'd heard the slurs thrown his way on their first meeting by the other men and the looks from others who had not been brave enough to use their tongues.

Are we really the people to cast judgements on those called Traitors, My Love? Talus had asked her whilst balancing Alec in one arm and trying to withstand Lyra climbing up his leg on the other side. If we can't give him a chance, who will?

"I'm most certainly not a Lady," Zana laughed and offered the man a hand, helping him to his feet. "And we'll see if you're still thanking me after our session," her eyes sparkled with mischief. "Now, from what I've read about you and what I saw during our last session, you've got a pretty solid handle on your magic. You're just very.... Pretty about it," her head tilted to the side. "Like you don't want to take the next leap into your magic. Why?"

 

[Henk]

Henk knew that glimmer in her eyes. She knew more about him than he gave her credit for. Of course, she would have done her research on all of her candidates for this 'taskforce,' as she was calling it. If anything, it only made him more curious as to why he'd been given the nod.

She shared precious little of the knowledge she had of him, only what she'd seen. Henk's gaze averted off to a patch of red half-covered by sand as she spoke. It wasn't the first time she'd used that word. Pretty. At first, he'd thought she merely meant the accompanying light show that tended to accompany his magic, given its nature.

But what she'd been trying to say was that he was far more visually impressive than he was practically.

"Like you don't want to take the next leap into your magic. Why?"

He winced, meeting her eyes again. Zana didn't waste any time, despite Henk's wish that perhaps she would. "I..." the Dreadlord searched for an answer for a moment. "I'm afraid, ma'am. I've gotten stronger through my training, exponentially so, but..." He shook his head, remembering the outburst against Edric, and now Alistair as well. the way he'd engulfed himself in heat, light and fire. The way his anger had overtaken him.

"I feel like something has changed. The more I learn, the more I practice, the harder it is to keep my magic under control. It starts slipping, and my emotions get the better of me."

It was a vulnerable admission, one he hadn't made to many.

"It was never a problem before, but then, I've never liked fighting much."

Zana

 

[Zana]

"You don't like fighting, yet you returned to the Republic after your graduation and not only have taken part on several missions but have agreed to join a Taskforce dedicated to killing some of the worst of us?" Zana checked off each thing on a finger and raised a brow. She wasn't sure whether to laugh at the sheer hypocrisy of what he claimed, ask a thousand other questions in an attempt to understand the reasons behind his thinking, or to just call him a fool for believing his own lie. With the same ease an ordinary human took to breathe, Zana called one of the wooden training swords to her hand and swung it in a perfect series of moves as she paced. Thinking.

"Dreadlords have made the mistake for the last two hundred years in believing emotions make us weak. That they get in the way and lead to uncontrollable magic. Cut off the emotion and you stabilize the magic. It's why we steadily indoctrinated more and more children into that way of life. No family. No friends. No ties to anything that might make emotions rear their heads... but they were wrong. Some of the most powerful Dreadlords in our histories used their emotions to power their magic - it is what made them legends.

It sounds like, Henk, you are trying to practise using these old ways still, yet your conditioning is broken. There is no going back to learning through those old ways. You need to learn to embrace these emotions and use them like you would any tool. I could be wrong, of course, but... When Talus broke my conditioning I found myself feeling the way you described too. So... Would you like to try?"

 

[Henk]

The more that Henk listened to Zana speak, the more he understood how she'd come to command the power that she had. She spoke to him, not like a Proctor who wished to shape and mold him into what Vel Anir wished him to be, but as though she were an evolution of what he was. She'd experienced his turmoils and beyond, and had conquered them. The experience she held birthed wisdom, and in a world full of 'might makes right', it was that wisdom which truly resonated with him.

The Dreadlord found himself in agreeance with much of what she said. He too found the Dreadlords abhorrence of emotion to be their greatest weakness. He loathed the way they'd initially been trained, to be mindless and thoughtless in their violence. It made them seem nothing but weapons to be used and disposed of, and he'd always thought so much more of his comrades than that. These resentments are what had caused his shift in loyalties, at one point.

But they were also what made her exposure of his hypocrisy as painful as it was, the words causing his already scarred face to wince. It was like a fist to the gut, being told that your thinking was wrong by somebody who knew better. Because Zana was right; Just like they'd taught him, Henk feared his emotions, and what they would do to him. He feared the rush of blood through his veins when he saw one of his friends in need, he feared the light feeling he got when around those he enjoyed the presence of. He feared the drumming of his heart when a certain Blackguard had placed her lips on his.

It was frightening, the prospect of letting go of what he knew and diving into the unknown depths. Perhaps even more so than the Archons he would be expected to face.

But he owed it to them all to try.

"I've never wanted to kill before." He admits finally, raising his eye to meet her. "Now that some part of me does, I fear becoming what I've struggled against for so long. But I can't forgive them, not for what they've done to my friends, or for what they would do to my home. All I've ever wanted is for those I care about to thrive.

Henk takes a deep breath.

"To achieve that means putting the rogue Archons in the ground. For that power, I will try anything."

Zana

 

[Zana]

Zana listened attentively as Henk explained. Or at least, began to. His words hinted at a bigger story that she assumed related to the disaster of a graduation some rogue Proctors had engineered last year. Some of her old students who had survived the ordeal had told her bits and pieces, but she had not wanted to push them. Not when their eyes had held such shadows. That it had even happened still enraged her; everything they had fought for - that Sloan had died for - had been to stop abuses of power such as that. That it had still occurred tainted the sacrifice of every rebel life lost.

"Very well," she nodded and then took a deep breath. "When I began learning how to use my emotions, my own tutor Sloan told me the first step was recognising them and accepting them. You can't try and wield your magic if you're also trying to battle every intrusive feeling," she held out her hand and the wooden sword lifted into the air, rotating slowly.

"For example, right now I feel angry you and your classmates went through what they did last year. But, there's nothing I can do to change the past," a flicker of pain crossed her face. "What I can do is make sure it doesn't happen again. How? By training you. By being stronger," the sword began to swivel faster, chips of wood suddenly ripping free. "Take away the power being the anger and you can work with it, let it help you," the sword shattered. Each tiny fragment hung suspended in the air.

"Now you try. Use your power and let yourself feel. Talk aloud if it helps."

 

[Henk]

Henk nodded in response to her instructions, but truthfully he wasn't certain where to begin. What did using his power entail? Taking in light? Channeling it? The former was like a second nature to him, and the latter was--

No, he was overthinking it again. Zana was telling him to do, not think.

"Nothing pretty'" He reminded himself. "Just let it happen."

So with a deep breath and a straightened posture, Henk stood perfectly still, closing his eyes and tilting his head down to the sand beneath his feet. He allowed the sun overhead to sink into his flesh, to permeate every exposed pore of his skin. There was no flashy expulsion through his armor, no effort to maintain his temperature by venting the light slowly. He merely stood and allowed his energy to build up.

That was step one. Step two was feeling.

He thought again upon Alistair's words, at the initial recruitment of Zana's team. The biting truth to his words that had wounded him so, coming from a former friend. Of how he'd hurt all of them with his cowardice, and of his desire to make things right.

"I'm selfish," Henk muttered, softly. "All of this time, I've acted as though I am the only one suffering, struggling. Alistair was right about me, what he said before. I think I'm morally better than everybody else, but when my friends needed me most, all that I accomplished was being the 'good person' who did nothing but flee from my own failure." He could no longer tell if the heat he felt inside was that of the light building up to what he would normally consider dangerous levels, or of the emotion that he now confronted, having hidden from it for so long. "The only victory that I have achieved is in being a coward."

Zana

 

[Zana]

Subtly, Zana began to create a forcefield around the arena.

The others hadn't needed it, but then none of them had had the issue of letting go of their power. Henk was different. The block on his gifts was his own internal struggle, not a lack of training or strength. Had the old ways survived and cracks such as this had appeared in his conditioning, he would have been sent to a bootcamp until those emotions were once more tightly locked down. Zana had had to pretend for years it remained in place even as she fell in love and discovered her pregnancy. Henk no longer had to keep those chains in place. Zana just hoped she could help him realise it.

With the forcefield in place to stop any magical blast from doing damage to anything beyond the sandy arena, Zana asked calmly.

"So what are you going to do about it?"

 

[Henk]

The quiet erection of a barrier went unnoticed by Henk; He was far too focused on the simmering emotion running beneath his skin, the jagged edges of Zana's question, and the sweat running down his brow, beading at his nose and falling into the sand as he struggled to form a response to her. "I.. I don't..." Henk stammered through clenched teeth. He could feel the pain now, what felt like the boiling of his insides as he stubbornly refused to exert the self-control that every cell in his body now screamed for.

The Dreadlord had already made his choice. He would find an answer here and now, or he would die at the hand of his own magic. If he were to fail here, he may as well have been a corpse anyway.

"I don't know! I'm... trying!" He snapped, wrapping his arms tightly around himself as an ugly groan of pain left him. It was the most agonizing thing he'd ever experienced, as though every organ was withering away to nothing in a furnace. His breaths came in heaves, his clothes soaking through with his sweat. "I have to kill him--" He wheezed as if such an answer would offer him relief of some kind. Instead, his knees buckled, and he collapsed onto the sand, sputtering. "...It's my only chance."

That was it.

He didn't want Gilram and the other rogue Archons to die. He wanted to be the one to do it. He wanted to look into each of their eyes as he took away the last vestiges of life from them, wanted his scarred and blinded face to be the last thing they saw. Only then could he be certain that they would never hurt his family again.

That was what he was going to do about it.

He was going to kill them all. That was the last thought the boy had.

Henk had stopped screaming, he'd stopped talking as well. It was difficult to do either when your lungs no longer drew breath. Bubbles formed on the surface of his skin, his flesh boiling and cooking in the heat he'd collected.

The Dreadlord lay still, motionless, dead.

And when his blood stopped pumping, all of the light within him was released in a massive flash, filling the barrier with blinding illumination and searing heat. As quickly as it came, it dissipated into the air. Where Henk had once lay, there was now nothing but an indentation in the sand where he'd once been.

 

[Zana]

Life as a Dreadlord opened one to many of life's more unusual mysteries and wonders. Over her years she had seen people turn themselves into liquid, grow to the size of a sycamore tree, and commit atrocities the likes of which even the Chroniclers didn't want to record. Never in all of her years of training had she ever seen someone turn into glitter. Zana looked up at the sparkles of light as they drifted up towards the roof of her dome. When the contacted little purple currents zipped across the rest of the structure. Gazing at them she wondered abstractly whether she should collect them into a jar for his family.

She pulled a face.

She should, probably, be worrying about the fact one of her team members had already died but she was strangely calm. For every time one of those little glimmers touched the dome purple energy streaked across the surface stopping its release into the air beyond, and it only ever did that if there was a vestige of life in the energy. All magic contained some, fuelled by part of the magic wielders life force when it was used, but in this case Zana wondered...

"Very nice, Henk. Now... if you would be so kind as to pull yourself back together?"

Zana just prayed she was right or it would be a very awkward funeral.

 

[Henk]

It was, perhaps, the strangest sensation the little flicker of light had ever experienced. To exist, and also to not. What was he, beyond a small remnant of what had once been, floating aimlessly through the air like a spec of dust amongst the clouds? Beneath him was a giant pit of sand, shaped in a dome. A stage? A battlefield? It was rather pretty from up so high. The little light could see it from all angles, with all of his tiny eyes.

There was a person down there too, a woman. She was pretty, but she also scared him.

Why am I scared? I'm just a little light.

No, he hadn't always been this way. There was more... He'd only just woken up from a grand dream! Yes, he remembered now, a dream of a massive city! A school of magic, and all the colorful students that attended! In the span of his sleep, he'd watched them grow, bond and mature over the course of years. And then, right when everybody was finally getting along, and they were meant to be free, the villains came and tore them to pieces, leaving them fighting from underneath.

The little light could recall all of the characters, too! There was Zael, the hot-tempered warrior, and his best friend Gaage. There was Everleigh, the witty and lovely poison wielder. Edric, the warrior who hid his soft heart through a mask of violence and indifference. Noel, the passionate metal-mage who never strayed from her goal, and the powerful Ralene. Oh, and Alistair, Chasmine, Sable, Meredith... There were just so many!

That's weird. Who am I forgetting...?

Wasn't there somebody else? When the little light put all of the characters in his dream together, there was a patch of fuzz in his memory. Something important, something just out of reach.

"Very nice, Henk. Now... if you would be so kind as to pull yourself back together?"

Something clicked, and Henk was suddenly aware of who... and what he was-- Light, everywhere and nowhere. It felt as though he were bound motionless and suspended in a hundred places at once, all hanging in midair from different angles. He couldn't feel, couldn't speak, couldn't move. Yet even in the stupor he was trapped beneath he recognized Zana's voice. Yes, she was right. He hadn't finished yet.

Through whatever power of will he could find within his formless state, Henk focused on being once again. Slowly those minuscule particles scattered across the air drifted closer together, towards the point they'd initially shattered. Like microscopic pieces to a puzzle, they fit together, forming the shape of the man who'd lay motionless only minutes earlier, a glowing, transparent image of him at least.

"I'm here. I apologize, that... this is new."

Henk raised his own hand, looking straight through it. Wisps of light trailed off of him, but he felt no heat, no pain. Just as Zana had predicted, once he had released the grip he'd held on his own abilities, he had broken the chain he'd wrapped around himself.

No longer did he carry the burden of holding the light inside of him. He was the light.

"I'm not sure what I've just done, or how I did it..."

Zana

 

[Zana]

Thank Kress...

Zana watched the light show with fascination though she kept her face neutral. If he thought she had not been prepared for him self combusting in such a manner he might once more become frightened of his own gifts. It was better to pretend this was nothing new and that this was normal so that he could continue to grow. She folded her arms over her chest as he finally pulled himself into the shape of a man and was able to speak and finally allowed herself to look impressed.

"Don't apologise, I asked you to stop holding back. Though, I suppose I should give up ever trying you not to be so... glittery," her lips curled in a half smile. "I think that might be like asking the stars not to shine."

Zana walked around him in a slow circle, purple energy crackling across her green eyes, trying to make sense of what exactly he had done herself. Her gifts allowed her some insight into other magics but she was no scholar. It would take further research to make sense of what her own magic told her.

"Last time I watched you fight, what you were doing was only putting in half of your energy into the attack. The other half you... expelled out of you. Like when a tea pot is getting too hot and needs to let out steam lest it explode. This time, you let all of that energy go into your attack and well..." she waved a hand at his state.

 

[Henk]

Henk listened to Zana's words, and even cracked a small smile at her jab about his 'glittery' showings. It was difficult not to glow when one appeared to be quite literally composed of light.

That was, at least, the best he could surmise of his situation. Henk felt weightless, and all of the reflexes that he'd grown accustomed to down to the simplicity of breathing no longer existed. Experimenting, he planted one foot into the sand firmly. The grains under his foot barely shifted as he pushed up into a jump that sent him high into the air, nearly colliding with the roof of Zana's dome before he sank back down.

"I was always under the impression that retaining too much heat would burn me alive..." Henk admitted in response to her appraisal of his last fight. "That, or I would lose control of the magic and it would... over take me. I suppose that could be one theory as to what's happened here."

His pale-blue eye looked over at the watching Zana, and then moved to his right hand as he clenched it.

Henk suddenly steps forward, far more swiftly than he would have been able to at his usual body weight, and swings his fist directly at the side of her face at a blistering speed. Upon contact, Henk's fist and arm merely phase through her head harmlessly, perhaps offering her a brief heat flash at the very most.

"That's what I feared... I'm as weak as a kitten, and about as hot as a warm bath. I need time to learn how to control this, and how to use it practically. Not to mention I must try to regain my solidity. It's all time we don't have."

Zana

 

[Zana]

"There is never enough time," Zana said softly, her voice twinged with a touch of sadness. For a moment her gaze seemed to turn inwards before she shook her head and re-examined him.

"So it seems that you sacrifice that when you fully let go of your powers, perhaps this is your body's way of trying to recharge," she knew she was theorising out loud but as he had pointed out - they didn't have time. Certainly not when she already had Livia's worrying magic to research into. Henk at least had control over part of his magic, the girl had barely any. "You might one day be able to work out what the cut off is - how you can give those powerful blasts without pushing your body to this state... but it does have it's uses," she let the dome fade slowly.

"Try walking through one of the walls. Or taking a different shape."

 

[Henk]

Henk heard Zana's resignation of their limited time, even though his eyes were still focused on his own altered state. If this is what happened when he pushed himself to his absolute limit, it raised questions about the nature of his magic as a whole; He'd always been convinced he merely harnessed and shaped light. To have the capability of becoming it... It had never crossed his mind.

"Perhaps." He conceded to her theory that his body needed to replenish. "But I don't feel exhausted. I feel as though I've just had a full night's sleep, in fact. Maybe... I am reading too far into this, when I should be keeping things simple, as you suggested." Indeed, her recommendation that he try to shape himself was a reasonable exercise. If he could manipulate light any other time, why should manipulating himself in this new form be any different? Holding out one arm, he focused on shifting the shape and makeup of the light just as he had every other time he'd done it.

It startled him how easily it came.

With only a second's thought, his arm vanished entirely-- separated into the small particles Zana had witnessed flying around the dome after his initial change. The small beads of light swirled around the space where Henk's limb had been like stars around the Sun, converging once more into a new shape. In the place of his arm, Henk now had a single, massive wing sprouting from the side of his body.

Impractical, but... promising.

"That was far simpler than usual." Henk observed aloud, before turning his head back towards Zana, a smile growing on the side of his lips. "I think I'm beginning to understand-- This is what I've been working towards without realizing it. I've just been taking extra steps this entire time."

Quickly, his pleased expression changes to one of resolve.

"With your permission, Lady Zana... I would like your assistance in putting this new form through its paces."

Zana