50.1 Nightfall

General Summary

Day 1062

Late in the evening, Oblivion comes to me nearly bubbling over with enthusiasm. She has heard back from Darkness, and he wants to bring Void back to the ground so long as we can find a suitable place for him - underground, maybe. Oblivion is already eyeing Asphodeloideae’s tree with a martial look in her eye, but I tell her that there is a suitable cavern to the West by Cereus’ tree.   As long as he isn’t home, we shouldn’t have any trouble. I’d rather he and Magdalena continued to spend time apart. She and Qing Chen might have just gone their separate way if not for Oblivion’s insistence that we will want Qing Chen’s demon expertise and Magdalena’s magical supervision.   And so after some quick goodbyes to Jian Ming and Temir, we hitch the dusk ship to Oblivion’s floating castle and make haste back up the river. Up above the clouds, we can see the stars beginning to emerge and Lyssa and I reminisce about Deepest Refractions. I tell her about how No Moon wanted to make that place home and Mistress says he did go back eventually, but found a new place when the dwarves moved in (when he wasn’t paying attention). Sometime, we should go back there with Starfield. Lyssa says she’s getting tired of us all being apart - she’s impatient to gather everyone up and sweep over the Collective. But Mistress and I know it’s not time yet.   Despite the castle’s unwieldy shape, it is remarkably fast and we arrive at the cavern before night has truly blanketed the horizon. Lyssa gets people settled in while Oblivion and I build a gate for Darkness and Void. It’s a pretty scraggly gate, but it will work - we just need to reach through and create a thread of a connection for Darkness to rely upon. It’s a very draining exercise to send a tiny, tiny piece of magic even further than I’ve ever reached before.   Then, I touch something both foreign and familiar, dark but comforting. It flows back along my thread, strengthening it and moving towards us. The stone circle we’ve created shatters and we are left with two people - Void is held gently in the arms of the person I assume is Darkness. He looks so much like No Moon, but his entire form is fuzzy as though he is fading into his own shadow. He’s dressed in elegant black robes trimmed with stars and constellations.   We lay Void down in a grove of midnight trees where we’ve prepared a restful space for him. He is pale, bloodless and grey, almost withering. It almost feels like he does not exist enough to be killed; I can feel the magic coating him and leeching away his energy.  

It is but one of the many things that is my fault. He cared so much for his half-siblings but he had so few amongst fae that he could call family.

  Darkness seems wrapped up in his reminiscence as I quietly gesture for Oblivion to fetch Magdalena and Qing Chen. He is absolutely an anxious father who is in my way as I magically examine Void, half tuning out his quiet murmurs about Void’s fae and dragon nature. I point out that it doesn’t seem like fae ever made much of an effort with Void.  

Since when have dragons and fae ever gotten along?

  Weird thing for Darkness, husband of Trenali, to say to me, sister to both dragons and fae. But I know we are exceptions.   My magical examination of Void finds that he has poured so much effort and strength into his dragon side that it takes up the bulk of his being even though it is broken and unusable right now. His fae side is atrophied and underdeveloped, but I think we could strengthen it and then let it seep into the dragon side of his being and shield it from the curse.   When Magdalena arrives to hear my plan, she doesn’t disagree, but thinks he lacks a necessary connection to a Tree that would shelter him since Trenali can’t plant one. Something about him being a fae without a tree makes me think…maybe he would fare better as an elf?   Darkness raises an eyebrow at that, and I backtrack a little and say he could also become a Night fae, considering where we are. If we blend sap from the origin tree and the night trees, we could help him shift his cycle. I am certain that the Heart is watching over him and could help him, but he is so weak that hearing songs for his first time might break him, or he might become lost in the new memories and lose himself.  

You could let him have a guide.

  Darkness looks at me with great consideration. His idea is that I could go with him and lead the way into Night (he would suggest Oblivion, but she is not steadying or stabling). After the fae transition, we would need to attack the curse and then I could take on No Moon’s legacy and use Void as a sink for whatever magical energy I’m not ready to absorb so quickly - it would likely go a long way to rebuilding his dragon essence.   I turn to Qing Chen expectantly as we bring up attacking the curse and he looks distraught - it’s a poison with no antidote. Silly junior brother - I flick his forehead and tell him to be creative; it doesn’t have to be a poison, think of it in other ways. He looks distressed again before starting to scribble furiously and blurting out “we could starve it!”   Just like the chains that bound Starfield, he thinks he could inscribe the curse to attack something else, like Osyr, and then it would starve without an accessible target. Ausha points out that it shouldn’t be Osyr, and Qing Chen seems to pale at the thought of targeting Zephyr. Ausha rightfully points out that we should target Ingans.   With this idea in hand, Qing Chen is given a pile of books from Magdalena’s library and told that he has 2-3 weeks to figure this out while the rest of the plan proceeds. And so I prepare to sleep, much earlier than I would expect. I send letters out to my family:

• About to do something magically complicated and possibly dangerous
• Don’t worry - I’m with Magdalena, Uncle Red, Darkness in a very safe place
• Expect it to take 2-3 weeks (I’m sleeping early)
• Lyssa will be minding the message box.

  Before I fall fully into sleep, I find myself in Harmony with the Heart.  

I wanted to meet them. I had no idea he would be so injured…he’s very brave. And perhaps very foolish.

  She thinks maybe I could have made him Celestial, but this makes sense as well. Perhaps he’ll follow in my footsteps and explore many cycles. She agrees to keep watch over what we’re doing and help. And then she calls Ausha out, to my surprise.   The Heart says that she should accompany me because leaving her behind is painful for her. Apparently it has hurt her every time we’ve split up, and Magdalena has helped but neither of them told me, much to my consternation.   But we do have the opportunity now to make Ausha fae as well, if she chooses. She could join me and Void as fae of Night, though she’s uncertain that it’s the right path for her considering she has only recently committed to giving up her Osyr side.   I listen as the Heart describes the choice as being between gaining more time together, in song-bound memories, in exchange for taking on the racial legacy of the fae. I don’t think this is quite right - the bond that Liliales and I have from our shared songs is not something that Ausha and I will gain; we are already far too bound up in one another for the shared memories of Day and Night to be as impactful as it was for Liliales and I.   And besides, Ausha has not been drawn to any aspect of the Day and Night cycle. Especially with her determination to be elven - I think she is more like a seed or sprout of Leaf and Vine. And that transition, too, would be possible, but more complicated. Pulling the three of us together as two fae of night and one of leaf and vine would mean pulling on old songs. Maybe of the Pruning, and we would all three be exposed to conflict that she would otherwise have shielded us from. I don’t want Void to be exposed to even more tragedy and conflict than he already has been.   The Heart suggests even older songs of Water, Wind, Darkness. But when I muse aloud about Samsara, Ausha’s eyes light up. Jaeril’s grove is on the sea and the Fae of Samsara have always travelled and had many friends. And Ausha herself has died and been reborn into her second life.   So it is settled - the three of us will sleep together and the Heart offers us the gift of singing and choosing songs that bind the three of us together. In all of our memories of past lives, we will have had each other: Little brother Void, big sister Heiassa, and the constant but ever-shifting friendship of our Samsara fae.