Chapter 187: A Third Eye

Toren Daen

Olfred shook his head at my words. "I don't know what you've heard, Daen, but the Lance artifacts aren't so simple. I appreciate the sentiment, but I guarantee you won't be able to alter a thing."

I looked around us, making sure there was nobody present before enveloping the two of us in a sound bubble. "I'm not just saying this, Olfred," I said quietly. "Do you know where the Lance artifacts came from?"

The dwarf pushed off from the wall he'd been resting against, looking at me askance. "The asura gave them to the leaders of the three races in days of old," he said slowly. "To push us to greater heights."

I nodded, looking seriously at the Lance in front of me. "And if my power is derived from the same source as those who created the artifacts themselves?" I pushed.

Olfred's micromovements stilled entirely as he looked at me, seeming to hear me for the first time. "So what you're sayin'…"

"I discovered this in my duel with Lance Aya," I said, hearing as the dwarf's heartbeat picked up. "The tether for your Lance artifact isn't some static, immutable thing. I can influence it, for lack of a better term."

The dwarven Lance took me by the arm, staring up at me with a warring expression of disbelief and hope. "If what you're saying is true, then you could free me from the asura's control," he said shakily. "Free me from any control."

I gently took his hand from my shoulder. "Yes, but…" I thought of my confrontation with the elven Lance. "It's not nearly as simple as you might think. The tether between a Lance and their monarch is reactive. Sensitive to any sort of influence. If I'm not careful…"

"Then I might simply die regardless," Olfred said, filling in the blanks easily enough. The dwarven Lance's shoulders slumped as he heard my words. He turned around, looking at the many people milling about at a quick pace as they prepared for evacuation.

"Tell me, Toren," the older dwarf said, "Why do you offer such a thing for me? Only for your cause? I told you that I will not lead these dwarves. If you hope to rope me into service through gratitude, know that it will not work."

I exhaled, crossing my arms as I thought. "I was tasked with being an ambassador from Alacrya to Darv," I started, "And one day, to the rest of the continent. A sort of bridge between Dicathen and the land across the sea."

"You might not know my culture yet, Olfred, but Alacrya isn't so great a place to live. I don't know what went through Rahdeas' head when he sided with our continent. I will be honest with you: I don't see a future where the Sovereigns set the dwarves on an equal pedestal with Alacryans."

The dwarven Lance turned, looking at me through hard eyes that could have been carved from stone. His gaze quietly demanded I continue my story.

"But our Sovereigns upheld a system that put magic above all other arts. The advancement, utilization, and implementation of mana is the basis for personhood where I come from." I tilted my head. "But that's starting to change. And that process started from mage and nonmage meeting in the middle, recognizing each other for what they could do."

Olfred was silent for a long time at my implications. Gradually, the many torchlights around the cavern started to flicker and dim as their fuel sources failed to be refilled. The shadows stretched longer and darker, penning us close to Gruhnd's old home as they stretched their talons.

"If I am to die regardless," Olfred said eventually, looking back at me, "Then I would rather die trying to find a way out, rather than accepting my fate. Rahdeas will be waiting for me, and no others care for him as he deserves."

I nodded seriously at the dwarf, holding out my hand. He clasped it with his own, his pulse thunderous beneath his skin.

—

I settled down within one of the abandoned houses, Olfred sitting cross-legged in front of me. I felt my own anxiety swell as I internally made a plan of action. I clenched my hands, feeling the sweat that slicked my palms.

Aurora, I thought, Is there anything more you can tell me about the Lance artifacts? I know you said you didn't care much for us 'lessers' at the time, but even a small tidbit of information could help me with this.

My bond thought for a moment, her shaded form appearing near my side as I looked at Olfred's back. "My brother was concerned about the compatibility of a mage with the artifact," she said eventually. "If there were too much divergence between man and artifact, it risked the death of the mage. I know not if this will help you in your endeavor, my bond, but I will assist in any way I can."

I nodded slowly, absorbing this information. "Olfred, I'm going to run some tests. If you feel like the restrictions are too close to activation, I need you to tell me."

The dwarf grunted, his back to me. "I'll do so, Daen," he said. "I'm ready for this."

You better hope so, I thought. Because I'm not sure I am.

I engaged my Acquire Phase, the familiar warmth that thrummed through my veins centering my unsteady hands. As Aurora's mind grew closer to my own, I took solace in her confidence, as a child balances themselves with their mother's guiding hand.

But what I saw in Olfred's heartfire as it flickered a deep red immediately made my brow furrow in concern. It was surprisingly small for someone of his core level and power, barely a flickering flame. In fact, my own lifespan was significantly larger than his own.

"Olfred," I said aloud. "How old are you?"

The dwarf turned around, looking at me uncertainly. When he met my gaze, he shuddered involuntarily. "I'll reach my sixtieth year soon," he said. "Why do you ask?"

I frowned as I looked at the Lance's lifeforce, dancing without care around his heart. I took a deep breath, "Are you aware," I said slowly, "That your lifespan has been severely damaged?"

Olfred blinked. "What do you mean?"

I fell into my more clinical side, detaching myself slightly as I spoke. "If I'm guessing this right," I said somberly, "You have only about ten years left to live before your body will give out on you."

The dwarven Lance huffed. "That makes sense," he said with a similar morose tone. "I've been a Lance for a decade already. It tracks that I'd only have another decade in me."

It was my turn to be confused. "I'm not following what you're saying, Olfred," I said, concerned.

"The Lance artifacts reduce the lifespan of the mage they touch," the dwarf said as if it were common knowledge. "It makes their life expectancy closer to that of their monarch for safety purposes. The times vary between the races, but the dwarven Lances before me lived for an average of twenty years after their ascension to white core."

Only twenty years? I thought, aghast. A white core Lance should live for two centuries at least! What kind of magics did this?

"You said it was to make life expectancy closer to the monarch?" I said, doubting the truth of that statement.

"Unless the bond is manually relinquished, as the Greysunders did," Olfred grunted, "Then a Lance always dies with their monarch. When we take the job, we know this and accept it. It makes for a smooth transition between leaders, as each successive king can choose a mage loyal to them alone to ascend to the status of Lance."

I frowned, rolling this information around in my head. I didn't think it was so simple. In fact, the diminished lifeforce wasn't a clean cutaway, more of an extracted drain.

On a hunch, I called my own heartfire to my palms, then rested them against Olfred's back. The orange-purple energy of my personal aether sank into the Lance's body, threading across muscle, bone, and artery alike.

The feedback was extraordinary. It was easy to see the effects of the artifacts if one knew what they were looking for.

Olfred's mana channels and veins were supernaturally wide, and the paths for energy stretched in a way I didn't recognize. But the effects were easy to guess at: with wider channels and veins, the Lance could flood them with more mana at a faster rate.

Slowly, as my heartfire flooded across the Lance's body, I gathered a clearer and clearer picture of what happened to the white-core mage. While during my Sculpting Aurora had dynamically rebuilt my veins and channels cell-by-cell, strengthening and improving them in the manner of the phoenix, what had been done to Olfred was functionally different.

It was as if they'd been forcefully stretched by an outside force, widening their pathways with brutish force. This left more area for mana to flow, true, but I could also track scars along his veins and channels that were worrisome. They'd been brutally spread apart not unlike overstretching a ligament. Furthermore, the walls of his pathways were notably thin, like a layer of cardboard instead of solid wood. I suspected that any damage to the mana veins and channels would be exceptionally difficult to recover from.

The Lance artifact used most of Olfred's lifeforce to do this pseudo-Sculpting, I thought, furrowing my brow at all the damage left behind. No wonder there is a high chance of death whenever a new Lance is made. If the artifact isn't precise, it could drain them entirely of their lifespan. Or the force of this flawed Sculpting could rip their mana veins and channels to shreds, effectively crippling them as mages.

But if you're Kezess Indrath and don't care for the lives of the lessers under his dominion, I thought sourly, It is a fair tradeoff to strengthen their abilities.

Windsom had advised Arthur against using the Lance artifacts, as they inhibited further growth in magic. Further on in the books, Arthur–now attuned to aether–had pinpointed scars left along each Lance's mana core that forcefully stalled their growth. But it wasn't so simple, was it?

If I weren't so hyper-aware of my own mana pathways, I doubted I'd be so easily able to notice the damage to Olfred's either.

"I've done a cursory inspection of your body," I said absently as I prepared for the true meat of this mission, "But now I'm going to start poking at the tether that binds your heart. Be ready, Olfred."

Olfred only grunted. From his elevated heartbeat, I could tell he was anxious, but the man was courageous at his core.

I remembered how I'd first sensed Aya's Lance artifact. Within the heat of battle, I'd been able to hear an inkling of it from the start, but it wasn't made visible until my own blood splashed across her chest, creating a contrasting swirl of lifeforce that made the chains suddenly visible.

I held out my hand, calling the light of my heart to my hands. They were cast in the color of a waxing dawn as I pressed them solidly against the dwarf's back.

Almost immediately, the tether to Olfred's heart became visible. He gasped audibly as my hands brushed it, his heartbeat picking up immensely. "Mother Earth be damned," he cursed, his fingers digging into the stone.

I stopped my inspection immediately, pulling my hand back in haste. "Is there anything wrong?" I said seriously. "Was it close to activation?"

I didn't think I'd pushed the artifact too far, but what did I know? Olfred was the one to truly feel the restrictions.

"No, it's not that," Olfred said breathily. "It's just… I felt the effect. Like someone thumpin' a fist onto my chest. I didn't expect it is all."

I nodded slowly, settling my nerves. "Okay. I'm going to inspect this, alright? Tell me immediately if I get too close to activation."

I set my hands back on Olfred's back, threading my heartfire down the tether in a testing probe. Olfred's breath hitched, but he didn't say a word as I inspected the chains around his heart.

Not entirely unlike my ability to drain the heartfire from my enemies, I thought, The target's heart is wrapped in aetheric energy. Except I doubt this tether is designed to drain energy, merely cinch shut like a vice.

And considering the already weakened state of the Lance's lifespan, there wouldn't be much resistance.

"I may not agree with Kezess or my brother's methods," Aurora said sadly, "But I must admit it is an ingenious way to bind someone to you. Utilizing what is once a weakness and turning it into a feature instead."

The other end of the tether stretched from Olfred's chest in a flickering tapestry of deep red, seeming to vanish like mist further into the air. I suspected there was some sort of spatial tie-in that kept the Lance bound despite any sort of distance.

I inspected the rope of heartfire, thinking of what I should do next. I might be able to simply snap the rope connecting Olfred to Aldir, but I had no way of knowing if that would be enough. For all I knew, the tether would automatically pop back into place. Or in the act of severing the link, I could activate some sort of failsafe that would kill Olfred instead of save him.

I looked closer at the veins wrapping Olfred's heart. They were more like the fingers of a hand cupping the dwarf's vital organ like a gemstone, ready to crush it at a moment's notice. 

"I'm going to try and detach this tether, Olfred," I said. "It might not be pleasant."

Olfred nodded somberly, shifting nervously from where he sat against the stone. "If Mother Earth takes me, Toren," he said quietly, "Will you do what you can for Rahdeas? As an ambassador for Alacrya, as you put it?"

My hands stalled at the dwarf's words. The heartfelt emotion in them made me pause, making me need to consider his words.

"I will," I promised. "But I won't let you die without one hell of a fight, Olfred. And even if I fail this time, that doesn't immediately mean death."

The dwarf's shoulders relaxed. "Aye. Do what you have to, Toren. I am ready."

I exhaled, smiling slightly. "Then let's get this over with, yeah?"

I threaded my heartfire down the length of the red tether, falling deeper into my Acquire Phase as I focused utterly. I began to slowly and carefully poke at each 'finger' of the hand holding Olfred's heart, testing their limits.

When I released the pressure of my touch, the grip snapped back into place, holding the Lance's lifespan like a greedy child. I realized quickly that I would have to pull back every vice-like strand at once, all with a precision I'd never managed before.

But I was a surgeon; a healer. My hand had remained steady when I played my violin. It remained steady when I wielded Inversion. And it remained steady when I leveraged my scalpel.

My intent would not slip now.

I gradually began to pull back the fingers of the heartfire claw, peeling them open in a slow, purposeful draw. I felt the pushback along my aetheric energy increase as the tension of the binding spell tried to snap back into place.

Olfred's breathing picked up as sweat streaked down his back, soaking his jerkin entirely through. Even as my own heartbeat thundered in my chest, however, my breathing never faltered.

Breathing correctly steadied one's hand. Long ago, Trelza had taught me that a single breath could mean the difference between a clean cut and a life-ending tear. My mind became a machine as I methodically detached this claw of energy from my patient's heart.

No different from pulling away a tumor, the part of my mind that was still conscious thought. Or tearing a parasite from healthy flesh.

A single bead of my sweat hit the ground as I pulled the claw of heartfire away from Olfred's heart. Yet as it shifted further and further away, it began to struggle to snap back toward its original location. Like a jaw that was trying to constantly bite down on succulent fruit, the pull became greater and greater as the tether of heartfire shifted away from its source.

I'm almost done, I thought, a mote of excitement breaking through me reverie even as I fought against the driving desires of the spell. He's almost free. He's almost–

And then I felt it. I felt the gaze of something great and deep and knowing as it settled over my body. My hands–once so steady–locked up as if under the inspection of a giant. My breathing shuddered.

I let go of the tether, my heart roaring in my ears like an engine as I felt the attention of something else. A single vertical pupil of an iridescent violet burned itself into my brain, a foreign King's Force weighing me into the floor. That eye watched me. Peeled me apart, looking into my darkest secrets.

I trembled, my shoulders slumping as an aura of utter terror suffused my soul. All I could see was that single, all-encompassing eye before me. Its pupil darted around as it roamed across me, judging and scraping and hating. It was everything and nothing. Absolute, primal control. Here was force. The fundamental, encompassing law of momentum molded into flesh.

Absently, I noticed as the tether snapped back into place around Olfred's heart. It cinched shut, the claw of aether squeezing as the restraints were engaged. The dwarf toppled forward, clutching at his heart as he screamed in pain.

But… but I couldn't move. Not when that eye took up everything. My body creaked in pain as the King's Force shoved me to the ground, stealing the vitality from my very soul.

"You dare, Aldir Thyestes?!" my bond yelled in fury, her phantom form appearing in a flash between me and the eye. Her feather-red hair surged like the solar flare of a star, her eyes brightening enough to banish any darkness. "You dare to touch my son?!"

Aurora sneered, her dusky purple face cast in rictus anger as she threw her hands forward. Suddenly, the all-encompassing force of power suffusing me was buffeted back, another power meeting it in the middle in a wave of explosive force. The house we were in rattled and shook as Aurora's shade battled the foreign gaze, denying it its influence.

I groaned, feeling my insides creak as I crawled over to the dying dwarf. I could feel his erratic heartbeat as the claw slowly closed around his lifeforce, attempting to snuff it out as one washes away a candle.

Need to save him, I thought vaguely, my thoughts heady and weak. From that barest brush of killing intent, I'd lost practically any strength in my limbs. But I couldn't let my patient die; not when I hadn't done everything I could.

I clenched my hand around the tether, my arms burning and protesting their continued use. Olfred whimpered.

I wasn't gentle this time, taking my time and being careful. I forcefully ripped the cinching claws around Olfred's heart apart with my own veins of aetheric heartfire, feeling the feedback along my body.

I ripped the red tether from Olfred's chest, clasping it in a haggard grip as it tried to surge back toward its victim.

I didn't let it. I funneled more of my heartfire around the tether, my breathing picking up as I felt my resolve swell.

The house trembled as Aurora's shade took a step forward in defiance, each footstep leaving burning brands along the floor. Her martial robes rippled as if in a stream. "You will not halt my son, Aldir Thyestes!" she declared, her breath steaming with the color of a waxing dawn. The phantom image of a purple eye flickered back, seeming to grow smaller as its influence was banished. "His will is mine! And you shall not claim him!"

You don't get to claim a victim today, I thought with a snarl, agreeing with my bond. I felt the muscles in my forearms tense, my hand cinching shut around the heartfire claw in my arms.

Magma pulsed and roiled around the room, the walls and ceiling melting from Olfred's death throes. I felt myself sinking partway through the rock, the heat burning and scalding at my skin. Splatters of molten rock seeped over and through my flesh.

And with a sound like shattering glass, the construct of aether broke into a million glittering pieces in my hands. I slumped forward to my forearms, heaving for breath as my damaged body struggled to heal.

The ghostly eye of Aldir, the preeminent pantheon of the Thyestes Clan, faded away. The rumbling of the house went with it, dust sifting from the ceiling above.

Aurora slumped in exhaustion, nearly falling to her knees. But when she saw my sorry state, she rushed over to tend to me. Her phantom hand brushed against my back, and I could feel her worry in the depths of my soul.

"Toren," she said softly, her comforting thoughts brushing against my scarred mind as my Will slowly retreated. "Are you well? Can you stand?"

I groaned, blood dribbling from my lips. I was partway subsumed in molten rock, my telekinetic shroud resisting most of it: but it still felt like I'd had a close brush with a volcano.

Then I vomited, a stream of crimson splashing onto the ground beneath me. It seeped into the cobbles in a slow, painful dribble, following the precut divots in a perfect flow. It sizzled and steamed from the heat.

Just from his mere gaze, I thought, feeling nausea ripple across my body. Just from a look, he nearly killed me, I realized in grim horror.

Olfred stumbled to his feet, his legs trembling as his eyes darted everywhere. "What… what in the blazes just happened?!" he demanded, his own heartbeat nearly drowning out his words. He hastily summoned a massive hammer of magma, hefting it high as he looked around. "I'm seein' ghosts and phantoms, now! Strange women and eyes and–"

He seemed to belatedly realize I was kneeling in the ground, encased in heated earth. "Mother Earth, Toren!" he exclaimed, shuffling forward jerkily. "Are you okay–"

A dark mist rushed from the doorway, sifting through Olfred's body. He collapsed with a gasp, his eyes blown wide as his magma hammer crumbled away. I blinked blearily, too caught off guard to react. The magma around my body cooled as Olfred lost control, making a partial coffin around my arms and legs. 

Suddenly, Seris Vritra stood in front of me, her hand wrapped around the dwarven Lance's throat–and she looked ready to tear it out.