14; The Final Farewells

The next morning, Aster was abruptly awakened by a tremor that spread throughout the groove. His senses sharp from years of living in the dangerous forest, his attention immediately landed on the nearby lake that was now frothing in waves. Its previous calm surface was disturbed; its waters were boiling as something emerged from its depth. Half-forgotten memories rose to the surface, as the only terror that had made the lake its home made its presence known. Its iridescent scales shimmered in the rising sun, and as Aster had only ever seen the beast once when it had devoured his enemies, its sight was still something to behold. He stood there, frozen under the shade of the golden tree, as the beast unfurled itself. Its eyes glinted as it brought its diamond shaped below to the only reason he was not at the moment running away as fast as his new body would allow.

"Master…." Aster tried to wet his suddenly dry throat. "Wh-what is happening?"

Eiseldawn, standing beside the lake, nonchalantly responded without ever turning his head.

"What do you think, my little apprentice?" He chuckled. "We are here to say our final goodbyes."

Aster couldn't even find words for that. Last night, when his master agreed that it was time to move out of the forest, Aster was expecting it to take a few days. He thought his master might have had a few challenges or perhaps a couple of lessons for him to learn before their eventual trip. But what he did not expect was to be abruptly awakened by his master's attempt to bid farewell to the large snake that slept under the lake. That's when the true weight of what his master was doing hit him. As much as the beast terrified him, to his master he was practically family. It was the one being that had accompanied him for years, long before he arrived. He had never been able to pinpoint exactly how long his master had lived in the forest, but if it was as long as he suspected, then saying goodbye to someone who had stood vigil for you for all those years was the least anyone could do. Not that his master needed the protection anyway.

Looking at the monster, he was sure the beast had somehow grown compared to last time. Its scales shimmered brilliantly against the blossoming sun, and this time, with his new senses, he could practically feel its primal presence swallowing up the meadow. Flowers swayed under the invisible pressure, while the surrounding trees shook with the tremors caused by its long, sinewy body moving through the waters. His master didn't pay it any mind as he wore a sad smile, one that would have riddled his heart with guilt if it wasn't directed at a beast that wouldn't have had any problem swallowing him whole. His newly grown body was barely more than half of the largest hunter the snake had devoured all those years ago.

"My little creature," his master crooned as the snake allowed its lowered head to be touched by him, an intermittent low hiss of pleasure escaping its mouth. Aster felt his whole body shudder with fright and revulsion. Something told him it would take a long while for him to overcome his fear of the beast. It didn't help that the snake was more than half the size of the lake.

His master got closer, his head touching with the beast.

"The day has finally arrived, dear, for me to leave." He spoke with a regretful tone in his voice. "Years were lighter with you by my side, that i cannot lie. But the time has finally come for me to do that which I must. But I would not dare leave without something of me behind."

In a sense, Aster could barely believe what he was seeing. The beast, the large gargantuan snake swimming in the lake, crooned so deeply that its terrible sound reverberated in his bones. He could have sworn that even the surrounding flowers and herbs drooped a little at its mournful cry. His master gave the beast one last pat before taking a step back and then raising his hands in gesture Aster was familiar with. Very rarely had Aster witnessed his master casting any spells during their stay together, but on the rare occasions he did, he would always get a chance to peek at what true mastery meant.

Eiseldawn had raised his hands wide and, in an act of concentration, uttered invocations in a barely heard bubble. To a clueless person, he would have thought his master was muttering a string of nonsensical words with barely any meaning, but to Aster, his knowledge during his time in the forest included the basis of the arcane tongue, the true language of the cosmos upon which nearly all spells ancient and modern were based. To be honest, it had been one of the hardest things to learn, but despite that, it had tremendously helped him in his spellcasting, as proven during his battle with the chitterer.

Shaking his head as he gave up trying to parse what his master was saying, he looked around only to find the familiar golden lines spilling out of the golden tree but this time into the waters. By this time, the snake had already retreated into the lake, which was soon surrounded by a circle of markings, ones that seeped into the ground before vanishing completely. This went on for a good five minutes until his master finished his spell with a clap and his golden form dimmed for a second before returning to its normal. For a moment, Aster was terrified something had gone wrong, but his concern was quickly brushed away when his master still stood beside the lake, his distinct golden-white robe flickering in an invisible wind.

"Master, are you okay? You were…"Aster tried to find words to portray what he had witnessed but he was quickly cut off.

"I will be fine, child. I had just underestimated the strength it would take to form an array around the lake."

Aster was just about to voice his worries when he was quickly distracted by something else.

"Master…your tree…."

Eiseldawn turned around only to find the light from his vibrant golden soul tree had visibly dimmed. The gleam from its brilliant leaves has slightly faded, and a few of its branches have atrophied, almost as if they were seemingly drained of energy. He sighed.

"I was afraid of that happening." He muttered to himself before he snapped out of it. Out loud, he said, "Regardless, I was prepared for it, and now there would be no turning back."

He snapped his fingers, summoning into his right hand a fist-sized orb. This orb Aster saw was meticulously carved. Its smooth surface glimmered in a bluish white color, and there was a peculiar ornament that circled around it like water. Aster had never before seen anything quite like it. His master then walked up to the faded golden tree and laid his other hand on its surface.

"I'm truly grateful for housing my soul in all these years." He said it as if he were talking to the tree, which confused Aster more than a little. "Now that our journey is no longer with this forest, i invite you to come with me into our new chapter, our new tale that marks the beginning of our retribution against those who betrayed us."

Already having an inkling of what his master was talking about, Aster watched as he raised the hand that held the orb. With an almost invisible force, the orb left his hand and floated up towards the air, quickly travelling several feet until it reached the top of the tree. There it stopped, hovering and revolving around a wave of barely visible golden mana. A short moment passed where his master did nothing other than stare at the tree until he slowly raised his hand, pointed at the floating orb above him, and gave a command Aster understood almost immediately.

"Reverse."

The arcane word was uttered, and the whole meadow strived to obey. Aster gasped as he watched a rising tide of mana swirling throughout the groove like a hurricane until it congregated atop the golden tree. Almost like he was watching a growth being undone, the golden tree that had once stood tall and proud in the middle of the groove began losing its leaves along with its branches and then finally bark to the whirling maelstrom above it. The heavily spinning orb swallowed everything that came close in a stream of golden mana, and as he continued to watch, it didn't take long for the tree to get ripped from the ground and all together disappear along with its roots and some of the soil. Gales of wind whipped about as the enchantment that had previously enclosed the meadow in a golden dome became undone, the remaining mana swirling in the air until it eventually disappeared into the orb. When the turbulence finally calmed down, a small seed of brilliant golden light was all that remained of the tree, floating where its roots were once deeply entrenched in the ground. His master stared at the mote of light with almost a sorrowful face until he beckoned it to his palms, where it hovered like a golden star, its light flickering like a heartbeat.

 "This is where the rest of my soul resides," he wistfully said to Aster. "within this seed of the golden soul tree."

Fascinated beyond measure, Aster was gripped in wonder as he sauntered closer, his eyes wide and burning with a thousand questions like, How was that possible? What kind of treasure was the golden tree that would have allowed his master's soul to live for hundreds of years despite his assumed death? All of these questions and more milled around his mind, but when he finally got a clear look at the seed with its flickering golden light, only a few words came to his mind.

"It must be priceless."

Eiseldawn snorted.

"You have no idea, child." He then added, "For the many faults that the Forefather possessed and the impossible challenges that he made us go through, he always strived to look after his own. This was one such thing, a contingency plan, one I would not have needed if I hadn't let my own hubris fail me. Perhaps if I weren't so naïve or if I hadn't let my previous strength get to me..."

Aster would have loved nothing more than to know exactly what his master had gone through back then. But during the short time they had spent together, he had learned it was much better to let him rant rather than interrupt with his questions. And despite not understanding a lot of what his master uttered, he had gleaned enough to get a rough picture of what had happened to him all those years when the Forefather's presence was felt more keenly and he wasn't just a mythical figure as some now portray him to be. This time, though, he had to break this rule as a nagging worry made itself known.

"What would happen to you, master? Now that the tree is longer?"

Eiseldawn cracked a small smile.

"Already worried for your master, aren't you?" When he saw his apprentice getting flustered, he proceeded to explain. "Just because the tree is unmoored, does that mean I will fade away. All I have done is supplant it into another treasure, one that would hold it safe and one that you would now have to carry with you at all times." He gestured above them, and the hovering orb quickly descended into the palm of his right hand. With both his hands, his master now held two of the mightiest treasures Aster had ever seen. His left hand held the glowing seed that somehow housed his soul, while his right hand held the strange artifact his master had used to store the golden tree inside it.

Looking at both of the treasures, particularly enamored by the arcane energies swirling around them, he felt like something wasn't adding up.

"Can this artifact," he gestured at the orb, "truly house the golden tree? I thought all void objects did not allow life to survive within."

His master laughed.

"There is a lot you haven't witnessed, dear apprentice. But today I will allow you a peek into the responsibility you will now have in your hands."

He brought both of the treasures together until the seed of light immediately disappeared into the orb. His body again flickered for a moment before stabilizing, and it was then that he pointed towards him.

 "A drop of your lifeblood, apprentice."

Aster immediately obeyed. Summoning a short knife from his void stone, he quickly slashed his hand across his palm, letting his true blood seep through the wound. A brief flash of pain made him wince, but he had honestly experienced far worse pain ever since he had awakened as a blood mage, or as his master called him, a blood proginetor. There was much more to it than he was willing to tell him, but already his wound had begun to heal. He willed the deluge of blood that sipped into a dark blob. He would have done it faster by conjuring blood from his mana, but he had quickly learned his master always preferred his true blood over his mana blood, another thing Aster was sure it distinguished him from other blood mages.

Eisel only gestured in his direction, and the dark blob was quickly summoned to his side. He let it touch the orb artifact and within a flash of golden light, Aster soon felt an ephemeral connection to the floating orb. He focused his senses, trying to parse it, or at least understand it, but it soon disappeared. All that was left was almost a small, transient feeling that did nothing else other than make him aware of the orb's existence within his vicinity.

"You are now bonded to my personal artifact, the Orb of Altamr. Your strength is currently too weak to fully wield it, and so only the weakest of the bonds exists between you and the artifact. Using your blood as a medium, I have also established a bridge between you and me. Rarely will I make myself seen, but we would still be able to converse through the artifact."

It was hard for Aster not to show his disappointment but his master caught it as always.

"You will soon be bequeathed enough artifacts to call your own, or better yet, ones that you can wield with your own strength. Besides, you have no hope of wielding this orb until you become a mage of the third order, and that's the bare minimum. Now control your greed. We have one last thing to deal with before you begin your journey out of the forest."

Aster's attention was pulled away from the artifact by the serious tone in his master's voice. When his gaze shifted, he saw his master staring at him with a solemn expression on his face.

"You have a long journey ahead of you, child, and you will have to make a lot of sacrifices along the way. This is just one of the many. Your enemies number in the hundreds or more if I had guessed correctly, and in order for us to gain an advantage over them, you have to leave a part of you behind."

When Eiseldawn saw his disciple had no idea what he was talking about, he iterated.

"You have to forsake your name."

Immediately anger, indignation, fear, and doubt rose within Aster, but he fought to keep his face as placid as possible.

"Why?" That was the only question that escaped his clenched teeth.

His master only sighed. "There are a lot of strange magicks in these lands, ancient spells and workings, esoteric rituals, and formations that even I, as the only and first disciple of the Forefather, have no idea about. There is a certain power in true names, and unless you have some idea on how to protect yourself from scrying and being divined against, your true name can act like a beacon leading your enemies right up to your door. My presence in your life has already heavily altered the tapestry of your life, along with the ascendant ritual that has elevated you so much that you are basically transformed from your past self. A new name will serve to protect you, not only from magical means but also from physical ones."

He gazed at his apprentice with a kind but harsher gaze.

"If we take into account your immediate enemies, the Lunar Family was already aware of your survival the moment your father shuttled you to safety through the cosmic array. If they weren't already, the presence of hunters meant that no matter what, they would always be after you. I might regard that treasure of yours as middling at best, but it still does offer a decent chance to someone who seeks to break through their bottleneck. Your name is too unique to not attract the kind of attention we do not want."

Aster felt his heart break a little at the pure logic his master proposed, but a part of him still fought against it. Giving up his name felt like letting go of the only tether he had to his parents, who bore him. A connection to the family he would no longer have

"B-but I'm different." He stuttered, "No one would recognize me in my current state. And I'm sure there must be several people out there who possess the same name as mine. I…"

Eisel raised his hand with an air of finality. "You made the choice, apprentice, and now you shall abide by its consequences. Apart from what you think, your name is derived from the stars above, which means it is very rarely used by common folk. Only families touched by the stars are known for using names of such nature, and a powerful blood and star mage who appears out of nowhere, possessing the same name as the fugitive several hunters were after months ago, is enough to raise suspicions of anyone with half the intelligence."

His gaze got softer.

"You might feel you are betraying the last thing that connected you to your family, but that's far from the truth. You need time to grow stronger, and if you aren't here, where you are safe, then I would have to make sure that you do not meet your demise so early on your path. Don't let your feelings cloud your judgment, child. One day in the future, when you are strong enough to stand on your feet, you can take back your name and more if you wish to. But for now, you have no choice but to tolerate."

Aster physically swallowed the indignant words that were about to come out of his mouth, and his shoulders sagged.

"What kind of name did you have on mind?"

His master mischievously smiled, and when he finally answered and explained the true meaning of the name he was about to take, he also returned the smile in turn, his heart burning with vengeance.

On that day, Aster, the small kid who had survived the disaster that befell his home, officially died. And in his place, someone else was born. Someone who now had a strange new affinity and a griveous old master by his side, someone who was now ready to begin his journey outside the Endless Glades. Someone who had a bone to pick with the outside world.