Young Flame

Our world is fragile.

It is a difficult idea to conceptualise, but it is true. The world we walk and live is beholden to the overwhelming forces beyond our control. Titans can obliterate cliffs with a few steps. Anatla can take the minds of an entire advanced race and revert them to primal beasts. We reside on land susceptible to the whims of incomprehensible beings, only surviving because those existences do not move with frequency.

The Titan Alps has always been believed to be beyond such weakness. It was a place of danger, and yet it held solidarity across the continent. Wherever one went, it was always visible, always looming. Those Alps were the spines of the world. They were what held the land together despite the Titans’ and other disasters’ — such as the Void Fog — continual eradication.

But the Titan Alps have fallen. The long mountain range may not have disappeared from the sky, but the collapse along its length and the recessed heights are evidence of its failing strength. Something forever thought impossible.

If the Alps are what hold our world together, then we truly are approaching the end.

Armageddon is soon, if it hasn’t already arrived, and yet my elders move with the sluggishness of those who don’t realise how fast time is passing.

As I stride through the dark, empty path between glass pillars, I gaze up at the sliver of light that breaches our otherwise buried Agglomerate. It is midday, and the áed city is cold. Something considered impossible only a year ago.

A mountain of stone blankets our home from the Eternal Inferno. The small light of its fire that reaches us through the southern crack is barely enough to illuminate the space. Anything beyond is too much. No longer can the glass pillars amplify the heat and focus it down.

I kick at the gravel obscuring the glass under my feet. The bright glow beneath is gone. Months without heat has extinguished the forge in the deepest recesses of our mountain.

It’s the emptiness that permeates the Agglomerate that truly makes this place feel alien. The place was evacuated immediately following the Titan Alps’ collapse, but even so many months afterword, no tribes return. Without light and heat, why would they?

It all combines to create a rather eerie atmosphere. One that I can’t wait to be rid of.

I know too little about what is going on around me. Armageddon, Anatla, the Titan Alps and their namesake; all these gears move around us, but nobody can decipher what the machine is doing. We could stay here — little creatures sitting in the contraption, unaware of our surroundings — until we get crushed between the teeth of cogs. Or we can act. We can figure out the purpose of the machine and find an escape before it all falls apart.

With beings like Titans and Monolith Anatla involved, I can’t imagine fixing Armageddon, but if there’s a way to live on, I want to find it.

I wanted to head out immediately in my search — not that I had any idea where I should start — but I promised the grand elders to introduce them to Tore, and then those I know in the pact nations. Such a promise was fine… when I made it, but who would have thought my elders would take months to prepare for their trip?

… I really should have known better.

At most, I’d been prepared to wait a month. I didn’t like it, but if the world was going to break within that time, then there was little we could do, anyway. Though somehow, the old cinders held me back almost six months. With so many well over five centuries old, they have quite the arsenal of delays and excuses available to them.

But this time… this time I’m leaving whether they join or not.

“Please tell me you lot are ready,” I shout as I enter the chamber. “If not, then you can find someone else to introduce you.”

Before me are half a dozen grand elders, each sitting on a rug with a pile of glass tomes before them. This small group of elders are those who shall join me back east. Well, they are supposed to, but by the way none of them respond to my call, it looks like I’ll be going alone.

I give them the benefit of a minute to forget their tasks before I leave. While waiting, I glance along the walls. This chamber is a library of sorts. Unlike the kind in New Vetus, this library holds no paper books or scrolls. As with many of the objects through the Agglomerate, each of our old texts is scribed to glass and slotted into groves along the walls.

We’re pretty low beneath the surface here. Near what would have been the limit of my heat had the Agglomerate remained warm.

Each of my elders is busy rewriting the words and diagrams from the old tomes to — the more prone to damage — paper books. They are pretty much done now, but I know I can’t give them any space. If I do, they’ll find some other pointless endeavour to follow and delay us another month.

When my minute has passed and not so much as a single elder seems to notice my presence, I toss my hands up in the air with resignation.

“Well, alright then. I’ll see you all in New Vetus.” I wave at them as I leave the chamber before speaking under my breath. “If you ever leave the wasteland.”

“Ah. Wait, Solvei.” Yalun’s voice follows me through the glass tunnel, but I don’t stop for her. “We’ll only be a little longer. I want to make sure we have every little map and detail prepared for when we have to travel beyond the sands.”

“You’ve said that a thousand times already,” I call back without stopping. Our voices echo easily through the tunnels of the Agglomerate. I wouldn’t be surprised if those outside could hear us. “Besides, what’s there to prepare for? You can all handle a little rain, and I can assure you there aren’t many that can compete with your strength.” Not unless they take on Tore himself.

As I reach a few floors above them, showing no hesitance in my steps, I finally spot Yalun give in through the glass. She murmurs something indecipherable to the other grand elders in the chamber and rises to her feet. A smirk fights its way over my mouth as Elder Ignatia and Śuri follow, but I hide it from those below. The other three grand elders remain seated, showing no sign of joining.

Well, that’s fine. They can stay here and waste their time writing as long as they want, but I’m leaving.

I stride away, not willing to wait for my elders — lest they take it as an invitation to waste more time — but slow enough they can catch up. While treading toward the only route to the outside, I lazily swing my spear. The relic weapon inherited from my mum has grown familiar within the grasp of my flames as of late. Its touch, a constant.

While waiting, I’ve not spent my time idle. Mostly, I was filling in as an eagle, travelling between tribes and sharing the news that would have taken years to spread otherwise. As an áed of high binding — higher than ever before seen, if I may be so humble — that also has an unreasonable capacity, I’m in almost the perfect position to be a messenger.

I can fly longer and faster than any other eagle, and while Yalun might be decent in her own right, she manages the eagles; it is impossible for her to leave the Agglomerate and still organise them.

Beyond being essentially a messenger-bird, all my time has gone into continuing the self-improvement Kiko had me doing before I infiltrated the Anatla’s island. I may not have the challenge of the Titan Alps beasts to challenge, but I can still practice while moving. Now, with my binding beyond the threshold, my body is less restricted in flight. I can swing my spear around as easy as if I were grounded.

With only the slightest deformation of my arm, the spear spins without restraint. Like the spinning blade of a centzon’s contraption. If I were a normal creature — or even a normal áed — this would be impossible. Nobody can twist their hands this many times without letting go of the blade as they change their grip. But such wasted motions are pointless to me. The fire my hand devolved into is just as solid as the rest of my body as it carries the weapon through the air in rapid twisting arcs.

I’ve fallen into the habit of practising my spear in this way whenever I’m bored. The shaft spins through my torso, disturbing the fire of my body, but not slowing down in the slightest. A flourish impossible for anyone but myself.

Even months after having reached this state, it still feels unreal. I can disperse my head into a thousand different flickers, and still remain aware. Something that would have easily disrupted my consciousness before.

The strangest thing though, is the effect micro-blasts have on my body. In my old, albanic-esque default form, those miniature explosions through my legs or arms could amplify my strength and speed to levels far beyond standard. Now, with both my inner flame and body being one and the same, there is so much potential. I’ve been able to implement it into my spearmanship, but I know there’s plenty more I can accomplish with time.

“Solvei.” Yalun’s voice carries between the glass pillars as my elders finally catch up to me. “You know we need to be prepared. I’m sorry we’re taking a little longer than expected, but nobody’s been beyond the wasteland and survived for a millennium.”

“A little longer?” I laugh. “We could have been there and back three times over by now.”

“Well, we’re ready now. Not much more we can prepare anyway,” Śuri says. “I would have liked more time to survey the new geography of our wasteland and wait until many grand elders finish their tasks so we could have a stronger reserves force, but we have all necessities at least.”

I eye Śuri as the trio joins me. “You’re not actually preparing for war, are you? Between the four of us — and Kiko, when we group with him — I don’t think we would have much of a problem in terms of threats.”

Śuri did propose a war against Henosis, but that was simply a negotiation tactic to encourage us to open our borders, right?

“No, we aren’t. For now, at least.”

“For now?” I echo.

“I would like to talk with these nations that you are on friendly terms with before considering how we shall respond to the atrocities against our tribes,” Śuri says, completely serious.

I’m not sure how to take that declaration. It’s not like I like the Empire at all, but a lot of people die in war. I’ve seen firsthand how many the fire of an áed can kill of the susceptible flesh races. If there are multiple of me, just how high will the death toll rise?

Far from the indifference I had to the act of slaughter at the time, I can no longer treat a battle against the unenhanced the same way. Me and mine are still first and foremost in my mind, but if I were to look over some stranger I might have once killed without hesitance, I would see the possibility of them being friends of my friends and how that could hurt them. As I hurt Leal.

Of course, that won’t stop me if it were any of my friends being threatened. But with the strength I now wield, I can avoid massacres and murders while still protecting those close to me and mine.

The sun feels nice as we walk out under the clear sky. Finally, we’re travelling to the eastern nations. Finally, I can begin my search for what is going on in our world.