Chapter 3 #4
From my other side, Malachi watched the storyteller closely, his disguised face twisted somewhere between a grimace and a sneer. I had the distinct feeling this was not the first time he’d encountered the charismatic speaker.
“They seem bought in enough to me,” I whispered back.
“Your thirst for truth is palpable,” the masked figure spoke once more, addressing the crowd.
“I have felt it in the air, this drive for understanding. I’ve told you the history behind the Magi, but what of your own histories?
What decisions brought you here, tonight, to this most auspicious occasion?
Some would call it fate. I choose to think of it as something far greater.
A plan, centuries in the making. And it’s all come down to this.
This moment in time. How special that we get to share it, friends.
“During the First Awakening, the Source’s magic was disseminated through four individuals.
But I’m here to tell you that these four confidants were not the only ones in the room that fateful day.
There was one other.” The figure held up a finger, holding it out in front of him as he turned slowly.
“A boy, seeking a moment’s rest for his weary body after the battle against the Magi King had left him battered and spent.
The Source’s gift had exhausted him to a point near death, but when the light of the Awakening engulfed him, he felt the warm embrace of the Source as it lulled him to sleep.
And sleep he did, for the boy fell into a slumber that would last for three hundred years. ”
My pulse spiked, and Cirian tensed at my side.
“Taken into the care of the newly formed Church of the Source, the boy slept on as magic spread far and wide across the Expanse. And as he slept, he dreamed. Dreamed of the beautiful world he was going to wake to, and of the peace promised by the Source. However, when that day finally arrived, and the boy woke from his slumber, those dreams evaporated, chased away by the cold reality that the Magi had built. There were Magi Kings no longer, but everywhere he looked, he saw the corruption of the Source’s blessings.
Magic had become a weapon once more, and the Magi used it to indenture scores of Mortals to build their cities.
Not only that, but the boy also found that the Source’s gift had granted the Magi longevity far greater than mortalkind.
“As his body had been kept in the vaults of the Church, when he awoke, the boy found himself face-to-face with none other than Annora, the Magi King’s alchemist. She had studied the boy’s slumber, and he would discover it was her efforts which allowed him to end his wakeless dreams. She was old and frail by that time, the last of those original Magi created in the hall of the Magi King, and she told the boy that finding the proper way to wake him had become an obsession that she’d dedicated the latter part of her life to.
When the boy asked her why, she said that the Source had given her power over death, but had managed to keep the boy away from her for all those years. Now, she’d bested the gods.
“The alchemist kept him there in the vaults, under her eye, for another decade. His body resumed aging, and by the time she’d exhausted her questions and experiments, he was no longer a boy at all.
His name had been lost to his slumbering, along with most of the memories of his life before the Source’s blessing, so the alchemist regarded him as the Sleeper. ”
The knot in my stomach had swelled to such a size that I could hardly breathe. It was as if this storyteller knew that we were there and what to say to keep us rooted in place. Did this alchemist of old discover the solution I’d been searching for all this time?
“The alchemist was fascinated by the Sleeper, wanting to understand how the Source’s magic had manifested itself within him.
She assumed that he would wield immeasurable power since it was he who had put an end to the rule of the Magi King.
But she could provoke nothing out of the Sleeper to prove her theory.
The alchemist and the Sleeper would take long walks through the Sanctuary City, discussing all manner of scientific discoveries that had been made regarding the Awakening.
Over time, the Sleeper began to regard his captor as a friend, and he would look forward to her visits each day.
“Then, the day came when the alchemist did not appear at his door. Then another. And another. On the fourth day, the Sleeper knew that his friend was gone, and he was once again alone in the world. He cried out to the Source, cursing its name for going back on its word. When no answer came, the frustrations distilled to pure vitriol. Wielding the magic he’d been given all those years ago, the Sleeper destroyed the vaults of the Church, freeing himself once more into the world that had forgotten him. ”
The crowd fell silent around us as the storyteller paused, their form growing still.
“That feeling of loneliness… of being abandoned by the one thing that had given his life purpose, it was almost too much for him to bear.
But there, in the wreckage he had wrought upon the Sanctuary City, the Sleeper heard a whisper, the small, still voice of the one that had brought him to this place. It told him, ‘I am here. Rest.’