CHAPTER XIV #9
How are they all going back to their conversations as if that small confrontation is normal?
No one deserves to be singled out due to something they can’t control, and yet everyone here accepts exactly that.
Have they never seen those cities in Warrior and Knowledge that live together?
Have they never enjoyed each other’s companies as a single people of Disce?
Obviously not.
A cool breeze consumes the room and my thoughts, moving against my skin and the table around us.
The candles on the walls begin to flicker, their flames darting with the draft before they quickly snuff out.
My eyes go wide at the summoning I know pushed out of me, watching as everyone’s heads dart up from their tables, their brows furrowed and looking around the room in confusion.
I quietly sink into my chair and feel Keane’s arm sneak around the back, his own fingers flicking just barely to light the room once again.
No emotion, Alexis, Stormfall’s deep voice fills my mind.
“I’m just exhausted,” I sigh to the bird and men. “It won’t happen again.”
“I heard of your little outburst yesterday, Alex,” Hirovale replies quietly behind me.
I’m leading him and Keane back to the same meadow, just finishing my training with Cal.
“Stormfall…” I turn my accusing eyes to the Bird of Ash on the Ancient’s shoulder.
I am his right hand for a reason, Queen, his old voice replies.
“Traitor,” I grumble. “Perhaps, instead of focusing on me, we should instead focus on why a girl not even in her teens was able to so casually speak those words…”
I turn and eye Keane at the Ancient’s side.
“I’m still meeting with Alma and Mina to discuss the best way forward, Alexis. Hundreds of years of custom. These things take time.”
Etter didn’t.
“Or, you know,” I shrug my shoulder with no regard to this time, “the humans of Alston can just come into their own magic as Hirovale predicts. Then they’ll be forced to integrate with the rest of the Discerni.”
I stop dead in my tracks, my brows furrowing.
“Hiro…”
My voice is quiet as I turn around fully to the men.
The Ancient catches my gaze, his golden eyes sparkling in hidden secret at the question he knows I’m about to ask.
“How exactly do you plan to restore magic to the Old World?”
“Your curiosity still remains one of my favorite things about you, Alex,” he grins.
“And your evasiveness still continues to be one of my least favorite things about you,” I reply as he walks right past me. “Answer the question, Ancient. How do you plan to do it?”
I can feel Hirovale’s grin in my mind as he continues to walk through the woods. I pick up my step and move next to him, my full features demanding that he provide an answer.
“There’s a reason why I wake my brothers and sisters, Human Reborn,” he says at my side. “The restoration will require their help.”
“But the magic was stripped by the Elder Father and Mother,” I shake my head in confusion, “not the Ancients. How do you expect them to assist?”
Hirovale shrugs his shoulder casually, his lips turning up in a small smirk, the sight making me pause in my step again.
There’s no way.
There’s no way Hirovale thinks the Ancients have the power to do something like that.
The Elder Father and Mother were the strongest of the Old World.
The oldest. They were the first to walk our lands.
All of the magic that resides here came from them.
There’s no way Hiro and the rest can possess that kind of power.
The Ancient turns to me with a lifted brow, power dripping off him as it reaches towards me, wanting to prove my words wrong. I flick my hand delicately at my side, pushing the tension away that wants to make itself known.
“We need Rivian’s words, first,” he continues. “I need to learn of her own plans before I can take my request to the rest of my brothers and sisters.”
So he does plan on using them.
Hirovale nods before he turns behind us to Keane. “When do you make the travel to Livyatan?”
“As soon as we’re done here in Woodlands,” the King replies steadily. “I’ll start the arrangements when we get back to Gaumond.”
“Begin them now, Keane…”
I look at the Ancient. Have I ever heard him call Keane by his given name?
“… I’ll need her prophecy before I decide who next to wake after Nolan.”
The King bows his head in response, his sharp features calm as he hears the weight behind Hirovale’s words.
“Surely Malachi would take your side?” I look back at Hiro curiously, “if there is any perversion of magic happening right now, it is certainly coming from the Leviathans. How he sleeps through their ritual summoning is beyond me…”
“My brother is aware of what took place in Livyatan in order to wake our sister. It was the first thing I had Sia send to him in his dreams when she woke…”
“But no,” Hirovale shakes his head firmly and continues in his walk.
“Malachi will remain asleep. He may be the protector of all magic in this Old World, but he is still the one who forced the rest of us to sleep. He is my Father and Mother’s favorite child, the one who whispered in their ears to strip Aireal of their power and to slaughter our brother and sister. ”
What?
Hiro’s own brother sought his siblings’ deaths? An Ancient not too far from Hirovale and Damen in power, third only to the two.
Second now, with Damen gone, Hirovale reminds me heavily.
“But he has a duty,” I argue, “he is the Ancient of Mystical Preservation. He’s supposed to make sure that no one perverses the magic, Ancient or human or magical being. Wouldn’t he seek to punish Rivian and her followers when he wakes?”
“He would,” Hiro grimaces, “just as he would seek to thwart my attempts to rebirth that same magic in humans. He takes our parents’ word seriously, Alex. It was their ruling that stripped Aireal of magic and created the first humans. I suspect he’ll want to see it continued.”
“Plus,” the Ancient shrugs as the three of us step into the clearing, “at the moment I don’t have the collective summoning it would take to wake him. My brother sleeps deeply of his own volition. To wake him would take more than just Heysan, Sianoa, Nolan and I.”
I completely stop in my tracks again, slowly turning towards Keane as Hirovale walks into the open woods without us. My face is distraught, looking at Keane in disbelief as another realization comes to me.
“Dear Ancients,” I whisper.
My breath quickens, a hard force gripping my chest as I’m still unable to comprehend how in the Old World it happened. Keane watches me with concern as I glance down to my hands, remembering Storm’s home as it faded to ash.
“Out loud, Alex,” Hirovale demands.
“You’re the strongest of the Ancient Ten,” I lift my head to him, voice filled with disbelief.
“And?”
“And you would need your brothers and sisters to wake the next most powerful Ancient…”
“But Alexis woke you and Stormfall by herself,” Keane finishes, the realization hitting him just as quickly.
Hirovale stands tall in the clearing, golden eyes staring back at me with deep respect.
“You have more power than you let yourself believe, Queen. You need to embrace it, need to accept the summoning that wants to be used. I told you once that there was no use fighting it. The same holds true now. The power will find a way out just as it did in the forest here with Arens. Your control of it will be the only thing that stops others from getting hurt.”
Keane reaches a hand for the back of my neck, gripping it to him as he pulls me to his side and kisses my temple.
“Now come,” Hirovale eyes the two of us, “we still have a lot of work to do.”
The trees above Keane are still unmoving by the noon apex.
No matter what I do, I can’t seem to find the will to make the air move between them.
It’s frustrating, spending the better half of my day unable to summon, and even when a few leaves do happen to move, I can’t tell if it’s me or the actual wind that moves them.
Hirovale finally steps in behind me, feeling my frustration, and lets the top of his chest press lightly against the back of my shoulders as he reaches for my outstretched hand.
His fingers don’t hesitate as they take mine in his, opening my palm wider to the tree right above Keane.
I can feel everything about him in an instant, can feel his presence and the power that pushes out of him, flowing easily through me.
“It needs to feel like this,” his voice is so close to my ear that my heart stills.
I don’t know why his closeness makes me so tense.
The Ancient has seen me undress countless times…
has looked upon my bare body without any shame.
But there’s something different about the way he’s directing me now, a commanding figure that’s nothing like the Ancient who nearly flinched at the touch of my knee a month ago.
I’ll choose to ignore that, he chuckles softly just as the feel of his power runs down our hands. The feeling is light, taking Hirovale’s will with it as the air around us moves to his direction.
“Let the summoning flow through you,” he continues, flicking our fingers above Keane’s head as the full branch sways. My eyes go wide, watching the air move back towards us before it catches against the limb again, Hiro moving our hands together.
“Do you feel that?” he asks softly, voice sending a small shiver down my neck.
I let my eyes fall on Keane’s, catching the heated playfulness behind them as he looks at the two of us so close together. His lips turn up in a wicked smirk, lighting my body to a small fire as I quickly shake out of the Ancient’s hold.
Dear Ancients, Keane, I narrow my eyes and watch his smirk go wider. Don’t look at me like that.
Let him, Hirovale laughs and takes few slow steps around me, he’s enjoying it.