17. The Shadow Mage
The Shadow Mage
“Noec is one of them,” Flora announced, breathless as she stormed into the Eldon house.
Thaola looked up from her seat by the fireplace, where she had been conversing in a hushed tone with Heron and Elia.
“A scythe,” Flora explained, faced with startled looks and glances of mutual confusion. “Noec is a scythe.”
After reading Sona’s note, Elia’s brows furrowed. “Heron, how could this be possible?” Apprehensive, she continued, “Do you think…”
“No,” Heron replied, shaking his head with an answer before the question. “There must be chimeras of another origin.”
“But only Azura could…” Thaola bit her tongue, stiffening as the intensity of Heron’s glare flicked to her.
“Only Azura could what?” Flora pried, but Thaola’s eyes darted away, and as Flora glanced expectantly between her and Heron, she felt her cheeks redden with frustration as she realized her voice had fallen on deaf ears.
“Anyone want to tell me who Azura is?” she pressed further. “So I can help us help Noec?”
“Heron.”
Heron met his wife’s eyes, and the hardness of his glare began to soften with worry.
“Enough is enough,” Elia said. “She’s one of us, right?”
Heron blinked. “Of course, I…” he said, his gaze flicking to Flora. “I just want her to feel?—”
“She’s safe,” Elia assured him. “Here with us, she’s safe.”
Heron exhaled, taking a seat at Flora’s side as she watched him carefully.
“Secrets grow heavier with time, right?” Flora murmured, but Heron seemed chained to his own silence. Tucking the note back into her bag, Flora sighed and thought she ought to leave.
“Right.” Flora glanced up, surprised. Heron nodded to himself, smiling weakly back at her.
“Azura…” he continued, “... he was the Shadow Mage of the late king’s court.
” He breathed a sharp inhale, then squared himself further to her, explaining, “Azura could warp humans and beasts together as one, inventing monsters from blood and shadow.” Heron sighed deeply, and there was a nod of encouragement from his wife.
“But the Shadow Mage is long dead,” he explained to Flora.
“Geno—my brother—he made all too sure of that.”
Flora blinked. She’d been eager to guilt him, but she hadn’t expected it to actually work. “Oh,” she muttered softly. “Thanks.”
Heron rested his head in his hand. “I don’t like hiding things from you, Florabelle,” he said. “But trust me when I say that I do so with good reason.”
Flora sighed, then looked away. That meant there was more, she supposed. More she wasn’t worthy of knowing.
Seated by the crackling fire, Thaola furrowed her brow in thought. “Azura may be dead,” she started, “but what of his chimera?”
Heron paused, a memory catching behind his eyes.
“The chimera is long gone,” Elia responded quietly on his behalf.
“... chimera?” Flora implored cautiously.
Heron met her eyes, but only for an instant. “We called Azura’s beasts ‘chimeras’,” he replied. “They were his greatest weapons.” Heron paused, his eyes darting back and forth in thought. “But hybrids like those,” he said slowly, “like what you think Noec has become…”
“They were made to live only a few days at best,” Elia muttered. “Cursed to die once their usefulness was spent.”
Flora stiffened, and Heron’s shifting eyes fell cold. A few moments of silent tension drew them back into the lingering memory of grief. But before the grief could sink its teeth in completely, Heron shifted to his feet.
“Not all of them,” he said softly, stepping toward the fireplace.
“Not all seeds were planted just to wither.” He grasped a pinecone-like structure from atop the wooden mantel and gently blew off the dust. It took Flora a moment to recognize the object as a maewyn-husk, a seed that grows without sun.
Bringing the jagged maewyn husk to Elia, he placed it between her hands.
“Besides, my love,” he said gently, “haven’t we seen how good things can grow in the dark? ”
Elia studied the blackened husk in her hand, a shimmer of misery in her honeyed eyes.
Her gaze lifted to her husband as his hand barely grazed her cheek, but Elia’s expression was void of courage, void of hope.
They had already lost their daughter to Night Sky Forest. How could they move forward if they lost their nephew, too?
But when Heron met Elia’s eyes, he smiled, and it wasn’t the counterfeit smile Flora would’ve expected.
“I know he will be alright,” Heron said with a gentle determination. “He’s got his father’s dumb luck on his side.”
Elia huffed. “That’s for sure.”
“And while he may be some sort of chimera,” Heron continued, “he isn’t Azura’s.
There should be no ‘spell of death’ to bind him.
” Heron rested a kiss on Elia’s brow before taking a step back.
“Perhaps… all he has to do is remain hidden from the others,” he added softly, “until the time comes that he’s ready to come home. ”
After a moment, Flora cleared her throat. “If it’s any reassurance,” she said, “the creature I met at the spring didn’t seem to be dying.” She shrugged. “It was more… existing awkwardly in my general direction.”
Elia smirked just barely. “Quite Noec-like for a scythe,” she said, and her eyes flicked up. “And quite Heron-like for Noec.” Heron huffed a chuckle, an inescapable smile cracking on his lips.
Thaola and Flora exchanged a hint of a smile, and a fragile sense of hope had flickered to life in that room.
“If the only things that distinguish him from the true scythes are colors, I’d say he’s in a good place,” Thaola offered. “The rest of them are blind as bats.”
Elia’s heavy eyes seemed to have brightened just slightly.
“Out there,” Flora added, “Noec is undetectable.”
Elia turned the blackened husk in her hands, and for the first time, the faint smile she wore might have almost reached her eyes.
“I want my nephew to come home,” she said after a moment, tears brimming in her eyes as her gentle voice invaded the silence. “Heron, I want our son to come home.”
Later, as she stood outside the Eldon home, Flora caught a glimpse of Kestra, standing at the edge of the stream with her eyes on the coursing river beyond. Perri, Flora thought, and the question pressed on her—should they share what they had found with his mother?
“Hope can be a heartache.” The words came from behind her. Flora turned to see Thaola approaching, Heron keeping close at her side. With a weary sigh, Thaola rested a hand on Flora’s shoulder. “Maybe…” She trailed off.
“Maybe we keep this to ourselves,” Flora finished softly. “At least until we know that Noec is really okay.”
“Right.” Thaola nodded. “Sometimes, the truth is crueler than the lie.” She offered a parting wave before moving on, leaving Heron behind. His brows were knit, his silence heavier than words.
Flora let out a long breath and looked away. “Right,” she murmured.
That evening, Flora insisted on going back to the spring alone.
She wandered slowly up the path, swallowing her fear, her frustration, and the exhaustion that sleep would never sate.
In the distance, the red sun fell low, painting the waterfall in hues of amber and crimson.
The weapons in her bag felt heavier with every step, a reminder of the strange and precarious state she existed in.
“Azura,” she repeated the name.
Heron and the older villagers rarely spoke of war. But by now, Flora had pieced together that it had centered around the infamous Shadow Mage—around Azura.
Clerics and priests claimed he grew from roots as ancient as Lunara herself, and any doubts of his divine heritage were quashed at the sight of his eyes, which reflected the colors of autumn and fire.
Rumors of Azura’s power barely captured the devastation he could unleash.
Entire cities fell to the hellfire in his palm, and because he could create ungodly creatures to do his bidding, he needed neither manpower nor public support to crush the king’s enemies.
At the service of the people of Asilia, he was the weapon that won the war.
But just when the war finally seemed to be over, the Shadow Mage slayed his own king.
The kingdom spiraled back into panic, enduring another miserable year of conflict between Azura and the throne’s successor, King Velo.
Despite an alarming show of strength, Azura was defeated by an elite group of Velo’s soldiers—the King’s Hunters.
Without recourse, Azura vanished like a mirage in still air, hiding in the shadows until the day the Hunters finally took his life.
Heron never spoke of war, not until today. And despite the trove of medals hidden away in the Eldon home, Heron carried an essence of shame whenever his time as a soldier was mentioned, one that Flora still couldn’t quite understand.
Flora sighed as she reached the spring. Her gaze settled on the magnolia tree, tracing the memory of the strange scythe lurking behind it. Those shimmering emerald and gold eyes were burned into her mind.
Tonight, she didn’t want to go home. Flora sank to the silky sand along the water’s edge, loose curls falling across her face as she peered down at her shuddered reflection. He was close—so close she could feel him.
“Noec?” she called softly, turning her head toward the shadowy forest. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Please come home.”
The world around her glistened under the fading light, and the steady roar of the waterfall seemed to both echo her call and drown it out all at once.
“Noec,” she repeated, her voice barely audible.
She wondered if he’d been waiting for her that morning. Had she frightened him away with the weapon? Would he have come home by now if she hadn’t? Her thoughts spiraled as she placed her head in her hands, reclining into the sand.