White and black, light and dark, ying and yang. The concept of perfect balance in two opposites created to fit perfectly together.
That's not how real life works at all, though. Alina Starkov may have been the sun summoner: young, inexperienced, na...
Author's note: This is a very emotional chapter and let us just say: I've been bleeding my heart out on this chapter as well as shed tears as this is one of the regrets I share deeply with my charcter.
Enjoy and much love,
Inkwinds.
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Winter had drawn a veil of frost over the world, even the air seemed to carry the ice crystals as they pierced my lungs with every breath I took.
Still, stubborn as I was I perched on the windowsill of my treehouse with my journal and a feather clenched in my hand as I stared at the steel grey sky.
No contours, no change of colour to break the illusion of being caged in a cell of bitter cold cement. No distraction from the cries and coughs comming from Aleksander's closed chambers and the callous quiet of loneliness, of neglect that had been embittering me since my brother was born six winters afore.
The memory was one of the very few that had weathered the storms of time, for it wasn't a single memory, but an assortment of each season from the moment Aleksander, the fifth of his line, had seen the light of day until the day his corpse had been laid to rest beneath a willow tree that bordered the lake on our lands.
Madraya had insisted for him to be burried there as he had never had the chance to enjoy his favourite tree from up close in his living days. Aleksander had always been a sick child, his weakened constitution preventing him from tasting the freedom of a childhood without care. Nonetheless, his short life had been one of light within the warm and tender embrace of our loving mother.
"-lion?!" A firm voice tore me out of my memories.
Would she have asked me to burry her corpse beside him? The dissonant note that accompanied the thought left me with self-loathing.
"I want to know every. sigle. detail." My voice was brittle like frozen glass.
"Your mother's life is tied to the boy's. There has been an exchange... the boy was not meant to live, Endellion." My nostrils flared.
"What exactly binds Devana's and Jordie's life sources?" No time.
"Magic. Not unlike the magic you've seen me use to heal your mortal wounds... not unlike the magic that resides in your bones as we speak and that I reckognized in you when we first met."
My theory of a relation between song magic and Merzost did have some reason to it at the very least.
'Not unlike' does not mean 'the very same', though.
You don't have time for this.
"Why does it kill Madraya, but neither you, nor me, nor the one who gave me this magic?"
"Whoever gave you this magic must have been a magical entity, utilising the magic he has been born to utilise, Endellion. Just as I did. Your mother however... she is no magical entity, or at least not to the capacity that she would be able to use this sort of magic without having to pay the price of pure magic... there is no rule to pure magic as binds your mother and this child, but one. Magic in general demands an equal sacrifice given to receive its gift as only the creator can create something out of nothing. Creatures are only capable of transforming that which already exists and while magical creatures are given gifts with clear boundaries at birth... Pure magic runs through the very fabric of creation... is the very fabric of creation in fact. It knows no such boundaries."
