Discordant Note: Crescendo | TBATE

Chapter 178: Rising Animosity

Toren Daen

I frowned at the three-pointed array as I stared at it using my Acquire Phase, tapping a foot in irritation. In front of me, three spots of blood created a positive feedback loop that glowed with a simple silver light streaked through with fuschia-tinged ochre.

Mana and lifeforce both swirled around from point to point. The mana somehow seemed more charged, each bit of energy bouncing off the points like a ball thrown against a wall at an angle. Its triangular flow around the array held a strange sort of allure as the silver sheen oscillated.

But my heartfire seemed to flow within and without the mana, utterly ignoring it as it pulsed in a controlled rhythm from blood spot to blood spot. Not the rigid bouncing of the silver energy all around it, but more of a tranquil stream that burbled over bumps.

It had taken a gamble for me to finally manage to ignite my lifeforce to flow from point to point. I couldn't activate it remotely like Circe Milvew could: instead, I needed to connect a vein of my lifeforce to one point, then let a spark drop as if into gasoline.

But it felt like I was fighting against myself when I tried to make this array. Fighting against my insight, even if I'd managed a workabout way to make it work. I'd treated the spots of blood as if they were a human body, drawing on the insight I'd gained from attaching Sevren's prosthetic.

Yet it wasn't complete.

While I'd finally managed to maneuver my lifeforce into coursing around the array, it still failed to interact with or affect the mana in any way. It seemed I still couldn't replicate the true effects Circe Milview had managed with her array and lifespan.

"Do not be so discouraged, my bond," Aurora's puppet said from the side, observing the triangular flow. "Remember that heartfire almost never interacts with mana. You do not have a basis for this, and you are working with half the pieces. But..."

"But?" I pushed, sensing my bond's hesitance.

"There may be something that emulates this, though I know not for certain," my bond said. "The artifacts that empower and bind each Lance of Dicathen to their respective monarchs were created in a joint effort between my brother and Lord Indrath."

I turned to my bond, my eyebrows raising as I considered this information. The Lances were supposedly stronger than your average white core mage due to the strengthening effects of those artifacts. And if those strengthening effects were somehow achieved with lifeforce...

"Do you know how they work?" I asked, feeling a bit of giddy hope. "If so, then..."

Aurora sadly shook the avian head of her puppet. "Unfortunately not, Toren. I will admit that at the time, I did not find your races... worth my time. What Mordain did to assist Kezess in strengthening the peoples of Dicathen had nothing to do with me. And afterward, I never got a true chance to ask, as Mordain discovered the true fate of the djinn as he delivered the relics. Our clan fled Epheotus not long after."

I frowned, cataloging this story. Yet talks of Mordain and his flight made me think of something else.

"Hey, Aurora?" I asked solemnly, stepping away from the array of mana and lifeforce. I moved back toward the bed I'd slept in last night, slumping into the surprisingly soft mattress. "Do you want to go to the Hearth? I mean... you could speak to your brother again. Your son, Chul. It would be good for them to know you're alive."

Aurora's relic slowly stopped moving, gradually becoming still as a statue. And after a moment, the Unseen World washed over my vision. My phoenix bond, in her martial robes and with a hole over her heart, looked at me with a deeply complicated expression.