Discordant Note: Crescendo | TBATE

Chapter 282: Those Secrets Kept

Thank you to my beta reader and editor, GlassThreads!

Toren Daen

Olfred didn't say a word. In the depths of a makeshift earthen sanctuary, I quietly worked to heal his wounds with my heartfire. The dwarven Lance was dreadfully silent as I let my dawnlight mist into his body, soothing aches and internal damage that had hounded him for days.

He was laid out on a simple sickbed, covered from head to toe in bandages that were a rusty red color. Dozens like him lined the makeshift infirmary, but I didn't have the strength to see to them all healed. At least not right now.

I'd recovered quickly since waking up, a side-effect of my nascent phoenix bloodline. It had mixed well with my djinni heritage, allowing wounds to recover at truly absurd speed.

It had barely been a week since the Breaking of Burim, and I was nearly back at my full strength. Outside the aches and pains that made my heart clench at odd intervals, my power was returning with every second. Wounds and stresses that would cripple any other mage washed away quickly.

It felt wrong. Wrong that I should be well, and all those around me should still be burdened with the lavatide. But I could live with wrongness, couldn't I?

I kept my mind focused on the stream of light coming through the window as I washed away the majority of the wounds that Olfred left. And as my heartfire brushed near his core, I noticed something else. A wound—six of them—that I wouldn't have ever noticed before.

Insight gained from nearly breaking my core—cracking it from an overflow of power, before healing it back over—allowed me to see those pinprick marks in the Lance's core.

I knew from that otherworld novel that these six points of nigh indetectable damage were what kept the Lance's potential and power limited. Arthur had fixed them by isolating a healing vivum spell from a strange scepter artifact granted by the Indrath Clan.

Somehow, these six points prevent further purification of the core, I thought, in that clinical state of mind I entered whenever I performed surgery. Like cluster points blocking outward flow, it makes progression and perfect equity impossible.

Did these array points forcefully guide a Lance's purification away from the intended spots? From what I understood of how a white core advanced to Integration, it wasn't so much purification as it was... modification. I had a more intimate sense of how my body changed as my white core continued to advance, and I suspected that these array points somehow bound the Lance's mana away from continuing that modification.

It was a simple thing, washing away the wounds in his core. After all, I knew the numbness that echoed through his intent deep in my soul. He didn't speak at all. Just stared forward with eyes that would never really see the world in the same way again.

Olfred and I were both survivors of a storm-ravaged fleet, clinging to driftwood in the aftermath. Every now and then, a familiar name etched into flotsam would drift by, and all we could do was stare with empty gazes as they bobbed and flowed.

But Olfred... his pain was as great as mine. As deep as mine, if not deeper. Because he knew more of those names than I ever would. Knew Burim better than I ever would.

A rasping voice spoke then, startling me from my thoughts. With some surprise, I realized it was Olfred.

"Years after I found myself in Rahdeas' care, I had some strange thoughts," the Lance croaked, his voice dry like sandpaper. Each syllable sounded like it was laboriously scraped from a block of wood with a dull knife that barely held any room for inflection or sharpness. "I had everything I'd ever wanted. Food to fill ma belly. A man to call my father. A place where I felt I belonged, ya know?"