Weight of Worlds

Cayed Brethson sat on a bench in a quiet park, and his heart was racing. They were far enough south that the grass was still green and the air kept its tentative hold on fall. The containment center’s flat obsidian structure was an ominous monster casting its ever lengthening shadow towards his seat.

His tail, stinger retracted, lashed agitatedly at the grass behind him, his wings quivering regularly. Civilians walked about on their daily business. Firsts and seconds enjoying their day, not realizing the monumental events to play out on this late fall evening.

Daysin, wings tucked tight, tail slung across his shoulder in regulatory fashion, approached from the side. Cayed needn’t look in his direction to see him. A Prophet’s presence was too heavy to hide for long, let alone from a space-lashed.

He carried in his hand a single band of gray steel, a band of mourning, to match the two currently bound around his own biceps. Striding through the tall grass, boots rustling the blades softly, Daysin sat down next to him.

“I’ve gathered my people,” Daysin said after a time.

“I sense them.”

Daysin, eldest of the Hall of Stars, and second of the people, leaned forward onto his knees and looked out over the clearing. “I’m sorry. I know what you’re going through.”

Cayed wanted to yell at him. To scream and shout and run away. Hide from it. But Daysin truly understood what he was going through, what was happening. The Crystal Light never hid that he had faith in his people. He genuinely believed that every single person he met had the potential to achieve above and beyond their current capabilities.

Even now, should Cayed ask him, Daysin would believe in him to find something deeper than alignment, a stage stronger than Prophet, a place closer to the Mother in all Her shadows.

“I don’t want to do this,” Cayed admitted, his voice breaking. I am a leader of my people. An entire faction of lashed look to me for guidance and help.

“Do not allow defeatism within your soul.” Daysin laid a hand over Cayed’s forearm, their his gray skin against Cayed’s faintly blue. “Of course you do not want to do this. He is your father, but it is time.”

My father. Cayed closed his eyes and tried to swallow.

“Even a solid and temperate element like obsidian will eventually drive the sanity away. His mind has lasted for a long time. It’s time to let him go.”

Cayed nodded. Nine times over the last year, he’d been hurried to the containment to settle Breth down. Three within the last month. Last time he’d fallen into hibernation. The last sign of deterioration.

Daysin still sat leaned forward, one hand now on his knee, the other spinning the band of gray steel. Dull flashes of light caught the band as fingers worked it back and forth. Swinging ponderously, mimicking the pendulum of the new clocks that were being fashioned.

It swings, pushing the time further and further, the moment closer and closer. Back and forth. From shadow, through a flash of light, back to shadow. Repetition after repetition.

“I told him, you know… I told him he could do it. He was a Priest, a full third. He had been for years, nearly a century. I told him he could make it to Bishop. Urged him to try.”

“Cayed,” Daysin said, his voice firming. “I thought I told you to stop chastising yourself. Were you a poker at your father’s back? Was Breth incapable of deciding for himself, even before his soul broke during the advancement? You are not a criminal for believing your loved ones to be more capable than they are. You are not a fiend for expecting the best of them. You do not violate them for wanting them to try their best. Were a driving force, ever haunting them from behind? Then this is not your fault.”

Cayed pursed his lips and said nothing. Only watching the pendulum swing of the band. One to match the two on Daysin’s arm.

“Your father chose this for himself. He was a grown man. No one can understand what you are truly capable of, except for yourself. It was your father’s responsibility to take a clean look at himself and make the estimation. Should he have attempted a connection with the Mother? Evidently not, but in the end that was his call to make.”

Swing, swing.

“You’re only saying that to protect yourself.”

Stop.

Silence filled the lawn. The passersby had realized the high number of trained lashed, fighting people. Finally, they understood what kind of day it was. This was not a day of celebration or happiness.

“That was beneath you, Cayed Brethson.”

The words hollowed Cayed out. Scooped from him all the animosity, fear, and anger that roiled within. As his emotions deflated, then so did Cayed. Wings falling to hide his face, tail going limp, stinger half extracted.

“I forgive you, Cayed, for your unkind words. I understand what kind of day it is.”

Swinging no more, the band passed the space between. Pinched between Daysin’s fingers as if it was only the simple band of metal it pretended to be. But he understood the venomous truth behind such a creation.

Two bands around Daysin’s arm. His eldest son, and not three hundred years ago, a daughter. Both failed their Bishop advancement. Both splintered in soul and mind.

The metal was cold to the touch, like normal. He clenched it hard between his fist, driving the color from his knuckles.

“Cayed,” Daysin said. “Your journey to Prophet was a strange, I won’t deny it. I am proud of how far you come and you showing that even a rare strain of the Mother’s power such as yours can and will achieve greatness.

“You became a third in less than two years. A marvelous time, rare among even our common elements. Then you spent a full decade.”

“Eleven years.”

“As a third, before you brought even your second Discipline to muster. If I’m not mistaken, it took only a little less time for you to achieve Priesthood. A year later. A single year later, you stepped under the Mother’s grace and stepped up as a Bishop. Unrivaled. I knew then that you would flourish under her touch and it was only a question of time before you attained the status of a Prophet.”

Daysin cupped Cayed’s face. “You are a marvelous person, driven and ambitious, yet close enough to the ground to understand how things need to be.”

Cayed nodded to Daysin and stood from the bench. “I best get going.” He didn’t put on the band, not yet.

Elder Daysin watched Cayed leave, his footsteps tracking unerringly for the entry of the containment center. His eyes stung and heart pounded painfully. In all the years of his overlong life, Daysin hadn’t yet found a duty as difficult as the one young Cayed now faced.

But it was his duty. There could be no other to carry it out for him. Only in the events of someone failing their Bishop advancement without a master or familial connection would it fall to a Prophet. This was not the first time Cayed had struck down one of the Broken.

But if someone closer connected to them had the ability, it should be them. Risking someone as strong as a Bishop or Prophet, losing their temper was simply too big a risk on the plane. If the uncontrolled wrath of a Broken should come to threaten the plane as well, then both would be struck down.

It was a hard call, one Daysin’s old soul had been forced to make too many times.

His daughter joined him, her Bishop soul lighting the world around them, despite the chill to it.

Her eyes, white with a faint hint of blue, locked on him. “Done bathing in the glory of the moment?”

Daysin shook his head. “You are too cynical of me, Daughter. You rarely have to convince Cayed of anything. He already understands what is right. I just ensured his heart was light enough to take on the burden before him.”

“If that makes you feel better.”

“It was not my emotions I was trying to save.”

“The Ghost is here to set up the field.”

Daysin sighed as his daughter walked away from him. She was only a few years older than her brother, who’d almost the same potential as her.

Almost. He fingered the lower of the two torcs around his arm. A bright young man. Pasik, he bowed his head for a moment, then followed his stubborn daughter. Perhaps she would come around. Though she’d avoided relationships ever since Pasik’s death.

A single band of bandages, graying in age, filtered down from the sky, carrying the massive weight of the soul they were entangled with. The Discipline of Spirit was a hard power to measure. Wholly devoid of the Mother’s touch, this was a power developed outside of even Anirai’s knowledge.

Forsaking even the concept of elements, they trained their souls to such a fine point that they forced Mother to acknowledge them. In some ways, they were the closest to Her, in some they were completely separate. Unfortunately, also entirely necessary.

“Cries.” Daysin nodded to the spirit beyond the now person shaped wrap of bandages. “Will you lead the ceremony?”

“As you please, Prophet.”

Cries split his perception into a net, interweaving it through the many other lashed currently circling the containment center. Through a careful weaving of his power, one that Daysin couldn’t imitate even with a millennium of head start, their senses were bound. As one, Daysin’s people raised them into a dome above the building. Sealing the Mother’s gifts within from the rest of the world.

Even a Prophet could cut loose without inviting the attention of the Ralith. And Cayed did. His power roared to full might until Daysin felt it shake some of the weaker third’s own base of power. The pressure of Cayed’s strength descended on a single room, then with a blow that shook the ground under Daysin’s feet, it was over.

Cayed’s scream was carried on the network of space, instinctively borne by his pain to every ear and person within his long reach. Daysin nodded his acknowledgment of the young Prophet, though he sensed his daughter’s eyes on him.