CHAPTER 62
Azra'il - POV
The clay ship glided over the suspended current of water, advancing towards the horizon I'd drawn myself with mana and stubbornness in equal parts. I plucked the next chord and changed the melody's key, giving it that deceptive lightness which tends to precede the great tragedies in any decent narrative.
🎵 "Twelve ships crossed the sea, weary and slow,
Toward a harbour still waiting to greet.
But the wind swept them off to a strange, silent isle,
Where time seemed to sleep 'neath the lava's own heat." 🎵
I made a discreet gesture with my left hand. From the floor of the banquet hall, small white earthen flowers began sprouting between the joints of the polished planks, which would probably cause some legitimate concern to the staff responsible for the wax maintenance, but art demands certain structural sacrifices. I channelled a thin veil of bluish light over the petals, giving them a glow almost too inviting to be innocent.
"They found an island covered in flowers," I sang, dropping my voice to a whispered, almost hypnotic register. "And the local inhabitants offered them, with peaceful smiles, the sweetest fruit any exhausted sailor had ever dared to taste."
🎵 "Whoever tastes the flower of Lethe just the once
Forgets their name, forgets their home.
Forgets the wife who waits by the door,
Forgets even why they chose to roam." 🎵
Under the effect of the melody and the mist of mana, the small clay figures halted their march. The clay swords fell to the ground with a dry clatter, and the figures let themselves drop, clumsily, among the flowers, wearing the expression of those who'd decided, in that exact instant, that no obligation in the universe justified the physical effort of remaining standing.
🎵 "But Asteria did not taste the flower,
Her heart already had a name to keep.
She dragged her men back down to the ship,
Against their will, though hunger cut deep.
Because there's a pain worse than any war,
Worse than the deep sea's monsters and more:
To forget, if only for one fleeting breath,
That someone awaits you this side of death." 🎵
Asteria's figure bent over her inert companions, lifting them one by one by their clay collars while the figures mimed weak resistance. The earthen ship pulled away from the coast, and the white flowers dissolved back into the floorboards in a fine cloud of magical dust.
In the brief gap between one verse and the next, I registered Rudeus's expression, whom I'd been watching out of the corner of my eye since the performance began.
He wasn't merely dazzled. He wore that cognitive paralysis characteristic of someone trying to work out a physics problem too complex for his current knowledge.
His eyes followed, almost against his own will, the four parallel mana flows I kept active simultaneously: the earth shaping the figures, the water sustaining the airborne river, the wind filling the linen sails, and the flames lighting the set. All executed in silence, with not a single chant, while my fingers plucked the lute and my voice sustained the ballad.
My brother had mana reserves most mages on that continent would never reach in an entire lifetime of training, and yet his mouth hung slightly open, his eyes unable to decide where to focus first, the exact expression of someone calculating, in real time, that he'd struggle to replicate that without his own concentration collapsing halfway through.
I made a mental note to tease him about it later, once the mask and lute were put away.
Eris, on the other hand, wasn't even blinking. Her cheeks were flushed by the reflection of the magical flames, and her fingers gripped the fabric of her red dress with such force I genuinely began to worry about the longevity of the stitching.
Her gaze leapt from one spectacle to the next with an almost childlike eagerness. The stone ship cutting through the suspended sea, the waves raised by magic, the clay figures coming to life, the flames wrapping around the journey... and, inevitably, it came back to me.
Or, perhaps, not to me.
To Asteria.
There was a particular glint in Eris's eyes. The same glint that appeared whenever she encountered someone she considered extraordinary. It wasn't merely admiration for the magic. It wasn't merely fascination with the music. It was the enchantment of someone following the journey of a warrior facing gods, monsters, and storms just to make her way home.
I knew that expression.
If Asteria asked her to board that ship and defy the ocean at her side, Eris would probably only ask how soon they could leave.
🎵 "Onward, the winds bore them to a shore
Where dwelt a giant beyond all compare:
Arges, son of the sea, with one eye alone,
Hungry for human flesh, heart made of salt and despair." 🎵
I raised my left palm, and a mountain of grey clay grew before me, tall enough to force the front-row guests to tilt their chins up. A point of unstable blue light glowed at the centre of that shapeless mass, pulsing like a living eyeball.
🎵 "The giant trapped them in his cavern deep,
And sealed the entrance with a boulder no man could recall.
He devoured two men on that very first night,
And swore he'd devour the rest, one and all." 🎵
A tense murmur ran through the tables of Asura's minor nobles. Old Sauros Boreas looked like a boy waiting for dessert; he rested his clenched fists on his knees and leant his whole body forward so far he seemed about to leap from his chair to personally storm the clay cavern.
🎵 "But Asteria was not merely sword and shield,
She was a mind sharp as blades, a cunning beyond compare.
She gave the giant wine from the finest vintage year,
And gave her name as 'No One,' to lay the trap and snare." 🎵
The small clay figure of Asteria offered a vessel to the monster, and Arges's mass of clay began to sway heavily, mimicking the typical sluggishness of someone succumbing to alcohol's strength.
🎵 "When Arges finally fell to drunken sleep,
They heated the stake till it pulsed with flame's own glow.
And drove it deep into that single eye,
Making the giant roar in fury and woe." 🎵
I channelled a flow of compressed flame through my fingers. A bright red flash exploded at the centre of the giant's light-eye, accompanied by a deep percussive boom the musicians executed in perfect timing.
🎵 "'No One has hurt me!' he cried to his kin,
'No One has taken my sight, my dear!'
And the other giants, hearing him wail,
Laughed and left him alone with his fear." 🎵
The ending drew spontaneous laughter from several guests at once, the kind of comic relief any good story requires before delivering its next dramatic blow to the audience.
🎵 "They escaped, clinging tight beneath the sheep,
While the blinded giant groped along the ground.
But at the gate, Asteria made her one mistake:
She cried her true name with pride's triumphant sound.
'It is I, Asteria, queen of Thalassia!
It was my hand that stole your sight away!'
And Arges, hearing that name for the first time,
Called out to his own father, vengeance to repay." 🎵
The mountain of clay collapsed under my mental command, dissolving into the floor. In its place, I quickly shaped a taller, more imposing silhouette of dark clay: Nereus, god of the depths, surrounded by a mist of perpetually moving water I kept suspended.
🎵 "Nereus heard the cry of his own son,
And swore, with a fury ancient as the sea's own salt:
'Asteria will find her way home, that much is true,
But alone, and late, on a ship half wrecked by the assault.'" 🎵
I let the lute's melody settle into a lighter, almost triumphant tone, the kind of aesthetic contrast I knew would make the following disappointment even more painful for the listeners.
🎵 "And yet, the gods are not always so cruel,
And an old friend of the wind wished to lend her his aid.
He gave Asteria a bag sealed up tight,
Trapping the winds that could see her waylaid." 🎵
A small pouch of synthetic leather rose into the air, suspended by an invisible thread of mana, swaying beside the clay ship as it resumed its voyage across the suspended current.
🎵 "'Guard this bag well,' said the god of the wind,
'And the right wind alone will carry you home.
But do not open it till Thalassia comes into view,
Or the whole voyage is lost, and in vain you have roamed.'" 🎵
The ship advanced, majestic, over the water. At the back of the improvised stage, I used earth magic to quickly raise a distant silhouette of gentle hills, sketching the shape of Thalassia, about to be reunited with her exhausted sailors.
🎵 "And finally, after years of war and sea,
Thalassia rose on the horizon, at last.
The men, exhausted, already saw their homes,
Already dreamed of the embrace holding them fast.
But curiosity is a sailor's poison indeed,
And some believed the bag held treasure untold.
They opened it while Asteria slept, worn through,
And the whole world turned to grief, dark and cold." 🎵
At the exact instant the verse's last word was spoken, I released the current of wind I'd been subtly holding back since the start of the stanza.
The physical blast abruptly swept through the Boreas main hall.
Velvet capes rose like startled wings against the nobles' backs. The meticulously styled hair of several ladies suffered an unplanned aesthetic reorganisation, and the flames of dozens of candles danced on the brink of extinction before regaining stability. The clay ship spun chaotically on the suspended water current, dragged back in the opposite direction, while Thalassia's silhouette disintegrated into the air.
I heard contained murmurs of surprise among the guests. Hilda let out a muffled gasp, her eyes welling up at the collapse of the sailors' hope.
🎵 "So close they could smell the scent of home,
So close they could hear their own names being called.
And the sea, cruel as only the sea knows how to be,
Cast them back to where they'd started, appalled." 🎵
The ship came to a stop, motionless, far from any promise of a safe harbour.
I held the pause in silence for a noticeably longer stretch than the previous ones, the musicians sustaining only a whispered violin chord in the background.
"Asteria woke," I narrated, my voice dropped to almost a whisper filling the silent hall. "And realised that everything she'd won with her own sweat and blood had been lost to someone else's carelessness."
🎵 "Did she weep? Perhaps.
Did she scream? As well.
But she rose once more,
Because home was still the only fate left to tell." 🎵
I let the image of the small clay figure standing alone on the deck linger before Eris, and then, with no transition warning at all, I changed the metre entirely, giving the melody a dense, mysterious rhythm.
🎵 "But the sea still held more trials in store,
And the next isle to rise brought no peace at all:
There lived a sorceress of beauty grown old with age,
Whose name the sailors would learn, too late, to recall." 🎵
A new earthen structure rose at the back of the suspended water current. It was covered in dark clay vegetation, from which a female silhouette began to take shape. The figure rose surrounded by a halo of magical flames in shades of blue and green, carrying no real heat, but casting a spectral light over the hall.
The air around the improvised stage changed scent, taking on the characteristic smell of ozone that signals high active mana density.
"Pasiphae," I sang, dropping my voice into a register wavering between seduction and imminent danger, "welcomed the exhausted travellers with peaceful smiles and cups of wine. And none of those men suspected, until it was too late, what that drink truly concealed."
The first clay figure of Asteria's crew, mimicking drinking from the cup the sorceress offered, began to writhe, gangly. The clay of its body began reshaping itself under my silent magic; the human contours gave way to short, squat forms, and thick clay bristles sprouted where arms had once been.
And it was exactly at that moment of incomplete transformation, with the little clay sailor's snout already lengthening into a non-human shape, that I abruptly cut off the lute's chord, leaving the last note unfinished and suspended in the silence of the entire hall.