Amdirlain’s PoV - Maze


    When the double chime sounded, Amdirlain returned to her chamber, carrying the pouch of keys Rasha had handed her. Though she raced along with reckless speed, the vines held back from breaching flesh. With each risky manoeuvre she executed, they merely shifted their weight and thrashed persistently in their attempts to force her off-balance.


    “Playing shy now?”


    She’d stored the pouch in her hidey-hole and teleported to a region holding malicious spirits. Shortly after her arrival, two dead spirits in rapid succession had the first unit deployed. Throughout the ensuing fights, the vines continued to prickle and shift until they finally erupted. Within rendered flesh, a thorn drove from her upper arm to lance bone deep into her forearm. The vines had perfectly timed it to hamper a palm hand block, and the partially deflected spear punched deep into her abdomen.


    Amdirlain pulled herself off the spear’s broad tip, barely ahead of more thrusting spears breaking skin, but left a loop of intestine behind. A blind grab seized the thorn still buried in her forearm before she teleported away. Amdirlain’s blood gushed down her legs and quickly covered the grass beneath her. Regeneration barely started closing the wound when yet more growth battled against its edges, bringing its closure to a halt. With agony eating at her control, she kept her grip on the razor-edged thorn. As the vines fought against her guts and flesh, Amdirlain applied a steady pressure to draw out the seized thorn.


    Amid the internal battle the vines acted with vindictive malice, serrated surfaces ripped and gnawed with every undulation beneath her skin. Thorn after thorn stabbed from torso to arm, each targeting wounds opened by the fighting that more serrated leaves kept vulnerable. Still, despite their deliberate efforts to hamper her, she pushed on. Then, amid the pain, a memory smashed into her and bore her awareness away.


    Orhêthurin took a slow breath and felt the music in the air as it filled her lungs and made her abdomen swell. Her position at the base of a sheer cliff amplified the physical sound, but it did not affect the energy it contained. The view down through the forest valley helped inspire her music, the canopy crusted with beautiful ?snow that could delight or kill.


    The Song started slow, but like spring would melt the snow, it quickened the sleepy seed of rules that father had set and they bloomed. The power awakened the potential of the primitive spirits, and the mantle’s rules activated for the first of them.


    A whisper of sound had her spin, and the World Step ripple was already calming to reveal a male Anar that Orhêthurin instantly recognised as her husband. Though Orhêthurin knew him, it was the first time Amdirlain had seen him in any memory, and she’d expected pain rather than the comfort and love present at her husband’s appearance in the memory.


    His hair was a deep amber hue uncommon among the Anar, equally distinctive was the short length he kept it at, the ends well clear of touching his broad shoulders. His Elven features were sharp and refined but showed traces of fine scars. Tokens of pride rather than necessity, none of them would be a challenge to a healer; he kept them because of their origin.


    Each showed where he’d taken a hit during challenges among the duelist’s ranks; thus, each was a ridiculous badge of pride in Orhêthurin’s eyes. Most were nicks, but the exception was a long scar from high on his cheekbone to just under his ear, only just short of cutting into neck muscle. Prideful as they were, she still begrudgingly admitted he wasn’t the only one that indulged in the growing custom.


    “Hirindo, did you finish seeding those oceans already?” asked Orhêthurin curiously, hoping to distract him with his work.


    He went to open his mouth and reply but stopped even as Orhêthurin caught the confusion in his music. As he took in the Song still spreading across this world, an intense focus shone within him before his gaze snapped around to lock onto hers. “That Song? How is that possible?”


    “This world’s life forms had beseeched spirits for aid. The Titan needed the mantles activated to provide such help,” replied Orhêthurin, keeping to the exact truth.


    Hirindo swallowed in confusion, and Orhêthurin’s felt him taking in the resonating Song she’d used to set the cascade in motion. “That music is all yours, but it has both aspects of the True Song. How?”


    “This is the first time I’ve needed to activate mantles; normally, they’ve worked without intervention,” answered Orhêthurin, not bothered that it was clear she was deliberately not answering the question. “Something odd about the spirits in this place—I’ll have to speak to the chorus that did the work.”


    He let out a deep breath and continued in a calm voice. “If you can’t tell me, just tell me you can’t. You wanted to discuss a ceremony for our daughter’s coming of age. I got your message, so I came to find you the moment we finished. I don’t know what to think of the music I hear here, so perhaps we should talk about this ceremony instead.”


    “We could talk about both later,” offered Orhêthurin and held back the temptation to snuff out the growing music.


    “Orhêthurin don’t! I don’t know what to think, but I want to know the truth about both before we go anywhere,” insisted Hirindo.


    “You heard the Titan explain the children were reborn souls from amongst the expedition that had perished,” stated Orhêthurin and locked down on the dread that tried to choke her. “I know a Song that can help her to recover those memories that suit her personality.”


    “Regain memories from her previous life?” snapped Hirindo. “Tell me how.”


    Orhêthurin almost grimaced but focused on ensuring the suspicion and anger in his Song remained away from her. “The memories are within her Soul and may rise of their own accord. I can coax those suitable up so she can claim some of them more easily, that''s all. There is a difference in how the dragons'' bloodline memories work. She’ll be able to assess the events from her perspective; the original Anar’s personality won’t overwhelm hers.”


    “How do you know about this?”


    “Because someone needed to possess the knowledge to do so,” offered Orhêthurin, and Hirindo’s gaze narrowed at her vague explanation.


    “But it wasn’t necessary to share it before now?” snapped Hirindo.


    His continued attitude prompted her to shrug, but his desire for her to reply aloud was clear. “No one died before, so there was no need to share it. Honestly, no one would have died if they hadn’t been so prideful.”


    Hirindo sidestepped the bait for a different argument they’d had before and kept on topic. “If you had died?”


    “My songbooks have all my recorded songs, but I’ve concealed some. The extra songs would become visible if I died,” admitted Orhêthurin.


    Hirindo’s music soared with sudden anger. “You’ve hidden songs? Hidden them from all of us? But you’ll share them to make sure the work can continue.”


    “Better to be focused on the work than intent on collecting trophies like your scars,” huffed Orhêthurin.


    “They’re a reminder,” objected Hirindo. His lips tightened as anger rose in waves that caused his eyes to glow brighter.


    “Now, who''s telling a lie? Name one thing that any of us have forgotten.”


    “I think I’ve forgotten why I fell in love with you,” snapped Hirindo.


    The words hollowed out Orhêthurin’s stomach, and the surrounding songs blurred into hissing noise until finally, words forced their way loose. “Well, I guess one of us at least can break a promise. I love you despite not agreeing with your viewpoint. What is it about today that has you fixated on the idea that everything is about the work to me?”


    Hirindo’s mouth twisted in anger as he spat his reply. “Your greeting was to ask about work.”


    “I’ll admit I was trying to distract you from the Song. I hoped if I asked about your day, you’d discount it and believe there were other choruses working,” admitted Orhêthurin. “It’s certainly worked in the past. You’re normally excited to tell me how well your chorus blends with others.”


    She’d meant her words as a jab, but Hirindo just drew himself upright. “Because they do.”


    “Pride. You’ve been talking to Balnérith too much,” huffed Orhêthurin, as she tried to push past the empty ache inside her chest. “Hers, I’m sure, will be her downfall, but maybe I should worry about how many she’ll take with her. She certainly doesn’t believe herself accountable to anyone. She even flaunts how far she can bend the rules purely for her benefit.”


    “Then who holds you accountable? You don’t seem to answer to anyone,” accused Hirindo.


    His angry tone ignited a flame within the hollowness, and Orhêthurin gave him a flat look. “I follow the Titan’s rules and the Anar laws.”


    “For now, you do. But how can there be laws to hold you to account when you’re keeping secrets? Is this what you do when you go off alone? Secret things for which you don’t want to answer to anyone? I’m sure you don’t report your activities correctly to the conductor’s council, as I’ve never had discussions about the Song evoked here. How do I even know whatever you unleashed was for the Titan?”


    “I do what I need to ensure balance, and that progress continues.”


    “Really, and what sort of work is that? Slipping around behind our backs, ensuring your tools keep toiling for him?”


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    Orhêthurin lifted her voice again. This time, the combined songs that crossed her lips scaled through all the octaves. The music’s energy built higher, one melody turned into hundreds in a score of heartbeats. From complex melodies that contained deep pounding notes to ones piercingly beyond most mortals'' perception. When she finished, there was no explosion or shock wave—it was simply gone, jumping away towards its target in the depths of space. The overlaid songs she’d wrought emerged a billion light-years away and bloomed into a new sun.


    “What did that do?” demanded Hirindo, his tone split between heat and fear, but radiated petulance.


    At the tone, Orhêthurin wondered where her husband''s composure had gone and laced her fingers together. “Weren’t you listening?”


    “That Song was impossible; there were so many voices overlaying each other I couldn’t track the purpose of any individual Song among that din,” retorted Hirindo.


    The insult was a slap in the face, but Orhêthurin tried to hang onto the last of her rapidly depleted calm. “That wasn’t a Song, it was a few thousand individual songs at once. Combined, they created a new sun; its heat and gravitational effect will already have started work on the material in the surrounding space. In a few billion years, we’ll hopefully find one or more useful planets formed. I didn’t do it on a whim for you; it was on my list to handle today. That is what I do to speed up the work. ”


    After long minutes of absolute silence, with Hirindo barely drawing breath, he licked his lips. “How are you even on your feet?”


    “Lots of practice,” Orhêthurin offered with deliberate casualness and caught Hirindo’s gaze narrow.


    “You said you woke just before me,” whispered Hirindo, unable to take his eyes from her face.


    “I had been asleep,” offered Orhêthurin, the fact concealed the truth in a fashion that required no effort to steady her Song. Her habitual factual truths about those events had remained in place for millions of years, and it wasn’t easy to slip the practice.


    “Tell me the truth of it, Orhêthurin, don’t play word games. I’ve seen you play them with the conductor’s council. You certainly played them avoiding being elected as Queen, so don’t play them with me now, please.”


    “I existed before this realm, and my Song helped form it. There had to be a balance in power within the framework of the rules, so no Anar or Lóm? has access to the entire Song.”


    Hirindo motioned at the view before them, but Orhêthurin knew he meant the Song that was still resonating worldwide. “But you do?”


    “The Song is mine, but I shared as much of it as possible, and in doing so, I became the lynchpin of the scales. No one’s ever taken count of how many there are of us. If you could get an accurate count, you’d find there are eight million Anar and an equal number of Lóm?,” stated Orhêthurin before she motioned to herself. “Plus me. It''s another reason I avoided election to the position of Anar Queen—I’m not an Anar, I merely look like one. Or perhaps to be more accurate, the Anar look like me.”


    Hirindo had flinched at her movement and then continued to back away. “If someone tried to get a count?”


    “Then you’d likely find people confused why the count was off by one and pondering the why. Should they recount? Is it meant to be that way? Did something go wrong with their count? Eventually, I might have to answer questions, but more likely, they’d just move onto something else,” offered Orhêthurin.


    “So they’d go through all that while you''re hiding your lie in plain sight,” accused Hirindo.


    Orhêthurin threw her hands out and stared at Hirindo in disbelief. “You ?realise you asked ?about something that hasn’t happened? If it were causing undue distress, I would have explained it, Hirindo. Are you looking to start an argument about that as well? I said I might have questions to answer. Did you not even consider that I would have volunteered the information if it was causing someone distress?”


    “You lied.”


    “I didn’t lie. You looked around at those still stirring and asked if I''d seen anyone awake beside us. I told you I had just sat up before you did, before other events distracted,” recounted Orhêthurin.


    Hirindo’s mouth twisted as if he was about to spit more accusations, but he stopped to calm himself before he nodded. “The Titan appeared, and his presence rang the grassland like a bass drum.”


    “He grabs people’s attention that way. After he showed himself, you stopped asking me questions about what came before you woke up. I didn’t lie. I certainly didn’t volunteer information, but people don’t have to share everything with everyone else.”


    “He mentioned his songbird had created us,” murmured Hirindo, though his tone was clearly questioning.


    “It''s funny. Everyone I’ve heard discussing it since has talked about various magical animals, but no one ever considered it was a nickname my father used.”


    “He’s your father?” breathed Hirindo.


    “Yes,” replied Orhêthurin. “My father, who has now sealed himself inside the Spire. The only ones that get to see him now are the Aspects we created together, and perhaps those whose choices take them through the Maze.”


    The muscles in his jaws flexed as Hirindo ground his teeth, but eventually, he replied calmly. “The echoes of that first Song didn’t sound like your music.”


    “You have two powers that let you release songs in multiple voices at once, Hirindo. You tell me how I did it,” Orhêthurin challenged and gave a snort. “There was no lie. Rather, you let an assumption blind you and didn’t challenge it again, so it continued until today.”


    At her words, Hirindo paced before he halted some distance away, standing with his back deliberately to Orhêthurin—yet another insult among many. “It was your Song we woke to.”


    Orhêthurin nodded and listened to the erratic tempo of his music, and avoided giving him a verbal thrashing by the slimmest of margins.


    “If you could do that, why were we made at all?” asked Hirindo, turning back to her at last.


    “The work was taking too long, and the more I made, the more I needed to finish at an increasing pace,” admitted Orhêthurin. “Things are stable now, but then I believed the balance was going to tilt beyond recovery. I hoped some of you might help from time to time, and that would allow me to ensure a balance that would remain in place.”


    “You hoped. So we’re not the Titan’s creations? Are we yours, simply to get more work done? Is that the only reason we came into existence?”


    “No, but does it matter that you don’t know everything? Don’t you have your own life and control over what you do with it? Or do you think life would be more enjoyable if you never lived? Does it take away from your pleasure in seeing new flowers bloom or a planet''s first dawn?” Orhêthurin asked, hitting him with questions one after another, not letting him get a word in edgewise. “I don’t force anyone to do anything. Not everyone helps with the work, and that’s their choice. If none of you had helped, I would have looked into a different approach.”


    “You made us for the same reason most make tools, something to make your life easier,” growled Hirindo.


    “Tools you only make for a specific purpose, and I gave you far more power than any other species intended for this realm,” protested Orhêthurin and worked to keep calm and not clench her hands. “I didn’t sing mindless beings into existence, but two peoples that could find their joy in life. I included the capacity for Song so they could help if they wanted to, but I included no compulsion to do so.”


    “Is that why you say these Soul memories are necessary? So you needn’t worry about losing those Anar that wanted to help you? Or was it so that if they died, they might help you in the next lifetime?” accused Hirindo. “You said you knew about the Song to wake her memories because someone needed to know. You knew because you created us, but you keep the knowledge of that from us.”


    “That’s not the reason, Mortal flesh can’t handle billions of years of memories. Well, not unless you wanted to be the size of a Great Wyrm so your body can support the brain mass required. Even then, dragons cheat by holding memory elements within treasures and the building blocks of their bloodline. The Soul stores the memories of Anar and Lóm? so none of you will truly forget anything,” explained Orhêthurin and motioned for him to hear her out. “The lifetime that generated them is always in harmony with the memories so that you can recall the oldest of your current lifetime’s experiences. It also allows the recovery of suitable memories when reborn after a personality stabilises enough to avoid drowning in those memories.”


    “Does a smithy always use every tool they make?”


    Orhêthurin bit her tongue to hold back her retort and tasted blood in her mouth. “Neither the Anar nor Lóm? are tools.”


    The unyielding expression on his face made her feel as if the mountain was paying more attention to her. The repeated insistence made her unsure how to snap Hirindo out of the mood he’d locked himself into today.


    “Can’t you see that’s exactly the situation? You created us to get work done. Not all of us worked out, but you have enough Anar and Lóm? to achieve your goal. What matters if a few tools sit and gather dust on the racks? Maybe in the next lifetime they’ll feel like doing the work you want.” spat Hirindo, his eyes ablaze with anger.


    Orhêthurin ground her teeth to keep angry words of her own from getting loose, but he continued, unconcerned.


    “Personality changes between lifetimes, so is it a chance for you to dust an idle tool off?. Is that what our daughter means to you, a chance to have a proper tool? Those who died hadn’t been creating and were merely explorers. Did you arrange their death?”


    “This realm''s purpose isn’t to be a playground for the Anar or Lóm?,” objected Orhêthurin. “They should have listened to the Dragon’s Song and fled, not fought. They had no chance against it, and it was furious they came into its hunting grounds. It even had a clutch of eggs in its lair. How could they not hear that in its approaching Song? Even if they hadn’t fled at once, they’d have survived if they’d stopped and apologised once they saw her; instead, they struck at her.”


    “How do you know they had no chance?”


    “They baited one of Tiamat’s original reds in what she considers her territory. All of them were lazy with developing their skills, so they had no chance,” retorted Orhêthurin. She kept from her Song the long conversation she’d had with the brooding Red after the Dragon’s rage had settled.


    “We swore always to be true to each other and treat the other as an equal. How was I ever an equal to you when you lied to me from the start?”


    “You are my equal in our relationship?” gasped Orhêthurin. “I’ve never belittled you?, never treated you as anything less than an equal partner in our marriage. I don’t like some of your choices, but they''re yours to make when they aren’t things we should decide together.”


    Orhêthurin reached out for him, and Hirindo flinched away. “I’ve heard you un-sing others’ creations more than once when the results weren’t acceptable. How can I ever be your equal? Could you erase me from existence?”


    “I would never do that to you,” insisted Orhêthurin, her voice cracking as her tears at last flowed. “I love you, Hirindo.”


    “That isn’t a yes or no. Love me? What? The way you love your dragons, who seem like pets to you? You sang them into existence, didn’t you? No one knew where they’d come from, so it must have been you. I thought I knew you! I thought I could trust you—what a joke. Why didn’t I realise I wasn’t safe from the word games you played with others?” snapped Hirindo, and World Step swept him away.


    “I didn’t want pets, I wanted friends and family again,” whispered Orhêthurin, the main reason voiced perhaps too late.


    “Don’t follow me. I need time to think.”


    The scathing tone carried by his Song scratched at her control, and more tears burned her eyes. Tired of it all, she used neither Song nor Spell but simply willed him to hear her. “Take all the time you need. Though you might consider why ?you could leave or spit in my face like you just did if your accusations had any merit.”


    Hirindo’s words about trust echoed so close to words she’d spoken to Andrew when he’d cheated. Amdirlain had dealt with her pain, but Orhêthurin’s felt too raw, constrained for so long that it dug more profound than the thorns and ripped apart her defences. Tears of both lifetimes rose to swallow her, neither betrayer nor betrayed was free from the pain.


    As sobs shuddered through Amdirlain, the pain echoed in her flesh and fingers that had clung to the thorn slipped. Uncontrolled, the vine pulled back into flesh and fed on Orhêthurin’s pent-up rage to surge through Amdirlain’s flesh. Blinking away the tears, Amdirlain gritted her teeth against the agony within and took in the price of her mistake. Fresh vines had grown further along her hand to obscure the white meshwork of scars. Where the fronds had once only lay across her palm, now they reached up to enfold the fingers of her left hand. Serrated leaves had scoured through flesh, and fresh blood dribbled to the ground.


    “One step forward, two backwards,” growled Amdirlain. Her gaze fixed on her hand, she traced the vine covering her palm before it split into fronds that ended just below each nail. “Or should that be six backwards?”


    The vines hastily retracted as if they expected her to grab for them, but she remained unmoving, slumped on blood-soaked grass. When the last wound sealed, she sought the Mind Palace and ventured to Orhêthurin’s site. Fresh blood pooled on the hard clay beneath it, and Amdirlain could see glimpses of bone-deep wounds beneath the vines. The metallic vines had regrown, scouring into flesh and breaking through the stone that had covered her fingers.


    Tiny beside the giant figure, Amdirlain moved carefully forward and saw glowing motes of gold within the growing pool of blood. As her touch broke the blood’s surface tension, a crimson and gold tendril spiralled around her arm. Before it had even fully settled in place, power blazed along its length, and where there had been hard clay, a sea of red-tinged grass swayed around the figure.


    A dark reflection within the pooled blood showed Orhêthurin with the weight of years upon her, and the tendril changed into a woman’s hand clasping her forearm. Orhêthurin’s lips moved, and though there was no sound, Amdirlain knew the contents of the waiting message.


    “I don’t know who you are, who you’ll become, or even how many times a reincarnation has heard this message. Don’t make my mistake; they feed off death and pain unleashed through the True Song, but also can subsist on the energy of our Soul. I gave them a gluttonous feast, and they set their roots deep. I couldn’t remove them after that feast because I couldn’t hear where they started clearly enough to remove them without risking my... our Soul. Find the tools or a means to do what I couldn’t, free yourself of their menace. Find where they start or you end; only then might you have a chance.”


    With the message from beyond the grave delivered, the tendril lost cohesion and dripped from her skin. The grass that had sprouted turned to blood, and filled the air with a cloying stench that curdled on her tongue.