Page 85 of Bright Soul

His earliest memories were of shadows, curling and billowing between his boyish hands. They were always there behind the beacons of a goddess of light otherwise present on a world saturated in a deep shroud of night lit only by distant, cold stars.

What he truly remembered of childhood were bits and pieces of an ancient whole. Finely tailored suits reduced to shreds because they fit too snugly. The shadowborn rage, overwhelming in a boy’s body.

He associated his Iorsio mother with her disapproval; her pursed, white-stained mouth.

His father, however, let brief glimpses of sympathy through the cracks of his stony visage. Phaeron and his twin had taken after him, after all, beget of the strongest shadowborn to ever serve Myuna.

It was his father that’d put him into physical training early, and from there, he discovered his first love…a weapon in his hands.

The sword did not require manners or doublespeak, nor did it look at him with weighty expectations. It was straightforward, something to master. He learned with one, then two swords, moving through forms and stances until his fingers bled and it all became muscle memory. He honed himself to a fine edge of mastery made of blade and shadow.

Like any other weapon, he was put to use. His birth nation was constantly at war, conquering and expanding in the name of Myuna. The softness of his teenage years dulled as time progressed. One of the only constants he had was his brother. Early on, they would trade battlefields: from court to bloodshed and back. Phaeron preferred bloodshed, but he did his duty as a prince as was required.

He served for a drudgery of time, a murky pit that came to crystal focus with the ringing of claws on metal. Phaeron rapped the ends of his swords, peace tied in their sheathes, as he waited one cold evening at the mouth of a cave. Not just any cave, but Shenmaw, an underground town and home to the secretive Vess.

Restlessness shifted under his skin. I felt a shade of his discomfort and the weight of darker thoughts and emotions. It felt like he was here because of the despair, loneliness, and grief that filled him, though he longed to melt into the night as the passing seconds wore his resolve away.

He had announced to the Vrassorm male keeping guard that he was there to see Auric et Vess. The leader of the voidwhisperers was not usually one to be summoned casually, but Phaeron had minded their rules and kept to the line in the dirt he was not allowed to pass.

I was surprised when Auric arrived. He was nearly unchanged this far in the past, except he had two intact backswept horns and his navy-blue hair was long and woven elaborately into braids. The stain on his face glimmered purple, tracing jagged lines over his skin and horns.

He still had a spiked tail, tattooed blue skin, and a clouded eye, the other teal with a scratch-thin pupil. Phaeron tensed as the other male inspected him, tension threading the air between them.

Phaeron broke the silence first. “I have come to take you up on your offer.” Slowly, he inched his chin down in a show of respect for the elder Vess. Here in Shenmaw, Auric was the ranking male, practically a king of the tiny population he kept protected underground.

Auric held a precarious political position as the leader of an order separate from Myuna’s nation of worshippers. Shenmaw was within her territory, clinging to a technicality for its neutral existence. It was close to uninhabitable, reportedly close enough to a rip in the world that the Void’s madness twined through the air like a physical force.

None of the devout wanted to experience the Void that way, and they weren’t invited at any rate. As long as Auric sent a steady supply of Vess to predict the future for Myuna, Shenmaw was allowed to govern itself.

A smile broke across Auric’s face. “About time, kid. Leave your goddess at the line and enter.” His voice was also the same, a deep rumble from his barrel chest.

“Myuna does not dwell in my heart. I am a tool to her, a blade,” Phaeron said bitterly.

Auric turned, motioning to the guard, who resumed his post in front of Shenmaw’s opening. “Then you are welcome here. Come,” he said over his shoulder.

Phaeron followed, and time blurred. I felt his surprise as he walked Shenmaw’s spacious corridors for the first time. Many single-eyed Vess practiced their magic here, but there were others from all walks of life. The one thing they had in common, he knew, was they all spurned the goddess of light to live in the pitch-black depths of the earth.

I felt his loneliness deepen. There were families here, and the sense of loss within him grew more biting. “Will you look into the Void for me?” he asked.

“That’s what I do, kid.” Auric stole another glance over his shoulder. “But this is the first time you’ve asked. What do you hope to find?”

“Hope, perhaps,” he murmured.

Auric grunted. “The Void contains little of that. Come eat with Geryn and me.”

Phaeron resigned himself to the cross-examination about to occur with Auric and his mate. Later that evening, when their young children had been put to bed, he sat with them, nursing a cup of spicy-sour broth that was common amongst the seers. It helped clarify the sight and sounds of the Void, apparently. He couldn’t stomach much more than it.

He shared his news and his request. He’d only just buried his son, the final connection he’d had to his last mate. War had severed them both from this plane, and he found it hard to say the words, gazing into the depths of his soup rather than meet their eyes.

Auric’s hand on his shoulder was about as welcome as the sharp edges of shattered glass. But his only words of comfortwere, “The Void cannot soothe your pain, nor will it give you an immediate answer. You would be better served by reaching for community rather than the unknown.”

“A promise of future peace would be enough. I have been unmarked for so long now…” Long enough that he’d forgotten the relief of a True Light’s soothing touch. He needed something to anticipate, something to hold on to. Desperately enough to truly anger Myuna, should she know he’d visited Shenmaw and ducked into the one place her all-seeing light did not reach.

Geryn glanced toward Auric. She was also of the Vrassorm tribe, but not a Vess, her belly well rounded with child. “He could stay here for a while. We have the space.”

“If it pleases you.” Auric gave her a tender smile. He wouldn’t invite another male into his mate’s space unless she approved. She’d be bedding down soon to rest for the last months of her pregnancy, exhausted by the needs of the growing child.

Phaeron masked his discomfort with a sip of broth. “I don’t mean to impose, especially not at a delicate time.”

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