Page 162 of Mother of Death and Dawn

“He broke down the barriers separating him from his magic, just as Klasto and Blif said,” Tisaanah said. “When we retrieved this.”

She placed the petrified heart on the table.

Ishqa blinked at it, utterly stunned. “This is it?” he murmured.

“Apparently so,” I said. “Not that we have any clue what it is, or does, or how we use it. That, actually, is what we were hoping you could tell us.”

“If it is an object, then it must be a conduit. An object that calls and channels the magic beneath.”

“And who made this conduit?” I asked. “Why is it a heart?”

“And whose heart is it?” Sammerin added, a little too quickly, like he’d been thinking about this question for the last two days.

“I do not think that is relevant,” Ishqa replied.

“I think it’s very relevant,” I said. “I’d like to know who is going to come haunt me because I’ve been carting around his heart.”

“It could be a her,” Tisaanah pointed out.

“Fair. His or her heart.”

“If itisa person’s heart, it would be from many thousands of years ago,” Ishqa said. “Likely from long before the initial fall and re-opening of magic a millennium ago. Whoever forged these channels did it so long ago that even my ancestors have forgotten these facets of history.” The corner of his mouth rose in a rueful, humorless smile. “Humans and Fey alike have been hungry for power they should not have for as long as we have existed. Whoever created it very well may have ended up destroying themselves with it.”

“Lovely,” I muttered.

“Which is why, however we decide to use it, we must be very careful with it,” Ishqa said.

“Maybe we shouldn’t be using it at all.” I knew too well the negative consequences of playing around with that kind of power. I had no desire to unleash another Reshaye upon the world—at least, not any more than we already had.

“If we are able to make that choice,” Tisaanah muttered.

“The important thing is that we obtained it before Caduan or Nura did. I think that is clearer than ever, after seeing what it is capable of. Little remains of what was once Niraja, and what is left is… different.”

“Different?” I asked.

“I do not know how else to describe it. I went back to the ruins after the soldiers fled, when it was quiet. The stone is… different. The marble is as clean and white as it must have been a thousand years ago. But it is uncut, as it would be when it was harvested, no longer forged into pillars and bricks but lying over the island like mountains.”

Well. That was… strange.

Tisaanah and I exchanged a glance. We’d barely been conscious down there, with no way to really know what we were doing. The whole thing felt more like a fever dream than an intentional Wielding of magic.

“I have never heard of anyone doing anything like that,” I said. “Let alone at that scale. A thing can’t just be changed into another thing.”

Tisaanah jolted, like a thought just hit her hard. “Klasto told us that there were rumored to be three types of deep magic,” she said. “One creates life, one destroys life, and one changes life.”

We all looked at the heart in the middle of the table with fresh eyes. Ishqa let out a strangled chuckle. “A mortal heart. The most fickle of things for a fickle, changing magic.”

Ascended fucking above.

“So if this magic gives us the power to… change life… what does that mean, exactly?” I said. “Could we stroll over to Caduan’s army and change them all into frogs?”

“And why stone?” Tisaanah mused, deep in thought.

“Was ‘change’ a direct translation?” Sammerin said.

Tisaanah seemed to understand immediately what Sammerin was asking. “In Old Besrithian, the word for ‘change’ only refers to… the way things change over time. Like…” She struggled to find the Aran translation.

“Evolution,” I finished.

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