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rainbowfic2025-03-08 09:05 pm
thisbluespirit) wrote in rainbowfic2025-03-08 09:05 pm
Beet Red #6; Warm Heart #11 [Starfall]
Name: open the wild inside
Story: Starfall
Colors: Beet Red #6 (Harder they fall); Warm Heart #11 (Torn)
Supplies and Styles: Sculpture + Canvas + Chiaroscuro + Giftwrap
Word Count: 3076
Rating: Teen
Warnings: Mind control, illness, manipulation.
Notes: 1306, Portcallan. Leion Valerno/Atino Barra, Donn Chiulder, Tana Veldiner, Aima Beconil, Tessine Hyan, Tam Jadinor. More of the backstory Leion won't talk about. Sculpture as this builds up on what happens before/after Bedazzled (a Colour of the Day piece, which I re-edited into this one.) Giftwrap because it's set around the Sea Festival.
Summary: Leion goes undercover to prove his stepfather wrong and nearly loses his mind.
Leion turned over on the dusty boards, shivering and sweating; thoughts running in every possible direction at once. The thing he kept coming back to, the one vivid red thread through it all, was Chiulder's presence in his mind until this point—so clear now that he had stopped and seen it. Nausea rose in him again. He pressed the back of an unsteady hand to his lips, but this time he managed not to actually retch at the memory of the alien intrusion.
Where was he now? How had he got here? Leion closed his eyes, his head aching. He had to think, to put everything back into order, but there were knife-stabs in his head every time he tried.
He remembered Aima, screaming. Pain stabbed through his head; another short wave of nausea close behind it. Aima had seen through Chiulder's words, the same as Leion, but she had shattered in front of him; beyond repair.
Leion pressed the heel of his hand against his forehead, his skin hot to the touch, and gulped back tears that came nonetheless. The light in this attic room, even dim and filtered through the roof as it was, proved too much to bear. His memory was broken and pieces were missing, scrabble for them as he might. He might as well have been six again, crying in the night for Mother, Tam, Arna, Seahra—someone, anyone.
The thought of his family immediately restored some measure of self. Leion wiped his tears away roughly, and pulled himself up into a sitting position, his back against a small pile of wooden boxes; empty crates that had been shoved up here for storage at some point. A light summer jacket was lying beside him. His. Leion snatched it up and held it against him.
"Think," he said under his breath. "Remember what's real."
He had to sort his mind back into linear order—everything that had happened since the first day of the Sea Festival. He must separate out the truth from the lies he had been fed. They were poison, clouding his vision and sending fire through his veins until he was left lying here, throwing up his guts and incapable of thinking straight.
Leion leant more heavily against the wooden boxes and they shifted behind him, sliding back into the wall, not quite heavy enough to support him. He resettled himself, pulling his knees up against his chest, and cast his jacket over his legs.
Start at the simplest level: he was in a house that was not his own. It was hot, despite the way intermittent waves of cold drew shivers from him. Late afternoon sunshine filtered through; dust motes floating in malt-hued light. The floorboards were warm underneath him. It was summer still—it couldn't be that long after the Sea Festival, and he could remember that.
That was where it had begun.
Leion had no idea where his stepfather had picked up this ridiculous idea about the younger members of some of Portcallan's most elite families. Those he knew were often annoying, it was true, and some of them were fully obnoxious, but they never talked about anything as worthy as investigating the relationship between starstone and affinity. Which, apparently, even though it sounded like it ought to be a good thing, Tam said was only going to wind up with people getting hurt.
Leion had taken up with Atino Barra and his set, mainly to prove Tam wrong. Nobody had talked about the Powers, and Leion would have given up already if he hadn't enjoyed irritating Mother and Tam every time he mentioned his new set of friends. Well, but for that and one or two other things.
"You said you weren't spying for anyone," Tam said, cornering him as he headed for the door out of the family home. "So, what is this about?"
Leion shrugged. "Ignoring your stupid prejudices and having fun with people who actually know what the word means."
"If you aren't keeping an eye on them—and that only with caution, Leio—then you should steer clear of them."
"I like them," Leion told him. It wasn't completely a lie, because he did, at least some of them—he always had—and it was good to be out of the earnest atmosphere that often pervaded his parents' circle. Everybody they knew seemed to work in law and order or the government, and many of them were far more alarming than any Hyan, Ylie, or Barra or even an Allin.
When the summer ended, Leion was going to study for the first year of a law course himself, and what had begun out of a mix of curiosity—what if Tam's suspicions were true?—and sheer perversity became the escape he'd been desperately seeking since the spring.
Leion had been to a dozen parties so far and no one had said a word about starstone, the Powers, affinity or anything of that sort. Tam was barking up the wrong tree. These people had everything. Why would they waste their time seeking visions in lightstone or trying to induce vague dreams of a future they didn't need to worry about? They were a frivolous bunch, really—but for one summer Leion was happy to tag along with them when they let him. They never nagged him about how wrong all his life choices were, and they didn't care if he had any abilities to waste or not. One or two of them even deigned to notice him now and then.
Like Atino Barra.
"You're not listening to me," said Tam. He heaved another of the world-weary sighs he kept practising on Leion lately. "Well. You're past old enough to make your own mistakes. I can't stop you. Just don't do anything too stupid, that's all I ask."
"As if I would."
Tam gave him a hard stare, but evidently decided that didn't even warrant a response. Leion appreciated his restraint.
Funnily enough, on the evening after he and Tam had that little talk, Atino suddenly turned around and did ask Leion about his future. It was the first night of Portcallan's big annual Sea Festival, and a group of them were standing around under the bright tinted lanterns and long, thin strips of paper and fabric that had been hung from lines tied to the tree branches—all in sea shades of blue, green, silver and white as they fluttered and flapped overhead in the warm, sand-edged breeze.
"You," Atino said, stopping in front of him, "what do you want to be?"
Leion pulled back. "Wish I knew."
Atino met his gaze, dark eyes glinting. His mouth curved into a smile. "Want a nudge in the right direction?"
"You're offering?" Leion's heart beat fast. His fingers were sticky against his glass of something the vendor had called sea spirit and that had an unnatural blue tint to it. That sounded like a line to him. He'd been hanging around, desperately waiting for this. His heart beat faster.
Atino grinned. "I am," he said, but he turned to take in everyone else around them, which wasn't what Leion had hoped. "I can show you what you really are. All of you. If you're interesting. Dull souls I can't help."
"You're so full of yourself," said Tana, one of the girls—Tess and Aima's friend, Leion thought she was. She was tall, pale-skinned, with blonde hair tied back from her face.
Atino advanced on her. "Ah, a sceptic." He raised his glass, spilling some of his wine onto Aima in the crush of people. "Wouldn't you rather walk around with your eyes open than closed? I can show you how, if you're willing to listen."
Tess giggled, and Aima caught her arm, brown eyes open wide.
"Going to make us scowl into lightstone till we see something?" said Leion. His mouth dried. Was this the nonsense that had worried Tam? But Atino wouldn't do anything the Guardians of the Peace would have to investigate. That was impossible. He didn't do anything that took that much effort.
Atino swung back towards Leion and put a hand to his chest. "Better than that," he said, grinning into his face. "But, of course, if you and Tana don't want to come, you don't have to. Who's with me? Aima, Tess, Jez -?"
"I am," said Leion.
Up in the attic, he groaned. He had no excuse for himself. Tam had told him what to look out for and there it had been, shoved right in front of him, and he'd gone along with it anyway.
The right thing to do had been to make his excuses and tell Tam later. Why he'd done exactly the worst possible thing, perhaps just because it had been the worst possible thing to do, he couldn't explain even to himself. Sometimes there was a fatal attraction in that, like wanting to put your hand in the flames, even though you knew it would singe your fingers.
But then he had been a bit drunk, and Atino made him catch his breath every time he came too near—and he was so sick of law and order.
Leion followed the others, wading in a line through shallow sea water to the entrance of a small cave that was tucked away in a fold in the cliff. Once inside, they made their way along a narrow rock ledge towards the back. Occasional bright pieces of starstone studded into the cave wall reflected and fractured light on the outgoing waves. Leion had drunk more than he realised; it dizzied him. Or maybe that was only the company and the festival air. Whatever the cause, Leion walked an unreal path; led enchanted into an otherworld somewhere beyond the Boundary.
“Told you I'd show you something,” Atino said, catching Leion's hand and pulling him on when he fell behind. His face was shadowed in gloom, but when he turned round to check everyone was following, pale light caught on his features, and he seemed to shine like the points of starstone in his assurance. “This way – watch your step, Valerno!”
Once they got to the end of the cave, there was a long, dark stretch of tunnel ahead. Leion hung onto Atino’s arm, and, immediately behind Leion, Tess gripped his other hand. Leion splashed in and out of small pools of water, unsure of the way over what proved to be uneven, slippery rock, but the others following only laughed. Most of them had clearly been this way before.
Tess bumped up against Leion's back. Her clothes and skin were damp from sea spray but her body heat burned through. “He’s only showing off," she said, keeping close. "We could have got here by going through the town, like normal people.”
“We have to come by way of the sea tonight,” Atino insisted. He tugged at Leion again. Every time he did, it was hard for Leion to breathe, let alone think straight. Leion wished he knew what Atino wanted. He'd hoped that he was after some fun and heading somewhere more private, but it was growing clearer by the minute that he really had meant the semi-religious stuff he'd been spouting earlier.
They started up a set of stairs hewn into the rock that, as they carried on upwards, became first stone steps, leading up into and out of a basement, and finally a wooden staircase, up through a building. Atino led them at a pace that left Tess gasping. Leion slowed to put an arm round her, helping her onward. It must have been three hundred steps or more from the bottom, and that on top of the walk down to the sea from the festival green, and back up through the cave and tunnel. They must have doubled back on themselves until they were within the city walls again. Tess had been right: Atino had taken them the long way round to dazzle and confuse them.
“I wish you wouldn’t be so silly,” Tess huffed, but Atino was too far ahead to hear.
Leion gritted his teeth, determined to appear as undaunted as Atino as he climbed the last few steps.
“Here,” Atino said, leaping lightly up onto a long landing at the top. He turned his head to grin at Leion, and then led them on through a narrow door into a room lined with shelves that were filled with boxes, bottles and raw lumps of various kinds of starstone that glittered in the lightstone lamps.
A middle-aged man, thin, pale-skinned and sandy-haired, was waiting for them, as were three of the others they'd left at the festival. They had evidently known what they’d be in for if they went down to the beach and gone the short way round instead. The older man was a stranger to Leion, although he was dressed in light blue and green festival robes, rather like Tana's. The rest of them were sporting similar colours in the spirit of the occasion, but they wore lighter clothes—shirts, thin trousers or skirts, or dresses.
Leion's gaze strayed over the collection of artefacts that surrounded them with unease. “Isn’t this messing about with things that should be left to – I don’t know – the proper people? Priests, scholars, you know.”
Atino rolled his eyes and clapped his hand on Leion’s shoulder. He pulled him further into the room, laughing—and everyone else seemed to be giggling at him too. Leion tugged away from him, his face flushed, and inadvertently knocked into Tess, standing behind him.
“Yes, yes, we all know whose son you are,” said Atino. "Didn't you tell me you wanted to escape—to find out who you really are? Well, that's what I'm offering. Not scared, are you?"
There was starstone everywhere around Leion, of all different kinds, both polished gems and artefacts, with facets that flamed and darkened in turn whenever Leion shifted his position, and roughly-hewn pieces of ore. He knew some types of starstone were used to power artificiary as well as for spiritual purposes, but he had never thought of the raw article as noticeably giving off energy before. Here, he felt it, right through him. There was a sense of static in the air, and his hair slowly stood up, strand by strand.
“Where’s the flask?” Atino called to someone behind Leion. Jez Wardern, in a gauzy, silver-threaded shirt and thin green trousers, pushed past Leion and passed the item to Atino.
Atino took it in his hands as if it was some kind of sacred chalice, and then poured water into a basin on a plinth at the centre of the room. Leion could see the sand and grit settling at the bottom of the bowl. It was only ordinary sea water. Atino held up a hand and winked, as if to say, wait for it—the real trick is coming. He pulled a knife with a white hilt and a steel blade out from inside his jacket, and then lowered the blade into the water, where it dissolved into silver ripples across the surface.
“Now,” said Atino to Leion. “How did I do that?”
Leion folded his arms. “I don’t know. Some trick – maybe the blade’s made of something soluble?” If they wanted him to gasp and fall to his knees, he was cursed if he was doing that. Not yet anyway.
“No, it isn’t,” Atino said. “But that’s the thing. You don't know, do you? It's a Sharan knife—it's complicated. And the world is full of things like this—if we don’t try and understand them, how will anyone learn?”
Leion stared down at the water in the bowl. It was still again, but silver-white images formed on the surface. A shiver ran through him. He leant forward and rested one hand on the side of the basin. He brushed the other through his hair, leaving it standing up in tufts. It was late, and all he'd been planning on was partying at the festival. He didn't want to deal with mystical questions at this hour. He felt like three people, not one – the first Leion was his mother’s son, Tam’s stepson; the voice in his head who kept warning him that Atino might be lying, and even if he wasn't, why should this group of people hardly any older than him be taking it upon themselves to tackle this, as if no one else had ever thought of it before? Why, lawful-Leion wanted to know, didn’t they take it to one of a priest or scholar instead?
The second was an easy-going Leion who would have preferred not to know about any of it and didn't really think any of it mattered that much. It was all very pretty and amusing—so was Atino, so was Tess. Why did they want him to decide things? He was trying to avoid troublesome things like decisions. That was the whole point of this.
Then there was the last Leion, the one who was only here because of all the things he didn't want to be; flooded with resentment at people trying to make him study law, spy on people, or join in their dangerous games. I won’t was all that Leion had to say to anyone.
He shrugged away the conflicting voices in his head, and dipped his fingers into the water, as if to find the answers there, while Tess and the others laughed about something. Maybe it was him. He swallowed and closed his eyes.
“Chiulder,” said Atino, to the older man. “Why don’t you tell him?”
Chiulder shot Atino a nervous look, but took a deep breath and started talking. He was surprisingly convincing, explaining to Leion that people ought to know these things, and how they studied them in High Eisterland; that it was absurd for Emoyrans not to follow their example. It was all so reasonable that all three Leions came together and agreed with him. His words flowed over him like waves, cold and clear, washing away his objections.
“I see,” Leion said, and nodded. For a moment, everything finally seemed to make sense, the way it never had before.
Atino gave him a light, congratulatory push and Tess kissed his arm through his light shirt sleeve. Everyone else laughed again; Leion grinned back at them in relief.
One way or another, he had done it. He was in.
Story: Starfall
Colors: Beet Red #6 (Harder they fall); Warm Heart #11 (Torn)
Supplies and Styles: Sculpture + Canvas + Chiaroscuro + Giftwrap
Word Count: 3076
Rating: Teen
Warnings: Mind control, illness, manipulation.
Notes: 1306, Portcallan. Leion Valerno/Atino Barra, Donn Chiulder, Tana Veldiner, Aima Beconil, Tessine Hyan, Tam Jadinor. More of the backstory Leion won't talk about. Sculpture as this builds up on what happens before/after Bedazzled (a Colour of the Day piece, which I re-edited into this one.) Giftwrap because it's set around the Sea Festival.
Summary: Leion goes undercover to prove his stepfather wrong and nearly loses his mind.
Leion turned over on the dusty boards, shivering and sweating; thoughts running in every possible direction at once. The thing he kept coming back to, the one vivid red thread through it all, was Chiulder's presence in his mind until this point—so clear now that he had stopped and seen it. Nausea rose in him again. He pressed the back of an unsteady hand to his lips, but this time he managed not to actually retch at the memory of the alien intrusion.
Where was he now? How had he got here? Leion closed his eyes, his head aching. He had to think, to put everything back into order, but there were knife-stabs in his head every time he tried.
He remembered Aima, screaming. Pain stabbed through his head; another short wave of nausea close behind it. Aima had seen through Chiulder's words, the same as Leion, but she had shattered in front of him; beyond repair.
Leion pressed the heel of his hand against his forehead, his skin hot to the touch, and gulped back tears that came nonetheless. The light in this attic room, even dim and filtered through the roof as it was, proved too much to bear. His memory was broken and pieces were missing, scrabble for them as he might. He might as well have been six again, crying in the night for Mother, Tam, Arna, Seahra—someone, anyone.
The thought of his family immediately restored some measure of self. Leion wiped his tears away roughly, and pulled himself up into a sitting position, his back against a small pile of wooden boxes; empty crates that had been shoved up here for storage at some point. A light summer jacket was lying beside him. His. Leion snatched it up and held it against him.
"Think," he said under his breath. "Remember what's real."
He had to sort his mind back into linear order—everything that had happened since the first day of the Sea Festival. He must separate out the truth from the lies he had been fed. They were poison, clouding his vision and sending fire through his veins until he was left lying here, throwing up his guts and incapable of thinking straight.
Leion leant more heavily against the wooden boxes and they shifted behind him, sliding back into the wall, not quite heavy enough to support him. He resettled himself, pulling his knees up against his chest, and cast his jacket over his legs.
Start at the simplest level: he was in a house that was not his own. It was hot, despite the way intermittent waves of cold drew shivers from him. Late afternoon sunshine filtered through; dust motes floating in malt-hued light. The floorboards were warm underneath him. It was summer still—it couldn't be that long after the Sea Festival, and he could remember that.
That was where it had begun.
Leion had no idea where his stepfather had picked up this ridiculous idea about the younger members of some of Portcallan's most elite families. Those he knew were often annoying, it was true, and some of them were fully obnoxious, but they never talked about anything as worthy as investigating the relationship between starstone and affinity. Which, apparently, even though it sounded like it ought to be a good thing, Tam said was only going to wind up with people getting hurt.
Leion had taken up with Atino Barra and his set, mainly to prove Tam wrong. Nobody had talked about the Powers, and Leion would have given up already if he hadn't enjoyed irritating Mother and Tam every time he mentioned his new set of friends. Well, but for that and one or two other things.
"You said you weren't spying for anyone," Tam said, cornering him as he headed for the door out of the family home. "So, what is this about?"
Leion shrugged. "Ignoring your stupid prejudices and having fun with people who actually know what the word means."
"If you aren't keeping an eye on them—and that only with caution, Leio—then you should steer clear of them."
"I like them," Leion told him. It wasn't completely a lie, because he did, at least some of them—he always had—and it was good to be out of the earnest atmosphere that often pervaded his parents' circle. Everybody they knew seemed to work in law and order or the government, and many of them were far more alarming than any Hyan, Ylie, or Barra or even an Allin.
When the summer ended, Leion was going to study for the first year of a law course himself, and what had begun out of a mix of curiosity—what if Tam's suspicions were true?—and sheer perversity became the escape he'd been desperately seeking since the spring.
Leion had been to a dozen parties so far and no one had said a word about starstone, the Powers, affinity or anything of that sort. Tam was barking up the wrong tree. These people had everything. Why would they waste their time seeking visions in lightstone or trying to induce vague dreams of a future they didn't need to worry about? They were a frivolous bunch, really—but for one summer Leion was happy to tag along with them when they let him. They never nagged him about how wrong all his life choices were, and they didn't care if he had any abilities to waste or not. One or two of them even deigned to notice him now and then.
Like Atino Barra.
"You're not listening to me," said Tam. He heaved another of the world-weary sighs he kept practising on Leion lately. "Well. You're past old enough to make your own mistakes. I can't stop you. Just don't do anything too stupid, that's all I ask."
"As if I would."
Tam gave him a hard stare, but evidently decided that didn't even warrant a response. Leion appreciated his restraint.
Funnily enough, on the evening after he and Tam had that little talk, Atino suddenly turned around and did ask Leion about his future. It was the first night of Portcallan's big annual Sea Festival, and a group of them were standing around under the bright tinted lanterns and long, thin strips of paper and fabric that had been hung from lines tied to the tree branches—all in sea shades of blue, green, silver and white as they fluttered and flapped overhead in the warm, sand-edged breeze.
"You," Atino said, stopping in front of him, "what do you want to be?"
Leion pulled back. "Wish I knew."
Atino met his gaze, dark eyes glinting. His mouth curved into a smile. "Want a nudge in the right direction?"
"You're offering?" Leion's heart beat fast. His fingers were sticky against his glass of something the vendor had called sea spirit and that had an unnatural blue tint to it. That sounded like a line to him. He'd been hanging around, desperately waiting for this. His heart beat faster.
Atino grinned. "I am," he said, but he turned to take in everyone else around them, which wasn't what Leion had hoped. "I can show you what you really are. All of you. If you're interesting. Dull souls I can't help."
"You're so full of yourself," said Tana, one of the girls—Tess and Aima's friend, Leion thought she was. She was tall, pale-skinned, with blonde hair tied back from her face.
Atino advanced on her. "Ah, a sceptic." He raised his glass, spilling some of his wine onto Aima in the crush of people. "Wouldn't you rather walk around with your eyes open than closed? I can show you how, if you're willing to listen."
Tess giggled, and Aima caught her arm, brown eyes open wide.
"Going to make us scowl into lightstone till we see something?" said Leion. His mouth dried. Was this the nonsense that had worried Tam? But Atino wouldn't do anything the Guardians of the Peace would have to investigate. That was impossible. He didn't do anything that took that much effort.
Atino swung back towards Leion and put a hand to his chest. "Better than that," he said, grinning into his face. "But, of course, if you and Tana don't want to come, you don't have to. Who's with me? Aima, Tess, Jez -?"
"I am," said Leion.
Up in the attic, he groaned. He had no excuse for himself. Tam had told him what to look out for and there it had been, shoved right in front of him, and he'd gone along with it anyway.
The right thing to do had been to make his excuses and tell Tam later. Why he'd done exactly the worst possible thing, perhaps just because it had been the worst possible thing to do, he couldn't explain even to himself. Sometimes there was a fatal attraction in that, like wanting to put your hand in the flames, even though you knew it would singe your fingers.
But then he had been a bit drunk, and Atino made him catch his breath every time he came too near—and he was so sick of law and order.
Leion followed the others, wading in a line through shallow sea water to the entrance of a small cave that was tucked away in a fold in the cliff. Once inside, they made their way along a narrow rock ledge towards the back. Occasional bright pieces of starstone studded into the cave wall reflected and fractured light on the outgoing waves. Leion had drunk more than he realised; it dizzied him. Or maybe that was only the company and the festival air. Whatever the cause, Leion walked an unreal path; led enchanted into an otherworld somewhere beyond the Boundary.
“Told you I'd show you something,” Atino said, catching Leion's hand and pulling him on when he fell behind. His face was shadowed in gloom, but when he turned round to check everyone was following, pale light caught on his features, and he seemed to shine like the points of starstone in his assurance. “This way – watch your step, Valerno!”
Once they got to the end of the cave, there was a long, dark stretch of tunnel ahead. Leion hung onto Atino’s arm, and, immediately behind Leion, Tess gripped his other hand. Leion splashed in and out of small pools of water, unsure of the way over what proved to be uneven, slippery rock, but the others following only laughed. Most of them had clearly been this way before.
Tess bumped up against Leion's back. Her clothes and skin were damp from sea spray but her body heat burned through. “He’s only showing off," she said, keeping close. "We could have got here by going through the town, like normal people.”
“We have to come by way of the sea tonight,” Atino insisted. He tugged at Leion again. Every time he did, it was hard for Leion to breathe, let alone think straight. Leion wished he knew what Atino wanted. He'd hoped that he was after some fun and heading somewhere more private, but it was growing clearer by the minute that he really had meant the semi-religious stuff he'd been spouting earlier.
They started up a set of stairs hewn into the rock that, as they carried on upwards, became first stone steps, leading up into and out of a basement, and finally a wooden staircase, up through a building. Atino led them at a pace that left Tess gasping. Leion slowed to put an arm round her, helping her onward. It must have been three hundred steps or more from the bottom, and that on top of the walk down to the sea from the festival green, and back up through the cave and tunnel. They must have doubled back on themselves until they were within the city walls again. Tess had been right: Atino had taken them the long way round to dazzle and confuse them.
“I wish you wouldn’t be so silly,” Tess huffed, but Atino was too far ahead to hear.
Leion gritted his teeth, determined to appear as undaunted as Atino as he climbed the last few steps.
“Here,” Atino said, leaping lightly up onto a long landing at the top. He turned his head to grin at Leion, and then led them on through a narrow door into a room lined with shelves that were filled with boxes, bottles and raw lumps of various kinds of starstone that glittered in the lightstone lamps.
A middle-aged man, thin, pale-skinned and sandy-haired, was waiting for them, as were three of the others they'd left at the festival. They had evidently known what they’d be in for if they went down to the beach and gone the short way round instead. The older man was a stranger to Leion, although he was dressed in light blue and green festival robes, rather like Tana's. The rest of them were sporting similar colours in the spirit of the occasion, but they wore lighter clothes—shirts, thin trousers or skirts, or dresses.
Leion's gaze strayed over the collection of artefacts that surrounded them with unease. “Isn’t this messing about with things that should be left to – I don’t know – the proper people? Priests, scholars, you know.”
Atino rolled his eyes and clapped his hand on Leion’s shoulder. He pulled him further into the room, laughing—and everyone else seemed to be giggling at him too. Leion tugged away from him, his face flushed, and inadvertently knocked into Tess, standing behind him.
“Yes, yes, we all know whose son you are,” said Atino. "Didn't you tell me you wanted to escape—to find out who you really are? Well, that's what I'm offering. Not scared, are you?"
There was starstone everywhere around Leion, of all different kinds, both polished gems and artefacts, with facets that flamed and darkened in turn whenever Leion shifted his position, and roughly-hewn pieces of ore. He knew some types of starstone were used to power artificiary as well as for spiritual purposes, but he had never thought of the raw article as noticeably giving off energy before. Here, he felt it, right through him. There was a sense of static in the air, and his hair slowly stood up, strand by strand.
“Where’s the flask?” Atino called to someone behind Leion. Jez Wardern, in a gauzy, silver-threaded shirt and thin green trousers, pushed past Leion and passed the item to Atino.
Atino took it in his hands as if it was some kind of sacred chalice, and then poured water into a basin on a plinth at the centre of the room. Leion could see the sand and grit settling at the bottom of the bowl. It was only ordinary sea water. Atino held up a hand and winked, as if to say, wait for it—the real trick is coming. He pulled a knife with a white hilt and a steel blade out from inside his jacket, and then lowered the blade into the water, where it dissolved into silver ripples across the surface.
“Now,” said Atino to Leion. “How did I do that?”
Leion folded his arms. “I don’t know. Some trick – maybe the blade’s made of something soluble?” If they wanted him to gasp and fall to his knees, he was cursed if he was doing that. Not yet anyway.
“No, it isn’t,” Atino said. “But that’s the thing. You don't know, do you? It's a Sharan knife—it's complicated. And the world is full of things like this—if we don’t try and understand them, how will anyone learn?”
Leion stared down at the water in the bowl. It was still again, but silver-white images formed on the surface. A shiver ran through him. He leant forward and rested one hand on the side of the basin. He brushed the other through his hair, leaving it standing up in tufts. It was late, and all he'd been planning on was partying at the festival. He didn't want to deal with mystical questions at this hour. He felt like three people, not one – the first Leion was his mother’s son, Tam’s stepson; the voice in his head who kept warning him that Atino might be lying, and even if he wasn't, why should this group of people hardly any older than him be taking it upon themselves to tackle this, as if no one else had ever thought of it before? Why, lawful-Leion wanted to know, didn’t they take it to one of a priest or scholar instead?
The second was an easy-going Leion who would have preferred not to know about any of it and didn't really think any of it mattered that much. It was all very pretty and amusing—so was Atino, so was Tess. Why did they want him to decide things? He was trying to avoid troublesome things like decisions. That was the whole point of this.
Then there was the last Leion, the one who was only here because of all the things he didn't want to be; flooded with resentment at people trying to make him study law, spy on people, or join in their dangerous games. I won’t was all that Leion had to say to anyone.
He shrugged away the conflicting voices in his head, and dipped his fingers into the water, as if to find the answers there, while Tess and the others laughed about something. Maybe it was him. He swallowed and closed his eyes.
“Chiulder,” said Atino, to the older man. “Why don’t you tell him?”
Chiulder shot Atino a nervous look, but took a deep breath and started talking. He was surprisingly convincing, explaining to Leion that people ought to know these things, and how they studied them in High Eisterland; that it was absurd for Emoyrans not to follow their example. It was all so reasonable that all three Leions came together and agreed with him. His words flowed over him like waves, cold and clear, washing away his objections.
“I see,” Leion said, and nodded. For a moment, everything finally seemed to make sense, the way it never had before.
Atino gave him a light, congratulatory push and Tess kissed his arm through his light shirt sleeve. Everyone else laughed again; Leion grinned back at them in relief.
One way or another, he had done it. He was in.
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I like this rewrite.
It was all so reasonable that all three Leions came together and agreed with him. His words flowed over him like waves, cold and clear, washing away his objections.
This, too.
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Ahh, so this is where Chiulder came in. I really like this depiction of the mind control.
One thing that's slightly confusing is that at the beginning, it says
Aima had seen through Chiulder's words, the same as Leion, but she had shattered in front of him; beyond repair.
which indicates that Leion did see through the mind control, but at the end of the piece, he clearly didn't. But I guess that refers to something that happened immediately after the end of this?
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Thank you!
As to the rest, it is to be continued, don't worry! I did mean to bring the flashbacks up to the point that lands Leion in the attic here when I started writing this piece but then realised it'd be long again, and here seemed like a decent temporary stopping place - hopefully I'll get the rest done reasonably soon.
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Oh, neat! No pressure or anything, go at your own pace, but I'll definitely be interested to read the rest.
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I really like this!
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