ADARA

Fear tore a hole in her heart as they reached the spire's entrance. No amount of sleep chased away the agitation and the crimson nightmares. Within its marble corridors, blue lamplight gave off an eerie glow in the dark maze. Every noise and smell disappeared the moment the curved door closed behind her with a rocking clang to rip apart her ears. Several corridors led into what appeared to be study rooms. One large hallway junction branched off into a spiraling staircase leading higher into the tower. She jumped away from a rolling shadow, but frowned at the wide-eyed surprise of what appeared to be a student. They shuffled off with a mumbled word she couldn't hear, disappearing into the same darkness which foretold her doom.

"I have never seen someone so scared of the tower," Yuven commented from the side. "Unless you are afraid of getting a paper-cut — you will find nothing but books in here."

Adara slammed her pace to a stop, forcing both the Storm Wardens to turn to her. "I'm sorry," she bit. "Apologies for being a little nervous at the prospect that I might be walking to my death after nearly dying to Derelicts."

Yuven shrugged. "Some would argue you're the most dangerous thing in the tower, if you wish to put it into that perspective. They fear you just as much as you fear them."

His words stung with prickled brambles against her mind. Blue tiles led them up to the door to what she could only assume was the inner sanctum. Yuven stopped short of the massive door. In her peripheral, two other cloaked individuals crawled up the tower's spiral staircase. Up into the heavens. Maddening silence crushed the corridor. No echoes of truth reverberated through empty space. Adara turned back when Yuven's feathers lowered against his head.

"If it's any consolation," he spoke up, his melodic tone dissonant from his face. Calm and disconnected with frozen emotion. "I don't enjoy this anymore than you do."

Adara crossed her arms. "You could've fooled me with that attitude of yours."

His violet gaze bore into her, sending the darker colors into an eerie reflection of a wyvern in her storybook pages. He sighed, then nodded at Fenrer before opening the door with a wave of both his hands. Wind brushed over her shoulders as they creaked on its hinges.

Moons and stars danced along a high glass mosaic, where beneath it in a reflection of the heavens, the ground they stood on. Beneath the reflection, silver liquid bubbled against its large container as it pooled into the cardinal points. Adara drew across the sky with Fenrer and Yuven. Eight white-robed priests stood at the ordinal directions. Their headdresses curled around their bodies, in the shape of a spiralling leviathan. At the back of the room, two staircases led up to four pedestals of seats.

More robed people.

High on their pedestals of power.

"Yuven Traye and Fenrer Pyren," a thundering voice spoke. "I'm assuming you have come due to finding the source of the Anima power?"

Yuven and Fenrer glanced at each-other, and Fenrer nodded. Yuven approached the silver starlit edges of glass. "We have found the Anima." He didn't bow to the shadows reigning above them.

"Have the Anima come forward to the center of the star."

Adara readied herself for never escaping the shadows, but she jumped when Yuven whipped his hand out in front of her, stopping her path to judgement. "Before we do anything, might I kindly remind you that our directive was not under your orders. Warden Commander Faehariel acknowledged your fears, but planned to assure them in lieu of more firm methods that we have dealt with in the past." He dropped his arm and came closer to the southern point. "Whatever happens here, I have been ordered to warn you that it does not change that order. We are going to take her to Euros, no matter what the Conclave decides."

"The Wardens must defer to the judgment of the Elder Convocation in terms of possibly star shattering magick," a female voice said, as cold as the last.

"It changes nothing." Yuven folded his arms as his feathers straightened against his head. "It is simply a warning. You can ignore it, or abide by it. The Wardens have not deferred to your choices since the signing of the Pact of Hundred. How you choose to interpret it is up to you, but the Wardens have already made our interpretations of the pact." Strength filled the melody as he snapped his head up to them. "In my personal opinion, I don't think you get a choice in the matter. If the Anima was as important as you say, you would have sent people after her." He swung his arm out. "In fact we could have skipped all this formality, Elder Orianna. I would argue that the convocation falls under 'political maneuvering' no matter your intentions with safeguarding magickae kind — which should also include the Anima."

Fenrer brushed the bridge of his nose.

"You are too defiant by half, Warden Traye," Elder Orianna growled with begrudging respect. "We shall see about that. What is your name, Anima?"

"My name is Adara... Sazaka."

Elder Orianna stood up on her pedestal. "Do you understand what an Anima is?"

"This is the first time I'm hearing of it."

A couple of the Elders spoke between each other, while Elder Orianna folded her arms. Beside her wispy haired companions, her dark hair marred with gray wisdom. No further words left her mouth as one of the other Elders stood up with a huff.

"So, you are to tell us you were never taught how to wield your magick?"

Adara stepped back into the shadows of Fenrer and Yuven. "Wield it? No. I was taught to control it."

"Who taught you?"

"Garren Tyronai."

Mumbled words bore through her head.

"Who are your parents?"

Faces she couldn't remember save for the moments of silver infernos. A woman, strong and proud, but gave life to a crystal to protect her daughter. Her. Nothing more than a voice which told her stories of knights in the dark.

"I don't..."

Another Elder snapped up to their feet. "How much do you know how to wield then? Do you understand the gravity of your magick reappearing in this era? Do you understand what the Anima have done in the past?"

Blood sparked with embers in her veins, and silver streaked the night sky on the floor. "I said I don't know!" she snapped up to them. "All I know is that Garren Tyronai simply taught me how to control my magick! I don't know what you're talking about!"

Elder Orianna raised her hand, and the whole hall silenced. "Thousands of Turns ago, before Storm Wardens came to being." Her gray eyes turned into steel. "The Anima sought the secrets of the sunless sea and the secrets to true immortality. In so doing, they opened a hole in the echoes, and released the Derelicts and their doom upon all the world as we know it. It split our plane, causing magick once known to us to disappear. Your magick I should say, holds memories, and can touch the flow deeper than what we can do after the appearance of Derelicts."

Her defiance fell apart on her shoulders. Into nothing but the weight of crags. "I have nothing to do with what they did in the past," she pointed out, pain tearing apart her throat. "You can't blame me for something they did. I just came from a town that got ravaged by Derelicts. I remember nothing otherwise."

Fenrer was the one to step forward. "Elders, I must inform you that about twenty or so Turns ago, the queen of Tebora gave up her life to create a powerful barrier around Adara's mind," he said, using her name, and not her magick. "Asking her these questions will get you nowhere."

Elder Orianna brought a finger up to her chin. "And you've confirmed this, Warden Pyren?"

In the haze of her inferno, Fenrer reached out his hand with nothing more than a pained smile, though he stared into the sun. Adara bit on her tongue and tried not to turn to jelly underneath the judgment of the Conclave.

"I have. I know this from communing with the crystal. I bore witness to Garren Tyronai's and Queen Seirean's ritual."

"That's not an issue," the person on the left of Elder Orianna said. "The Auro Cardinals can handle it."

Every priest stepped onto the starry dias, but Adara waved her hands at Fenrer. Yuven smirked. "I'm afraid there's a complication," Fenrer continued, and caused the nearest Cardinals to stop. "The crystal removed it, but the overflow into Adara proved too much to bear. The mental ward around her mind is no longer of the crystal's weaving. I weaved it, and only I can safely unravel it without repercussions." He stepped into the middle, followed by the silver light from sky and ground. "We came here not to seek your judgement, but to use the crystal's power at the top of the tower. In the matrix of the crystal's flow, I can safely say that her magick will not harm her or anyone else around her. We can safely remove the barrier here." He lifted his head to the pedestals, never bowing. "And I will do it." He hesitated, and turned to her. "If it is her will, as per the Auric Law — which, if it is not... even the Cardinal Auros cannot do much, even if it is by your bidding."

Yuven's smirk grew into the same wicked grin when he faced down the king and his knights.

"These are extreme circumstances."

Adara lunged forward. "Do you think I have something to hide?" she snapped. "How about the fact that you turned your back to the suffering of Tebora? Innocent magickae lives were lost. You safeguard magickae kind, but you haven't done that. Derelicts were the one that tore it to the ground, but I'm the threat you're worried about — like I'm going to go seeking the same thing the Anima of the past did?" Fire sparked in the silver sky, and embers fell along the magick haze growing from the liquid. "How would I have anything to hide if I can't remember anything?"

Yuven tsked.

"Do you have something on your mind that you would still like to share, Captain Traye?" the man who called for the Cardinals asked.

"I'm mulling over the usefulness of a law when not even those who made it can't follow through with it," Yuven said. He nodded at Fenrer, who turned back to her in full. "Go, Adara."

Adara. Adara. Adara.

Fenrer sighed, then raised his face to the same light she burned him with. "If you pour too much auric magick into her, there is nothing the crystal can do to prevent the magick explosion. By the Auric law, we are to bring no harm upon a mind which rejects an outside flow. Only through acceptance can Aurus tread the mind to see within the recesses." He dropped his gaze to her. Green galaxies swirled.

"Did you two plan this?" she whispered. No... I don't think Fenrer knew what was going to happen when he stepped within my magick's boundaries. It almost... It almost seemed like it was too hard to look at. Adara took in every moving shadow, robed or otherwise.

"Adara, I cannot read your thoughts, but listen to my voice," he said as the Auros took their cardinal points, but his voice reverberated from her own mind. "If you don't wish to do this, say so now. Yuven can figure something out, but be warned of the consequences and the thoughts of the conclave." Guilt flashed in his features as he dipped his head. "As we said, hundreds of Turns ago the old convocation had the Storm Wardens hunt down the Anima after they ripped open a hole in the world."

Adara bit down on her lip, and allowed the hush of spring to enter her mind. Tension threatened to keep her in place, but she pushed through the mosaic's growing barrier to meet Fenrer halfway, in the center of the star.

"Is this all I'll be?" she rasped so no one else but Fenrer could hear. "A monster even among my own? Was it not enough to live under a regime where I had no choice but to hide what I am? I'm spurned here because of something someone else did long before I was born?"

His brow furrowed, and he shook his head with another smile. "As I told you before, you are not a monster — and your magick is not a curse. If you have no wish for this, say so and I cannot do anything without consequence. If you are willing to trust me, I will walk you through all that you've lost within your memories. I cannot say everything will make sense after, but such as life is." His smile filled with the coming of dawn. "The mind is comfortable with things that are familiar." He brought a hand up to his chest and leaned forward. "I wish only to help, but it is your choice. No one can take that away from you, nor should they."

Every eye was on her.

Yuven raised a hand up to his crescent blade.

Trapped on all sides, death impeded on her shoulders. Adara sucked in a breath to control the overflow of water drowning her from within. Her heart slammed against her chest as the silver light intensified. "What would my memories even hold?"

"I don't know." Fenrer blinked, then held out his hands to her, but never grabbed onto her. "... but wouldn't it be interesting to find out for yourself? If you want my thoughts, you're owed that much after all your loss and pain that you've endured."

"Wouldn't it be interesting to see the rest of the world?" Jisa asked, happy and excited for a future unknown.

And would never see.

You're owed that much.

Adara reached out to his hands, settling her fingertips on his. Warmth spread throughout her arms and down her spine as the world blurred with truth and shattered realities. Starlight rose from the mosaic and a bubble shimmered around them, with the Auro priests as the anchors. I don't trust them... but I do trust you.

Her mind screamed at her to flee, but she ignored it as Fenrer guided her to sit down at the center of the star. Attention drawn to the brown band around his forearm, a black dragon twirled into a circle, with the opal flames setting it on fire. Gentle tendrils of green wrapped around her wrists, but no pain ripped her bones apart. Spring's tranquility washed away the ash and blood of before.

"And this won't hurt?" she asked, unable to look him in the eye.

"I promise, Adara."

When she looked into his eyes, the same opalescent flames met her instead of the deep, strong forest.

The world threw her back into the abyss. Her body jerked for stability. Reality shifted and changed around her, into her trembling memories as they came back into silver focus.

I promise.