Ivory lay on the bed, her eye locked on the silver spiraling patterns above—the valor architecture. It was a purposefully calming structure: the wide walls, the dark, embracing hues, and the dim light raying from the wall bases. All of this ca together and lulled her into a sleep, urging dim acceptance.
She turned to the bedside, feeling the bulge of the erelt within her bosom. I need to bathe first, Ivory thought, but knew herself drained of both ntal and physical energies. Miralin and Nail had seen to that.
Here, she was a tattered thing—too weak to defend itself in case of violence. What if that assailant took the ti to co? Of course, her room had been cleaned of the supposed white paint and reinforced with casting. Even the very air slled of deep purification and filtration.
Two eiyas floated on both sides of the bed—what purpose that served, she didn't know. One was enough. Two was an unnecessary indulgence. If one could be destroyed, what stopped two?
She closed her eyes, accepting the calmness the room pressed within her. Paint? A laughable thing. She, for the first ti, had cast, and instead of the symbol of the clan, she perford the act of the dreamShaper.
I wonder if Mother has pieced this together. Ivory knew. She had refused it in the deepest parts of her mind, but there was no denying it. If ever she were to beco a caster, the dreamShaper was the presumption.
She gritted. This was the sa as the non-caster: a dreamShaper. Ah, what the wolves would do to use this as a frailty in her legitimacy. Of course, not being within an order did not cancel her right; nothing did. But as a thing done in countless repetition, a highness was ant to embody the order of her clan. Not another... worse, it was that of the fools.
Mist it!
She closed her eyes, a self-imposed defiance. She was sleep-deprived, yes, but mist it! Everything else slipped away from her. Even the desired casting showed a more brutal reality.
What now? she thought. Must I pray I never snap into my power? Tears stread down her face. I hate this. I hate all of it.
Ivory walked in a vast darkness—lightless, yet perceived by so sense of hers. Which was it? Not sound, not sight, yet she registered the eerie space. Where am I?
She walked on all sides. Not exactly. There was no sense of direction; just self-movent.
There was no expulsion of sound, she noted. She jumped to prove it, scread, but heard nothing outside her internal thought. More so, she realized her innermost awareness seed weakened. Processes did not go into those deeper ditations.
"Where?"
A light faded into the distance--a ring of brilliant white burning ages away. So beautiful, it felt to behold, and she, for no clear reason, ran towards it. Sohow, she knew, there, in that light, was the answer to the darkness. An adversary of the blackness.
"Wait!"
"I'm coming!"
"Can you hear ?"
"Wait!"
There was a sudden pause in the air. Did it hear her? The light turned, and Ivory saw a face before it. A man, dressed in a form-twisting sleek coat.
"I am!"
And the whiteness surged out, burning through the darkness in an abrupt burst of pure radiance. Like a veil uncovered. Brightening, an unexpected charge that required ocular adjustnt. Now, she was in the light, standing. The floor, a spread of solid white, like that of chalk.
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"Where?"
She looked ahead, then saw a castle of towering spires and large proportions. Dark, vast, and angular. It lood over the white overhead, partially hidden within it. Windows—if they were windows—stared outward with such darkness it seed a husk of an eye. Sohow, she knew. Even superimposed with the magnificence of the valor castle, a thing built by n, this one—this was surely not. She felt her perception drifting. There was an internal resistance to that, yet she found her gaze averted. Over and over, just to lose interest before it.
A symbol? A brief conclusion ca.
That man was before the castle, standing laterally, watching a distance. She tried to trace his gaze but found herself drawn to him. His majesty. His form was certainly indistinct—faint, and unclear.
His body was like a thing of changing lines, static in flash whiteness. Darkly clothed, certainly. She felt her mind warming from observation. Instinct ca, and she lowered her eyes.
Do not look at him—the warning was clear.
"Who are you?" She found the words, self-surprising.
"I am," he said simply in a clear tone. A baritone of excellent purity.
"What am I doing here?"
Silence, then. "You called ."
"I did? How?"
"A connection now exists; that's all that matters." Ivory sensed an annoyance in his tones. She tried passing this through the necessary ntal sifting. No outco. She now endured a dull brain. Who was this? She chose then to glean that data.
"What is this place?"
"Your dream."
A veilCounsel? she thought. A powerful one, at least, to be able to again break through the already modified defenses. He also does not even seem to care about discovery.
"What do you want?" she asked.
Again, he chose silence.
"Are you trapping here?" A question too direct, Ivory noted, but knew the need.
"No." He said, glancing at her. Ivory knew this by the chill through her flesh. This was a dangerous being.
"You hard my Ar—Aspect."
Ivory perked at that one. It was a weirdly specified word. A sudden change from what he had planned to say. Ar—Avatar? The elmiren? That chill charged her senses. There was an implied plurality to his words. Aspects? More than one. A multi-Avatared caster. Beyond a redeer, beyond the sacred?
Dread ca upon her. Do not show it. Do not endure the fear—the trait of the beasts. She mustered herself. "It ca unannounced. To attack a high heir required the sa."
"Did it truly attack you?"
Again, the cold. Ivory experienced an urgent litany to the Almighty. Her self-created conditioning battled against the mind-killer and weakened to its assault. Did the Aspect attack ? No. I did. It spoke, and I attacked.
Of course, her right to such actions was justified when the context of that mont was recalled. She was in danger, false or not, she was. A justified attack. Question: Did the damage to the Elmiren admit to him of her threat? Would he harm based on that?
She said, "I believed it would."
Ivory felt the piercing quality of his gaze. "It did not an to harm you."
She accepted his words; there was no option regardless. He said, "But again, you had called to ."
"The sa before?"
"The sa before."
Ivory quelled the growing curiosity and instead delved into the collection of mories. In them was an answer, she knew it. The symbols were an odd thing, a strange construct within Enor. The castWarers can attest to it. Its rules are in an inconstant state. Events happened for no reason—chance encounters, suddenness with no visual or logical flow. It is known to be an effect—likely by the fallen, who knew.
In that, there was every reason her encounter with this man—this thing—was an outco of such a fickle state. The symbols were unpredictable enough. Her mind went back to the early monts. It started with a dream—no, Ivory paused. It started with the Erelt.
A ware ant to allow casting. Was the outco triggered by it? Or sothing else? All things are symbols, and the symbols themselves can and are events. Did she then desire this? Want made event?
She tested. "Can you make a caster?"
There was a pause. Ivory sensed his attention outward. What was he doing—
"Yes!"
She trembled. There was no deception in the answer—just that sa clear purity. An unnerving realization. He could do it! She marshaled all her training to quell the frenetic desires. The answer was a thing that spoke of loftier origins. None could do this—not saints, not the fabled half-mortals. None. Of course, the theocracy preached that caster power ca from the Almighty, and this partly was the ans they controlled the darkCrowns.
He could do it!
Ivory felt her thoughts scattering—she called them, declared the order for unity. There was none. The words, they were like the fire of whiteTrumpet—utterly destructive. How was one to endure the excitation of those words? It was like a man born blind being told his sight could be returned.
No, even that was not an adequate comparison. Nothing was. The impact sensation was torrid enough to deserve the previously learned breathing: through the nose and out the mouth.
He could do it!
The recalling of his words burned the excitent like propellant to kindling. Scintillating. She breathed, hearing it like a rush of wind. Calmness was needed. Now, more than ever. This man—this thing—claid sothing greater than the caster. Was he? Aspect. Did that an not the Elmiran but the Almighty?
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