“The first Sundering,” I said with a shrug, and her expression showed a polite interest.
“Oh? The first? I thought there was only one?”
I winced slightly at my loose tongue—I had long speculated that a second Sundering was sneaking closer, especially with the arrival of the gods. But it was still just that at this point—a theory.
“Uhm, yes. There is only one. I just was looking at the causes and events leading up to that Sundering,” I admitted.
“Anything of note you’ve found?”
I frowned slightly and narrowed my eyes. “Are you asking to be polite, or are you actually interested?”
She tilted her head, her perfectly curled light-blonde hair cascading down her shoulders to nearly rest on the floor.
“Why can’t it be both?”
My lips turned down slightly and I bobbed my head.
“Fair enough,” I admitted, and Ellowyn laughed lightly again. It was a beautiful sound. Everything about her was magnetic, and I was drawn into her orbit. “There were massive, nearly cataclysmic storms and other natural disasters, the emergenceof godlings, villages eradicated, hyper-nationalism. Those sorts of things. I was just going back to look at some of the specifics.”
“Godlings?” Ellowyn tilted her head curiously.
I nodded once, butterflies floating in my belly, both at the prospect of someone else taking interest in my research and the subject of that research.
“Yes! Godlings. They were these . . . beings. Not full-fledged gods, almost like adolescent gods? I don’t know for sure; the information is unclear. They’re only mentioned a few times in what I’ve read, and their descriptions were passing at best. But it seemed that they possessed the same type of power as the gods—could wield it in the same fashion—but they were mortal.”
“Huh. What do you mean could wield their power the same way as the gods?”
“Well, from what I’ve read”—I let the book fall to the ground next to me so I could talk with my hands—“gods had an infinite well of power to draw from with no need to refill those reserves. Godlings had the same well.”
“Ah,” Ellowyn’s face was suddenly ashen, and she twiddled with the bracelets on her wrists.
“Yeah,” I said, noticing the sudden change in her demeanor. “Uhm, but it’s all just speculation, obviously. There’s no one left alive from that time. Except for the gods, of course, and I doubt they’d be open to a conversation with me.”
Not to mention the only description I’ve found of godlings was in a book given to me by a dead Keeper.
The irony was not lost on me.
The disinterest faded from Ellowyn’s expression only to be replaced by wry amusement.
“I would imagine not,” she agreed, and silence fell between us.
“Was there something I could help you with today?” I asked, crossing my legs in front of me and leaning my elbows on my knees, hands propping up my chin.
“Oh! Yes. So Alois says that, in order to take these off”—she shook her wrist at me and the bangle softly chafed against her skin—“I need some sort of Containment Rune? Something to help keep my magic in check while I learn to control it.”
I frowned.
A Containment Rune?
I’d never seen one used that way on a human before—generally they were constructed around pieces of pasture to keep animals grazing in one area while foliage regrew in another pasture. Putting that type of rune on Ellowyn would not only be cruel, it would probably kill her, forcing her magic to bottle up with no way to release it.
The longer I stayed silent with my brow furrowed, the faster I saw Ellowyn wilt, her gaze growing dark and despondent.
She needed this; that much was clear. Keeping her barred from her magic for so long was more than barbaric at this point, and I wondered how it would affect her once she had full access again. To me, it felt like forcing the bracelets on her only made her magic wilder and untamable.
But maybe that is Lord d’Refan’s goal. But why?
I chewed my lip in thought as I pulled my personal journal from my waist belt and quickly jotted a few notes in the margins of a nearly full page. I snapped it closed and placed it back in my belt before schooling my expression.
