She’s… pushing time forward, drawing night to us, until Aslendrix is overhead.
It is not a full moon, yet her glow sparkles in the newly darkened sky, and a sense of majesty cloaks us.
“I see you have been marked by my brother.”
My lungs freeze, and my palms turn clammy as I hear a voice on the air, stronger than the whispers of the forest, and there is familiarity in it.
“Aslendrix?” Fear trickles through my veins, and my mind rushes to think of all my actions over the past few weeks.
Novandia’s magic. Using my power. Stealing power.
“Hush, there is no need to fear.”
“Really, I’d beg to differ,” I say in defiance.
“Have I not helped guide you? In your darkest times?”
The fight in me softens as I remember the times I wondered if she had come to me. Those fleeting glimpses. Moments.
“What has happened to my magic?” I ask.
“Is that the question you yearn to answer first?”
I think about the other questions gathered. The ones that won’t rest, but hasn’t the Maker pointed me in the right direction for those?
I nod.
“Your magic is in a state of flux. Both Novandia’s influence and mine. You are the first.”
“The first?” I thought my brother was the first.
“The result of what the Usher did, exposing you to Novandia through the gap of my spell, was enough. My brother and I don’t agree, and our magics repel one another.” I think of the interactions with Fenix, and how our magics wouldn’t mix. Not like the natural flow of energy I was used to. “But our powers are celestial born, and don’t bend to the whims of mortals quite like he wants, and his experiments haven’t quite worked out for him. Not in the way he intended, at least.”
“My brother?—”
“—Isn’t like you. The Usher saw to that. He didn’t have a Transference. He is only half of what hecouldbe.”
“And I am… both?”
“Perhaps. You always had the potential. You are the possibility. That is what a Fifth is, at the heart. A possibility of all my magic. To do good, to do bad, if you want to adopt your simplified view as you did when talking with my daughter.”
The Maker was right.
“And what about my parents? Why two Fifths?”
“That was my brother’s interference, and not my intention. The power needed to keep my brother contained has its own limits. He is quick to exploit the natural eclipse of my magic to his advantage. But with your parents, it was a happy accident. I choose to see it like that, even with the consequences. And I cannot predict or meddle with affairs of the heart. Their love, in many ways, overruled every possibility to them.”
“What do you mean?”
“They chose to follow their hearts, even knowing that it would bring them pain. They had other options to them, but they wanted to make a stand. Their power turned inward. They stopped seeing the balance that all my magic must have. The checks and balances I have ensured for centuries so as not to unleash something or someone like the Usher.”
“You’ve failed then. Because I’ve seen what he wants, and it is to rule you, Novandia—everyone.” I let my pain edge into rage and take over at the sheer naivety of her words. She is our Goddess, and she didn’t foresee this? “You let this happen. You took them away from me. From Fenix. This is all your fault,” I scream at the sky, at the moon, at the stars.
And for a second, there is silence.
“Maybe. Or maybe, I blessed the wrong people with my gift.”
“Maybe people don’t like being told what path their life will travel based on who you bless or don’t.”
