The passage of time was illusory; growth came later. He had become a man.
The giants' rite of passage was different from that of the Fey. It was not merely a legal status of independence; it was a sign of power, of prowess, of survival. But... he did not remember that. His mother's face and those of his sisters were blurry. His mind harbored memories that were not his own; he hadn't lived that life before.
Or maybe I did? he thought to himself.
Words did not leave his mouth; they were simply echoes of vague memories, static images that emanated emotions rather than facts. Very different from everything he knew, very different from...
"The Sect... of the... Shadow..."
He looked, or rather, his mind materialized what seemed to be the image of a warm face. He couldn't distinguish it, couldn't preserve that image in his memory, as if it were something that had never existed.
"I never had a mother," he murmured.
But a voice challenged him from the darkness: "Everyone has a mother, Ducanor. Even abandoned children."
He refused to listen. He had to... he had to wake up. This wasn't real. He knew it.
It wasn't a simple illusion; it was a mirage, like those in which men get lost in the frozen mountains.
His mind darkened. His vision shifted again toward a dark, labyrinthine space. There was no direction or guide. The illusion of what had been his home crumbled; the inconsistencies had appeared too quickly. The lack of real memories made it difficult to sustain a fictitious home, no matter how much his inner self yearned for it.
Now everything had changed. He felt his mind dulled and dizzy, as if an ice needle had pierced his eye to touch his brain. He knew something was wrong, but he couldn't escape. How do you wake up from a dream when you already know you are asleep?
"There must be a way out of here," Ducanor murmured, frowning.
His own body felt ethereal, a vague manifestation of reality, but coherent enough to feel pain. "Dammit," he groaned, trying to find logic in that void.
At that moment, he tripped over something invisible.
"Hey, watch out!" squealed a voice beneath him.
To his surprise, it was a girl. Or something like it. On the Fey scale, her height was diminutive; even most Feynir exceeded two meters, but she was tiny.
"Are you okay?" Ducanor asked with a grimace, feeling confusion cloud his judgment.
What am I doing? he thought, as his gaze locked unconsciously onto the creature's shining eyes.
She was on the ground, but she sprang to her feet with an elastic bound. "Yoo-hoo!"
Ducanor looked at her strangely. He tried to smile, or perhaps mock her, but he couldn't. "You're stupid."
"Hey! You're thinking rude things about Voltia!" the girl replied with an almost cute growl.
The situation felt stupid, forced. Ducanor didn't respond with words; he launched his fist straight at the girl's throat. But to his surprise, she dissolved into mist before the impact.
"You're smart. You discovered the inconsistencies quickly, despite my intervention," said a voice that seemed to drill into his ear from the inside.
"Who are you?" he growled, searching for the presence in the void.
"You still haven't figured it out? I am Voltia, the True Spirit of Ethereal Dreams," the voice murmured in a sleepy tone.
Ducanor's expression returned to normal. Certainty calmed him: it was a test. He remembered the steps to perform a Geiss, the contract with a True Spirit. He knew his Feysir body, with skin hard as steel and blood dense as mercury, could withstand the burden. Spirits traded power in exchange for energy, and the price was the pact.
"Is this your test?" Ducanor asked, feeling his consciousness fading, falling into a deeper but real darkness.
"Yes, and you passed with flying colors. You will be a good warden, Ducanor Kal Arreus," she whispered before everything went black. "May you never forget your dreams."
...
"You did it. I thought you would take a little longer," Alana said with a smile as she observed a dizzy Ducanor.
Next to her was the small figure of the True Spirit who had been screwing with him, and behind her was a small inhuman figure he couldn't quite distinguish; the creature was strange in itself.
It was a bird-like creature, or at least vaguely a mottled parody of random copper-red feathers on a crow with what appeared to be a vulture's head.
"I am Voltia, and from now on I will be your guardian spirit," Voltia said with a somewhat arrogant smile, "and this is my good friend and partner, Ellen."
"Craw!" the bird responded, emitting a strange screech; it already had a rather strange presence.
Is that a True Spirit too? Ducanor thought to himself, though he decided not to ask to avoid further headaches.
"Does that mean the test is over?" Ducanor asked somewhat hopefully as he looked at Alana.
"Pass?" Alana asked doubtfully. "Did you not pay attention in class? Forming a contract with a True Spirit doesn't immediately make you a warden, it simply makes you a spiritist. To be a true warden, you must pass the exam."
Ducanor tried to hide his lack of awareness regarding that as he nodded as if he already knew.
"For my spiritist, you are quite dumb; I hope you are strong enough to defeat the monstrosities in the Valley of Fire," Voltia mocked unsubtly, simply floating in the air before vanishing into a mirage along with the strange bird at her side.
"Ugh." Letting out a sigh, Alana looked at him wearily as she said: "Follow me."
Ducanor composed himself quickly as he immediately followed Alana and tried to remember everything the exam in the Valley of Fire entailed.
...
I don't remember anything, Ducanor thought to himself as he cursed his attention deficit during classes.
Although at least from now on he could use the linking ability of spiritists.
True Spirits, when performing a Geiss with a Fey in general, do not become something like a familiar from legends, but rather it was an equivalent exchange. Through what is known as a Geiss, the True Spirit lends part of its power to the spiritist while the spiritist gives spiritual energy in return to the True Spirit, since unlike the Fey, True Spirits were not living beings and could not assimilate the spiritual energy of the world like normal creatures.
Suddenly a strange sensation formed in a part of Ducanor's mind as he had a strange impulse to circulate the spiritual energy within his body to materialize something.
"It seems you've already gotten used to the Geiss," Alana said, detecting that he had become engrossed in his own thoughts.
"You could say that," he murmured with some concern; he knew that Geiss had certain limits and conditions—oaths, so to speak—that if violated would cause a backlash on the offender.
That little girl didn't even mention the condition of this, he cursed.
"Sure?" Alana asked with a somewhat mocking smile. "Well, Voltia isn't too strict in her Geiss so don't overthink it, although you should use your Seal to get used to it."
The gifts shared through the Geiss with the True Spirit were called Seals of Fate, which manifested a part of the will and power of the True Spirit with whom they had linked.
A warm light manifested from the tip of Ducanor's finger as it shot upwards.
"Aether."
A sphere of light manifested in front of him as if it were a small, warm silver sun.
But in an instant as fast as a blink, it had gone out.
"Interesting, the most basic law of light, equivalent to 'Illuminate'. Besides, illuminating breaks illusions and mirages; it will be useful to you beyond your greatsword..." Alana said.
To which Ducanor simply responded with a small laugh as they continued walking.
Until they arrived at the entrance of what appeared to be a checkpoint within the sect itself. The guard at the post quickly let the duo pass without too many questions as they boarded the pneumatic elevator toward the lower levels where they would reach their destination: the Valley of Fire.
"Before entering, I suppose I'll have to give you a little intensive crash course in spiritual strengthening," Alana said with a somewhat strange smile as she approached him dangerously while laughing.
...
Year 400 before the Ascension of the Celestial Monarch
Power was intoxicating. It surpassed carnal pleasure itself, and even any natural gift or attribute.
But common power was symbolic and subjective; it could be a man's fist or a woman's whispered words. That was not the power she sought.
No. What she yearned for with all her might transcended brute force or seduction. It was supremacy. Absolute suppression. To be incomparable, invincible; to be deified and worshiped. And she had fought for it.
Some men sought power through wealth; others, through influence and contacts. Some women preferred emotional manipulation or the mastery of the arts, from the physical to the aesthetic. But she sought to transcend the human limits of perception. She sought to reach divinity through the arts of the occult.
She had traveled the path of the left hand and that of the right, but abandoned both to forge her own path. For years she had suffered, she had cried, and she had sacrificed everything to ascend.
Until that fateful day arrived. The day the heads of kings rolled like rotten apples. And she, like just another apple, also fell from the tree.
Or so she had thought at first.