The Archmage: Chapter Seventeen (Patreon)

Since I had six months, give or take two weeks, the following morning, Osheen and I went out to eat for breakfast. I had soft poached eggs on toast with a bit of lemon dressed arugula, while Osheen had a croissant with butter and jam, with eggs and rashers on the side. 

After we got back to our rooms, Osheen fixed me with a serious look. 

“Do you plan to actually investigate your aura now?” he asked. 

“What do you mean?” I asked, shifting uncomfortably. 

“You haven’t done anything,” he said. “You used some faerie runes the day you awoke your aura. And you’ve lit your aura a few times. But all summer with Aldvarri? Nothing. I thought you were just recovering. Fallen void, I needed to recover after that. But we’ve been back at Yesgol for two weeks, and you’d only lit your faerie aura once, and your human aura for classes. You should have seen the spread sooner, if you’d been regularly practicing aura exercises.” 

“I…” 

I shook my head, and I felt my eyes get blurry. 

“How can I?” I asked seriously. “I saved my life, yes, but I killed someone for it. Sure, he wasn’t a great person, but is that fair? Is it fair in any, way, shape, or form for me to be the arbiter of when it’s okay? I condemn the nobility for using lives to strengthen themselves, but then I went and did the same.” 

“I used them when I was a kid,” Osheen said. “Two, both to expand my natural aura size.” 

“That’s different,” I said. “You didn’t know – you said it yourself, when you found out, you started arguing with your dad, and then it wound up with you two fighting.” 

“Is it different?” Osheen asked. 

“Yes,” I said. “You were a kid, raised in an isolated environment, and even still, you were able to put together that it was wrong.” 

“And that makes it fine?” 

“You weren’t the ones going out and killing,” I said. “I was. I chose to kill him. I could have–” 

“Become a faerie lord or king, and then gone on to enslave the entire population by spreading massive amounts of knowledge?” Osheen asked. 

“I could have died,” I said quietly. “Liam’s–”

“Not a diviner on the level of you and Tara, and while a skilled necromancer, not entirely capable of pulling this off.” 

“Someone would have.” 

“Maybe. But you’re arguing from a purity point of view. That you’re impure and evil now, because you did one bad thing. I don’t believe that. I think you were put between a rock and a hard place, and you chose the harder option.” 

“No,” I said. “I chose the easy way out. I didn’t give some noble sacr–” 

Again, Osheen cut me off. 

“Oh, nonsense. If you’d let yourself die, that would have been easy. You would have gone on to whatever comes next, whatever happens to souls when they’re claimed. You wouldn’t have had to fight for Paerús. You wouldn’t have had to stand up to archmages. You wouldn’t have had to discover a new arch-star. You wouldn’t have had to try at all. You could have just washed your hands of it and died. But you didn’t do that. You chose to fight, because you’re going to help people.” 

“What, my choice to murder someone in cold blood was actually brave and good, then?” I bit back acerbically. 

For a moment, I saw Osheen’s temper flare, and I realized just how much I’d messed up. 

But he didn’t lash out, instead closing his eyes for several long seconds. 

“That was cruel of me, I know that’s not what you meant,” I said. “I’m sorry.” 

“Thank you.” he said. “I’m not saying it was good. But I am saying that it was needed. Aura sparks aren’t all evil. Sure, some are horrible. But that doesn’t mean that it’s inherently bad. Did you ever ask how Finnalir got his axe?”

Honestly, it had been so long since I’d thought about his axe that it had never really registered that he’d had an imbued item, and thus, a murder item. 

“No,” I admitted. 

“His grandfather,” Osheen said. “Magic skipped his mom, but both he and his grandfather had it. When he grandfather was ninety-one, and could feel his mind starting to go, he commissioned an enchanter to build a weapon for whoever the next battlemage in his family was.” 

“How do you know this?” I asked. 

“Babe, you’re not the only one who can talk to people, let alone find information. I asked him about it in private, before you’d found out the truth, since he knew, and I knew, and we could talk. I wasn’t about to let my guard down around Zheren – for all I knew, they were luring us out there to do the same.” 

That just made me feel self centered and arrogant, so I shut my mouth. 

“That’s similar to how a lot of nobility get their third or fourth arch-stars,” Osheen continued. “The ritual can be used to aid in the transfer and creation of arch-stars.” 

“Why are you telling me this?” I asked, genuinely curious. Osheen obviously had a point, but I couldn’t figure it out for the life of me. 

“Because you want to improve things,” Osheen said. “So do that. Make a world where if someone else is put in your situation, they don’t have to make that choice.” 

“Like organ transplanting spells,” I said. 

“Maybe we could try to set up a Bureau of Aura Sparks,” Osheen said. 

“It would need solid oversight,” I said. “A powerful checks and balances system, or else it would just be a way to revert back to the current system, with nobles buying out the aura sparks for their kids, and buying back alley ones if the knowledge got too widespread.” 

“It’s definitely a problem,” Osheen admitted. “Not a simple one to solve, either. But I think it can be done. A world where if someone’s aura got poisoned like yours was, they could get a legal transplant.” 

I took a deep breath, then nodded. 

“I think so too.” 

“Do you need more time?” Osheen asked. “I’m not going to force you to start working on your aura, or to start figuring out your skills with it, or anything like that, but… It’s worth looking into when you’re ready.” 

“There’s no time like the present,” I said, with a lighthearted cheerfulness that I didn’t feel. 

“Alright, let’s check it out, then,” Osheen said. “Human aura?” 

On command, I lit my viridian aura out around me, and for the first time since the ritual, really took a look at it. 

It had grown. Of course it had – when I’d split my aura, I’d effectively imbibed two aura sparks. 

I wasn’t sure the math – if there could be math done for auras, regardless of what Elderglass claimed – was as simple as one plus two divided by two is one point five, but my aura was still substantially larger. 

It radiated off my body for about two and a half inches, as opposed to the inch that I’d used to have. 

It was horribly thin, though, likely from how much I’d needed to fuel my fourth arch-star in order to stay alive during the splitting. It was thinner now than it had been when my aura first awakened, and I was actually somewhat reminded of Tara’s whispyness. 

Spinning within my aura, above my head like a crown, was five arch-stars, and… That was all. The Ligature knot and my connection to Oracle were both gone entirely. 

“Fascinating,” Osheen said. “I wonder if that means you can take on another familiar, or a boon?”

“Probably,” I said. “I’ll wait until I have Oberon’s assessment, though. I’m not too keen to accidentally speed up a de-humanization.” 

“Smart,” Osheen nodded. “Alright, now dismiss it and summon your faerie aura.” 

I did as he said, and the silvery glow of change magic lit around me. It was roughly the same size as my green aura, but it was noticeably thicker and denser. Spinning inside of it, I could see the familiar knots that represented the Ligature and Oracle both. My aura was a slightly brighter shade of silver than Oracle’s, but duller than that of the Ligature Knot, which was so vibrant that it was almost white. 

Curiously, I funneled my faerie aura into my Ligature knot, and it expanded easily. 

When I’d been operating with an entirely human aura, it had taken an absurd amount of effort for me to keep the simple portal open. 

Now? 

Well, it was far from effortless, but I thought I could hold it open for several minutes before I started to run desperately low on aura. I didn’t know if that was because of the size and density, or if it came from being a similar kind of magic to what had created the knot. 

Probably both, come to think of it. 

I shut the power, then glanced at Oracle, where he sat perched on the counter. 

“You got something out of being bonded to my human side. Do you need or want to move over, if it’s safe?” 

The mental response I got was long and complicated, and it conveyed conceptions of power in a way that I didn’t understand, but from what I understood, he gained from either side, he simply gained different things, and he was content on either side. For my health, he thought it was best he remained on this side. 

I nodded my agreement, then explained it best I could to Osheen. 

“Alright,” he agreed. “Now let’s look at recharges. You have midnight for your human aura, what about the faerie one?” 

“I don’t know,” I said. “I haven’t encountered it so far. Oracle gives me starlight. Maybe it’s that?”

“Maybe,” Osheen said, “but I doubt it. For one, the silver colors are different.” 

“True,” I said. “Oracle, any ideas?” 

Oracle hesitantly sent me the image of a moon, then an image of me asking the Silver Queen. 

“Moonlight’s definitely a possibility,” I said. “But I’m not going to ask the Silver Queen.” 

I was already going to need to get tutoring on making better memory packets from her or Garnet. If I could bundle it in, I’d consider it, but I really didn’t want to be more indebted to the fae. 

Osheen nodded. 

“Alright, well, it’s not a common time, weather, or environmental one,” Osheen said. “I don’t think it’s a moon one, since I think you would have noticed it when recharging your faerie aura under the starlight, but we can’t rule it out. Have you tried any material or actions for it?” 

“Nope,” I said. 

Osheen then had me run through a variety of different actions – meditation, crying, yelling, fighting, sprinting, swimming, stretching, holding one eye open, jumping, and more. Once that was done, we headed down to a supply cabinet and I picked up as many materials as I could, trying to see if any of them would trigger my recharge. 

Nothing. 

We tried a few more things in town, then I did some aura exercises with Osheen before we stopped for the evening. I made a mushroom, onion, and pea filled pastry for dinner. I added a bit of leftover bacon for Osheen’s sake, and we spent the evening reading – Osheen read a fiction novel, while I read about industrial magic some more, trying to gather what I could while I waited for the Ligature’s support. 

By the time we went to bed, I was feeling better. 

I still wasn’t happy with myself. 

I didn’t know if I’d ever truly be able to forgive myself, and I still felt like a big hypocrite. 

But I thought I could live with myself, at least. Even if I couldn’t forgive myself, I could learn to live with myself.