Advent Redemption

by alamais

Instruction

"I promised to let you all know...more wards are going twitchy. Still nothing overt, but...whatever it is, it's still increasing."

***

Trixie smiled to herself as Gideon went through the Laminar Forms, and she idly followed along beside him. He was picking things up quickly, now that he'd found his aura and consciously connected to his control paradigms. "Good, but you're fumbling the circumcranial rotations."

"I'm not the only one," he said, with a hint of a teasing tone.

She blinked, focusing on her own aura pattern, and clamped down on her embarrassment. Dear Luna, I've allowed myself to get so sloppy. Outwardly she merely nodded, and remarked, "Indeed," while she tightened up her own recitation. She was starting to feel like she was reliving her days in magic school--trading constructive criticisms with a classmate.

A faint smile crossed the human's face as he drew to the end of the Forms. While his edges still went a little ragged when he made fast changes, he was vastly more confined, and had already regained basic use of telekinesis.

"Good," she said gently, "but your end state is lazy. You need to work on your control until it becomes second nature, until your resting state is a sharp edge, with no instabilities. A fuzzy rest state can leave you open to interference."

His aura wobbled a little, then sharpened. Its internal state was turbulent, but not chaotic--showing a surprising degree of internal flow and weave.

"That's better. I think we can end for now…"

"Trixie?" His focus did not fade.

"Mmm?"

He hesitated before continuing, "How…er…physically correct, are auras?"

She scrunched her nose before responding, "I'm...not sure what you mean."

"Well…I mean how does the power's influence correspond to the aural form? We focus in a certain way to lift objects, or push and pull on them, but so far all the telekinesis has been done in the Laminar Forms, with amorphous edges. The Platonic Forms produce angles and sharp edges, the Fractured Forms, points…what do those do if they touch something physical?"

She nodded. "Well, to a degree you get the results I'm sure you're thinking of." Not that I'm entirely comfortable with that line of thought; but, then, he is a soldier...

He caught her hesitation, and held up his hands, "If you don't want to go into it, that's fine."

She shook her head. "No, it's fine, and a good question." She glanced around, then pointed to a recently fallen tree limb several yards away. "Here, try it. Use a Platonic to try to cut that log in half."

He focused on the limb, and she watched as a section of his aura formed itself into a thin, sharp-edged polygon, which then swiped at his hapless wooden victim. With a sharp crack, a two inch cut appeared in its middle, the wood splintering away from the phantom blade. Gideon started, looking surprised, and his aura receded to a neutral--and well-confined--resting state.

"I don't get it," he commented, looking over to her, "it felt like I had enough power behind that swing to carve right through."

"Mhmm, and if you put the same amount of power into tossing it about with telekinesis, you could probably reduce it to sawdust. The difference is, oh...a sort of leverage." She raised an eyebrow. "What exactly are you doing, in a physical sense, when you use telekinesis to lift and throw an object?"

"Er..." he thought for a moment. "Countering gravity...then changing the object's momentum."

"Certainly. Your people surely knew that gravity is the weakest force by far, yes?" As she saw a bit of understanding form, he nodded, and she continued, "And so it is the easiest to counter. And while it can take a significant input of power to accelerate a large mass or reach a high speed, once you do, its inertia works for you, causing damage when it strikes." She paused. "Once you start drawing additional power, you can even temporarily modify an object's inertial and gravitational mass--something that pegasi and griffons do instinctually."

He raised an eyebrow at that. "Okay, so...trying to cut or pierce something is a lot different."

"Quite." She waved a hoof vaguely. "While your aura feels substantial while you work with it, it's just a perceptive tool. It has no mass, like a physical sword or," she gestured to the half-chopped limb, "an axe would. And you're striving against the electromagnetic bonds that hold its atoms and molecules together--an altogether more daunting force than gravity."

"So then, does all magic work on mass, inertia, and gravity?"

"Hmm, no, not all. There are spells to generate lightning, tame light and create illusions, and even cause chemical reactions and transmute matter. But all the most common spells are indeed as you say. Even spells to generate heat or cold are based on changing the random kinetic energy of the atoms in question."

Gideon stared at the cut he had created, his aura simmering quietly. "What about the opposite?"

"The opposite of...?"

Looking down at his hand, he replied, "Everything I've ever accomplished has been destructive. All this power...and all I can do is break stuff."

As he stared into space, she tried to read his expression, and found a mixture of exhaustion and disgust. "That's not true," she said firmly. He looked askance at her, but she pushed onward, "You've said you could use shield spells. Nothing destructive about that." She nodded, "and those same forces you use to toss things around as weapons can be used to build and repair. To protect. The circumstances matter."

He stared at her, and then nodded in return. "Okay. You said repair. That's my question, then." He gestured to the log. "Magic can break stuff, but can it reverse that?"

She gave him her best arch look, and threw in a head toss for good measure, then with a casual glance at the log, drew up a fairly large amount of power, and spoke, "Just as we can tear apart electromagnetic bonds, we can create them anew...shifting pieces and particles back into place." The cut in the log began to swiftly draw together, the splinters and sawdust around it to fill in, and even the capillaries, rings, and ragged bark to regenerate. "The key is to know that which you are fixing, inside and out. To bring it back to the state you desire, such that the universe itself does not know the difference." As the glow of her power faded, no sign remained of Gideon's attack.

He slowly let out a breath. "So...can even complex life be healed? People? How can you--or anybody--have that much control?"

"It's not...not just about control. You are right that nobody can focus and process enough to actually recreate a molecular structure, or a cellular matrix." She paused, trying to remember how her teachers had put it. "Especially when it comes to living--or once living--matter, you have to know it on a deep level." She brushed a hoof against the ground as she admitted, "I'm actually not the best at healing, because I've never bothered to study detailed anatomy of any species...but even without that, you have to remember that any form of life has its own resonance with the Flux...and that similarity is something you can tap into."

He ventured, "That reminds me of what you said about that cleansing spell...that my aura knows what's foreign and not."

"Well, yes. I've even heard that for the best of healers, the more complex the lifeform, the easier it is for them to heal it. The more complex a creature is, the more it knows its own body, on an...I guess an instinctual, or even spiritual level. To a degree, the healer is merely allowing their aura to join with their patient's, and providing it with the power and focus it needs to heal itself."

He looked at her for a moment, then mused, "Maybe I can learn to be a healer, then. Seems a bit more appropriate to this world...more so than a soldier."

She smiled. "This world has its share of strife; however, I'm sure if you make such an intention known once we get to Equestria, you'll find plenty of willing teachers. And until then, don't worry that you're practicing old skills that may be destructive. We're just trying to get you back in control, and the more control and understanding you have of your own power, the better you'll be at using it in anyway, including to help others."

***

Cupping the frigid air in her wings, Alouette glided homewards through crystal-clear skies, her eyes mere slits--nearly shut against the late-morning sunlight. She'd just finished up yet another uneventful patrol...well, it was eventful for that little rodent-thing she'd stooped on, but otherwise? Meh. Tasty, though.

She pondered again why she was still holding to these patrols. Oh, they were supposed to be a guard against any wandering threats, but she knew her Watch history. In all the years--decades, centuries--groups had winterovered here, none had been significantly accosted. The decay of the ancient routes here had made it incredibly unlikely that any sapient would venture this way even in the summer, much less now, and the wildlife tended to avoid the ruins because of the random scattering of wards that still worked. Of course, there was the strange behavior of the wards that Trixie and Tev had noticed, but if it was truly having an effect on the weather, it sure hadn't shown for the past few days.

As she came within sight of the fallen city, where once grand towers and archways had stood, she glanced down to see a perfect example of the area's protection. A pack of ice weasels was scrabbling through the sparse woodland below, several hundred yards from any visible ruin, their eerily glowing eyes clearly visible even in daylight. They were traveling almost perfectly tangential to what she would call the actual perimeter of the ruins--whether it was some magical sense, a well-worn path, or just hard-earned experience, they knew where to avoid.

Looking away from the weasels, she began to descend a bit as she passed over the central parts of the Halls. They'd stopped keeping a regular watch after learning of the fate of Gideon's people, but old habits die hard. Like the patrols. At least they give me something to do while I stretch my wings. I'm productive! As she cleared the wooded area below, she picked up speed and began idly following the terrain.

Thus, she was coasting up and down over a series of hillocks when she noticed it: a cloud of snow puffing up from the detention zone where the human had appeared. As she locked her gaze in that direction, another giant plume was cast into the air. ...That ain't right. With a jink and a powerful thrust, she regained some altitude and moved for an indirect approach.

Her mind ran through the possibilities for what could make such a large disturbance. No ursas this far north, likewise for most dragons. Enough small fliers could do it if they worked together, but why...? She began to get worried when she couldn't see anything through the artificial blizzard, but then it cleared momentarily and she saw it. Or rather, him: Gideon was at the center of the cloud, looking away from her approach vector. As she stared, he waved an arm, his hand glowing softly, and another plume rose up and away from him.

She cut in towards him, again descending. "HEY!"

He turned, surprised, and waved to her.

"I see you've got your magic back," she said as she landed, "but what's up with the snow abuse?"

He chuckled, rubbing the back of his head. "Well, I'm looking for something. I'm pretty sure I had it on me when I came through, but..." He shrugged, while gesturing around. "I've found a few pieces of the council chamber, but even those have been buried by all the snow."

"Hmm." She tilted her head at him. "What is it, and how big?"

"Well, it's a weapon," he started, once more looking around the area.

She felt her ear tufts go up of their own accord.

"It's about twice as large in area as my hand, maybe two inches thick, weighs a little over a kilo..."

She interjected, "Do you really think you need it?"

"Oh-" he looked surprised, then thoughtful. "No, I doubt it. There's only a few shots left anyway, and I'm not even sure it would still work, after sitting in the snow and cold for this long. I've just been having some dreams lately that made me think of it, and well..."

Taking in his uncertain look, she just raised an eyebrow.

He sighed. "As far as I know, this may be the last piece of Edumean technology in existence, except maybe for some long-range satellites, if the Seekers didn't blast those out of spite."

"Uh...oh." She grimaced slightly. "I guess that does make it pretty important." She looked around, then ventured, "But, you do realize you aren't really accomplishing much, right? Those plumes were mostly vertical, so the snow's just falling right back."

"Yeah," he said, looking chagrined. "My control isn't really good enough to do better, yet. I could ask Trixie for help, but I feel like I'm taking up too much of her time as it is."

Alouette snorted. "Trixie's not the only one with power around here, you know." When he blinked in surprise, she just shooed at him with a foreclaw. "Stand back."

She turned to where he'd been casting, facing across the widest part of the small depression that was bordered by stone pillars, and shook out her wings, finding them still reasonably limber after her flight. "I'm no weather worker, but this isn't a job that calls for much finesse..."

As she spoke, she turned most of her attention inwards. It was the same power she drew on for flight, but used in a more focused and purposeful manner. She found her inner stillness, and then focused her power, first into her wings, then beyond--stretching it out to act as additional surface area while deliberately neglecting to devote any power towards mass-cancellation. At the edge of her vision she could see the weak, silvery glow her wings were now emitting, and she drew in breath, and then flicked her wings forward, finding the magic to be stable and strong.

Digging claws and paws into the snow, she arched her back to angle her wings forward, and gave a single powerful stroke. As she pushed the air forwards, she laced binding magic into it--gently dampening out turbulence, encouraging coherence and flow. Another sweep of her wings, and already she could feel patterns forming in the breeze around her. Continuing to push at the air, she saw the snow begin to wiggle, then shift, and then crumble into the air, flying in weak spirals as it was swept into the nearly horizontal twin cyclones she was generating.

With only a few moments of work, she began to see the outlines of shapes that didn't belong. Random chunks of stone, arches, what looked like a piece of stairway. Those must be more pieces of his council chamber... She slowed her strokes, letting the spells fade, allowing the winds she'd made to break up and fade away. The view swiftly cleared up, to show a substantially cleared channel through the field, along with a large new mountain of snow collected on the hill in the distance.

Relaxing, she folded her wings and allowed the last of her magic to settle, and then realized she was breathing rather heavily. Ugh...I'm really out of practice. She glanced at Gideon to see him looking contemplatively at her wings. "Um...good enough?"

"Huh?" He started. "Oh, yeah! Thanks a lot. I think if it's here, I can find it now."

She gestured for him to proceed, and walked alongside as he searched through the debris field.

"So, uh..." he ventured.

"Hmm?"

"That was...impressive. Trixie has said wing magic is instinctual, but that looked very controlled and complicated, so I was wondering: can all gryphons use their magic like that?"

"Hmph." She snorted softly. "I guess I can't blame a unicorn for not knowing much about wings, but there's a lot more to it than just instinct. An untrained chick, or, like, a pegasus raised by some other tribe...they might learn to fly, uh...poorly. Or at least glide. But it takes a fair bit of knowledge and guided practice to get good at it."

"Alright." He stopped, and raised his hand, levitating a pony-sized chunk of stone to look beneath it. Finding nothing, he set it aside, and moved on. "So then, did your parents teach you to fly?"

"Uhh, sort of?" Her sharp eyes noticed a glimmer to one side, but she tilted her head, and could see that it was just a fragment of ice.

"What does..." he trailed off, then walked to the side and brushed off something dark-colored, which was half-buried under a fragment of some sort of statue.

"Is that it?" She drew a little closer.

"No, no..." He roughly pushed the statue aside, and raised a wicked-looking device. It was lumpy and black, with some green highlights, and two sickly green blades jutting out of the front. "This is a Seeker weapon. Pretty messed up, too." He turned it over, and she could see where the casing had obviously been ripped open by the fallen debris. She also noticed a dark splash of frozen fluid--alien blood?--near where he was holding the weapon. He reached over with his other hand, and pushed a switch on the side, popping out a small, weakly glowing green box. "Guess I won't leave this lying around..."

She perked her ear tufts, but he said nothing more about it as he pocketed the small component. He then dropped the weapon back to the ground, and stepped away, his face cold. Using his power, he raised the chunk of statuary and dropped it right atop the weapon, which sizzled, and let out a strange acrid smoke. "Good riddance."

They walked away, still looking for Gideon's weapon.

Alouette stayed silent for a while, but eventually she couldn't resist asking, "You really hate them, don't you?"

He looked at her like he'd forgotten she was there, then just said, "I don't know how much they've been used, but...yeah, I suppose I do."

She stammered, "I-I mean, it's understandable. I guess it just didn't really sink in until now. It's hard for me to imagine the kind of death and destruction you've seen..."

His blank look slowly changed to a smirk, and he asked, "Is everything on this planet always so peaceful and prosperous?"

"Well, no...and all Terrans have war in their pasts, between themselves and each other." She sighed. "My people might be one of the worst in that regard...but the past few thousand years have been pretty idyllic, I guess. There are always bandits and outcasts of course, but since the Discordian era, the ponies have been a big stabilizing influence across the world, with their princesses in charge. It's hard to argue with an immortal's knowledge and experience, not to mention their power."

"I imagine so." He fell back to examining their surroundings, seeming less distracted. Eventually, he ventured, "So...what were you saying before? How can you 'sort of' be taught to fly by your parents?"

"Ah, it's just that the aerie I grew up in was pretty communal. Once a chick reaches fledgling age, they're all housed and taught in the same big nest, instructed by the adults who are best qualified to do so, and choose to."

"Huh." He scratched his head. "Sounds strange, to me. I can't imagine my parents not being around during those years."

"No, well, I mean, they were around, and in fact my bloodsire taught us the ancient histories. I'll always have a special bond with my biological parents, but I just have a lot more griffons who I look at in a...parental way?" She snorted in frustration. "I've tried explaining this to a lot of other people, but I guess it's hard to really understand. Even a lot of other griffons think our aerie is a bit nutty."

He chuckled, "Well, I guess if you feel like it was a good upbringing now, looking back on it...then it doesn't really matter what other people think."

She replied with a grin and a nod.

They wandered a bit more, and then he coughed. "You know, you never really answered my original question...could any griffon do what you did to clear this field?"

"Er..." she looked away uncomfortably. "Well, I've had some, uh...special training."

"Oh? What kind of-"

"Hey, what's that?" She interjected, pointing to where she could barely make out a difference in texture in the shadows below a large fragment of an archway.

He followed her gesture, then went over to the arch, summoning a small light to his hand. "Heh, there it is. Nice catch."

He bent over and scooped up a surprisingly small object that looked less gnarly than the earlier weapon--more like a tool, less like something that would eat you. It was obviously designed to fit a human hand, with a black ribbed handle, a white casing of some material she didn't recognize, and a few black details and orange highlights. "I present the H.A.Z.E. blaster: the latest in human violence projection," he said skeptically.

He turned it over in his hand, then looked surprised, and touched a small crack in the casing. "Not undamaged...maybe in the fight."

Alouette looked at it curiously. "Broken, then?"

"Ehh...maybe, maybe not. I wouldn't fire it...it was a prototype to begin with, so who knows, especially after all this time in the cold? Wouldn't want it to explode in my hand."

She warily eyed the device as he stored it away.

"Thanks for your help, Alouette. I don't think I'd ever have found it without you."

They began to move towards the tower as she replied, "Eh, no problem. All in a day's work."

He chuckled. "Yeah, well...I'll buy you a drink, eh?" He paused, then scratched his head. "Uh...when we get to a place that has drinks. And I have money."

She just looked askance at him, with a weak grin.

"... This may take a while."

***

Gideon stretched, and glanced up at the starry sky, waiting for Trixie to finish examining the nearby wards. They'd come here early in the long night, to finish a series of exercises in drawing power. It didn't look like much, but according to a map in the library, this clearing had been the site of a holding cell for magically active criminals. As such, Trixie felt it was probably the best place for Gideon to venture into using his power.

As he waited, he found himself crossing his arms with a frown, now intently staring at the heavens. When the pony stirred, and finally looked his way, he glanced at her, then flatly stated, "You know, there's something wrong with your sky."

She blinked, ears going crooked. "Whaaa?"

He laughed, and shook his head. "I don't know." He sighed, and looked up again, growing serious. "Every time I look at it for a while, it just throws me off... It's not the position of the stars--I expect that to be foreign. It's not the look of them individually, either...I guess it's something about how they move, or how they're arranged in general...I just can't put my finger on it."

Trixie blinked at the unfamiliar idiom, then shook her head. "Mmm...well, just don't say it like that to Princess Luna. She might get offended."

Confused, he looked at her, but her attention was elsewhere as she said, "Anyway, the wards are all fine, so let's get started before it gets any colder, hmm?"

After a moment's hesitation, he nodded, and focused. He summoned power to himself, but slowly, trying still to examine his own actions, and proceed with thoughtful deliberateness. After two days of drawing power, from a mere sip to a raging torrent, he felt infinitely more confident in his actions. Whereas the raw feeling of drawing power remained the same, now he could see the effects his actions had--the slight dimming of the area, the rippling as power flowed and equalized, filling in the deficit he'd left.

It reminded him of his brother's criticisms of his flying, of his constant delineation between 'merely flying' and 'understanding the ship'. He'd laughed at the idea, always called Ethan a budding mystic--now it appeared the universe had a dark sense of humor. Slowly, he could feel himself beginning to understand the magic that he'd before merely been using.

He focused on the target they'd chosen earlier, a car-sized fragment of stone archway on the edge of the clearing. It would have been exhausting to lift for long using only his own power. So now, rather than toss away the power he'd gathered as he had in the rest of the day's exercises, he mixed it with a limb of his aura, using foreign power to do the hardest part. With conscious control of his aura, the act of lifting the heavy stone was almost effortless. Although not nearly as needle-fine as Trixie's, his once-rough and jerky control of his high-powered telekinesis was much improved, and he juggled the mammoth stone through the air with ease.

As he finished showing off, he let the stone draw to a stop, and glanced over to Trixie.

"Not bad, but I can see you've stopped drawing power...we should work on continuous replenishment later."

He blinked at her. "You can do that?"

"Certainly." She frowned slightly. "A lot of what you're doing now seems awkward because it's new, and because you're purposely concentrating on the minutiae. Eventually it should all become natural, and doing more things at once will be easier. There are also exercises for that..." She gave him a sharper look. "But anyway, we're here for a reason. If you think you've got the power, go on and give that stone what-for."

Arching an eyebrow at her, he returned his attention to the target. He tried to summon up the old 'lessons', remembering how it felt to use his magic as a weapon, and fed the bulk of his remaining power into the resulting aural form. Returning to old habit, he raised a hand to act as a focus, drawing it back as the power crested in his cupped palm. Examining it closely with his newly awakened Sight, he could see a twisted mass of spells: gravitic redirectors, inertial mass modifiers, linear impulse vectors, all in balanced, directed conflict.

He flung the resulting bundle of power at the target stone, narrowing his eyes against the shock of air the passing spells raised. The stone--caught between the fixative force of his lingering telekinesis and the warping energetics of the new spells--shattered and exploded, sending chunks and fragments spraying out in a wide cone to the fore. Gideon grimaced at the overkill, and then winced as a large number of purplish flares of power flickered to life at the edge of the clearing.

As the debris finished raining down, he glanced over to see Trixie staring at the aftermath, her ears pinned back and mouth slightly twisted. After a moment she noticed him looking, and cleared her throat, "Ah, hmm, yes, I...I think that went well?" she offered, with just a hint of a squeak to her voice.

"Uh, sure..." He glanced back at the arc of stone remnants, and noticed a shard embedded in the side one of the sparse trees that had managed to grow through the ancient floor. "Um. Maybe I overdid it? Were those flares a reaction from the cell wards?"

"Yes, I think so," she said, her voice more firm. "It was actually quite interesting, I think it was a shield..." She walked off to where the flares had appeared, and Gideon trailed along behind her. "Yes, see?" She gestured to the ground. "None of the stone got beyond a certain line, the wards contained it all. I've never seen a shield spell quite like that, though..."

"Huh. Superficially it looked similar to what I could make."

She gave him a thoughtful stare, then glanced around, and floated over a fist-size chunk of rock. "Here, let's both pay a bit more attention..." She flung the rock at eye-height towards the debris-delineated ward line, and the shield flared to life again, stopping the rock short.

Even to his untrained--but now well-attuned—Sight, the work was interesting. Strong inertial modifiers and kinetic sinks were layered over other fields he didn't recognize, all in a hexagonal plane that couldn't be larger than five centimeters across, and all of it repeated in a honeycomb grid that spread a good half-meter around the impact site. At the bounds between the individual pieces he could see hair-fine lines of power--some of them feeding the shield, others acting as outputs, bleeding kinetic energy away, and, oddly, still others that seemed to be serving no active purpose.

As Trixie stopped forcing the rock against the shield, letting it drop, Gideon commented, "Well, on a fine level it's certainly fascinating, but I can't really tell if it's anything like what I know how to cast..."

Trixie was still staring at the spot, and muttered, "Yes...fascinating. That's a good word for it."

He looked askance at her before asking, "Is it really that different from shield spells you know?"

"Hmm?" She looked blankly at him, then shook her head, and looked puzzled. "Well, yes and no. The fields themselves are basically the same, though there were a couple of things it was shielding against that I didn't recognize at all...but the real difference is in the structure."

"You mean the grid?"

"Yes..." She absently sat down as she continued, "It's vastly more complex than a standard shield they'd teach you in school, but I think I can see the benefit. A standard shield is, oh, monolithic I guess? Strong and simple, but if somebody manages to overwhelm it at any one point, the whole thing will just start to shatter."

"Hmm," he nodded, following, "but here just one of the pieces would break."

"Exactly!" She nodded vigorously. "And because you're not putting all your power into one big spell, the backlash from a failure would be much less of a shock. While something could get through the hole, with the right regenerative backing patterns, you could close it up pretty quickly." She rubbed her chin with a hoof, then raised an eyebrow. "And you say it looks like what you can do?"

"Well, superficially. I could try casting a shield again."

"Er...no, no. Especially not here." She said hurriedly, looking around. "I'm not sure how the wards would react to something like that being cast from inside..." Her nose scrunched up slightly. "Could be nasty. But even apart from that. I mean, it's been a long day, and you're just starting to get control back."

She hesitated for an instant, before reaching up with a hoof and touching his arm. "Give it a little more time. You did well today...let's head back."

***

It was a twisted, infinite space. A mishmash of Edumean modernism, fluid Aurelian architecture, and stately galactic council pillars and arches--even a hint here and there of ancient Terran style. He did not know how long he wandered, looking for a difference, looking for some point of reference, but there was nothing there. Finally, he leaned against the base of a statue--a graceful human form--and waited.

He'd wake up eventually...right?

Left to his own devices, he pondered the memories, the losses, the hopes and wishes and dreams he'd had in the past year.

The dream of peace, as the Edumean civil war ended. His joy when Olivia accepted his proposal.

The mixture of awe and wonder and apprehension when an alien ship arrived.

The shivering nights on the journey to Aurelia, wishing he--they--would all wake up from this terrible nightmare.

The pain of Olivia driving everyone away--blaming the Aurelians, the military, Marin, even himself, anyone and everything, mourning for her lost family, for her home. Her drive for vengeance as they suicidally engaged their enemy. The look in her eyes as she died, already sealed in a watery tomb.

The feeling of power rushing through his body. As if he'd taken Olivia's thirst for revenge onto himself. Barely controlled fire and rage, tearing through an endless stream of En Kull, their thralls, and Aurelian loyalists alike. The rush of being a hero.

He thought of Marin.

"Yes."

A meeting at the point of a gun. Stronger than Olivia? Or perhaps just colder. A respect for power. And a desire for it.

"Your power was magnificent."

But, he'd begun to hope, something more. Love could grow anywhere, in all sorts of situations, and from the strangest of seeds...couldn't it? He wanted it to be so. The last survivors of a species should at least try, right?

"I wanted to stand by your side...god, and goddess."

Slowly, she resolved in front of him, still in the flowing Aurelian dress, just as he remembered her during their brief time of peace. She smiled.

"Hello, Gideon."

Marin. He was frozen, examining her form, as she walked closer.

"It's taken me quite a while to find you."

It was just a dream, right? She reached out, her hand caressing his face.

"No, Gideon...we're connected, you and I."

Could she really talk to him, over dozens, even hundreds of lightyears?

"Yes, with the help of some new friends."

Friends? Did things go better than he'd imagined, back there?

"Powerful friends."

Power, again.

"I've learned...so much."

As she said that, her voice evincing just the barest hint of hesitation, there was a sort of flicker. A momentary skip. It was as if her skin lost all of its color. Her face now devoid of warmth and emotion, it instead took on, for an instant, a cold, calculating glare. Predatory.

The surprise of it was enough to break the dream apart-

He woke with a full-body twitch, eyes gazing into the darkness at the edges of the tower, barely lit by the banked embers of the fire. There was a shift nearby, and Alouette began to gently snore. A dream? Already fading. Huh, I've had plenty of nightmares, but... He shifted, then rolled over, looking into the glowing firepit. It was...Marin. Yeah. I guess it makes sense I would be worried about her. He sighed, and closed his eyes. The dream interpreted, sleep returned easily. If there were more dreams, he did not remember them.

Author's Note:

Thanks to Archonix for prereading.

Comments

[Mustafa]

Only game I ever played where shields were the most OP thing ever.

[Pupsrus13]

4787363 Go play Ys Seven. It's like Dark Souls except your health regenerates, you don't have a stamina bar, and your guard cannot be broken.

[Mad Maudlin]

4787363

Fable I. With enough mana regeneration slotted, you're basically immortal and can string attacks* together indefinitely for basically infinite exp.

More attacks = higher attack multiplier to exp. Getting hit reduces the multiplier, unless you have shield on. It also protects you from being knocked down or back.

[mrpretzel]

There's a problem here:
Not that I'm entirely comfortable with that line of thought; but, then, he is a soldihttp://www.fimfiction.net/user/archonixer...

[alamais]

4787978
What in the... Fixed. Thanks~

[PickleSurprise]

Very nice chapter. Always a pleasant treat to see this update. Also, loving the explanations on the workings of magic.

[alamais]

4789423
Thanks.
I just hope I'm keeping it from being overly dense or didactic.

[PickleSurprise]

4798006 Hardly. I prefer the ones that make you think about how this would be applied realistically not just, "See that rock over there? Think about lifting it. OMG you did it!". There's an actual process to this and I feel you've done a wonderful job at explaining it.

[Pack Lord Rohl]

I approve of this story keep it up.

[Veo Skride]

When's the next update?

[alamais]

10537850
Some time before the heat death of the universe. I promise.