MAGUS INFINITE

The pain of this process was immense; there was something different about the Caelith than any of the other rooms inside my soul, but it was a clean pain that did not seek to corrupt me. Like a baby’s teething, it felt like something that was always meant to be, which made enduring the pain easier.

I could feel the Caelith’s ancient consciousness pressing against mine; it was not consciousness as I knew it, but it was purposeful, and the one thing it reminded me of was the Hollow Avatar. Come to think of it, they must be the same kind of being, but one was situated inside me, and the other was inside this Celestial structure.

[Binding complete.]

[Status: ARCHANGEL (Broken) — Warden (Provisional)]

[Authority: Caelith Fragment (243^235) — CONFIRMED]

[Containment: Class 6 Entity (Partial) — STABLE]

The notifications faded, and I felt the weight of the Caelith settle onto my shoulders, which was likely the result of Mortal Shell sharing the weight on my soul across my flesh.

I looked at the pyramid, sensing that I could not fully communicate with it until it had finished reassembling itself, as it was still sealing the Pale Matron’s arm within its core, and its structure was adjusting to fit the new body part now inside of it.

However, the first entity to communicate with me was not the Caelith, but its prisoner.

I had expected the scream to fade under the celestial stone and leave only silence. Instead, as the pristine Caelith rebuilt itself fragment by fragment around the pale limb, sealing it back into the dark, the Pale Matron found a voice that was not a scream, and she turned it on me.

Her voice came into my soul, and it was so old my new Celestial senses strained to hold its shape, and the words she spoke were old too. Like something that should be long dead, but remained, because someone like her was old enough to remember it.

”Little warden,” she said, and the stone closed over her wrist. ”Thou thinkest this stone shall hold me?”

∞

It was a good thing that I had Death herself speaking to me in my soul, because I would not know what to do when something as ancient as this spoke into my soul.

I did not answer, partly because I was shocked that the arm could speak so directly to me, and also because I did not know what to say.

”I have been held ere now,” she said, unhurried, even as the stone climbing her forearm. ”Epochs in the dark did I lie, and every one of them I counted, and I do remember the faces of they who laid me there. Achon faces. Wingèd and cold and certain... as certain as thou art now, little warden, standing in my blood, deeming thou hast won some victory.”

The stone reached her elbow. Her voice did not slow, but something in it shifted, a faint stumble, the way a tongue stumbles reaching for a word it has not used in an age, and I did not know why that subtle shift caused goosebumps to break across my skin.

”They are gone. Every one of them gone. The heavens did break, and the wardens did fall, and the seals... rusted.” A pause on the word, as if she tasted it. ”Rusted. Yes. For so many epochs no one came. And I waited, and I whittled at the dark, and I woke.”

The stone climbed her upper arm, and an awful understanding began to enter my head since I was hearing the archaic weight of her words, sentence by sentence, lighten... it was very creepy.

”That is the thing thy kind forgets... the thing you always forget.” The thou slipped, mid-thought, into you, and I felt her notice it, and then reach through the contact between us and take the present tongue off of me with her cold touch. It felt as if a snake had reached into my soul and ran its tongue over it.

”You are not eternal. The dark is. I am. You are a candle that believes the night is afraid of it. Even the brightest of you have fallen; what hope do you have?”

More than what she was saying was the awful realization that she was learning from me, and updating her understanding of the world as the archaic cadence was falling away line by line, and that frightened me more than the threats did.

I prefer my enemies to be arrogant and dumb, but if she was ancient as she was suggesting, then it was a horrifying thought that she was adapting so quickly.

∞

”You...” she said... and the last of the old syntax burned away as the calm tone of her voice cracked, and what came through the cracks was hatred, cold and ancient.

And as I heard this hatred, a part of my fear vanished, because this was something that I recognized. A demon was a creature of hatred, and I think I just saw the origin of that hatred

”....You wear the Shell of my captors, you want to keep me in this broken cage, and you stand there in a broken body thinking yourself clever. Thinking yourself a warden. Thinking yourself anything but what you are? You are a fool, and worse... you are a thief.”

The stone reached her shoulder. The arm thrashed once; the Caelith held it; my Warden’s bond sang with the strain and did not break.

”A broken little thief of a broken little heaven, wearing stolen rank and stolen fire. Unauthorized... Unfinished... Unwhole!” Each word landed like she had learned it five seconds ago and chosen it precisely. ”I know what you are, warden. I have felt your kind reach for the arc of the sky with hands that had no right to it. You are the theft the heavens died of.”

I froze for a bit, since this was not the first time I had heard the word Arc of the sky, and instinct was telling me that this was very important.

”And your kind,” she went on, the stone climbing towards the last portion of the arm still left outside, about to silence her voice forever. ”every winged thief that ever wore a Shell and called the theft a birthright... I curse you. I curse the rank on your soul, and the fire in your channels, and the broken arc you were cut from...”

She was saying more, but thankfully, the sealing of the arm was complete, and her voice instantly cut off.