189: Final Flame (Patreon)

“You’re normally in hibernation,” Vir said, recalling memories he should never have ever had. “Being active… consumes your prana core. You survived this long only by rationing your power. You spend entire decades asleep. Waking only long enough to check on the city before shutting down again.”

How do I know all this?

“Sympathetic Resonance.” Ashani grimaced. “I thought I’d suppressed those thoughts. They must have leaked during the simulation I showed you. Strong thoughts can sometimes be difficult to hide.”

You’re worried about it, too, Vir thought, nearly brought to tears by her plight. After all this… after watching over the city for so long, she was doomed to die. Simply because her energy ran out.

“It would have been impossible for me to remain active the whole time,” she said. “Impossible… and dangerous, I’m afraid.”

“Dangerous? How?”

“While my body’s repair mechanisms will keep me in working order, my mind is far more complex. I was never meant to go so long without routine maintenance.”

“You’re saying you’d… go insane?”

Ashani nodded. “I’ve seen it in other automatons that survived. I… do not wish to end that way.”

She looked off into the distance, wistfully.

“All things come to an end, Vir. My people were long lived, yes, but they were not gods. I should not have survived this long in the first place. My time has come.”

“I refuse to accept that,” Vir said.

“Look around you. Mahādi’s buildings are resilient, and their built-in inscriptions can repair damage by Ash Beasts. Yet they, too, require power to operate. Each reconstruction consumes a bit of their energy. One day, they will fail. Then only rubble will mark the site of what once was.”

“There has to be something we can do. Anything!”

To Vir, Ashani was like a wick that had burned down to its stem, burning its final flame.

“Truly, I am grateful you feel this way,” Ashani said. “It has been so long since I felt the care of another sapient being. I never thought I would experience it again.”

“No. You don’t understand,” Vir said. “You can’t die. You… are a treasure. You’re the last survivor of your people! My people worship you as a god!”

Ashani laughed. “They worship my people, you mean. Who would worship me?”

“Um, actually…”

“You’re serious?” Ashani asked.

“Y’know, your name’s bugged me ever since I heard it. It felt so familiar, but I just couldn’t place it. Then, when you mentioned Siya, I knew. It has to be. It’s too much of a coincidence, otherwise.”

“A coincidence? I’m not sure I follow.”

“Ashani, there’s a nation of powerful mejai—magic wielders—in the Human Realm. They call themselves the Altani. One of their major cities is named Alt Siya!”

Ashani frowned. “Just a coincidence.”

“I thought so as well, but do you want to guess what their capital is? It’s Alt Ashani. Ashani… I’m pretty sure those cities were named after you and Siya.”

“How?” Ashani asked breathlessly. “That’s impossible! The Imperium died that day. You said it yourself—my people haven’t made themselves known. Even if they did, few knew my name. I’m hardly someone to name a city after. Let alone a capital! How would they know of Siya? She was just a girl!”

“I don’t know,” Vir replied. “I really wish I did. But I do know this. People in my world worship you. And Siya. To them, to us, you’re a goddess. Don’t you understand what that means? I’m sorry, but I can’t let you die. No matter what.”

“Because I’m a goddess?” Ashani said, half laughing. “If Siya had heard that people worshipped her, she’d have giggled until she fell over.”

“No,” Vir said. “Because I want you to see your city. I want you to experience what the world has become. We’re not nearly as impressive as your people, but as you said, there’s art and culture. Maybe even food you might enjoy. Don’t you want to experience all that? Isn’t that worth living for?”

“I admit, that all sounds wondrous. It sounds like a dream, if I’m honest. But what can be done? Fate never seems to care one whit about our wishes.”

There was an edge to her voice—an astringent bitterness—that she’d never shown before.

“Your spent energy core,” Vir said. “Show it to me.”

— —

Back at Janak’s home, Ashani led Vir down another hall, then down a flight of stairs to a grand room, perfectly square. Its walls and high ceilings glowed a pristine white, and all sorts of strange apparatus had been placed all around the room.

Vir had never seen a mejai Thaumaturge’s workshop, but this is what he imagined it might look like.

There was no clutter, though. Aside from the desks with knobs, levers, and buttons, and the strange crane-like machinery that sat in the corner, it was spotless.

“Janak’s personal workshop. He worked at the central spire most times, though he maintained a facility here for the rare occasions he was home.”

“He worked even when he came back here?” Vir asked.

Ashani nodded, approaching a metal box in a corner. “For Janak, meeting Siya really just meant working while Siya got to watch, I’m afraid. Especially near the end.”

The box hissed when she touched it, opening on its own to reveal a perfectly smooth crystal sphere, the same size as the one Vir had slotted into her back.

That orb had shone with mysterious energy, but this one sat dark and dormant.

It’s similar to mejai orbs, Vir noted. Strange. No inscriptions on it.

Vir eyed the crystal, bringing his eyes closer and closer. He felt like he saw something inside, but lost it whenever he looked closely.

“Lady Ashani? Do you have anything like a magnifying glass, by any chance?”

Ashani clapped her hands together, and when her palms separated, an image appeared, showing the orb, except magnified several times.

“No way,” Vir whispered.

He’d been wrong. There were inscriptions. Just miniaturized. Shrunk down so small, his eyes could barely see them. And unlike mejai orbs, there wasn’t just a single circle of inscribed text. There were dozens, all at various depths, crisscrossing each other.

I was a fool to think I could help, Vir thought, paling at the absurd complexity. This is the kind of magic that powers her? Just how complex must she be?

“Do, uh, do you know how they work?” Vir asked hesitantly. He couldn’t let her know just how beyond him this magic was.

Ashani shook her head. “I’m afraid not.”

No magic in the Human Realm could ever replicate this… But maybe he didn’t have to.

“Is there a way to refill its energy?”

“There was, yes. With a machine. None exist any longer, I’m afraid. I would know, I’ve searched far and wide.”

“But everything in here looks pristine? Even the buildings look well maintained,” Vir said.

“Most of our smaller self-healing scripts were destroyed in the blast. Only the powerful ones that keep our buildings in the condition they’re in remain.”

“What about conjuring a new orb from prana, then? Can you conjure things too?”

Ashani opened a palm, and an exotic fruit the likes of which Vir had never seen popped into her hand. “Matter fabrication only functions for simple objects, I’m afraid. Lord Janak created me at the height of Imperium advancement, and my construction is equally complex. My prana cores cannot be materialized in such a manner.”

Of course, Vir thought, flushing. She’d have mentioned it if it were poossible.

“Thanks for humoring me,” he said. “You would’ve tried everything already, I’m sure. Look at me, thinking I could solve a problem even a goddess like you couldn’t.”

Vir found himself held in Ashani’s embrace. “Er, Lady Ashani?”

“Please do not feel this way. Ashani is touched by your concern. She truly is. Please do not think yourself any less than her. She is hardly omniscient.”

There was something about the way Ashani lapsed into her third person dialect that made her incredibly endearing to Vir. One moment, she was a wise, ancient goddess, and the next, she felt more like an innocent child.

Which only exacerbated Vir’s frustration. He wanted to save her. He needed to.

Vir racked his brain for ideas. “Your cores use Ash prana, right?”

Ashani tilted her head. “Ash prana?”

“Er, do you call it something different? Y’know, there’s the eight affinities, and then there’s Ash?”

“Ah! The prana of origin! Yes, of course. Elemental prana has its uses, but the Origin is the most potent of them all. It wouldn’t make any sense to use the other affinities.”

Origin, huh? So it did come before the others.

“Okay, that’s good,” Vir said. “Can I handle that orb, then?”

“You may keep it, if you wish. ‘Tis useless to me now,” Ashani said, handing over the prana core.

Vir sat on the pristine white floor, prana core in hand, and closed his eyes.

He’d never once been able to power an orb in the Human Realm, for the simple reason that Ash—or Origin—Affinity orbs didn’t exist. But here was one, right in front of him. There shouldn’t be any reason it wouldn’t work.

Her life rests on this. Don’t screw it up, he thought, focusing on the orb.

Having watched Maiya, Vir understood that mejai charged orbs by sucking prana away from their hands, creating a suction to pull in ambient atmospheric prana. It was analogous to what Vir did with his legs to suck ground prana into his body.

Here in the Ash, though, Vir didn’t even need to do that. He simply let the saturated wall of prana near the skin of his palm lapse, allowing prana to rush into his body… And the orb.

It was that easy? Vir stared at his hand in wonder.

His whole life, he’d been derided as a prana scorned. How many nights had he sat with Rudvik’s utility orbs, praying, willing them to charge? How much had he agonized over his inability to use magic?

And here he was, powering an orb that was entire realms apart in its complexity to even S Grade orbs fielded by the apex of the mejai.

It was silly, he knew. He’d known he wasn’t magicless for over a year, now.

A year… huh? Come to think of it, my birthday would’ve happened sometime recently. Maiya would’ve baked me a cake…

Vir pushed those thoughts away, returning to the orb.

Wonder what this thing can do if used directly, Vir thought, but then realized it probably didn’t work that way at all. It was designed to slot into Ashani, to power her. It wasn’t supposed to launch fireballs or summon lightning.

“How fascinating!” Ashani said, squatting on the balls of her feet to look at Vir’s prana manipulation. “You are altering the flow of prana within your body to pull prana into the orb!”

“I’m surprised you haven’t tried this,” Vir said, feeling a small flame of hope light.

“I cannot. I am an automaton—my prana functions in very different ways to beings of flesh and blood. Prana does not circulate through my body as it does with yours.”

Vir peered into her body with Prana Vision and found it to be true. There was prana there—a staggering amount of it—but it was mostly static. Condensed into hypersaturated balls that spun rapidly at tens of thousands of places within her body. There were also millions of inscriptions, weaving throughout her, glowing with prana.

Merely looking at it gave Vir a headache.

“I can’t believe this is working,” Vir said, ensuring he moved saturated blood away from his palms to maintain the suction effect. Eventually, his body would fill up with prana and he’d have to purge it from his body, but that was easy enough to do. He had Parai’s Reverse technique, and he could also power any of his Talents off the prana in his own body to bleed off the buildup.

“There is… one slight issue,” Ashani said, looking at him awkwardly.

“What’s that?”

“Your method will work. But at this rate, it will take you two years to fill that prana core.”