Uriel

It took two weeks for Uriel to find a suitable replacement.

Without another to act as a placeholder, he was forced to play the role of king himself. That left him little time to do as he pleased and it was a reminder of why he handed the responsibility to someone else. The constant corralling of the miserable creatures he ruled over did not leave room for personal business on the agenda. Despite the isolation he'd built around this façade there were constant visits from the various vassals reporting information they had collected or mage seeking favors. The prolonged proximity to so many souls had both him and the beast so close to the edge, it took five attempts before he managed to make a new puppet without draining it outright.

by the time he had his newest double on the throne, the beast was crazed with the need to feed on his annoying subjects, and Uriel's anxiety to get back to Nina made him more irritable than was healthy for anyone within clawing distance. He'd never left her with someone else before, knowing the proximity to others would drain her before he could replace her spent energies.

He should have brought the diamonds.

Any crystal would do for storing the energy she couldn't generate on her own, but diamonds were the best. Their strength and purity retrained ether without it degrading over time allowing them to act as perfect batteries for when he was away from her. With her isolated as she had been before, there had been no risk of other souls pulling from her so the precious stones he collected and fueled had been more than enough to keep her functional during his extended absences.

But that had always been a matter of time.

Now...

Now he didn't know, and he didn't like that.

Yes, Ajak had enough to keep her functional and Uriel trusted Shayla to make sure Nina didn't drain herself, but they weren't his stones. Their ether didn't know Nina like Uriel's did and wouldn't work as effectively.

Stepping out from a withered birch, Uriel emerged in the glen just outside the circle and made a note to himself to retrieve them as soon as he'd checked on his ward.

Birds chattered in recognition and the beast rumbled its own greeting. Finding the sounds of the forest soothing, It calmed -if only a little- from the excitement of having created something as stretched out its senses.

Exploring.

Searching.

Above, clouds threatened an early summer rain, calling the beast to join them in the sky and making Uriel's entire body ache with the need to answer them. Among the mountains far off the dormant waters of their snow-capped peaks were already starting to awaken as they joined the streams that would eventually feed into the river. While below the timberline, trees danced in the wind, their leaves whispered secrets to each other as they sheltered the wildlife, curious about their new guest. Like the beast, they sensed the chaotic energy the sil'dysa carried within her.

Uriel could taste her ancient power woven into the circle's spell and both his and the beast's craving for it had his stomach cramping as pain scored his insides.

More. More. More, the beast demanded making the crystals in Uriel's skin itch with its insistence. Letting it push him forward, Uriel slipped silently through the trees, approaching slowly so as to not disturb the lesson taking place in the circle.

"Purpose and intent are the bricks with which you build, strength and ether the mortar," Ajak's voice carried as clear as ever, but his words were too exacerbated to come out kindly. "You cannot simply throw them together and hope they withstand the storm. You must build something that lasts. Make it your own but make sure it works."

Uriel might have found it amusing but he remembered what it was like to be on the receiving end of Ajak's lessons. Even if hope did, in fact, make spells work better than should be possible, Ajak loved his rules and patterns far too much to stray from his idea of a perfect cast.

The vindictive part of Uriel relished his farmer mentors' frustration. The older mage could be the most patient of teachers but had a flair for the dramatics that made things more confusing than they needed to be. Uriel idly wondered if Ajak had made the girl practice the movements meant to center her thoughts and calm her soul as he had with Uriel. He also wondered if they'd met with the same disastrous results.

Worry for Nina squeezed at his chest, but Uriel forced himself to continue on to the circle and his approach did not go unnoticed.

The girl... Ira opened her eyes just as he stopped at the circles boundary.

This close he could sense the difference in her. The chaos within her was more settled, and yet... It still spilled from her like an open wound hemorrhaging ether. Skyglass blue observed him with wariness, opalescent irradiance a fixation the beast gave all its attention. Uriel noticed thick dark strands now hanging past her shoulders. Frazzled blond ends brushed her shoulder blades as she turned her focus to him, the new growth marking her as an old mage, though she likely didn't know it yet.

Noticing her lack of attention, Ajak turned to see what had distracted her. He sighed when he saw Uriel hovering just outside the containment spell. Resigned to the day's progress, or rather the lack thereof, he gestured for Uriel to join them.

"Might as well make your peace now," Ajak told him "She'll never get anything done if she's too afraid of you to focus."

Uriel tilted his head at that, resisting the urge to sneer as the beast stretched at his skin. "If she can't focus when she's afraid, then she's already died."

"It's not her I'm worried for," Ajak winced. "At least not right now. I'm more concerned about the people who she might hurt." Ira shifted Uncomfortably and tugged at her sleeves when he added. "I don't know how long Nina's Blessing will hold up against Ancient-tainted ether and it's already taking longer than I expected to get her building basic barriers."

Cold rage burned in Uriel's belly at Ajak's hypocrisy, but his words were calm.

"You could just leave her in there until she can control it," he said, "that seemed to work out for you just fine last time."

Ajak was quick to hide his guilt, but it slipped out with his quick dismissal.

"No, she's already gone too long without learning and I don't think the mental repercussions of her trauma will let her do it on her own."

"Why not?" Uriel asked, returning his focus to Ira, and making her shrink into herself. "Trauma shapes our gifts, but it doesn't control them."

Ajak grimaced at having his own words quoted back to him but quickly shook them off. "There's too much chaos imprinted on her mind, and you know what that does to the soul. Even when she manages to draw it in, she can't seem to hold it long enough to make anything with it."

Uriel considered the girl for a moment before finally questioning Ajak's method "why not make a barrier for her yourself if it's so important to you that she has one?"

"You think I haven't tried?" Ajak snorted seeming to relax a little now that he had someone new to discuss the problem with. "Not a single one I've made for her has lasted past thirty seconds. Whatever the nature of her gift is, it has the ability to mimic or perhaps mutate, in a way that just absorbs whatever I give her." shaking his head, he muttered with something akin to awe "I've never seen anything like it."

"That's what you always say." Uriel pointed out, sounding unamused.

"And it's always true." Ajak retorted "at least if she had the same... condition as you, we'd have something to work off of."

Uriel didn't miss the way Ajak paused.

While aware that Uriel's gifts stemmed from a destructive source, Uriel had never told Ajak just how cognizant it was. As far as anyone else was aware, Uriel's gifts and mutation were exactly like every other new mage: the most prominent aspect of the moment he was awakened, manifested to the extreme. Where Ajak was concerned the hunger that marked anything Uriel touched was a mutation born from a childhood spent starving. Ajak had never really been comfortable with the severity of it but Uriel didn't care to tell him the beast was so much more than its hunger. Uriel knew he suspect it wasn't just a mutation, even if Ajak never asked but he also knew a part of Ajak was afraid of the answer he'd get if he did.

And rightly so.

Uriel had broken the laws of nature once before and the devastation that followed could never be undone. It was no wonder Ajak chose to tread carefully with Ira. She was somehow connected to the Ancients, and they could do far more than remake the world. Ajak was right to focus on teaching her self-containment even if he'd been, so far, unsuccessful.

It seemed a hundred years hadn't changed much but Uriel found it satisfying to know he wasn't the only one who didn't fit into Ajak's perfect mage ideals. And if there was one thing Uriel had learned from the beast, it was that there was more than one way to cage an animal.

"Walls aren't the only thing that can make barriers, rivers are good at it too." He pointed out.

"We already tried that" Ajak's frustration was returning "She can't hold it long enough to direct it and I can't guide her without getting pulled in."

"No, but maybe I can."

Uriel told himself it was only pity, not the beast's hunger, that made him speak aloud but the words were out before he could swallow them back.

"That... that might actually work " Ajak had that thoughtful look he always had when he thought of something new. "It would also let me see how her ether interacts with others without the distraction of being a participant."

"Ira paled at the suggestion and gripped both knees to keep her hands from trembling but still would not break her silence.

Was she that afraid of him?

Uriel knew the boy he'd once been, would be disappointed if he realized the Uriel he'd one day become was one of the monsters who took a sadistic satisfaction from being feared, but he couldn't bring himself to care.

Uriel only hesitated for a moment, but the beast writhed restlessly in his mind as he stepped within the circle. Immediately the spell laid along its edge hummed to life, but Uriel shoved the beast back and the circle returned to its dormant state. Drawing closer to the pair, he saw the girl shrink back ever so slightly but Ajak only watched him warily as he crouched, facing the girl so that they were at eye level.

Uriel could feel Ajak's ether pulling away from them, settling back to observe as the beast stretched out. Excited to be allowed closer to the focus of its lusts, it pulled against its restraints in an attempt to swarm her seemingly endless ether. Uriel waited until Ajaks eyes were the charcoal red of hot coals as he called on the mage's sixth sense.

Then he began.

"What do you feel right now?"

Ira swallowed hard but breathed out an honest "Scared."

"Good" she flinched at the intensity with which he said it. "if you're afraid, then you have something worth fighting for. Use that. Survive. If you can't keep everything in, then push it out and hide somewhere no one else can get to it." lowering his voice, Uriel kept his gaze locked on hers "let the world around you conceal your presence. Bury it in the ground so no one else can find it. hide in the leaves so no one will see it." he kept his voice to a soft even tone as he watched her subtly relax 'hold it under the water of the river so one can smell it and let the birds sing over its song."

Uriel didn't need the beast's senses to see the shift in her. Her ether was still centered within her, but now the excess that leaked from her soul was carefully dispersed. It flowed into the earth and forest to ground her instead of drowning the mind where it had been dammed up.

The beast could feel her energy as it drifted outward and it tried to follow, but Uriel kept it firmly in its place. Ajak watched them with curiosity but kept silent, letting Uriel lead the transition that came next.

"What do you feel now?" Uriel asked in a soft whisper.

"Everything." Her voice trembled, and Uriel could taste her fear as she began to unravel. He felt the ether she'd hidden away rushing to return, called back by her panic. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Ajak's grimace as he resisted the sudden surge pulling at his soul.

Uriel wanted to snap at her. This was exactly why she was so dangerous. He should have had Ajak leave the circle. Realizing he cared if the old man died only irritated Uriel further and it was difficult to keep the calm he needed to do this without causing any more damage.

Silently commanding the forest to keep what she'd given it and stilling the influx of either, He forced himself to continue.

"Feel the land. Feel the shape of it. feel how it feeds the forest and river. They are connected just as you are connected to them. They are a part of you now. Let them carry some of the burden."

''I can-"

"don't think about it" he cut her off "just give them what you can. They'll take whatever you offer."

She pressed her lips tight together but closed her eyes and tried to follow his instructions.

It to several long minutes for her body to relax. Hands falling to the ground she buried her fingers in the grass and the beast's exuberance crawled up his throat as her mind blossomed before them.

It was oh-so-tempting to rip into her. She held nothing back in the feast she unknowingly laid out before him. Chaos still cloaked her thoughts, but a sort of order now held its hand, an enticing display that took everything he had to resist.

"Go to the river," Uriel told her. the words coming out more guttural than he'd meant them to, but she was too far gone to notice.

"It's missis you" she breathed, her awe seeming to echo in a way that resonated with the beast.

A shiver ran down Uriel's spine at the disquieting stillness that settled around them.

He hardly dared speak and doing so felt like a crime.

"It forgets too easily." He told her "But it will carry your secrets if you wish. If you can trust nothing else, trust its waters to protect you." Even as his words led her deeper into the connection, she'd formed with the wild rushing lifeblood of all things, Uriel could feel his own calling the beast out of its corner, coaxing them both to follow. "Become the stone that splits the river...let it wrap around you... be the island no one can touch."

As he finished the remaining quit seemed to echo. Even the trees were still as if the wind did not dare disturb this moment.

For several minutes they sat there.

Her shoulders lax and breathing even as sank within herself, Ira showed no sign of her earlier distress. Ajak, used to long meditations, waited patiently but Uriel found himself struggling to hold the beast. The longer they sat the headier her ether became. This close he could taste it on the air she breathed, and the beast was never one to resist temptation.

Nearly ten minutes into their wait Ira's head lulled forward, her chin dipping to her chest as she swayed. Ajak leaned forward to catch her, but Uriel stopped him with a shake of his head. Something in the way she moved and the stillness around them, reminded Uriel of the calm before the storm in the bunker.

Ajak gave him a curious look, but let Ira be.

She rocked back, face tilting toward the sun, as her lips parted. Foreign words spilled out and ether hummed to life at their utterance. Ajak's eyes widened in surprise as the beast screamed its delight inside Uriel's head. It took everything Uriel had to keep it from breaking loose as Ira swayed forward again, her hair beginning to rise. Like a weightless halo, it drifted through the air around her as she moved and the ozone taste of ether assaulted Uriel.

The beast clawed at his spine and skull wanting out.

Wanting more.

More.

MORE.

It wanted everything but Uriel pulled it back, making the beast want to snarl but Uriel would not allow it even that

As if she could hear its soundless protests, Ira stilled, and her eyes flicked open. Light poured from them, impossibly bright, and he could feel it in his bones when her unblinking stare met his. They gazed past him, to where he kept the beast hidden deep within.

The invisible hands stretched out to stroke the creature that lived inside him, and he stiffed, back ramrod straight as the beast purred in ecstasy. It embraced those hands and lapped greedily at the pure ether they fed it with that one simple touch.

Uriel's whole body shuddered, his breath hitching at the sensation. His bones felt brittle, and his skin burned where the crystals marked him as other.

Then Ira spoke.

Her voice echoing with that of a hundred thousand souls, she told him "Do not forget your mother's lessons, dark one. The blood of you people will die without its freedom."

Uriel forgot how to breathe, and the beast pulled at its chains as old memories were coaxed to the surface by unseen hands.

"My beautiful boy"

his mother's smile was as bright as dawn on the horizon as she reached for him. Her thin hands were weak, but warm, on his nap as she drew him close to press his forehead against her own and share with him the blessing of their people.

"Uriel'voli'owena, may your soul be always free, your heart ever wild, and your mind never alone."

Uriel had to force himself to suck in air, the smell of sky and rain hunting, even as he prayed the last thread of his control would not break.

Dismissing him in favor of Ajak, Ira turned to the older mage. Her expression was so alien when it met his stunned one, his dark skin grew visibly paler.

"She is not yet ready to wander the either."

Her words reverberated around them making the trees tremble, their roots struggling to hold the spell they wove between them in the presence of something unmade and unending.

"Without an anchor, you must not send her to find answers she cannot return with. Your grief has made you careless, word seeker." Though emotionless, a transcendent gentleness carried her warning "you will not succeed in your master's calling if you cannot forgive your failures first."

Ajak sucked in a sharp gasp and blinked away tears, his own memories called forth to haunt him. Knowing he understood her cautioning, she nodded a shallow bow of deference.

"We will retrieve her" the multitude intoned as Ira settled back, her eyes sliding closed once more as she delivered her final warning. "Do not send her to us again without her bond mate."