What Reverie found could only be described as a storm of magic. Even easing herself into it was no humble feat. Almost as soon as she made contact, she lost awareness of her body in a way that felt frighteningly similar to drowning. She instinctively tried to suck in a breath, only to find that she couldn’t. It was too sudden for her to be curious about this new sensation, and she instead focused on keeping as much of her ‘self’ intact as she could. As she struggled to ride the chaotic waves of energy, she was able to piece together a basic understanding of what was happening. There were three distinct layers of magic twisting and folding in on themselves, and each other. Two, she guessed, belonged to Marcel and Owain. The third was beyond her comprehension. Usually, an individual’s energy was a reflection of them, the same was true of the magic a person might possess. One of the three felt so familiar to her, she could only assume it belonged to the twin she hadn’t met. It was a cool, quiet, magic with unnerving depths to it. For all that its tranquility called to her in the storm, she felt she would certainly drown in that bottomless power if she came too close. The other, Owain’s, was more volcanic in nature. Large and looming, as the person might be while awake, and intense enough to melt the flesh from her bones. It roiled and writhed, as though it would erupt in order to escape the confines of this unnatural entanglement. Reverie skirted the edges of the storm as much as she was able, but eventually came to the conclusion she would have to delve much deeper if she had any hope of success.
Her own magic was apt to twine with the others, and when it did so she experienced a number of alarming things. Where her magic interacted with them, the others would swell in volume and intensity. Marcel’s cold pool of magic became a frozen ocean, and Owain’s bloomed into the sun itself. Reverie curled her magic into itself, like giving herself a hug. She squeezed in tighter, and tighter, until she was as dense and compact as she could be. She resisted the impulse to splay herself wide again as she immediately began to plummet like a rock through the waves and layers of magic. In a mere moment she was propelled to the eye of the storm, surrounded by that indescribable third magic. If Marcel and Owain’s magics were imposing in their size, this was utterly paralyzing. As soon as she was enveloped in it, Reverie felt she could drift on the tides of this power for eternity and never come full circle. She was afraid, for a long time, to uncurl herself and risk amplifying this power. Eventually though, she remembered the two boys lying on the bed, dying. She kept stayed tucked tightly against herself, but allowed enough of her power to move loosely and push her into motion.
Her journey was aimless, for a long time, as she remained too afraid to open herself any further. She hoped she might find something, anything, to give her a clue to what she ought to be doing. Unlikely, she decided. She relaxed a little to survey her surroundings, and immediately pulled back again. This magic was too big, it was impossible for anything so large to exist. As soon as she relaxed her hold on her ‘self’ this magic began pulling her relentlessly deeper into it. How could this be real? Could a thing be so massive that it devoured everything around it? Reverie could no longer feel herself breathing, or her heart racing, but she still knew panic when it washed over her. Had she thrown herself blindly off a cliff, into the maw of her death? For a brother she’d never known, who’d had everything she hadn’t? For the son of some self-righteous, Noble prick? Truly she’d lost everything the moment that man called for her. She’d been cast out of her only home, by her only family. It mattered not that her home was a foul pit of suffering, or that her family were dangerous creatures, shaped by the pit. They were all she’d had, and they were gone. What was she left with then? The promise of a stranger that she’d be taken care of? She knew well what value that had. She thought of Beau, who she’d made the mistake of considering a friend. There was no safety, no shelter from any storm either out in her life or here in the mouth of death. She’d have sobbed, if she could. Instead she let herself float aimlessly for another long while. Marcel and Owain could well be dead by now, she knew. She didn’t want to care, though. She didn’t want to give anything to those two who had so much, when what little she’d had was taken from her for their sakes.
As she stayed there, wound tight with grief and self pity, she pushed away any thought that tried to intrude on her. Until the face of the man she killed, barged rudely in. She kept the weight of responsibility for his death with her all these years. Even when Beau had been pinning her beneath him and fear had seized her throat, the feeling of tearing through the fabric of that man’s life had been with her. She lived with herself, under the justification Ilysia had offered her. After all, she had been saving someone else. If she let these boys die, would she float in this place forever with no escape from the sliver of guilt she knew would be there. Given enough time, would that guilt consume her? She bristled as anger burned through her. That was it, then, those were her options. She could remain here, suffering in silence until the end, or she could struggle in hopes of resurfacing to suffer in life. So be it, she resolved. She bent herself to the task of life this long, had suffered what was given to her for the sake of surviving. Gods take her if she would spit in her own face now. No, she would struggle again, she would struggle over and over if that was what life demanded. And she would take from life what she deserved, she resolved. If nothing was given to her, fine, she didn’t need anyone to give her anything. She could take what she wanted from life herself. With that decision made, Reverie stopped curling in and, instead, unleashed herself.
When Reverie awakens to her magic, she is hurtled towards a journey fate is determined for her to take. As she leaves behind her life as an orphan in a brothel, to learn painful truths about her family, Reverie can only trust in what she's been taught all her life; "If you want to survive, you must be useful and make use of others." Reverie soon finds herself allied with a group she wouldn't have chosen for herself. Can she survive the gauntlet of trials before her, and learn to take the hands being offered to her? Or will her own doubts be enough to hold her back, and pave way for a calamity several hundred years in the making?
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