(Resumed) Solstice

[Emmett]

The last thing I remembered before blacking out was having my chest ripped open by a sharpened tree branch sprouting out of dirt.

Why did I do that? Why did I do any of that?

Grace wasn't even that close to me. We had just started talking, and I was sure she still loathed me.

"Grace Gardner is wanted for treason against our Lord."
Bullshit. Grace would never.

"And she will be brought before me" 
Not if she doesn't want to, you jackass. I knew now why Jacqueline was so insistent on teaching me to never impose myself on a woman: because of arseholes like that guy.

"or you will all be slain."

I snapped. 

And yet, you have the signature feature of a man right here, just aching to bury himself inside me~
Ooooh, fuck that felt great~
Yeah Fuck You Jessica.

You're sweet, but thank me later:
Yeah this? Right now? Not about you.

You're gonna overburn and pass the fuck out.
I no longer cared. It didn't matter how my skin felt like it was warping into a wrong shape, or about how I had made love to an innkeep while lashed to a bed.

This guy was going to take Grace by force and.....

Even the thought of it was blasphemous. I went full-out, with neither restriction nor inhibition. It was like I had Magick beyond Magick and enough Æther to last me days.

And then Chancellor Breckenbale impaled me with a tree branch. I'd have laughed at how much it reminded me of Aegis' invisible caltrops of murderous death, but I was too busy howling in agony.

Died the way I began, huh? I could live with that.

I felt a trace of hostility somewhere. It wanted my Squad dead. I didn't. My final remnant of a thought formed to wish it gone.

After that, it was all over. I had nothing left to give. Oh well: at least Emmett Sinclair didn't die a coward. He fought for what was right, with every fibre of his being.

[Grace]

Everything was cold. Nary a trace of snow on the grasslands. Stormfront was contained. House Fayt was quelling Lord Adams and Chancellor Breckenbale. To crest the warmth that should have been, Emmett was safe in the arms of an older, wood-skinned woman with flowing jet hair. I even cauterized his wounds with my Element in the hope that a healer can resolve what I had initiated.

But the cold reality was that Emmett Sinclair, probably the most loyal man in the Squad, had his heart skewered by Arbor Magick. His ribcage was smashed open and exposed. Viscera lay out in the open. The air turned an irony scent in his presence. 

I had to swallow the burning tar my stomach pushed back up my throat. I was accustomed to death: I saw my sister incinerated right in front of me at the tender age of nine. I have seen, smelt, and even felt corpses since then. These experiences instilled in me a fortitude almost uncharacteristic for a woman. To be clear, not the part about resisting the nausea of decay. Moreso the power to suppress empathy at will.

The problem was this was someone I cared about, to whom I still owed a deep apology. I had treated him like an abusive suitor because that's what I had experienced in my adolescence. In my hindsight, I'd learned he made no such advance.

I was never going to get the chance. My opportunities expired the instant we set foot here.

"Chin up, hopper!" The matronly voice of Charity Fayt lured my gaze forth again. "Keep a calm Shroud! This man loves you and if he doesn't feel you near he'll raise hells!"

Before I could think a single thought my Aura enveloped me.

Shroud is one of the Schoolgirls' Magicks, teaching us to feel our powers in our bodies, to connect to our Vessels, and speak to our Souls. It is a faint aura conveying emotion and intent to any willing to respect the air. It is foundational to Spirit Magick, so much so that men are taught variants and imitations to approximate the same. Such fabrication is never the real thing, however, which I feel accounts for why women favor Spirit Magick and men Mind. Manly Minds, Womanly Hearts, so they say.

Only when my skin thrummed with Magick did coherent thought return. First, Emmett didn't love me. Not in that capacity. He was like Celeste: he reached with his heart, trying to make the world around him brighter despite the loss of his home, and everything he'd been through. He still reached out to me after everything. No, this wasn't love. This was martyrdom and my prior loss gripped me in fear of recurrence. 

Trying to explain any of this to Madam Fayt, however, was an exercise in futility.

And second...

"Is that-" 

No. I did not hear that voice. 

My instinct darted in the rightward direction of-

No. That woman is dead to me.

"No time Cherry," Madam Fayt barked at the red-robed skeleton-thin ghost-skin bitch in the corner of the room, "We're saving a soul. SIMON! SUMMON ANGEL!"

"On It!" a voice howled back.

Mother leveled her eyes on me, and my heart skipped. "Why you-"

Time froze. Terror gripped my Soul. Why... How...

I heard the intake of Madam Fayt's breath, with aim to bestow a scolding most protective.

Despite that, I heard not a single word. None were spoken. Instead, 'fore she could talk, I saw the dead Emmett's hand twitch. A dense wisp flew, true as an arrow, with the snap of a viper. Mother swiveled her hips, her chest exiting the line of attack. The wall behind her, however, burst clean open, as my ears nearly did from the crash and roar.

The Æther was silver. 

I refused to believe what I saw.

I refused to believe that Emmett Sinclair just threw what had to have been a Yangside bolt, tuned to kill, at my Mother, with perfect accuracy, while unconscious.

This bears repeating: If Mother had not dodged the spell perfectly, she would have died right there and then.

The air scorched, and I knew she was about to kill him for good. Worse, she now had right of self-defence.

"YOU WILL LEAVE YOUR DAUGHTER AND HER MAN ALONE OR SO HELP ME I WILL SUCCEED WHERE HE FAILED!" Emmett's carrier shouted, foreboding presence to match, "YOU'RE IN HOUSE FAYT NOW; ACT LIKE IT!"

So that's why: She married her way in. Probably to Thaddeus.

"Come on hopper! We have a life to save!"

That reminded me... How the fuck is he alive?!

[Emmett]

They said your burdens would be left behind when you leave the mortal realm for the Heavens and Havens.

What I never knew was they meant it quite literally. I felt weightless, adrift, free of all burden and responsibility.

I was at peace. Finally.

I hadn't been so at ease since I still had my parents around. From what I heard, they were strong Magi in their own right. I was taken care of back when they were still in Charade Gin, and well at that, but they couldn't fully hide their frustration at my Magickal incompetence.

It wasn't their fault: They were really good teachers and Patrick picked up some crazy tricks under their tutelage. I bet if they knew I was a transcaster, I'd have been able to put up a fight against Aegis back then.

Or, you know, I could have been killed for being an actual threat. Didn't matter much when I was dead now, right?

When I was younger, they had an apprentice named Celeste. She always had a smile on her face, and she always called Mom "Mama Sinclair." With Dad it was "Mr. Sinclair," but that was 'cause Dad was very formal with outsiders. She still respected and liked him, but it was Mom she bonded with strongest.

Celeste was Unattuned like me, but unlike me, she had a lot of Ætheric might and she knew how to fight. She would wreath the field and herself in azure flame, devastating any opponent with supreme prejudice. Dad told me once she could even use her talent to "kill" an opponent's resolve and halt their casting. Apparently she invented it herself.

It was Celeste that taught me Æthervision, much to my parents' shock. Until that day, they were thoroughly convinced I was a Dreamer. Honestly, it was a reasonable inference. From what I gathered, Mom and Dad weren't exactly pushovers. Celeste came all the way from Can Vahs just to study under them, after all.

The way she taught me was fairly simple, and now that I thought of it, brilliant in neutrality. I was to take a slow breath in, imagining pulling the energy around me in, and a slow breath out to push it up to my eyes. Most likely, it worked because the breath-in calmed me into a psychosomatic state to cast. Then, when I exhaled, I pushed my own Æther instead of whatever I pulled in because I didn't pull anything.

It must have terrified my parents to have spent so long trying to help me learn Magick only for their student to show them up in the span of an afternoon. They had planned to task Celeste with teaching me the basics. 

Unfortunately, that day was the last I ever saw her. Her last words to me were: "Sir (Yes, she actually called little 10-year-old me Sir), one day you will meet a girl. Or a boy, but I'm betting on a girl, who resonates with you and unlocks your world. You'll want to shield her with your life. How? That Magick you have, that's how! Your spirit is strong, like my sister's. Always have faith in yourself and practice self-care. You hurt yourself, it's worse than hurting me. Got it? I know you'll be a great Magus someday. I can't wait to introduce you to her!"  

She left to run an errand and never returned. My parents told me she had graduated and accepted a prestigious station back in Can Vahs, but even the little me called it the lie that it was: Celeste would never have abandoned me like that!

I waited patiently for the truth, but it never came. They drowned to death at the hand of the Emissaries of Total Salvation.

From there, Jacqueline took me in as her foster servant and Patrick as her actual apprentice.

I wondered if I could meet Celeste in the Heavens.

Who was I kidding? I was a lost cause. It was straight to the bad place for me.

...

"...air?..." I thought I heard a faint voice sing.

...

"...clair?" I heard the voice louder. Who was it? What did they want?

I could feel the sensation of breathing. Well, it wasn't so much that I was breathing, but my chest was rising and falling.

"Mr. Sinclair?" That was... Ser Fayt?

I slowly opened my eyes. The night sparkled in all directions with starlight. Amidst them danced several swirls of twilit colour. This nightly tapestry extended past every corner of my vision.

"Try not to overexert yourself, Mr. Sinclair," the feminine voice to my right echoed. I looked down and to the right, ignoring a silver light to stare at what looked to be a perfect azure silhouette of my Literature teacher. "You were a literary centimetre from the edge of mortality when I got here, and you literally just got enough lifeforce back to so much as dream."

Mortality... dream? Wait...

"I'm-" a foreign dulcet voice left my lips and I slammed my jaws shut. That- that's not my voice!!

"You are indeed alive, yes-"

I looked back down at myself. My body... it shone a pale silver, stood a tad shorter than it was a few minutes ago, and-

My breathing stopped. My hips were rounded, my shoulders were slimmer, and two.... two spherical masses on the top half of my chest, exactly where my nipples should be, exactly in the shape of the illusory weight back when I sparred Ansel in MMA.

"Mr. Sincla-"

"I'M A GIRL?!!" I kicked my body off of solid emptiness to lurch into standing.

"Stay resting-"

Dizziness seized me and I landed square on my suddenly-NOT-square rump back onto whatever invisible cradle was there. My consciousness faded rather swiftly.

An hour later, it seemed, and I felt a thin, warm vapour wash over me. I stirred.

"Damned lucky you didn't die just then," Ser Fayt spat, "Yes, you will have a woman's body in the Astra. If you're going to put yourself near death a lot then get used to it because here is literally where your dreams take place, and those are innately Spiritual." 

I sighed. "Urgh... Y-yes Ser..." My voice was still warped, and I took the time to breathe in and out a few times. Guess moving around's hard when you're low on lifeforce...

Wait... Lifeforce? That didn't make sense. 

Æther is the Magickal energy both within and without. Spirit relates closely to Æther, but it is a different matter. Humans have a Spirit, otherwise known as a Soul. That Spirit is comprised of a metaphysical substrate akin to Æther called lifeforce, but one's Spirit is not consumed in the process of performing Magick. 

It is said that Spirit is the stuff of the Heavens and Havens, what grants a human their Will. Exceptional Souls are preserved in the Heavens as a model for future generations to come, while the vast majority meet the Havens in their afterlife. Acts of violation, on the other hand, mar and stain a soul, opening it to temptation from the Hells. No points for guessing where the bad ones go.

It is very important to note, however, that Spirits are still intact even after an overburn or overdraw. Therefore, lifeforce is not consumed in the casting of Magick.

"W-why..." my not-my-voice asked.

"Why what?" Ser Fayt asked calmly.

I took a slow breath. Damn, it felt like my heart was going to rip out from my chest... Did I even have a heart in this form? "Why... is my lifeforce..."

A dire male voice erupted behind me. "That's why we're here."

Ser Fayt turned to scowl at the new arrival. "We are not here to interrogate! We are nursing him to health!" 

It was very strange to me that I knew the facial expression when Souls didn't show things like eyes or lips.

"Her." I followed Ser Fayt's gaze to my left and saw another glowing silhouette. This one, unlike Ser Fayt, bore a pine-leaf aura, and it felt as prickly to boot. He was about her height, but I could tell he was one of those paper-pushing disciplinarians at heart. "And mind your attitude, girl, you're not cleared of suspicion."

"That's enough!" Ser Fayt shouted.

"Who-" I asked weakly.

"I will be asking the questions seeing as my counterpart is too blinded by material greed." The strange man held an accusing finger pointed straight at my chest. "Where did you learn Necroturgy?"

Necroturgy? Didn't he mean Necromancy? Everyone'd heard tales of Magi who could siphon and sunder lifeforce, but nowhere in the Magickal foundation could I see even remotely a way to access it. And here I am, an Unattuned, an empty, being accused of what has to be a very niche use of a Concept, most likely Healing?! It was absurd: first I'd have to be a Water Magus, like Grace. Then I had to also be talented, again, like Grace.

And why in the Heavens and Havens was he asking-

I'm dead. I have to be. This is a hell.

Ser Fayt threw out words faster than I could even comprehend any of what was going on right now. "What are you on about, you ass?!"

"Keep your materialistic daydreaming out of this, cow," he replied to her, "You don't go from an Unattuned Remedial who can't cast worth a damn to throwing Concepts at a Lord and Chancellor. That girl you're trying to save is a covert operative of the Emiss-

Sheer hate enveloped me. How dare he?! I pushed my wispy silvery arse off the bed of literal nothingness and howled.

"EMMETT NO!" Ser Fayt leapt between me and the interrogator, pushing me back down with a tight embrace. There was naught intimate about it: it was a pure gesture of an instructor protecting one of her students. "You're not that! You're not that at all! Please keep your calm!"

"How can I poss-" Not-me barked when a soothing pulse washed over me. My breaths evened and I let myself float.

Whoever this jerk was, he seemed like some worse fusion of Patrick and Samael. "Fine, ignore me like you always do." Oh for crying out loud he was passive-aggressive too?! "Just don't whine like a whore when she inevitably guts us."

Ser Fayt released me with a smile and turned to the strange man with a sigh. "He has shown no interest in transitioning thus far and even if you're right, students of the Colleges deserve this thing called due process. We are a healer and we heal the wounded. I'm leading. Follow or get out."

The lean mean green man sighed and stepped out of my view. He was still around, but it seemed he got the hint.

Ser Fayt turned back to me. "The reason he's asking about Necroturgy is because you're right: you shouldn't have so little life energy in you. Magick doesn't do that."

"It does," the man swiftly corrected, "And that's not the reason, either. What you're choosing to ignore is that this student of ours should have died thrice over from the injury report alone; Adding in the horrid state she was in, no way did natural healing or even Yangside Water keep her going."

Ser Fayt shook her head. "Oh so now you're choosing to help." 

The forest-coloured soul stepped back into view. "I can't stop you from making a stupid decision, but I can make sure you don't get shit wrong." He then turned to face me.

I glared at him. What did he want to accuse me of this time?

"I disagree with the other Angel on this, but if she cares that much about a damned statement of intent-"

"Vow." Apparently Ser Fayt liked this guy as much as I did.

"Vow, whatever." He focused his gaze on me. "I'm going to make sure she at least succeeds in her blind-sighted goal. To that end, you must remain here in the Astra for some time to ensure your safety."

I spat into the empty night. Nothing came out, but it felt good. "Why's that?"

"Souls are reconstituted by affirmation, and the last thing it, or to be more specific, you, need is dysphoria."

"Why would I be dysphoric?!" I barked, "I'm a-" A sliver of my spirit-woman-body-whatever-this-is effervesced away. Not one moment after, fatigue replaced my excitement.

The male Soul nodded. "Need I make myself any more clear, Miss Sinclair?"

I didn't even have the will to respond. I was a man, plain and simple since the day I was born.

Why in the name of all that is fucked in the world could I not just say that?! Had this Air Magus cursed me to try to delude me? 

A sliver more boiled away, and a warm azure light enveloped me. I looked up to find Ser Fayt kneeling over me.

"You can worry about it when you're better, Emmett." Ser Fayt kept her hands over me, the soothing energy continuing to pour, "Don't worry about the mission; you couldn't have known Miss Gardner had a backstory here."

"Speaking of your girlfriend-"

"She's not," I interrupted him before he began. No way in hells would Grace accept me of all people.

He shook his head. "Don't try to hide it."

"That's not a lie, Fayt." Ser Fayt lowered her head ever so slightly.

Wait, He's also a Fayt?

My healer continued, "He really is that vigilan-"

Mr. Fayt slammed his foot down "She! Are you daft or murderous?!"

"What kind of question is that?!"

"She's seeking self-destruction and making herself a martyr!! What she needs is a Yinside Water Magus to transmute-" 

No. No no no. No. "I can't do that!" Even if he was right, no. 

"Why not?" Both Fayts asked in unison.

A surge of strength rushed into me. "Because I need my Magick! Even if you're right and I'm a woman, which I still dou-" The surge faded back into vapour. "-bt... because it's... absurd... I need..."

The older man stepped forth twice and stared down at me. "Why do you seek Magick?"

I met his gaze. "To stop the Emissaries from doing to others what they did to me!!" My strength blazed once more. "I have friends! Actual friends! Ansel! Grace! Freya! Selene! People who see value in me! Ser Feylance! Ser Linn! Ser Lienne! You, Ser Fayt! Barbara back home!"

I shook. My voice shifted well into the softer registers. My emotions flooded into me and my metaphorical body shone. "... Celeste. My parents' apprentice who taught me my first spell. She said I would be a great Magus and protect people..." A sharp wetness singed my face. A tear? "She went missing, most likely dead, but she'd have been disappointed... outraged at what-" 

my emotions broke through before I could finish, pinning my words to the corner and flooding the room with futile cries. 

Ser Fayt put her hand on my chest. "Don't you dare denigrate yourself like that! Emmett, I can tell you right here and now that Miss Gardner would be beyond proud of the man- er, Magus you have become. I do not want to hear a remark like that from you ever again. You hear me?"

Somewhere in the middle of that, I had closed my eyes. And a few moments after that, I fell back into bliss.