To Fly the Soaring Tides

In my youth, I would shine endless light upon the darkness in these skies.

At first, they told me I was too young, too weak. No matter how much effort I put forth, I could live for a thousand years and never make a difference. But one day I reached for the sun, and the rest was history.

Once my talent undeniably blossomed, my parents were quick to throw me under the tutelage of the Silver Witch. She was the glimmering example of what one could do with the long life afforded to a master of witchcraft. Centuries of sitting on the High Coven, undefeated among those who challenged her, she spearheaded the alliance between the Earth Vein and Nightwing Isles. Untold wealth made its way to our shores, along with unprecedented opportunity.

As a child, my duties were studying while my hobbies were experimenting with magic. Uncovering the mysteries was my purpose before I knew anything else. I was not only keen, but thorough. A prodigy among my peers.

I still met folly at her honeyed words. Earth Vein represented utmost prosperity, and I could be a part of that. So many years ago, I didn’t even know the world existed beyond the Mystic Skies, then they showed us the Boreal and beyond. From sea to sky, it was like the horizon ran away, vanished into the distance. That which I thought was the extent of my gaze turned out to be nothing but the local scenery.

Given my talent… nothing was beyond my reach after I entered her tutelage. To her credit, the Silver Witch helped me reach my potential. Her methods were harsh and effective, but picturing that damned girl, I wonder if she only stifled my potential in the end?

Among Nanri’s blathering was mention of “the witch’s shackles”. My student was nothing if not extraordinarily ordinary, yet she still found time for amused mutterings as the single greatest opportunity in her life crumbled around her. As the adjutant’s daughter, she could have gone even further than me.

Did she let that cursed witch in willingly or was she merely a victim herself? A tool to be tossed aside? Looking back on the way that silver-headed girl spoke, I can only think she came out better than most from that ordeal. The High Coven was sure to punish her, but her fate was out of my hands.

These days I often ask myself, where did I go wrong?

I never would have thought my life would unfold in such a tragic way. Centuries wasted chasing gold and mithril, for what? So that my manor was larger than my childhood friends’? There was not a single teacher on Porta Bora who owned a larger estate.

As Earth Vein claimed it for my alleged debts, did it ever even matter? My home was built upon a parcel of land which had existed for millennia, and I only gave someone a bag full of rocks for it eighty years ago. Was it not always fleeting?

Naturally, I lost my job. Overnight, all my prospects within Earth Vein were dissolved, let alone my reputation among the witches of Nightwing. I no longer had students for the first time in what felt like ever. But perhaps it was for the best.

There was a very long time during which watching my students grow into prominent witches was the highest gratification I could find in life of mine, but somehow, I lost that long the way too. They turned lackluster and I thought nothing of it—that perhaps it was their fault. This generation just didn’t get it. But it was me all along.

Consistently over the multitude of years I’ve somehow managed, my students kept me alive. Their unquenchable yearning for knowledge in any given subject kept me on my toes, but somehow, it all became routine.

My estate only grew larger over time. My workshop had materials stacked wall to wall, my pantry overflowed. The floor of my treasury could not even be reached without shoveling catalysts out of the way.

I forgot that my pursuit of knowledge was the only reason I had anything to my name in the first place, and somehow decided that I possessed those things because I innately deserved them. Such a long life, and even that which I earned through blood, sweat and tears ended up being taken for granted. Of course, only she whose blood poured would bear the pain when it all fell apart

Decade after decade, the students were all the same. Difficulties understanding my texts were resolved and recorded throughout the years—easily available to future students. Furthermore, I was not blind to this. I adapted my understanding when necessary and properly evolved my syllabus with each twist and turn. But after so long, I couldn’t think of anything so tedious.

It wasn’t until that ridiculous child led me toward my flaws with a firm hand that I truly realized how thoroughly I had been wasting my years. Simply looking into her radiant cerulean eyes was like being crushed under the weight of a young undine within the Mystic Seas.

As salt fell to dust beneath my feet, how did I ever think I could compare to her? The mere act of approaching me turned the island to ruin. She spoke to me for a short moment during her brief, but effective reign. She spoke to me like I was a gnat obscuring her vision—one to be swatted away. There wasn’t a single moment where she looked at me as an opponent or even the slightest of threats.

Honestly, as soon as she appeared from a bolt of divine lightning, I knew it was over. But after all my years—all my experience—what was I supposed to do? Kneel before that child?

Perhaps it would have been the wiser choice, but that was impossible. My pride had been exacerbated over a great deal of time. While I drowned in the opulence offered in my cooperation with Earth Vein, the light of a star I had long forgotten blinded me.

In my youth… nothing was safe from my light. There were those who wished to gain from others’ misfortune, or bully the weak, and they were all purged of their narrow-minded views. Was I really going to destroy the infirmary… and everyone in it?

Where did I go wrong? As it turned out, the light had long forsaken me—surely when I turned my back on it.

That girl, my student called her Cira, outshined me more anything I had ever known. She crippled me further than I had ever thought possible. Not only my knee, but my aura. Centuries of perfecting my mastery over light—gone in the blink of an eye. I can still feel that cursed smoke stuck to my soul like a festering lesion.

Somewhere… I lost my way. My parents are long dead. Those I called friends have nearly all fallen to the decay of time. Perhaps I lost whatever I thought I needed to pursue, but it was questionable whether or not I shined so bright a single time in my pitiful life.

Everything I thought I ever accomplished amounted to a laughable scolding from someone a fraction of my age. She spoke as if my greatest spells were child’s play before her. As a mere child felt that way—could they be anything but?

“You’re pathetic.” She looked at me as she would a bug beneath her feet. “Like a child throwing a tantrum.”

Nothing made me more infuriated than those words. Hundreds of years I’ve lived, and a girl shy of even two decades dared to look down upon me.

She was right.

Earth Vein offered me wealth and resources, at the exchange of my heart and soul.

Not really my soul, but I may as well have offered it. The things they made me do… When you rely on a single source for your livelihood for centuries, it becomes difficult to decline their requests. At first, it’s something simple. Reclaim stolen materials.

Reclaim stolen materials.

Collect a debt from a merchant who forgot his due date.

Reclaim stolen materials.

Investigate potential resources in uncharted lands.

Reclaim stolen materials.

Magicians from the Sunset Skies have encroached upon our distribution network. Destroy them.

I have no right to blame Nanri for betraying such a master. The way she stood up to me; it reminded me of how I used to be—or how I always wanted to be. What I always wanted to do. She protected the people of the island when the entire sky deigned to let them crumble away like miniscule grains of salt as soon as their worth dwindled. Never in my long life had I envied someone so. The fire in her eyes burned just as bright as the girl above in that moment.

Before I knew it, I was deeply involved in the oppressive system that ruled these skies, yet here was one of my least notable students from a deceptively auspicious background with the courage to defy the only sky she’s even known. Her courage came largely from the one behind her, but she was ready for me to turn her to dust. I saw it in her unfaltering gaze.

Cira… That’s the name my student muttered.

The Hidden Witch probably wasn’t even a witch. Not one from the Nightwing Isles at least. Beyond the witches, many mages and sorcerers across the sky believed in broadening the range of their casting abilities rather than specializing in any one school, but this girl didn’t seem to care either way—a master of whatever she wielded. It was as if she used the aether around us to paint the picture of her will. The Saint of Seven Suns?

That’s what she’s known as now, though it felt like an understatement. She became the savior of one of the biggest islands on the Boreal, and the most problematic one by a longshot. I wouldn’t even know where to begin to replicate her deeds with a team of a hundred witches.

After being stripped of my title and everything else, I felt no obligation to clarify things for the Gandeux, let alone Earth Vein. Something tells me the girl will introduce herself to them in due time anyway. In any case, they saw no reason to interrogate me about it, and didn’t seem to hold someone like me to much merit, anyway. My leg had already been healed by the time we reached Port, so they were quick to toss me out.

Without my aura, I discovered there was remarkably little I could do.

Lyren was the only one in these skies that seemed to care once I’d fallen from grace, despite how poorly I treated her. After my shameful display on Fount Salt, I have no idea why she even bothered to take me in. She could crush me with a stray thought if she wanted, extinguishing all my years in a single breath.

But she was compassionate enough to offer me a spare room in her home.

Of course, I treated everyone poorly. It was impossible to find employment when I belittled everyone for their common existence. Though I desperately needed to do their bidding simply to survive, I somehow found a way to make myself sound superior.

It didn’t hold weight, naturally. I was the same as them now—no, I was far worse off. I couldn’t stop myself and was shamefully laughed out of every general store and restaurant who squandered the absolute honor of letting me greet their patrons or wash their dishes.

Pitiful.

It hasn’t even been that long, yet that way of thinking seems so foreign to me.

How did I ever get such a big head? And why did it take so long to realize?

I was nothing without my aura. The moment it was stripped from me, I became an invalid.

All Lyren asked was a hundred silver crowns a month. I only found out later it was many times lower than the going rate in downtown Port. It could hardly have been called a fee just to make sure I was trying.

Somehow… somehow I found the gall to berate poor Lyren. Why should I have to work some insufferable job for some paltry merchant? Just to live in some shitty run-down shack? For the record, she lived in a modest house right on the main street.

“How do people even live such bleak existences?! The thought of it makes my blood boil! Look at this shanty you’ve put me in! We may as well be in the lower districts of Uren—are you happy to live like this Lyren?! Are you satisfied living like a miner not even worth the salt they can gather in a day?!”

I’ll never forget the cold look in her eyes as I threw her kindness in her face for the umpteenth time. My last remaining student—the last person who seemed to care if I lived or died—the last shred of her concern dispersed into the aether in that moment.

“Get out.” That was all she said.

Those were the last words I heard Lyren speak. I was still in a rage, but part of me knew I had crossed a bridge that offered no return. My feeble excuses died against a brick wall. I had too much pride to backtrack—to apologize.

That night it rained. As the moon rose above the distant mountains, I took shelter beneath an awning. It didn’t take long before a man exited a nearby door with a bag of trash and took one look at me. His eyes creased in abject hatred and he threw the bag.

“Get the hell out of here!”

The bag was bursting with weight and ripped open on impact.

All I could do was stumble to my feet, still trying to wake up. Putrid oils and decomposed food waste covered the only set of robes I had left to my name, and the rain spread it through the fabric evenly.

I clenched my teeth and stared at him indignantly while the rain washed away the tears forming in my eyes. I have spent days battling in heavy downpours before, but a few minutes subject to the elements in this frail, useless body had me utterly defeated. My chest tightened and I couldn’t get any words out. Nightwing knows no incantations would have worked.

Many trials I have faced in my life, but in this moment the only thing I could think to do was turn around and flee down the street into the ceaseless deluge.