by J. J. Lorden
Irrienna held the reins of the place firmly in confident hands. In his sight she was illuminated like a magnetic beacon and he could only marvel at her hand as it came to rest on his arm, guiding him to the center of the circle.
“Kneel here and place your head on the ground there, pointed toward the air glyph. Center your core above the heartwood, then cover the glyph with your hands.”
He did as she instructed, kneeling with his core centered and head oriented to the air glyph.
Irrienna moved to sit on a small red pillow. She began to hum, and essential air energy was pulled into his core. It blossomed like a flower in the sun, but so much faster and larger.
His energetic center spun, surged, and settled, humming perfectly in tune with the sorceress. The elemental attunement he’d just chanced to find in the entry grew denser and localized. Any sense of it being untamed vanished.
Now the air around him began to thrum with energy. It seemed like a deep well and his core was a broad pipe plunged into it. The sense lingered for too short a time, then Irrienna stopped humming.
“Good, now turn to engage water.” She said.
His core knew the water glyph immediately, it felt like the early morning after a thunderstorm, and he turned as instructed.
As he settled, her humming began again, but it was deeper this time.
A weight dropped from the back of Carson’s neck into his navel, something gave way, and a new path opened. Sensation rushed through it and he began to feel–moisture–it was everywhere.
It was in the air and tree around him; he could feel the water of Irrienna’s body just a pace away, the water in his own body was charged with this power.
The molecules sang to him, and his soul now resonated with them, the new thrum joining easily with the resonance of air vibrating within. They sang a harmony, a childhood memory of Christmas carols and the scent of pine from the tree.
Then, in a blink, his mind was gone. It dipped into the harmony, swam effortless between notes, frolicked with a thousand playful thoughts, spit a mouthful of joy, and then... he was back.
The air all about was saturated with the power of water. He inhaled deeply and moist air filled his lungs. It felt right and good, like an old friend, forgotten, lost to memory, and now rejoined–a companion once again.
“Excellent. Now earth,” Irrienna’s voice was strong and commanding.
He turned, and she began again, humming deeper yet and causing a palpable vibration with a far deeper resonance than the other two.
A heavy pressure pushed up from his pelvis, the sensation caused his body to stiffen, then it pressed against the spot where air and water were humming.
A lock released, and a third gate in his core swung open.
His mind, thoughts, sensations, everything that existed in the space that was Carson imploded to a point. The point left his body through familiar yet foreign hands, dropping down a needle-thin channel–into density.
Impossibly long lines connected soil to the sky. Powerful earth energy joined his core harmony, it pounded, deep booming drums transforming the melody to a shamanic tribal dance that bristled with force.
Bits of black eternity spread from him into the earth–deep and heavy the rhythm hammered outward. The power spread wide, but he was immovable. A point of force restrained with immeasurable pressure on all sides, yet still it thrummed in him, power confined but unstoppable.
He began expanding. Drawing in the force that pressed on all sides, growing, seeking, combining with ever-present water and so, so many familiar cousins–the flavors of the earth.
He became fibrous, and his roots grew down and down and deeper still, pulling potential in and pushing his yearning up. Then there was air and sunlight and his growth exploded.
Unknowable time passed in growth. Infinitely, he cycled all three essential powers, his feet were miles upon miles of spreading roots, his legs and torso were an impossibly tall trunk that impaled the heavens. His arms were legion, dividing the mighty trunk again and again into branches beyond knowing that captured and loosely held a treasure of sky.
Patience, steadfast confidence, and the weight of immovable strength defined him.
Time was far less relevant to earth, so earth ignored time. He felt time’s petulance at being so treated, but it mattered not to earth. Earth gave to him a thousand years of wisdom all at once.
A distant part of Carson was separate and observed his transformation. It still knelt in the transformative chamber. That separate bit of Carson coaxed the infinite part that stood outside of time to return.
It whispered of adventure and succulent meat, cold dark beer, the curve of a woman’s breast, and friendship. And slowly, reluctantly, earth conceded and returned to the small, soft body.
A third thick, commanding resonance joined the other two, and his whole body throbbed with the power of the three.
“Now,” The word crashed into him, “the final resonance. Head to the flame and place your hands flat on the glyph.”
Carson was awash in power and sensation; every molecule in him sang of it. He was drunk on the energy, but Irrienna’s command helped settle the power.
Fire was right there. It smelled of molten glass and the wrath of a god.
Feeling every muscle’s smallest movement, every nerve ending’s stimulation, he turned, centered his core above the heart of the tree, and extended his hands above his head before pressing them into the glyph.
Its power was not the same. This power came from everywhere all at once and grabbed his core. It was feral, sexual, animalistic, and destructive. His breath began to come in heavy urgent gasps.
This time Irrienna did not hum. When she opened her mouth, a deep and guttural rumble began to build, slowly gaining momentum like a wolf building energy for a kill. Violent vibrations swollen with brutal intent gripped him.
Fire’s message couldn’t be spoken.
It’s only language was realized destruction.
He was all mighty; instant action, unthinking, uncaring annihilation was all. Nothing else could hold this power.
Then his core began to weep. A keening scream cut through the searing grip of the fire, resounding through his skull, filling the entire space of his awareness.
It was a red-hot knife slicing through him, carelessly carving off pieces of his mind and leaving them to float in the all-consuming flames.
Who he was dwindled.
Outside the power of desolation, the three resonating essences were being held separate. But they wouldn’t be denied. Their song began to swell in righteous indignation, pounding relentless on the veil of destruction.
The consuming barrier of flame quailed, diminished before the power of three, and still it howled defiance, but there was no advocate capable of resisting the combined weight of air, water, and earth.
So, the fire’s veil was pierced by their song, and the resonance reached him. With care, the power of the three reassembled what annihilation had sundered and laid down a path back from the brink.
It was an irresistible pull to follow their trail. Involuntarily, his being began barking and flicking outward, rending matter with a rhythmic cord of violence that was the lightning within the melody.
Still, he went along the trail of the three.
A nameless, once destroyed, lovingly reformed being emerged from the prison of annihilation, bright scars cooling from molten red to grey, whole again, reforged stronger.
He choose harmony. And his core bound with essential fire.
The screamed song collapsed. The fierce rumbling cord of elemental fire flared and hammered its part in symphony with the other three.
The tree fibers below his hands quivered. For a moment, everything went perfectly still and calm and Carson felt himself teetering on a blade’s edge between desolation and life.
He tumbled.
As if struck by a bolt out of a clear blue sky, the entirety of everything he knew himself to be was obliterated and consumed in an instan
t.
He was flame, heat, and ash. He was the immovable judgment of destruction. Then there was nothing but black.
Sometime later, Carson became aware that he was, in fact, not ash or destruction. He was not annihilation incarnate. He still remained a mortal being, and he had returned to his body, lying prostrate in the heart chamber.
Slowly, he extended his senses and felt the four essential resonances moving through his core. The essence of fire was his, but it was less at ease than the others. And although he knew it, he could not touch or commune with it as effortlessly as he did the others.
Carson realized he hadn’t used words in a very long time, and there was something to say, something appropriate. He looked up. The Elven sorceress was kneeling in front of him, regarding him intensely.
The needed words came to him, passed as a whisper from the ancient heart of the tree.
He sat up and met her eyes. “Through air, water, earth, and fire, I am destroyed and remade anew in service to the awakening whole. I am forged as a blade of essential power, I become the enemy of untruth and a diviner of that which is and remains unseen. I am, as I am, as I have always been.”
“You are, as I witness you are, burnt to ash and remade in truth. An essential heart of that which is and is revealed as it is.” Irrienna’s voice sealed an unseen document writ large on the universe.
Carson was.
What had been a half-formed man, was now a blade of essential power.
Then there was silence, and they sat there, together, separate but connected. He wasn’t sure how long–it could have been a moment or a lifetime, and in a way, it felt like both.
Irrienna eventually tipped her head to him. “You did well, Gwarn’din. The heart of Isrenn’Nal has seen many long years since someone channeled that much power during an awakening.”
The Elven matriarch smiled at him. “She appreciated the excitement and thanks you.”
Carson wasn’t exactly surprised about the implication of an intelligent tree, but it took him a moment to absorb the idea. Words still felt clumsy, so he just nodded once with a tight smile.
Irrienna smiled back, hers much broader. “Stand up, Carson. You and I are complete here. You have received all that I can grant at this time.”
He stood with small, deliberate movements. Each little motion felt monumental–like he was shifting a universe within.
When he reached his feet, Irrienna gestured for him to lead. So he turned and left the room, the cords parted as they had before, but he knew them now and felt no compulsion to touch or inquire into their nature.
Nero waited for them, standing before a bench that he’d obviously been sitting on. The guardian bowed his head in acknowledgment to Irrienna, and a meaningful look passed between them. “Were you able to monitor the entire ceremony?” Irrienna asked him.
Nero nodded his head, “I was. It was... a near thing.”
Irrienna turned to regard Carson as she contemplatively replied, “Yes, it was.” Her eyes stayed on him for long moments, her thoughtful look seemed distant. Irrienna blinked and turned back to Nero. “Do you understand the implications of this?”
Nero nodded again. “I do. I had suspected, but now we can be sure.”
The ranger took a step toward Carson, drew in a deep breath, then exhaled, and looked into Carson’s eyes with powerful ferocity.
His voice rang with that power. “You are unique, Gwarn’din. Your latent power is unmatched, but it is also raw and untrained. As you are, you’re as much a danger to your enemies as you are to yourself.”
“Good thing the boy has you, then, isn’t it, Swarn’gan?”
Nero’s piercing gaze lingered for an instant. Then broke off as he smiled kindly to the sorceress and moved to her, kissing her respectfully on both cheeks. “Truly it is, Mother. Thank you. I once again have a clear direction.”
She touched him lightly on the cheek. “Well it’s about damn time.”
Nero guffawed, then the smiling ranger guided Carson out of the chamber and down the hall toward the platform. Irrienna’s melodic voice followed them down the passage.
“Don’t break him on his first day Swarn’gan. Talent or no, he needs proper instruction.” Somewhat disturbingly to Carson, Nero didn’t answer.
They exited onto the arrival platform, but his guide didn’t go to the row of travel wards on the trunk. Instead he went to the edge of the platform. Carson followed, unsure of what they were doing now.
Nero pulled something from his pocket and gestured for him to approach. He did, moving to stand a pace away. Nero let a crystal pendant drop to hang from a silver chain, then he lifted and set it around Carson’s neck.
Carson’s heart raced slightly. He looked at Nero with confusion. This seemed an oddly informal way to give him such an obviously important item. Nero’s gaze was confident and relaxed, and his slightly twisted lips hinted at an undercurrent of mirth.
Carson lifted the pendant in one hand. It was a clear, flat, oval crystal the size of a fingernail, wrapped in light green metal. The metal was engraved with intricate patterns of air, water, and earth glyphs. He didn’t exactly know the glyphs, but he could sense their energy.
“Welcome Gwarn’din Carson Stix. With that pendant you have completed your initiation into the Whitewood Elven Family.”
Carson was taken entirely off guard by the man’s pronouncement and looked about like there should be more to it.
Where’s the ceremony, the music, the special words, and the formal fluff? He felt cheated. Where’s the g-damn princess!?
His elemental resonances rose with his ire and he felt swept along by the power. It was too much and the sensation threatened to overwhelm his conscious mind. Carson knew the elemental resonances now, he’d become them for a period, and he knew the danger of allowing these powers to possess him fully.
He went right for his toolbox and pulled out his grounding rod.
Carson bent to his right knee, put his right hand on the platform, palm flat, left hand braced on his left knee, head bowed and moved breath through his flattened palm, grounding the energy.
In a moment it passed. The rush drained away, and he breathed through the adrenaline that remained. It took several sets of breathing cycles before he felt close to baseline. When he was, Carson stood again and turned his attention back to Nero.
When he spoke, his voice was clear and firm. “You can’t be serious. Just like that?”
Nero smiled broadly. “Ha. Well done, Gwarn’din. The throws can be difficult immediately after awakening, even for the most prepared elf. You continue to… not suck.” It sounded like a compliment and Nero was clearly not in the habit of giving compliments, so Carson didn’t dwell on the words. “And yes, I am serious. Just like that.”
Carson felt disappointed. “Well... okay. I guess I figured there would be some formal ceremony for something like that.”
“Oh, there is,” Nero replied.
“What?” Carson felt his elemental bonds rising once more, and his tone rose with them. “Then, what the fuck, Nero?”
The wave crashed over his psyche, but he knew it was coming this time. He gripped the railing, eyes closed, and exhaled the power out his hands. Several long breath cycles later, he felt better and opened his eyes.
Nero leaned back against the rail, both hands wrapped around it. He nodded and grunted approvingly, then regarded Carson with a level gaze.
“Well?” Carson asked, wary of his temper. “I don’t warrant a proper ceremony?”
“We don’t have time for that pomp. You’re now a fully awakened Elementalist, initiated in the heart of Isrenn’Nal. Look, look there.” He pointed to Carson’s sternum. “Open it and look.”
Carson looked at his chest–it seemed the same. He looked back to Nero. “Open it,” Nero said, miming the act of pulling aside the outer flat of his jerkin.
“Ohh.” He reached under his arm and activated the release, pulling back the outer wrap. To his amazement, what had previou
sly been plain green cloth was now emblazoned with the four runic glyphs of the elements. They were small but glowed faintly with power. “Woah.”
“Yes, woah is right. Unlocking all four elements normally requires years, and you’ve pulled it off in a single day. I’d say woah about sums it up.”
Nero’s manner shifted, becoming more serious. “Although I gotta tell you, kid. We nearly lost you during your bonding with essential flame. If anyone other than Irrienna or the queen herself had been your Tannis’tan, you probably would have decorated the heart chamber with your entrails.”
This was news to Carson. “Wait... you mean, being blasted to ash and becoming the essence of destruction isn’t normal?” The words spilled out and they sounded ridiculous.
Nero was not laughing; his expression was slightly pale. “Hell no. That is not normal.”
Nero exhaled and his demeanor eased. “Everyone shares the experience of the elemental essence that they bond with, Gwarn’din. But they do not fully become that essence. Fortunately for you, Irrienna was able to pull you back. I dare say this may be a sign that your path will not be a smooth one.”
Then it hit. Quite unexpectedly, he felt the impact of his awakening as an Elementalist. Telling Nero of his transformation, saying it aloud, anchored the experience in reality… or virtual reality. The distinction was murky to Carson–this seemed very much like a new reality.
His memories of becoming the elemental essences were profoundly intense. They were almost like memories of different lives; lives that had been dominated by an absolute awareness of who and what he was.
When he focused on his memory of air he was suffused with a sense of unbounded freedom. Water felt like love, connection, and kinship with life itself. Earth was resolute, powerful, and steadfast. And then there was his memory of fire.
His memory of fire scared Carson. Describing his experience of that resonance as simply fire was far from accurate. To him, it felt like the absolute belief that all things existed for the purpose of being destroyed. And, he was the power that burned with desire to make sure they were.
