41.

My mother’s son

He was dreaming of that place again. A dark, summer sky stretched overhead. Stars twinkled in every direction. Uliana glimmered like a crystal above; Ymara had already set. The grass, up to his knees, swayed with a slow, warm breeze. Fireflies flickered between the blades and around him. The trees in the surrounding forest rustled, accompanying the chirping of crickets in the night.

It didn’t exist—it didn’t feel like it existed—but he was here again. It was a dream, but at the same time real. When he cut his finger on a blade of grass, it bled and then healed. He could not find it when he wanted to, but it was always somewhere, alive, waiting for him to dream again.

Dominic walked through the grass, a thin, trodden path parting the way through it. Around the bend was a tiny chapel—abandoned, mossy, overgrown with weeds and ivy. He was familiar with this place too. He had come here before. Though it had been a long, long time.

A black nightingale flew to his shoulder, warbling a song. He gave it a scratch on the head and continued walking.

The inside of the chapel was empty, pews long gone, weeds growing up through the floor. Moonlight barely allowed him to make out the walls, the plants, the stone altar on the far side. He held out his hand, and summoned up some strength.

Light gathered in his palm, a golden orb flickering like a miniature Sun. It lit up the tiny space, bathing it in warm color.

Dominic stared at it and laughed to himself. He knew it, but this only proved further that he was in a dream, in a place that didn’t fully exist. Light magic was the most difficult magic to trigger, requiring unimaginable amounts of mana to ignite. And yet it was just hovering merrily in his hand, appearing immediately after he thought of it, his body not rejecting it in the slightest.

He held onto the orb and kept walking. Pebbles crunched under his feet. He stopped at the altar, looking down at the plain rock, waiting—maybe hoping—that something might happen. That this dream would finally mean something. That it would be more than a dream.

It remained an unresponsive slab of stone. Dominic traced his fingers across its surface, cold to the touch, then turned around and sat down with his back against it. He leaned his head back, letting the chill soak into him. It was always this dream, this same place—a place he wanted to go back to, but at the same time, wanted to never see again. So warm and lonely.

He glanced upwards, his gaze moving to a carving above the door. It was old, crumbling like everything else, but he could still make out the details—a figure eight ringed in a circle, superimposed on several concentric arrows. It looked a little bit like a wheel, but also a little like the Sun’s rays.

Dominic reached inside the collar of his shirt and felt for that cold metal chain. He pulled it out, the gold pendant dangling in front of his eyes—a figure eight that matched right up with the one on the wall.

He laughed weakly to himself.

“I guess I should have known, huh?”

The necklace dropped from his hand, thudding lightly back onto his chest. He leaned back into the stone, letting out a long breath.

The nightingale on his shoulder began singing, the tune clear, easy on the ears, yet melancholy. It was calling for others, searching in this empty forest, yearning for companions that didn’t exist. Dominic knew that there was nobody here but him. But perhaps that was exactly who it was calling for.

He glanced at it. Its beady black eyes glimmered in the light of the orb inside his palms. Its feathers were so dark and shiny that they made the bird look like it had been carved from obsidian. It sang, and when he tried to listen closer, he felt like he could almost make out the words.

The warm, muggy air was making him think strange things. He leaned back and closed his eyes, relishing in the comfort of the make-believe forest, wishing for the dream to end.

∞

His eyelids slowly cracked open, blinking as he struggled to adjust to the light. He was still in the pavilion, lying against the pedestal instead of on top of it, the room in the same disrepair it had been in when he’d passed out.

He tested out his arms and legs, moving them a bit. Every single muscle was sore, and his body itself was still very weak. The reflux from forcing so many affinities he hadn’t touched before had drained him. He wouldn’t die at this point, but he wouldn’t be able to do much either.

The light sound of footsteps neared from the other side of the pedestal, and Marion appeared with her journal in her hand as he turned his head.

“Oh!” she said, putting a hand over her mouth. “You’re awake.”

She snapped her notebook shut and crouched down to his eye level.

“How do you feel? I moved you off the pedestal; it looked uncomfortable.”

Dominic stared at her, unsure if he even had the energy to speak. He took a long breath and tried.

“How long has it been?” he asked, his voice barely crackling out.

“Three days,” she replied. “We separated three days ago. I found you yesterday, passed out.”

So he’d been asleep for roughly a day. Dominic slowly turned his head to look around the room, then looked back to Marion.

“Where’s Aster?” he asked.

She paused, then shook her head.

“I don’t know.”

He frowned. If it had been three days, the boy was probably starving. There wasn’t anything to eat down here, and their food stores had been with Marion.

“How’d you find me?” Dominic asked.

“It was by coincidence,” she said. “I’ve been in Marshal labyrinths before. I knew I wanted to see the deepest level, so I kept going downwards. This is the lowest room in the entire maze, and you happened to be here.”

“Do you know a lot?”

“About what?”

“The lowest levels.”

She glanced around, surveying the obvious damage.

“Well, they’re all a little different,” she answered. “The builders all have their own unique tastes and styles. What happened here?”

Dominic opened his mouth to respond but only managed to cough, his throat dry. Marion flicked her finger. A small blob of water floated to her from the pools outside. She purified it with a snap, and softly grabbed Dominic’s jaw with her hand.

“Pardon me.”

She opened his mouth and let the water slide down. He swallowed and coughed again, one droplet having gone down the wrong tube.

“Take your time,” she said. “What happened?”

Dominic gulped and cleared his throat.

“Kali was here,” he finally answered.

Marion glanced at the pile of rock shards on the pedestal above him, then back down.

“I see,” she said. “And then what happened?”

“And then I killed her.”

She stared at him. Unexpectedly, she smiled, crow’s feet crinkling.

“It must have been hard,” she remarked. “A dragon’s trial is never easy. They’ll only allow a true Marshal past.”

Dominic chuckled dryly.

“Do I look like a true Marshal to you?” he replied.

“Of course!” she said, taking his hand. “Dominic, you killed Kali. She would never have let you take her pedestal if you weren’t qualified. She would never have opened the way downwards.”

He paused, then shook his head.

“She was just a statue.”

“A statue made by a dragon.”

“How do you know that?”

“I’ve been in a lot of labyrinths.”

Dominic met her eyes. They were glimmering, an endless confidence shining behind her words.

“Even the king has never found a dragon, you know,” he said. “Not once in a thousand years.”

“I am not the king,” Marion replied. “Besides, the king was never a Marshal. His knowledge is vast, but his experience is limited. Did he tell you if he’s ever met a dragon before?”

“…He said he’d met one.”

“See? How would he have been able to find them? He hardly knows anything about them.”

“Do you know more?”

“Of course!”

She threw her hands out wide, smiling brightly.

“I know all about them!”

Dominic was quiet for a moment, trying to parse the new information in his mind, then abandoning the endeavor altogether. He didn’t have the energy to bother.

“Tell me what you know,” he said. “About those dragons.”

“Sure,” she replied. “Hm, where should I start?”

She glanced around, eyes catching on the rock shards on the pedestal above his head.

“Well, Kali is fairly common.”

Dominic raised an eyebrow.

“Kali?”

“In their trials, the lowermost rooms. If the labyrinth was built around a lair, then Kali would be there. If the labyrinth didn’t have a resident dragon, then she wouldn’t be. A lot of dragons worshiped her, but humans and demons didn’t.”

“…What?”

“Well, I guess it wasn’t quite worship, but perhaps a deep respect? If you could imagine how people treat an apostle of god instead of the god themselves.”

“Wait,” Dominic said. “Why Kali?”

Marion tilted her head as if it should have been obvious.

“What do you mean?”

“She was just a mortal mage,” he said. “Why would a dragon…”

Her expression was momentarily one of surprise, then quickly morphed into something like pity.

“Oh dear,” she murmured. “Is that what you thought? My boy, do you know what an archmage is?”

“They’re a mage that can use all affinities.”

She shook her head softly.

“No, that’s the result,” Marion said. “An archmage is only an artificial title. You fought Kali. You killed her. Tell me: if her statue could have spoken, would she have called herself an archmage?”

Dominic thought back to those eyes, that smile, that warm but mysterious expression. She was the genius of geniuses, the mage that went down in history as the most influential to ever exist.

“No,” he answered.

“See?” she replied. “You understand it. ‘Archmage’ was what she was called. But Kali was something else, something different, something only the dragons knew.”

She paused for a moment, looking at him.

“But you know it now too, Dominic.”

He pursed his lips, then shook his head.

“I don’t,” he said. “I don’t understand. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You do, my boy, you do,” she insisted. “It seems I’ve been too lax.”

Marion took his hands again. She lowered herself, sitting on her knees, holding his numb fingers with her old, calloused ones.

“Do you remember your youth, Dominic?” she asked softly.

“How long ago are you referring to?”

“About ten years.”

He paused for a moment, then laughed weakly.

“Oh, I remember.”

“Do you remember the day it all changed?”

He smiled lazily.

“Of course.”

“What were you then?” Marion asked. “An archmage? A blessed one? An apostle of god?”

Dominic thought back. Such cold sounding words. The Ashans would have loved them, just like they loved their cold metal bars and cold damp floors and cold isolated rooms. He had forgotten about all of that, on that day when he was ten. A voice full of mirth. Warm fingers on his cheeks. Come here. My child.

“No,” he answered. “I was just my mother’s son.”

She smiled softly.

“There it is.”

He felt her wrinkled, dry fingers still softly wrapped around his.

“…So it was you after all,” he mumbled to himself.

He stared at his own hands, tiny scars lacing his fingers despite his ability to heal. They were from a time before he could heal anything.

“Marion,” he said, “is it rude to call a god by their name?”

She tilted her head.

“Why would it be?” she asked.

“The Ashans make up so many titles,” he replied. “The god of life, the mother of life, the beginning—but never just Asha. Even the king is ‘His Majesty.’ I can’t call him Set.”

“Why not, Dominic?” she said. “You can call him Set. You have that right. He is only a king. Besides, names are superficial things made by mortal men. Why would a god ever care what they are called? It’s beyond their notice.”

“…I see.”

He held her hands tighter, then looked up into her eyes.

“It’s an honor to finally meet you, Mars.”

There was silence for a moment, deafeningly thick. Like they had been drowned in mana, and the entire room was underwater.

Her smile widened. In place, on her knees, her form began to flicker and change. The wrinkles on her face smoothed over and disappeared. Her hair grew out, turning pitch black, spilling to the floor. Her clothes morphed from the maneuverable archeologist’s uniform into long, dark robes—the same color as her hair, decorated with glistening gold.

When she opened her eyes, they mirrored Dominic’s—amber ringed in a halo of red. It was different from the version he’d seen ten years ago, that he’d been looking for for so long. She was imitating who he was now. Pitch black hair. Gold irises. A face roughly his age. When she smiled, she had two sets of canine teeth.

She put her hands on his cheeks and pulled him close. She smelled like nighttime, like the navy sky. Like the vast expanse of stars above, burning red and yellow and blue and white. Like the earth below that watched them twinkle. Like the ocean wind.

He breathed it in, and buried his face into her shoulder.

How long he had waited to return here.

“It’s been a long time, my son,” she said. “How good it is to see you.”