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*
This is a work of fiction. All names in this publication are fictitious and any
resemblance to any person
living or dead is coincidental.
***
Table of Contents
Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three
Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six
Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen Chapter Twenty Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two Chapter Twenty-Three Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five Chapter Twenty-Six Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight Chapter Twenty-Nine Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One Chapter Thirty-Two Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four Chapter Thirty-Five Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven Chapter Thirty-Eight Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty Chapter Forty-One
About the Author
Chapter One
“To truly understand the Ancient One, it must be understood that they are not
like any ordinary,
mundane human who ever lived, before or since. Like all the truly mighty mages
of legend and
song, Eddas Ayar was and is passionless, and compassionless. Beyond
humanity, Eddas Ayar was
and is no mere mortal being, but more a force of nature, or the will of a vengeful
god incarnate.
To ascribe ordinary, human motivations to any mage is false - they wield powers
far beyond
far beyond
normal beings, and that power shapes their view of the world, distancing them
from it. The
greatest of mages were even more distanced from the world by their power, and
Eddas Ayar was
and is perhaps the greatest mage in all of history. Thus, the Ancient One was so
far removed from
humanity that ascribing human goals and motivations to their actions is simply
impossible.”
- Lord Caladis, The Eddasine Chronicles, 1817 NCC
I reached out an ebon-gloved hand to adjust the full-length mirror, and looked
myself over. The same
strange woman who had gazed back at me for seven decades stood there, her
expression calm. Even
after all these years of gazing upon the woman in the mirror, it still felt odd at
times to see her rather than
myself - a tall, bearded, olive-skinned Hyperborean male.
The half-elf woman in the mirror was beautiful, of that there was no doubt.
Night-black hair drawn back
into a ponytail, highly arched eyebrows, eyes as black as jet… Her body, forged
by seventy years of the
ascetic life of a battle-mage, had received its final forging in the raging,
destructive chaos that was the
very heart of a mana-storm. Her beauty, because of that, was beyond ordinary
mortal beauty… She
was, in fact, possessed of a terrifying, alien and surreal beauty, fitting of who
and what she really was.
She was dressed in the ebon, long-sleeved hooded robes I favored, though with a
black waist-belt over
it to draw it closer about her figure. Wearing the black, elbow-length kidskin
gloves and knee-length
kidskin boots that had once belonged to my beloved Dyarzi, she looked every
inch what the two ebon
feathers she bore beneath her hairband announced she truly was - the Raven of
Yorindar.
“Old Man, stop primping! You look fine,” a voice called.
I turned, looking over my shoulder, and saw Joy coming up the stairs to my
room at the top of my tower.
Though now over ninety, the proud beauty of Joy’s youth had been restored by
my own sorcery, and she
was once again the golden-haired goddess the late King Darian had taken as his
wife. She was, in truth, a
giant - though her mother’s brush with the edge of a mana-storm had left her
daughter of diminutive size,
at a mere five cubits in height. And, though the giants might still consider her to
be quite small as she was
barely the size of a toddler to them, Joy towered head and shoulders above any
human I had ever
human I had ever
known. “Old Man, you’ve fussed in that mirror for an hour, now. Come on - it’s
nearly time. You don’t
want to be late.”
“The first impression is very important, Joy. For some of those children, it will
be the first time they have
ever seen me. For some others, it will be their first day of lessons as an
apprentice battle-mage,” I
replied, turning back to the mirror. “I will leave nothing but my best impression
each time winter returns,
and the children come.”
“Yes, and for the rest of them, they’ve seen you a hundred times before and all
your primping is
completely wasted. Now come,” Joy said, and grinned at me.
I chuckled. “Well, I suppose you’re right. After all, they can see what I really
look like beneath this
garment of flesh, and most of them wouldn’t even notice what I was wearing.
Still, it’s the principle of the
thing. I want them to always know they’re important to me - because they are.”
As Joy and I walked down the stairs, she spoke again. “I still find that very odd -
that they can see more
than we can see. What have you been able to discover of it?”
than we can see. What have you been able to discover of it?”
I shrugged. “Well, as you know, each of them is the result of the little enchanted
bracer that Pelia and her
women gave me,” I replied, patting my upper left arm where I wore the band
beneath the sleeve of my
robe. “The bracer allows me to begin a pregnancy within them, though I lack the
equipment to otherwise
do so - the enchantment responds to my male soul, which remains unchanged
inside this body. The
children themselves have nothing of me in them - their germ-plasm is entirely
that of their mother, and
they are more like twins than daughters. Still, because their lives were sparked
with sorcery, their
germ-plasm has been altered by sorcery. My best explanation, after studying
their auras myself, is that
they simply are more attuned to mana and astral emanations. They will be
immensely powerful mages
when they grow up, I think, as they each will have an innate understanding of
mana-flow that even an
apprentice with a strong Talent normally takes years to learn. They can see astral
space and astral auras
clearly and easily, Joy, just like I can with the Spell of Astral Vision or the spell
of Astral Projection.
Nothing is truly hidden from them - they can sense emotional states simply by
glancing at one’s aura, and
tell what’s really on someone’s mind just from the colors they see floating about
them, which are directly
them, which are directly
derived from various factors of emotion, intellect and personality. More, their
vision is uncannily
penetrating and accurate. Normally, with a spell of astral vision, one can only
see the aura cast by the
body itself, and whatever enchantments happen to be upon it. All these children
can see far more than
that - they can see the very soul. They know what I really look like, simply
because they can see my
male soul housed within this body.” I shrugged again. “Still, it’s best to make
light of it, I think. After all, it
wouldn’t do to have them grow up thinking that they are in some way odd or
strange - they may be that,
for a human, but in truth, they are quite normal children, otherwise.”
“I agree,” Joy replied, nodding. “Having lived as a child being treated as an
oddity because I am so small,
I can tell you that it is a terrible thing to experience.” Joy then grinned at me as
we stood outside my
tower, standing in the thin layer of snow which covered the ground. “And having
raised two children
myself, I can tell you that you make a wonderful father.”
I rolled my eyes at her. “Please, Joy. That’s the one thing I can’t be for them.
They spend the majority of
the year with their mothers just so they’ll not think of me as ‘father’. Fate and
the gods have meant that
the gods have meant that
our people are, for now, a race with only one gender, and to my courtesans I am
much like a bee to
dozens of flowers - they need my touch to reproduce, but the result is never
another bee, always another
flower. Perhaps someday that will change - perhaps Yorindar has some plan I am
not aware of that will,
eventually, solve this problem. I have already developed a refined version of
Pelia’s spell that the Second
Generation can use on themselves, once their numbers rise to the point where
there simply are too many
of them for me to act as the ‘bee’ to their ‘flowers’ - that, I accomplished ten
years ago. Unfortunately, it
takes a master mage to even attempt the spell, and none of them are even close
to that level of power.
So, for now…” I said, and shrugged. “Eventually, each of them will have to
come to me and receive the
same spell their mothers did, so that they may become mothers themselves. It
would not do for them to
all think of me as ‘father’, then have to turn to me later to become mothers, Joy,”
I said, and lifted my
head as we stood outside my tower. “I am their teacher, Joy. I add to the lessons
their mothers have
taught. In a few decades, each of them will be both a master healer and a master
battle-mage, as well as
the best researcher and scholar of magic I can possibly make them. I must
maintain an air of propriety at
all times, that they will grow up to be proper Hyperborean ladies and well-
all times, that they will grow up to be proper Hyperborean ladies and well-
educated, well-trained
sorceresses. I am their teacher, Joy. Only that, and nothing more.”
There was a shimmering in the air before us, and all eighty-nine of my
courtesans appeared, along with
their sixty daughters, all holding hands so Pelia could transport them with a
single spell of returning. Pelia
and her woman all smiled and called “Good morning, Eddas,” as did the eldest
of their children, bowing
their heads respectfully. The toddlers and infants, held in their mother’s arms,
simply gaped - the
experience of being translocated through sorcery was still a new one, for them.
The rest, two dozen girls
all ranging between two and ten, had a completely different reaction. They all
immediately whooped with
joy, dashed over to me and all tried to hug me at once, screaming “Daddy!
Daddy!”
My heart melted, and I went to my knees and gave each of them a hug. “Hello,
my little darlings! How
are you?”
“Hello, daddy! We’re just fine!” chirped Myota, grinning broadly.
“I learned how to whistle just like a sparrow! Wanna hear?” asked Molati.
