Discordant Note | The Beginning After the End SI

Chapter 160: Participants [End of Book 3]

Wren Kain IV

I watched the lesser boy, Arthur Leywin, as he mowed down another dozen golems. His hair was a deep white, yellow runes tracing all along his body as he flourished Dawn’s Ballad. The boy threw an arcing current of black lightning, the tendrils snapping between different mana constructs. When one of them neared, throwing a fist that could pulp boulders, he simply sidestepped, coating his blade in white fire and decapitating it with ease.

I lounged inside a cozy nook in the crater, scribbling down notes as the boy worked through the army with deadly efficiency. There was a coldness to his aura that made even me shudder sometimes.

Was he ever loved as a child? I wondered. I don’t see why else he’d be so strange for a lesser.

I snorted with irritation as I marked down his mana output. Absolutely astounding for a human, I supposed. But it should be far higher, especially as the legacy holder of Lady Sylvia’s Will.

“Arrogant dragons,” I said, scratching my hair with a bit of irritation. I flashed back to Lord Indrath’s lofty order to train the boy. “Can’t train him properly if you don’t even tell him all there is to his Will now, can I?”

Part of me truly wondered what this Dicathian lesser would be able to do if Lady Myre had allowed him full access to her daughter’s powers. But no; Arthur Leywin was only allowed to dip into a fraction of his true abilities. The millennia of condensed insight he might be able to tap into would be truly worth the study.

The boy had asked me a while ago if it was possible for a lesser to match an asura in magical strength with enough practice, and I found my self-control wavering. The data I could gather would be absurd!

And all I would need to do would be to defy a direct order from Lord Indrath.

No thanks. Many of my fellow titans called me various words that were all synonyms to “batshit insane,” but I wasn’t that insane yet.

I suspected Lord Indrath would wait for the lesser boy to die of old age before coercing him into passing the Will back to Lady Sylvie. Truly a waste of an opportunity, if I were to say.

I pulled myself to my feet, strolling over to a nearby device I crafted over the course of a few weeks. I narrowed my eyes as I inspected its deep ochre surface, noting the slot at the top that was perfectly shaped for a blade. The last time that sword of Arthur’s had burned–this time white-hot–I’d swiped it from him, thrusting Dawn’s Ballad into the rigid stone. And I’d been able to isolate the signal; where the resonance originated from.

Dawn’s Ballad.

I thought once more of Aurora Asclepius. The sister of the Lost Prince was considered cool and aloof by many before the Asclepius Clan’s disappearance, only burning hotly when it came to matters of battle. She was one of the prime targets for marriage of the generation for her beauty, her strength, and her perfect poise.

I ground my teeth as I looked down at the device I’d used to track the phoenix.

Early in my many millennia of life, I had been somewhat ostracized, even amidst my own race. For a titan, I was… different. Our race’s mana arts were maximized for creativity and craftsmanship. Our blacksmiths were the eminent workers of all asura; our hammers primed to make the best weapons and tools in any world.

Because our clan alone had made a pact with the Sacred Fire. That impossible flame; kept secret in the deepest tunnels of our sanctum. While the other clans of titans could craft wondrous marvels, none could ever hope to match those of the clan of Kain.

Youths in the clan of Kain were gifted a single ember of that impossible flame once they reached their majority: an ember that would follow them for all their lives. That would grow as they focused their mana through it, imbuing each strike of a forgehammer with impossible heat and using the resonance to create true marvels.

But I was born small and weak. My mind was sharper than any blade my clan ever forged, but what use was the mind when you needed pure, brute strength to exercise your clan’s arts? And by the standards of a clan renowned for their blacksmiths and metalworkers, where every hammer stroke and pulse of Sacred Fire pushed a weapon closer to perfection? I was less than nothing. A… a lesser.

I did not remember why I had been along the great cliffs west of the Starbrand Sanctum that day, the floating home of the Asclepius Clan looming far in the distance. I simply remembered my anger. The cretins that called themselves my family couldn’t appreciate what I could do, if just given the chance.

And then I’d heard it. That wondrous, beautiful singing had pulled on my soul. I’d flowed as if in a trance toward the source, weaving through the Charwood forests to a hidden glade.

And when I’d seen the woman within singing from the depths of her soul, something in me changed.

I had re

“I’ve had knowledge of this world’s future for a long, long time,” I said, pushing my bond slightly so she could look me in the eyes. “But I haven’t used it. I’ve been too afraid of the changes I could make; of diverting away from a predestined path.”

I clasped Aurora’s hand between my own, feeling the warmth as it spread through me. “But I helped change a city. I helped bring understanding between mage and nonmage. And it's time I set my sights beyond just killing Nico Sever.”

I inhaled, feeling a burgeoning star kindle in my breast. “I’m going to change this world’s future.”

[End of Book 3: Spellsong]