Chapter Text
The heap of books around him has been growing steadily over the past two days. Now they cover the desk in uneven stacks and are piled up beside his chair. Sheaves of parchment covered in his own neat hand lie discarded everywhere and there is barely a patch of the table to work on.
Still there is nothing.
Almost nothing. There is something, but the idea of it fills him with an immense uneasiness. He can feel his heart thump in odd rhythms when he stops to consider it and he is searching with an increasing sense of futility for any possible alternative.
Viren has always believed in his own ingenuity, but this spell is of another level of magnitude. It has never been performed by a single mage as far as he can tell, even in a group it hasn’t exactly had an impressive success rate. The mortality rate on the other hand, that is dramatic.
So he reads and he reads, through the day, into the night, looks for alternatives, for any grain of hope that he can find. There is no other answer though. As the cold light of dawn comes creeping through the vaulted library windows he is left staring at the only solution he has been able to discover and the words blur together against his eyes.
If Kpp’Ar was here, maybe the two of them, maybe together… but that is another of his epic failures, irreversible. The loss of him is like a slow poison that twists in his veins, makes it hard to even breathe sometimes.
That memory returns, unbidden, absorbs all his senses, seems horribly near and real still. The look on Kpp’Ar’s face, the feeling of utter hopelessness, his own actions inevitably playing out again and again, always the same. He sits at the table unable to move and the smell of the candle guttering in front of him becomes nothing more than the smell of fire and rage that had filled Kpp’Ar’s study, all brimstone and wild flames burning.
It gets harder and harder to force the memory back down, to feel the loss of him, to know his house sits out there like some empty mausoleum and he is the shadow that hangs over it. He had tried to reverse things, he had failed. There are moments when his hands shake with the effort of it, moments when he thinks that all he leaves behind him is a trail of mess and blood and failure.
“Viren?”
A voice cuts through his thoughts and he has to make a considerable effort to regain his composure and look up to meet the eyes of the person who is standing in front of him. It is Sarai. He rubs his face and takes a breath, he doesn’t really want her to see him looking this perturbed. There is a certain air of indestructability that he feels is essential for maintaining the Council’s confidence in his role as the High Mage. It doesn’t really allow for any sense of doubt in his capabilities.
His head spins with his memories and the thought of what he is planning to do though, and Sarai is one of the few people in the castle who he considers to be a genuine friend. She sits down opposite him in the dim morning light. The candles around him are burnt down almost to their stubs, pools of wax congealed at their base.
“Are you alright?” Sarai’s voice is soft and she is looking at him with an uncomfortable level of concern, as if she can see right through his façade, right through to the very bones of him.
“I’m…” He wants to say the word fine but it dies on his lips.
He knows she sees magic differently to him, has never really approved of some of the actions he and Harrow have been forced to take. He also knows that if he were to tell her about his fears, tell her that he wasn’t sure of his solution, that it might be something too great even for him, she would take his side without question and stop it. She has always separated her feelings for him as a person and the role he performs for the Kingdom, other than his children she might be the only other person who does this.
Even Harrow... even Harrow perhaps. He is no longer certain of anything, things change, years pass, the ground they walk on shifts like quicksand.
He doesn’t want to tell her his worries directly but he can allude to them. There have been other difficult choices he has had to make, other times when they have seemed to weigh like lead on the very soul of him. He stops and takes a breath.
“When Lissa left, after Soren... it was... I didn’t know...” He puts his head in his hands, it is difficult to revisit those exact circumstances again, they are something he tries to bury, they are a hole he has cut from his heart. A confusing swirl of emotions washes over him once again.
It seems strange to try and recall that time, he remembers his conviction like that of another man, and there is an odd, numb space in him where something has been lost. He isn’t even sure precisely what it is, and his mind blanks over it and covers it in mist.
“Viren.” He hasn’t even noticed her move around the table but her hand is now on his shoulder. “Viren, it’s okay, take a moment.” She is always so kind, she is just the way Lissa had been and he pulls his palms away from his face, stares at them.
Empty.
His shoulders are shaking, it must be the tiredness and she rubs circles over them, traces the taut lines of his muscles with her thumbs.
“Sarai, I thought I was doing the right thing. I just… sometimes I don’t know anymore. I thought, I really thought she would stay.”
Her hands pause, she squeezes his shoulders and she is silent for a moment.
“You did... you did what you needed to do. You have Soren, he’s well now, it was the right choice. You can’t ever doubt that.”
There is something in her voice, a firmness, as if doubt cannot enter his thoughts.
He stares at the pile of books he has in front of him again. Rubs at his chest. He has to be strong. There are so many people, too many people, depending on this. He would be letting them down, he knows the cost of that. A hundred thousand lives, the kingdom, the throne, all of these things are fused together. It doesn’t quell his fear though.
“Is that what you’re worried about? Lissa and Soren?”
Her hands stop moving, and she touches his cheek.
“Is that it? Harrow says he hasn’t seen you in court since Duren made their petition.”
For a moment all he wants is to tell her about the answer, the only one he can find, to tell her that he thinks it might be beyond him. That the moment of saving his son had ripped something from him, bought odd feelings that he doesn’t understand in its place, and he is afraid. He is so afraid that this will do the same, that he will lose something else, and panic seems to overpower him at the thought of it.
It is a feeling he hasn’t felt quite so acutely since he was a boy, the feeling that the world will utterly overwhelm him, that he is nothing in it but a speck of dust and he will be devoured.
That this world cares nothing for him at all.
He looks into her brown eyes, they are full of concern. Sometimes he thinks it is her more than any of them who holds the kingdom together.
The kingdom has to be held together. Famine would ruin them, he has seen it before, not enough people to bury the dead, the desperate resentment of hunger, the base things it drives people to. He cannot doubt himself, he cannot let anyone see his own fear, that is a crack that would widen and fissure like earth without any rain.
Panic is only a feeling, it can be conquered, he cannot give in to it.
“Yes. I don’t know why, I’ve been thinking of it recently. I know it was the right choice... I know I couldn’t have chosen any other way. It’s just sometimes, sometimes I still miss her Sarai. It was hard. She was so good to me. I know you’re right though. Thank you.”
“Okay.” Her voice is uncertain, “You don’t look so good you know.”
“No. I should get a little sleep perhaps. I lost track of the time.”
He stands up, shifts his paperwork into piles that are neat enough not to incense the librarian completely. They can wait for an hour or two, things always look better after a little sleep.
That is what he tells himself.
He follows Sarai out through the shelves of books but the words on the pages he has been reading seem to float up like apparitions in front of his eyes.
The heart of a Magma Titan contains the power of the very sun itself. There are few items of such incredible magical energy in the world, they hold the potential of both life and death and they should always be treated with absolute caution...