The flickering light of magic illuminated the dark path through the trees. Shadows danced in a golden glow as the party progressed through the woods to the river, the light anchored to the four men by Alaric's spirit magic.
"What were you thinking?" Alaric asked yet again out of the side of his mouth. His hands curled and uncurled into fists at his side. "You know I'm going to have to report this. You must secretly enjoy being punished."
"Do what you need to do. Just as I did what I needed to." Rowan walked behind Alaric down the path to the river, hands clasped behind his back and gaze downcast in an image of contriteness that didn't match his words.
Lysander and Nicasi, the adepts from the Branches of Logic and Strength, formed the rear of the little group. At a safe distance, of course. Alaric had been berating him the whole time, but the silent condemnation buffeting him from behind was every bit as draining.
They'd all been novices together, though Lysander was a few years ahead of them. After Lysander and Nicasi had been selected by their respective branches, Rowan had still interacted with them whenever they visited the Core. Now that he'd taken on the role of Caretaker, he only saw them on the occasions when he had to harvest the souls of their Branch members or others deemed valuable to their particular niches in the Order.
Members of the Order tended not to die very often, as the magic they gained from their practices typically allowed them to live for the span of several human lifetimes. The magic also allowed them to control the appearance of age, so you never could tell exactly how old someone was.
Alaric, Nicasi, and Rowan were truly only twenty and a handful years old, Lysander a few years older than that. Most of the other adepts appeared to be around the same age, but you never could tell for sure. They could have just preserved themselves that way. Someone like Ciprian, who was extremely powerful and had a few grey hairs on top of it, must be very old indeed.
"You are disgusting."
How fun. Nicasi had decided to speak.
Rowan sighed. "I know. Thanks for weighing in with your opinion. I forgot how much I missed hearing it."
"If you were a member of the Branch of Strength, I'd make you pay for that chaos you created. Are you not allegiant to the Order? Why would you be so brazen as to purposefully sow Discord?"
Rowan couldn't help but chuckle. He turned his hands out in a gesture of surrender. Alaric gave him a warning glare, which he ignored with a painted on smile cast over his shoulder at the men behind him. "You've caught me, good Brothers. It was my intent from the beginning to tear apart the worlds with flowers."
"Alaric, if you don't knock some humility into him, I will," Nicasi said.
"He is part of my Branch. I will handle it." Alaric sounded tired.
"Oh? I'm part of your Branch?"
"Shut up, you idiot," Alaric said.
Lysander strode smoothly around them to the front of the group, the physical embodiment of cool, composed Logic. As always, his long hair was bound into a neat bun at the base of his neck. Even the shorter, loose strands around his face seemed well-behaved and logical. He wore the pale blue tunic and jacket of his Branch, and his white belt cinched his trim waist. Silver and gold embroidery adorned his tunic and jacket, and silver and gold braids hung on his belt.
Like the other four adepts, his embroidery and belts marked him as being second only to his Branch's acolyte. The only adept who differed was Alaric, with his black belt and multi-colored braids, but he wasn't just the second to an acolyte, he was second to the True Core himself.
As Lysander took the lead, not caring at all that Alaric was second to the Master and technically in charge of this excursion, he touched the sword that was his particular conduit for magic as if preparing to remove it from where it hung at his waist. It bounced against his leg as he strode by. "Enough. If Alaric says he'll handle it, he'll handle it. We are working in the dark now because I had to clean up your mess and cleanse that child. We have other things to do besides argue."
"You mean, I have other things to do. I'll do them first, then Alaric can handle me. How's that?"
Alaric let loose a burst of magic with his bare hands — no conduits necessary for him — punching Rowan square in the shoulder. Rowan accepted the blow and kept his eyes on the trail.
"Here." Lysander held out a long arm to stop the group.
They had reached a point where the trail curved to run parallel to a slight cliff. The sound of the river came from the bottom of it, a quiet rush like wind through the leaves or blood through the veins.
He drew his sword and touched the point of it on the ground by his foot. A burst of blue zipped in a line down the cliff, across the river, and back, outlining a circle that included a stretch of land near the banks of the river. The silver blade flashed like lightning as Lysander's magic returned to its source.
"The containment is still in place," Nicasi said.
Instead of a sword, his conduit was a black staff, and instead of pale blue, he wore red. His blonde hair skimmed his jaw in short, loose waves. He'd positioned his conduit in front of him as if prepared to do battle.
Lysander's eyes turned to Rowan, irises the color of snow clouds flashing almost as bright as his sword. "Caretaker, bring back my fallen."
Rowan bowed his head. "I will collect every soul to be born again, as my Master decreed. For the good of the Order."
"And dispatch what is left of the agents of Disorder." Lysander's voice was cool and steady as he finished his decree.
He made it sound like a trivial thing. Rowan didn't know how to tell him that there was much more of one type of energy contained in the perimeter than the other.
"Be quick. I don't like the feel of this place. We'll keep watch." Alaric raised his hand to send a burst of light over the edge of the cliff.
Rowan stepped in front of him, his eyes already filled with the glow of the souls that awaited him. "Never mind that. I don't need it."
The presence of so much death pressed on his chest, poured into his limbs with a tingling sensation that made his muscles ache. His vision shifted to a plane that only he could see, a liminal space woven in the shadows between the worlds. The faint pang of death filled his nostrils.
He stepped through the boundary of the containment spell, and his knees almost buckled. His head swam, and he pressed the heels of his hands to his temples to dull the sudden pressure in his head.
Whatever energy he felt on the other side was magnified tenfold, unlike anything he'd ever experienced before. This was not the gentle warmth of a soul yearning for tender care. Not merely the presence of his brethren, lives cut short by an unforeseen disaster.
He'd felt all kinds of souls in his time as the Caretaker. Some eager to move on, some fearful. Confused or angry or tired. Some happy to have fulfilled their roles in this lifetime and excited about what came next. Underneath the various emotions, they shared the common thread of humanity, that gentle warmth that he was able to coax so nimbly with voice and fingers.
Rowan bent over and almost vomited.
"What is it?" Alaric's voice swam in his ears, distant yet close at the same time.
After taking a few deep breaths, Rowan straightened. "It's fine. I'll be back before you know it."
He stopped fighting the onslaught of foreign energy and opened up to it instead. His body shuddered as his vision shifted entirely to a place he'd never been before. Bodies lay everywhere. The air rippled with dissolving spirit above each corpse. Humans, even members of the Order, possessed souls that were more or less silver. The more magical ability one had, the brighter the soul, the closer to gold. These bodies emitted a transparent black vapor that somehow still shone in his altered state.
Were these all rogue practitioners? Even they should have been human.
He squatted next to a corpse and placed his hand on its chest. The black spirit-vapor clung to his arm. It was sticky and cold. These weren't humans.