Ashes Unwritten: Oblivion's Heir [Volume 1 Complete!]

Kess huddled against a partially crumbled wall with Rowan by her side, staring into the dark wall that formed the very edge of the center of the storm. Most of the debris had already blown away by this point, but Kess was still grateful for the wall against her back. The strength of the storm pressed her into it as rocks and other debris pinged and chipped inches from flesh. The wall spun, the wind churning at speeds Kess had never seen in her life. It was all she could do to remain standing, even with the wall and Rowan to brace her.

"You're not really going to walk through that, are you?" Rowan's voice was loud to the point of breaking, but he was still a tiny, muffled sound next to the storm.

"I said I would, didn't I?"

"Yes, but that was before—"

Kess pushed off, stumbling towards the storm wall. Using her Fulminancy to keep herself steady, she reached her hand out. Hesitantly, she stuck it into the wall, then drew back, hissing, her hand on fire. She looked at it and blanched. Her palm was missing skin.

Rowan grabbed her cloak and pulled her back towards the vague shelter of the crumbled wall, and they huddled together as Kess tore off a strip of her cloak and wrapped her burning hand.

"We should go back," Rowan said.

"No. We'll find a way."

Kess had created this storm. She knew this storm, and she had promised to speak to it. She would find a way to get through it.

Hand bandaged, Kess got to her feet again, wrapped her bloodied hand in Fulminancy, and sunk it into the storm. No fresh pain erupted, and when she pulled her hand out, it was in one piece. She cursed herself for not trying it that way the first time, but well, she'd been trying to conserve her already partially depleted powers. They were coming back fast, but perhaps not fast enough for what she planned to do tonight.

Kess took Rowan's hand as he approached the storm and drew a thin skin of Fulminancy around the two of them, letting Rowan's Fulminancy sustain his as she let go of that control, like she had in front of his father. Kess hadn't quite figured out how to do shields, but she could do this extension of her Fulminancy as a skin. They walked into the storm together.

Darkness and swirling water vapor kissed her skin as Kess picked her way through the uneven ground with Rowan, the wind buffeting them mercilessly. Finally, they broke free, and Kess stumbled over a set of steps, Rowan not far behind her. They straightened and climbed the same steps Rae had attacked them on. At the top, Kess caught her breath, staring.

The Archives were gone. A crater filled the plaza, carved from the mountain rock itself. But that wasn't what gave Kess pause. She looked up, where a velvet canvas stretched overhead, a smattering of twinkling lights spilled in swirls and twists. Stars, Kess thought.

"Have you ever seen them before?" Rowan asked quietly. Kess shook her head.

"I've only heard stories. They're beautiful."

Kess stared at those stars for a very long time, Rowan at her side. The sky was calm, the storm behind them a forgotten memory, and yet she could feel it all around her, spinning and twisting, rejoicing in her presence. She smiled, then squeezed Rowan's hand, eying the pit below.

"I'm going to try in there," she said. Rowan moved to follow her, but she shook her head. "One of us needs to get back to Arlette if something goes wrong."

A frown twisted Rowan's face, but he nodded, keeping his Fulminancy up and placing one hand on his sword. Kess could imagine what was going through his head, given that the last time she'd asked him to stay behind, she'd ended up half dead in a dungeon. She gave him what she hoped was an encouraging smile, then, after a second of consideration, kissed him briefly. He smiled as they broke. "Good luck, Kess."

Kess slid down into the pit, nearly tumbling off into a dark chasm she couldn't see the bottom of. Each shelf of the pit was created with pieces of the tile that used to make up the plaza, and Kess hopped between these, trying to make her way down to the very bottom without falling to her death. Her Fulminancy might protect her, but she was having a hard time trusting it lately with what the storm had said to her that night.

At least today I can get to the bottom of that. She hoped, anyway.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, Kess stood at the bottom of the pit. Dark cracks webbed out from beneath her feet in the rubble, and she eyed them nervously. There were miles of tunnels and caves below this still, and she was unsure if they were a steady foundation any longer. Still, if the storm wanted her dead, she supposed it could have done so before now. Rowan was a distant speck at the top of the pit, and she could barely make him out from this distance.

Kess paused, watching the stars so far above, and waited for something to happen. Finally, growing impatient, she reached out to the storm as she had from her cell, willing it into her, greeting it with her Fulminancy. Nothing happened for a moment, then the clouds gathered around Kess, swirling, twisting, spiraling into the sky. Slowly, a storm wall built around her, not unlike that which she'd passed through with Rowan. It climbed higher and higher until the stars were a single pinprick overhead, then fell around her and plunged her into darkness.

She lost her hold on the ground as that blackness threw her into a sea of dark clouds, the clouds themselves suffocating. She was drowning in an ocean of water vapor, her lungs choked and clogged by the dampness.

This was something she couldn't fight. Drowning, gasping, and spinning in a blackness she couldn't orient herself in, Kess panicked. The clouds were wrong, somehow. She'd make a mistake. She wasn't meant to come here, wasn't meant to be involved in this city or its problems. She had just wanted her brother back.

Finally, limbs exhausted, blackness creeping into her senses, Kess gave up. She floated there, drifting, then felt her stomach drop clean to the ground as she shot back up through the clouds. She crested the cloud cover itself, arms trying to find purchase on something, anything. Even Fulminancy couldn't save her if she fell from this height.

A pair of arms grabbed her, and she suddenly stood on the clouds.

Chest heaving, Kess backed away from the person, gaping at her feet instead. They found purchase on the gray clouds themselves, the ground fluffy and pliable beneath her feet. Then she looked at her savior.

The same woman from her vision, perhaps in her thirties or forties, watched her with a smile. Her long white hair was tucked away in an elaborate bun, and her blue eyes were tired but kind. Kess squinted at the woman, clouds at her feet momentarily forgotten. She'd seen that woman before, recently, archived in the form of stone—as a statue outside the palace.

"Mariel?" she breathed. A wry smile appeared on the woman's lips.

"I always complained about that statue, you know, but apparently the likeness is similar enough." Kess looked at her feet again and fought back a wave of nausea. "Calm yourself, child. I know it's all a bit overwhelming, but the clouds will hold you just fine. This isn't your body, anyway."

"What do you mean, it's not my body?" Mariel simply pointed below the clouds.

"I borrowed your spirit and left the vessel down there." She frowned. "Unfortunately, I had to be rather dramatic with the clouds or that boy would have interrupted." She cocked her head, as if studying Rowan from a distance, then added, "He's quite handsome, though."

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Kess sat down, hard, overwhelmed by the situation and no longer really caring if the clouds would hold her up or not.

"So if I'm not real, then you're not either," she said. "What are you? Just her spirit?"

Mariel nodded.

"A piece of her, yes. But also a piece of you. A reflection, if you will. All that power you've been venting down there coalesces here, in this storm, and well, since I made Fulminancy in the first place, it's a little attached to me." A tiny bolt of lightning swirled up her arms and into her hair, as if playing. The woman herself was slightly translucent, Kess realized. She stared at her own hands and found the same thing.

"You say that like it can think," Kess said quietly. Mariel blinked, surprised.

"It can. Concentrating so much of it into one place makes for near-sentience, I'm afraid. It's why I'm able to communicate with you outside of the basin now. I have to admit, I wish I had more time," she said, smiling. "You're the most fascinating Seat I've ever gotten to watch."

"I've mostly just made a mess of things," Kess said, watching the clouds swirl through her translucent hands.

"But that's what makes it so exciting," Mariel said, grinning. Kess wasn't sure what she'd expected Mariel to be like, but this wasn't it. Mariel's smile was momentary, and a haunted look entered the woman's eyes. "Come though, child, we have much to discuss, and little time to do it."

She motioned, and Kess got to her feet, hating the way the clouds sucked in on her shoes as she moved. She followed Mariel on the springy ground and tried to pay attention to her footing instead of the gorgeous smattering of stars scattered across the sky above. Had they really been there all this time, under clouds that blustered and brewed constant storms? Kess had always thought the clouds beautiful in a way, but this was something else entirely.

Mariel stopped just ahead of her, those blue eyes focused on a distant point. The storm swirled around the city proper, save for a gap back at the center where Kess had come from. Oddly, they had traveled all the way to the city wall in mere moments, as Kess was now able to see how the storm strengthened and then died long before the city ended. In the storm's place, however, encroaching upon the outer city, was a second storm—if it could even be called that.

Beyond the Archives storm, a black wall stretched up to cover the sky, its diameter so large Kess couldn't find the end of it. Flashes of lightning played within it, but they were an ominous and violent orange—nothing like the playful blue that crackled around Kess when she used her Fulminancy.

Kess had seen all manner of approaching storms in her life, but this storm was damning and deadly all at once. And, gathering in front of the storm, an army of Shadows crept along, engulfing the mountainside in an inky black to match the looming storm above. She looked at Mariel then, and the heartbreak on the woman's face was enough to send panic shooting through Kess's limbs.

"I made a mistake," Mariel said, her voice hollow. "It's always been there. Building, growing. After I made Fulminancy, I knew that tampering with nature's balance might cause problems. So I built the storms. They were to absorb the volatility from people who were born with too much active Fulminancy and dump it back into those users, slowly." She frowned, watching that wall of death march towards the city. "I never quite got the balance right here, which is why you have cycles of wet seasons and dry seasons." She waved her hand. "But that's besides the point. When I realized that Fulminancy was responsible for bigger storms that I hadn't intended, I made what you refer to as the Shadows. They were my contingency plan and would temper some of that Fulminant energy to avoid feeding the storm." She paused, watching the creatures move along the ground. "I'm afraid they worked a little too well and drew the Ashfall in."

Kess stared, unbelieving at the woman. "You made Fulminancy, started a world-ending storm, and your solution was to turn people into Shadows?"

"They were supposed to revert back after giving up that energy to safer storms," Mariel said, voice exhausted.

"Well that could have gone better," Kess said, thinking of the woman from the gala.

"I never suggested that I had all the answers," Mariel said. "Unfortunately I found it more difficult to communicate with you through the basin. My consciousness wasn't quite reformed, and the vision ended too abruptly. I apologize for not giving you more specific instructions, and for what you've suffered as a result of that." Her hair, oddly, whipped in the breeze, though Kess was fairly certain she wasn't solid. "We were forced into Fulminancy, as I'm sure you've heard. It worked for a time, but now that time is up."

"What do you want me to do about it?" Kess asked, watching the storm creep slowly towards her home. She felt powerless—how was she supposed to stop anything like that? Surely Mariel would have the answers this time.

"I want you to undo my life's work," Mariel said, tightening her hands into a fist. Her lips formed a fine line as she watched the storm. "I want you to destroy Fulminancy."

Above the clouds, the wind was fierce, but held none of the volatility that the storm below did. Kess turned to look at Mariel and saw the woman watching her with sorrowful eyes.

"With the lockets?" Mariel nodded.

"Each locket needs the Seat of Faleas, Mariel, and Thanadel to agree to destroy it. Now that one is done, the rest can be destroyed by any of you three, but with the state of the other two…" She trailed off, looking back into the storm.

"Thanadel?" Kess asked. "Rowan is a Seat? And Rae?" Mariel nodded without looking at her.

"In a way, though Thanadel's Seat is long lost to history. Any can occupy it, but traditionally it comes from a bastard son, spurned to live away from other Fulminancers. The other one you refer to as Rae—Faleas was hers all along. With what she agreed to do with you at the Archives, I imagine she might have known. I didn't design the Seats to be passed around at whim. Instead, they were meant to choose the correct heirs—a design completely ignored by your Council."

Kess shook her head, watching that inky blackness. "One of the Councilmen wanted the lockets. He said you left them with some sort of contingency plan," she said, gesturing towards the storm.

"This is the contingency plan, I'm afraid. The Council hopes to layer together power—it's how they've stopped bad storms in the past. But even they realize that Fulminancy isn't as stable as it once was. It yearns to return to what it once was. The lockets might help keep it stable for longer, but if they concentrate that much of it in one place, the instability would at the very least destroy the wielder, if not the entire city.

"There's no way to stop it without giving up that power—without destroying what I've created—and they're loath to do that. After all, it's a system that now benefits them the most. I don't know what will happen when it's destroyed, but I imagine that men like that will suffer the most."

"They'll kill us," Kess said quietly. "They won't let it happen." Mariel turned then, regarding her.

"And you're here, standing on top of a storm, your body far below, because you give up so easily?" Kess thought about pointing out that she hadn't chosen to leave her body below, but said nothing instead. Mariel moved closer to her then, lying a ghostly hand on her shoulder. The woman had nearly five or six inches on Kess, and she found herself looking up into her eyes as Mariel continued. "Kess, you might think that these powers define you—that you're a weapon and a tool to be used, even now. But even after years of you chasing it away, your Fulminancy stayed. Do you know why?"

Kess frowned. "No."

"Because you're able to fight your enemy, understand your enemy, and love them anyway. There are many people who could have received your power, and certainly the Council wishes that someone else had them. But Fulminancy concentrates where it wishes to, Kess. Regardless of what you might think of yours, it chose you."

"How do you know?" Mariel smiled then, something maternal in her gaze.

"Because I made it that way, of course."

Kess opened her mouth to ask another question, but paused when she felt a distant tug, and an overwhelming feeling of nausea. Mariel frowned, watching her. "That's it, then," she said. "We need to get you back to your body. Time's up." She took one last look at the Ashfall and dragged Kess back through the clouds at a breakneck pace.

"Destroy the lockets, Kess. Whatever it takes." Kess nodded, feeling a bit overwhelmed by the whole thing. When she reached the eye, Mariel held her by the shoulders, then embraced her. "I'm sorry to ask you to do this, my daughter. I hope that this time, you'll be able to fix what I could not."

"Mariel—" The last Kess saw of her before tumbling back through the clouds was her smile. Kess twisted and whirled, the clouds dark and assaulting, yet somehow less horrifying than the Ashfall's. In an odd moment, she saw her body right below, then collapsed into it with a thump. The clouds cleared in a puff, and the crater appeared around Kess, who sat up, coughing in the dirt.

Rowan was already halfway down the slope of the crater, though he had a while to go yet. Shaking, Kess got to her feet and began the climb. Finally, a level below Rowan, she planted her hand on the mosaic above and swore softly, her hands covered in dirt.

Rowan pulled her the rest of the way up, steadying her as they balanced together on a chunk of stone. "Are you okay?" he asked, brushing aside her hair. "What happened?"

"I met Mariel," Kess said simply, looking up at the rim of the crater. "But clouds, Rowan, the least she could have done is put us back up at the top."

She kept climbing, leaving a very confused Rowan to follow.