Fire Forged - Part I
Fire Forged
Crucible, Part One of Two
Part I
He wakes up to the unchanging stone, to the drearily familiar patterns of cracks and seams spiderwebbing the walls and the ceiling of his cell, to the unfading smell of damp and sweat and sour reeking despair, to resignation and anger. Bars across the windows and the dark grey sky. A faint flicker of stars, the blank face of the moon, never quite near enough to touch.
On the periphery of his senses, he can just barely feel the banked fires in the kitchen and the hands of the people working to stir them, to wake them once more. He strains to extend his reach further and the faint smells of bread and meat suggest themselves, as do the voices of the kitchen scullions as they raise their voices to each other. He registers the echoes of clashing weapons and armor, announcing that the soldiers have begun their drills early today.
He turns over, slowly, and the straw gives only a little beneath him, scratching and rustling. The stone beneath is far less yielding and always so cold. No matter how long he lies in one position, no matter how long he wills what little body heat he can spare into his pallet, he will always be cold, even in the baking summers. He will always wake up shaking, in the mist just before dawn breaks.
The irony of this situation will never truly go away.
He hears his own bones creaking as he slowly pushes himself upright.
He keeps a sliver of broken mirror tucked into the bottom of the straw. He peers at his face. When he was a child, people looked him in the eyes and turned away, suddenly afraid.
Blue eyes like the sky before a summer storm, deep and strange and fey. Blue eyes as cold as a lake, frozen over in the deeps of winter.
Blue, nothing but blue, blue irises surrounding a darker blue pupil. The strangest possible sign of one such as he. An unmistakable mark.
He snaps his fingers, and a little flame flickers into sputtering life between his nose and the mirror. It’s tiny, it’s the barest hint of light and warmth, it’s not even enough for him to see all of his face with.
His face, the deep shadows beneath his eyes. The bruise near his mouth that is only now beginning to turn to an ugly yellow-green, that still hurts whenever he speaks or eats. The scar cutting across his left eyebrow, disappearing into his hairline. His maimed left ear, the top partially cut off.
There is not enough light in the world to make the pain in the lines around his mouth disappear. There is not enough warmth to smooth away his unending grimace.
He knows that any more fire than this will mean he will begin this day chained and beaten again, will mean the collar and long hours of being cut off from his abilities, long hours of painful penance, and today of all days he desperately wants to avoid these things. He cannot be thrown into the depths of the tower today, because he cannot disappoint his sister.
Today is his birthday. His birthday and hers. They will be sixteen today, and if he does not offend anyone, they will allow him out of the tower for a holiday, the first he’s had in six or seven months, though he will have to spend most of it wrapped up and cloaked. Hiding in plain sight.
So he extinguishes the flame and he cries quietly for the loss as he runs through his morning ablutions. He scrubs his face roughly - he can blame the reddened eyes on the washcloth or on the soap - and he pulls his best clothes on: the trousers that have only been mended six times; the shirt that he hasn’t worn for two weeks because he has been saving it for just this day.
He is lacing up his rough boots when there’s a loud knock on the door, and a man with an eyepatch glares in at him.
“Out,” is all the man says as he unlocks the door.
He quickly puts on his heavy cloak, pushing the cloth back over his shoulders. He keeps his eyes trained on the floor as he is marched down corridors and up stairs. He keeps his hands in plain sight, the angular script on his wrists easy to see, declaring to all that he is a dangerous thing, a weapon that could so easily turn on its handler, one that could self-destruct in the blink of an eye, one that could do more harm than good. Not human.
He doesn’t realize he’s holding his breath until he’s actually walking on woven rugs, on deep red bordered in gold - colors he knows from his dreams - and there is someone waiting for him, someone who is smiling at him, a beloved face.
“Dearest,” he whispers, and he stops and he stares and he watches her walk carefully toward him, away from her two escorts. The man is tall, with dark wavy hair falling into his stern eyes. The woman wears her long red hair in a braid, and a wide scar cuts a slanted line across her face from eyebrow to jaw.
His sister: he’s been looking at her all this time. She creaks quietly with every step. Leather armor, the dark brown run through with decorative lines in blue and green. A bow on her back, good black wood carefully shaped and crafted, and a quiver full of arrows. A sword at her hip. Her dark hair neatly tied back, her eyes, the gentle smile on her face. She is holding out her hand. She is wearing a half-glove in black leather. “Hello, brother.”
“Hello,” he whispers, his eyes downcast.
He listens intently as the man in the eyepatch speaks to his sister’s companions. Their hands openly on their swords, their stances ready for anything. “He is not to be left unguarded for a single moment. He is a menace. At the first sign of trouble, you are to subdue him by any means necessary. You will bring him back here by sundown tomorrow, and if you are late, I will have your heads.
“And you,” the man with the eyepatch growls as he turns back to him.
He feels his sister’s hand tighten around his, almost painfully, but he does not cry out. He wills his mind to calmness. Control, always the tight control, like thorns wrapped sharp and tangling around his heart. He squeezes his eyes shut.
“You know what your restrictions are, and what you will face on your return, should we hear about any transgressions on your part. Remember your place, wild mage.”
“And that is all I will ever be. That is why I am alive. I know my place,” he says. Forcing the words past the thick lump in his throat. Hatred, fear, disgust. “I will remember.”
“See that you do.”
When he looks up, the man with the eyepatch is walking away. He looks at his sister. Her eyes are defiant, but her mouth is trembling with her fear.
He doesn’t speak again until they’ve left the castle, their escorts trailing closely behind. “Raven,” he says, quietly; and he leans into her warmth. He lets her settle the hood of the cloak over his face, lets her pull the heavy cloth over his shoulders so that he is completely hidden. “I hope you are well.”
“I - Charles,” is all she says, and she puts her head on his shoulder. “Have they been hurting you again? The collar? Your face - who struck you? I have been away four months, training on the outskirts of the kingdom, and I have come back with wounds and bruises - but you, what have they been doing to you in that tower, all this time...?”
“I’ve just had a few accidents,” he says, into her disbelieving face. “And sometimes they strike me for no real reason. I am not working hard enough, or I am showing off. Nothing more than normal.
“They’re just treating me as they think I deserve,” he says, dully. “They have marked me for this. All they have been teaching me is only what they believe I must know. Sometimes I forget who I truly am - and that is why I am so grateful for you. You know me still, Raven.”
“And I still know you best,” she says. The note of staunch trust in her voice calls to him, pulls at his heart. Bonds forged in fire and in blood. “Charles, it hurts me to see you like this. You’re not a monster. Those terrible names that they call you are all lies. They’re not you. There is no reason for them to fear you; you only want to help them.”
At that, he tightens his grip on her hand, he lifts his head for the first time and allows her to look full into his blue eyes. “I hate this servitude as much as you do, but we are here because we must do what we can. We have to help them, we have to force them to change if we must, but we have to do it from within. Until things change - if they can change. We have to endure, and you must harden your heart - harden it against me if you must. I will bear you no grudge for it. We must carry on, you and I, for worse days are coming.” He taps his fingers against his temple, once. “I know this to be true.”
“The dreams,” she says. A flat voice. A statement; not a question. “Charles. You’ve been dreaming again.”
“I have, and I am frightened by them. Dark times are coming - and we must be ready. If I am to be used as a weapon then I must be one.”
He watches her think about it, her brows furrowed, and then: “And so must I.” Her mouth firms.
When they reach the horses they mount up, silently, and he rides close to his sister as they pass out of the city gates. Down, into the fields. Greenery and flowers growing in the shadow of the city’s walls, and ahead, the great rolling vineyards. Beyond are the forests and the distant mountains, snow on their shoulders, overlooking the very borders of the kingdom.
Men and women working among the vines. Dogs barking and running past them, weaving easily around their horses, disappearing into the distance.
He glances over his shoulder at their silent escorts. “You do not know them?” he asks.
Raven shakes her head. “I think they’re from a different regiment. They came into the training barracks a week ago; their faces are familiar, but they won’t talk to us.”
Charles shrugs, and keeps looking at his sister. It only takes him a thought to keep his horse going in the right direction, a twitch of the reins; he’s been trained to ride well. A required skill for everyone in the tower. “Will you tell me about your training? I have not yet congratulated you for winning your armor.”
His sister still looks troubled, but she takes the time to smile at him, launches into an animated description of life in the soldiers’ barracks. Her commanding officer, a woman with long black hair and bronze skin, who is also one of the most formidable swordswomen she’s ever met; the other members of her training group. The boy who talks incessantly, except when he’s thrashing someone in hand-to-hand combat; the girl who can throw daggers and insults with pinpoint accuracy. She talks about being the winner of an archery competition in her camp; she talks about one of the other officers enlisting her in a friendly conspiracy to steal apples from a local farmer, and he grudgingly smiles, though he wants to wave an admonishing finger at her.
The horses set a slow, gentle pace through the heat of the day. He is grateful when Raven eventually steers them into a small copse of trees; the sun is beating down, and his cloak is heavy against his skin.
He follows her into the branches of a great weeping tree. Something is rippling past his feet - water, barely a trickle, following the trail for a few more steps before it curves and flows away. Cold, when he dips his hand into it, and he licks his fingertips. Scent of earth and grass, and the faint taste of crushed grapes and fallen flowers.
He is so terribly conscious of the guards following his every movement, and reluctantly he retraces his steps, back to where his sister is sitting among the roots of the tree, back to her slightly worried smile. She is laying out the contents of one of her saddlebags: a few dainties to eat, a double handful of raisins, a waterskin.
He digs through his pockets, then, and he presents her with a gift. A wide silver cuff. Her answering smile almost makes him want to laugh, if only he could forget the terrible dread in his heart.
Because of his dreams, he knows she can’t wear this gift for very long. It’s difficult, holding this knowledge close, hiding it where she can’t simply deduce it with a glance. No matter what it turns out to be, it’s still a gift for her in the right here and now. He has to think of it that way.
“Here, this is how you wear it,” he says instead, and he clicks the cuff closed around her wrist, where it lies snugly against her skin. “It will not make any noise, so you may wear it with your armor. That is, if you are permitted this in your barracks?”
“My commanding officer can hardly complain if I wear something like this,” and she laughs, softly, begins to draw lines on her hand. “She has this beautiful piece, Charles, four wide rings on her fingers connected with flat chains to a bracelet on her wrist. The whole thing is silver, and studded with large red gems. I have never seen her without it, and it doesn’t seem to hinder her, not even when she is thrashing the rest of us with her sword.”
“Then this will be safe with you. Will you wear it at all times, and think of me?”
“Of course.” She looks up after a moment. “And you? Do you have a cuff of your own to wear?”
He shakes his head. “I am not allowed these things. Frivolities. And I might lose them at any moment.”
Her eyes harden again, for just an instant, and her next smile is a little strained. “Come and eat, dearest,” is all she says, however.
The food comes from a cook who favors Raven - she explains that he has told her that she reminds him of his daughter. She pours out cups of fruit juice and he drinks his portion slowly, enjoys its clean tartness on his tongue. The raisins, she says after a moment, will be her gift to him, and so he eats a dozen or so and tucks the rest away for when he’s back in the tower.
“I have a place where I can hide them,” he says, reassuringly, “and you know that there are no rats or vermin there. We do quite a good job of keeping the stones scrubbed and clean, enough that we can eat off them.”
He ignores the flash of worry that flickers in her eyes, only holds her hands tightly, apologetically.
After, he lies down on the grass - much softer and much more comfortable here than in his little pallet, or on the numbing stone - and he lays his head in his sister’s lap. He feels her move the hood away, feels her fingers carding gently through his hair.
“You are turning silver,” she says. “I’m not sure that it would look well on you.”
He knows she’s avoiding the old marks, old scars long since faded from his skin, but never from his memory.
Sometimes he wakes up and it’s all he can do to stop himself from screaming - and even then, when he clamps his own hands over his mouth, he still can’t stop himself from keening in his distress. He’s clenching his teeth now.
The hot blood flowing over his skin, drying slowly to a hard brown crust. The piece of his ear in the hunter’s fingers. Raven, beaten and near death in his arms, the flames raging around them in an uncontrollable ring, spreading so far and so fast. His hands, reaching out to the fire for the first time, his skin growing pleasantly warm, buzzing with potential. The sudden roar like sweet music, like something was asking him for orders, like something was eager to obey him.
He remembers closing his eyes as the hunter seized his throat, prepared to throw him aside.
He remembers screaming, words in a language that he had never spoken before. Words that he now knows by heart, the knowledge precious to him, hidden inside his head.
And he remembers opening his eyes to a pile of ash, to Raven awake and aware, clinging to him and looking afraid.
He opens his eyes in the here and now, and here is his sister. A matchless understanding in her eyes.
He doesn’t deserve her. He doesn’t deserve this. How can she love him, how can she care for him? Her comrades know of him now, and she must carry the shame of it. She will have a hard time advancing in rank because of him.
She is a talented warrior; she deserves to command.
They don’t speak again until the sun begins to set, and that is when he gets up and he runs out, past the trickle of cold water, to the highest point he can reach and still be within sight of the others.
The sun falling to its rest, red and gold and yellow, licking across his skin and he throws his head back, raises his hands as far as they’ll go over his head, creaking bones be damned. He allows himself to smile for his favorite part of the day, so rarely glimpsed now. The fading warmth, the light burning his eyes.
Someone is taking his hand. Raven, who is following his lead. Their linked hands raised over their heads. They stand there until the wind picks up again, and then they huddle together, their arms wrapped around each other’s shoulders.
And then one of the guards speaks. Charles is hearing the man’s voice for the first time. Quiet, commanding. Not unpleasant, though the words coming out of his mouth are a different story altogether. “We must find a safe place to camp.”
Joy turns to ashes in his heart. They are not worrying for his safety. Others must be protected from him. Unsuspecting people, who might fear him or hate him or tear him and his to pieces.
“Can we not find some small inn, some quiet house where we can stay? My brother isn’t some wild weapon like you might think; you can’t imprison him all the time,” Raven protests.
“We are only following orders,” and this time it’s the woman speaking. Her voice is low, and rough, like her words are being scraped over jagged rocks.
“I know of a place,” the man says, and he raises an eyebrow at his fellow guard before leading the way back to the horses. They are silent as they mount up.
Charles knees his horse closer to Raven’s, and they join hands again.
The inn is surprisingly elegant inside, despite its run-down appearance. He huddles into his cloak and he watches with wide eyes as Raven bargains for the price of a night, haggles shrewdly for food and water for their horses.
Such confidence in her, now. He remembers how she used to cling to him every night, and how she would shrink away from speaking with strangers. Soldiering has given her such confidence: it’s brought out the strength in her stance, the easy banter and the friendly insults with which she plies the innkeeper, the smile that pulls an answering grimace from the old man.
He envies her the ease of contact. They have permanently switched roles now. Now he has to skulk in the corners and hope no one peers under his hood. Now he has to hide his eyes and his hands at all times. Now he has to imagine himself as something tiny and harmless, in the hope that other people will perceive him in the same way.
All of his dark ideas vanish with a gasp when they’re shown the room. Beds! Real beds with sheets and pillows!
“Dearest,” and it’s his sister, grinning fondly at him. “I think you’ll sleep better if you wash up now, before you fall into bed and I won’t be able to talk to you until the morning.”
“I washed up when I woke,” Charles says, a little baffled and a little amused, but he takes a washcloth from the basket near the beds all the same, and walks out into the corridor.
That his sister is teasing him, that she’s smiling and happy, is enough to make him just sigh, and not protest, when the male guard follows him out around the back of the inn, is standing within shouting distance as he puts the washcloth over his face and immerses himself in the tub full of hot water.
What luxury, to have soap and to be able to wash his hair properly. What little water he can use at the tower tends to be cold, and he has been beaten too many times for using his abilities on it. When the winters come and the entire tower is freezing, there are mornings when he has to crack the thin crust of ice in the basin, and even on those days he just grits his teeth and shivers and uses it anyway.
Even though there is no one waiting to use the bath, he does not soak for long, and he reluctantly hoists himself out after a quarter of an hour, and he ignores the surprised look that the soldier shadowing him sends his way.
Raven follows him back into the room after a few moments, already out of her armor and her hair dripping around her shoulders.
“I’ve missed you,” he says after a moment.
“And I you, my dear.” Raven sits next to him, puts her hands in his lap. The skin of her arms is deeply tanned. Charles runs his fingers over the crisscrossing hairline scars on her skin, the edges of older wounds, long since healed. The marking on her wrist is easy to read and easy to bear. She seems proud of it. Soldier.
The marking on his own wrist reads Outcast.
“Last year I thought you would miss our birthday,” he says. “You were training so hard, and you were bruised all over when you made it to the tower, and I looked just as sorry as you did. Like we were cats fished out of a river in full flood. Sad and shaking and silent, clinging together.”
“You frightened me then, Charles,” she says. “You looked like you were two steps away from death. Will you now tell me what they have been doing to you? Who gave you that bruise?”
He looks away, pulls his hands from hers. “My instructor. He threw his books at me, and one of them hit me on the mouth. I cut my lip open on my own teeth. This happened two days ago.”
He fights the memory. He speaks without any inflections in his voice at all.
But the images rise up in his mind’s eye all the same. Trying to control a series of nine rings of fire nested inside each other, it takes him too long to set them spinning around at his instructor’s command, and the next thing Charles knows is that he must dispel the flames or absorb them as quickly as he can, his own screams be damned, because he is in his instructor’s room, and there are many books in there, and those books are flying at his head as though controlled by an unseen force.
Which is the truth. His instructor can move things with the power of his mind, and he is doing that, and all the while he’s hurling the vilest abuse, calling him a blind fool and a useless weapon.
Then and now, he hangs his head, and he doesn’t look up even when Raven wraps her arms tightly around him, draws him in close. He turns his face in toward her, breathes in her soap and the clean scent of her skin.
It’s still not enough to quell the memories, and he sighs and he resigns himself to another sleepless night.
Charles dreams: he is himself, aged sixteen, and Raven is a child no higher than his knees. He dreams that they are standing, facing each other, in a familiar place. A stone house, little more than a hut. The sounds of wind and water rushing outside, roaring and swelling; the mountains, looming as if protectively over them. A happy place for them - the place where they had lived together, searching the mountain brush for fruit and meat, playing games around the little hearth. The weeks before they had been found out and separated, before Charles had been dragged away to the tower, fighting his captors every step of the way.
A shadow falls over his shoulder, and child-Raven cries out and starts to run towards him, and he watches in blank shock as something seems to stand between them, keeping her away from him. He watches her pound her tiny fists against an invisible wall.
He holds up his wrist and sees the writing there, and a thick line of blood spreading across the ink, almost blotting it out: his own blood.
A hand closing around that wrist. A rough hand, a scarred hand, old scars and long-healed burns marking the skin, fresh wounds on fingers and arm. The other person’s blood is mingling with his, red dripping onto grey.
Who are you, Charles thinks, and he doesn’t resist, he lets the other person pull him away, though his heart is breaking and child-Raven is crying out and reaching for him. He can’t even brush against her fingers. Farther and farther, and something is dragging his sister away, and he can’t even cry out.
And that’s when he suddenly wakes up. His eyes fly open in the darkness and Raven, the real Raven, sixteen-year-old Raven, is whispering urgently at him. “Charles, something’s wrong.”
“I know.”
“Do you think our escorts - ”
She doesn’t get a chance to finish: the door flies open. Charles yanks his cloak partway on, and he doesn’t even think, simply leaps over his bed, lands neatly at his sister’s side as she moves into a ready stance. He watches her shift so she’s covering him. She draws her sword from its scabbard and the sharp rasp of the blade moving fills the room. The weapon grasped firmly in her hands.
He places one of his hands over both of hers, slots his fingers into hers so they’re both holding on to the sword.
“Charles,” she says, suddenly, and he wraps his free arm around her shoulders.
“Don’t!”
He looks, and he can see Raven’s eyes moving at the same time, and the female guard is bracing herself on the doorway, one hand stretched out toward them. Her wild eyes. Every line in her body is screaming: fear, protect, mission, don’t.
“I beg you, don’t attack,” the woman is saying, as rapidly as she can. The words slurring together as she hurries to explain. “You don’t recognize us, soldier,” she says, and Raven starts, “because we are not the real guards.”
“Who. Are. You,” Raven growls, and Charles feels her shoulders tense, knows he’s a heartbeat away from himself attacking. Anything to protect his sister. “Who sent you? Why do you want us? Speak!”
He has all of a moment to lean his forehead to the back of her neck - he has no other way of showing her how he admires her and loves her right here, right now - before she’s tensing again. The guard is approaching them, her hands still outstretched in entreaty.
“My name is Jean,” the woman says. “The other guard is Summers, and he is my husband. We are members of an organization that is fighting against the tower. We want to free the mages, we want the oppression to end, once and for all. We want mages and people to live and work together.”
“You know that what you want is impossible,” Charles hears himself say. “A noble goal, but impossible all the same. You may be on our side, but...we are already resigned to our fate.”
“You shouldn’t be.” And the man, Summers, is walking in. Blood flowing down his arm and his face from deep gashes, but he looks calm, and his voice is even and cold.
Charles is taken aback - Summers is looking him in the eyes and isn’t flinching at all. “And why not.”
“Because you are not alone.”
Raven shakes her head. “It’s too convenient,” she says, and she’s spitting the words over her shoulder. “Charles?”
He looks the man and the woman in the eyes. Jean cannot hold his gaze - but Summers can.
And he makes the decision from his dreams, even if he cannot understand it himself. He has to trust in what it could mean, in what the dreams are saying, for they have never gone wrong. Finding Raven, his mutilated ear, their assailant vanishing in a white-hot flash of light. Their flight to the stone house in the mountains, the fire, the soldiers finding them and separating them, the rush of tears. He’s lived this part of his life knowing what must happen, being powerless to stop events as they rushed headlong into them. “Raven.”
“Charles.”
“We will follow them for now. This is where things change.”
She explodes, and he thinks that he already knows what they are both going to say. “But how do you know - not the dreams? But we don’t even know what’s happening out there; we don’t even know why they’re fighting! I believe you, there is a point where things change, but is this that point?”
“Raven. I have never dreamed wrong.” He winces, he sees the same expression cross her face. “The dreams have pushed me to this point - and after this, I don’t know what will happen, not until I start dreaming again. But this - this is what we’ve been waiting for. Everything leads to this.”
He turns to the guards. Their startled faces. “I have known that you were coming, but not what you looked like. Our apologies, Jean and Summers, if either of us have acted wrongly towards you.”
“Fear can do that,” Summers says, mildly, and Charles watches as he holds his hand out to his wife. “We understand you, and there is nothing to forgive.” His face hardens suddenly. “Ready yourselves. We must be moving soon.”
When he turns back to Raven, she is lowering her sword. A myriad of expressions crossing her face. Shock, fear, hope, confusion. Love, burning at him, like his own powers. Tears gathering in her eyes. “Lead on. I will protect you, now.”
Charles nods, once, and he hides his eyes and his hands once more. Hides the fear in his eyes from her.
“Charles,” Raven says, and he looks up to her, watches her pull off her gloves. “Wear these.”
“They might get burned.”
“Then you’ll just have to see that they won’t,” she says, and now there is a little smile playing around the corners of her mouth, and he knows what will happen and he takes the gloves.
He glances warily at the cuff around her wrist as she resheathes her sword, knows it must come to him - and he follows them out of the room, and for the first time in a long while he breathes freely.
He looks inside himself, at the flame that he keeps in his heart, always protected - and he smiles. He tells it to burn. To explode. Words that he hasn’t thought of in years, that he’s always blocked out whenever he was angry, that he’s had to keep secret every moment that he was locked in the tower.
Now - now is a different story.
Raven is looking at him, and her eyebrows are pulled together in her worry - but he breathes in, and he smiles at her. He is trying to be reassuring.
“Keep moving,” Jean says, frantically. “We have to get away now!”
He gestures at her, once, and she falls silent. To his sister, he says, “Raven? Please stand back. And take them with you.”
She smiles now, and she backs away as fast as she can, takes Jean and Summers by the hands, starts moving them backwards as well. His sister, shouting encouragement at him. Her face lighting up. “Charles! Let it fly!”
He holds up his hands. The blazing rush in his blood, the smell of hot iron, the crackling and roaring in his ears. He turns his palms toward himself and he can see orange light flowing outward.
As she backs away, he can see Raven nodding, the tears in her eyes. The power bursting through him - she’s well out of reach now, but it doesn’t matter. He can sense her, joy and apprehension and fear and life, command and family. Everything about her and the two guards flanking her.
He calls out, and his voice is rough like he’s been screaming, deep and powerful, the voice he hears in his dreams - his own self, pulling him on, making him run always forward: “Raven. Go.”
And at last he closes his eyes. The world narrows down to himself and the flames, eating at him now, strength flooding down every nerve and every muscle in him, the flame and the power like old friends finally met again.
Let go, the voices in his head are shouting. Let us out. We must be free.
And he replies, for the first time in a long while: Yes!
Triumph and power. To be whole again. To find you again. It has been such a long time.
Flames, heat and strength, and Charles falls.
To Part II