Heart of the Hearken

There weren’t always dragons in this Valley.

Too many trees. That’s what I decided as I weaved between them, eager to reach my cottage before the coming of the Void. The Valley is a trench more long than wide, a narrow corridor wedged between the Sentinel Mountains and filled to the brim with the eternal trees of the Yearning Forest. Dragons, according to legend and rumor, distinguished only by inflection and volume, preferred to live up high in the many towering peaks of the Sentinels. The Valley is nothing more than the passage between the land below the mountains, the Known, and the land beyond the mountains, the Unknown.

I still pondered the cloaked figure’s warning delivered on my doorstep this morning as I let my satchel slide off my shoulder and thud onto the floor. It took everything not to collapse, exhausted from winning the race against dawn.

“If you are the Hearken then heed my words. Dragons are coming. Alert the people of the Valley, then flee with them.”

Whoever he was, the broad cloak shrouding him revealing as much about him as I cared to know, he was beaten down. Behind that rumbling voice, I could feel it rather than hear it. There was a sense of duty, but without commitment, a strong determination, but tinted with despair.

“Are you alright?” I asked as he turned to leave. He paused, and when he lifted his head and dropped it as a nod of confirmation, silver eyes flashed under the hood. He then retreated down a path I knew only ended at a mediocre clearing, created by a smooth flat piece of the mountain jutting out to slightly indent the timber line.

He had come seeking the Hearken, but my sister had left for the Unknown more than a decade ago. All she had left behind was the name and a heartbroken little sister. Assuming the title made me feel closer to her at first, especially because everyone who called on the Hearken could share a story of how they had heard of her, who she had helped and why they needed her. Now that I had held it longer than she had, I usually recognized the stories as my own, and it only made me miss her more.

He had called on the Hearken and I answered, though I wondered if my sister would have had this difficult of a day spreading the word around the Valley as I watched my sweaty sock cling briefly onto the wall I flung it at before it plopped wetly onto the floor.

Most had walked away incredibly pale, quickly deciding that the stories they had heard of dragons were not worth verifying. Depending on the source, they were Guardians of the Gods, ruthless harbingers of their wrath or maybe the Gods themselves. Many thanked me before running back to grab that or those that they loved and cherished before fleeing. Reputation was the only thing that meant something in the Valley, and my sister had truly listened to the people of the Valley when few others would. Still, it could not convince everyone.

A few scoffed, their belief being that the dragons had all died at the same time as magic, or that if they were truly alive and arriving soon, then surely the Incanters would also arrive to protect the people. No one had seen an Incanter, those powerful sorcerers rumored to have reclaimed magic in the Unknown, or evidence of the magic they harnessed. It was said that they could reorder reality with a mere whisper. I had no evidence to counter, and felt no obligation to persuade them.

The people of the Valley claimed nothing and expected less. Everyone who came to the Valley at some point felt a greater calling, sought salvation, or demanded answers. Adventurers, desperate souls, fools alike. Besides that, the only connection the people of the Valley shared was with the leaves. They felt at home among them as they had either been sheared off from home by forces beyond their own, or leapt off, desperate for anything but this. Whatever the reason, wherever they had come from, they had been funneled into the Valley, and now were content to swirl around on the forest floor until they were lost to it.

The people of the Valley did however share one tradition, one to which I was now speedily attending to even as I counted the various lights twinkling amongst the trees. Indeed, there were less than usual, but still more than I had hoped. I had done my best, and no more could be done, especially with the Void approaching quickly. It didn’t matter that the Void came and left the Valley every night for longer than I had been here, I never quite felt at ease with the physical presence of nothingness. The people of the Valley called it the Void because no other name could be given to something that was so otherworldly and strange. Only the embodiment of emptiness could announce its arrival by commanding silence.

As soon as the Sun began to Fade, slowly withdrawing into itself until it withered away, every creature of the Yearning Forest enacted measures to become utterly silent. Feather flies, incessantly buzzing with their long light wings, froze and floated down to the earth in reverence of it, scuttling to whatever burrow they could find. Each and every animal, from deadly Bubble Snakes to meandering Porcupine Bears, moved in pained silence as they found their shelters and hunkered down.

The sudden snuffing of all ambient sound is deafening in its absence, and the people of the Valley had enough sense to mimic the creatures that fled. Although homes were not shared, no one owned them. When people arrived to the Valley, they wandered through or asked around until they found an empty abode, and filled it. Then they fled back to it as soon as they saw everyone and everything else do the same, quietly too as any small noise was amplified in the concert of noiselessness.

Rigidly followed though incredibly pointless as most traditions are, the people of the Valley prepared any source of fire and light that could be mustered and self-sustained throughout the night. They then lit them before retreating to the safety of a familiar space. The hope was that if some lost soul were stuck out there that maybe they would see the light and find refuge. So far, that had been proven futile, the Void had taken much and given nothing back. It often felt less like a beacon of hope and more like a vigil for the lost.

I ensured that my lantern had adequate fuel, carefully struck a match in gloved hands, then held it to the wick. A warm glow filled the clear glass pane sides of the lantern. The latch slipping into place as I gingerly closed the lantern window still clanged loudly in the emptiness of sound. I tensed as I rose to place the lantern on the post, the small click still bouncing down the walls of the Valley. I relaxed a bit as it softened in nothingness, but was tense a moment later when I saw the light to my north, alone in the vastly expanding darkness. Its flickering light was not as bright as the torches and lamps of the others, but it glowed like the reflection of the Sun off silver.

It came from the same direction the stranger had headed down earlier today. An odd coincidence, though maybe someone new had taken advantage of the exodus and upgraded their dwelling. There was nothing that could be done about it now, and I turned away towards the shelter of my cottage. I didn’t make it more than two steps before I heard my name, calling out from the direction of that swimming glow.

I had abandoned my name longer than I had ever used it, and no one who lived in the Valley could have known it. The last time anyone had said it was when my sister whispered it in a promise to return someday.

Still, I had heard it since then, often times while lying in bed and listening intently to the nothingness of the Void. Even then, it was always muffled, muted, and never truly formed or with a voice.

When it rang out again, louder, more clear, it had an undeniable identity behind it. I ran towards it, snatching the lantern from its post as I headed down the path towards the clearing.

It took only one night in the Valley to understand how vital it was to be inside before the Void arrived. Anywhere else in the Known, the rising night sky revealed stars and moons and other celestial bodies that staved off the Void. The night sky of the Valley was made of the dense canopies of the Yearning Forest, and during the day they barely made enough room to allow the Sun’s light that was crucial to their survival. The trees flat out refused to sacrifice that space when the night came, and the Void was born of their selfishness.

Despite its terror and might, the comfort of an enclosed space allowed safe passage through the night. Being outside meant the Void was endless, but the confinement of being inside was enough reassurance of reality to not succumb to the lack of it. I was much too far from my cottage to reach its safety when the Sun finished its slow withering away.

The sound of branches and leaves smacking together as the trees ignored the innate nature of crown shyness rustled through the forest, clashing together like biting teeth as the Void swallowed everything. I couldn’t hear the rustling above me as my name pounded in my ears, but I saw it happen as the Void rushed towards me. The light ahead blinked away, and the lantern I held out before me, despite my begging for its light to remain strong, became darkness in my hand as the Void rushed past.

The Void did not just stop the light from entering from above, it denied its existence. It outshone the light with its darkness, and everything and nothing were the same in the blinding blackness. I could feel the ground below me, I could hear the wick snapping as it burned in the lantern, but even those sensations were questionable when there was no visual confirmation to assure me they were real. I spun around, scanning the seamless darkness in vain for my cottage or for the voice that had stopped saying my name. I reached my free hand out for trees, feeling for the ones around my home I had spent hours running my hands over for this very reason. The Void, the absolute nothingness that it created, moved the trees, my hands smacking bark at times I thought it wouldn’t and slicing through air when I had confidently intended to strike a tree.

Death would be like this. All-encompassing in its emptiness just as life was wide open with possibilities. It already consumed me, bringing my hand to touch my face the only comfort that my body was still intact. I fell to my knees, then hugged them to my chest, only for the assurance that they remained as well.

Tears flowed from my face, downward I could only assume as they fell lightly on my knee caps before rolling down my shaking legs and into the stillness of the Void. Whatever it was, whatever lived in it, would come for me, and I would not even know it. Hope was gone too, even that internal light being strangled by the Void, that is until one tear drop fell with a sparkle of light.

The next tear that fell was even brighter, and I stared in awe as it glistened briefly on the forest floor before being absorbed by it. The light in my lantern slowly blossomed, resurfacing from the darkness. As my crumpled frame began to form in light growing much too bright for the lantern, it became clear that it was only refracting a light greater than its own.

A wall of red and orange light, dancing as it grew on the horizon, saved me from the Void, but something about it did not feel quite like salvation. Its fiery reach spanned the width of the Valley, and as it marched forward so did its heat. A fire, raging down the Valley from the Unknown, illuminated the forest floor as it burned through trees that had once stood stubbornly impervious.

Everything I had once known had been upended but all I focused on was that voice that had returned. Despite almost being lost to the Void, I could not resist the urge to run towards my name, towards that silvery sparkle that now was tinged with the red of the fire. Even as I watched that fire devour trees that had never had their bark successfully maimed, I could not flee back to my cottage when my sister was calling my name.

I picked up the lantern and sprinted forward, desperate to reach the clearing before the fire did. Weaving through the trees became faster when I started dodging their shadowy backs, running pasts their fronts staring staunchly at the oncoming blaze.

My feet slid as they transitioned from the dirt of the forest floor to the stone of the clearing. The fire reached the other side of the clearing at the same time as I did, it too seemed to lose its footing for a moment as it flared briefly before halting. Just ahead of it, leading it like a dog on a leash, was a tall man grinning from ear to scars, rough skin where his right ear should have been.

“Oh yes, she is a delicious thing” he crooned, amusement dancing across his face as his black eyes reflected the fire he chuckled to. It stopped advancing down the Valley and finished enveloping the clearing as my back met the warming stone of the mountain.

“Why don’t you come over here? Surely you must be cold?” He cooed, laughing as he stepped forward. The expanse of empty stone that held back the forest also stopped the fire, containing nothing for the fire to consume and cross over to. That limitation however was lifted by the man, speaking louder now as he continued to walk towards me, the fire flashing towards me in taunting.

Once again my name was called, though no longer the voice of my sister. The chanting man continued egging on the fire as I looked for my sister, the strange messenger, any one to help.

“Act quickly” rumbled that voice that called my name last, though it felt like the words were spoken directly into my head. My name, I hadn’t felt any sound enter my ears, same as now, but I heard it nonetheless. I looked around to beg the voice to save me when I caught something in the dancing shadows of the fire, perched upon a rock above me and to the right. A blue iris set in a pool of liquid silver, set ablaze by the reflection of the fire below, blinked at me in its scaly socket before shutting completely.

“Focus, listen, and speak” it commanded.

I closed my eyes, despite the distance from my fiery death being only mere feet away, and released a breath. Words, in a language I knew nothing of, began to flow from my throat and out of my mouth. The man went silent, the words being stifled in his throat as they rushed out of my own.

The words not only felt foreign, they also felt beyond my tongues’ ability to pronounce, and it was difficult not to wonder why it felt as though my tongue had been cleaved in two. More alarming, it felt as though it was lifting and dropping simultaneously, intertwining and rolling in order to project the chant that flowed from me, that was now coaxing the fire to recede into itself. I watched with eyes wide and words still surging from me, as the entirety of the suppressed fire, still massive in size and heat, lifted into the air as it moved towards me.

“Raise the lantern”, a clear command over the words flowing from me. I raised my arm, holding the lantern out in defense against the column of fire floating towards me. The man, once holding a dominating grip on that fire, was flung by an unseen giant into its blaze. There was no evidence left afterwards, nothing as the wildfire continued towards me. The closer it got, the more it began to calm, and the flames licked my cold shaky fingers as softly as a candle as it diminished into the lantern. I remembered nothing but falling as the latch clicked into place.

I awoke to darkness, but as my eyes adjusted to light streaming in, it assuaged the panic that rose at the thought of the Void. The light shifted, and I started to remember where I was. Still on the stone clearing, but underneath a shade that seemed to be made of the Sentinel Mountains themselves. As my eyes adjusted, I realized that the shade was a wing, the light entering through holes in its stretched frame. A ray of light bounced off flowing silver as an eye opened, the same eye from last night, the eye of-

“A dragon.” It said, still that same gruff voice of the strange messenger that had uprooted my life a day ago. “Speak, but not with your voice, with your mind. With intention.”

I concentrated, though it was evident that my mind must have been focused plenty as the eye flinched as though I had yelled.

“I heard my sister. She was calling for me.”

“Part of Beckoning, a spell I used call to you. I apologize for the confusion.” It retracted its wings more and stood, much taller and larger in the empty field of simmering embers.

“Truly, I mean you no harm. You need not be afraid, tiny though you are.” A chuckle, more masculine now in its form, echoed through me as he gestured towards the lantern, flickering steadily and brightly despite competing against the morning greetings of the Sun.

“Is she alive?” I might have accepted that I would never see her again but I had always held out hope that maybe she was still out there.

“I don’t know, I’m sorry.”

I collapsed, and was braced by the tip of his tail breaking my fall by bracing me along the spine. My eyes fell from where I looked up into that pool of silver and back to the crackling wick of the lantern.

“That man” so many questions formed in my mind it was impossible to sort through them and focus on one. Where did he come from, how had he been able to burn the trees, why did he attack me; every thought swirled in my mind until they were simultaneously answered, a wave of information rippled warmly over my mind.

Magic was real, but it had only resurfaced recently in the Unknown. There had been an attempt to seal it away, the result of an ancient civil war that had consumed everything. After a bloody battle, it had been locked away before it could cause damage to the world beyond repair. It had been done for the good of all, and had come with great sacrifice.

But magic can never truly be contained, and it returned innocently. Far in the Unknown, there once stood towns and kingdoms that were united under the pursuit of knowledge. When they discovered magic had returned, they took care to avoid the mistakes of the past. They understood all too well the danger of desire, the disregard that is given to valid concerns about progress. They implemented a safe guard, a regulator to control the magic instead of a cage. The goal was to prevent anyone from exploiting magic for gain or to cause harm, and group of powerful Incanters called the Spoken developed the Oath after much deliberation.

The debate was not in the merit of the Oath, but in the sacrifice that would need to be made for the greater good. The Oath was sourced from a dark curse, one that binds the promises made to the very life force of the promiser. The wisdom of the Spoken was in recognizing that good and evil was not ingrained in magic, just in its vessel. Seven of the Spoken sacrificed their lives to bind magic to the Oath, leaving seven behind to start the new world order. They called themselves the Council of the Echo, and administered the Oath with the same intention and purity of the Spoken.

Adhering to the Oath keeps the flow of magic open, allowing it to be taught freely and wielded appropriately. Breaking the Oath broke the soul, killing the person inside and all magical capability, leaving nothing but a husk. Infraction and punishment however were fairly balanced, a small step over the line felt like a small sting between the shoulders that only grew if provoked.

My body felt like it had been submerged in a deep pool of water, and information swirled around as illuminated currents. The dragon redirected certain flows my way, and I only had to reach for them to absorb them. Although I could not see the dragon, I could feel him, and could feel his surprise when I willed one of the streams of consciousness towards my suspended body. It felt familiar, and I quickly knew why as I was carried into it.

My sister found one of these towns and was welcomed in. She was introduced to magic, shown how it had been used for the betterment of humanity. She learned the mechanisms of magic as she watched in awe as Incanters bent nature to their whim by simply speaking to it. Wind is dramatic, too soft at times and unrelenting at others, and the Incanter who wishes to speak to it must perform accordingly. Fire needs to be sparked, fueled, and fed, and though what is spoken to conjure it varies, it must be meant with every fiber of your being to avoid being taken by it. Earth pulses with rhythm, but very few are able to tap into it. There once was one that knew that rhythm so intimately that he raised the Sentinel mountains himself, a favor to the Spoken to help protect magic. Water was impossible, always changing, never revealing its true self. Sometimes it listened, though usually it didn’t. Control of the elements came first because nature always spoke the loudest.

The last fail-safe of the Spoken tethered the physical bodies of those who had taken the Oath to the lands of the Unknown. Magic must remain hidden, and partaking in it meant giving yourself wholly to that principle.

My sister took the Oath immediately, and through the information that flowed into me I could not tell if she had even considered me, or the promise she had made, though I assumed she hadn’t.

It was evident though that she fell in love with magic, devouring it and exploring it as far as the Oath allowed. She moved to the capital, almost living in the great libraries they held, eating food from gardens tended to with soft voices. She achieved everything, all dreams and desires met and exceeded until sleep was nothing more than a blink of blissful quiet. In the emptiness of having everything, the guilt of the promise she could no longer fulfill ate at her.

A formal request to the Council was the only way to circumvent the Oath, and they already had grown wary of her growing power. They denied every appeal to visit the Valley, the idea of a sister to aid in that growth was certainly not conducive to the control they preferred to have.

When two Incanters of the Council knocked on her door the day after her one hundredth request, they delivered their decision along with a request for her to join them back to the Council for an Official Inquiry. With every denial of her freedom she felt the walls of the prison she had willing walked into closing in on her.

She gave them only seconds to react before she lunged at them. It was all she needed to decide that she did not agree with their agenda, and would rather see it burn than let it control her. The Oath shredded her soul, but she fought through it as she shredded through the Council. She lost her control on her magic and herself as she demolished the town. My sister killed indifferently, old mentors, innocent bystanders, friends alike. She only stopped after she lured all of the oxygen in the air away from the gasping leader of the Council of the Echo, the last of the original Spoken. The Oath had been broken, her pursuit of power no longer constrained as she collapsed and waited for death atop the remnants of her collateral damage. In that quiet, drifting away from this life, she heard the voices.

They whispered to her in the language of blood, of bone, of souls. Her spilled blood flowed back into her body as she mumbled weakly in repetition. Painfully, but smoothly, her skin started repairing where it had been slashed and singed. Fully recovered and reinvigorated she stood, alive and more powerful than any that had come before her. She still wanted more. Ancient texts from the library, now just ash and memory in the wake of her destruction, stated that the dragons were taught the Song of Everything, the ultimate magic. The teacher died as he finished the song, and the dragons were tasked with guarding that secret. To take those secrets, she would need more power than she could muster alone.

Whatever being it was that brought each and every person in that town back to life one by one, only to offer them the chance to serve them was not my sister. She must have been lost when the Oath imploded to stop her. Sucking in air, stolen from death’s grasp and writhing in hers, they pledged their life to her to fulfill her own twisted Oath, vowing their souls to her instead. If they did not plead enough, or simply because they once stood in her way, she made their blood boil.

Since then, she had been on a rampage, ravaging through the lands that once knew magic and peace, that were now rendered defenseless by the Oath as she continued to desecrate. The dragons refused to give her anything, my sister being the justification for why they sealed away magic so long ago. She did not accept their silence, and the dragons were forced to fight against her.

One of her top generals was a feared and wicked Incanter from a far corner of the Unknown. He had been dispatched to hunt down the scout the dragons had sent into the Valley, and was now somewhere amongst the ash of the forest, or perhaps contained within the lantern by my side. The dragons had decided that the Valley and the Sentinels would be their stronghold, though they had also come in hopes of finding someone capable of stopping her.

“She found it. She found magic, didn’t she?”

The dragon’s snout released a plume of yellow smoke, his contempt snort more visible against the sheen of his black scales.

“She stumbled into magic. Then she lost herself to it. Now she demands more. More than any should ever have.” His eyes fell to mine as he felt the weight of the request he needed to make.

“Simin Clearburn, Hearken of the Dragons. Help me defend my people. Help me defend my home.” His eye did not waver, his face did not change, but I could feel the pain and loss he had suffered because of my sister.

“She intends to keep her promise and return?” I asked, my eyes scanning the swirling sea of ash as the morning mist cascaded down the mountains, steam rising as it cooled the Valley.

The dragon nodded, his snout lifting up and then down, the same nod the cloaked stranger had given me a full day ago now. Solemnly, my heart wrenching thinking about what she had done, I matched his stare. He had called on the Hearken and I answered, and there was no grey area when he heard my decision ring out from my collected mind. “She will find no home here.”