Chapter 38: Cadogan

(I painted this in Procreate using the oil paint brush and found it immensely difficult trying to stop painting the clouds and think that I could have kept going for days, but thankfully I give myself deadlines. - Chaiga T. Cheska)

Oren’s eyes widened as he stepped forward before he quite realised he had moved. He reached out to the man standing before them. “Olis. At last.” His hand swept back beside him, catching Nix by the upper arm and drawing him close. “Please, this is my cousin, Nix. He’s in desperate need of your guidance.”

A soft, weary sigh escaped Harthos at the door. Tavik shot him a dark, warning look just as Olis lifted his hands and set them gently on Oren’s and Nix’s shoulders and looked between them both. Oren found himself staring into ancient eyes, fathomless and blue as deep water, and the quiet smile that rose there steadied him. Nix, too, stilled at once, caught by the presence of this unusual being, as though speech had left them both and only breath remained.

When Olis spoke again, his voice carried a warmth that seemed to fold around them. “There is no need for worry in this moment. Many creatures along your way have spoken of your trials, and yes, I will help as well as I may.” His gaze shifted past them, softening with concern. “But for now, I believe there is one in greater need, for I see a boy fading even in sleep.”

He stepped back a little, as though listening to something only he could hear, and the air in the room seemed to tighten around his attention. Even Harthos straightened, the frustration draining from him as Olis’s words settled over them without needing acknowledgement.

Oren, Nix and Tavik whirled towards the sofa where Bran still lay in deep, untroubled sleep. At first glance, he seemed peaceful, but a faint shimmer clung to the outline of his body, thinner now than it had been, as though the light itself were losing its hold on him.

Tavik and Oren were beside their younger brother in an instant, hands reaching for him, alarm sharp in their faces. Before either could touch him, Olis stepped between them with a quiet, steadying smile. He leaned over Bran, studying him with a calm that seemed to settle the air around them. Bran slept on, oblivious, his breathing soft and even, while that dim halo flickered as if it might gutter out at any moment.

“Can you do something to help him?” Tavik’s voice was low as he touched Bran’s shoulder. The moment his fingers met the fabric of Bran’s sleeve, an odd sensation travelled through him, as though the very edges of his younger brother had thinned. It felt as if Bran were somehow less substantial than he had been only minutes before, as though the world had begun to wear him away.

Timatticus reached across and gently drew both Oren and Tavik away from their brother, guiding them to one side so they could watch without crowding Olis. The scribe bent over Bran at first without touching him, scrutinising the sleeping boy as though searching for something hidden just beneath the surface of the world.

After a few moments, Olis lifted his stained fingers and made a small, deliberate motion, as if plucking at something invisible. A shimmer answered him. The finest filaments rose from the edges of Bran’s form, gossamer threads that drifted as though stirred by an unseen current. They were faintly green, intricately patterned, and so delicate that Oren felt his breath catch. He recognised them at once. They were Bran’s life signature, the same fragile lattice he had tried to repair during the portal’s opening earlier that day.

Olis’s fingers moved with astonishing precision, dancing through the threads as though he played some elaborate stringed instrument. Oren, Nix and Tavik watched in silent wonder as the patterns lengthened under Olis’s touch. With one hand, he held a section of Bran’s fading threads steady, and with the other, he reached into the air around him. From nothing, he seemed to select more strands, each one coloured with subtle, shifting hues. His fingers wove them together in mid-air, forming entire patterns before drawing them down and stitching them to the frayed edges of Bran’s outline.

It was a wonder to witness. Tavik realised after a while that his mouth had been hanging open, and he only managed to close it when Oren nudged him sharply.

At last, when the final thread settled into place, Olis rested two fingers against Bran’s forehead. The effect was immediate. Bran’s eyes flew open, widening at the sight of the unfamiliar man leaning over him.

Olis smiled, gentle and unhurried. “My greetings to you, little wizard. How do you feel now?”

Tavik, Oren and Nix exchanged quick, bewildered looks at the ‘wizard’ remark. Then Oren and Tavik reached for Bran at once, each gripping a shoulder and feeling, with a loosening in their chests, how solid he seemed at last. The strange smallness that had clung to him earlier was gone.

Olis stepped back to stand beside Timatticus, his gaze dropping sideways and down to Nix, who stared up at him in open wonder. Before them, Bran was trying to fend off his older brothers’ competing ideas of affection while glancing down at himself, as if trying to make sense of the strength returning to his limbs.

“Tav, stop,” Bran laughed, attempting and failing to push Tavik away. Tavik ruffled his hair and pulled him briefly into a headlock before Oren intervened and freed him. “Tav, really,” Oren said, exasperated but smiling as he drew Bran into a proper hug. He pulled back to look at him. “Are you alright? You look less small.”

Bran shoved at his brothers, pushed himself upright, and glanced towards Nix, who was watching him with quiet appraisal. “Five feet is a better height, Bran,” Nix murmured. Bran let out a long sigh, accepting that he was no longer quite so diminished, even if he had not regained his full height. He looked up at Olis, wonder widening his eyes as he took in the strange man before him.

“You made me taller. Thank you,” Bran said, earnest and breathless. Olis peered down at him with a soft, knowing smile and set a hand on his shoulder.

“I separated your magic from your life force,” he said. “Later, I will teach you how to use your magic so you do not fade when instinct takes hold.”

Tavik rose and slung an arm around Bran’s shoulders, drawing him close as he looked up at Olis. “You also called him ‘little wizard’. What did you mean?”

Bran looked up at Tavik, then at Olis. “I’m a wizard?” His voice lifted with a bright, unguarded excitement he couldn’t hide.

“Not yet,” Olis said. “But you will be, if you learn to anchor your magic in something other than your own life force.” He turned to Nix and rested a hand on his shoulder, his touch light. “Isn’t it time you shared what you learned when Grænsfell delivered you to the Caelvarae, Nix?”

Nix blinked up at him, startled. A faint pulse of magic thrummed from Olis, steady as a tide, and Nix felt it brush against him like a quiet recognition. “How do you know?” he asked, his voice low, as though the answer might shift the air around them.

“I think you know the answer to this.” Olis held Nix’s gaze without the slightest flicker of retreat. Nix let his fangs lengthen, testing him, waiting for the usual shift in scent or stance that marked fear. Olis didn’t so much as blink. The lack of reaction unsettled Nix more than any flinch would have done.

A prickle ran along his spine. He felt the old urge to slip back into the dark corners, to fold himself into shadow where no one could look at him so directly. His eyes darted around the room, searching for a way out, for any pocket of dimness he could vanish into, but Oren rose at once and reached for him, steadying him with a hand on his shoulder.

Nix let out a long, quiet sigh, his fangs retracting. He glanced around at the others, meeting their eyes for the briefest moment before dropping his gaze to the floor. When he spoke, his voice was low, as though he were trying to keep the words from escaping. He relayed what he had hoped to keep to himself, each admission feeling as if it were being pulled from somewhere deep and private.

“Grænsfell delivered me to the edge of the sky kingdoms, up in the clouds. He wanted to wait for me, but I told him to go. I didn’t want him at risk as well.” Nix’s voice was quiet, but the tether carried Tavik’s frustration to him all the same. He glanced up, caught the flicker of it in Tavik’s eyes, and with a small nudge from Oren at his side, he forced himself to continue.

“I think… because I’m half Caelvarae, I could walk on the cloud kingdoms. There were only a few fields, and then the castle. I felt I’d find my father there. There was a signature of him in the air, something that felt like me.”

A weighted sigh escaped him. He leaned unconsciously into Oren, who kept a steadying hand on his shoulder, grounding him as the memories pressed closer.

“I found a way in through a low storage window. Inside, it was dark, and the room was full of Evermilk barrels along one wall. There was a little hatch leading into a corridor that climbed up through the keep into the main courtyard. I thought I was alone, but… apparently, I was being watched.”

He stilled, almost imperceptibly.

“Because suddenly I was slammed into a wall and held by my neck in a chain that felt like it came out of the stone itself.”

Nix flicked his eyes up. Tavik was staring at him with an intensity that bordered on fury, and Bran watched him with fear, widening his gaze, as if the thought of Nix trapped like that unsettled something deep in him.

“The Caelvarae are… they are…” Nix’s voice faltered. He cleared his throat, glanced around at all of them, then dropped his gaze again as Oren’s hand settled more firmly on his shoulder. “They are not what I thought they would be.” The words thinned out, barely more than breath. He tried again. “I thought they would recognise my heritage and welcome me. I thought I would find my… my father.”

His voice caught. The dread of what he had to say sat in him like a stone. The urge to flee into the darkest corners pressed hard against him, stronger than any instinct he’d felt facing predators. Speaking the truth felt more dangerous than claws or teeth.

Oren looked across at Olis. “Perhaps this is not the time. We should give Nix a rest. He’s been through a lot.”

Olis smiled gently, then lifted his gaze to Harthos, who still stood at the door with his arms folded, watching everything with that unreadable stillness. Olis looked back down at Nix and gestured towards the seats.

“Let us sit, rest, and drink something restorative,” he said, his voice warm but carrying an unmistakable weight. His eyes held Nix’s for a moment. “But I must urge you to reveal what you discovered. The future of you and your cousins hangs in the balance, and your words will shape everything that follows.”

Nix exhaled shakily as Oren guided him into one of the soft chairs by the hearth. Timatticus, Tavik, and Bran took their seats opposite him, with Oren sitting beside him, forming a quiet circle.

Olis stood between them all, and before Nix could speak again, he lifted his hands into the air around him. His fingers moved with a deft, fluid grace, plucking at something unseen. Invisible strands answered him, shimmering into view as intricately woven patterns that unfurled like threads caught in a slow current. The patterns thickened, colours gathering until they resolved into swirling green and turquoise liquid that caught the hearth light and sparkled like a small, contained borealis.

The liquid folded in on itself, settling into the shapes of goblets as though the air had decided to hold them. One by one, they drifted outwards. Each goblet floated to its intended hands, even to Harthos at the door, who accepted his with a knowing delight and drank with his eyes closed, as though the taste carried him somewhere familiar.

Bran stared openly, his mouth hanging wide at the spectacle. It was the first time he had seen the scribe’s magic, and the wonder of it lit his face. Tavik nudged him, and Bran closed his mouth before reaching out to pluck the goblet from the air, joining his brothers and cousin.

A soft hush settled over the room. Only the crackle of the fire broke the quiet as they tasted the elixirs. The flavour was unlike anything they had ever known, slipping across the tongue with a brightness that defied description. A calm spread through them, thrumming gently from their toes to their ears, as though the drink had tuned something inside each of them to a steadier rhythm.

When they had all drunk and settled, the goblets vanishing once consumed, Olis took the chair nearest the fire and turned his attention to Nix. Nix sat straight beside Oren, the elixir’s calm settling over him but not quite reaching the place where the dread sat in him like a cold weight. He wished he were anywhere else.

Oren’s hand found his shoulder again, steady and warm. Nix didn’t look up. His ears were flat against his head, refusing to lift even after the drink’s soothing warmth, and the runes along his skin flickered in restless, uneven pulses, betraying the storm gathering inside him.

“Nix,” Oren murmured, urging him gently.

Nix swallowed, the sound small in the quiet room. The fire crackled, throwing shifting light across the walls, and every pair of eyes rested on him, waiting for the words he least wanted to speak.

Nix looked at Oren, then at the floor, and began again. “I should explain first… the Caelvarae are figures woven from cloud light, or silhouettes lit by the split-second glare of lightning. Their Floating Halls drift as pale citadels unmoored, their silvered spires rising and falling with the breath of the Sentient Skies. The Skies shape their course. Their moods steer the whole kingdom.”

He swallowed, his voice thinning as he pressed on.

“They are keepers of wind and storm. Their language is made from the hiss of rain on slate and the tremor in the air before thunder breaks. Their blood runs quick with the pulse of weather, their thoughts sharpened by sudden change. In a heartbeat, they can summon a squall from a clear horizon or strip a tempest to bare silence. The Skies know them as kin. Their will and the Skies’ sentience twist together like strands of the same current.”

He paused, breath unsteady. Sharing this part was easier; it sat at a remove from him, descriptive rather than personal, something he could voice without touching the wound beneath. His cousins needed to know what it meant to be half Caelvarae, and speaking of his heritage kept him from the darker memory waiting behind it.

“This is interesting, Nix, truly,” murmured Oren. “But you are avoiding what Olis asked you to do.”

Nix’s runes flickered sharply at that, as though his own magic had felt the weight of what he was saying.

Nix gave Oren a pained look. His runes flared in sharp, uneven bursts, and his ears flattened so tightly against his head that they almost vanished into his hair. His Caelvarae magic stirred with his fear, whipping his wild red hair into a restless storm that crackled faintly in the firelight. He drew in a breath that trembled at the edges and spoke to the floor, the hearth’s crackle filling the silence around him.

“I was held against my will. Somehow, my Lightweaver magic flared, and my wings buckled against the wall I was pinned to. I felt figures moving around me, half stormlight, half lightning, pushing their meanings into my head.” His voice quickened, as though the words were trying to escape him. “As they stole each of my constellations, they raged at me for being the reason my father was killed.”

A breath escaped him, unsteady, but the words kept coming, drawn from him like threads.

“I understood then that my father, apparently also the son of the king, was killed the moment he and my mother made love. My father’s name was Cadogan, I’ve learned. So, to the Caelvarae, I am the murderer of my father because my life caused his death. I don’t think my mother knows.”

The last sentence arrived before he had finished deciding to say it. Nix leaned forward sharply, elbows on his knees, hands covering his face. If he couldn’t flee into the dark corners, he would make his own darkness behind his eyelids. He stayed there, folded in on himself, wrung out and wishing they would all look somewhere else.

He felt Oren’s hand settle between his shoulder blades, steady and warm. Tavik’s worry reached him through the tether, low and aching as a held note. But Nix wanted none of it. He wanted shadow, silence, and the safety of being unseen.

“Oh, Nix,” whispered Bran, wiping a tear from his eye as he looked at his cousin, who still refused to uncover his face.

Tavik reached out through the tether and felt it clearly: Nix wasn’t upset, not in the way the others feared. He simply needed darkness. He needed the world to stop looking at him. Tavik understood in a sudden, sharp way that this sharing had gone on too long, and Nix was a wild creature cornered, the whole of him straining toward shadow and silence.

Tavik stood. He reached for Nix and pulled him gently but firmly to his feet. Nix’s hands dropped from his face, startled, as Tavik glanced around the room. His gaze caught on the only patch of true shadow, the narrow space between a wardrobe and a bookcase.

Without hesitation, Tavik guided him there and pushed him into the darkness.

The effect was immediate. The moment the shadows touched him, Nix’s skin deepened, cerulean dissolving into the dark by degrees, the indigo of his throat and hands the last to go, until nothing remained of him but his eyes, two quiet points of hazel-green in the shadow, catching the hearth light from the room behind. A wave of relief and gratitude surged through the tether, washing over Tavik so strongly he almost staggered.

Tavik turned back to the others, his voice quiet but certain. “He needed darkness…”

Author’s Note:

This chapter was a heavy one to write, and it fought me the entire way. It has been trimmed, reshaped, trimmed again, and then glared at until it behaved.
Next week reveals even more, so steady yourself. And if you’re enjoying the slow unravelling of MirMarnia, please share it with others.

-Chaiga T. Cheska