#fyonia

There’s magic in everything, in the land- in the world- of Fyonia. Flowing, overwhelming anything without magic, of which there’s little. Every person is born with the potential for magic, absorbs and releases the flow of magic surrounding them without noticing, in idle actions. Every person is born with magic.

In the land of Fyonia, a child by the name of Kai is born. Born in a place where everyone is born with two souls. (One always dies, eventually. It’s rare, far too rare, that both will live into adulthood, or even past ten.) Kai is born with only one.

This isn’t the thing that makes him stand out, though.

In the land of Fyonia, a world overflowing with magic, where people are born with multiple souls in one body, where every person is born with a natural affinity for magic, a child is born without any magic. Alone in a magic-less body, which rejects the magic around it. That pushes back against it, and is pained, intensely, by the magic around them.

Dying from the moment he’s born, Kai is expected to live to ten, at most. More likely, five. But he doesn’t understand this, or why everything is painful, or why, when he’s three, seeing hurts. Doesn’t understand why his parents pass him off to a blue-haired man. (Named, he’ll learn later, Azure, after the colour. A colour born from his affinity for ice magic.)

Kai comes to understand, by the time he’s six. Lived longer than expected, he hears from Azure. His eyes have given up on him, his legs are following their lead. Azure is honest with him. “I think you’re going to die soon, Kai.”

What a horrible thing to say to a child, Kai thinks. He shouldn’t be able to think that way, not yet.

Magic isn’t killing him, necessarily. It’s just aggravating things that eventually set in for most everyone. His brown hair turns white, at five. His eyes give out at six. His joints speak loud protests by the time he’s seven.

Another kid, Cera, ends up with them soon after Kai turns seven. Equally rejected by magic, a statistical outlier, Cera’s body reacts differently, but equally deadly. Rather than being drained of life by it, magic strikes him painfully, at random, pushing the parts of him that should hold magic apart. His ear drums give up, burst, a week after he arrives. His wrists follow suit. Kai can’t offer comfort because he doesn’t know what Cera would want to hear- read, actually- were he to ask for it.

Azure makes magical items. Has been working on something since before Kai met him. Kai thinks, a month after he turns seven, that he’ll never see the end of it. See what it’s become. But, then, Azure asks him something, one day.

“Would you want to live, if you were no longer human?”

“But as long as I’m me, then I am human?”

It’s a powerful amplifier of magic, Azure explains. It needs something powerful to bond to, in order to remain stable. So far, his attempts have fallen apart- exploded, mostly- because the pure energy in an object didn’t work. Cera is told, too, but doesn’t seem to understand. Kai does, in his worn, tired, mind.

“If I attached a soul to it, it could take form- human form, even- and still serve its purpose.”

The first is made purely of the, “light,” energy of the world. Anglesion magic.

“If my soul was used, would I still be me?”

“Yes, of course.”

Kai dies, two months after turning seven. Passes out, in the middle of a meal, and doesn’t wake. It’s only a few moments. A short five seconds, where his soul remains while his body has finally given up. In that time. Azure acts.

Kai wakes again, a soul held in an object. Bound to an enormous amount of magic. Being made of it, himself, now. His soul fuses with magic, slowly, over the course of a week, until he’s one with it. Until his soul is just another part of the mass of energy, and he’s a child, again, in form. But he can feel it, over his skin. That he’s no longer the same. His body functions, aside from his eyes.

Cera describes him. He looks the same, Cera says. He looks healthy, Cera tells him. There’s a tattoo over his back. A black circle, with curving lines surrounding it. The only immediate sign something is inhuman about him, it sparkles with stars of magic.

“The anglesion orb,” Azure says, one day. “You’re that, now, Kai.”

Kai doesn’t appreciate the pity in his voice. Not when it was Azure’s idea, in the first place. “So I’m light, now.”

“Blindingly,” Azure jokes. “Rakai.”

The Fyonian word for blinding, rakai. It’s a pun, one Kai almost appreciates.

“Rakaishi, then?” Kai raises a hand to his chest. Shi is the Fyonian word for Light. “A new name for this me, hm?”

Azure’s thoughts- Kai can hear them, distant, but there- tell Kai that Azure finds his speech unsettling. His words, aloud, are nicer. “It’s still weird to hear you talk like that, when you’re still so much a child.”

“Blame the magic.”

Cera passes a year later, and Azure does the same to him. Demecian magic, the “dark,” magic of the world. The necessary pull to the push that was angelsion magic. Cera is ten, when he is reborn in the same way Rakaishi was. His attitude is lighter, more the child he is, than Rakaishi thinks he himself ever was.

“Should my name be changed, too, then?” Cera asks, a hum following his question. Rakaishi laughs, reaches to ruffle Cera’s dark black hair.

“What do you want it to mean, brother?” Rakaishi asks, silent. Speech isn’t necessary to talk, even without the slowly arriving telepathy that their new magic had given them.

Another hum. “I want my name in it, too.”

Cera, meaning hope in Fyonian. A name Rakaishi had thought cruel, once, to give a child they knew from birth would die young.

“La, maybe?”

“Quiet?”

“Yeah.”

Lacera, quiet hope. Cera grabs one of Rakaishi’s hands. “It matches yours!”

“It does.”

Azure reaches fifty, before another child like Kai and Cera is left with him. His movements are getting slower, and don’t keep up well with the surprising energy of the dying girl. Ia has already made it further than Kai or Cera did, by the time she arrives. Already eleven, and lacking her voice. Magic numbing her other senses, she’s clumsy and a greater danger to herself than magic is to her.

Azure has been looking into the idea of pure elemental magic, something generally denied by most. All magic is laced with angelsion or demecian magic, most would say. Rakaishi doesn’t doubt that, if Azure is able to figure his theory out, a third, different, orb would be possible.

“Ia, do you know what your lack of magic means?” Lacera asks, once, while distracting Ia. Keeping her from distracting their aging caretaker. Rakaishi watches his siblings- and that’s what they are, now- with his magic. He can’t see them, but if he spreads his magic out, thinly layering it over the space around him, he can feel them. It’s almost as if he has his sight again, though it’s exhausting in a way that’s more difficult than his human body’s exhaustion ever was.

“I’m dying.” Ia signs, simply. Lacera nods, slowly. “And then I’ll get to be like you.”

Lacera is too taken aback to respond, so Rakaishi does. “Do you think that’s a good thing?”

“It’s just a thing.” Just a thing. Not good or bad, just something. Rakaishi wouldn’t argue with that, given the chance.

“You know,” Lacera says, finally. “Me and Rakaishi had different names, before.”

“Different names?”

Lacera explains, and Ia nods along with every word of his explanation. Rakaishi finds his thoughts drifting, while it happens. 

Azure is fifty, already, and far weaker than he should be. It’s not a lack of magic weakening him, but he’s pushing his limits of magic. His affinity is angelsion magic. Demecian magic should be painful for him, and Rakaishi remembers his struggle with Lacera. His affinity is ice, but Rakaishi has noticed Azure practicing other elements, ones far removed from what should be safe for him to attempt, in order to learn more about them. He’s pushing the limits of what his magical ability will allow.

Rakaishi worries he won’t last long enough to make Ia like them.

Azure announces his research being completed two days later, easing Rakaishi’s concern.

Ia not only arrives later into life than Rakaishi and Lacera, but further outlives them by two more years. Is thirteen, when she stops being able to move. It’s still two more weeks, after, before she actually dies, and nobody appreciates those two weeks.

But, then, Rakaishi and Lacera’s sister is the same as them, and she grins when she tells them her name.

Minia. Min being both the word meaning spirit, and from the Fyonian word mingia, meaning voiceless. As well as ia, her name but also joy. Besides taking from the word, Minia is also very close to being the word for voiceless, too. Rakaishi feels a bit lacking in proper wordplay, with his own choice of name.

“You should have thought harder,” Minia teases, grinning. “Sorry, kids.”

“We’re older than you.”

“Really, didn’t you die sooner than I did?”

“Yes, but-”

“Then I’m older.”

“Rakaishi aged pretty rapidly near the end, though,” Lacera pats Rakaishi on the shoulder, emphasizing his point, though Rakaishi suddenly feels offended.

“You make it sound like I became an old man.”

“You didn’t?”

Azure lives to seventy, before he stops being able to conduct any research whatsoever. His age finally doing what was inevitable. It’s then that he admits to them what he never had, before.

“You wont be able to maintain forms, when I die.” Azure’s explanation goes uninterrupted. None of them having the words- thoughts- with which to interrupt. Their souls aren’t the only requirement, to keep a human form, but a bond- a living, human, bond- is also required. Azure is that, now, and in the future, they may choose the next for themselves, but until then things will change. They’ll take the form of orbs they were originally named for.

“Then what- where will we end up?” Minia asks, finally, after far too long a silence. The silence stretches further, speech already taking much out of Azure.

“I’ve arranged to send each of you to one of the kingdoms.” To separate them. Rakaishi wants to be angry, to accuse him of something, though he doesn’t know what. Yet, he can’t. Azure explains further, that in their orb forms, their magic- their power- can be used by whoever, without them being able to do anything about it. Thus, keeping them all together would be dangerous.

Still.

Still?

Rakaishi finds himself alone, days later, staring at his hands, as if he could see them. “Would you want to live, if you were no longer human?” Azure’s question suddenly, decades latter, has more weight.

Azure dies at seventy, four weeks after telling them what would happen, and leaving them to be separated, as tools instead of people.

Minia is sent to Memerchi, the inhabited planet only accessible by portal from Fyonia. Those who come to separate them take her, first, due to the portals only remaining open a short time. Rakaishi is taken, next, sent to Miceri’s Royal family. The country is a part of Fyonia, the planet, and neighboring Fyonia the kingdom, and the one they’d been living in, already. Lacera, apparently, is to be sent to the desert sitting under neither kingdoms rules.

As a tool, Rakaishi can see. Properly, more than a human with eyes could. As a tool, Rakaishi can watch as scientists study Azure’s accomplishments, with creating him, and hear what they might use the power for. This arrangement, his existence, wouldn’t have been possible with a soul born of magic.

Rakaishi doesn’t remember his exact age, but he knows it’s been nearly a century, since his soul was bonded to a tool, when they send him to Fyonia, the country. When they pass him off to the Royal family, a gift to celebrate the birth of a new heir. For said heir. They’ve replaced him, he thinks when he hears they’ve found Lacera. They would have more use for a tool they haven’t studied for so long already.

Did the same happen to Lacera, before? How was Minia’s situation, at all? He wouldn’t know, wouldn’t hear, couldn’t ask.

It’s comparable to a prison, the place he’s kept. Hidden from the person he was sent as a gift to. Is that for the best? Rakaishi doesn’t know what difference it would make, anyway. After all; at this point nobody remembers that there’s a person inside the magical tool they’ve gained access to.

A second child is born, but no gifts join him in the prison.

The queen of Fyonia dies. Rakaishi hears murmurs of this- rumors shared between magic experts- as they study him. Killed by her child- no more than five, so he hears- the child who he was meant to be a gift to. In their minds, he can hear fear, disgust, confusion.

Fourteen years after Rakaishi arrives in Fyonia he finally meets them. After being locked away and barely seen by a living person for that same time.

“Faroni-” It’s the kings voice. Rakaishi had heard it a few times over the past years, but he recognizes.

“You told people it was lost!” Footsteps. Then she’s there. The heir. The murder. The one whom he was meant to be a gift to. Red hair, pink eyes, decay. The magical sickness anglesion magic reacting to demecian, and vice versa, causes. Trailing over her collar bones, presumably from her chest. Twisting veins, dark lines, painful to look at. It must be permanent. And, there must be some magic keeping it from spreading and killing her.

“We can’t let just anyone know where it is! Azure’s tools are horribly powerful.”

“You mean you couldn’t let me know.”

“No. Faroni, listen-”

“It isn’t your decision. They sent it here as a gift to me, right?”

“Well- yes-”

“Then it’s my choice. Or will you stop me?” Kill her, she means.

“I wouldn’t.”

“Oh?” You want to, her thoughts say, loud enough Rakaishi doesn’t have to try to read them. She turns, fully facing him- the orb or angelsion magic she was gifted. “Then we at the very least tell those who gave it to us the truth. We could use this magic to…”

Erase decay. She reaches to her chest, grips the stone hanging from her neck. A decay stone, meant to absorb decay and slow its progress.

She reaches out, but doesn’t touch the orb. “It could amplify angelsion magic, yes? We could- maybe Hishimori’s legs…”

“You think I haven’t tried?”

“I think you didn’t try as much as you could have.” She glares at him. “Hiding it here, from me, you couldn’t without me knowing.”

She returns the next day, brother alongside her. Still red, his hair is darker, his eyes the red of her hair. Her other half- the other soul in her body- is visible, now. Fyonian children, with two souls, usually become one soul by ten. One dying off, leaving the other as the owner of name and body. But both are there, despite the fifteen years of age they must be.

So that’s where the decay spawned from. The demecian magic of the second soul, the angelsion magic of the first, unable to coexist in their singular body for so long.

“How is this even supposed to work?” The second soul asks, floating besides the first. Their appearances are so similar, yet the second’s hair is a deep black, and eyes green.

“I’m going to touch it.” The brother says, simply. Rakaishi wants to laugh, almost, at the blandness of his statement. “See if my magic is better.”

“And how will that help?”

“Blood magic is for healing, duh.” The brother- Hishimori, he thinks- stands on failing legs. They only move because of self-used magic. Blood being used to move them, instead of dissolving muscles. He reaches out, and the tips of his fingers reach Rakaishi.

Hishimori’s mother is dead, he doesn’t know how. He’s got a best friend who loves books. He feels more anger than he would tell anyone. He uses blood magic, his natural affinity. He’s angelsion. He doesn’t remember the other soul he once shared a body with. He thinks the power of the angelsion orb is terrifying.

Rakaishi can feel all of this at once. Hishimori flinches back, falling to the ground. Rakaishi can’t stop the use of his magic, but he can decide Hishimori is not the one he’ll eventually bind himself to.

“Hishimori!” The first soul- Faroni? She rushes to Hishimori’s side. “What happened?”

“It just surprised me. Lotta magic?”

“Lotta.” The second soul repeats. “So no go?”

“Not by myself.”

“We’ll try a healer, next.”

“Sure, sure. I’m going upstairs, okay?”

“Okay.”

He leaves, and the second soul stretches the distance she can get from her body to follow. Leaves Faroni there, with the orb. With Rakaishi.

“Do you think…this would undo decay?” From a distance, she reaches out. Too far to actually reach him. “Lizabella?” Insantity? It’s a Memerchian word. Fyonian dialect specific to the sister planet’s version of the language.

There’s a third soul. Rakaishi can hear her, now, though he can’t see her. Sitting inside the body, instead of taking presence in the physical plane, for now. He can hear her, though, clearly.

“Try it. At worst, you die.”

“You’d die too.”

“Oh? Are you worried about me? I thought you hated me, dearest?”

“You-” Faroni sighs, shaking her head. Silent, unsaid, there’s a twisting feeling of guilt and anger in her gut that Rakaishi can feel from a distance. “It wouldn’t hurt Mera, would it?”

“She plenty far away, now.”

“Right…”

Faroni prefers to be called Fara. Her magic affinity is fire. She didn’t kill her mother, herself, but she feels responsible. She worries her sister- the other soul, who’s left- is unhappy. She worries her brother is unhealthy. She worries the third soul- named Lizabella, despite the name being a word- is someone she could become. She doesn’t flinch when the overwhelming pressure of angelsion magic hits her, but fears it.

“There’s a person, here,” Rakaishi says, quiet. His voice can’t escape the orb he’s a part of. “I’m here.”

She does flinch, finally. Pulls back, gripping her own hand, face twisted in pain.

“Well?” Lizabella asks, voice teasing, amused. “Looks like it hurt, hm?”

“Shut up.”

“Oh, oh, so we’re not answering question now.”

“You could feel it.”

“True.”

Fara leaves in a rush. Rakaishi thinks, for a moment. If she returns, maybe she would be the one he forms a bond with.

Healers come and go, over the course of a week, but only them.

Rakaishi is surrounded in darkness, alone in the prison left to him by the staff. Is this the situation Minia is in? Lacera? Have they chosen someone, by now? Taken form again, and pretended to be alive, again?

Are they alive?

Rakaishi is startled by the approach of footsteps. Met by the form of Fara. She’s alone, now. He can’t feel the presence of either of the other souls she shares a body with. The only light in the room is sourced from him, but its enough to see the frown on her face.

“This is ridiculous.” Her muttering is to herself, as she approaches. “I could have sworn I felt-”

Silence. If she would reach forward, could he…

“Is there someone in there?” She asks, quiet, barely audible despite the silence. “How did Azure make you?”

Finally, she holds out both of her hands. At once, she grabs the orb, lifts it in her hands, and holds it to her chest. Afraid. Rakaishi is afraid. The magic there must be far too much to hold in such a way.

“I didn’t imagine, right?”

“I’m real.” Rakaishi doesn’t know if his voice can reach her, like this. “I’m here. Will you help me? Please help me. I-”

He’s sick of being stuck like he is. As an object.

“Okay.”

He feels like he’s being twisted apart. Stretched into form, into a body he hasn’t had in far too long. His vision fades, as he does, and he barely registers when he hits the ground, harshly. A gasp, as cloth- part of the altar-like structure he’d been kept on- falls over him.

“You really are a person.”

“I really am a person.” Rakaishi puts his face in his hands, able to feel for the first time in more than a century. “Thank you.”

Silence. He hears- feels- as Fara kneels beside him. Feels as she wraps something around him- her vest?

“We should- uh- probably take you upstairs.”

“Okay…”

Rakaishi learns many names, over the course of a month. Spends more time than that adjusting to seeing with magic, rather than sight, again. In the land of Fyonia, a magical tool regains human form, declaring himself Rakaishi, and declaring Fara his human bond.

“Why didn’t you do that sooner?” She asks, once.

“Because whoever I did it too would gain some access to my magic, even then.”

“But they already had access to it, when you were like that.”

“Yes but so did everyone else.”

“Hm.” She hums, acknowledging if not understanding. “And you’re okay with me having that? I’ve killed people, you know?”

“Lizabella did.”

A pause. “Oh.” And another. “Thank you.”

“For?”

“Nothing, never mind.” A sigh. “So, your name is actually Rakaishi.”

“Is that hard to believe?”

“Blinding light. A bit on the nose for the light-magic orb that become a blind child.”

“Hm. I chose it.”

“Oh?”

“Only two people know my original name.”

“I see.” Fara nods, Rakaishi thinks. “It’s a nice sounding name, at least.”

“Thank you.”

A year later, the second soul- Mera, or Meroni- abandons Fara. Leaving her with only Lizabella as internal company. She takes one of Fara’s friends- someone Rakaishi only knows by association- with her, tearing a group of what Rakaishi had enough time to realize was close friends, apart.

“Rakaishi, do you think… you made a mistake?”

“Why’s that?”

“Never mind.”

“You aren’t the reason they left, Fara.”

“If you say so, Rakaishi.”

Rakaishi reaches out, grabs the sleeve of her shirt. “Kai.”

“Warm?”

“Huh?”

“You said it.”

“No, my- my name. It was Kai.”

“Oh.” Fara pauses, then laughs. “It suits you.”

“Thanks.” Rakaishi laughs. “Warm?”

“Mhm. Did you not know what it meant?”

“It’s not a word.”

“Not anymore, maybe.”

“And yet you know it?”

“I don’t know if you knew, but one of my friends is a historian.”

“Ah, of course.” Rakaishi laughs. “Then do you know what your name means?”

“Flower.”

“In proper Fyonian? Sure. In Micerian?”

“I don’t know Miceri’s dialect very well.”

“Dearest person.”

“Oh.”

“Hm, in Fyonian proper that would be, Fairi Maebi, right?”

“Right. Should I change my name, too?”

“Probably not.” Fara laughs at that. “You know, when I was a child-”

“When you were?”

“Shush. When I was, for real, I was told I was probably going to die, soon.”

“How cruel.”

“Weren’t you told too?”

“Yeah.” Rakaishi feels her raise a hand, likely moving to touch the edges of decay. “We’re probably both supposed to be dead.”

“I’m glad you’re not.” Rakaishi is, he thinks genuinely. “I wouldn’t be human again.”

“Do you- are you glad you’re alive?”

“I-” Rakaishi pauses, shakes his head. “I can’t honestly say I know. However…”

“However?”

“I want to be, now. I want to…find Lacera and Minia. And I can only do that like this.”

“Can’t find your siblings as an orb, huh?”

“Right.”

“I’ll help you.”

“Thank you, Fairi.”

“Sure, Kai.”

In the land of Fyonia, a child by the name of Kai was born. The only child of parents not prepared to raise a magic-less child. Meant to die.