The Last Spell 44.2

At first, Cyrin couldn’t see through the gray haze of floating particles in the air revealed by the door opening. As Mireya started to cough, Clarity whisked out another spool of magic, twisting it into a small Force spell. The effect was a wind-like rush, stirring the dust in the room away from them and forcing it to settle on the floor. A floor covered in…

“Rocks?” Shane whispered.

He was right. Cyrin stared into the room, trying to process the sight before them. Around a small table in the center that appeared to be some sort of desk, three dozen rocks or so were scattered around the space. Some were massive, claiming a huge area for themselves and reaching up to Cyrin’s shoulder. Others were small enough to fit in their hand. But all of them were sparkling in a pattern of light they would have to be blind not to recognize.

That was the gleam of magic. Magic in what could only be its original form.

“Not just rocks,” Cyrin said quietly, and from the way his own words reached his ears, it sounded to him like someone else was speaking with his voice. “I think those are meteorites.”

The silence hung heavy over the six of them for several moments.

“Meteorites,” Shane repeated. Cyrin couldn’t help but freeze under the force of his gaze, piercing and demanding, as he turned back to them. “Like the ones that brought magic to the planet?”

“That’s just one theory of how it got here—” Clarity started.

“You can’t call everything that Aphirans weren’t the first to think of a theory, Clarity,” Mireya interrupted.

Clarity deflated a little. “Okay, it’s a sound explanation. But why would these be here?”

“I don’t know,” Cyrin said. He felt unable to move, trapped by the weight of what this meant—and what he didn’t yet know. “But… we should look for those instructions.”

“Search the desk,” Dawn suggested.

Despite the nods of agreement, it took several seconds for Kaja to be the first to enter. Cyrin was next, but only because everyone’s gaze had darted over to him for some reason, and he felt like he was going to snap if he didn’t escape from the weight of their collective observation. The dust muffled his already-light footsteps as he slipped through the doorway.

His senses were pulling at him in all directions as he moved closer to the meteorites, screaming at him that there was magic here, but failing to identify what any of it was. That isn’t normal, Cyrin thought. Minor Mages could detect the presence of nearby magic and what kind it was, but only if it had been cast into a type. He looked back to Clarity to see if she was having the same reaction, and sure enough, she was frowning in confusion as she stood in front of a rock the height of her knee. She started to reach for it, but seemed to change her mind, her palm floating an inch above its cratered surface.

“Did you say it was a scroll, Clarity?” Mireya asked.

Cyrin turned to see Mireya standing at the desk, looking down into a drawer she had pulled open. He looped around hurriedly to join her, seeing that the only thing inside was an aged parchment scroll— a scroll tied up with a white ribbon. The two of them exchanged a look, and he knew what they were both thinking: the ribbon around the First Spell had been the same color.

“Yeah, it’s supposed to be a scroll.” Clarity’s reply came a bit delayed.

As Mireya set the scroll on the desk with more caution than Cyrin had ever seen from her before, the Heirs gathered around them. He found himself holding his breath as Shane took out the First Spell, placing the two side by side. If he didn’t know any better, he wouldn’t have been able to tell the two scrolls apart.

“I’d say that’s promising,” Shane said quietly. “But we should probably be certain this is what we’re here for before we leave.”

Mireya nodded distractedly, already untying the ribbon around the scroll from the drawer. When it unraveled, the paper she rolled out was not a map under a mysterious layer of glowing water, but a text of faded writing. Cyrin squinted at it until they could make out the shape of the letters clearly, but that didn’t help them to read it. The words were somehow familiar and yet incomprehensible.

They were starting to worry they were losing their mind until Kaja asked, “What is that?”

“It— it looks like it’s in Ren,” Cyrin said, a little helplessly as they stared at it. They weren’t this bad at their second language, were they? “But I can’t—”

“It’s Old Ren.” Mireya’s tone was hushed, but something about it cut them off immediately. Startled, Cyrin glanced up to see that that her expression held a sort of muted shock. With a bit of a chill, they realized that it could have been ages since she’d seen anything like this. “You can’t read it because the language has changed so much since this would’ve been written.”

Openly awed, Shane gawked at the writing. “You’d need a doctorate to translate that these days.”

“…Sparrow didn’t have anyone involved in the plan who could do that,” Clarity said, walking up. “For once, I think he didn’t account for something. He probably didn’t even consider it could be in modern-day Ren.”

And why would he, Cyrin thought bitterly. Sparrow was just another Aphiran trying to claim the world as his own.

Shane looked up at Mireya, his expression almost feverishly intense. “Could you translate it?”

“I…” Mireya trailed off, biting her lip. “This is older than what I grew up speaking, but I can glean the gist of it. I might not know some vocabulary or be able to provide word for word instructions.”

“That’s about as good as ancient language scholars can do anyway,” Shane said.

“Then I’ll be expecting my honorary diploma in the mail soon.” Mireya raised her eyebrows, and the group fell silent as she looked at the scroll so fiercely, Cyrin thought the fragile parchment might combust. “It, uh… opens with a word of advice. Be careful with this object, consider your motives, I think it’s saying something about the dangers of power…”

Mireya squinted at the scroll. More expectant silence followed.

“…Wait, I know that phrase. It means don’t be a little bitch.”

Kaja snorted. “Noted.”

“Let’s not prepare to do anything with it right here and now,” Dawn said, with an anxious glance back at the door. “For both moral and practical reasons. The sooner we leave, the better.”

“Well, that’s good, because it’s getting real confusing now,” Mireya said, tapping a section of the text further down. “It says the person using the First Spell needs to be a— well, that word used to mean scholar, but now it’s closer to a scientist, and I have no idea if it meant either of those back then. It was also slang for ‘nerd’ back in the eleven hundreds.”

“Suddenly I don’t feel so bad for not understanding a thing,” Cyrin murmured.

“Does it say what they should do?” Shane asked, with a sharp look to Cyrin like he was annoyed they’d even spoken. Cyrin turned away. They didn’t wilt— they didn’t dare to—but their heart clenched anyway.

“Uh.” Mireya slow-blinked. “They should… this literally says they should wait for the travelers to come back.”

She received five blank stares in response. The urgent tension in the room stretched a little further.

“That is the word they used. Travelers,” Mireya said defensively. “I’m actually pretty sure of that one.”

Dawn shook her head. “I hate riddles.”

“It’s probably not meant to be one. I bet made it perfect sense at the time.” Mireya sighed, fuming for a moment before leaning over the scroll more alertly. “Hold on. Okay, after the travelers are back— whatever those are— the scholar is supposed to add… add more fallen space to the First Spell.” She paused, then started to roll up the scroll. “You know what, this is taking too long to make sense of. Let’s work on this later.”

When Kaja opened her mouth, Cyrin expected some snarky comment about how this had been a waste of time. He was not prepared for her to point at the First Spell and shout, “There’s rocks in there!”

“Rocks?” Dawn repeated. “Like—”

“Like these rocks, yes!” Kaja swung her arm out at the room. “Leilan pulled a small one out of the water layer that forms over its surface, when we were examining it in the Permafrost’s Fall. We had no idea what it was doing in there, but fallen space— that has to mean a meteorite. That might be what activates it.”

A silence of realization fell over the group again. Cyrin had to admit that she was probably right— and if she wasn’t, that there was no time to debate it. They needed to leave.

“Someone grab one of those before we go, quick,” Shane said.

Clarity hurried to the other end of the room, snatching the smallest meteorite there was, which was just small enough to fit in her hand. The minute she had it though, she froze— and so did everyone else. Cyrin could read the suspicion on their faces as they watched her, and he knew what they were thinking, because he was thinking it too: Can we trust her with this?

Clearing their throat to draw attention, Cyrin held up their hands. A look of relief passed over Clarity’s face as she nodded, preparing to toss it to them underhand.

They barely had time to think about whether any of their group besides Mireya still trusted them as the meteorite sailed through the air, getting brighter as it got closer to them. Cyrin didn’t understand what kind of optical effect that was, but by the time they decided that it was not normal, it was too late to keep from catching it.

The shock traveled up their arms like they’d grabbed lightning out of the air, and Cyrin’s entire world went white.