VII. Adax

Adax hadn’t been asked again to train. He knew that training was crucial for a Concipio to develop their abilities. At dinnertime, others would exchange stories about pairings that made Vectors develop the strength of ten men, or catch on fire. He listened, making sure to exclaim in excitement at all the right parts. She caught on fire? And you were unharmed? Adax knew he could talk to the Scions, but something prevented him. He tried to find the Vector, Malan, but was unable to do so. He stood at the door of the Scions’ hall, on the top floor of the Pillar, where he had been summoned. He pushed the door and walked in, as he was instructed to do. Long tables run along the walls, heavily laden with potted unfamiliar plants and sprigs of herbs floating in water jugs. Scion Mavi was sitting on a worn armchair at the eastern corner of the room, small tufts of filling springing outwards. She beckoned him over with a tilt of her head. “Concipio Adax. It is time for the next stage of your training,” said Scion Mavi, and Adax slumped his shoulders, feeling the tension roll off his spine. He would train! Finally, he sighed in relief, his mind only faintly registering he was the only Concipio there. Scion Mavi slid a hand into her tunic’s side pocket, pulling out a vial containing a purple viscous liquid. She unscrewed the vial and downed the contents of it, head remaining tilted and eyes closed as she drained the last dregs of it. She shivered visibly, and when she opened her eyes, Adax took a step back. Bottomless black. “This,” she said, waving in the air the empty vial, “is called Arteficia and is extremely valuable. It is what you saw on the tables there.“ she pointed to the plants by which he had walked past. “This helped turn the tide during the Pyrian War. Not in its raw form. Fawn knows how many died until that lesson was learnt. We use its oil.” The Scion walked to a door that Adax hadn’t noticed. She opened it and Adax’s blood froze in his veins. A young servant, neither a Vector nor a Concipio —an Infelix, unlucky — was lying on the floor, hands and feet bound. She seemed to be sleeping, eyes closed, chest rising and falling gently. The Scion walked closer to her. “Something you should know, is that all of us, are in possession of a kernel of power. We cannot yield it. We cannot even see it. Arteficia can.” she said. Adax eyed the girl in worry. Why was she there? “Impossible. Only Vectors possess power. Not even we, Concipios, possess power of our own.”, he countered. “If by power, you mean what runs in each closed conduit, correct. I, however, am referring to what fuels a human’s essence, their very being. It might seem insignificant, but it has its uses.” The Scion extended her arms. Adax watched in shock as a single ribbon of shimmering light, barely thicker than a single hair, got pulled off the young woman’s chest. The ribbon swam in the air, swirling around the Scion. It was beautiful. And wrong. Wrong, wrong, his gut chanted, as the ribbon got sucked into Mavi, the wrongness growing more powerful with every terrified beat of Adax’s heart. Power crackled at Mavi’s fingertips. His gut resumed the chanting. Wrong. No Concipio should ever possess any power, let alone the likes of power that now curled off the Scion in dark wisps, a cloud of smoke engulfing her. The girl was frozen in place, unmoving and silent as the light flowed out of her. The next thing that Adax knew was him kneeling next to the girl, her thin body slowly wasting away to dust. Dead. She was dead, and within the span of a few seconds, she had disappeared as if she never existed.