Nym's Arc

Chapter 8 of 41

The fire cracked between them. Nym set down her cup and waited. Magnus stared into the flames a long time. The black cat curled near his boots. At last he spoke, and his voice was low. "You need to understand," Magnus said. "A great evil began to dwell in Enchantia. It was pure hatred, cold and hungry. It devoured everything it touched. Fields died. Rivers froze. People vanished into the dark." Nym leaned forward. "And my mother?" Magnus turned his purple eyes on her. "We could not fight the evil with the magic we had. The Rune Keepers gathered. We needed something powerful. A child born from a Rune Keeper might carry enough light, but a baby takes years to grow. We had no years." "So what did you do?" Nym asked. "We cast a spell of light," he said. "We did not wait for a birth. We made her. Full grown. A woman shaped from light itself, meant to hold more power than any of us." He rubbed his palm slowly. "We poured everything into that spell. She rose from the circle already breathing." Nym's hands went cold. "You made her. Like a weapon." "Like a hope," Magnus said. "But she was more than the spell. She had a will. She had a heart." He paused. His jaw tightened. "Her name was Drasila." The name landed hard. Nym said it once under her breath. Drasila. It meant nothing to her, and yet it filled her chest. She had a mother now. A real name. Not a face on a river, but a woman made of light to save a dying land. "Drasila," Nym repeated. "That was her." "A witch of great strength," Magnus said. "Rune marks on her hands, like yours. We made her from light and runes, she was made not born." He looked at Nym's glowing palm. "You carry her marks in your skin. You carry her blood, though you were never part of our plan." Magnus went still. The fire snapped. "Drasila was made to have no family. No child. We created her only to the fight. If she carried you in secret, then she broke from us. She defied the very Keepers who made her." Magnus spoke bluntly He stood and crossed to the window. "And if she hid you, Nym, it was to keep you from us. She feared what we would do with a child born of her light." Nym rose too. She had come for a name and won it. But the name pulled a door open onto something darker. Her mother had a maker. Her mother had run. And those makers still lived. "Where is she now?" Nym asked. Magnus did not turn from the window. "That," he said, "is where the story makes no sense to me with you apart of it now."