The Red Glaive

Aeria flinched as the blade slipped and cut her finger yet again. She glanced at her sisters. Aget was meticulously carving her totem by hand. She was carving the badger using one of the temple statues for reference. Adelaide had used her magic to conjure her blade to do the carving for her. Her wolf was nearly complete. Aeria wasn’t talented enough in either of those skills to be able to do either successfully. Now she was bleeding.

Her totem was going to be a horse. In the brief sermon the Colossus Priest had given, he had said that the Colossus had created the horse for man. For wherever man had left his footprint, in the long road to civilization, the hoof print of a horse would be found beside it. It was a good totem, but now Aeria had lopped of the three of her totem’s legs and there was blood all over it. It looked more like a strange rabid bear. What did bears represent in the cosmogony?

Aria jumped when the priest took her hand in his. “This,” he said said squeezing her hand forcing more blood out of the nick and letting it fall on the ground below. “This is your life blood the Colossus accepts the hard work you’re done and appreciates the pain you have endured. You’ve made. . .”

He stopped when he glanced at the thing in Aeria’s bloody hands. “It’s, uh,” Aeria said turning her totem in her hand before the last too thin leg broke off. “it’s a snake.”

“That’s one fat snake.” Aget said with a laugh.

“That’s because it ate your stupid badger!” Aeria shot back tapping her totem aggressively against Aget’s. Aget only laughed.

“Finished!” Adelaide said presenting her perfect wooden wolf, complete with eyes and layered fur.

“Wonderful, come with me.” the priest said leading them away from the makeshift temple.

Aeria felt it as soon as she stepped outside. The magic raging like a stormy sea in the earth below. She could nearly feel the vibrations traveling up her legs making her knees buckle. A quick glance at her sisters and their befuddled expressions told her that they too felt it too.

“Come, come,” the kindly priest said urging them out into the enclosed space behind the makeshift temple.

Aeria took a step but the once solid ground felt like trying to step on water. She fell to her knees clutching the small disfigured totem close to her chest. Adelaide and Aget proceeded much more carefully, the bottoms of their dresses getting stained in mud.
Hands and knees already dirty, Aeria stayed on the ground feeling the surge of power rumbling around her. It was similar to when she focused on her blessing from the Colossus only a thousand times stronger. Unparalleled power just there beneath her feet.

The priest was talking again but only Adelaide and Aget were listening. A dull hum rang in Aeria’s ears. That strength, it was within Aeria too. It was the Colossus himself, existing in the earth and all living things that grew and nourished from it.

Give. . . . that hum formed the word faintly. And you shall receive. . .

Aeria glanced at the bloodied chunk of wood in her hand. Then lowered it into the muddy ground. Just when she hit the bottom, the earth itself gave way and Aeria’s hand sunk deeper into the ground burying the totem completely. The earth shifted under the mud taking Aeria’s totem from her hand.

Aeria gasped feeling a surge of magic charge up her arm, flooding her senses completely. Aeria glanced up expecting to see her sisters but saw only. . . Aget?

No, it couldn’t be Aget. This woman was older with much darker hair. Black. . . like Aeria’s. .

“Mom?” Aeria could only think it. She couldn’t speak.

“How do you keep finding puddles to crawl into!” she said rushing over and picking Aeria up. “It hasn’t rained for weeks!”

Aeria started crying. Or, rather, the toddler version of herself from which she could only see through. Her mother’s features softened. “I’m sorry baby, I didn’t mean to scream. Shhh,” she cooed softly but Aeria just kept crying. “A kite above a graveyard grey, at the end of the day, far, far away. A child holding to the magic of birth and awe.”

Aeria stopped crying. It was her song. The song she sang to comfort the dying. Her mother now sang to her to stop her weeping. Her mother smiled. Aeria reached up, little dirt covered hands, to touch her face but her face turned to clay.

“Aeria?”

She looked up. Aget stood there in the tiny courtyard of the ramshackle temple, the spitting image of their mother and Aeria wept.



“I apologize for not writing sooner, I’ve been rather busy and haven’t found time lately to find a good clerk. I made it all the way to Lux Aeterna though, and there are plenty of those here.” Videl paused smiling at the pretty clerk who was transcribing his words. Ibis rolled her eyes and continued writing.

The mail office was covered in documents, translations, copies, and transcriptions. Behind her a wall of cubbies held all matter of mail.

Videl knew how to read and write, but only just barely. Things went much smoother with a clerk. Videl continued, “Good news though! I met up with Adelaide here in the capital and she’s been helping me quite a bit here. She even bought me some armor even though I told her not to. I think you would like it, not just because I look amazing in it but because it helps keep me safe which I think is why you worry so much about me. She gave me a good horse too, one that she was going to have slaughtered. Fantastic horse, I’ve named her Oak. I have more news too,” Videl paused and thought that perhaps it wasn’t the best idea to tell her about Aeria. “Adelaide helped me join the melee on Warrior’s Day, that should get me recognition with some good Knightly Orders, at least I hope it does. I, uh, sending you something for mother and children’s day, the clerk tells me it’ll arrive later than this letter so please expect it soon.”

Videl stopped and watched for a few moments before Ibis caught up. Once she did she paused then looked up at Videl. “That’s it?” she said expectantly her eyes hidden behind spectacles. She was really pretty, with freckles splashed gently across her cheeks. “No, my sincerest regards, or I love you mommy?”

“You’re the clerk! Embellish it!” Videl said, “Just don’t use the second one.”

She sighed, “all day I’ve been getting men like you. All day, suddenly remembering about their mothers the day of. You know, your mother dearest is supposed to receive her gift and, or letter on this day not have it sent out day of.”

She wrote as she spoke and she wrote quickly. She was done in a matter of moments. Sealing up the letter in envelope, she wasted no time climbing up the ladder up the cubby wall. “Ney you said, correct?” She said reading an overstuffed cubby. “I assume you’ve been traveling a lot.” she said pulling out all the mail in the cubby. “This is all for you, they couldn’t quite pinpoint you till you settled down here for now. This paper here is a pick up slip for a package you can pick up in the office next door.”

A thick package of letters was set on the desk before him. He picked up the first from his mother. The one beneath from Shep, then from father, and Arvon, Rurthren, Jarv, even Walther, from all his brothers. More than a dozen letters his family back home.

He was the youngest sibling, on Mother and Children’s day they had all thought of him.



Caius had only ever been inside a temple once in Flumina. The Great Pyramid of the Leviathan in the capital city of Aguois was a massive stone structure that jutted out of the Glass Lake. The capital had been built around it, and thanks to ancient, ancient magic the whole structure moved taking with it the city that surrounded it. The whole city drifted on the surface of the crystalline waters of Glass Lake of Flumina. As such the only way to truly reach the city was by boat.

It was a boat that Caius had stolen and unceremoniously sunk. A boat belonging to the head priest of the temple. The priest had wanted 12 year old Caius to serve time, but Reimar had threatened him down to penance instead. So Caius spent the better part of a month scrubbing floors, doing laundry, and running all sort of errands in the massive temple.

The Beast ‘temple’ erected in Lux Aeterna was nothing like the Great Pyramid. It was so small he struggled to find it in the first place. Situated just in the outskirts of the Legion encampment a tepee was formed out of painted hides and wood. White smoke billowed out of the top and into the sky.

Pushing aside the cotton door flaps, Caius stepped inside into a sweltering space. A old man sat before a fire, staring into the flames. His hair was long, threaded with ivory beads and tied in two long braids down the front.

Without saying a word he motioned at the floor on the other side of the fire. Caius sat down, unsure of what to say.

“You are looking for someone.” the priest said.

“No, I came to honor my mother.” Caius said. “She. . .She’s dead.”

The priest looked up from the fire. “Her name?” he said reaching into the cluttered table pushed to the far side of the tepee.

“I, I don’t know it.” Caius said ashamed. She was a whore, so insignificant Reimar hadn’t bothered to remember her name. Caius, the product ill begotten union, a mistake.

“So you are looking for someone.” the priest said reaching over the flames towards Caius. The flames danced just beneath the priest’s hands, but he made no sign that he was in any kind of pain. Caius cautiously reached out and placed his hands over the that of the priest.

Caius felt the flames, felt them licking at his fingers, but he felt no pain and his skin didn’t burn. Even when he used the Beast’s gift he ran the risk of accidentally incinerating himself, but not here with these flames.

It was over before Caius could register had happened. A sharp prick and a drop of blood on the tip of his finger. The priest had cut him with his ring.

“Blood calls to blood.” he said holding onto Caius’ hand tightly when he tried to pull it away. “Son calls to mother.” The priest squeezed Caius’ finger forcing the blood out.

The drop fell and the fire extinguished to embers. Shadows fell harshly on every wrinkle and fold on his face in the ember light. “The Colossus may be the Keeper of Memory, but the Beast is the Herald of the Dead.”

From the smoke of the dying embers a figure formed in the smoke. A face, features indistinguishable but definitely feminine. “Who is she?” the priest asked.

“My mother. . .” Caius said the words slipping out of his mouth without a second of hesitation. Low flames grew from the embers again filling the tepee with warm light. The smoke figure remained and her body formed in the smoke into a tiny person. She was carrying something in her arms, held close to her chest. Caius could almost hear her cooing softly.

“Thats, that’s me!” he said watching his mother carrying him.

Then a second figure formed. Broad shouldered and masculine. Father.

Caius stared dumfounded watching as the shapes moved. Father embracing the mother, holding her tenderly and the child held between them both protected and loved. Reimar had lied. This woman had meant more to him that he had let on and certainly spent more time with her than a single night. Watching that smoke family, his family, made the name irrelevant to Caius. There was a time, if only briefly, that he had been loved. There was a voice in that smoke that whispered a name like the final hiss of a dying fire.

“Theia. . . .” Then the figures faded.

“Write her name.” The priest said holding out a strip of paper.

“I. . .” Caius was uncertain. He knew her name, but putting her name into something physical wasn’t so easy for him.

“I can if-“

“No,” Caius said snatching the paper when the priest began to pull it away. “I’ll do it.” Then Caius slowly, and painstakingly wrote his mother’s name on the strip of paper sounding it out in his head repeatedly. Then he returned the paper with his mother’s name back into the priest’s beckoning hand.

“All things that come into existence return to Oblivion.” The priest dropped the paper into flames incinerating it, casting fresh smoke in the claustrophobic space. It spun around them before drifting upwards towards the opening and into the sky. “The Beast accepts your burning, your mother will be honored in the beyond as you have honored her today.”

The smoke was all but gone but Caius’ eyes stung with tears.