"Alright, I'll do it." - The Debate of the Season
9 Cylus 720
The sea was captivating to the Defier, even if it was not his most trusted ally. Balthazar's eyes drifted to the waves crashing on the shore and from the waves to the sea, but when Isabella noticed Balthazar's wandering attention she snapped her fingers to get it all back. "Balthazar, focus! Please." Isabella said in a stern but concerned voice. "Give us some cover. I don't want this to go wrong." While she was confident she had enough experience with the magic to perform the feat they were going to attempt, she remembered what her own experience had been like. That was why she understood Balthazar's refusal to initiate her into Defiance. Besides, he wasn't wrong about the missing children in Almund. It hurt Isabella's heart to think of the families who would never see their children again and hearing that Balthazar had been closer than she ever had to finding the killer made her think that with an Attunement spark he might indeed get the edge he needed.
Balthazar nodded "I'm sorry. I'll focus." He remembered the first time she'd initiated him into a magic. The Rupture spark had been a wild thing that took them to many places but Isabella assured him that this initiation would be very different. Yet Balthazar was confident he would survive it. He was certain that this was the way to find the killer. He'd convinced Isabella of that at least.
"Alright, watch your head. The ground here is malleable but it doesn’t enjoy the strain." Balthazar placed his hands on the ground and willed the earth to rise around them, encasing the two in their own private room. The earth resisted and Balthazar inclined his head towards the ground when his desired creation did not manifest. Then Balthazar stood and assumed a stance with his legs shoulder distance apart. He stomped both feet, pushing ether through his body into the ground before driving his hands up into the air. This time the earth gave way lifting four six foot walls around them to box the duo in. The walls have them a measure of silence and remoteness that sitting in the beach had not. Alas the construction effort was crude and filled the room with dust and sand which Isabella and Balthazar both coughed through and shook off uncomfortably.
Balthazar sat back down with his legs crossed in front of him, having done what his naïve mind thought would be the hardest of the work.
"You idiot." Isabella mumbled to herself before adjusting back into her seated position. When Balthazar had finished dusting himself off he similarly sat up straighter, "No, no. You need to relax or it won't work. Lay down, find a steady breathing pattern, and focus on my voice." Isabella instructed and Balthazar obeyed. He laid flat at first but then crossed his legs when he realized he'd be more comfortable that way. The earth around him, even the sand, always seemed softer thanks to his Defiance spark and so it was not hard to get comfortable where they were.
"Attunement is a delicate magic, but the spark is volatile. I'm going to attempt to hum my spark into your soul and you must not fight it. Listen, embrace the tone, hear the frequency within it. Allow yourself to experience the song as if it it the first time you’ve truly heard, because it is." Isabella instructed as she placed her hands on the side of Balthazar's head to hold him still.
They sat in silence for a few trills. Enough trills for Isabella to be certain no one would disturb them. She didn’t want to chance a drunk coming from the sea of lights and being permanently deafened by the effort. Then she began to hum. It was a gentle hum what rose and fell in volume to create a beautiful sound. Balthazar listened and the humming slowly began to grow louder. At first Isabella was using only her voice but as the humming grew in complexity, her spark opened itself to Balthazar. A chill spread through the two of them which began in Isabella’s soul and spread down through her hands into Balthazar’s head. Then it spread from his mind throughout his body.
But the humming went on, even after Isabella had stopped consciously doing it the noise remained. Isabella could feel her spark joining with Balthazar’s and she could feel the other magics within him fighting the Attunement spark, the gentle spark.
It would make the pain to come worse for Balthazar.
"Ah ah oh oh, ah ah oh oh." Isabella's voice rose from a hum into a short collection of notes and the deed was done, the initiation moved forward from its beginning to the moment in which they could not turn back. Isabella had created a divine song to fill Balthazar with and she began to do just that.
Balthazar’s body began to convulse violently and Isabella held his head gently to protect his neck. Remarkably his arms and legs did not flail and he was not making a grand effort to swing his head, but his whole body had begun shaking. Isabella’s eyes widened and her hands almost pulled off of him but she did not because she knew that stopping the song now would only bring agony. So she sang the tune again "Ah ah oh oh, ah ah oh oh."
But Balthazar kept shaking. Isabella could feel that the spark had been imparted upon the man she once loved but now it was left to him to accept it. Isabella had done all an initiator could do to help the initiate.
It was left to the strength of Balthazar’s soul to receive the spark or be permanently scarred by failure.
While his body violently convulsed in the real world, filled with Isabella’s divine song, Balthazar’s experience was entirely different. He still felt as if he was laying still in the floor with Isabella holding his head. He could still hear her melody echoing in his ears, filling his mind and body with every individual note and chord. He heard the fluctuations in her tone but it had become more than simply hearing, he understood the changes.
His body resisted the melody at first but as he came to understand the divine melody flowing through him everything seemed to become easier. He felt more at ease as he became one with the song and then suddenly a pain unlike anything he’d ever felt ripped through his body.
Balthazar’s eyes snapped wide open, and they were bloodshot which frightened Isabella but did not stop her. Balthazar had been buried alive, stabbed, cut, burned, nearly drowned, beat, and poisoned more times than he could count and yet the pain that filled his body now surpassed all of those pains that had come before it.
He felt as if every nerve in his body had been lit aflame with a crackling, somewhat tingly, fire. It was agony and bliss at the same time because the divine song still rang in Balthazar’s ears. He let out a pained gasp, his body in such agony he could not force volume from his throat, only air.
He shook and he shook until suddenly the mage stopped moving at all and just laid there, his chest slowly rising and falling with his breaths.
It felt, to Balthazar, as if he’d been on fire for hours but in truth it had passed in a few trills. Isabella removed her hands from the side of Balthazar’s head and he sat up slowly, feeling like his body might fall apart if pushed too hard.
But it wouldn’t. Just as the melody was gone now and forever, so too was the pain that it had brought. All that was left was an understanding and a new Attuner.
Balthazar looked at his hands and then the sand around him. Everything felt different but also the same. Distance was not any different but there was more to be seen now... seen and heard. Neither of the two knew what to do or say next, but one thing was assured between them. The killer of children in Almund’s days were numbered.
