The Arcan Acolyte

Time moved like whispers on a breeze, becoming fainter and fainter until it was all but unnoticeable for Miu. Days became weeks. Weeks became months. Stillness became her reality.

It was impossible to know how long she had been amongst the crystals and silent corridors. All she knew was that her hair was longer than it used to be, and it was clumping into tangled knots from neglect. But still she was still.

In the radiant caverns of the crystalline Arcan fortress, she sat and lay and crouched as she forced her body to refrain from moving. The voices were out of her head for most days because no one spoke anymore. At least not to her. Silence engulfed her, leaving her thoughts to her own machinations and flutterings.

In those moments that may have been years, Miu wrestled with all of her spirit to rein in her chaotic psyche. But she was not an eternal crystal like her hosts. She was a human. A broken, traumatized, lost, enraged human. Though they had seemingly hoped that the steady flow of time would smooth over the jagged edges of her soul like a river did to stone, all that happened was Miu became more and more coiled.

Every aspect of her wanted to move. It wanted to fight. It wanted vengeance and to inflict suffering. Try as she might, she couldn’t shake her hatred for everything. And the ghost of dread had returned, binding plagues of fearful loneliness to her heart every night. Those hauntings festered and spread, pulling down any fortitude she dared to build.

She was supposed to be finding stillness, but at best she was rotting.

Miu was forced to accept that this might be all she became. A rotted, festering, wretched remnant of soul, wrapped in splendor and light, craving only release and revenge.

Acknowledging that meant sitting with full awareness of every muscle, nerve, and mental scar, even as they ached and burned as though she was covered in ants.

All of her being cried for more, yet she remained still. That was her journey.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

But it was.

This was her path. This was her plight.

Eventually, the quiet lessons began. For ages, I’ah and the others merely led to sit with them as they communed with all manner of alien rock formations that lined the walls and floors of the gemstone-laden lair.

Their voices in her head became softer until they seemed to stay within the edges of her skull, merely gliding along the distant realms of clarity, barely legible and unrefined, but still there.

Miu forgot what it was like to eat. Taste and scent became distant memories. Sound devolved into an echo that devolved into a pulse. Closed, strained, pensive eyes lost focus.

Self was becoming unmade.

But beneath that self, the chaos remained. No matter what was stripped from Miu, the torment of her rage remained ever-present. So she sat with it. The terror became the truest form of what remained of the girl who was left behind.

Every night, the ghost returned. She slept on the prismatic floor and could feel it dripping from the shadows when she was supposed to be sleeping. Rest evaded her and left her on edge, frayed and waiting for the spectre of loneliness to return and penetrate the most vulnerable parts of her mind.

Beyond becoming unmade, Miu was coming undone.

It was unclear if this was intentional or a byproduct of being hosted by a race of eternal beings that did not feel such things as human emotion. Regardless, in those haunting, ever-flickering stone halls, Miu the Girl died bit by bit.

Lessons were eventually taught on the nature of the ancient language.

By then, Miu had not audibly spoken in months. Her own thoughts were perceived by them, just as theirs were projected into her mind. In that absence of spoken language, her mouth and mind were finally ready to learn the magic that they referred to as the ancient language.

There were no notes or sacred tomes of incantations. It did not matter what words were spoken, as long as they were a reflection of the essence and intention of the caster.

Regular spells for mundane things like elemental creation and movement were done by harnessing the Aether that lived within all shards. The spells could create semblances of new reality from nothingness, which is how the manu-crystals were able to create never-ending supplies of water for ArcanMizu and such.

Once a spell was cast, it could remain active for eternity, as long as the caster existed and had clarity of mind.

Truly, the barrier glyphs that were continuing to absorb human artillery were years old by that point. Every second of every hour, they glowed and hovered, devouring the rounds of death that were hurled at them without ceasing.

The glyphs were the purest form of ancient language. They were the alphabet and iconography of the souls of those who cast them. Everyone was different. The shape and symbol would remain consistent across spells, but would appear unique depending on who it originated from. This was one of the forms of ancient language that the humans and the manu-crystals could not replicate. It was too complex. Too pure. Too true to be mass-produced.

Glyphs created hexes- varied lesser spells that carried specific functions. Those could be manufactured, and I’ah sensed that the humans were already attempting it.

For Miu, the glyphs evaded her. After enough time had passed, she was allowed to attempt magic once more. Within seconds, she was able to summon fire and basic barriers. Within days, she was able to quadruple their power. Within weeks, she was able to levitate.

But the glyphs never appeared.

Still, it was enough. By all accounts, she was the only human in the world able to cast true magic.

Through it all, peace evaded her, and stillness continued to eat away at her.

She would spend her lonely nights out on the ledge of the fortress, watching the glyphs’ dancing wonder and listening to the muted concussions of incessant warfare that never struck them. Occasionally, she would take to practicing her spells and incantations out in the open air of the ledge, allowing the tempered air to graze her partially exposed skin as she tried to block out the raging wrath that gnawed at her just below the surface.

Far down below, back in the human realm, on the other side of the barrier, whispers began to drift through the battalions and command centers. Fleeting images caught glimpses of fiery pink swirling in the wind. Non-Arcan limbs rose and twirled just on the edge of what the cameras and targeting lenses could observe. Proportions were small for an Arcan, but almost normal for something familiar. Something human.

Confused, concerned, cautious voices spoke to one another of what they thought they saw.

High above them, living among the invaders and sharing their magical abilities, was a human. A pink-haired young woman was seemingly learning from them.

She was, by all indications, the Arcans’ acolyte…