Chapter Three: Elda…

The Soul Forge was battered when Elda was finally able to lay eyes on him. His skin was pale, marred with cuts and bruises, and his wings hung limply behind him. He stared at her like he thought she was a mirage, and she got the distinct sense that if he wasn’t hurt he’d be leaping over his bed to hold her.

“El,” he murmured, the pink berries in his hand forgotten.

“I must have only been out for a few hours if you still look like that,” she sighed, relieved that she hadn’t missed anything. Sypher swallowed, his brow furrowing. “Oh. Was it longer?”

“You’ve been unconscious just over a week. I woke up not long ago,” he said carefully. She felt her eyes widen.

“But you look like you were fighting just this morning. Why haven’t you healed?”

“I can’t,” he replied. Elda’s heart lurched. “My healing has stopped and my magic is gone.”

“Why?” she gasped.

“I don’t know. It’s likely to be a side-effect of passing into the Between.” When Elda frowned, he sighed. “I followed you through the barrier, maite. Cynthia said I could save you if I let her live, and she swore an oath to show it was the truth.”

“I went through it with the intention of sacrificing myself, Sypher,” she said softly. “Hephaestus needed my help and he asked me to gift him my light before Cynthia’s poison killed me.”

“The reason means nothing to me,” he murmured, and Elda felt the shift as both sides of him spoke to her in unison. “I love you, El. I’d follow you to Oblivion if it meant I could stay with you.”

“You almost did,” she answered shakily. “We really did die when we walked through. I can’t even begin to explain what happened to me once I died.” A memory fluttered through her foggy brain. “You found me in the prison Hephaestus was trapped in, didn’t you? I felt you touch my hand.”

“I found a light, and then I was in the cavern with you again.”

“The light was me,” she remembered, eyes rounding at the memory. “I could feel the others battering the monolith from the outside but it wasn’t enough. I felt my light trying to strip it apart from the inside. But when you touched my hand it was like an explosion went off inside me. My power recognised you and obeyed me. I don’t think I could have gifted it so freely without all of you there, reminding me why I wanted to return to Valerus alive instead of moving on to the Spirit Realm.”

“Only Spirits go there,” he frowned. “You would have gone to the After.”

“No, I wouldn’t.” She waited for him to understand, and when he did, the berries he held dropped onto the blanket. “Are you serious?” She nodded. He blinked. “…You’re a Spirit?”

“I was supposed to be. Hephaestus was trapped before he could send me out into the world. He spent his captivity conserving his power until he had enough to send me to Valerus as an elf.” Sypher stared at her, his jaw hanging at the hinge.

“This is fucking nuts,” he muttered, and she recognised Vel’s caustic tone in it. “Absolutely fucking insane. Do you understand what this means?”

“It means everything we know could be wrong,” she nodded. “And for some reason, nobody seems to remember Hephaestus.”

“One thing at a time,” he mumbled, rubbing his hand over his eyes. “We need to heal enough to travel. Then we need to get to Eden and smash the monolith before Malakai gets to it.”

“Are we going back to the Dragon Isles to smash that one too?” she asked, sensing the importance of compartmentalising everything for him. The Soul Forge was overwhelmed - she could see it in the slump of his shoulders and the permanent downturn at the corners of his mouth.

“We’ll have to. Hopefully Jovai will be more amicable about it this time. If he isn’t, we’ll have a problem on our hands.”

“I have a feeling he’ll know we’re telling the truth when he sees me again,” Elda decided. She swung her legs out of bed and gingerly pressed her feet against the cool wood floor. She expected aches, bruises, any sort of pain, but nothing came. In fact she felt wonderful.

“You look beautiful,” the Soul Forge sighed, collecting the berries from the blanket and setting them down on a small table beside his bed. “Seeing you alive when I thought you were gone is a blessing.”

Elda smiled and climbed onto the bed with him, slotting herself between his legs on top of the blanket and carefully leaning back against his chest. Tears of relief welled in her eyes when it finally started to sink in that the pair of them had survived the impossible.

“Dear one.” The voice was soft and lyrical, young and ancient at the same time. The Soul Forge sat bolt upright, then hissed in pain and his forehead touched Elda’s shoulder.

“…Cerilla?” the elf asked hesitantly, struggling to recall the name of the small Spirit for a second.

“I thought you were dead,” Cerilla sobbed, fluttering across the room on her butterfly wings to kneel beside the bed, tears flowing freely down her cheeks. “I can’t feel you. My connection to you is gone, Sypher.”

“I know,” he replied roughly, his voice sounding like it had been dragged across a pile of broken glass. “I haven’t been able to feel any of my connections since waking.”

“I know you asked me to stay away, but I couldn’t. Dear one, I couldn’t.” Cerilla blinked and more sparkling tears cascaded, her small hand reaching out to touch his. Elda sensed Sypher hesitate, then blinked in surprise when Vel took control and covered the Spirit’s tiny fingers gently with his own. The girl looked up quickly, chocolate eyes widening.

“I know I’m the part you didn’t want,” Vel told her carefully. “But you never stopped advocating for me, even when I gave you every reason not to. I know it was your love for the Angel that drove your defence, but I’m here today because you stood up to Aeon all those years ago. Thank you, Cerilla.”

“Vel?” she whispered, blinking at him. “You are free still?”

“Yes. I have been since the desert.” Elda felt him tense behind her, waiting for the Spirit to shout or attack, or perhaps even run off to Aeon. Instead, she kissed his hand, more tears decorating his knuckles.

“You are as much my creation as Sypher.” Her studious eyes strayed to Elda. “And you are not as you were, are you?”

“Not exactly,” the elf hedged. “But neither are Sypher and Vel. Their magic is gone. They can’t heal.”

“That would be my doing.” Another voice, so familiar it made Elda gasp, yet she’d only heard it a couple of times.

“Hephaestus!”

“Yes,” he smiled. He stood by the wide windows, silhouetted against the sun. In his earthly form, she could see the outline of two rounded ears on the top of his head and a long, swishing tail. He stepped closer, moving out of the path of the sun. “I have a physical form for the first time since I was imprisoned. That’s thanks to the two of you and your friends.”

“Who are you?” Cerilla asked, staring at him.

“You won’t remember me, but you were my first creation.” A hand with a dark, rough palm and fine black fur coating the fingers reached up to stroke more fur on the back of his neck, two green eyes with vertical pupils glittering above a whiskered, feline face.

“You… what?” Cerilla frowned, getting slowly to her feet and shaking her small head until her brunette curls bounced around her chin. “Aeon created me. I’m the Seventh.”

“I’m afraid that’s simply not true,” Hephaestus replied, clasping his hands in front of him. He was dressed in an outfit similar to Gira’s casual clothes - a deep orange, sleeveless tunic with a low, open neck that stopped halfway down his chest. Wide-legged pants in the same burnt orange, tucked into a pair of brown leather boots. A matching belt adorned his waist with a colourful purple braided rope hanging from it.

“I would remember that,” Cerilla denied, taking a step away from him. “Whatever you are, you are not one of us.”

“I am Hephaestus, the Spirit of Creation. Aeon is my brother, the Spirit of Destruction. We were equals once.” The feline man sighed and bowed his head a little. “I’m not sure how I was imprisoned, or indeed why, but he managed to divide my soul and trap me in the monoliths. Unfortunately my memories of exactly what happened lie with one of my other soul fragments.”

Elda and the Soul Forge watched the exchange in silence, waiting for Cerilla to attack him or disappear to tell Aeon what she’d learned.

“Are you the reason my Soul Forge has no magic?” the small girl questioned, lifting her chin.

“Yes.”

“And you stopped his healing?”

“Yes. An unfortunate side effect, but something I had to do.” Hephaestus turned his reflective eyes on Vel, who had apparently taken offence to the admission because his hands were fisted in the blankets on either side of Elda.

“If you hadn’t done that, we could’ve left already!” Vel argued. “I swear, if my spine didn’t feel like a loose stack of pebbles I’d get out of this bed and strangle you with your own tail!”

“Lucky for me, you’re incapable,” the new Spirit smiled. “I did this for your own good, Vel. In time, your body will adjust and your regenerative capabilities will return. Your magic, however, will remain bound for as long as possible.”

“Why?” Elda gasped, holding an arm out to stop Vel leaping from the mattress and hurting himself more. “We need him to destroy the monoliths.”

“Everything that makes you the Soul Forge is controlled by Aeon,” Hephaestus replied, speaking directly to Vel. “If you are not the Soul Forge, he cannot find you. If you have no magic, he cannot sense you wielding it. You are invisible to him now, Vel. Unchained from his shackles for the first time in your life. The greatest gift I can give you is keeping you out of his grasp, just until I am strong enough to break his tether permanently.”

“So I have to continue without magic?” Vel settled reluctantly and Elda sensed the shift when Sypher decided to share their space again.

“You will have time to heal and return to Eden. My other prisons are untouched for now. After the destruction of the one in Bratus, it seems Malakai is struggling to regain his strength. His greatest fighter narrowly escaped death and the other Corrupted are not ready yet. He will wait until the odds are in his favour again.”

“Do you know which monolith he’ll go for next?” Elda asked.

“Eden,” Hephaestus stated, and her heart sank like a rock. “As far as I know, the Dragon Isles are too far out of his reach for now. You must return there, build your strength and destroy my prison. If he gets the monolith under his control, Eden will fall and his power will double. Then he’ll go after the one protected by Aita. You must stop him before the rest of Valerus becomes an extension of Shade.”

“Can someone at least heal me enough to travel first? My wings are ruined,” Vel muttered.

“I can,” Cerilla nodded.

“You may do this for him only once, and then you must forget everything you have learned today,” the black Jaguar instructed. “Aeon cannot know the monolith has been destroyed.”

“Wouldn’t he know already?” Elda probed. “A lot of magic was used to destroy that monolith.”

“If he knew, he’d be here already,” Cerilla murmured. Her butterfly wings fluttered in shades of deep amber and stark black. “How are you keeping it from him?”

“Aeon’s attention is focussed on my life force, not on the monoliths he trapped me in. He won’t sense a change in me until I’m reunited with the next piece of my soul. By then, it will be too late for him to trap me again.” Hephaestus cocked his head. “My brother is spectacularly arrogant, and that makes him ignorant..”

“And if your memories are gone, how do you know all of this?” Sypher asked, arching the eyebrow that didn’t have a cut bisecting it.

“Observation.” Hephaestus dropped his shoulders in despair, rounded ears drooping with them. “I have watched and waited for a very long time, and I’ve seen the disregard Aeon has for the world I built and the people in it that worship him. Prayers are unanswered, wrongdoings unchallenged. The Spirits are subjugated when they are supposed to be equals. All of it is wrong.”

“That was why I created the Soul Forge,” Cerilla put in. “When Malakai committed genocide against his own kind I needed someone to restore the balance.”

“You are the only other Spirit blessed with the power to create because I made you that way, Cerilla. You are the Spirit of Life. You can shape living beings just as I shape worlds. I cannot wait for the day when I can help you realise your true position among the Spirits.” Hephaestus smiled softly. “You should heal your creation.”

Cerilla nodded and took Sypher’s hand in hers, and Elda felt him sigh as her healing magic flooded him, sweeping through every injury and lessening it until he was able to stand without wincing. He stretched his wings and nodded when there was no pain lancing through his chest.

“I’m glad to see you again, little one, even if you don’t remember me,” Hephaestus murmured, crouching to cup Cerilla’s cheeks in his taloned hands. “I am so very proud of you. Now you must forget all of this and return to the Spirit Realm. I will come for you as soon as I am strong enough.”

He pressed a soft, gentle kiss to her forehead like a father would his child, his eyes drifting closed for just a second. When he pulled away, Cerilla vanished. Elda saw the Spirit’s head dip and she realised he was sad.

“You love her,” she realised. His ears pricked up, swivelling towards her.

“Like a father loves a child, yes. She feels the same for your husband. It’s a complicated thing, having loved ones when you’re a Spirit.” He rose to his full height and set his hands on his hips. “I’m sure you’ll learn it for yourself in the future.” His gaze drifted to the window. “You should hurry to Eden. The more time the pair of you have to build your strength, the better. I will meet both of you there when the time is right. Until then, wait for me.”