Siverlight Saga Chapter 3 Rough Draft

Chapter 3





True Ascension



Keira arrived back in the village across the barrier just as the sun was rising on the third day of Anchea. It was the eighth month of the year and time when the harvest begins in most of the world. Leafs on the trees would begin to turn to there autumn colors soon. It had been four days since Keira had left into the cave. It hadn’t seemed that long but one would lose track of time inside the caves.

As she had passed though the barrier back among the village the guard who had been watching the gate sounded his horn to alert the village as to her arrival. Then he ran to aid her as she had collapsed from exhaustion, her one and only wound pained her grievously.  As he picked her up he asked her, “Did you do it, where you successful Keira?”

“Yes.” Showing her orb as she answered him.

“Good, I didn’t want to have to worry about you.” His voice sounded familiar to Keira.

“Who are you?” she asked as others started to arrive in the clearing.

“What! You must be tremendously tired if you can’t recognize your own brother.” Keira shook herself awake. It was her brother, she was just that tired, and she realized it because he was the one allowing her to stand she had no energy. The ascension had been a rough one for sure but she had made it out alive and that’s what mattered.

“Keira.” shouted another familiar voice but again she couldn’t recognize it. Her brother laid her down on something soft she didn’t recognize. It was as if she wasn’t part of herself anymore like she was just viewing the things that were happening to her. Like all of her memories and senses were relayed to her second hand, with things lost in translation. She closed her eyes as her energy began to fade away.

“Keira, speak to me honey.” A woman’s voice this time perhaps her mother she wasn’t sure. As she lay there pondering her fate she fell in to a deep slumber, and didn’t awake for two days. When she finally did awake a man was there sitting by her bedside with a happy look on his face. At first she was afraid of the man, and pushed herself as far away from him as she could. She didn’t recognize him, he seemed familiar but it was like the memory of him was just out of reach.

He closed his eyes, as if he was hurt by what she had done.  With a worried look the man spoke to her kindly, “You don’t know who I am do you?”

“N-no” her voice cracked like she didn’t want to disappoint the man that sat in front of her.

“When your brother told me that you didn’t recognize him, I knew something was wrong. I just hoped that the displacement hadn’t happened to you.” He said with a sorrowful tone.

“Your memories and senses will be harder to reach now, if you’re not directly in sync with your soul-stone.” He explained to her. “There is a reason that your family name is Silverlight, Keira. You come from a long line of warlocks; in fact you are part of a line that stretches back to the very beginnings of the ascension ritual.”

         “But, my father never mentioned anything about displacement or about my lineage.” Keira told the familiar man.

         “That’s because I was trying to protect you from our family’s power.” The man’s face suddenly became so much clearer, he was her father.

“Dad, I’m sorry that this happened.” Keira said trying keep from bursting into tears.

Her father wasn’t looking much better than she was as he spoke, “Its not your fault my dear, if its anyone’s fault its mine, I should have told you about our family sooner and prepared you better. Your brother didn’t nearly have the troubles you had, I’m assuming, because he has more of his mother in him than me. The Silverlight is barely present in him, so it was no surprise to me when he came way from the ritual with nothing but a arm wound and a couple of days exhaustion.”

“I’m assuming the case is different with me.” Keira said now comfortable in her surroundings, she recognized it as her room she had been in her house the whole time. She had truly become out of touch with her memories if she couldn’t remember what her own room looked like.

“You would be assuming correctly my child.” He seemed to have rediscovered his composure from before, “You inherited a lot from me and not just in the physical appearance department. You inherited from me, the Siverlight, a power that runs deep in the blood of our family. Only a few every generation has the ability to manifest it during the ascension, but if they do they gain immense power. The power though comes at a terrible price; your very soul is ripped from your body and placed inside your soul-stone. In fact that’s one of the reasons that it is called as such, because of our family’s affinity to place our souls into the stones.”

“But that doesn’t make sense wouldn’t I be inside the stone then detached from my body, unable to move or speak?” Keira questioned very confused about all the information that she was being confronted with.

“You missed a key element of the ascension ritual, the spell that the chieftain wove around you not only creates the soul-stone but also binds it to your body alone.”

“I see, so would there be away to manipulate the stone to bind it to another’s body?” Keira was intrigued with how much she had gained with this new ability.

“Yes, it is possible to do such a thing but you would be completely obliterating the person’s consciousness that you took over. So yes you could live-forever if you wished but you would be no better than a vampire, killing to keep yourself alive.” Her father said in a very serious tone.

“Ok I just wanted to know, its not like I would ever kill someone just to keep myself alive, I’m not an evil person.”

“Your great-great grandfather was one of the ones that achieved ascension and he lived to be about ninety years old, three times. Each time he leaped he would go into a child’s body, an infant, he believed that they didn’t have a personality yet, so he wouldn’t really be killing anyone.” Keira’s father paused to take a sip of water, “His misdeeds were greater than just destroying lives by implanting his own, and in the end it ended up destroying him. So let it serve as a cautionary tale to you the corruption that can come with this great power.”

“Are you like me?” Keira asked.

“No, and if I was I would gladly tell you about all my experiences, but I can only relay what my father taught me about it. I can tell you that you are the first woman in our family to achieve ascension.” Keira’s heart sank with this news but she still had questions begging for answers.

“You keep calling it ascension, I thought you said it was displacement?”

Her father sighed, “This is the last question I will answer tonight, so ill make this short, and then we must put you fully in tune with your stone. The reason I call it ascension is because that is what the ritual is truly suppose to do for everyone. But, it only affects the few like our family that are fully in tune with their abilities, and few enough inside those family’s ever achieve full ascension. The displacement is merely an after effect of ascension that’s all.”

“Ok, but I still have more questions.” Keira pressed him.

“No, I think its time that your mind and body were at least joined again, I would say whole but your body and mind will never be whole together again.” This saddened Keira for it rang true inside her, she would never be truly part of her own body again it was merely a vessel. He told her the incantation and she picked up her stone and held it in her hands, ‘This stone is my soul, its me, this feels strange to hold your own consciousness in your hands.’ She held the stone to her chest and recited the spell. The stones luster and color changed from that of light and florescent blue, to silver gray.

“Silverlight” She said as if she loved what she had become.

“Indeed my daughter, tomorrow you start serving the community on the woodland patrol, so rest up.” Her father said as he got up from his chair and exited the room.

She felt that her body was tired and that her arm was still sore from the cut she had received during her ascension. So she laid her head down, closed her eyes, fell into to her stone and went to sleep.