Aurix the Bold

“This must be the most depressing place in all of Valeria,” Inanna said. Her cheeks were wet, but then again, so were Aurix’s and Regulus’.

They were riding alone on the Ixian Plain, each remembering those they’d lost there. They picked their way carefully through the fields, so as not to disturb the bones of the dead. At times, that was easier attempted than accomplished.

It struck Aurix, with the skeletons picked clean by both bandits and buzzards, that any of them might have been Regulus’ father, or Inanna’s parents, or his own. When all was said and done, everyone was pretty much exactly the same, give or take a few inches. Whomever and whatever they’d been in life had been reduced to nothing more than the memories they’d left behind and a collection of bleached and unidentifiable bones. And given long enough—as Shlee’s had—even those would turn to dust.

Aurix found himself mourning them all equally.

“Perhaps this would be a good job for Ralin,” Regulus suggested.

Aurix thought maybe it would be. It would take many lifetimes to clear the Plain, but there were plenty of Xu’ul’s former soldiers that could give the old regent a hand. And that those hands would be forever stained red from the soil they would have to dig in seemed a rather appropriate justice. He thought even the Goddess Xandra would approve.

“I like the way you think, big guy,” Inanna said.

“Me too,” Aurix said.

Nyx rode on Aurix’s shoulder. Just like the last time they’d been there, she was fidgeting with a bandage that held her wounded wing against her body.

“So why are we really out here, Aurix?” Regulus asked.

“I thought we should ask Nyx that,” Aurix said.

The hawk stopped picking at the cloth and turned her head to him. She tilted her head at him and screeched.

Aurix took the bird in his hands and gently unwrapped her. She sat on his wrist for a moment, her head swiveling to each of them in turn. Then she jumped from Aurix’s shoulder. Her wing was still not entirely healed, and she beat furiously at the air until she settled on the ground a few feet away from them.

She began to break.

Though Aurix had expected something, even he was not prepared for what actually did happen. Nyx’s black feathers molted and fell, stark against the crimson flower petals carpeting the ground. They could hear her bones cracking as they lengthened and shifted inside of her body. Regulus and Inanna winced at the sound. Aurix had seen and heard Nyx’s transformations before, but even so, it wasn’t something one ever really got used to. He winced too. Her body elongated and contorted.

“Oh Gods,” Inanna said, looking away.

At first, Aurix thought she might be reverting into a feline form, but she had no fur. Even after she’d completed her transition, Aurix didn’t see the obvious for a moment. It was so entirely unexpected his brain couldn’t quite make sense of it.

The breaking stopped and Inanna risked another look.

Nyx was crouched among the flowers, her back arched and her head down.

“Whoa!” Inanna said and started digging in one of the bags draped over Destra’s back.

Regulus cleared his throat. “Uh. Oh! Hem.” He turned Archaeon around so that his back was to her. No one saw him blushing.

When it finally dawned on Aurix what he was seeing, his mouth fell open.

Inanna jumped down from Nim and ran to Nyx. She helped her slide into one of the extra dresses she always kept on hand for those special occasions where she really wanted to be noticed. Aurix recognized it as the bright yellow one she was wearing the day he left Midian.

Nyx’s skin was perfectly smooth and the color of pure darkness. Her hair was the silver-white of a comet’s tail, and shone like starlight in a midnight sky. When she stood, Inanna’s clingy dress slipped down her body like water flowing over a stone. She turned toward Aurix and raised her head. Her right eye was a bright and flickering yellow the color of liquid dynox, her left was a furious and burning red fire, like blood set aflame. Neither had pupils. “At last, we really meet,” she said.

Aurix felt her words more than heard them. Her voice seemed to come from all around—everywhere and perhaps also nowhere. “What—?” He trailed off, mesmerized by her eyes.

“So, uh, you’re not a Shapebreaker?” Regulus asked.

“I am,” she answered, keeping her eyes on Aurix. “But I am also more than just that.”

Regulus risked a quick peek and turned Archaeon around when he saw Nyx was covered. Only when he faced her did she turn her head his direction. Startled by her gaze, he nearly fell off his caple.

“Hello, Regulus. Inanna,” Nyx said with a nod of her head.

Inanna gasped and raised her hand to her mouth in amazement.

Nyx turned back to Aurix. “You’ve done well, my young friend. I am proud of you.”

“What are you? Fluxen?” he managed.

“In a manner of speaking, I suppose. You call my brothers and sisters Shapebreakers, but really we are Xandra’s brood. There are but a handful of us, and it is exceptionally rare that we reveal our true selves to anyone. Your kind therefore knows us only as animals that can assume any form. But as I said, we are more than merely that.”

“Godlings,” Inanna said.

Nyx smiled and lifted a hand in acknowledgement toward the enchantress. “That is as good a term as any other.”

Inanna turned to Aurix. “How did you know? The Helm?”

Aurix shook his head. “I didn’t know. Not this.”

“But something?” Regulus said.

“The flux,” Aurix said. “The first time it happened, the Nulla were attacking us. There was an explosion of light. I thought it must have been Shlee, but he denied it and said it must have been one of the other travelers we were fighting with. But they seemed just as confused and startled as we were. Then on Skypierce—the fireball in the cave. I was so angry when Banjax killed Shlee, I thought maybe I’d done it somehow. But in Glynn…”

Inanna chimed in. “The soldiers. They were paralyzed by something.”

Aurix nodded. “The only one there for each of those was you, Nyx. I suspected there was more to you than we knew, but this I never would have guessed.”

“How many of you are there?” Inanna asked.

“Only as many as there were Gods to father us. I have three sisters and three brothers; each of us embodies a bit of this world.”

“And you are night,” Regulus said.

“Not much gets past you, does it, colossus?” Nyx teased.

“You said this world,” Inanna said. “Does that mean there are more than just Valeria?”

Aurix answered with a slow nod. “Countless,” he said, remembering the voice in the Nexus.

“He’s right,” Nyx said. “So many, in fact, that there’s very possibly a world in the heavens where people are right now reading tales of your heroism. Everything and every place is connected in ways that will never fully be understood.”

“That’s more than a little hard to believe,” Regulus said.

Nyx laughed. “Truth does not require your belief. It simply is. Even Valeria itself is but a name given to a tiny fragment of this world. One continent of many. There are places beyond the seas. Species never seen. Lands never walked. This world is vast, my friend.”

“And yet infinitely small,” Aurix muttered. He’d not told his friends what he’d seen in the Nexus, because he could not have explained it adequately even had he wanted to.

Nyx smiled at him. She understood.

“There’s something I still don’t get,” Aurix said. “Why did you come for me in Glynn?”

Her eyes swirled with the radiance of Valeria’s suns, and Aurix realized that was exactly what he was seeing. Shura and Nova blazed within her gaze. Somehow he knew that her siblings, no matter their other differences, would each have those same fiery eyes.

“I was here when it happened,” she said. “I was a bird in the sky, a mare in the fields, a serpent writhing in the blood spilled by my Father’s blade. I watched The Cleaving. It…hurt me. I could not just stand by while Xu’ul conquered and destroyed my world. I went to where I could watch over you until you were ready to become this man.”

“But why me?”

“Because it could have been no one else. You were the only with courage enough to stand for all of Valeria. But along the way, anything might have befallen you—no future is fully written. I chose to come and try to help you see this through, much like these invaluable friends of yours. And now you have.”

“Do you know everything?” Inanna asked.

The Godling laughed again. “Far from it. I know some things—perhaps more than you, but less than those that gave me life. Nor am I invincible, as you’ve seen.” She slipped the sleeve of Inanna’s dress up to her shoulder. A bright blue and white and orange bruise stained the midnight black of her skin, like an exploding star—a supernova.

Nix frowned at her injury, and lowered the sleeve. “I, too, am bound by the physical laws that govern this world, though not quite as strictly. That’s how we shapebreak. It’s how I’m able to harness flux. And how I knew to come and find you, Aurix. If only everyone could find your courage and kindness, what a world this might become.”

“You said you rarely take this form. Why show us now?” Regulus said.

“Because you three risked everything for this land and its people. You’ve all earned the right to know that you are not alone here. With that said, I should resume my previous shape for now. It won’t do to return to Glynn looking like this.”

“One last question, before you go, Nyx?” Regulus asked.

“Of course,” she said kindly.

“If it’s as you say, and we’re all just small beings on a small part of this world among countless worlds,” he held up his giant hands as if in surrender. “What’s the point?”

“A question that will be debated throughout all of time and space,” Nyx said. “But I’ll let you in on a little secret. No matter what the scale—as immense as all the universes, or as miniscule as a single grain of sand, we’re all moving parts in a great machine that will go on forever. Whether we live as long as Shlee or as briefly as a mayfly, there’s really only one thing that lives on beyond us and shapes every future whether for good or bad—our memories.”

Aurix thought about his parents somewhere out here on this enormous bloodstained plain. The memories they’d left him with were brilliant and filled with love and laughter. Those memories were what had shaped him and gave him the courage to stand against Xu’ul.

Nyx continued. “To answer your question, Regulus, the point is to—”

“Create good ones,” Aurix interrupted.

Nyx looked at him and smiled. “Exactly.”