Chapter 7: Hand of the Void

When Aven was eight years old, Mother cut open his arm.

“This will hurt,” Mother said, voice calm as always even while opening up the cut on his skin. Never harsh like Father. “You won’t remember it, but it will hurt. You’ll need to be brave for me. Can you do that?”

Aven wiped away the tears from his eyes. He already hurt. Father had been cruel with training. Nothing Aven did was right. His sword form was sloppy. His feet were too slow. All matters that Father corrected with the switch.

“Yes, Mother,” Aven answered. A foolish sentiment. He was a child with no understanding of pain or bravery. It was Mother’s command, not any courage that made him sit still. He held out his left arm, palm facing up.

She held his forearm, gently stroking it with a finger until his breathing slowed. She smiled, green eyes softening. She dipped the hollow needle in that strange black jar, filling up the needle with the liquid inside.

“Hold still, my brave boy,” Mother said. “If you thrash, it will hurt worse.”

Aven tried to hold still. He really tried.

Yet when the needle pierced the open cut on his arm and fire entered his blood, he couldn’t help but scream and thrash.

* * *

Aven’s head broke the surface of the Void. It wasn’t like swimming in water. More like thrashing about in a cloud of thick mist. Mist that choked his throat, filled his eyes, his lungs, his stomach. It was impossible to get his bearings in this world, even the Battle Mind could only keep him oriented enough to keep his head above the void. Yet reaching for the Battle Mind also bought up the void as well. He couldn’t keep his own power and the void separate in the well of his soul anymore. The void was spreading, tainting everything. Even just keeping his senses was an effort more than he could manage. He reached for the wall, trying to find some purchase.

The chain on his leg jerked, and Aven plunged back under.

* * *

When Aven was ten years old, Father beat him worse than ever before. No matter how Aven tried, he couldn’t master the sword forms to Gaius Arvanius’ satisfaction.

He lay in bed, staring at the ceiling as the sounds of the argument reached his ears through the half-closed door.

“How dare you,” Mother’s voice came, calm as ever but holding steel. “Is this what you wanted? to leave him with broken bones? This is your ‘training’?”

“I don’t want to hear that hypocrisy from you,” Father sneered. “His body and mind need to be forged stronger. He’s a warrior of Octarnis. He needs discipline. More than that filth you try to inject him with.”

“Discipline,” Mother’s voice turned icy. “Was it ‘discipline’ that you showed when you snapped at him? Oh, what a devotee of the ideals you are! Surely the paragons will smile on you beating your son for failing at twelve what you did not master until you were nearly an adult. You’re a coward, Gaius.”

The shouts turned incoherent as one of the maids pressed the door closed. As if shutting Aven out from the words themselves would hide the truth. Hearing the shouts hurt just as much even if Aven couldn’t understand the words.

It was nearly half an hour before the shouting stopped. Soon after, the door opened, and Mother emerged.

“I’m sorry,” Aven said, immediately. “I-”

He couldn’t say another word before Mother cut off the words with a tight embrace. He felt tears running down his face, soaking into her nightshirt.

“You have nothing to apologize for,” Mother whispered. “You’ve done nothing wrong.”

Then why were you and Father arguing? The thought was unspoken, even then, Aven had learned better.

“Your father,” Mother said slowly. “Is a fool.”

Aven had often heard Mother say such things to Father’s face, but she’d never said so to him directly. It wasn’t proper for a wife to criticize her husband in front of the children. Only behind closed doors.

“He only thinks in terms of brute force,” she continued, “as if throwing you repeatedly against a wall will make you stronger.” A sigh, “Your father and his oafish ways will only hurt you. You’ve tried so hard, and I’m so proud of the progress you’ve made. Your Father only sees his way.”

Father commanded Aven always do things in the exact prescribed way. Any deviation was harmful. He needed to suppress his instincts. Tame them. Mold them to the same precision a sculptor turned rock to art.

“I want to be stronger,” Aven whispered.

“Your father is strong,” Mother agreed, “in his own way.” Aven could almost see Mother’s eyes, cold as steel, “You don’t want to be his kind of strong. You...” she kissed his hair, “will have your own strength, far beyond his. Why do you want to be stronger, dear?”

Aven paused. He didn’t understand the question.

“Because...being strong is good?” he answered hesitantly.

Mother chuckled softly, “Wisdom speaks from the mouths of children. You’re exactly right, my darling boy. Power is good. For its own sake. Not to be tamed. Not to serve the empire. Your power will be all your own.”

Aven still didn’t understand. But if Mother said it, it must be true.

“I know you’re hurting,” Mother pulled away. She pulled out a hollow needle and a jar of black liquid from her coat. “But there’s something we can do to make you stronger. It will hurt, but you won’t remember the pain. Endure, and you will be stronger. Can you do that for me, Aven?”

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Aven set his jaw and nodded. Mother smiled and pricked the needle into his arm.

* * *

It felt like being stabbed by a dozen knives all over his body at once. The voidspawn’s claws seized his leg, seeking deep into his flesh. Aven screamed, and void rushed into his mouth. He couldn’t breathe. Cold deeper and sharper than the winds above stabbed into his skin, reaching through to the marrow of his bones.

Reaching into the Battle Mind only stretched out the pain, seconds turning to agonizing moments as he felt the teeth scrape across his bone. He kicked out blindly, but it was like moving through freezing mud. He struck hard chitin, but his blows held no more strength than a toddler’s.

He was going to die here.

The seed of the void within him pulsed. It reached out to the surrounding sea, as if it was home. The ice expanded in Aven’s chest, void within and without trying to consume him.

* * *

Aven was fifteen years old when he killed a boy with the power of the void.

He didn’t remember how it happened. It was a simple sparring match. The boy wasn’t someone he knew; just a vis from the neighboring county who Father brought to be his opponent. The boy was better than Aven, a full vis of the 1st circle who could move so fast Aven felt like a child. Aven struggled, fought to keep pace, but every blow of his was turned away. Every attack found purchase. The Swiftfoot Body was the very domain that Father tried to beat into Aven, and that Aven had failed to learn. Even Aven’s half-formed Battle Mind domain could barely keep up, and even that only meant that Aven could see the blows coming well before they slammed into him.

Frustration rose as the boy’s smug confidence grew with every win. As Father’s barked reprimands grew. Damn those smirking eyes.

Rage. Aven always held back the rage. That was Father’s chief lesson. Control the emotions. Passion must give way to discipline.

Fuck that.

The next thing Aven knew, he was being dragged away, and the boy was dead, a jagged slash open from jaw to navel.

The rage was gone. Horror took its place. Aven didn’t resist as he was dragged away. That didn’t stop Father’s palm from smashing against his ear.

“Did you learn nothing?!” Father still roared at him an hour later. “I taught you control! I taught you to master yourself!” Father grabbed him by the shirt, “Not this- this reckless violence. Is this the legacy of House Arvanius? Is this what you aspire to?!”

Aven couldn’t say anything in response, not when the memory of the boy’s corpse still stood in his mind’s eye like a ghost.

Father released Aven and stepped back. When he spoke, the voice was low, but his eyes blazed with bitter anger.

“You have a choice, Aven,” Father said. “Your mother...she wants you to be a monster. She wants you to embrace the powers of the void. I...” Father looked away. A rare gesture of vulnerability for him, “I want you to be more than a weapon. More than a monster. She...wants you to be this.”

Father took a deep breath. He suddenly looked very, very tired. In that moment, Aven didn’t see the hero of the western frontier. He didn’t see the vis of the 3rd circle who had slain the empire’s enemies and led a legion to glory. He saw a scared old man with sunken eyes and iron-grey hair beginning to bald.

“You mother is leaving,” Father said. “She will be gone tonight. She will not return. If you go with her...she will continue to forge a monster. I...if you wish to go with her, I cannot stop her from taking you. But she still claims she will honor your will. Please stay. Stay and be more than a monster. You can be a warrior of Octarnis.”

Aven looked down at his hands. The boy’s dried blood still clung to his left hand. The veins on that arm stood out black as night.

Aven had always loved the legends of House Arvanius. He had dreamed of fighting with his father in the west, earning glory for the Empire fighting the cursed men of the west. Or perhaps in the north, facing the voidspawn. The voidspawn were monsters to be destroyed. They were threats to the order of the empire, even more than the rival kingdoms and barbarians outside the empire.

Aven met Father’s eyes, “I will be a warrior of Octarnis. I will discipline myself. I will never let this power control me again.”

For the first time in memory, Father looked upon Aven with pride.

* * *

He couldn’t stop the void from rising.

* * *

Gaius Arvanius’ eyes were cold as he approached Aven with sword drawn.

“I saved people’s lives,” Aven whispered.

“You betrayed your oaths,” Father replied. “You betrayed the Order. You betrayed the Ideals. You betrayed everything you swore to uphold!” He stepped closer, “You knew the consequences. Ralius Talone should have been a sufficient example. And yet you chose to do the same.”

Aven laughed, “Mother said this would happen. In her last letter. She said that you never would accept me. I just thought that I would die for being a monster instead of actually doing something good. Funny, isn’t it?”

Father looked at Aven with disgust, “I thought you might show some penance in your final moments.”

Fuck that. Fuck the Order. Fuck the Ideals. Fuck the Empire.

Father lunged.

Aven reached into the well power in his soul. The twin powers rose up, the Battle Mind and the void.

Time slowed, and possibilities unfolded before him. Father’s stroke was executed perfectly. An aged body no longer that of a vis yet still carrying the ghosts of old strength and speed. Even now, after years of training, Aven had never beaten Father in swordplay.

Aven was twenty-one years old when he first used the powers of the void and the Battle Mind in tandem.

With time still slowed, Aven stretched out his left arm. The veins turned black. The flesh opened in hideous scratches, and black blood spilled out, turning to smoke. A claw made of that black mist formed, rushing out, narrowing into a spear.

The hero of House Avarnius should have been able to dodge. Father was not that man anymore. Mind and body slowed with age, Father could not dodge. Or did not.

The spear struck.

* * *

In the darkness of the void, Aven held both powers in tandem a second time. The moment he accepted the void, the ice in his veins turned to fire. In the stretched-out seconds of the Battle Mind, he shaped the void into a weapon. Blind, he struck. A shriek sounded, and he felt chitin tear apart under his power. He struck again and again until the claws released his leg, and he rushed up.

He broke the surface of the void with a gasp. His left hand burned as if plunged into a bonfire, yet the void still swirled around it. He reached out, and the mist of the void stretched out into a claw bigger than Aven’s hand. That claw sank into the wall of the pit, giving purchase at last. With a snarl, Aven hauled himself up with that arm. His right hand followed, and he managed to reach the lip of the voidpit. The weight of the chain still pulled down, the limp weight of Old Fox’s corpse still attached. Hanging on with his right hand, he reached the hand of the void back into the blackness, seizing Old Fox by the collar. He yanked, and the corpse flew up with no more effort than it would take to toss a rag doll.

Aven scrabbled up onto the ledge, gasping and shaking. Black blood dripped from his left arm, the veins standing out stark against his skin.

“Had enough, you bastard?” Aven shouted back into the void.

No reply came.

Aven laughed giddily. Still alive. Still alive.

“Fine!” he laughed up at the heavens. “You win! If you’re going to kill me for being voidtouched, I’ll be voidtouched! Call me an enemy of the Empire, of the Ideals! Command my Father and anyone else to kill me!”

He fell back to the ground, laughing. The heavens were silent. The sun was low in the sky, not yet set over behind the mountains to the west.

What now?

The question brought another round of laughter. It took a long time for Aven to decide. Ultimately, it was the fading light that made his decision. When the power of the void faded and the heat no longer burned, he realized how fucking cold the snow was. There was a whole world out there. Unfortunately, for everything in sight, that world consisted only of snow and voidspawn.

Aven looked back south. The tracks left by the other prisoners in the snow still guided the way back to Hellfrost. Back to prison and chains.

Aven hoisted Old Fox’s corpse onto his back. The chains made it difficult, but he finally managed a position where he could carry the old dead bastard and still walk.

He set off towards Hellfrost.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *