I do not know how long I knelt on the floor, and the Moon Fox stayed on my shoulder the whole time and did not say anything, which is not like her, and I understood later that she was doing the only thing there was to do, and I loved her for it... I don’t know if I would have been able to bear this reality without her warm weight against my neck.
At some point, I held out my hand and made my thread take a small circular shape, and with Lightning Edict, I transformed this disk into a small gold disk that almost resembled a coin.
When I left home, following the traditions of our village, my parents and sister gave me a charm; my dad had given me a small golden disk, and since my staff was missing, I no longer had that charm, but now that I had returned home, I could not be empty-handed.
I braced myself against the pain I felt as I found my father’s cold hand and pressed the golden disk into it. With the same magic, I recreated my mum’s needle-hoop, placed it in the fold of her hand, and I closed her fingers on it; they closed more easily than I expected.
Recreating these charms showed me another advantage of my crystalline soul as an Arcanist, and that was the fact that my creations were incredibly stable.
Originally, when I used my Lightning Edict to transform anything, I had to place a constant mental effort to maintain that transformation, but now, I could barely feel any breakage in the magic, as it was merely seamless.
The charms I pressed into the hands of my parents could almost be considered real, and it would take an intense magical probe to break their structure. For mortals, I could create seemingly anything from nothing.
I was unconsciously creating the bell for Mel when I sat back on my heels and looked around, but I did not see my sister.
∞
I searched the house, then I searched the yard, and the workshop, and the collapse where the neighbour’s house had been, and then I searched every one of the nineteen standing houses, and then I went through the lane and looked at every body in it, one at a time, and made myself look at each face, including the small ones, and I could not find Mel... then I searched again.
I searched for three hours, even when the sun had long set, and I was alone in the darkness, and only the loud booming and the flashes of light from the sky now and then lit the night. The war above did not stop to observe my grief; the world just kept rolling on, leaving me in the silence of everything I knew and loved, and I kept searching for my sister.
I used every skill that I had, and scoured my entire village, and I knew without a doubt that either she got out, or they took her.
∞
Mel should be eleven now. I had missed her birthday last month, and when we were growing up, apart from the fact that my soul could change the world around me, start fires, cause rain to fall inside the house, and other magical oddities, I always thought my sister deserved to be a Mage because of her mind and quick wit.
I believed she must have a photographic memory, and I sometimes wonder why the talent for soul growth had been given to me and not her. Still, her quick wit meant that Mel was far more observant than most would give her credit for.
It might just be possible that she must have seen the devastation coming and she had escaped, but how far could she run? What mortals considered far was nothing to a Mage; even with a month headstart, I could catch up to any mortal in less than a day.
No, she could not have escaped; they had taken her, or she was dead somewhere I could not find.
∞
The cold I had pushed aside as I saw my dead parents came back, but now, it was... different.
Up until that moment, the cold had been a thing that happened to me, from the madness and pain that I witnessed. Now I chose it.
I stood in the ash of my house, and I picked up this cold on purpose, and it fit me well. My hair was slowly turning white, as that part of me that kept my hair black to show my parents that I was still their child despite my powers vanished.
"Elric," the fox said quietly. She had felt the change through the bond, but for once, I don’t think she knew what to say. Everything she knew about the world came from my memories, and if I did not have anything to draw upon in this moment, how could she?
She nudged me with her nose and said, "Talk to me."
Perhaps it was because I did not want the fox to see me this way, or maybe there was still a bit of reason left in my mind, I slowly looked up and whispered, "She might be alive."
The Moon Fox nodded, "Yes."
"If she’s alive, she’s somewhere out there in that." I did not gesture. There was nothing to gesture at; it was just a continent after all. My arms were too small to encompass all of it. "And if she’s not alive, then she needs me to bring her home."
"Yes," the fox said. She did not tell me it would be alright. She has never once lied to me, and she did not start there.
"Then it’s the same answer either way," I said. "Alive or dead, I have to be strong enough to go anywhere and take her back out of anything. That’s the whole problem. That’s the only problem I have left. I know the shape of the game now, I know how the world ends, I have seen enough of the players, now I have to take it all down."