Vortex Visions (Air Awakens: Vortex Chronicles #1)

by Elise Kova

magic has an odd way of finding us when we need it most.

She was Awoken now, there was little doubt of that. Her uncle had said it would result in her being able to truly command her magic. But this did not feel like control.

Vi gave him one last, long look, trying to uncover whatever secrets he was hiding. But the man was a closed book. It was a good thing books of all kinds were Vi’s specialty.

She’d heard it said that a heavy crown made a good ruler, but from where Vi sat, the Senate seemed to have necks far too thin to wear the sun crown—even if it were split among them.

Living in a region full of those with the power to manipulate the earth itself was both a delight and nightmare, for a hobby cartographer like herself.

“Everywhere is paradise, just a different kind.” Her maps told her that much. The world was wide and diverse; there were highlands and lowlands, frigid mountains and tropical jungles. Who was to say which was better than the other?

This was the oldest tree in the world—so the wrinkled men who sat around fires said—and they called it the Mother Tree. It was this tree that was said to have caught a falling star—a shard of the Mother’s light—in its branches. By the time the star finally reached the ground, it had absorbed life from the tree and became a woman. The same woman cut civilization from the boughs of the Mother Tree, forming all of Shaldan.

“There’s no time now for punishments,” Sehra said ominously. “We have too much work to do, you and I.”

“Like nature versus nurture. You have been nurtured by Firebearers, so you and everyone else believes that is what you are. But that is not your nature. That is not your magic.”

“I am too Northern to be Southern. I am too Southern to be Northern. Eastern to be Western. Western to be Eastern. I belong nowhere, and to no one, and it’s all because of some stupid magic and the words of one person—whose name you don’t even know.”

“You belong nowhere, because you belong to the goddess herself. You are her chosen child, more than even I or Ellene, as you were hand-picked outside her lineage.”

“No child chooses the circumstances of their birth. Rich parents, poor parents, high and low. We are all handed the starting point. What you make of every step thereafter is what defines your life.”

Every curve of the cartographer’s brush left Vi wondering. Wondering what was there, what stories were out there to unfold…

“What are the apexes of fate?” “Places the world changed, or places where it still could be changed. They’re locations where fate was malleable and the future was—is—yet undecided.”

“Yargen’s words are too complex for a mortal hand to draw efficiently—maybe it’s possible to achieve something in that way, clearly your teacher manages. But that seems an utterly ineffective means to harness her power…You must, instead, understand the glyphs beyond all doubt. Know them in your soul—more than your eyes and ears can tell you. Know how the words resonate with your will. Only then can you gain mastery of them.”

When you say the word, you will not draw the glyph with your hands, or ink, or by any other means. But with your mind. You must know it there. Like a musician knows his pieces, inside and out, well enough to know how it must be played in his own style.”

Vi may not understand everything yet, when it came to being a Lightspinner. But she understood how to make something burn.

For the first time in her life, Vi thought there might be something beautiful to magic. Not just any magic, but her magic.

“You’re not what I expected you’d be,” he said softly, thoughtfully. His gaze was almost… tender. How could the same person look at her with equal measures compassion, skepticism, and pain? It was a mix of contrasts that shouldn’t fit together. “I suppose it’s mutual,” Vi whispered in reply. “I didn’t expect you at all.”

In him, Vi saw a portal to a world she’d barely imagined. She saw truth, and secrets of the universe she hadn’t fathomed weeks ago. And she couldn’t help but wonder what he saw in her.

“I’m glad the end of the world has inspired your curiosity.”

The hours and her consciousness slipped between her fingers like unformed strands of magic for the rest of the day.

“You’re still beautiful, if that’s what you’re asking,” he whispered.

“Here I am, willingly seeking you out after you’ve haunted me my whole life… I feel I should hate you for entrapping me once more.”

The only scrap of hatred I can find in me now is for the elfin’ra who harmed you.”

all she wanted to do was stay and teach a man made of light how to dance.

“Home is a funny thing…” she said, finally. “I don’t really know where home is or what it will look like. I have dreams, ideas, but nothing concrete.”

if family isn’t home, then what is?”

My family is the one thing I’ve wanted, the one thing I’ve been working toward. I can’t give up on it now.”

“I am Vi Solaris. Anything burns if I will it.”