The soul residing inside of Jacen Kyros, or Juni’us, son of Kyr’os, is very old indeed. The elders saw it in his eyes before he even spoke, before he turned one arc. And so it was that he was gifted an odd name – Juni’us, for another Old One saw the name scrawled across his brow before he could teeter across the floor on his toes.
He was born to Kyr’os and Nor’ah in arc 701. Ryl’ee, his younger sister, came three arcs later. His father was a teacher and his mother was a seer and a storyteller – a keeper of history. They lived modestly in Desnind with other Sev’ryn, and Juni’us developed his love of books through his parents’ professions.
The first tattoo they marked him with was an inverted tree, with the branches webbed over his breastbone and the roots climbing toward his throat. One of the dreamwalking elders informed his parents that this was the same mark he’d had in a previous life, a memory unlocked and made public.
As Juni’us grew, he was taken under the wing of the elders and educated in the mystical arts. Whatever they saw in the boy, serious and soft-hearted, prompted them to start him off on the path. There were a number of teachers in the city of Desnind who practiced one discipline or another, several of which had departed long ago and explored the wider world, only to return and teach youth such as Juni.
As Juni struggled to regain his memories of past lives, he wondered if one of his teachers remembered him, wondered what their soul spoke to his in secret. There were things he couldn’t explain about himself, ticks and traces of trauma from whatever his previous body had suffered. The Sev’ryn shared their histories in song, in speeches, and Juni was well aware of the plague which had ravaged the
originals so many arcs ago.
Had the sick started in his guts and traveled through him? He tried not to think on all the ways the plague might have affected his former lives, but it made him wary. Juni found himself incredibly touch averse, and the affliction only worsened as he grew older. Was it fear of illness that forced him to shy away from physical connection?
Or something worse?
Juni spent most of his time away from other children. His parents took note, especially the way he veered from the affections of his little sister, but they wrote off his strangeness for whatever the elders explained was brewing within him.
He’d flee to the city outskirts and lose himself in the jungle forests away from the southern roads. There was no one to bother him there, especially when he sought solitude to commune with nature and ask Moseke to send him his familiar. Sometimes he brought a book or two, whatever the elders were teaching him that week. Juni spent little time in regular classes with regular children, always wandering away, not looking to lose himself but seeking to restore something he might’ve lost, perhaps.
When he was eleven, he met a boy on the road – taller than him, older by an arc or two. His hair was as white as Juni’s was black, yet their eyes locked and they found similarities in the shade they had been gifted.
Juni could only speak a broken flavor of Common, but it was enough to communicate with Zarik – that was his name. The boy was a nomad, wandering about with his father. The two came together in an easy camaraderie, sharing similar passions.
Zarik also never tried to touch him, and Juni took note.
They played together where they could, whenever they found each other. It was an easy company that lasted two arcs, until Zarik tried to tell him they were leaving for Quacia.
Juni was only thirteen, but he counts this as his first heartbreak.
After Zarik’s departure, he shifted his focus to fulltime study, with the nagging hope that someday he might see Zarik again.
Perhaps in dreams…
Dreamwalking was the first magical ability he took to, and though it wasn’t a true discipline, Juni felt fulfillment in the way he could ascend into Emea and enjoy a false physical proximity to other dreamers in his astral body. Those he was drawn to often reflected what he saw in himself: good-natured, curious, quiet souls, but haunted in some invisible way.
He wanted to
help, somehow…
In his greenery of the ability and the wider world, Juni might have mistaken a mask of good-nature for the true thing he already was. He began to seek out one presence over the rest, slipping through the doors of various dreamscapes until he found
him.
That’s when he first heard it, the name he would take on in his travels:
“Jacen?”
But the speaker was distorted, and instead of the finer features of a man, his frame fractured into a kaleidoscope of colors.
Juni didn’t know how to put him back together again.
He always woke up too soon.
When Juni was sixteen, when other boys of his tribe began to take note of the opposite sex, he made his excuses. He’d flee to the forest, bare feet sliding through the moss and the muck without care, perhaps hoping to find Zarik once more. At home under the dark lit canopy of full, fat trees, Juni spent hours pouring over whatever texts his teachers had lent him. He had a knack for research, and for putting thoughts to parchment.
His mother knew he would eventually leave her.
Mothers always know. Plus, she had left once – long ago. And she returned. Perhaps her son would do the same.
By day, he was Juni’us, the odd duck of a well-to-do line, an old soul dissociating with his current lot in life. By night, he was
Jacen, a dreamwalker wandering realms beyond his people’s comfort zone.
“It is time,” said the Elder Tyn’an, one day, finding Juni still in bed in his family’s home, shaking the last remnants of sleep from his eyes.
“It is time that you find a different frequency, one that does not just point to Emea.”
Little did Juni know, Tyn’an had been training him all the while for this very day.
“Follow me,” the elder said, and Juni did as he was told, as he often did. It was rare for him to rebel against an authority figure.
They walked deep in the woods until they came upon a clearing that Tyn’an had already prepared for them. Juni sat down as instructed, noting the age of the trees by the girth of their roots. This was an old place, sacred and strong. Ambient power thrummed around them, but the boy still couldn’t tune in.
Tyn’an said nothing else. He only sat cross-legged opposite of the waif and rolled out a sackcloth full of flutes carved of bone or shell.
Juni was burning to ask his questions. His teacher must have saw it in his eyes, because he shook his head before he took an instrument to his mouth. The note that played out set the scale of things. It was only one long stretch, a pretty humming repetition before the flute was replaced and Tyn’an took to
singing instead.
No. Not really singing? He was… humming…
The sound was unlike anything he had ever heard before. It was aching. It was elemental. It spoke to every living creature, every atom fallen from the stars themselves. Between the buzz of vibrating lips and the sound that slipped between them, Juni heard the name he heard once in a dream…
He felt himself being pulled apart, with one toe in
this world and one in Emea. Or maybe it was something beyond Emea? He felt the pull of power uncoil something he’d locked inside the cage of his chest, something between his ribs and his heart.
Was he singing, too?
Was he screaming?
Juni’s mouth was open long after the elder stopped. The world around him felt
different. His ears no longer worked the same sharp magic of a normal man’s senses. He could pick up the language beneath it all,
attuned to everything around him.
Then his eyes changed, splintered blue-black across the cobalt glow like puzzle pieces.
Juni spent more and more time focused on his magical training, and more and more time in the thick of nature. He spoke to Moseke as if she were there beside him, as Zarik had once been, though the two didn’t always understand each other. By his nineteenth birthday, Juni’us disappeared into the dense forests and lush jungles for days without word, only to return, at long last, bonded with his familiar – Janara.
Time passed. An arc, then two. He did not forget his promise to his familiar that he would leave and explore the known world, but neither Janara nor Juni
felt that time was
now. Instead, they continued on as before, Juni honing his various skillsets, somewhat helping his father teach the next generation, and practicing the art of storytelling with his mother. Nor’ah also taught him the basics with tarot and runes and scrying with a ridiculous crystal ball Ryl’ee had in her possession. He would also work alongside scholars in the city’s library and university, an apprentice of sorts, given his literary prowess. He continued to learn the Common tongue, however fractured it was, as he hadn’t had anyone to practice with since Zarik left.
The next phase in life came without warning. It was the hottest day of the season, and Juni had joined Ryl’ee for a spell in the city center, running errands. As Ryl’ee teased and pried about his personal life, complained about his stuffy, old companions, Juni rolled his eyes and diverted the conversation away from his sister’s favorite topic: his nonexistent love life. Janara stalked between their shadows, but neither man, nor woman, nor feline spirit saw the cart come up the road until it was too late.
Ryl’ee, ever ready to dance ahead of the herd, was in the direct line of fire. The horse was out of control, and though the girl scrambled to remove herself from the road, the cart slid at an awkward angle, knocking her body to the cobbles. Juni scrambled to pull her to safety, but not before the back wheel rolled across her left leg.
There was no healer who could fix such an injury without magic, and as blood pooled beneath her broken body, Juni lifted his sister and went screaming toward Tyn’an’s home.
Tyn’an. His mentor. His teacher. He would know someone who could fix this.
The man was as old as eons, weathered by age and the sun in the southern lands. His said nothing more to his pupil, but the gravity of the situation was apparent in his eyes.
While Juni applied simple first aid to his unconscious sister, fretting over the blood loss and the pallor in her face, a figure appeared in the threshold at Tyn’an’s call.
Her name was Kiriel, and she was not Sev’ryn.
Still, the woman went to work like they were her own. There was a light around her the attunement in him focused on, though her witchmark was obvious: a third eye located just shy of her hairline.
Permanently closed.
Kiriel smiled, and it was enough to shake the strangeness of her appearance. She was otherwise beautiful: golden haired and doe-eyed and not quite older than the trembling waif before her.
Juni watched with shallow breaths as Kiriel traced the edges of Ryl’ee’s injury, murmuring something like an incantation – or was it just the way she focused? Juni was sensitive enough to feel the frequency of the magic the mage poured into his sister. It took several trials before Ryl’ee’s flesh had completely knitted itself together.
And it was
expensive.
As partial payment, Juni offered up his services as an apprentice of sorts, with the spark of attunement driving him to learn all there was about this new discipline. Kiriel agreed, but did not promise initiation – not at first, not until she was impressed enough by his prowess with dreamwalking.
She too, was a dreamwalker.
And though they were never romantic, Kiriel shared with Juni a kinship he thought he would never know again.
“You understand what you’re asking,” she said to him, as they reached an impasse in his education. The spark of attunement pushed him onward, curious, eager to learn.
“I have to know what you know, how you can do the things you can do,” he confessed, blurting out the first thought that came to mind. Most times, Juni’s pride stepped in, but he was not beyond begging for something he truly wanted.
“I want to fix people,” he murmured,
“like you can.”
Kiriel sighed and draped an arm across his shoulders, which he skittered away from, fast as he could. She blinked.
“If you cannot stand simple contact, you would not be able to survive the initiation.”
And then, his pride swelled.
“Watch me,” he spat at her, then woke up in a sheen of sweat in his own bed.
They had been conversing in Emea again. Juni was pestering Kiriel relentlessly, to the point the mage could not escape him – not even in sleep.
She finally agreed.
“No one chooses Graft for beauty,” she warned him as the two met in the solitude of Kiriel’s own home, a step above modest.
“It is the power to shape, but also to distort, to fuse what nature never intended…”
“It is the power to hope, to heal,” he proclaimed with spectral softness. Kiriel couldn’t see Janara curled around his heels.
Kiriel led him the main parlor room. She had cleared away any formal furnishings, leaving only two chairs, a table, and a bucket between them.
She sat in one and motioned for Juni to take the other. Janara flitted by, a fly on the wall, listening, watching, perhaps knowing where this would all lead. Having her there filled Juni with confidence. Surely his little familiar wouldn’t allow him to do something so dangerous?
But it
was, and Juni was determined not to die, or worse: the half death of a Mortise.
Kiriel loosened her shirt at the collar, then peeled forward, staring into the empty basin. He saw her jaw tighten, teeth locked together behind an eerie mask of calm.
The first time she wretched, nothing came up. The second time, it was more the foam of undigested water and a bit of bile.
Juni paled.
The third time, the initiation began. What came out of her was no larger than a cat’s paw, but it was squished and scrambled, red veins threaded across a pink glob. Kiriel popped it in her mouth and swallowed.
Then, repeated the process – over and over and over, more times than Juni ever could have guessed was possible. After each cycle, the stench was worse – rancid,
wrong.
After the sixth time (or was it seventh?), Kiriel swayed in her seat, then pushed the basin at Juni’s face. The witchmark at her brow seemed to open for a moment.
“Now you,” she instructed, somehow maintaining an air of authority despite the look of utter disgust.
“Do the same.”
“For how long?” His skin prickled.
“You’ll know,” said the mage.
The first swallow was the worst thing he had ever experienced, far more terrible than Zarik’s departure. He waited for something to take root, something his attunement aided him in knowing, and then forced himself to wretch it all up again.
Over.
And over.
And over.
Six more times.
By the seventh time, there was bile at his lips and tears in his eyes. The blood had completely drained from his face. His mouth was numb, his teeth were red, and something
moved in his stomach, akin to the thrum of a newborn heart.
He screamed and fell from his perch, bent fetal with his arms crossing in a hold on his guts.
But as his mouth hung open with piteous whines, Kiriel saw what Juni could not see: the bud of a witchmark at the center of his tongue. It was yet another tongue, small and useless as all graft sensory additions are, grown from the base of his original appendage and lying flat atop it.
It might’ve been missed, had the boy not screamed like that.
Juni’us returned home the next day a grafter, with the hopes of reigning in the spark’s persona to focus on mending flesh instead.
It didn’t work. Not really.
But he never consumed animal flesh again.
Two more arcs went by, and Juni continued down the path of power. Ryl’ee, forever mended, took a husband. As he watched his little sister start her life, he wondered about his own.
“Soon,” Janara had said, but he hadn’t ventured farther than the forest where he first took on attunement.
At the marriage ceremony, where Ryl’ee and Man’nix split their palms and fastened their hands, Juni made a choice. He would leave at the conclusion of the festivities. At twenty-three, he was overdue for exploration, and he had two disciplines to develop on the road.
His going away party was sweet and small. Ryl’ee gifted him the crystal bauble
for luck, and his parents provided enough funds and supplies for the journey. To where? Juni wondered. Perhaps the answer would come in a dream.
He saw Kiriel smiling in his room, and he knew at once she wasn’t really there.
“We always find each other in Emea,” said the other grafter, and the walls of his childhood home melted away to usher them to the road he would travel at morning’s light.
“You remind me of another mage I met once. A very powerful one. His name is Llyr, but I knew him as Zarik.”
Juni’s eyes opened wide. He knew of Llyr – of
course he knew of Llyr. He had heard the stories but…
“Zarik?” Juni rasped out, unfocused on the dreamscape suddenly, completely devoted to whatever Kiriel said next.
“Zarik is Llyr?”
“Well, yes. I believe that is the name he goes by now. Often we are given one name, only to trade it for something more suitable. The last I heard, he was in Etzos.” Kiriel said with a knowing smile.
Had she heard it? In his dreamscape?
“Jacen.”
The next day, Juni’us, son of Kyr’os, made for the road.
And Etzos.
And
Zarik Llyr.
Now: Juni has been living in Etzos for a few seasons now, but he still has yet to find his childhood playmate. He goes by the name Jacen Kyros, the name he's heard countless times in Emea, and a surname as a nod to his father. He chases Llyr through whispers of rumor, utilizing attunement when he can, but still cannot focus on his frequency. All this time, he’s grafted a few flower petals back to their base, mended a few cuts and scrapes. For coin, he works out of his house, reading his mother’s old tarot cards for clients, occasionally spilling into their dreamscapes before sessions to make his interpretations more real.
He didn’t expect on meeting Ziell, but that’s another story.
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