The Soul.
Hours after Darnath and Gentil had given Jackary the box he had asked for, the Mage snuck into his newly appointed room at Flynn's estate. He sat on the bed and stared at the familiar carvings, the engraving that he had done himself so many ages ago it seemed. There the box sat on the bed before him and yet all he could do was stare.
Blue fire... The Orc said he saw blue fire...
With a deep, cautious inhale, fingers reached forward from their curious caress along the wood and began to flick the bindings to unlock the intricate design, pushing the lid open ever so slowly. Within the dark room that Jack sat in, the light source that came from the opening container was nearly blinding. The item inside, however...
It stole Jack's very breath.
His heart skipped a beat when eyes began to adjust to the sight of something so dear, so precious to him that he could barely function. Beating within the box was indeed the blue flame that everyone had spoken of; the warmth radiated around the male as each flicker of his own rapidly sped up heartbeat seemed to follow the rhythm of the object in the box.
"Why...?" He questioned under his breath while tears began to form. "Why did you throw it away...?" As Jack spoke to what seemed like no one in particular, hands cupped the glimmering light, hoisting the warm sphere from it's resting spot. He struggled to breathe once it was within his touch... His grasp... It was right there.
"Why did you put it in a box.... Where did you go...?" He tried to reason with logic as the half of his soul that he had given to his previous mate sat there within his palms, still beating and still very much alive. He'd been filled with doubt for days and now that he had Kaarasu's half of him returned, something inside of him began to crack and break, shattering into nothing more than broken pieces.
"You would have never been so careless... Never so cruel, no matter what anyone said... Why, Kar.... Why would you ever just leave like this...? Were you keeping it safe for me? Were you taken away or did you leave on your own..?" Jack swallowed hard, not even bothering to hold back his frown or tears that had already started to drip down his cheeks. Guilt saturated his entire being.
Perhaps Jackary should have closed the door completely as he softly sobbed and leaned in, holding a gift that had meant the world to his own species to give. His Raven was gone and it was something that he could never get back. Not in this world. He didn't care if anyone watched him do it, he didn't care that there could have been spies feasting their gaze on the Magister's wounded secret.
With choked back noises of pain, Jack finally brought the flame closer to himself and then up to his mouth. To swallow such a thing was excruciating, he nearly choked on it. So.... He thought, this is why we only give it once...
When the two halves rejoined deep within his body, he allowed his hand to hover over his glowing chest, the scene that radiated within him was enough to light up his entire form within the darkness, pulsing with his fickle heart. His chokes struggled further and airways restricted while his body was finally repairing itself, rejecting the part of the Magister that was simply no more.
What began to bellow from his parted lips had been a mist of white essence and with each passing second, the more he breathed and choked out, the more it began to form into a sphere of white flames. When all was said and done, tear-filled eyes came face to face with the last of Jackary's innocence hovering in front of him. The dimmed light struggled to stay alive.
"I understand.... What I have to do to assure that you do not succumb to such a dark fate... Tainted as I am... You are still pure.... Hang in there..." Through sniffles and struggling limbs, crashing noises came from Jack's room while he tried to assure he had everything. His rune-laced tome that served as a diary was flipped open, pages flicked until they revealed the correct page he desired.
Other items clanked as they were spread onto the bed. Runestones, a vial of glowing sand, a raven's feather and other such trinkets started to litter the cleaned sheets. "Just a bit longer..." He murmured and with a cautious, graceful wave of his hand, he summoned the white essence to the center of the collection.
Eyes gazed over the sketches and words on the paper until he flicked to the next page, his shaken hands nearly ripped part of the page on accident. "... H-Here...." Uncorking the vial of shimmering sands, it was littered into a runic pattern, flawless in design to match that on the page.
"The Sands of Time to control the fate..."
Runestones of each element were put into place, instantly lighting up when the smooth pebbles made contact with the granules.
"Each element summoned to bind the gate..."
The Raven's feather was settled against the center of the forming rune symbol, hardly even caring if the lights had begun to flicker in the house from the powerful arcane that was surrounding his room.
"A Raven's feather on winds doth roam..."
As the incantation rendered a swirling vortex to finally open up such a powerful gate, the magic and effort alone lit up the dragon's eyes in a wild emerald glow. It took everything he had to finally escort the last of the white purity of his own body to coil around the feather that had succumbed to vertically hover within the center.
"With final memory... Take thee home."
The sounds of the portal howled through the room, muffled by surprisingly thin walls. He watched while the feather soak in the white glimmer before it turned as snowy as an owl's, pure as the first Winter's day. Within the vortex of the Sands of Time, Jackary swallowed hard when the items he had held onto long enough and for so long finally faded into the nothingness, vanishing inside the portal Jack had spent years on with research. Such a grand design had been meant to take Jackary from the world he was now stuck in. It was his final ticket to where he had once desired to go.
When the lights of the portal started to fade, it left the Mage with an empty feeling deep within himself. He sat there, staring at the mess of runes and sand that were all burned and black. All of his conjuring, all of his spell collecting and research... It was true. It had been a one-time deal. For the life of him.... He couldn't remember why he had just made a mess on the bed.
Through the threads of fate and time, a snowy raven's feather flickered around the portal, retracing each and every step the Mage ever took to get him to where he was. Each fight, each spell cast, each visit to the Spirit Healer and soon, the feather pulled away from Jackary's timeline and latched onto something or someone else's. The feather was going home to the winds it belonged to.
Upon it... Jackary's memories and now lost innocence.
To save himself and those around him, he had saved a dying part of his inner being. He was now whole again and he had hoped that whatever the purpose of the spell he had just conjured was worked... For everyone's sake. Fingers reached up to rub at his eyes firmly, wanting to wave away the strange stinging.
He couldn't understand why he had been crying.
