And if they vanished because they were dead, wouldn't that mean that the Breaking happened because too many Sorcerers died at the same time, so many that their loss weakened the Weave to such a point where it could no longer supply the magical energy that the magicians and priests and magical objects demanded from it?
You fool! If you destroy us, you destroy yourself!
The voice seemed to echo through the Weave, echo from a time and place distant from him, like a memory of a dream. A memory of the past.
The Tower of Dreams has been destroyed! Thousands are dead!
The Conduit at the Tower of Dreams has broken! The shock of it destroyed the Tower of Stars!
Mikan, you fool, don't you understand? The Weave can't survive this! It's going to tear!
Where were the voices coming from? They echoed through the Weave, like whispers from the past. Were they truly the voices of the Ancients, still drifting along the currents of magic for a thousand years? Or were they merely shades of the past, conjured by his own imagination?
We have no choice, Keeper! We must flee to the Lost City. You know what's going to happen, and who will they blame?
The Sui'Kun! a ragged cry called. The Sui'Kun are dying, Keeper! Their hearts are bursting like balloons!
Voices. More and more of them surrounded him, whispered and screamed and howled and cajoled and pleaded and demanded and begged and growled and beseeched and-
Too many!
They seemed to boil up from the strands, boil out of the Weave like bubbles from a boiling pot, assaulting his ears, all of them at once. Too many for him to hear any one voice, too many to make sense of anything that any of them said. They got louder and louder, as if they were vying to get his attention, trying to drown one another out. Louder and louder, more and more demanding, all of them murmuring in his ears, turning into a chaotic cacophony that threatened to drive him insane, pounded in his ears, pounded into the core of him like a spike being hammered into his brain.
"N-No," Tarrin grumbled, trying to push the voices away. "I can't understand you! You're hurting me!"
The voices only got louder and louder, a thundering roar that made him feel like his head was going to explode.
"No, stop! Stop, you're killing me! Stop!
STOOOOOOOPPPPPPPPPP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! "
The blackness flashed, and then he felt himself tumbling down through the endless void, felt it as something inside him pulled himself away from the voices before they destroyed him. The blackness flashed, and then there was an explosion of light before his eyes-
– -and he was clawing himself up to his feet, shrieking at the top of his lungs for them to stop, cold sweat drenching him in a sudden wave that made him feel cold. Panting heavily, his eyes seemed blurry, uncertain, and then they focused on the sun-baked expanses of the Desert of Swirling Sands, adjusting once again to the light of the sun. A moment of panic washed over him, but he realized he was back in the desert, he was back and safe, and there were no more voices. The voices were gone, leaving him with a pounding headache.
He flopped down onto his back onto the stone, panting heavily and trying to sort through the myriad of voices, trying to remember what he heard before they tried to drown him in their pain. What horror! Not just the words, but the emotions of those who had placed those voices in the Weave shivered through him, and an abject terror of an entire world seemingly going mad was the main core that unified them in his mind. They had all been terrified, shocked. It began to come back to him. Was that what had really happened? Had an attack of some kind at one Tower caused a Conduit to tear, which destroyed the Tower at the other end of that Conduit? And had the loss of so many Sorcerers, thousands of them, caused the Weave to weaken under its burden, and then finally tear in what most people knew as the Breaking?
He put his paw over his face as he got his breathing back under control. He heard Sarraya's buzzing wings a second before she called out to him in concern and fear. "Tarrin, what happened?" she asked quickly, coming up close to his head. "Your ears are bleeding!" she gasped.
He could feel it now. The warmth flowing into his hair, oozing out of his ears. It had been more real than just a hallucination. It had been real.
He sat up, causing her to have to move out of his way, finally feeling the wild emotions and terror flow out of him. Those were not his emotions. They were shades, memories of a past horror so powerful that they had been branded into the magic of the Weave for all time. They were ghosts from the past, and they couldn't harm him now.
"Sarraya," he said a bit wildly. "I could hear them!"
"Hear what?"
"Voices from the past," he told her. "Voices from the Breaking. They're still in the Weave, Sarraya, echoing inside it for a thousand years, echoing until the end of time. So many!"
"Well, let's not dwell on that right now," she said, and he felt her touch her Druidic magic. She put her hands on one of his ears, and felt her magic urge the bleeding to cease. Somehow, some way, the wounds didn't immediately heal. "Did you make any progress?"
"I… I think so," he replied. "I didn't find my power, but I did come into contact with the Weave, somehow. I can't explain it."
"I don't think I'd understand if you did," she said seriously. "What did the voices say?" she asked curiously.
"The Breaking happened because something terrible happened, so terrible that it made a Conduit break. Some kind of an attack on a Tower. It destroyed the Tower, and the broken Conduit destroyed the Tower at the other end. So many Sorcerers died that it weakened the Weave, weakened it to the point where it couldn't support the magical demands placed on it, so it ripped. Sarraya, the Sorcerers didn't cause the Breaking. Whoever attacked that Tower did," he said seriously.
"How could that happen? Why would the Weave tear if too many Sorcerers died?"
"Sorcerers are the Weave," he told her. "Without Sorcerers, there would be no Weave. The Goddess grants the power, but it's the Sorcerers that draw it out from the Heart. The more Sorcerers there are, the more power gets drawn, and the more magic there is that comes into the world. The more magical demands on the Weave, the more Sorcerers have to be alive to sustain it."
Sarraya gave him a very long, very penetrating look. "Tarrin, what you just said, you can never repeat it," she said in a voice so serious, so grim, that it took him aback. "Do you understand me?"
"Sarraya-"
" Do you understand me?" she said fiercely.
"I-alright," he said, uncertain in the face of such vociferousness from the usually capricious Faerie. "Why?"
"Because you just said the one thing that shouldn't be known," she said in a hiss. "If people knew what you just said, the entire world would be in danger."
"You knew?"
"Of course I knew!" she said in a heated voice.
"Then why did you ask?"
"To see if you knew," she said in a muted tone. "If certain people knew what you just said, and given how few of you there are right now, do you see why it's so very important for that not to be common knowledge?"
He looked into her eyes, and understood immediately. Sorcerers were rare. In all but a very few kingdoms, they were reviled as the bringers of the Breaking. They had to travel with Knights for their own protection from ignorant mobs of peasants who believed that Sorcerers were really witches. If someone knew that the Weave depended on Sorcerers, they could conceivably kill off so many that the current Weave would collapse into another Breaking.
"How did you know that, Sarraya?" he asked in surprise.
"I'm a Druid, Tarrin," she said in a hiss. "And I've been along a long time. I know alot more than you think I know." She flitted back a little, and composure returned to her. "Are you feeling alright? Ready to move?"
"I think so," he told her. "I'm just a little overwhelmed, that's all."