by Rob J. Hayes
"Take them," Aerolis said, holding out a flaming hand. Two crystals, each the size of a grape, fell from the top of the tower, thudding into the sandy ground nearby. "They are yours." The Djinn began to fade, the flames dying down.
"Our dealings are not done, Djinn!" I shouted the words before Aerolis could vanish entirely. I had to stand my ground and demand full payment now or I knew I would never get it. "You promised to teach me how to use them. How to use Sourcery."
"You claimed you already know." A blatant attempt to weasel out of the deal he had struck.
"And you told me I was wrong!" Another step closer and I could feel the heat licking at my skin, causing me to sweat despite the chill air. "I paid too high a price for your promise, Aerolis. There is nothing you can teach me that will be worth the life it cost." Tears in my eyes made the flames an orange blur, but I refused to wipe them away. I let the Djinn see them fall. Let it see what the deal we struck had truly cost me. "But I will be fucked before I let your debt go half paid. You will teach me!"
"Infuriating simpleton!" Aerolis said, his voice was the harsh roar of a fire with too much fuel. "You wish to learn but haven't the mind to understand. And I have not the patience to teach fools beyond their bounds." The fire drew closer to me, and I had the impression that Aerolis was staring into my eyes. "Perhaps there is another way. I see my brothers in your eyes, terran. I see Maratik and Jagran. Shards of them. Pieces of corpses. Memories. Knowledge. Power."
Something is wrong. The Djinn gathers power around it. Run!
I ignored the horror's dire warning. "What are you talking about, Aerolis."
"You wish to learn the true potential of the coffins you carry inside?" Aerolis' burning form drew back from me and lightning crackled around the flames. I should have listened to Ssserakis.
"Yes!"
"Then learn." The Djinn's lightning ripped into my chest.
Aerolis waited on the last of his brothers. Vainfold loved to make them wait. Not a single meeting went past wherein he wasn't the last of them to arrive. All the others were there. All who were left. So few of them yet survived. Only six. Six Djinn, and six Rand. It was foolish, Aerolis knew that, but they couldn't stop. The War Eternal had consumed both his brothers and his sisters, and unless something was done, the world they had taken for their own would soon be free of them once more. A shame, then, that peace was beyond their ability.
There was nothing in the realm of the Djinn. They had constructed that way. It was a void, a place with no form or structure, like the space between the stars. A purposeful design so no brother would hold dominion over any other. They all had their attuned elements, after all. Keratoll, the Learned, felt most comfortable in the rock and stone. The deep bones of the world. After all, the rock was wise and unmoving. The rock remembered all. Geneus, the Guiding Light, was light. He did not burn like fire but shone all the same. Ever the leader, never the voice of reason. Elleral, the Raging Heart, was a torrent of wind that never ceased. Violent and volatile, and never at rest. Elleral counselled battle wherever it could be taken. The strongest voice left who lobbied for such blatant mutual destruction. He had been even worse since the death of Jagran, the Swift. Arnae, the Wheel, preferred to exist within time. There were not many Djinn who felt most comfortable in that state, and Arnae was the last of them. Invisible to all the lesser creatures, they went without worship as anything more than abstract concepts. Predictable as ever, Arnae counselled patience. Wait, wait, wait. Always wait.
A fire bloomed in the void as Vainfold, the Eternal, made his appearance. A raging vortex of fire that burned with such foolish grandeur. Vainfold loved the fire. It made him feel important and powerful. But here, in the realm of the Djinn, they were all equal. Each voice counted, no more than any other, and each opinion would be heard before any decisions were made. Of course, hearing an opinion and listening to it were ever two different things.
"Were you waiting on me, brothers?" Vainfold asked, his voice a crackling hiss of flame.
"We are always waiting on you, Vainfold," Arnae said. He kept track of such things. Each moment in time memorised. He liked to say the future and the past were the same thing, fixed points along a fluid line that was more circle than line, except for when it wasn't. No one understood the inner workings of time like Arnae, and none of those left alive cared enough to try.
"I'm here now. But why?"
Aerolis changed his form, liquid bubbling up around him even as the rock fell away. He coalesced the form into a series of spherical bubbles of water, orbiting around each other. The others were mired to their forms, locked into the elements they felt most comfortable in, but Aerolis was different. Every form he tried felt right at first but constricting after a while. Some of the others mocked him for lack of consistency, but he felt his fluid nature to be a boon. He could see all sides of the conflict, just as he could take any form he wished.
"Something has changed," Aerolis said, his voice tinkling like a forest brook.
"Nothing has changed." Elleral rarely listened to others, instead he blustered over them and buffeted them into his way of thinking.
"Aerolis is right," Geneus seared the words into existence rather than spoke them. Whenever he said something, the others listened. He gave them no choice. "I could feel it after we lost Jagran, and then again after Ferinfal. We are losing our strength."
There followed a kind of silence that could only settle in the void of the Djinn realm. A true absence of sound. Even Vainfold's flames and Elleral's rushing winds muted.
Arnae broke the silence. "We were always so much stronger together. Linked as one, as hundreds, as one. Together we could move mountains, make them fly. Together we could will another world into existence, but each death shears us a little. With each death, power is lost."
"We've known this for a long time, brothers," Vainfold crackled. "The laws of Ovaeris link us to each other as they link us to our sisters. As we grow weaker, so do they. There has never been a better time to strike."
"Killing them kills us," Aerolis said. His argument was ever lost on the deaf ears of his more aggressive brothers.
"But they must be destroyed for their arrogance!" Elleral said. "Their mockery cannot be unpunished."
"Your punishment would destroy both our people." Arnae's voice sounded like the inevitability of time's slow advance.
"Then we imprison them," said Vainfold.
Old arguments were recycled. Failed plans brought up once more, as though their failure was from a lack of execution rather than a lack of knowledge. Too many of Aerolis' brothers were fools who couldn't see the truth in front of them. Too many could not understand that the road to victory lay not through violence, but through peace. The only way they could win was by not winning.
"A pocket realm could work," Arnae agreed though without his usual conviction. "But there is no way to convince our sisters to enter it."
"We should send them to Sevoari," Elleral said. "Let them wallow amidst the mockeries they created."
"We can no longer access Sevoari," Geneus' voice again seared itself into the void, and all stopped to listen. "This is the change Aerolis discovered. With the death of Jagran and Ferinfal, Sevoari has moved beyond our reach."
"Madness!" Vainfold crackled and then fell silent, his form wavering only slightly. It did not take long for him to see the truth. His flames intensified in panic. The others tried as well, with identical results. The Djinn were no longer strong enough to reach Sevoari. The world they had created, the world the Rand had corrupted, was beyond their grasp.
Even in the void of their realm, the Djinn became erratic. Fire crackled, earth rumbled, wind howled. It was all just a speck of noise and sound and time amidst a sea of nothing. Their realm was crafted that way for a reason.
"What do we do?" Elleral was, as always, the most vocal of his brothers.
"Are we stuck here?" Vainfold asked.
"We could open a portal," Arnae said.
"NO!" Geneus again sea
red the command into the void. "We cannot open portals, brothers. It would find us and send us all back. I will not be trapped again." Geneus turned his attention to each of the Djinn in turn. Even Vainfold bowed under the pressure of such scrutiny. The void was created so all the brothers would be equal, but by sheer force of will, Geneus would never be equal. Still, he was not nearly adaptable enough to survive the change that was coming.
"I have an option." Aerolis had considered his best time to strike, and it was now. Now, when his brothers were weakest. Now, when they were lost in their panic. Now, before even Geneus could convince them of another path. All attention turned to him and almost he faltered. Almost. "We can still enter our pocket realms." The void was a realm within the world, not without. Unlike Sevoari, it did not need reaching. It ever existed, close at hand. "And in our realms, we are safe from the laws of Ovaeris."
"I will not hide here for eternity, coward!" Elleral howled.
"We do not need to hide here, but we do need to hide. Some of us. At least until it is over."
"What are you saying, brother?" Keratoll, the Learned, would probably be the toughest to convince. It was in his nature to resist movement and change. In was in his nature to resist Aerolis.
"Here in our own realms, there are no rules but those we design," Aerolis said. "We are free of consequence. If the Rand die while we are here, we will be free from the bond that takes us with them."
"But there is no way to kill the Rand while we are here. Our power does not stretch outside these boundaries." There was greed in Vainfold's tone. Desire. Hope for a way to break the rules. He always did love to cheat.
"By proxy, there is," Aerolis said, tightening the noose. "Our sisters have given us the very tools we need. By trying to save themselves, they have created creatures who are sensitive to our power. These Sourcerers…"
"Aberrations!" Geneus' word seared into life between them all.
"Yes," Keratoll agreed in a grinding of rock. "They absorb our dead and use them to steal our power." For the Djinn who prided himself on knowledge, Keratoll knew so little.
"But they can be useful," Aerolis said. It was easier than pointing out where his brothers were wrong. "When they come in contact with one of our pocket realms, it is possible for us to usurp control of their bodies, while remaining safely inside our own worlds. Free from the consequences of Ovaeris' rules, but still able to influence it." He let the possibility sink in for a few moments before continuing. In these moments, Aerolis saw his brothers stepping willingly into the trap he and Mezula had laid. "They act as conduits for our power."
"This will work?" Elleral howled into the void. Glory and hope mixed together to form a torrent of wind that would have torn forests away had there been anything besides nothing surrounding them. "We can destroy our sisters for good and then emerge from our realms to gloat." Of course, Elleral could think of nothing but gloating over those too dead to care.
"It is not enough." Of course, Geneus saw the flaw in the plan. "No conduit can transfer power without loss. There are some rules beyond the world. They are written in the fabric of the greater. Without our full power, we cannot hope to defeat our sisters."
Mezula had seen the argument coming, and Aerolis had provided the answer. "Then, we will turn their other tools against them. The creatures they created, the ones they call terrans and pahht and tahren. We can teach them to make weapons from our prison. Weapons that can kill the Rand. We arm them and send them against their own creators."
Elleral laughed, a booming gust of wind. "I love it. Just as they perverted our creation, so we will do to theirs."
Keratoll let out a grumble of stone. "If these weapons can kill our sisters, they can also kill us."
"Once we have killed the last of the Rand, it will be simple to take those weapons away from such lesser creatures" Aerolis said. "They are no threat to us. And we will rule Ovaeris, free of our sister's influence."
Arnae did not appear convinced. The workings of time ground within his form. Geneus, too, was uncertain. Geneus was always uncertain when the plan was not his. They needed a push. "We must put this plan into action, brothers," Aerolis said. "We lose power with every death. We are strongest together, working in concert. With only six of us remaining, we can no longer reach Sevoari. Our own world is lost to us. How long before we cannot even reach our pocket realms? The longer we wait, the more we assure our own destruction."
All attention turned to Geneus. Regardless of the time or place, he would always be the leader. No one had chosen him as such, he had just assumed the mantle, and none were left to challenge him. However, even the Guiding Light could be led where Aerolis wanted, as long as he closed off enough of the other paths. He and Mezula had planned for everything.
When I came to, I had no idea how much time had passed. It has always been the way when I absorb memories through Arcmancy. At times, no more than a moment has passed, at others, entire days may have been lost to me. I think, perhaps, it is determined by the source of the memories, or perhaps by the way they are drawn out. It is not a study I have ever put much thought into. But Aerolis was gone. I sat in front of the great tower of Do'shan, its rotating light still gazing out over the city, and I was alone save for the horror.
"Did you see those memories as well?" I asked.
Yes. How?
"I don't know." The fact that Aerolis was gone convinced me of one thing, though. The Djinn considered his debt paid. He had promised to teach me how to use Sources to their full potential, and somehow those memories were the key.
They conspired together. Ssserakis sounded unsure, as though the very idea of it was beyond comprehension. I suppose it was, in many ways. For as long as anyone had been alive, the Rand and Djinn had been at war. Only they themselves remembered a time where there was peace. And yet the proof was in Aerolis' own memories. He and Mezula had conspired to be the last of the Rand and Djinn. Yet they still fight. They still try to kill each other. They still hate each other.
"I need to know more." The words were as much for myself as for Ssserakis. It was not just the obvious, as Ssserakis had seen. There were answers hidden within the memories the Djinn had shared with me. I now knew how Aerolis and Mezula had ended up the last of the Rand and Djinn. I knew why and how the surviving Djinn had ended up trapped in their pocket realms. But the answers posed yet more questions. First and foremost on my mind was how those memories could teach me to use Sourcery more effectively? But I also longed to know where and how the Djinn had once been trapped? Why had Aerolis and Mezula conspired to kill the last of their siblings, and why did the peace between them end?
Aerolis will not willingly give you more. Do not offer him any more deals, Eskara. You have already been cheated twice.
"Maybe there's another way. There's one other person here who might know the truth."
He cannot remember his own yesterdays; we cannot trust him to remember the truth.
I stood and scooped the two Sources from the ground. Necromancy and Impomancy. I now held all the magic I was attuned to. Not since the fall of Orran had I had access to so much power. And if I could just unlock the secrets that Aerolis had shared with me, I would know the truth of how to use it as well.
Send me home, Eskara. My shadow rippled with the words in my head. Ssserakis' excitement eclipsed its desire to learn the truth with me. I could feel the tug, trying to pull us both out of my body and back to the Other World.
"No." I resisted, faintly at first, my mind still a whirl.
What?
"I said NO!" I clamped down on the horror, trapping it inside of me. My shadow stopped rippling and settled back to the flat, natural darkness.
You promised me! We made a deal in the darkness. I stop killing your people, and you would send me home.
Truth is ever a tougher thing to swallow than lies. The horror had been with me all this time under false pretence. It was time for Ssserakis to learn the truth. "I don't know how to send you home, Ssserakis. I never did."
>
I expected the horror to rage inside, the equivalent of destroying a room in a fit of anger. I braced myself for it, ready to contain the anger and violence. What happened was far worse. Silence. Cold silence. Nothing. I looked inside and I felt no presence of the horror. Ssserakis was still there, but it had withdrawn, coiled itself into a tight ball around my heart. I shivered, cold spreading through me despite the flame of Pyromancy I carried inside. My breath misted, and then it didn't, which was even worse. Fear stabbed at me and my heart beat faster, but even then, the cold grew worse.
"Stop it." My hands were shaking, shivering, my teeth chattering as I forced the words out through numb lips. I had always felt the cold inside, ever since taking Ssserakis in, but this was different. This was the cold it had surrounded me with down in the Pit the day I first encountered it. "Ssserakis, stop! Please." I had to force the words out, and still the cold deepened inside.
I reached out with a trembling hand, the flesh an unhealthy pale blue, and with a gesture I opened a portal. I didn't even bother to give it a destination, and all it showed on the other side was nothing. Black and black and more black, the occasional twinkle of light, possibly a star. And then, in the farthest distance, somewhere beyond anything we recognized as distance, an eye blinked and rolled toward us. The creature from beyond the portals, the same one even the Djinn had feared, and its attention fixed on us.
For a time, we stood there, Ssserakis and I, both on the edge of oblivion. The equivalent of holding a knife to each other's throats. The horror could kill me from the inside. It could lower my body temperature to the point where I would just stop, or feed my heart so much fear it would burst. But I could kill it too. Ssserakis knew the touch of the creature from beyond the portals. It knew that thing would pick it apart to learn the truth of it. Every moment we stood together on that precipice, the monster drew closer. My fear and Ssserakis' mingled until neither of us could tell whose were whose. I suppose it no longer mattered.