by Vic Connor
Aremos channels the energy which has been roiling around him in his rage, putting it to good use. He pours a little White Fire into his shielding, causing a nimbus of glowing flame to undulate around his body. Asba flinches away, her sword bouncing from Aremos’ shield with a shower of sparks. Sah halts his charge and backs off a few feet, his demonic form flickering and his health bar lowering a little under the White Fire’s influence.
Aremos turns his attention to Asba as she comes in for the attack, her blade moving elegantly as she readies a few combos. He sheaths his own sword and grips his staff two-handed—there is no way his own blade will hold up to starmetal for very long, where the Staff of Adamant will go on forever. He has about half of his magical power left before he’ll need to either rest or take a draft of potion. Asba flicks her blade, cutting toward him, lashing at his shielding as he parries until it begins to weaken. The feedback begins to hurt him more and more, until finally her sword starts to break through and he has to fight in earnest.
She moves fast, preternaturally so. For every strike he manages to parry, two more get through, decreasing his health bar even through the Silverthread armor. There’s no way he can fight her for long, and there’s no way he can land a blow himself—she’s just too skillful. She leaps over him, backflipping and kicking him in the head before slicing his back with her sword. He can see Eirrac at the side, jogging in with her axe in hand even as Sah lunges forward, free to move now that Aremos’ White Fire shield starts to falter.
“No,” Aremos mutters, drawing into himself. He allows Asba to attack him freely, cutting through his new armor. He allows Sah and Eirrac to approach to nearly within striking distance as he concentrates, lining up the right spells, putting his rage into a flurry of charges to be unleashed to devastating effect. When he looks up, Asba sees what is about to happen and swears, lowering her sword as she attempts to put up a counter spell.
Quickly, Aremos holds up his hand and releases his Lightning Storm, pouring it fully into Asba. Her counter spell shatters immediately, no match against such a superior caster. She shudders and flies backward six feet, landing in a stunned fetal position, smoking lightly and twitching with the current. Meanwhile, a couple of jagged lines of lightning hit Eirrac, halting her advance as they spark and judder around her chainmail, causing her to drop to her knees.
Sah is unaffected, however. Not much hits him, and what does get to him is eaten up by his own natural defense. But you’re easy to deal with, demon, Aremos thinks, turning on him with his next spells coming to the fore. He puts up a quick, inelegant shield between the tip of his own staff and Sah himself, leaving the rest of his body exposed yet not in danger as his other opponents struggle to recover from his last assault. Sah’s axes catch against the shield and sparks fly. The force still knocks Aremos back a couple of feet as Sah’s incredible strength pushes onward. As the fire demon comes in for a second attack, Aremos thrusts his staff forward and focuses his attention on a gout of White Fire.
It blossoms from the orb at the Staff of Adamant’s head, washing over Sah, mixing its own crackling with his natural flame. Sah screeches, pained and enraged, and pivots on the spot, pirouetting as he tries to throw off the fire he knows he can’t shake. He retreats, stumbling, smoking, as his form changes and the fire demon disappears, leaving a burnt, angry-looking lank man with little health remaining—Sah the changeling, reverted back to his human form.
Aremos swipes his hand in mid-air, buffeting Sah with a blow from a few meters away. His magical attack hits his old comrade in the back, knocking him over to land in the snow.
Eirrac stands, hefting her axe in her hands, swinging it in a wide arc, but Aremos has the upper hand. He has the luxury of time now that they’re all separated and wounded. He’s able to cast whatever spells he wants, though nothing much is needed anymore. He turns to face Eirrac, reaches his thoughts out to her, stretches out his hands—and golden, glowing chains fly forward, binding around her arms and legs, pulling them together so that she falls, entrapped. He looks back over his shoulder to Sah, who’s struggling to his feet. Aremos curses him, opening a great wound in his chest which comes close to putting him out of action altogether.
Then, smiling, Aremos looks around at what he has just achieved.
Sah is kneeling in the snow, bleeding heavily and fighting for consciousness. Eirrac is bound and trussed, unable to move as her axe lies uselessly on the ground next to her. Asba is still in pain, seething, her health bar dangerously low.
“Now, tell me,” Aremos demands, standing over them all. “What did I do that was so terrible you’ve been avoiding me all these weeks?”
“You lied to us,” Eirrac whispers.
“What? When?” Aremos asks, shocked. He’s genuinely surprised by the response. “When did I lie to you?”
“You didn’t tell us you were applying for the scholarship… You never said you wanted to become a Maker.” Sah groans.
“Why should I have?” Aremos asks. “And anyway, I didn’t tell you otherwise. I stayed quiet and never said what I would do with the winnings.”
“It’s a lie of omission, then,” Asba says, her voice croaking. She looks up, climbing to her hands and knees. “All the attention you’re getting … all of it together, you have gone … stopped being our friend, humble Aremos… You are becoming, have become … something else.”
“What are you talking about? What else have I become?” Aremos asks.
“You have ideas too big for yourself,” Sah tells him. “We never knew you had such ambition.”
“Or such arrogance,” Eirrac adds.
“I’m not—” Aremos begins, but Asba cuts him off.
“You are. You’re arrogant. You enjoy all the attention you’re getting. And that attention eclipses us…” she explains. “And … and all the new powers, the new gear… You’re too powerful for the lower levels that we enjoy, it’s no fun to play beside you anymore.”
“Yeah,” Sah agrees. His bleeding has slowed, but he’s ashen-faced and his health bar is glowing red, down to just ten percent. “That thing with the orc encampment was kind of cool, even kind of fun. But if that’s how you fight now, it makes everything so easy—it would have taken twice their number to be a challenge. You don’t belong with us; you have no place adventuring in our warband.”
“We all thought it best,” Asba finishes. “Best for everyone if you just stayed away from us. You do your own thing, we do ours.”
“But we…” Aremos starts, faltering. Despite himself, he’s close to tears. “We are… We were friends. Why did you not just tell me, why were you not honest?”
“I don’t know.” Sah shrugs shakily. “And anyway, we’re not friends. We’re comrades, we’re a warband. But without a fight, without reasonable missions because you make it all so easy, what are we? We could go for bigger stuff, but the three of us could never keep up—we would be relying on you too much to fight for us. So, we’re nothing, really. You’re nothing to us.”
Aremos has had enough. His emotions get the better of him, his rage and his sadness welling up within him, mixing with the last of the magical power left unspent. He grabs his flask, downs it all, and buckles as the rush of power hits him. Soon, he finds himself at maximum capacity, facing a trio of defeated warriors, two of whom are close to death.
He disappears within himself and searches for a new spell he has wanted for a while. He buys it, equips it, and reawakens, looking down at his former companions as they writhe in the snow. His staff glows, his eyes shine—and they all look terrified, none of them quite sure what this new Aremos is capable of. Aremos himself knows what will come next, however, and he begins the spell, stretching out his hand as a blue nimbus surrounds him.
The nimbus needs to find a magical item. The spell is The Unforging, and it can work on a single item of any power level. He casts it over Eirrac’s weapons, her axe and her autocannon, and he casts it over Asba’s new gear, her starmetal sword and her ring of power. Finally, he
casts it over Sah, searching for something good. It shows him Sah’s weapons: a set of obsidian hand axes and a single, two-handed axe of an unknown demonic material, all available to Sah in his fire demon form, as well as a set of metal claws for his bear and an array of curved, evil-looking blades available to the gorgon. Aremos knows that Sah is most fond of the gorgon’s weapons, despite the novelty of the demon’s equipment, so he considers a set of scimitars, wrapping them in the blue nimbus before refocusing his vision on the battlefield and staring down at his old companions.
Of everything he has seen, though, Asba’s new ring remains the most appealing, the most damaging.
“Let it be done,” he whispers.
Asba shrieks in pain as the blue light surrounds her hand. The ring glows hot and shatters, releasing a ball of magical power so strong that it rips the elf’s hand to pieces, scattering her fingers. Asba passes out with the pain even as she cradles her ruined hand to her chest, falling unconscious in the snow.
“If you want to break with the past, so be it,” Aremos says. “You can find your feet from the beginning, without your favorite toy, without the means to fight as you once did. You want a challenge and I grant you your wish. You have nothing left now but humble steel… There will be no caster in your midst until you find something else with which to channel.”
Finally, knowing what the conditions of this icy mountain range mean, Aremos points his staff at Sah. A portal opens around him. Aremos randomizes the other end of the portal, not knowing where his old friend will be banished to, and not caring into what situation and in what shape he might fall. All he knows is that without Sah’s demon fire to aid them or the ability to cast wards of protection, the other two will die of exposure before long.
“You make your own way down from here,” he says to Eirrac as he withdraws the chains binding her in place. “Without Sah’s power, I don’t fancy your chances.” Then, he closes his eyes and vanishes, reversing his manifestation as his spirit returns to the child Somera, sobbing in the world beyond worlds.
Regret fills Somera’s entire being. The plane reappears before her and she blinks, suddenly engaging once more with the world around her. There’s a deep pit in her stomach, growing as the minutes pass and she thinks on what she has just done.
Did I do the right thing? she wonders.
No, she tells herself, you did not.
Had she waited until they were between levels on the quest, or had she tried to find them back in their usual tavern where they were relaxing, Somera could have just had Aremos approach them calmly for a conversation. She could have asked them what they were doing, why they were excluding her, and then she could have waited patiently while they told her everything that was wrong.
Then, we could have talked it out, she thinks. Perhaps, perhaps…
But there’s too much roiling within her at the moment. She was unleashing it on her old warband who, whilst deserving what she did to them—in her mind, a least—were unwittingly taking the brunt of all the stress and pain she has been feeling of late. The regret extends far beyond Aremos and his warband. The fear and the sadness permeate everything so that hurt feelings in-game turn all too soon to uncontrollable rage. As she sits alone in her seat—on an airplane taking her farther and farther from her home, from her parents, from her life with every passing second—Somera feels the regret all too keenly.
It is a mistake, she thinks. Going to America, enrolling in a foreign school when there are so many good ones at home… And to study how to make video games, of all things! She has told her parents that she’ll be studying programming and coding, which is true—these things will be central to the curriculum—but it’s a deception. They don’t know she’ll be learning it so as to make games. They don’t know that alongside computer script writing, she’ll also be studying dramatic script writing; that alongside learning how to speak the language of computers, she’ll be learning how to create worlds woven from that language. It’s all so ridiculous that she doesn’t know what to think, how to frame it in her own mind…
And now she has left home, the only home she has ever known, for the cold darkness of the unknown in a land not her own. As these thoughts swirl around her head, Somera realizes that she has begun to cry. She isn’t sobbing, she isn’t wailing or even sniffling. She’s sitting perfectly still as the tears run down her cheeks, silent and loaded with unspoken fears.
The kindly-looking man in the next seat turns to face her, smiling. “Oh, my dear,” he says. “You really are not doing so well, are you?”
Somera tries to answer, to brush him off as politely as possible, but when she looks at the man, she sees that he’s holding out a couple of tissues for her. His smile is as warm as her own father’s and he’s about the same age and, as soon as she sees the tissues, the tears come ever more quickly. All she can do is shake her head and accept his offer. She takes the tissues and wipes her cheeks dry. She dabs at her eyes with the corner of a tissue and then blows her nose. Then, she blinks away the tears that threaten to take the place of the ones she has just dealt with and breathes deeply, trying to settle herself.
After a minute or two in which she collects and calms herself, the kindly-looking man says, “That’s better, dear. Whatever is coming can’t be so bad, can it?”
“No,” she agrees, returning his smile with a wavering one of her own. “Not so bad at all. But it’s what I’m leaving that makes it so hard.”
“Ah.” The man smiles, understanding. “You’re leaving home for the first time?”
Somera nods.
“To go to school, I suppose?”
Again, she nods.
“Well, then, it’s worth it,” the kind man tells her. “Whatever heartbreak visits you, however hard the separation might be, you’re getting your education. That is worth nearly any sacrifice.” He shrugs. “So, even if it’s hard, at least you will know you’re doing the right thing.”
“But what if I am not?” Somera asks, struggling to keep the fear from her voice.
“How would you not be?”
“What if I’m going to study a silly subject?” Somera asks him. “What if it’s not what I should be devoting my life to?”
“Do you think that the subject is silly—or does someone else?” the man asks.
“Well…” She isn’t sure how to answer his question.
“What do your parents think of it?”
“They don’t know … not fully, not exactly what I will be studying,” she admits.
“Okay, well…” The kind man sighs. “What would they think?”
“That…” She falters, wondering what, indeed, they might think. “Well, they’d say it was silly. They might still support me… My papa, for sure. But they’d think me foolish.”
“And what do you think?” the man continues. “Do you think it is silly?”
“No,” she says, understanding for the first time how strongly she has always felt about it. “No, I don’t think it’s silly at all. To me, the subject is the only one worth studying. I… I can’t imagine myself doing anything else, to be honest.”
“Well, there you are, then,” the man says, triumphantly, as though he has just won a minor bet. “If it’s the only thing that makes sense to you, then this journey, by proxy, is the only journey that makes sense to you. And you cannot argue with that, my dear. You cannot deny yourself the only way of life that suits you.”
“Yes.” She nods, a small smile quivering on her lips. “I think perhaps you’re right.”
“Glad to hear it,” the kindly man says. He extends his hand and she takes it, shaking. “I’m Faisal, by the way,” he tells her.
“I’m Somera,” she replies. “It’s nice to meet you. Thank you for your kindness.”
“It’s nice to meet you, too, Somera,” Faisal says. “And the kindness was a pleasure to give.”
They spend the next hour or so talking. Faisal looks a little weary. His rather weak chin is covered in a fine gray stubble and his eye
s are slightly reddened. “Work has been getting on top of me lately,” he confesses. “It has worn me a little thin, I’m afraid.” He also tells her he’s from Islamabad, originally, but his family moved to America when he was a child. “And I cried when we left Pakistan, too,” he admits. “It’s a hard thing to do, saying goodbye to your home.”
“But you had your family?” Somera asks.
“Oh, yes, but only some of them,” he replies. “My mother and father, my brother and sisters. Oh yes. But my grandparents and my uncles and my cousins were all back there, and I had no idea how long it would be until I saw them again. I had never been more than a few days without seeing all of them, mind, and now my life would go on without them.”
“How did you cope?” Somera asks.
Faisal leans in and smiles ruefully. “I sulked,” he tells her conspiratorially. “At seven years old, I sulked and sulked for days on end. We were in Florida, a brand-new place, a bright new horizon, and I just stayed shut up in my room being a brat! But then…” He sighs. “Then, my willpower began to give out. My sulking stopped, day by day, and I discovered that for everything I had lost, I had also gained. New friends, new opportunities… You know, the clichés, but the real ones, the ones that actually make a difference.”
He lives just a few miles outside of San Francisco now and has his offices in the city, he tells her. He has a software outsourcing company, which he runs with one of his sisters. “One office in San Fran, one in Lahore, and the other in Delhi. I travel all around Pakistan and India, all the bloody time. And get this: When I travel away, I get homesick for America! If only my seven-year-old self could see that!”
Their flight begins its descent toward San Francisco a little while later, and Somera’s nerves get to her again. The no man’s land of the transnational flight is disappearing rapidly, and she will soon have to confront America itself, all new and unknown. But Faisal turns to her as they’re shuffling off the plane and passes her a business card.