Birth of Chaos

by Elise Kova

  Core elements:

  War between gods (specifically elder—Oblivion. And newer—everyone else)

  Battle for control

  Deceit of some gods

  Goddess of the hunt/archery

  Magical item (bow & arrow/spear) to defeat ultimate evil

  Chapter 10

  Springtide Pillars

  Jo took the stairs up toward the hall of bedrooms two at a time. In a blink, she was standing before Eslar’s door, knocking before she could think otherwise. Then again, if she was going to talk herself out of this plan, she would’ve done it hours—days ago. No, she was committed. There would be no other Nicos and there would be no more games with their existence.

  Eslar startled when he opened the door; clearly she was not the person he’d been expecting. “Josephina?”

  “May I come in?” she asked outright. She was practically ready to force her way in if she had to, and judging from Eslar’s expression, the fact was likely written across her face.

  “Is everything all right with the wish?” He held firm, blocking her entry and taking up nearly all available space in the door so that Jo could barely get a glimpse of his room.

  “Yeah, I just had a few questions to ask. It may take a minute though. So, may I come in?” Jo repeated, continuing to attempt to stare him down.

  “All right, then,” he said finally, as though they’d had a conversation without her realizing it.

  The elf stepped aside, and Jo stepped in past his tall, lithe frame.

  “Have a seat, should it please you,” Eslar murmured, gliding past her.

  Jo’s eyes followed his path through the room, but not the man himself. She was too distracted by everything around Eslar to give him too much attention.

  The room was a perfect circle. The roof was supported by thick columns on the outer edge, belling out at the bottom and tapering at the top. Between the two behind her was a wall, attached to what, from this side, appeared to be a grand palace. It stretched on in either direction from the door to Eslar’s room, windows breaking its surface, offering glimpses of places you couldn’t get to and the movement of people who didn’t exist.

  Sheer, multicolored fabrics hung from between the columns, wafting in a light breeze. The wind picked up, unhindered over the large pool of water surrounding the room. The circular area where she now stood was surrounded by large lily pads that were lazily floating by, flashes of emerald catching sunlight for an instant before winking out of sight. The pool was contained by a low wall, and beyond that, a forest of crystalline trees shimmered happily in the daylight.

  Eslar sat down in one of two circular, recessed areas. The shimmering crystal inlays of the floor sunk into pillows and blankets of equally vibrant colors. One was clearly for sleeping; Jo moved to the other one, albeit slowly. She was still taking in the chimes singing from the ceiling, hung at different intervals, and the ornate table far opposite her.

  The fantastical, grandiose lavishness of it all was almost enough to make her forget her purpose for being there. Almost.

  “What is it that you wanted to ask, Josephina?”

  “Oh, right. . .” She debated where to start. Jo quickly decided it was best to dip her toes in, test the waters between them, before diving right in to questions about the Society. The smell of smoke and a dead computer lingered in her nose, offering a potential avenue to begin. “Well, first, quick question. . . Have you, or any other member of the team that you know of, ever had the recreation room. . . not work? Like something inside it maybe acted funny or malfunctioned or something?”

  Eslar merely stared at her, contemplative. The look prompted Jo to elaborate with a quick clearing of her throat.

  “One of my monitors stopped working for some reason,” she said, delicately keeping out the part about it sparking and imploding the moment she’d touched it. “Has something like that ever happened before?”

  “Things are high stress right now,” he said finally, voice calming in its certainty, even if Jo didn’t quite believe him. “Perhaps the room was simply reacting to your current mental state?”

  “I think my mental state is fine.”

  “Do you? Given the nature of this wish? And so soon after Nico?”

  The mere mention of Nico had Jo looking away. His name was like an open wound she’d been trying to ignore. There had been no time for grief, though the memory of their dear friend haunted them all like a ghost.

  “I think it’s fine. . .” Jo insisted, picking at the floor. The crystal inlays here were so perfectly flush that there wasn’t even a groove for her nail to catch in. She used it as an opportunity to change the topic, not wanting to allow either of them to linger on Nico’s memory. “Your room is beautiful, by the way.”

  “I suppose it is rather . . . unique,” he said without even lifting his head from the book he’d propped open on his lap. “Especially for someone from the Age of Man.”

  “Age of Man?”

  He gave her a quizzical look. “You came from it and you don’t know?”

  “Oh.” Just that much and Jo could put it together. Still, he explained.

  “The Age of Man followed the Age of Magic. It was an apt name for a time when magic no longer ruled.”

  Eslar’s eyes scanned the pages of his massive tome. It was as though she hadn’t come into his room at all. He was completely lost, engrossed, escaped to the world between the pages because the reality he was faced with was too much to bear.

  “Was this common, in the Age of Magic? A room like this?”

  Eslar said nothing, flipping the page. In fact, he flipped several pages. Jo waited, not moving, not saying anything else. He had another thing coming if he genuinely thought he could avoid her. She wasn’t about to allow herself to be relegated back to hours of fruitless research without at least getting a new lead from him.

  Finally, a blank page showed up, breaking the lines of elvish runes—a new chapter, she guessed. With a hefty sigh and no more words left to conveniently hide between, he finally answered her question. “It’s reminiscent of the elvish summer palaces by the sea. We would go there on springtide to re-attune our magics with the greater cosmos.”

  “Your book had elves in it.” If she was careful, and just subtle enough, she could direct the conversation. Little nudges here and there, just to push him far enough that he would willingly let her past the tough guards she knew he kept in place. “The one you let me borrow.”

  “I knew what book you were referring to. It is not as if I have seen you with any other printed words in your hands,” he remarked dryly, almost coldly. “And given that the book was written in elvish, by an elf, in the Age of Magic, I fail to see how that’s unique.”

  Jo tensed, but pushed down the near-instant fireball of frustration she could’ve spat at him. She needed him—needed his knowledge—but she hated having to walk blindfolded through a maze of eggshells to try to get it. Okay, different approach. “Tell me a little about your time?”

  “What do you want to know?” Eslar sighed heavily and snapped his book shut with a mighty thud.

  “Anything.”

  “Is this really why you are bothering me?” he asked skeptically. “Don’t you have something to be doing for the wish?”

  “Talking helps clear my head. It’ll help me think of a new approach for this code that has me tripped up.” Fortunately, it wasn’t a complete lie. “You lived in the Age of Magic, right?”

  “I did.”

  “So, tell me about it.”

  “Wh—”

  “Please, I need a distraction. Anything.” Again, not a lie. Not the whole truth, but not a lie.

  “I have already given you one, but last I saw it was looking sad and forlorn out by the pool.”

  “Books can’t look like anything but books.”

  “Then you are not looking at them in the right way.”

  “Eslar—”

  He sighed heavily. It was the sound of someone finally giving in. “If I te
ll you this, will you go?”

  Jo pressed her lips into a hard, thin line. In her mind, she was telling him off in several different languages. Even if she had ulterior motives, he was turning away a member of his team who was in need, who was trying to reach out to the one elf-shaped lifeline they could come up with, and he didn’t even care.

  But all that came out of her mouth was, “Yeah, I guess.”

  He stared at her for a long moment, reaching for his book again with a sigh. Jo thought that maybe she’d have to wait while he read another chapter before she’d get an answer. But he simply held it, caressed it, spoke to it as if he was imparting his knowledge to the object rather than another person.

  In that moment, in that way, he reminded Jo of Samson.

  “Well, as I mentioned. . . the elves would head to the sea in springtime. We would bless ourselves with the foam of the ocean and wear crowns of flowers plucked from the dunes. Communing with nature replenished our energies and gave us new life.”

  Jo looked out over the pool, trying to imagine it, and found the task surprisingly easy. She could see a whole group of Eslars, joining hands, chanting, radiating with ancient power. She could see their woven fabrics, spun of silks from bugs her mind could conjure by image but not by name.

  She blinked rapidly and, like a mirage in the sunlight reflecting off the water, the images vanished.

  “You had magic in your time, right?”

  “I did say that’s what we were doing, magic,” he responded curtly.

  Jo avoided pointing out that he had not, exactly, said so outright.

  “We had power, so much power . . . and yet . . .”

  “And yet . . . what?” Jo probed, surprised it got her anywhere.

  “The elves were an ancient race—those of the high elf bloodline the oldest of all mortals. They said there was truth woven into the world, truths that could not be seen with eyes or hands but with hearts and magic.”

  So elves were the hippies of the magical world . . .

  “But younger elves, they strayed from the course. They were drawn toward the flashy magics of newer races. And they began to forget. When the upkeep of the pillars lapsed. . . we were doomed from that moment. Even if I wished for more time for my people, nothing lasts forever it’d seem.”

  “Pillars?” Jo’s focus honed on the one thing that could be useful to them now.

  “It was said that the world was anchored on four mighty pillars, positioned in each of the cardinal directions. And on these pillars were the truths of the cosmos as written by the gods who formed them.”

  “Were they from the Age of Gods?” Jo dared to ask, as if interrupting his flow might make him stop altogether. “I asked Snow that once, when he told me the time he was from. I take it he’s told you as well.” Eslar glanced sideways at her for a long moment.

  Jo gave a small nod. It wasn’t phrased like a question because the answer was obvious. “Were they?”

  “He would not answer.”

  “Good to know I’m not the only one he’s cryptic toward,” Jo muttered.

  “You are most certainly not.” Jo had never expected this to be their common ground, but she’d have taken anything for that brief moment of camaraderie with the elf. Eslar continued, “Truly of the divine, or not, did not matter. All that mattered was that while the pillars were maintained, the elves would not die unless they chose of their own will to return to the earth.”

  It seemed poor design on the part of the gods—if that was truly who made them—to have structured the anchors of the world on something that required constant maintenance. But that brought them back into the realm of speculation. Jo, instead, would focus on fact.

  “So, these pillars were maintained by the elves. . . Not maintained, I mean, given power?”

  Eslar nodded, preparing to retreat back into the world of his book.

  “Wait.” Jo held out a hand, as if she could catch him and reel his mind back. This was just what she’d been hoping to find. “Do you know how to do that . . . thing . . . ritual? Whatever it was that gave the pillars power?”

  He frowned, and Jo suspected that it was not because of the ineloquence of her question. She’d beat him to the punch.

  “Don’t think I’m crazy,” Jo said quickly. “But we need magic to feed the Society, right? We get it from wishes. . . kind of like. . . the Society is built on its own pillar—makes sense, right? After all, it’s a world outside of the world, so it’d need its own pillar. And instead of making elves immortal, it’s making us immortal.”

  His expression devolved into an all-out scowl.

  “What if we figured out our own ritual to feed it magic, rather than wishes? That way if we ever can’t—”

  “Out.”

  “What?” Jo leaned back, as if trying to avoid the invisible whip that lashed the word off his tongue.

  “Out, Josephina.”

  “I’m not trying to upset you, or ask dumb questions. I’m genuinely trying—”

  “How dare you,” he whispered, the words dripping with venom.

  “What?”

  “Do you not think that if I could have saved him, I would have?”

  “That’s not what I was implying.” But had it come off that way? Jo didn’t give it much thought. Intention had to outweigh execution here, right? She was trying to save them all, to cheat or dismantle the brutal system they were all subject to.

  “You knew him for a few months. I knew him for a millennium. Tell me, how many sketches would he produce before picking up his brush to actually paint?”

  “I. . .”

  “What music would always make him dance, regardless of whether or not he had a partner?”

  She’d never listened to music with anyone in the Society.

  “Could you tell the difference between the smiles he gave when he was genuinely happy, and the ones he gave when was desperately trying to have you not see his heartache?”

  Maybe? The word was weak, and small, tinier than she suddenly felt. “I was just thinking. . .”

  “You weren’t thinking at all.” Eslar opened his book with such vigor that she was surprised he didn’t tear it apart.

  Jo lingered a moment, reeling. When she was sure she could stand without falling over, or breaking down, she did so. The world swayed as Jo shuffled toward the door, all its prior luster faded.

  She should’ve left it there. But everything hurt again. The hopelessness was back, wedged between her bones, turning her ribs to barbed wire, stabbing behind her eyes.

  How dare she? How dare he.

  “You’re right,” Jo said so softly she didn’t know if he could hear. The soft crinkle of a page between tensing fingers assured he could. “I didn’t know everything about Nico and I didn’t have as much time as you to learn. But friendship isn’t a contest and it doesn’t have one universal measurement. You don’t get to hold a monopoly on grief because you had more hours with him.

  “And you don’t get to judge me for mine.” She turned. Eslar wasn’t even looking at her. “At least I’m trying to do something about it.”

  “By asking foolish questions,” he muttered.

  Jo had to bite her tongue to keep herself from spilling then and there all that she was trying to do for them.

  “I’ve already given you one book from the Age of Magic, more than enough. If you wish to distract yourself, go to that, rather than me.”

  Jo took the invitation to leave without saying goodbye.

  Chapter 11

  Fletcher

  Jo was under no illusion.

  She didn't actually think Eslar was trying to be helpful by suggesting the book. In fact, she was certain it was his way of dismissing her, by suggesting she do something that—in his own words—he had no expectation of her actually doing.

  Eslar was right after all. She wasn’t what one would exactly define as “bookish”. In fact, she could count on both hands the number of books that we were in her house growing up. Physical books, at least
. Most people in 2057 read on tablets, her mother included, and the books that were in her house had been her grandmother’s—holding more sentimental than physical value.

  Jo had done even less reading. . . Unless you counted pages upon pages of websites she’d culled through. If all of her research for her jobs counted, then she was likely the most well-read person she knew. That was what she was good at after all—her work. When it came to finding out information about a job, Jo didn’t let anything hold her back.

  Even if that something was reading a physical book.

  Instead of heading back toward the recreation room, Jo headed toward the common area. As expected, no one was there. Takako and Wayne were no doubt still at the police station. And if she had read between the lines right during her talk with Wayne, they would buy as much time as they could for her by investigating. Jo didn’t know where Samson was, but after Nico it was more unusual to see him outside of his room.

  Jo paused, her feet at the threshold of the patio, looking out over the pool. She and Nico had sat there. She saw the deck chairs, still pulled together, waiting for two occupants who would never return.

  Walking over, Jo grabbed Nico’s chair and pulled it off to the side.

  Her mission to bring down the Society might be inspired by Nico, but Jo wasn’t ready yet to confront his memory again. If she was honest, she might never be.

  Sitting down at her chair, Jo grabbed the book that had been left there for weeks. Luckily, albeit unsurprisingly, the book was still in pristine condition. There was no rain at the Society, no humidity to warp the covers or pages. There wasn’t much of anything, ever. Jo was swiftly discovering that even perfection had its limits.

  Opening the book, Jo leafed through the pages, quickly finding where she had left off in her prior skimming. She started reading, but it was slow going, slower than what she would have wanted. Part of her wanted to comb every page carefully, absorbing every minute morsel of information. The other part of her wanted to devour it quickly, getting the big picture before she drilled down into the specifics. She started out as the former, but quickly ended up much the latter.