Eternal Soul (The Eternal Path Book 1)

by Ivan Kal

  “You said that she wouldn’t be able to remove the block,” the Grand Marshal said slowly.

  “No,” Darza started. “We said that she shouldn’t be able to do it. We know little of your world—who knows what kind of things she knows? In any case, it was always supposed to be only a temporary tool for you to capture her.”

  The Grand Marshal sneered, but didn’t respond to Darza. Instead, he turned to Ming Li. “Fine. You may stay.”

  Ming Li grinned. She couldn’t wait to meet Vin again—nor could she wait to see the look on his face when he realized the magnitude of her power.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  KYARRA

  The Hunter dances with soaring blades across the plain, and the serpents follow. I feel myself wanting to help, yet I know that I cannot, as I have another task. In my dream, I turn toward the one covered in red and black. I see their red eyes judge me and the spear once filled with golden light is raised toward my heart. Sadness overwhelms me, and I whisper, “Come back to us.”

  –Excerpt from the Journal of Vardun Con Aroch

  Kyarra opened her eyes and saw the bright blue sky above her. She heard someone groan to her left and turned to see Ashara lying on the ground next to her. Beyond her, the man—Vin, she remembered—was already on his feet, his eyes sweeping around, alert. Kyarra looked around as she got to her knees and Ashara reached down and helped her the rest of the way. She saw that they were surrounded by trees, and seemed to be in some small clearing.

  “Thank you,” Kyarra said.

  “No problem,” Ashara said. Kyarra noticed her hand shaking. Now, in the daylight, she could see Ashara’s disheveled appearance. The night’s events had shaken her.

  Kyarra cast her gaze around, and then noticed a small stone tower behind them.

  “That must be Jeressi’s tower,” Kyarra said as Vin approached them.

  “We are safe. There is no one anywhere around us,” he said. Ashara visibly relaxed in relief at his words.

  Kyarra frowned. “How could you know that?”

  “I used my senses,” he told her, only succeeding in confusing her further.

  She took a step back and looked at the two of them. “I think that the two of you owe me some explanations.”

  The two of them shared a look, and then they both nodded. “We will explain everything,” Vin said. “But first, we should see if that tower is habitable, and rest for a while. Last night was a grueling experience.” He said the last sentence with a glance at Ashara, who was still shaking.

  Kyarra immediately felt chagrined, and she nodded. “Yes, of course.” She approached and took Ashara’s hand in her own, giving it a squeeze as Vin led them to the tower. They reached the large doors, and Vin raised his palm toward it.

  “Wait!” she yelled out before he could touch it. “It could be warded.”

  “It is,” he said calmly. “I was going to remove the protective spell.”

  “What?” she asked incredulously.

  Without answering her, he placed his palm against the door and a flash of something left his hand. “There,” he said.

  Kyarra looked on, mouth agape, as he opened the door and stepped in. “What did you do?” she asked as she followed him inside.

  “There doesn’t seem to be any protection in this room,” he said, ignoring her question as he looked around what appeared to be a simple room, one covered in dust. There were two couches and a table in the middle of the room. An empty cupboard was off to the side, and another, larger table with four chairs was in the right-hand corner to the back. On the left side of the room was a fireplace, and next to it was a tall bookshelf that was empty as well. In front of the shelf was a reading chair, and behind it was a large screen that sectioned off a small section of the room.

  “There are, however, powerful spells upstairs,” Vin continued. “We should stay away from there for now.”

  Kyarra glared at him for ignoring her question, and had opened her mouth to tell him exactly how she felt, when he turned toward her and raised a hand.

  “Later. There will be time for questions and answers later,” he told her as he took Ashara, whose face had gone completely white, by the shoulders and guided her toward one of the couches. He beat the dust away as much as possible and then guided her to lay down, all the while whispering things to her, too softly for Kyarra to hear. He settled Ashara in, and kept holding her hand until she fell asleep.

  * * *

  Kyarra left the two inside and stepped out of the tower. She had felt uncomfortable watching the two of them. Ashara was clearly in shock, and she could see the trust Ashara had toward the man—Vin, her friend. Just his touch was enough to reassure her that she was safe, and Kyarra was uncertain about how that made her feel. There was a closeness there that she had never had, an intimacy that she was not a part of. She felt alone.

  She walked to the tree line and heard a sound of rushing water in the distance. She listened for a moment—and then, after figuring out the direction it was coming from, she started walking.

  She didn’t walk for long before she reached a large rock wall with a small stream of water flowing from its cracks. At the base of the rock, the water pooled, making about a waist-deep clear pond. She put her hands and caught some of the falling water, then took a sip. The cold and fresh water slid down her throat and she shivered. She fell down to her knees at and put her arms around herself. Things had happened so fast that she hadn’t had the chance to process them. Everything that she knew from her childhood was gone. She had failed in her duty, the purpose she had been raised for, that all of her past lives had succeeded in. And Ovar, the closest thing she’d had to a father, was dead. She reached into her pocket and pulled out his amulet—the only thing she had left of him. She closed her hand in a fist, clutching it to her chest as tears rolled down her cheeks.

  Her entire life had been flipped over. Her magic was gone, and she was in a strange place who knew how far away from the only place she had ever known—the only place she should’ve ever known. For years she had dreamed, had yearned about freedom, to be able to leave Tourran and see the world. And now that she had it, the taste of it was like ash in her mouth. She was supposed to be the Eternal Soul, the protector of Tourran, and she hadn’t been able to use a single spell. She had been defeated before she’d even had a chance to try and protect her city. She had failed every one of her past lives, disgraced everything that they had built. She didn’t have the strength to think, to move; all she could do was shake with sobs that seemed to have no end.

  * * *

  Kyarra woke up, and for several moments her heart was racing as she looked around her, not knowing where she was or how she had gotten here. Then, belatedly, she recognized the room in the tower, and saw Ashara lying asleep on the couch across from her. The room was darker than she remembered, bathed in a soft orange glow. She turned and saw the source, the now lit fireplace.

  She remembered going outside and finding the stream, and then breaking down; she did not, however, remember getting back. And then, as if through fog, she remembered someone finding her and carrying her back. She realized that it could’ve only been Vin—Ashara’s friend, the one that had promised to help her get access to her magic again.

  She flushed with embarrassment as she remembered more details. She had been a wreck, unable to even speak coherently. She couldn’t even protest him picking her up, as she was too far gone in her grief. But she felt better now, as if her soul had been cleansed. She still felt the grief, but she didn’t feel like it would consume her again.

  A pleasant smell reminded her that she hadn’t eaten anything in a while and her stomach growled. She stood up carefully so as to not wake Ashara and walked to the door, which was ajar. She stepped out of the tower and saw Vin sitting by a fire with meat—clearly recently hunted—roasting over it.

  She walked over slowly and he offered her a piece of meat on a stick without turning around. She hesitated for a moment only, but then she accept
ed, and sat down on a stone that had conveniently been put close to the fire. She took a bite and almost moaned out loud, less so because of the actual taste and more because she was so hungry. They sat in silence for a while. She ate and gazed into the fire. She needed answers, and she was determined that this would be the time when she was going to get them.

  “I need answers,” she said simply as she turned to look at Vin.

  “I have heard a lot about you from Ashara,” he said, not meeting her eyes. “I had not heard about the Eternal Soul before. I come from a place far away.”

  Kyarra grew angry at him for ignoring her. “I need to know everything about those that attacked my people, and I need my magic back! I do not want to hear your life story.”

  At that, he turned and locked his eyes with hers calmly. “Patience, honored sister, and you will learn all. But for you to understand everything that I am about to tell you, you need to hear this story from the beginning.”

  She opened her mouth to tell him to stop with the games, that she was not interested in his story—but something in his eyes made her hold her tongue. She nodded curtly and settled in to listen.

  “As I said, I come from somewhere far away. Another world, in fact,” he said, turning to gaze into the fire.

  Kyarra frowned at that, but before she could say anything he continued.

  “My world is very different from this one. It is far smaller, for one—a city like Tourran has a population that is greater than there were people in all of our largest cities combined. And there were not that many large cities on my world,” he said with sadness in his eyes. “And, most importantly, there was no magic in my world. Not like there is here, where everything around us has aura—what you call anima. On my world there were only a few places that had magic, and they had far less of it than there is here. And so on my world we never discovered magic. We didn’t use it—we couldn’t.”

  “But you have magic, I’ve seen you use it,” she said, even though she had to admit that it was a strange magic. She had never seen anyone do what he had done.

  He chuckled and shook his head. “No, I don’t have magic… There are some similarities between it and what I possess, I admit, and perhaps they even have the same foundation. But no, I can’t do what you can.” Vin turned and looked at her again. “You mages use the energy—anima—around you to cast spells, and you need symbols to guide those energies. On my world, there isn’t nearly enough anima, so we instead turned inward, to the energy that every living being possesses. We call it ki, and just like you we use it to manipulate the energies around us. We simply manipulate it from within.” He put a hand on his stomach. “We use a series of techniques to strengthen and increase this innate energy. We cultivate it over time in order to gain more power. People like me are called spirit artists. On my world, there were no people like non-mages here. There were only those who had not reached as high.”

  “And how did you come to be here?”

  “That is where the Arashan come in. Those darji mages and warriors that attacked your palace were Arashan emissaries,” he said, his voice hardening. “The Arashan invaded my world. We do not know the exact sequence of events, but what I have managed to piece together is that they made contact with my people somehow. They sent emissaries and offered false promises. My people built them a gate, and their armies spilled through. We had great success fighting them in the beginning—I believe that they were unprepared to fight on a world where there was no magic against the power of my people. They were forced to bring magic from their own world, in gems. They did not anticipate our strength; on average, a single spirit artist is much stronger than any of their number. But as I’ve said, ours was a small world. We did not have the numbers to keep them back forever, and eventually they overwhelmed us. Our cites were razed to the ground, and my people killed. I, as their leader, had been imprisoned, and my power was taken from me. In the end I managed to escape through a breach as some of the Arashan emissaries crossed to your world.” He regarded her, his expression deeply serious. “The fate of your city is not the only thing at stake. The Arashan already have a deal with someone here. I have seen a man from your world on mine—a man of red hair and green eyes with a symbol of a gold-and-black sun on his breast. He made a bargain with the Arashan, and as soon as the Arashan get them to build a World Gate, your world will suffer the same fate as mine.”

  “The man that you described is the Grand Marshal of the Lashian Empire,” Kyarra said, thinking of how he had commanded the darji mage not to attack her.

  Vin nodded. “I have heard that title. It is what the Arashan referred to him as.”

  “If everything you’ve said is true, then it is even more important for me to get my magic back,” Kyarra said resolutely.

  Vin tilted his head. “I have heard from Ashara that you are a powerful mage, maybe the most powerful one on this world. But I need to warn you: the Arashan are strong. I have seen the mages of your world, and many of the Arashan have been far more powerful than them. That was on my world; here, they will be even more powerful.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I have a duty toward the people of Tourran.”

  Vin looked in her eyes, searching, then agreed. “We will start removing the block tomorrow. You should rest until then. It will not be easy.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  ASHARA

  Ashara walked out of the tower to find Ashara sitting on a small stone in front of a small fire, with a rabbit skewered on a stick a little way away from it. She made her way toward her, and Kyarra turned as she heard her coming. She stood up and walked up to Ashara, stopping only a step away. Then in a burst of movement she stepped closer and hugged Ashara tightly, and Ashara returned the hug after a beat. The hug didn’t last long, and as soon as Kyarra leaned back, Ashara looked around, searching.

  “Vin went to scout around. He said that he wouldn’t be long,” Kyarra said. Ashara relaxed and nodded.

  Kyarra led her to the fire and offered her some food, which Ashara took and started to eat, even though it had clearly been cooked a while ago, as it was cold.

  “Ashara,” Kyarra started. “I talked to Vin last night. He told me about the Arashan…about him being from another world.”

  Ashara nodded with a piece of meat in her teeth.

  Then Kyarra shifted, as if uncomfortable. “Do you believe him?”

  Ashara raised an eyebrow, but she realized that it was a bit much to believe, even with what she had seen at the feast. Ashara shivered at the memory and shook herself. “Yes, I believe him. I know him well enough to know that he does not lie. And you saw those mages.”

  “I did,” Kyarra admitted. “But other worlds?”

  “Ask yourself this—can you afford not to believe him?” Ashara asked. “This is no longer just about Tourran, it is about the entire world.”

  “I…I guess so.”

  “Trust me, then.”

  “All right.”

  The two of them sat in silence as Ashara ate. Then after a while, Kyarra spoke hesitantly. “How are you feeling?”

  “Fine,” Ashara said curtly. She remembered only pieces of what happened after they were transported here, and most of it was Vin’s whispering and assurances. She remembered him saying how everything was going to be all right, how they were safe. But she remembered the fear of before. She had never felt that way before, not even during the pirate attack on the Norvus. She was terrified—and she most certainly didn’t want Kyarra to see that, although she knew that it was too late for that.

  “Ashara, it’s okay.”

  “No, it’s not.” Ashara heard the words coming out of her mouth, and then before she could even try to stop herself, the rest just came bubbling out. “I was so afraid, Kyarra. I couldn’t do anything—you don’t know how many times I wanted to tell you to stop, to make you listen to me. But the words just didn’t want to come out. I was useless.”

  “Ashara—”

  “No, don’t tell me that it isn’t
true. I know that it is, and I am so ashamed of myself for it. You had your magic taken, you had nothing to protect yourself and still you kept your cool. I could only think about running away, but was too scared to even try!” Ashara yelled out the last part, her vision going blurry. Kyarra reached for her, and Ashara buried her head in Kyarra’s shoulder. It felt good to be held by her.

  She didn’t know for how long they stayed like that; but eventually, they heard someone approach and both stood up in alarm. Ashara turned her head in the direction of the noise and saw Vin step out into the clearing.

  Ashara relaxed as soon as she saw him and gave him a weak smile. He approached and gave her a short hug.

  “What did you find?” Kyarra asked.

  Vin turned to look at her and sat down on one of the stones. “I found a small road not too far from here, and a village about half a day’s walk from here. There is little in the way of things we need in the tower. We should be able to get some more supplies in the village.”

  “With what coin?” Ashara asked, and he showed her a small pouch.

  “I had it on me. There isn’t much in it, but it will be enough, I think.”

  “You speak as if we are going to be staying here for a time…” Kyarra said slowly.

  Vin turned his eyes on her. “I told you that it will take time to break the block on your magic. And we need to make a plan. If we are going to go against the Arashan, I need to see how strong you are.”