Transcending Limitations

by Brian Wilkerson

  “An elf?” He feigned confusion. “What are those?”

  “I don’t have time for this! Master Eric is about to be eaten!”

  Tasio tapped his foot on the air.

  “Uh…they’re humans infused with chaos. They have golden-brown hair and pointed ears. They have a healing factor that makes them immortal. They can shapeshift into many forms, but it’s not as extensive as yours because they remain physical.”

  “Interesting. Tell me more.”

  “They hide in concealed villages because they’re scared of humans and Order. They’re easily subdued by ordercrafters. They make terrific slaves because they can endure harsh conditions without death or injury.”

  Tasio cocked his head. “Why would you want to be one of those?”

  “Um…”

  She thought about the strengths and virtues of elves. Their powers came first, and their form of government came next. Their emphasis on love and family followed. It all connected and she found herself agreeing with each aspect of their culture. Order’s lenses only heightened her appreciation of their social structure because it was, indeed, structured. Finally, the festival came into focus.

  “They research the world and everything in it. They build things and invent things. They have a philosophy and religion based around Lady Chaos; its fundamental principles involve innovation, freedom, change, and personal/communal development. They practice every fighting art under the sun. Families are scattered for much of the year, but they always unite for a festival during the winter. They worship you as their nearest god and call Lady Chaos their grandmother.”

  “You want me to make you into such a creature?”

  “Yes!”

  “You will use this power to save Belco?”

  “YES!”

  “What about afterward?”

  “I don’t care! I want to live with Master Eric…Belco forever! I want to travel with him, heal his injuries, and kill anyone that tries to hurt him. I’d start with this despot…”

  “Really?” Tasio sounded intrigued. “Are you sure this is what you want, Arin? If you accepted Muags as your master, your life would be entirely luxury. It would be easy and it would be safe. You would have authority over the lives and futures of many. In comparison, all I can offer you is despair, pain, and loneliness.”

  “I’d never be lonely or in despair as long as I had Master Eric….I mean, Belco. I would bear any pain for his sake.”

  “Belco is mortal. If I help you, then you will be immortal.”

  “Right now, he is a healthy young man. I’m certain that by the time he leaves, I’ll have plenty of children to keep me company.”

  Tasio lounged and examined his nails. “I like the idea of my mother having a race of super soldiers on this planet. Such a race would ensure that her grip on this planet remains firm. They could spread out and vanquish Order in other parts of the world fruit as well.” He swiveled his head to look at her sharply. “You would make this happen.”

  Annala’s breath caught and her eyes widened. His words triggered a sub-routine in her collar’s brainwashing: support Order and sabotage Chaos. Then she remembered that this was a play. It wasn’t real. A glance at Eric stewing in the cauldron said otherwise. She could smell seared flesh. A third paradox; was supporting her master more or less important than supporting Order? Again, the collar resolved the paradox with default programming. In uncertain situations, seek clarification from the master. However, this failed to resolve the third paradox. Which master should she ask?

  One cannot have two masters, for they could disagree. One had to take precedence over the other. The collar remembered that Annala freely accepted Eric as her master. She submitted her Chaos-given right of self-determination to him, not Order. Thus, a product of ordercraft had to compel her to do something Order would not want her to do. This was the sole solution to the third paradox. Only by framing the dialogue as part of the play could the collar’s control matrix avoid a critical error.

  “I will be the mother of such a race.”

  She was about to follow up with “for the sake of my Belco,” as the collar directed, but faltered. That wasn’t in the script. It wasn’t in the story. Three paradoxes confounded the control matrix and three insistences on the master’s wishes forced it to allow her to follow the script.

  “I would be proud to be the mother of such a race,” she said, truly proud. “I will spread creativity of mind, freedom of knowledge, and the fulfillment of each person’s full potential. I will cast down rulers and free slaves. Oppression, whether legitimate or not, will dissolve in my presence. Wherever I go, I will be the lance that breaks every shield, the arrow that breaks every armor, and the scythe that slays immortals. I will teach my children to do the same but not force them onto this path. This will be my cause, my guiding light, my Eternal Hobby.”

  Tasio clapped his hands together and chaotic light surged from between his fingers. He pulled them apart to reveal a glowing golden-brown orb. Every elf present made Arin’s Triangle. To see a genuine Seed of Chaos was a truly rare and precious event.

  “If you want it so bad,” Tasio held the seed out to her, “then take it.”

  Annala reached, but her hands remained secured behind her. She wrenched in futile struggling. Her wrists created a bloody puddle at her feet. Tasio waited patiently. Annala bent over but still couldn’t reach. Tasio stifled a yawn while Ralm smelled his dinner and the audience watched in anticipation.

  Kicking off her shoes, Annala reached with her legs. With her toes, she could just touch the seed. It eagerly seeped into her skin and her toes were the first to regain a healthy complexion. The color traveled up her leg and spread through the rest of her body, all the way to her head. It stopped at her neck.

  The Subjugation Collar refused to let it pass. To do so would be to restore her elven physical identity, and following that, her elven state of mind. The brainwashing would fade. It began to subjugate this new chaos seed as it did the old, but this led to a fourth paradox. To prevent the transformation would be to defy the script, the written law of how the play was to progress. Furthermore, it would defy the master’s wishes. Four paradoxes were too much. The control matrix shorted out completely, and as a result, so did the rest of the collar’s functions.

  While the collar tore itself apart from the inside, the new Seed of Chaos joined the first. Together, they charged the collar like Lisogoths at the gates of Emor. Just like then, the defense gave up without a fight.

  The collar exploded off her neck and scattered shrapnel in all directions. Chaotic energy rushed to her head, out her scalp, and into every strand of hair. Golden-brown tresses fell over her pointed ears. Her eyes shined with holy power. A blissful smile shifted into a deadly smirk.

  Her ropes burst like twine as small and fragile wrists became large and rocky. The rest of her body followed until she stood eight feet tall. She inhaled and then exhaled a stream of chilly cold. It squelched the fire cooking Eric and sent chills down Ralm’s spine.

  “What is this disturbing prodigy?” he asked. “How did my lovely prize become so uncouth? Thy lily skin is as centurion armor and thy tender arms as century stone!”

  “Shut up, you freak!”

  The fair maiden slugged the dragon with her golem fist.

  He stumbled backwards and Annala pounded him again. She pounded three, four, five times before he recovered. He slashed, but Annala blocked with one arm, then shifted it into something longer and elastic. With his arm trapped and her new talons dug into the stage, she pivoted and swung Ralm through the air. He passed right over the audience’s heads. Annala ended his flight with a head-on collision into the pillar she was tied to. It crumbled and covered him in debris.

  “Oh...the irony...” Ralm groaned. “...my greatest triumph...is my downfall.” His scales, claws, and tail all fell off, leaving him in his original costume. “Muags the Hoarder...slain by his own hoard...bleeeehhh…” Ralm jerked once and went limp.

  “I b
elong to—Oh, Trickster, Eric!”

  Immediately, she was an elf once more and wearing a duplicate of Arin’s costume. The original lay in tatters under the pillar’s rubble. She heaved Eric out of the cauldron and laid him across her lap, soaking herself in the process. His eyes were closed and his wounds were open.

  “Ah, healing arts so fast and ...magical...heal these wounds in quite... ah… spectacle! ...Tasio! Help him!”

  “You want me to help him directly?”

  “I don’t know healing magic!” Annala blinked back more tears. “What am I supposed to do!?”

  “You’re the First Elf, Arin,” Tasio said. “You can make it happen if you want to.”

  Annala stared in confusion, but The Trickster would say no more. Eric’s heartbeat stopped. She was still glowing with her freshly acquired second chaos seed. In desperation, she put her faith into a groundless theory she heard in a fable. She hugged him and poured out all her love and desire into a single kiss.

  “Please, Eric...” she whispered against his lips. “Wake up...please!”

  A chaotic aura bloomed around her. Even the elderly had never seen a special effect like this! It enveloped Eric and the “critically injured” illusion that the SFX team worked hard to make disintegrated. He groaned and awoke. The first thing he saw was Annala’s tear-filled eyes.

  “I’m sorry I made you cry.” Lifting a hand to her cheek, he wiped away her tears. “Wow, you’re breathtaking with tears.”

  “Eric...shut up.” She made sure he complied with another kiss.

  A final cloud of smoke obscured them from view. Outside it, the muses reappeared and sang the play’s epilogue, concisely that this story was a mere prologue to all that Arin would do. They slipped back into the fog from whence they came and their shadows disappeared one by one until only one remained. That one was Remho.

  With a dramatic gesture from the actor trickster, all the smoke vanished, revealing the entire cast. There were actors representing the village and its invaders, such as Nilo. There was the guy that was killed by Muags twice under different roles, Muags’ soldiers, Ralm himself, and the muse chorus. Finally, Belco and a very confused Arin. Nonetheless, she took a bow with her fellow cast members. The audience stood as one and roared their applause.

  Backstage, Remho congratulated them on a job well done. Each and every actor received kudos for their work, from the star of the show down to the lowest stagehand. No explosions or lights followed his words because such a thing would be sacrilege after a standing ovation. Once he finished, he gave the floor to Annala. She stepped forward and said,

  “Remho, you created a unique version of Elven Origin to overcome my Subjugation Collar. You told Eric and Ralm, my current and former boyfriends, but no one else. This was to keep the secret because it might not work if I knew about it. Ever since I greeted Eric this morning, he was following a plan to free my mind and soul by acculturation. Is this correct?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  Annala punched Eric’s shoulder. “Idiot! You’re mortal again! A high-risk lifestyle like yours and…and Order is going to twist you up…Reapers kill convert…gar!”

  She punched him again. Suddenly, she bowed her head and said, in a demure tone, “I’m so sorry, Master Eric! I shouldn’t have done that. I’m erratic and violent. You are the best master anyone could ask for, too good for this unworthy girl and…” She shook her head. Again addressing Remho, she asked, “Is that going to happen often?”

  “Your mother and my brother say ‘yes.’ The collar’s gone, but Order’s brainwashing will remain as residue. He’s done this countless times and has experience beyond immortality. The ‘unworthy slave girl’ mentality will wear off eventually. How do you feel now?”

  “I still feel like I belong to him, but in a romantic sense, not a legal sense.” Her arms encircled Eric’s neck. “I feel like you belong to me as well.”

  “No arguments there,” Eric said. “Ah!”

  Annala retracted her claw into her nail and inspected the cut she made on his cheek. It bled like any human wound. There was no chaotic energy coming to close it.

  “If you don’t have a Seed of Chaos, then how come you still look like an elf?”

  Eric grinned. Closing his eyes, he reached for an identity and willed himself into becoming it. Only a few adjustments to his body needed to be made. He even matched the hair length. Taking a deep breath, “she” explained, “Technically speaking, there is nothing particularly exclusive to the hair and eye color of the elven genome. It is present more in the spiritual/supernatural fields than in pure physical genetics and so it is fully possible to become a similar shape and feature without the standard familial inheritance. Through the power of the residual—”

  Annala wrinkled her nose. “Is that really what I sound like?”

  “Yes, dear, it is.”

  She giggled. “Give me the Eric version.”

  Eric returned to his own form. “I still have a little chaos in my body, which means I still have a little shapeshifting ability. While I can look like you, I can’t become an ant or a whale.”

  “What about immortality?” She tightened the loop about his neck and tucked her head under his chin. “If Tasio had another Seed of Chaos, he would have given it to you by now.”

  Eric caressed her back soothingly. “Tasio promised another route to eternity and gave me a map too. It involves familiar territory, a friendly rest stop, and royal treatment on its roads. I will be immortal again soon.”

  “Why can’t he do what he did last time? Why, Tasio?”

  Tasio himself appeared in her midst. Whenever his name was said three times in quick succession, even if by two people, it never failed to get his attention.

  “I don’t have any left. The one I gave to Eric before was given to me by the Chaos Avatar, Gaius Luscious Luxous Polario Primordial the younger. I was saving it for a special occasion. To get another one, I would have to steal it from another elf. Do you want me to do that?”

  Without hesitation, Annala nodded. Then she realized what she had just done and shook her head extra vigorously. To make sure everyone present didn’t get the wrong idea, she said, “Take my spare.”

  “If I could do that, don’t you think I would have suggested it? Your chaos seeds have bonded. By now, they’re a single unit. Besides, after what you’ve been through, they are going to cling to you like you’re clinging to Eric.”

  “I won’t die,” Eric whispered in her ear. “I promise.”

  At these words, Annala clung even tighter to him. They were the same words Uncle Mori said to her every time he left the village.

  With the ending of the play came the ending of the festival. Everyone returned home feeling warm and happy, and as they lay in their beds, they were confident of their future safety. Only one elf did not sleep soundly.

  In the darkness and the quiet, she slipped out of bed and out the door. The streets were deserted as she sprinted across them. Fear ate at her consciousness and filled her with dreadful energy. She would not know peace until she found answers. At the sight of her destination, her legs suddenly locked and she face-planted into the dirt.

  “We must not look at goblin men; we must not buy their fruits,” she muttered. “Who knows upon what soil they fed their hungry, thirsty roots.”

  The temple to the most powerful god in the world was a wooden construction about ten feet high. The floor was made of natural materials and its windows were crafted in a style both organic and random. In other words, it was a shack. Harmless on sight, but it inspired irrational fear in her heart.

  There was always more to anything involving The Trickster than what the eye could see. He could be manipulating her into a terrible future! She squashed the thought. It was nothing more than residue from her brainwashing. She forced her legs to move and carry her inside.

  Tasio was waiting for her. He floated above the ground cross-legged with his hands folded in his lap. His eyes followed her as she walked in.


  “Good evening, my granddaughter. Is something troubling you?”

  “Was today’s play a re-enactment or a live event?”

  “Both.”

  “Then am I a second Arin?”

  “That’s up to you.”

  “Will I lose my Belco?”

  Tasio created in himself a viewing glass. Inside it, Annala saw Eric cut in half by Gruffle on a bridge, possessed by a crowd of evil spirits in Dnnac Ledo, torn apart at the spiritual level by rogue souls in his bed, crushed by animated rock golems in a forest, roasted by salamanders in a country field, and many other deaths.

  “Maybe.”

  Chapter 4 A Red Hood, A Wolf, and Stories

  When Eric woke up the next day, Annala was again at his bedside with food. However, instead of a full meal, she carried a granola bar, and instead of dressing like a maid, she wore casual clothing.

  “How did you sleep, M...Eric?”

  “Better.” He stretched. “Now that the collar’s off your neck and Nulso is dead, I can relax.”

  “But you’re mortal again...” She clutched the bar. “This bar is what keeps you alive: calories, fat, and nutrients instead of chaotic energy. You’re vulnerable!”

  Eric snorted. “I’ve been that way all my life. I’m used to it. Besides, I have faith in your mother’s technology.” And the gesis she placed on Order himself.

  “I’m not!”

  “Huh?”

  “I didn’t sleep a wink last night because I was worried about you.”

  Eric smiled. “I appreciate that, but I’m going to be immortal again soon, so don’t worry.”

  “That’s not good enough! I’m going to take action right now.”

  She reached into the collar of her shirt and brought out a necklace. It was five segments of ten beads with Arin’s Triangle set in between the segments. At the bottom, where a centerpiece jewel would go, was instead a metal Flower of Chaos.