Chaos Destiny

by Mussie Haile

  Indeed, the future of all of Toas did.

  Shewit wished that the horses would run faster. The plan had been simple, leave without being detected. But then they had come against unexpected resistance at the gate. One of the guards was being rather nasty. Shewit had worn a hood over her face to hide her features, and would have passed had the guard at the gate avoided harassing Ermias. It was something about a game they had played the night before, where Ermias had beaten the guard and won much as a result. But the guard was threatening to heap an accusation on him if he did not pay up, or worse, to stop them from going out. Ermias had cautioned her not to use her powers no matter what, and that if things became too difficult for both of them to maneuver, she should ditch him and leave. Ermias had insisted when he had instructed that she was all that mattered. But Shewit could not do that. So, she had intervened, and like Ermias warned, had attracted attention. Now, they had Lull and the rest of the teachers at their heels...

  Shewit could not understand how Lull was catching up to them so fast. She dug her spurs into the sides of her horse urging it to go faster. But this was also dangerous. The horses could not go on riding like this for too long or they would collapse from exhaustion. So Shewit turned and began to haul down trees to block the path and prevent Lull and his men from getting to them, or at least, getting to them in time.

  She and Ermias exchanged looks, and they rode on. They were not going to lose each other. If they were fast enough, they would evade Lull and be free to be together and to live for the rest of their lives.

  But all of a sudden, they crashed into an invisible wall and were plunged into the air. For moments, Shewit could not feel anything; even taking in breaths was difficult. Everything was dead silent, and then all of a sudden the world became alive again. She heard coughing to her side and turned to find Ermias on the ground. Their horses were nowhere to be found. They must have taken to their heels while she and Ermias were trying to get themselves on the ground.

  “What just happened?” Ermias asked as he rose to his elbows.

  Shewit could breathe better now and had opened her mouth to respond when someone else here provided the answer instead.

  “We just happened.”

  The voice was too familiar that they knew whose it was before they even turned their faces. Lull, and a band of other mages stepped out of the trees to form a circle around them.

  “Lull,” Ermias uttered, sitting up.

  Shewit just glared at him.

  “One look at the both of you and it is easy to surmise whose idea this little escapade was,” Lull said, staring hard at Shewit.

  “But I’m curious,” he continued. “Why now, Shewit? You’ve been in the palace all these years. You’ve been well taken care of. Everyone at the palace is at your beck and call, yours. You’ve never exhibited signs of erraticism until today. What was it?”

  Shewit just stared back at him.

  “Is it this puny apprentice?” Lull asked. “Did he somehow find a way to wiggle into your mind? Perhaps mutter a few spells to put you under his control?”

  “You very well know the answer to that, Lull,” Shewit replied.

  “If you had grown too familiar with the palace walls, and wanted to see beyond it, all you had to do was ask, and your wish would have been granted. We did not need to create all this drama.”

  Then he screwed up his face in a furious scowl.

  “Unless,” he said, “the being of Balance and Chaos got their hands on knowledge that is forbidden.”

  He stared at Ermias.

  “Honestly, I must say, I did not know you had it in you,” Lull growled. “Two years before being appointed a mage of the kingdom, and your skill is already widely sought. It must be frustrating for you, being so good, and still being relegated to the background. How you must hate your master taking all the credit for your accomplishments?”

  Ermias stared silently at Lull. Lull, on the other hand, could see the fear already building in the young mage’s eyes.

  “So, you devised a means to place yourself as a true master, with the being of Balance and Chaos eating out of your hand. I must admit, that is genius on your part. A masterstroke. No one would have seen this coming.”

  “That is not true,” Ermias protested.

  “Enough, Lull,” Shewit barked. “If you are here to take me back to the palace, you might as well have not come out at all. Because I am not going back.”

  Lull smiled. “Ah,” he exclaimed. “He told you. And just what did the mage tell you?”

  “That while you are lavishing me with care, you are fattening me up for slaughter,” Shewit spat.

  Lull chuckled. “And you think this power-hungry mage is telling you the entire truth? He is an apprentice, who had too much time, not more. The story is complex, Shewit. It is not only tapping into the power of Toas. This is what he told you, right?”

  Shewit and Ermias stood there in shock. That was exactly what Ermias found out. By tapping into the direct power of Toas she would have become a lot more powerful.

  Lull read their emotional reaction correctly and kept going. “It is a lot more than that, my dear Shewit. Let me be your teacher and I show you.” He smiled warmly.

  “Well that, or I just find myself now,” Shewit blurted and immediately stabbed her mind into Lull’s.

  The rest of the mages saw what was going on but did not react quickly enough. When they reacted, sending bolts of lightning streaking towards Shewit, she had already infiltrated Lull’s mind.

  Ermias rolled close to Shewit immediately and cast a shield spell.

  “Hasab totallus!”

  A sphere of energy materialized over them, encasing and shielding them off from the magic of the attacking mages. Lull gritted his teeth as he tried to fight off Shewit’s presence in his mind. But she was the being of Balance and Chaos, and he could not do much against her. Not alone.

  Ermias was no master of magic. He could conjure different magic with a vast assortment of spells, but seriously tired when it came to holding them up for a very long time; even now, when his life depended on it.

  “Shewit!” he called. “You have to let him go. I do not know how much longer I can hold off the attacks.”

  Shewit still had her mind locked onto Lull’s. And then she found something, so disturbing she could not understand if his mind was just hallucinating, or she saw the truth.

  The moment made her weaker for a second. At that moment like bubbles of air bursting, the shield began to break. Shewit removed herself from Lull’s mind to come to Ermias’s aid, but not before he had been struck by a boulder of rock. The rock had been formed out of different stones levitated into the air, swirling round and round before finally fusing into one for the strike. All the mages were pouring the brunt of their magical strength on Shewit now. The motive was simple. Hit her with a massive assault so that she spends all her strength on the defensive and when she tires out, it would be easy to bring her back to the palace.

  Shewit risked a turn to look at Ermias on the ground beside her, bleeding from his mouth. She felt her heart break.“Do it,” Ermias said, coughing as he spoke. “There is only one way you can set yourself free. Let go of everything, and draw your strength from the earth itself.”

  Shewit could feel the weight of the mages’ assault pressing on her like a moving wall. She was forced down to her knees. She felt something touch her arm. It was Ermias. Tears began to drop from Shewit’s eyes, if she was not defending from the mages’ attacks, she could try to heal him.

  “Let go,” Ermias told her.

  And she did. Seeing Ermias’s life, about the only thing she had ever cared about in her life, slip away from her was the catalyst for all the powers she had kept within herself; all the doors she had chosen to leave locked and unexplored. The first lightning bolt hit her on her chest. All she felt was a blast of pain, and then
she felt a massive surge of energy within her. It was not hers. The energy was old, stronger than anything she ever felt. She felt it envelop her, fill her to the very brim, and it was not even close to exhaustion yet.

  Lull and the other mages stopped attacking for a second when Shewit began to glow like hot iron, only she did not glow red, she glowed bright yellow. Her eyeballs shone a radiant yellow, and her hair swam in the air as though they were alive.

  “Attack!” Lull yelled. “Attack!”

  The mages unleashed every magic they knew how to conjure to the extent of their strength and energy.

  With one mighty scream, Shewit unleashed an arc of bright energy that radiated from her and washed through the mages, causing them to break and disintegrate. Done with her use of magic, the energy within her began to dissipate as she relinquished her connection to the earth. Then she turned and looked at Ermias’s still body.

  Shewit fell to her knees by his side and began to weep. He had given her the way out. She had finally let go and drawn her power from Toas itself, but Ermias was dead. Shewit placed her head on his chest and wept bitterly, wishing to all the world that there was a way she could bring him back. But short of dark magic, with its dubious untruthful results, she did not know of anything else that would be done.

  She was free now. The only person she had ever loved was dead. This fuelled her anger until all she felt was hate for the world. A world that knew where she was headed yet had said nothing. They had contributed to her fattening process as if she was no more a living being as they were.

  There was nothing for her to live for. She looked around her. All she saw was destruction and smoking heaps of ash. The Middle Kingdom would never leave her alone if she stayed within the vicinity. They would always come for her as far as she still had the title as the being of Balance and Chaos. She knew this for a certainty.

  Shewit rose to her feet, her face turning into a mask of steel with tears still dripping from her eyes. She lifted Ermias’s body into the air beside her. Then she closed her eyes. Conjuring in her mind the image of the place Ermias had charted for their retirement, she muttered a teleportation spell and vanished in a blinding flash of yellow light.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  It was a lie

  It is all a lie.

  Eldana walked by the beach in slow steps. She exuded a thick aura of gloom. She tried to kick sand back into the waves lapping at the beach, but the patch of sand only went so far before falling back and re-joining its kin. The island was big enough on the side she walked on, spanning at least two kilometres. Some trees laid at the middle, an unspoken demarcation of the abode where she stayed and the other side. On the other side of the beach, the natives lived, people who her hostess did not have much to do with.

  Eldana’s eyes looked into the sea like she was searching for something. Her heart ached. It was two weeks since she heard what happened to her friends. Two weeks since she had found herself in a strange room, recuperating, and under the care of Shewit – the person she had come to Piece Island to see. And what she learned was beyond anything she ever expected.

  Shewit was the only being of Balance and Chaos to escape the sacrifice apart from Eldana. She had absconded from her presumed destiny nine hundred years ago and had lived unobtrusively ever since; despite the enormity of her powers.

  What Eldana heard from Shewit made her sick through every bone of her body. She could not comprehend the sheer craziness of it. Shewit, drew power from Toas, she was better at it than everyone else as a being of Balance and Chaos, that was her power. But she also drew power from every sacrificed being. Eldana did not understand at the beginning.

  “But does that mean you are a god too? Eldana questioned her counterpart.

  “God..well. Everything that we do not understand or is more superior to us is godlike, isn’t it? What I saw back then, in the fight for my life with my beloved Ermias against Lull, was nothing else than the fact that we are the gods, Eldana.”

  Eldana was still puzzled.

  She kept going.” You see, Camin and Lowus are nothing else than Beings of Balance of chaos.” Eldana couldn’t believe her ears. “They live for millennium because every time one of us is killed, they get the rest of the life expectancy of this being. In fact, every being of Balance and Chaos gets part of the life expectancy. As stronger one of us was, the more years in life you’ll get. When we talk about the days of chaos, we only talk about the times many beings of Balance and Chaos existed and they fought about the country and more lifetime. “

  “What happened to the rest of the beings of balance and chaos?” Eldana could already guess the answer.

  “Well…they are all dead. It was a horrible fight but at the end, Camin and Lowus killed one by one. Till it was just them. The problem was, every 100 years another being is born. This being became another contester to their godlike status. So, they came up with a plan how to control them.”

  “The sacrifices,” murmured Eldana while looking down on the ground.

  “Exactly. It was a twofold win. One, the new beings of balance of chaos would never become a problem again, living in this fabricated heroic story that Camin and Lowus had created and two, they would make them the strongest fighters in Toas by letting them train with teachers from all parts of the country, just to kill them afterwards and drawing the most power out of their life.”

  “And because they do this for so long, no one knows what they look like anymore,” she told Eldana.

  Eldana just nodded in while looking to the ground. All seemed so surreal now. She still had unanswered questions.

  “But what about the chaos? It is everywhere, even now. People die and go insane. That is not made up.”

  “That is the saddest part,” Shewit answered her while looking at the wall. “You see, when people believe something, they will always find signs to prove it. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy. And Camin and Lowus support it by using their power…”

  Eldana cried just a bit. “You mean to say, they kill them all…”

  Shewit still looked at the wall. “Not all, but they support it, yeah! There, a volcano, here a bit of an earthquake, whispering lies and deceiving messages around. People are easy. They don’t need a lot to hate their neighbours.

  It was just not real. Everything a lie, everything that she believed in, all a lie.

  “Ah,” she added. “Sinto, Lull, the carrier of the child, there are two…did you know that? Beings of Balance and Chaos..just not as strong. The mark of chaos is not complete on them. The mark just says how powerful you are. If it is fully developed, you have the power to plunge the world into chaos. They don’t, so they do everything to adhere to the laws of Camin and Lowus to get their share of life expectancy. They have no chance, therefore just follow along. They always find a way to make a low level being of Balance and Chaos a carrier of a child, always.” Shewit laughed bitterly.

  Eldana just nodded. It made all sense now. An empty silence in her body numbed every emotion. She had the days to think through her whole life, all of it, just a lie. They did not talk about it again. Eldana was too much in shock about what really happened behind the curtains.

  Shewit had proceeded to train and teach Eldana everything she knew. At first, Eldana had thrown herself fully into learning what Shewit had for her. She wanted to key into the special power so she could go rescue her friends, who she heard were under capture. That vigor soon declined into frustration, and then indifference. No matter how hard she tried, she did not get to learn the new power. Her mind was scattered.

  One night, she had told Shewit that she felt she was ready enough and wanted to go after her friends.

  “Your friends knew what they were getting into.” Shewit had told her. “They were fully aware of the risks before getting into this quest with you. To leave now, you must have mastered your powers. Only then can you save your friends.” The same calm fire th
at was in Shewit’s eyes when they had first met was still there. The same awe when Shewit called her, “the flesh of my flesh.”

  Now, all she did was take occasional walks to the beach after every lesson with Shewit. Somehow, the journey down to the seaside cushioned her mind, keeping it from falling totally apart. Sometimes, she sensed the presence of the Camin and Lowus afar off, unwilling to come closer.

  Today, she sat close to the water, crossing her legs. The waves from the sea lapped at the under of her, but Eldana stared long and deep into the distance.

  She missed her friends. So much. She shut her eyes, and with each breath delved deeper and deeper into her thoughts. Like in a dream, Eldana found pictures welling up into her mind. She did not know where it was, or how it appeared to her, but she looked on anyways. She was looking at a room, dark, but for shafts of light that came in through the little openings close to the roof. The roof itself was low, because just then a face came into the shaft of light, and its head was almost touching the roof.

  Eldana gasped.

  It was not just any face. It belonged to Hermon. Eldana almost screamed out to him. But she was frightened of shattering the vision. The little part of his face illumined by the shaft of light revealed the amount of suffering he had undergone. Eldana’s heart burned for him. For Siem who she could not see. For Mikko and D’rmas. Tears slid down her face and dropped onto her lap.

  Without warning, the scene changed. At first, Eldana had thought that the vision was over because for moments it was just darkness. Exactly as it was before she had seen this one. Then, suddenly she heard the sound of a voice, singing. The song was so soulful, its lyrics unintelligible because they were sung in another language. However, the voice and the language of singing had the halo of familiarity.

  “Mother?” she whispered, the ghost of a smile on her face.

  Eldana did not bother trying to cry out. She knew it would not help. Fraweyni would not hear her. Eldana had been surrounded by so much gloom and sourness lately that she felt choked. Unable to see past the murky darkness that enshrouded her. As she listened to Fraweyni’s voice, losing herself into it, she began to feel a trickle of refreshment. Like cooling summer rain.