The Lure of Fools

by Jason James King

  “Thank you,” he coughed out.

  She just nodded. “I’m a good swimmer.”

  A growling moan off to Raelen’s left drew his attention, and he found a sodden Gryyth lying on his back, eyes squinted shut as he weathered a wave of pain. The jump and swim would surely have magnified the sting of his burns.

  They were on the lip of the aqueduct as it opened into a canal that ran into the city. Other soldiers and servants were climbing out of the water, but not as many as had been with Raelen. How many had not survived the jump? How many had refused to jump at all?

  “Look!” one of the servants shouted.

  Raelen followed his gaze and his stomach clenched. The Apeira well was cracking and shedding fragments. And then in one surreal moment, the well shattered, exploding into a thousand pieces and raining sharp shards down onto the palace below. Stone exploded in all directions as the ancient Allosian edifice fell beneath the barrage of crystal chunks. The ground shook and a dark wave of dust raced out from the crumbling palace and blinded Raelen as it exploded over them. An incongruous moment of silent stillness followed. Then, gradually, screams and shouts began piercing the air, rising from all corners of Aiested. That’s when the chaos began.

  Jove was dead. But he was also not dead. He floated formless amidst an unending storm of purple clouds. No, not clouds, Apeiron. It surrounded him in every direction, stretching on into infinity.

  What had happened to him? The last thing he remembered was drinking deeply from the well and everything around him. The sheer amount of energy he drank was torrential and at times it threatened to choke him. But whenever that happened, Jove simply opened himself more to accommodate the ever-increasing flow.

  That pattern had escalated until Jove felt himself drawn into the Apeira well. His body had disintegrated, just blowing away and his new self, his consciousness, had dove into the crystalline monolith. Down and down he’d flown, feeling as though he were lightning striking from the sky. Then he’d splashed down into that vast ocean of life that he’d sensed churning at the center of the planet.

  Jove tried to look at himself, but his hands were gone, as were his legs feet and body. His being was dark green energy, a spherical shape that looked like his translucent feeding tendrils. He was surprised to find that, even without a body, he felt hungry for Apeiron. He made to manifest a tentacle, but instead his whole self pulled in the energy around him. He broke it down inside of his core, like chewing, but his hunger didn’t go away.

  He absorbed more Apeiron, and it tasted as sweet as ever, but it still wasn’t satisfying him. Was this some sort of cruel joke? Was he in hell? Doomed to eat and eat forever without ever feeling full? He ate more, and then more still, but the cold emptiness at his core remained. It was maddening.

  Jove screamed, or at least that’s how he thought of it, and the swirling clouds of purple around him shuddered as he sucked them in. Finally, he felt some relief, though it had taken more Apeiron than he’d ever eaten before to do it.

  He perceived the world around him, looking in all directions at once and somehow he understood that the Apeiron flowed from somewhere. It had a source that perpetually produced more. Jove decided he would find that source of life. He would consume all of the Apeiron inside the planet, and then the fountain itself. And then, if that didn’t satisfy him, he’d eat the world. He would eat everything.

  Jove swam in an endless ocean of purple Apeiron. It was delicious. It was succulent. It was sweet. It was also not enough.

  His core ached with the Hunger, the pain refusing to abate no matter how much energy he sucked in. It was maddening, and the only relief he found was in that small moment of tasting the nectar of life as it passed into him. But it came with no satisfaction. He’d eaten too much back in Aiested, and now even this unlimited supply proved insufficient.

  Rock islands of all sizes floated above and beneath him in the vast purple ocean, the only physical things that existed in this place. Was he in hell? He’d died, hadn’t he? Or at least left his body. He looked at himself, not with eyes, but with unobstructed consciousness. He didn’t even look human anymore; his form only a ball of black, pulsating darkness.

  I should’ve taken that doll with the purple hair before drinking the well.

  She’d been so beautiful with her white skin and perfect figure. Now Jove didn’t have a body, and so the chance to enjoy the doll with the purple hair, or any other woman, was gone forever. He unleashed a tortured scream. The sound didn’t echo but instead produced visible ripples that exploded out from him in all directions, making the purple light swirling about him quiver.

  Jove stopped screaming and floated through the glowing ocean. He wept without tears, translucent tendrils of murky green wrapping around his dark sphere form as though he were hugging himself for warmth. He stayed huddled like that until the frustration within rose again to overflowing and he screamed another agonizing cry.

  The strange purple world around him trembled, and Jove sucked in Apeiron with angry abandon. Surprisingly, the Hunger gave way, if only slightly. Encouraged, Jove sucked in more Apeiron, and then more still. He kept on guzzling the surrounding power, unable to stop.

  Green electricity crackled around Jove, and he shot shafts of emerald lightning out into the surrounding purple ocean. They were angrier, more forceful versions of his feeding tendrils and absorbed entire wells of Apeiron with each strike. Jove didn’t stop to further consider the change, but instead poured his rage into the lightning, increasing its frequency and ferocity. Blinding green bolts flashed all about him, and small patches of blackness began appearing in the vast purple nebula.

  Maely started as a thick shaft of green lightning struck the building on her right. It tore through the structure, hurling pieces of wood and stone into the sky. A deafening thunderclap exploded half a second later, drowning out the screams of the panicked mob. She forced herself to look at the sky at what used to be Aiested’s towering Apeira well–now a jagged emerald shard that rose only to half its former height. Roiling clouds of blackness spiraled around it, spreading outward like ripples in a pond.

  The birthing dawn was obscured by a darkness that rapidly encompassed the entire city; flashes of green lightning high in the clouds providing the only light. To make matters worse, no one had any light talises. Well, they had them, but they were drained of their Apeiron charge. All the talises found among the crowd were empty, as though the power within them had been used up. Even Maely’s compulsion ring had lost its charge. What was happening?

  The thunder faded, and the screams and shouts of the fleeing masses again rang throughout the streets. “You have to stay calm!” Prince Raelen Taris shouted as a group of people surged forward.

  They paid little heed to their prince as they shoved past him, and the press became so fierce Maely worried they’d be trampled. A sudden, fierce roar from the prince’s bear-man bodyguard made the mob pause long enough for Raelen’s guards to wrangle them back into an orderly retreat.

  Raelen nodded his gratitude to Gryyth, who now hunched over, cradling his badly burned chest– the result of being burned by Jenoc’s spell-casting.

  The citizens of Aiested continued to move quickly through the streets, having to be reined in each time a bolt of green lightning struck somewhere nearby.

  “Where are we going?” Maely shouted up at Raelen.

  The prince didn’t answer.

  “I said, where are we going?!” Maely shouted again.

  He paused to look down at her. The intense stare of his blue eyes made Maely feel naked, as though he could see into her soul. Does he know what I am? Can he see that I’ve done something unforgivable?

  “The North Woods,” Raelen finally answered. Then he turned and resumed barking orders and managing the crowd.

  Maely was a monster for what she’d done to Jek. Forcing him to love her wasn’t any different from what men had done to her mother, and she was half convinced the prince could discern her crime simply by looking
into her eyes. And how many people had died as a result of her selfishly aiding Jenoc? How many more would die in the coming talis war, a war she helped start? Maely wanted to cry, but tears wouldn’t come—she was too exhausted for tears.

  Again, she glanced over her shoulder at the broken Apeira well. Had Jekaran gotten out before the palace fell? What if he was dead? She’d abandoned him, hadn’t she? If he was crushed to death under all that white stone, wouldn’t that be her fault too? Hadn’t she come here to save him?

  She thumbed the underside of her mother’s ring. She could lie to herself all she wanted, but in the end, she’d come to Aiested only under the pretense of rescuing Jek. Not rescue. No, I came here to enslave him. It’d been in her heart since even before Jenoc captured her. She’d been so desperate for Jekaran to love her, she’d long ago decided she would do anything to make him stay with her. It wasn’t something she was proud of. Ez would be disgusted by her selfishness; hell, she was disgusted by her selfishness.

  The thought of Ezra made her think of Mulladin. Where was her brother? Was he okay? Was he angry with her for abandoning him, too? A pattern was forming in the mirror of Maely’s self-reflection, and the image looking back at her was ugly. Selfish. Maely was selfish. Her leaving Genra to follow Jek hadn’t ever been about looking out for him, or keeping him safe. She choked out a laugh at the absurd thought. No, what she’d done, all she’d done had been for herself, for her own supposed happiness. This came not as a revelation, for Maely had known it all along. She’d buried that truth under rationalizations and excuses, but in the end it all came down to one thing: Maely had used compulsion to force Jekaran to love her. The memory of his adoring, vacant green eyes was too much, and she collapsed to her knees.

  The jostling crowd threatened to trample her. Well, let it. It was better than she deserved. Just then a strong hand gripped her right bicep, and lifted her so that she had no choice but to stand.

  “Just a little farther,” Prince Raelen said. “You can make it. We just need to go a little farther.”

  Maely wanted to tell the prince to leave her, to let her die with the city, but the words wouldn’t come. She was so ashamed she couldn’t speak. She couldn’t even meet his eyes. She started as her feet abruptly left the ground, and she looked up to find that Raelen had lifted her to carry in his arms.

  “No…”

  “Don’t worry.” The prince flashed her a smile. “You’re light enough.”

  She wanted to protest, but sleep was already taking her. Was she really starting to drift? How could anyone sleep while surrounded by hell without and tormented by hell within? Those were her last thoughts as the world faded.

  Jenoc strode through the streets of the capital city of Haeshala–Isadara. His step was quick with purpose, his strides sure. It was night, and he wore a dark cloak with the hood pulled up to hide his Allosian hair and burnt face. That burn stung terribly, and the loss of his eye made it difficult to see. But even those pains paled in comparison to the endless throbbing that pulsed in his head. It’d grown constant now, no longer coming in waves, but one continuous beat that kept getting louder. To add shame to his suffering, he no longer had the strength to maintain an illusion spell-casting, which was the reason for the cloak. He had been able to translocate himself through the city wall, but had to dismiss all other spell-castings so as to focus his entire mind on the Third Discipline–Space.

  During the flight from Taris, Jenoc finally accepted the possibility that he might be dying. Even so, he remained resolute, having long since passed the point of no return. Not pain in his head, nor loss of sight, or even the betrayal of his sister would stop him from doing what he’d come to Isadara to do. Thinking of his purpose made the pack on his back feel a little heavier. The thing in his satchel wasn’t particularly large, which made it confusing as to why it was pressing down so hard on his shoulders. Nor was it big enough to be evoking the labored breaths that now came from his mouth. Was he getting physically weaker?

  Jenoc clenched his good eye shut and gritted his teeth. He needed to focus on his task. He had an important mission to accomplish. He couldn’t stop to rest, and there would be plenty of time later–if he survived–for him to grieve the loss of Kairah. He wondered at what his sister would be doing now that he’d abandoned her, and started to worry for her safety before crushing the thought with a flare of anger.

  “I have no sister,” he hissed between labored breaths.

  Kairah had died the moment she’d sided with the humans, a fact that stung worse than his burned face. A lost eye and charred flesh could be repaired by Apeiron, but the wound Kairah dealt to his soul, that could never be healed.

  How could she choose the humans over her own people, over her own family?

  Jenoc’s growl startled an old beggar who’d been approaching him. He glanced at the man quickly hobbling away, and something primal rose inside him. He wanted to chase after the beggar, catch him by the collar of his dirty tunic, and pummel his face until it became an unrecognizable pulp.

  Those random flares of anger and violence used to frighten him, but now he welcomed them and lusted to lose control. That’d happened earlier when he’d been in Taris. A serving woman had seen him drop his illusory disguise so that he could translocate himself into the palace’s vault. Killing her, of course, had never been the issue. It was the fierce fit of violence that made the case remarkable. He’d enjoyed beating the middle-aged woman into unconsciousness and relished the popping sound her neck made when he’d twisted her head completely around.

  Worry came when the rage faded. Jenoc, though always angry, wasn’t usually prone to such explosions of violence. He didn’t think any Allosian was capable of what he’d done to the servant woman. The other magic, no, Moriora, as Kairah named it–where did she learn its name?–had indeed injured him. There was no other explanation for his headaches, difficulty spell-casting, and newly-developed sadistic impulses. It was somehow changing him into a monster.

  After nearly two excruciating hours of walking the streets of the Haeshalen capital, Jenoc finally reached his destination; a tall crystalline obelisk that glowed with violet light. It wasn’t built into the palace as the well at Taris had been. No, Isadara was a true human city, not an Allosian treasure infested by vermin like Aiested.

  Isadara could best be described as utilitarian in design. Squat, square-ish buildings arranged in austere rows nested into ever larger blocks. Even the citadel at the center of the city lacked the stylish architecture Jenoc had seen in other human palaces. It was blocky and black, without any windows on the first three of its stories. It fit what Jenoc knew of Haeshalen culture. These humans in particular were the most war-like in Shaelar. They looked like other humans save for their unusual green eyes, a trait that virtually all the Haeshalen people exhibited. Whereas in Aiestal and Maes Tol, green eyes branded one an oddity or an outcast, here they were the proud mark of royal heritage.

  Jenoc repressed his scholarly inclinations and focused on the ring of stone that surrounded the base of Isadara’s Apeira well. A single guard, clad in black armor, with a conical open-faced helmet stood protecting it, a post that was obviously the perpetuation of tradition and not necessity. No one would harm an Apeira well, not even an invading army. They were virtually indestructible, and too precious to the human’s economy and everyday life to even risk losing. The guard spotted Jenoc and lazily brought his spear up in a sloppy warding gesture.

  “Talis filling is over. Come back tomorrow.”

  Jenoc focused through the pain of his migraine and cast a paralysis net on the guard. His eyes widened as he went as stiff as an old corpse and tipped over. Jenoc made certain the man’s eyes remained open, and even cast a spell from the Second Discipline–Elemental–onto his eyes so they remained moist. He wanted this man to witness what he was doing.

  Jenoc slid the pack from his shoulder and placed it on the stone ring at the well’s base. He then reached in and produced a square cube so large it required
both hands to hold. It was the plague box he’d crafted while hiding in the king’s court as Navarch Pariel. He set the box down so the crest of Aiestal, faced the paralyzed guard and then touched its top. He willed the plague box to begin radiating its disease aura, and then locked the talis with a command word so no one would be able to deactivate it.

  He smiled as he imagined children all throughout the city waking with violent coughs and high fevers. It wouldn’t take long for the magical disease to begin its work. By this time tomorrow night, thousands of little bodies would fill street carts carrying them to a mass pyre. The man on the ground would report what he’d seen; a cloaked stranger depositing a talis emblazoned with the unmistakable symbol of their enemy nation. The Haeshalan talis scholars would soon identify it as the source of their loss, and they would marshal for war. With the Aiestali army already on the march, Jenoc estimated that the first battle of the new talis war would begin before the week was out.

  He chuckled, kicked the paralyzed soldier in the ribs, and walked away. He was casual about it, not wanting to attract the attention of the few late-night wanderers still milling about. He’d only gotten a mile away when the first motherly shriek rang out.

  That was quick. Perhaps the dead child had already been sickly.

  The agony in the woman’s tone was like sweet music to Jenoc, and he couldn’t help but grin. More yelling, and howls of grief followed. He stood still in the street, relishing the sounds of the suffering he’d caused.

  Then something sharp rammed itself into his brain, or at least that’s what it felt like. Jenoc gasped and crumpled to the ground. Pain drilled into his head, like twin daggers stabbing into the back of his eye sockets. He choked out a scream, and then his sight left him. He was blind, rolling on the paved streets clutching his head, and gritting his teeth so hard that one of them actually cracked. His first thought was that somehow the plague box was affecting him, but that was impossible. He’d made no error in defining the talis’s targets–children under five. No, this was his injury, the damage he’d done to himself by calling and channeling Moriora.