Authors: Rain Oxford
“You’re still you, though. You still have a way about
you that screams innocent and friendly. Even the gods should see that you
wouldn’t turn against them,” Mordon said.
“That’s just it; he would. If Tiamat asked him to, he
would side with her over any of them,” Edward argued.
Mordon looked at me and I nodded. “Divina loves to be
mysterious and sometimes gets me in trouble, but I know she would never risk my
life or turn against her brothers unless she had a very good reason. So, yeah,
I would side with her. Especially if I don’t know what I’m siding over.”
“Why?” Mordon asked. Edward scoffed.
“Because I love her. I would also side with you and
Edward against the other gods. That doesn’t mean I would try to use my magic
against them, nor does it mean I would refuse a mission if one of them needed
an extra Guardian.”
“What are they having a problem with, then?”
“Miscommunication and secrets,” Edward answered.
“I get the miscommunication, but who is keeping
secrets?” Mordon asked.
“Tiamat, who else? She’s always got something up her…
not her sleeves,” I said. That would mean she revealed them in bed and she
never did.
“And you still trust her?” Mordon asked.
“I will always trust her. You trusted me when I kept
her secret from you.”
He rolled his eyes. “I can smell your intentions.
That doesn’t count. I have always known who I can trust and who I can’t. I know
she’s mysterious and loves to have secrets, but she adores you.”
“I am pretty fortunate to have her. She is the most
amazing woman I have ever met. We should go back to the springs and finish
this. If you changed your mind about your father, we could go to Mokii
afterwards.”
He frowned and Edward started to clean up the cards.
“Why would I change my mind? I don’t want to rule Mokii.”
“I know you don’t, but we could go back to heal him
and then leave.”
“What do you mean, heal him?” He looked completely
confused.
“From his injury…” I said. He gave me a blank look.
“Edward said when we got back that he wouldn’t live without treatment.”
“Who wouldn’t? I don’t know anyone injured and about
to die,” Edward argued. Now they both looked at me like I was crazy.
“When we left the forest, and met up with Edward, you
remember that?” I asked. They both nodded. “Edward said you had to disguise
your eyes because your father was looking for you. He said that your father was
injured and wanted you back before he died. Remember?” They both shook their
heads. “I suggested we go and heal him, and you hid yourself away on the ship
for two days! You said no, that you would help me instead.”
“I was with you the entire time on the ship.”
“No, you weren’t. Edward and I were in the cabin, but
no one could find you. Sammy kept crying for you.”
“He was with us the entire time,” Edward argued.
Sammy was staring at us in confusion. “Sammy, where
was Mommy on the boat ride?” I asked him.
He got a weepy look in his face. “Mama hide.”
“Was Edward with us in the room?” I asked. The baby
nodded. “Was Mordon?” I asked. He shook his head. “When did Mordon go hide?”
“When we saw Eddie.”
“Saw who?” Edward asked. I laughed.
“Eddieward,” Sammy corrected himself.
Mordon flicked me on the nose. “Stop laughing, this
is serious. You and Sammy remember something differently than Edward and me.
What worries me is that you two probably remember the truth and I hate that
something altered my memories.”
“Wait, it is never that simple,” Edward said gently.
“You healed some of the damage done to this world, including rewrote things
that should never have happened. That is what must be happening, because no
magic has been cast on me or you. So, Ishte-mor’s injury must have been a
mistake in time, or related to one. Dylan, there are two things that could have
caused this. One, his father’s injury was a mistake and you corrected the
problem yesterday, which rewrote what happened, so we only remember what was
corrected and would have happened had we never gotten the news. Or two, he was
supposed to be injured, and a mistake formed sometime last night, causing us to
only remember the mistake happening. Either way, you remember him being
injured, and we only remember what everyone else remembers. Or his injury was
just delayed.”
“I hate time. It makes my head hurt. So if he was
supposed to be injured, and I heal the rest of the world…”
“Then time and space will revert to the right place
and he will have been injured. A worse situation is if we are actually dealing
with split realities. Many choices we make alter our future, in which we form a
course, or bubble. For each choice we had, we have a bubble and live in that
bubble of our choices, interacting with other bubbles at different points in
time. In that sense, we live hundreds of lives that never interact except with
others, depending on those choices we did or did not make.”
“Turn left.”
“Huh?” he asked.
“I wrote a paper in English class called “Turn left.”
Basically, you create your universe that you live in with every choice you
make, but there is an alternate you that made a different choice and is living
a different life. Not just your choices, but those around you. Maybe Person A
went out one night and Person B had a choice; drive drunk or take a cab. Person
B chooses to drive and ends up paralyzing Person A. However, there is an
alternate reality where Person B took a cab and Person A ends up living their
life to its fullest. Then there are events that were meant to happen, so say
Person A was
meant
to get paralyzed. In the reality where Person B takes
a cab, Person A is shot by accident from Person C and ends up paralyzed.”
“That is right. But these alternative lives are
bubbles in the universe. So far, bubbles, even ones damaged, have interacted
but never collide. If these alternative memories are the result of colliding
bubbles and not glitches in time, then we have a much bigger problem.”
“Then we need to heal as much as possible, as fast as
possible.”
* * *
I sat with my feet in the water again. I linked myself
with Duran, Earth, Malta, and Vaigda, but was careful not to connect any of the
links. Duran was very eager to finish its healing and took little time. When it
was fully healed, the world gently broke the link and Earth followed its lead.
Then I let go of Malta and Vaigda.
Before opening my eyes or returning to reality, I let
the energy swirling inside me settle. I didn’t over-exert myself this time, and
it actually felt good that I had used the energy. In fact, it took longer to
settle my nominal energy that hadn’t even been used.
I opened my eyes, relieved to see that I was still
sitting up. Mordon sat there holding Sammy. “How does it look?” I asked.
His eyes went black. “Good. It looks like everything
is how it is supposed to be.”
“And your father? Is he injured or not?”
“What are you talking about? I doubt you healed him
by healing the world. We already established that I would stay with you. You
need someone to burn you when you won’t wake up,” he said.
“I feel like we just had this conversation,” Edward
said.
“So, Mordon’s father was injured a few days ago and
everyone is looking for Mordon to return him to Mokii, and this morning, we
didn’t talk about anything?” I asked.
“We talked about Divina and how you would stand by
her against the other gods, but we didn’t talk about Ishte-mor.”
“What about alternate realities?”
“We did talk about those. Why are you asking what we
talked about? You were there this morning.”
“Yeah, I was, but you weren’t. Not my morning. Well,
you were, but you had different memories. Why did we talk about alternate
realities?” I asked.
Edward paused and frowned. “I don’t know. I guess it
was just something that came up.”
“Rojan says you were worried that the universal
bubbles were colliding, and that our memories do not match. Something is wrong
with the air, but I don’t recognize the scent. Rojan says it is the scent left
when time has been changed.”
“Did your healing the world help you at all? Do you
still feel sick?” Mordon asked.
“It hasn’t helped. I’m sure I’ll feel better when
Earth is healed.”
Edward went over to the closest tree, sat down, and
leaned against it. “I’m getting called away. You should be fine here and I’ll
only be a few minutes,” he said.
I hadn’t seen Erono contact him often, but he always
had a warning a minute or so ahead of time. Tiamat never gave me a warning. Or
maybe she did and I was too young and inexperienced to know it. Mordon and I
waited, but even after about ten minutes, Edward didn’t wake up.
“Should we head back to the house?” Mordon asked.
I sat down in front of Edward. “No. There are
monsters and demons running about; we need to protect him. Something must be
wrong.”
Mordon settled down for a little while before taking
Sammy for a swim. I said that the water was too hot for an eighteen-month-old,
but Mordon argued that Sammy wasn’t fully human. Also, Sammy was resistant to
the heat after spending so much time in the papoose. I didn’t like that logic,
but it appeared Sammy was completely unbothered by the heat.
The baby thought it was the most fun in the whole
world. Mordon always enjoyed the naturally heated springs, but that child was
born to swim. After over an hour, I told them to get out for a break. Sammy
threw his first major fit. We both suffered for another hour until the baby
stopped crying.
“It was my original intention to let him swim some
more, but after that fit, I am doubting it,”
I said to Mordon.
“He loves water. It’s unfortunate that he must live
with his parents on Dios, because they seem to lack the vast amount of water
that Earth and Duran have. He may never get to swim again in his life after
this.”
“I can borrow him from his parents and take him
swimming. So can you.”
“I think I need to spend a few years reestablishing
my life. Now that I’m no longer prince, I have no idea what to do. It is so
nice, though, to have the choice.”
Sammy crawled over to me and whimpered a little. I
guess he thought I was easier to persuade. “Please, Dada, swim.”
“Are you gonna cry when you have to get out?” I
asked. He shook his head in the most pathetic way possible, dropping it nearly
to the ground as if he couldn’t bear to hold it up. We both knew he was lying,
but he wanted to swim so badly and Mordon was right about Dios not having much
water. “Okay.”
Mordon had to flop to his side to catch Sammy before
the child dived in. Mordon would not let Sammy go when they were in the water,
even when it was obvious the baby wouldn’t drown. That probably had more to do
with Mordon’s fear of water than Sammy’s age.
After another half an hour, I told them to take
another break. Sammy started fussing, but I figured it was probably with
hunger. When Sammy’s fit only grew, I told Mordon that there was some good meat
in the shed that needed to be cooked. There was some jerky already cooked, but
I didn’t want Sammy to eat something that tough.
Mordon took Sammy back to the cabin to make
breakfast/lunch as I stayed behind to watch over Edward. I knew something had
to be wrong, but I also knew that Edward could handle whatever it was.
“Dylan, we need help over here.”
I was running
back to the cabin before Mordon finished his sentence.
I found them with the demon closing in. The demon had
taken the body of one of the neighboring wizards I had only met once; an older
man who bordered on dementia as he was a little more than three hundred years
old. Though he normally kept to his cabin, I heard he talked to the animals and
randomly shot his guns into the forest. When I heard the gunshots one day,
Edward chased him off and told me the old man had gotten lost while hunting for
Duran’s version of big-foot.
Mordon hid Sammy behind him, but the demon was
between them and the cabin. Mordon’s clothes were wet.
“Use your fire,”
I said.
“I’m trying. He hit me with something and it has
Rojan all messed up. It’s confusing my fire and I don’t want to hurt Sammy.”
The demon was focused on them, so I had to distract
it. Shomodii was the place to be for any weather-related attacks. Lightning was
one of my strongest attacks, but I had an idea. If the creature was burning the
bodies of its victim, it obviously was immune to heat, so maybe it was
sensitive to cold, as Mordon was. I created my lightning as normal, but instead
of nominal energy, I used Iadnah energy, with the intention of making it as
close to absolute zero as possible. I had to be extremely careful to keep it
away from Mordon and Sammy.
My energy poured into the sky, to become part of the
lightning. A haze of clouds drew in, but they were an eerie red and yellow
color. Between this and the sunlight, it looked very much like the sky was on
fire. As I focused on making the energy cold, purple was added to the sky.
I wasn’t ready to strike. The energy built and grew
colder than anything I had ever attempted to make it. I pushed until I couldn’t
stand it anymore, but I knew it was no colder than negative three hundred Fahrenheit.
For one thing, it wouldn’t react with the physical energy if it were any
colder.
The demon turned to me. I was ready with my
lightning… I aimed… And I pulled back.
My body was shaky like my nerves were shot and my
head was pounding, so I couldn’t be a hundred percent positive my aim wasn’t
off. The man possessed may still have been alive, and my lightning could kill
all of us if it wasn’t properly controlled. Yeah, I could control my lightning
okay, but this wasn’t normal lightning, and there was too much that could go
wrong.