Authors: Rain Oxford
By the time I caught up to Dylan, it looked a little
like a nightmare. Dylan radiated magic to the point that he was glowing. He
didn’t even need a shield, because the power was so strong that it would keep
anything away. Still, the energy had a gentle feel to it, as if it were healing
magic. Healing magic strong enough to burn through metal. Lovely.
What was worse was the blackness, the moving shadow,
surrounded him. In the red light of the sky it was easily visible, like a black
hole among stars. The closer it crept, the brighter Dylan’s energy became. “The
woman said it didn’t attack magic users,” I said.
“It attacks those who reject magic. I have been
rejecting my own magic because I didn’t want it to grow out of my control. I
never wanted to be more than in control of myself. My magic is becoming
stronger the more I use it, but I lose control the more I reject it.”
When the darkness reached his foot, there was a
familiar flash, bright enough to drown everything else.
We were back in the forest, but it was more like we
were in a dream than really there. Standing in front of us was a god. After the
five gods I had met so far, including Tiamat, this one didn’t look particularly
frightful; his appearance bordered on average with medium length, medium brown
hair, hazel eyes, and black clothes. The power emanating from him, though, caused
my skin to crawl. It wasn’t that his aura was menacing, it was just really
copious.
“Nice to meet you, god of Skrev,” Dylan said in a
foreign language. Apparently Dylan’s magic was still working on me to make me
understand.
“And you, young Noquodi. I am called Araxi. How
interesting that you speak the language of the gods.”
“I was not really able to learn. It is through my
magic that I am speaking Enochian now,” Dylan said. “Kiro tried to teach me…”
The god grinned. “Then you do not yet understand. All
Noquodi are encouraged to learn to speak the language, but none will ever
become fluent in it. Enochian is not a language made of words and sounds; it is
the language of our being, our magic. Only someone with Iadnah magic can speak
our language. Others can merely learn to imitate the sounds.”
“I guess it is another strike against me,” Dylan
said.
“To the other gods, yes. They will feel it is
blasphemy and that you think of yourself as one of us. Many of my brothers
believe that you want to be more powerful, but I was watching. When the little
vampire girl would not be healed by your magic, you resorted to other methods.
Why were you so determined to help someone that I know your people consider to
be a monster?”
“Sure, humans have vampire lore, but she was a little
girl who needed food. It isn’t her fault her food is blood. I bet vampires have
human lore, too, and are all terrified that humans are torch-wielding maniacs
with wooden stakes in their pockets.”
“You refused to use your magic to help yourself
because you were afraid of it, but when someone needed your help, you never
hesitated. Any other Iadnah would suspect you of being fake, but I was in your
head.”
There was no surprise in Dylan’s expression. “That’s
been going around a lot. You were in my head, I was in yours in a sort.”
“You felt the soul of my world and instead of turning
away, you continued trying to heal it.”
“Why make a world like Skrev, though?”
“On other worlds, people dominate. They fight and can
easily destroy the world, but on Skrev, people and creatures live in balance.
Because of the tears in time and space, the balance was broken. Made worse is
that my people now fear magic. This creates more damage. In the unending cycle,
my world is on the verge of collapsing from time and space and my Noquodi has
gone into hiding.”
“Did you threaten him?” Dylan asked.
The god shrugged, which struck me as odd. “Only a
little.”
“I’m sure he will return when the world is healed, if
he’s allowed back. I must know it’s difficult for a Guardian to stay away from
their world for long. I miss the feel of Earth’s magic, but Duran is my home.”
“Then we will make a deal. Help my world and take
care of it in the absence of my Noquodi, and I will defend you from the other
Iadnah.”
“Dylan, think before you agree,”
I warned.
The god didn’t miss it though; he looked at me.
“Speak freely, dragon child. You offer him sound advice and should not be
afraid to do so.”
“It isn’t like I would disagree to help anyone.
Especially if his Guardian isn’t doing the job,” Dylan said to me in English. I
sighed.
He was a very caring and friendly person, but he was
too quick to agree to help. “Just because you are willing to help every single
time, doesn’t mean you should agree ahead of time. What if his view of helping
conflicted with yours?” I regarded the god. “If a man was killing dozens of
people a day with magic, and for some reason you decided to tell Dylan to deal
with it, what would you have Dylan do with the man?”
“Kill him, of course,” the god said.
“And what would you think is right?” I asked my
friend.
“Imprison him in a dark hole with no chance of ever
seeing the light of day again. Oh, and he could only ever eat mushy peas for
the rest of his life. And put a clock in his cell so that the constant ticking
can drive him insane. A drippy faucet, too. Killing him is too good for him.”
The god was staring at Dylan as if he were completely
insane. “I am glad I was not too far into your mind. I think I should never
visit it again. That being said, I wonder if my sister would trade Noquodi.”
“We’re not sweaters. So what about if I help you when
you need it, but I solve the problem my way? As long as I’m not currently
helping Earth, you tell me the problem and I will fix it.”
“No other Iadnah allows their Noquodi a choice.”
“Sure, and I’m sure any one of them would do what you
say, when you say it, but I have good ideas and I can carry them out. I’m also
pretty stubborn and dense at times; I could spend days twisting what you tell
me to do around until I like the outcome.”
“I could kill you.”
“And piss off my girlfriend? Am I really worth that?”
“But you are already about to die.”
“Yes, I am aware of that, in about one minute,” he
said.
He looked unfazed. I sighed again. I needed new
friends. Or maybe we needed a third friend; one who would smack us both when we
planned out our next adventure.
“If you need help against another god, call for me.
If my Noquodi does not return, or if he needs assistance, I will summon you,
but allow you to choose how you will solve the problem. I make this deal in the
confidence that my sister probably won.”
“Won what?” he asked.
I poked him in the stomach for being an idiot. “Won
in the best Guardian contest, stupid.”
“Oh, well, I accept the modified deal then. But I
need your help. I need to heal Skrev, and it’s rejecting me. I need to do so in
the next minute or I will be no use to you as a Guardian because I’ll be dead.”
“My world has been allowing you to help it the entire
time. However, it has been abused and neglected by the people, and you will
have to be stronger than the damage done to it. You have the ability to heal
it, but you must use more energy than you have ever had to use before. If you
cannot heal it in time, then my world is lost and I will have to start all over
again. Tiamat will also have to find a new Noquodi.”
“Save Sammy and Mordon,” Dylan said. “They’re not
your people and they need to live.”
“The damage to my world is too great at this point.
If I took anyone from the world, the void will open completely and nothing
would survive that. I am too powerful, and you will have to be as powerful as a
god to save them. You could take them and save yourselves without healing the
world, but the void will open just the same. You would be buying yourselves a
miniscule amount of time at the loss of every world in the universe.”
“I hope it’s a long time before I meet you again,”
Dylan said with a scowl.
The god laughed. “I hope I will meet you again.” With
a bright flash, we appeared in the village, just as we were before, minus the
shadow. Thunder cracked across the sky again, but it was snow, not rain, that
began to fall. It wasn’t cold enough to snow, but such laws of physics appeared
to be broken today.
Dylan sat right in the middle of the dirt path and
put his face in his hands. “I can do this,” he said.
He got to work on healing the world. Even as he
worked, I started feeling sick, almost like I suddenly realized my body was
aching. When the energy started pulsing from Dylan with the strength of his
magic, it became difficult to breathe. As the seconds passed, it was getting
more and more difficult to remain standing.
Dylan opened his eyes and they glowed brighter than I
had ever seen them. A wave of nausea took me down. I could breathe, but I
wasn’t getting enough oxygen. I still had to watch over Dylan, though, so I saw
when the energy exploded. It was hard to follow, but there was definitely some
lightning and fire in the explosion, and I barely ducked in time to prevent
massive burns.
Taking a good breath, I looked up. We were back in
the cabin with Sammy and all the townspeople. Everyone, including Dylan and I,
were breathing heavy. In fact, several people were unconscious. I immediately
stumbled over to Sammy, who was crying on the bed. My body felt shaky and I
couldn’t fully stand.
Welcome back,
Rojan said.
I reached for Sammy and he lunged for me.
“Cover his eyes,” Dylan warned.
The moving darkness crept into the room through the
doorway, as the wood was still shattered, and the people who were still
conscious began screaming and scrambling to get away. Dylan reached out and
grabbed my arm an instant before the room filled with a blinding white light. I
suddenly felt weightless and the pain faded away.
When it cleared, and my eyes adjusted, we were back
on Duran in front of the Dylan’s cabin. My pain returned, but it wasn’t as bad
as before. Dylan flopped back in the grass. Sammy wiggled out of my arms and
crawled over to Dylan to hug him.
“Dada hurt?”
“Yeah, honey, but I’ll be okay. Where do you hurt?”
“I’m okay, Dada,” Sammy said bravely. Dylan pat his
back gently. “Mama’s chest hurts.”
Dylan held up his hand and a small ball of glowing
green energy formed and hovered over his skin. “Go give this to him.”
Sammy easily wrapped his tiny fingers around the
sphere, climbed to his feet, and brought it to me. He didn’t hand it to me,
though; he pressed it against my chest, where it was instantly absorbed into my
skin. I figured it would have been cold, but it was actually really warm and
all of the pain in my body quickly melted away. “Thank you. What happened? I’m
confused.”
“I’m not surprised you’re confused; you’ve been
suffering with increasingly low oxygen for nearly five minutes. I sealed the
cabin air tight to keep that shadow monster out, and I told you we had twenty
minutes.”
“So when we returned to the cabin we started
suffocating? I felt messed up before we got there.”
“You felt messed up because your body was oxygen
deprived and it was blocked from your conscious mind. It took me a while to
figure it out, but your memory was changing. You first said I only spent a
minute trying to heal the world and then you kept changing your answer. Rojan
was missing. Several times I felt like I was suffocating. Nothing felt right,
not even my magic. Mordon, we never left the cabin.”
* * *
“How could we not have left the cabin?” I asked.
“I think we were actually in something between my
mind and the soul of the world. Everything around us was some symbolic avatar
of the world. None of it was truly real, but it was affecting us and we were
affecting it. That’s why Rojan was missing; he was watching over us. The entire
time we were in what we thought was a time bubble, I was actually sitting
there, trying to heal the world. That’s why your time was changing; Rojan was
keeping time for us. You ‘remembered’ what he was seeing. Remember the clicking
sound the cell of the door made?”
“When it locked?”
“Yes. There was no lock on the door. It was locked
because it made the locking sound; it was only locked in our minds.”
“Then how did you pick it?”
“How did I pick an imaginary lock? With the imaginary
lock pick I imagined keeping in my bag. Obviously. A mathematician never
reveals his secrets.”
“You mean magician,” I said. He shook his head with a
knowing smirk. “So it was all a test created by the planet that you had to pass
to heal it?” It sounded a little appalling. No one should be punished for
trying to help.
“In a very subjective, generalized sense, yes, sort
of. But this world had scars from way before Tiamat defeated Vretial. It was
abused by those who shunned magic, and then here I come, denying my own magic,
and trying to meddle with it. Of course it was cautious.”
“It’s a planet. I know they generate nominal energy,
but they can’t have personalities,” I argued.
“You can’t see the souls of the worlds. Something I
know about magic, and I don’t know how I know it, is that magic retains
purpose. Magic is imprintable, and a world functions on magic. How could a
world, surviving and thriving on magic, not create a semblance of that same
purpose? And then you have the gods, who create the world, the people, and the
animals around their own desires and intentions. The worlds do each have a
personality, strengths, weaknesses, and a very, very simple consciousness. But
all of the worlds can influence and be influenced by its magic.
“When magic is created in fear and shame, that magic
will only ever be able to cause fear and shame. What happens when a world is
full of people who only ever create magic in fear and shame? A world based on
magic, full of people who
hate
magic?”