The voice was something to hold on to.
The first thing Aiden noticed was his panic settling. As it did, he turned his attention, looked around him. There was nothing else, nobody near or around him.
They aren’t here.
It was as much an observation as it was hope given words. He prayed he was right and that the others had not fallen into the hands of his captor. Then again, this whole thing could be a type of mental illusion, trapping everybody in one of their own.
“You are unbothered,” the voice observed, “unafraid. Perhaps I should not have spoken—allowed your fear to eat you alive. You seem to hold no fear for the known.”
Aiden was not ready to play a game of wits with someone who was capable of hiding an enchantment and spell craft that powerful so perfectly. In his experience, to do what they had done, the person had to be well over level three hundred. Then again, you killed my experiment already told him what he wanted to know.
The next thing he noticed was how whatever power had suppressed [Enchanted Void] when he’d activated it, forcing it back into inactivity was still holding him down.
Regardless of that, he could still move his body. He turned his head, felt the muscles of his neck work. He could feel his hands and his legs but not the ground beneath his feet.
Sure it’s an illusion? he asked himself. For all he knew, there was a chance he had been transported elsewhere somehow.
You killed my experiment.
There was only one person that could potentially be telling him that and saying the truth. But he’d never expected it to be an experiment.
“Still thinking,” the voice said. It was not a question. “I have often enjoyed a thinking mind. Their only problem is that they lack the ability to let go when they have to—the ability to be quiet.”
The last time Aiden had tried to speak, he’d found his words dying in his throat. Was that gone too?
He tested his throat muscles, opened his mouth to speak. He found words.
“What happened to my comrades?”
The voice sighed as if it was the most useless question that was of no benefit to it. “Well, they have done me no wrong, so they are untouched.”
That was good, if he was to believe the voice. Now he tried for something else.
“Is this mind magic or an illusion?” He wanted to see how much he could get out of the voice. The powerful were often benevolent without even wishing to be. It was a hubris they fell into. “Or have you physically moved me?”
“Hmmm….” It was a thoughtful sound, but not an answer.
Another thing Aiden realized was how his voice moved. It was perfect even if not echoing. This was either a perfect illusion with no mistakes, unsurprising considering the mix of enchantment and spell craft, or he had in fact been physically moved. But how could the latter be pulled off without affecting the others in any way.
“And you said experiment,” Aiden pressed. He continued to listen to himself, the beating of his heart, the way his voice moved from his mouth to the world outside, the way his sound vibrated from out of him. “That’s a particular word.”
There was a pause. Then something shifted in the darkness. It was not light, not exactly. Just the presence of something in the dark. It carried with it a slight warm quality, taking form like a physical presence.
“It is,” the voice agreed, yet its form was still not present. “Most beings would have said my work or my creation. I worked on something in an attempt to create something and watched and waited for the outcome… well, not really watched, but I waited for the outcome. So, in this case, experiment is more fitting.”
“And?”
“And the experiment is over.”
The initial warmth of a physical presence grew more. It grew greater, wider. A shape finally took form, and it answered Aiden’s question of whether he had been transported physically or if whatever was happening to him was mental.
The shape was not a figure. It was a landscape.
For the briefest moment Aiden was captivated by the sight. It was a place he did not recognize immediately. Perhaps it was because of the implications of being able to see the place.
Mental intrusion, he surmised.
The owner of the voice had tracked their way into his mind and usurped it. If that was the case, then he was probably lying limp in someone’s arms.
Ted probably has me thrown carelessly over his jepat.
Something in the landscape caught his attention mid thought and he focused on it before he could stop himself. He had not recognized it because the landscape had not finished taking shape. Now that it was complete, he recognized it. It was a valley between two mountains.
Are you fucking kidding me?
It was the exact valley that he and the others had been heading to in search of the [Enemy of the Order]. Was the man showing him what was happening in his absence?
The landscape resolved itself like the memory of a dream upon waking. It was there, present in Aiden’s consciousness, yet wispy, like a thing that would be forgotten the moment he took his attention away from it. It forced him to make a decision, succumb to his curiosity or succumb to his skepticism.
I have often enjoyed a thinking mind, the voice’s words came back to him. Their only problem is that they lack the ability to let go when they have to—the ability to be quiet.
Had the words been something of a foreshadowing for this moment? Had the owner been telling him that if he could not learn to let go of what was unimportant and give in to what he was about to be shown, then he would be unable to learn?
In all his thoughts, Aiden made his choice.
This is how people get themselves killed, he thought with a mental sigh.
Curiosity won over skepticism.
The landscape completed itself, then, all at once, the details sharpened until the dreamlike nature of it disappeared and everything sat heavy in his mind. The valley was covered in low fog that threaded between the stones and wrapped around the foot of the mountains like an anklet on a luxuriously funded fancy lady. The sky above it was the color of old iron, neither day nor night but the ill-defined hour between the two. It was somehow what you would expect the moment between the darkness of night and the breaking of dawn to be.
At the heart of the illusion was a woman. Clad in what, at a simple glance, looked like the attire of a peasant, torn and worse for wear, she moved the way a person moved when the weight of what they were carrying was not a physical thing. She looked like one whose fatigue was of both body and mind. Like a widow who’d traveled too far to find her husband’s killer.
Her arms were full, carrying a child no more than a year old, perhaps not even up to. The child was wrapped in cloth that had long since gone grey from use. The boy’s head kept lolling against her shoulder, forcing her to adjust its positioning every few seconds. The woman was not young. But Aiden could not truly call her old. The problem was that her true age was masked by the weight of her worries. One thing he could say for certain was that she looked like a woman that was likely younger than she looked. Her grief had taken her youth from her.
Aiden’s eyes softened in understanding. Or maybe it’s her rage.
His attention followed her every movement. The child was not all that she carried, behind her, she carried a sack as large as a man’s torso, dripping with blood. With it, she walked towards a man seated at the center of the valley.
As for the man, he was simply there. He sat on neither chair nor throne. Instead, he was settled casually on the ground, his legs folded beneath him like some monk in meditation while he was clad in a simple white robe with blue designs. Oddly, there was something childlike about the way he was seated, as if he sat that way simply because he wanted to see if he could, perhaps the uncomfortable need to try new things after waiting for too long. Besides that, the most remarkable thing about the man was his face. He had the kind of face that would not be remembered in a crowd.
Aiden moved his attention from the image for only a moment and looked at the darkness around him.
“Yes,” the voice said, answering his unasked question, “that is me, and that is not what I look like.”
Aiden visibly fought the urge to mentally claim that he knew what the owner of the voice looked like in case the man was reading his thoughts.
The woman stopped before the man. She did not kneel, neither did she speak, at least not yet. Although, she did look like she had a lot to say.
Only a few seconds in and Aiden already knew what he was being shown. He knew this story, at least multiple versions of it. The truth of what had happened had never been known. Perhaps he was seeing a truth that even the Order did not have in complete specificity.
The woman simply stood before the man, adjusting the child weakly in her arms once more. Her eyes were hard and Aiden confirmed what was aging her. There was grief in her, yes, but it was her rage that ate at her. Rage was the strongest emotion he knew that was capable of eating a human being alive while motivating them to the greatest heights.
Standing before the man in her silence, she knew that she waiting. Waiting patiently for the man to acknowledge her. But there was a defiance in her waiting, the defiance of a person who had nothing left to lose but the purpose that had brought her.
Finally, the man met her gaze. “You found me.”
“Don’t.” Her voice was like flakes of iron, despite being rough and tired. “Do not patronize me. I didn’t find you. My calculations say I still have at least another week of travel before I might find you.” She looked him dead in the eye. “You came to me.”
The man frowned a little, as if displeased. “A thinking mind.” Then he looked past her, somehow looking at the sack she carried without moving his head or leaning to the side. “Merchant Terlernor will not be happy that you’ve stolen from him.”
“Terlernor can go fuck his mother,” she spat.
The man’s eyes focused a little more, and his frown of displeasure lit into a smile of intrigue. “And the church, too?” He chuckled lightly. “The [Hierophant] will not be pleased at all.”
“What is a merchant and a church when your enemy is the gods?”
The man cocked a curious brow at that. “Oh, please. You are far too weak and insignificant to make an enemy of the gods. Still,” he folded his arms and sat with a straight back, “I will humor you. Tell me about this enmity.”
She stood taller, or at least she tried to and failed. Still, her hands clutched a little tighter to the child in her arms. The boy.
The man looked at the boy, and something passed over his unremarkable face, something Aiden could not read.
“I did not pity the child,” the voice interrupted, “I am yet to find a being that deserves my pity. You are all born to ultimately suffer. Suffering is a singular part of your existence. It matters naught when it begins and ends.”
“The gods gave him this,” the woman said. She was not pleading or complaining, she was accusing, as if laying the accusations on the gods in the presence of the man and daring them to come and defend themselves. “I made my offerings, followed the teachings of the church. I made my living and paid my tithes. I prayed as often as I was permitted, and when I was raped, I learnt to love the child regardless of how he was conceived. And what do I receive in return? Sickness. A sickness with no name. A sickness that no [Healer] can or will heal.” Her jaw set in the same old defiance that she had carried with her to the man. “So, fuck the gods, fuck the church, fuck the [Hierophant], and fuck the putrid merchant whose power will choke him to death one day.”
The man said nothing, as if he was uninterested in the ramblings of a lady being eaten alive by grief and rage.
She maneuvered her way around herself to pull the sack free from her back without inconveniencing the child in her arms too much. When she did, she lowered herself to her knees, again, for the child’s convenience, and placed the sack on the ground.
Then she untied the rope that had since kept it shut. From the sack she retrieved another, a smaller sack, and placed it next to the larger sack. This, too, she opened.
Aiden watched and knew just as a person in a dream knew without knowing how, that the larger sack held the [Heart of Nosrath] and the smaller held the [Crystal of Existence].
The man looked at the heart and crystal with the same level of boredom carried by a man who ate the same meal every day. What was special to the woman, was bland to him. It irked the woman because she had risked her life twice to get these items, and a third to get here. Aiden knew this without being told in the same way you understand the rules and logic of a dream without being told.
The man sighed. “There is no natural way to save your child.”
“I did not come here for natural,” the woman spat, staring into his eyes from her new position. “Be it an abomination or something else, all I came here for is to save my child.”
The man watched her a while longer before speaking once more. “Put him down.”
She hesitated but ultimately obeyed. Holding the child was the only thing her arms knew how to do anymore. So, when she set him down, it was as if she was practicing the very act, moving through the motions so as not to make a mistake.
She laid the boy on the ground, and he made a sound. It was not a word. It was not quite a moan, merely the small involuntary sound of a child who was tired and had been tired for far too long. His skin was the wrong color, tan where it should’ve been pale, lips black where they should’ve been pink. And while his breathing seemed intentionally careful, it also seemed strained.
Aiden already knew what this was. He was standing witness to the birth of the Immortal.
The moment the child touched the ground, he vanished, along with the sacks holding the heart and the crystal then the man vanished. The woman was left alone, turning, looking around, panicking yet keeping the panic in check.
“It is a fond memory of mine,” the voice said, and something else began manifesting in the darkness, “I have experimented countless times, and only this child came the closest to the results I have been looking for.” Some emotion finally leaked into the voice, disdain and disappointment. “All the rest, failures. Yet they walk around as though they have been bestowed with the perfect form, flaunting the very sign that they are failures. They think their red hair is proof of their vitality.” Anger sipped in. “They think they are perfect. Some of them even come to me seeking to become the very failure that they see walking around. Pathetic pieces of failures destined to be no more than detritus.” The voice calmed down while whatever was forming in the darkness continued to form. “But the child, cursed by the gods, came so close.”
In the valley, Aiden watched the man reappear, standing in front of the woman.
“What,” he said blandly, “would you give to save your child?”
The woman did not hesitate to answer.
“Anything.” Her voice hardened with resolve. “Everything.”
The man nodded.
Then he ripped her heart out of her chest in one simple motion. The woman’s face was frozen in shock and horror as she died.
“People,” the voice said, “always seem to overestimate themselves in the end.”
In the image, the man left the woman’s corpse lying there and disappeared. Then the perspective shifted. They moved to an empty room.
The room was impossibly vast, its dimensions difficult to judge. Aiden had expected to know it on instinct just as he had known things as if in a dream, but it did not come to him.
Because she’s dead, he realized. He had only known what the woman had known.
Towering walls of the room were made of smooth, pale stone that rose high into the darkness of a ceiling that did not exist. The silence of the room was absolute, broken only by the still seemingly careful breathing of the child.
There was nothing else.
No windows admitted light, neither were there doors to suggest a physical entrance into or exit from the room. The only illumination with which he saw it all came from an unseen source of light that cast itself upon the man and the child like a spotlight at a stage play. Aiden had a feeling the light did not exist, that it was nothing but a narrative tool to guide his vision.
Within the lonely center stood a crude wooden platform. Thick planks, scarred by age and oppressed by time, rested on stout legs that raised it comfortably to the waist height of the man. It resembled a table fashioned without artistry or comfort, built simply to serve the purpose of being a platform. The child laid quietly on it, breathing and not much else. Still wrapped in the cloth his mother had brought him in, his fingers flexed upwards and aimlessly towards the light. It made Aiden wonder if the light was truly just a narrative tool.
The shape creating itself in the darkness with Aiden finally took form, and he took his eyes from the illusion to look at it. He was not surprised at the sight before him.
A young man, perhaps in his thirties by looks, stood before him, clad in a simple white robe. He had a slight stubble around his jaw and flowing white hair that he held up in a loose ponytail. The only part of his skin that was visible was that of his face and neck, both fair as if he had never spent a day in the sun.
Aiden was not surprised. He had already known. Anybody with the information he already possessed would’ve already known.
Standing before him was the [Enemy of the Order].
The man tilted his head slightly to the side. “Not much of a reaction out of you.”
Aiden had nothing to say to that.
“No matter,” the man continued. He walked to the side, not approaching Aiden. “You have walked a similar path as the woman you have seen. You have come with the heart, and you have come with the crystal.” He turned and faced Aiden again. “Like the woman, you have somehow succeeded in seeking me out, and I have granted you my benevolence and come to you first.”
Aiden said nothing, doing his best to keep his recognition from his face. The last thing he needed was the [Enemy of the Order] discovering that he knew exactly who he was.
“But the others come only with the heart,” the enemy continued. “You come with heart and crystal, second only to the woman you have just watched die. And yet,” he started walking again, “you carry with you no infant. So, you have come for yourself.”
Aiden’s gaze moved over to the illusion once more and found that it had not stopped. Instead, the man now had his back to him so that Aiden could not see what abominations he was working upon the child. But it did not matter, the man was working with his robe hanging loose from his waist, his entire torso exposed but half-covered in shadows.
He knelt down before the corpse of the mother and slipped something that looked like a centipede into the hole where her heart had once been. It the span of a breath, the corpse rose to its feet as if it had life in it once more.
He offered the child to the woman, the infant breathing freely and easily, and she took him. Then he patted the child caringly on the head.
“Raise him well,” he said to the woman but looking at the child. “He just might be the success I’ve been looking for.”
The woman did not nod, and she did not respond. Instead, she turned and simply walked away while the [Enemy of the Order] stood there and watched them leave.
Aiden saw the sight and froze.
His breath seized in his lungs.
“So, tell me,” the enemy continued, but Aiden was only half-listening to him now. “Did you come seeking to be some kind of failure or did you come to be more? You have brought the heart, and you have brought the crystal. Now, tell me…” He turned his head upward, as if looking at something and some part of Aiden’s mind that still possessed autonomy knew that he was looking at Ted and the others. “Have you brought the sacrifice?”
The words shook Aiden, but they could not reach his core. He only half registered itWhy? Because something else had the very fiber of him in its tight grasp. His eyes were unable to leave the illusion before him.
The [Enemy of the Order] stood there in the illusion, bathed in the full light of the sun. He stood there, torso exposed.
In his loose hanging robe.
And his red right hand.