There had to be a catch. That was all Aiden could think of. For now, he took all his curiosity of the enemy’s red right hand and stashed it deep within his mind, far in a place where it would not interrupt his normal thoughts.
Now, he focused on the enemy’s own words. Did he bring a sacrifice?
With differing thoughts in his own mind, he fought against the primal urge to answer the question of the one who held the power in the conversation. It was something that people often found themselves in, answering questions when they had more important questions to ask.
“Why me?” he asked instead.
The enemy of the Order paused, tilted his head to the side in curiosity. “Why you?”
“This.” Aiden gestured at the illusion only to find that it was gone. It mattered not. “Why did you show me? Why did I need to know the origin and what was required?”
The man looked at him as if he was dense. “Are you one of those stupid thinkers?” he asked. “Those ones that think a lot but never come up with an answer; those that think they know but never know?”
“I like to think not,” Aiden answered. “But that does not answer my question.”
He already had a few ideas as to why the enemy had shown him the illusion, but he needed to be sure. Or, at the very least, he needed the man to confirm it.
“Alright thinker.” The enemy walked over to him, standing before him now. Somehow, while the man did not look it or had not looked it, he towered over Aiden by at least a foot. “Think. Tell me why you think I have shown you this vision, this memory.”
Aiden did not need to think. He also did not need to show defiance. So, tilting his head back so that he could into the man’s strange pink eyes, he answered.
“Because I killed your experiment.”
“Ah.” The enemy breathed calmly, letting the air spill from his lips. “So, you know. Yet you ask me stupid questions, the question of the dense.”
“But that is not the answer I’m looking for,” Aiden corrected the man’s misconception. “The question I’m trying to ask is why you are offering me this, why you are putting it on the table?” He took a step closer to the enemy, affecting defiance. “The world knows that there exists a man who can extend the effects of the [Heart of the Immortal]—”
“And yet, you have also brought the [Crystal of Existence].” The enemy gave him a knowing look. “Why is that?”
“It matters not,” Aiden dismissed the question. “The point is—”
The enemy took him by the neck. “Careful, child,” he hissed, the words slithering their way into Aiden’s mind as he found himself gasping for air. “Do not mistake the indifference of your betters for benevolence. That I find you harmless does not mean that I cannot in the same measure snap your neck.”
Aiden visibly fought against the urge to swallow.
“Just like that?” Aiden asked, looking into the man’s eyes. “You would kill me.”
The man tilted his head once more. “You think yourself special? Important? You are nothing but a replaceable spec, child. I can sooner experiment on you as I can your brother, or your knight, or one of the many fools that follow you. Do not overestimate your worth.”
There was a moment of silence that took effect between the two of them after that. In it the master simply stared into his eyes, taking in the measure of him as a man. Aiden could tell. It was similar to how the master of the Order did it. But where the master of the Order did it behind joviality and carelessness, the enemy did it behind indifference and melancholy.
So, Aiden stood his ground, kept his eyes on the man’s and did not flinch.
Before long, the enemy dropped him and smiled. “Your world must be an interesting place for you to not understand the true value of allowing yourself to be afraid.”
Aiden rubbed his neck with his normal hand. So, the enemy was very much aware of what he was. It begged the question of it there was any powerful being that was not already aware of who and who came from Earth.
“In my world,” he said when he was done rubbing his neck despite the absence of pain there, “There is a belief that fear exists in the hearts of men to teach them how to survive, to help them survive.”
“An interesting world.” The enemy nodded sagely. “And yet you reject fear and choose defiance.”
Aiden shrugged. “They have their purposes. Fear helps you survive, but defiance helps you evolve. But do not mistake curiosity for defiance. So,” he folded his arms over his chest, “why me?”
“Because you are the only other person, apart from the mother, who has thought to bring both the heart and the crystal.” The enemy smiled. “Which means that you must know something. Then you went the extra mile of slaying the Immortal. You must know more than most. The question is considering how short-lived you have been on Nastild, how exactly do you know?”
“Know is the wrong word. I guessed. I learnt of the heart and the crystal. I found their similarities, then learnt of the Immortal.”
“So you found and killed him?”
Aiden shook his head. “Not at all. His death was a coincidence.”
“And, pray tell, how were you able to pull of what even the strongest of these creatures could not?”
Aiden shrugged. “I stabbed him in the heart after overwhelming him with a lot of enchantments.”
“Is that all?” the enemy asked, confused.
“All that I’m aware of,” Aiden answered. “It’s also possible that he was just coming back from something else. He did fall from the sky like a shooting star.”
The enemy stroked his jaw in thought. “He did develop a habit of doing that.” He leaned down to look deeper into Aiden’s eyes. “My problem with this is that you are proving to be an anomaly. I can neither tell if you are telling the truth nor if you are lying to my face. Not for a fact.”
Thank God for that.
Aiden had been banking on being able to lie to the enemy of the Order since the master of the Order had also claimed that he could not tell if he was lying or telling the truth.
“Again,” he said, “why me?”
“Because you have made your way here with heart and crystal,” the enemy said in the voice of a man tired of an interrogation. “Because you have slain the Immortal and the very nature of that presents a variable that intrigues me.”
A variable.
Aiden had to figure that one out, too. What had he gained from killing the Immortal besides the levels. There were the titles. So which title exactly was the master looking for.
[God-like]. [Void bringer]. [Dauntless].
The question was which one the enemy had an interest in. Then again, nothing stopped the enemy from having an interest in all of them.
“Tell me, Lord Lacheart.” The enemy moved away from him, walking in the darkness the currently enveloped them. “What do you know about one’s ability to level up? What do you know about growing stronger from killing?”
“Killing helps me absorb the mana of the person by the simple virtue of killing them,” Aiden answered simply. “My body refines what it can and dispels what it cannot. That’s how I level up.”
“I see.” The enemy said without looking back. “Bandiv has done well to teach you what you need to know. But would you like to know something that they did not teach you?”
Aiden stood there, said nothing.
“What exactly happens as your body refines this new mana.” The enemy moved with the unhurried ease of a man who had never once in his life needed to rush towards anything. “It does not tell you how you assimilate qualities of the mana of whatever you have, acquired. Do you not ever wonder why every ten levels you always experience a growth in stats that you have not really used or pushed to its limit. Why you have points that can be put into any stat.”
Aiden knew the answer to that, but he said nothing.
“When you kill a monster, you take some of its strength,” the enemy said without looking back. “When you kill a creature with heightened perception you take some of its perception.” He plucked something out of midair and looked at nothing in his hand as if he was studying it. “When you kill a monster with high vitality, you take some of its vitality.” He placed the nothing back in the air and finally looked at Aiden. “When you kill the Immortal…” He let his words trail off, then gestured, inviting Aiden to complete the sentence.
“You take some of his immortality,” Aiden answered.
The master smiled then approached him. Aiden noted something interesting about the man’s footsteps now. He walked with calm ease, like a man comfortable in where he was. He also moved like a man who was not the only tangible object where he was.
We are not in the same place, Aiden realized. Even the enemy was an illusion, talking to him, perhaps from the comfort of his own home.
“That,” the enemy said casually, “is why you, Aiden Lacheart. I have picked you because compared to all the other peasants of Nastild, you and your ilk hold the highest possible affinity to the kind of mana required to achieve my goal. And you specifically have slain the Immortal and proceeded to find me.” He held his arms out to his sides and Aiden could not notice the color of both arms. Whether they were black or red or fair or brown, he could not tell. “And you have come seeking me by yourself. I want this to work.”
“Why?” Aiden stepped up to him. “Isn’t Immortality something already attainable?”
“Immortality?” The enemy snorted in disgust. “Immortality is what any fool with enough violence in his heart can attain. Even the gods have Immortality. A being such as myself does not experiment to gain what things as fickle as hardwork and talent can get a person. No, I look to achieve something grander than that, something beyond even immortal. Something even the gods will baffle at.”
Aiden tilted his head to the side now. “Something beyond Immortality?”
He kept his voice level and paid attention to the enemy. He watched for every reaction, anything that would give him a hint to finding, or even, beating the enemy. He found none.
However, he did realize something. What he was observing—what he had been observing—was not indifference. He had mistaken one for the other. This was patience. The enemy of the Order had lived long enough to be patient in the way that only someone or something very old or very powerful could be. It was the patience of a person who had learned that most things resolved themselves given enough time. Aiden was realizing what the enemy had meant when he had said not to mistake his indifference for benevolence. Patience was not the same as indifference, regardless of how expertly a person wore it, and the enemy did wear it so expertly.
“Good. You are thinking.” The enemy stopped approaching him and looked away. “People believe that the Immortal was somehow superior because he would not die. Yes, I said would not. Off the top of my head, I can count at least ten people on Nastild who could’ve killed him quite easily had they put their mind to it. He had simply never met them or given them reason to come after him. You see, the Immortal would have died eventually. That is not a success, that—no matter how close to success it comes—is still a failure. No, what I want stands levels ahead of Immortality.”
He returned his attention to Aiden. “And you just might be able to help me achieve it.”
Aiden mulled over the man’s words. A being as powerful as the Immortal was also a failure. Then again, Aiden considered, he had been able to kill the Immortal, regardless of his special circumstances. It made a question pop into his mind as worry for himself began to creep in. Considering the kind of anomaly he was, was it truly safe to submit himself into the hands of the enemy of the Order? What if the man noticed what exactly he was and decided to keep him and use him as an experiment for far more than just becoming an immortal.
“Why others?” Aiden found himself asking.
The enemy turned his head to look at him. “Because others come looking for me.”
“No.” Aiden shook his head. There was something he was missing and he knew it. “You have an idea for what you are trying to achieve. You have experimented so much that you know how to fail in a specific way as many times as you require. Why can’t you experiment on yourself.” Aiden gestured around. “I’ve seen what this world has to offer, I’ve heard the rumors of the man who increases the efficiency of the [Heart of Nosrath]. So, I am more than certain that you can experiment on yourself and walk out of it the way you want to.”
The enemy sighed. “Because to experiment on myself, I would need the heart and the crystal, and I am not allowed to go and get it myself.”
Aiden understood that part. If the enemy did something as daring as that, it would alert the Order to his location. Anything else could go wrong from there.
“Besides,” the enemy continued, “experimenting on myself to achieve what I seek to achieve will draw the attention of people I do not want the attention of, at least not yet. What I want is to know that by the end of the experiment, I will be able to face those people undaunted.”
The man was engaging Aiden happily. Something told Aiden that it was the mind of a scientist that led to this. There was always something about the smart, curious, and daring that wanted to explain, to exchange ideas with those they think worthy or slightly worthy of having a conversation with.
“So, you’re not trying to create an immortal,” Aiden said. It was meant to come out as a question but his certainty of it made it come out as a statement.
The enemy shook his head. “No.”
“Then what are you trying to create?”
“Something eternal.”
Aiden was only beginning to understand the gravity of the man’s words when he felt a tug at his chest.
He staggered once, grabbing his chest with his normal hand. Confusion colored his expression as much as it colored his mind. The enemy cocked his head one way then the other.
“That’s interesting,” he muttered. “I haven’t seen something like that in a while.”
Aiden had no idea what he was talking about as his blackened arm tugged him to the side. It was as if someone or something was pulling him.
“There is another curious mind,” the enemy mused. “But it is too young,” he cocked his head in another direction, “too inexperienced. He will have you banished to the void at this rate if he succeeds in what he is doing.”
Aiden frowned. “What’s happening to me?”
He felt his legs grow weak as if his control of them had been suddenly cut off. This time he fought against it, willing himself to stay in the present, to occupy the location he was in. Whatever was happening, he could not let it win.
“Let me tell you something fun about living things, Aiden Lacheart.” The enemy turned and picked something out of thin air again. He dashed it violently in another direction. Aiden heard and felt nothing. All he had to go by were the actions of the man in front of him. “Every living thing has a special signature, difficult and complex, always growing and evolving.” He bent down and picked up nothing from the ground. “The stronger you are, the more difficult the signature is. Now, if someone can somehow identify your signature and figure it out, it gives them power over you, the kind of power that can make you kill yourself if they were strong enough.”
Aiden knew about this. It was not news to him.
“But here is the problem I have with this signature,” the enemy continued. “For something so rigid and fixed, people do not take the time to consciously learn their own signature. They leave it to instincts, allowing their body to command it just the way they allow their eyes to blink through instincts. Learn your signature, Aiden Lacheart. Master it. Before someone else learns it for you.”
The enemy tossed whatever he had picked up at Aiden, and Aiden moved to the side in an attempt to avoid it. In the next moment the tugging sensation was gone as if it had never been.
“When you return to your friends,” he said with a gesture of disinterest, “tell whoever it was that was doing something strange not to do it again. They almost cost you your life.”
“And let me guess.” Aiden was still worried about how he would’ve almost died. “You saved me.”
“Saved you?” The enemy laughed. “You saved yourself child by simply refusing to go. No, all I did was disconnect the link. I do not aim to put you in my debt. That is the position of the weak. The strong do not put people in their debt because there is nothing a person can give to them that they cannot simply take. Now, be gone, and remember to tell that one in eight to perfect an anomaly before trying to use it.”
Aiden did the mental math.
One in eight?
That didn’t make sense.
Ted, Valdan, Melvet, Feira, Zen, Fjord, Rometo, Elami, Telma, Aiden counted quickly to be sure. Nine.
He was traveling with nine people.
“Choose your sacrifice, Aiden Lacheart,” the enemy said in a tired voice. “Then find me. I will make you the greatest among men.”
Aiden was more bothered by something else. “What do you mean one in eight—”
The world was ripped away from him, and he was once more standing on a ridge with bright clear skies and light as far as the eyes could see.
But there was one slight difference between the world he’d left and the world he had returned to.
The ground beneath his feet was littered with corpses.