The Guardian, of course, knew the meaning of this word, but only a few people can understand what it is like to force a Guardian into any world while he's flying by. Just because someone is bored? It turns out, the Lord had had no problem pulling him here, and yet he was also hiding from someone!
“Oh, Great Creator...” the man thought. “Ugh ... he's sitting in front of me now!”
“It's so boring,” nodded the Creator. “Well, whatever one may say, I am a man. Yes, unusual. Very unusual. But my mind is not designed to be imprisoned for centuries in an empty room. Of course, I can influence the time to some extent, but don't forget, I have long been not who I used to be. My possibilities are very limited compared to what they used to be.”
“Why is that, Lord? What could happen that you...” Shinigami struggled to find the right words.
“Heh,” the Lord scratched his forehead. “How can I explain it? I handed my post over.”
“What?”
“I gave away all my powers. Surrendered the post. I yielded the right of way to the youth. I just stepped aside. Call it what you want, the result is that all I have left are some ordinary human... magical powers, and a lot of experience.”
“From whom are you hiding?” The Guardian decided to clarify.
“It's funny and tragic at the same time, Yinsani. From the “youth”. Who knew that this nasty woman would go mad? What a psycho.”
“A psycho?” The Guardian did not understand.
“Well, yes, nasty psycho. Elandiel. You gotta know her being the Guardian of one of the worlds. You had to at least have heard about her.”
“Well... I...” Shinigami hesitated. “I've heard about the elves. It's an elven name, is it not? But... I don't think I know of any elves named Elandiel.”
“No?” The man raised his eyebrow, aforgetting about the plate with food, which had disappeared by now. “En'Zim'Ma. Have you heard this name?”
Hearing that, the poor Guardian started to hiccup. That passed rather quickly.
“So she... SHE is hunting you!?”
“Well, yes,” Nikolai was a little embarrassed.
“You are being hunted by the mistress of the whole Sphere of the Worlds?”
“Well, now you're exaggerating,” the Lord said. “I'm still alive if you have not noticed. And while I'm alive, there will be no 'mistresses'.”
“But... she will find you,” Shinigami looked around once more. “You can not sit in one place.”
“Power is far from everything,” grumbled the once greatest creature in power in the entire Sphere of the Worlds. “No one will find me here.”
“Lord, we're talking about En'Zim'Ma. Even if she doesn't find you, she'll destroy the whole world looking for you.”
“Freak,” Nikolai confirmed with a nod. “She once was a worthy person. Believe it or not, she’s giving mortals the opportunity to destroy the worlds. She calls them Erasers. They are mortals, Yinsani! In my entire life, I have destroyed only three worlds, and I had major reasons for that. And now her pawns blow up the erhaya around the worlds, damn it! Just to make me stay! I have no words to describe the chaos that is happening in the Sphere of the Worlds. I have no words, Yinsani. None! Big-eared witch!”
He continued after a pause, “I have time. First, local freaks will be looking for me for a long time. They'll search till their last breath. They will not dare tell her that they have let Al'Vir go. After that, she will come racing along. This will also win me some time. I doubt that she can immediately admit that she can't find me, either. Then there will be options. Most likely, she will simply destroy the local ones, blaming them for missing me. She can also destroy their whole world if she starts suspecting that I'm hiding there. What's also possible... Oh, there are too many options,” sighed Al'Vir.
“So you have absolutely no idea how to get out of here? How were you able to pull me here if the whole world is blocked?”
“You are you,” the old man chuckled. “You and others like you were created by me. Why did they not notice you? Because you're a Guardian. The local one has long been disembodied, but your very essence is able to synchronize with the world. It’s easy for me to make you invisible. You are now part of this world, in the truest sense of the word.”
“Then I should have dissolved in it.”
“Not on my watch,” the owner of the hideout grinned.
“Even now,” thought the Guardian, “even having lost most of his power and abilities, the Creator is truly great.”
“If I can only help you, Lord...” began the Guardian, who had introduced himself as Shinigami, but in fact, was not.
“Your strength is not enough. More precisely not your strength, but... You don't have the abilities. Tell me, what were you doing wandering around this world? What made the Guardian of external borders leave his world?”
“I was traveling back home, Lord,” sighed the Guardian. “The fact is that a few centuries ago, according to the calendar of my world, I had made a mistake and entered into a contract with one clan of mortals. A strong and powerful clan. I had to protect them from extinction for a thousand years. Who knew that they would be on the verge of destruction only four hundred years after that? Now I'm hustling.”
“Haven't you been keeping an eye on this clan?” Nikolay was surprised. “This is somewhat unprofessional.”
“I have,” another sigh. “But the mortals and I are different cratures... I don't even have the ability to monitor what’s happening with all of my wards. Boom! And within three days, they will be on the verge of extinction. Everyone through whom I could act is dead, and my ability to influence the mortal world is rather limited. So I had to arrange a little intrigue. I went to the neighboring world and inspired a person there with a story I know, and he wrote a manga based on this story... Umm...”
“Yeah, I know what that is.”
“After that, he flew around the world for a long time, encouraging other people to write books based on this story. Screen adaptation was the next step. In general, I made it a true story for some and make-believe for others. I just had to find a worthy person who knows this story, negotiate with him, and send his soul for rebirth to his world. Let him fix it.”
“In my opinion,” Al'Vir made a skeptical face, “you made it all too complicated. Why couldn't you find a person and show him the story in a dream? Among other things, it is also faster.”
“There are billions of them, Lord. And I'm a Guardian of the outside borders, not the internal ones.”
“Well, yes, it's easier for the gods to work with human souls. Anyway. So, you're coming back home from that world?”
“No. The man that I chose managed to make a deal with me... a cunning warlock, so I went to acquit my part of it. What is it?”
“Never mind, continue.”
“Ahem. So, as I understand, you've heard about the fact that someone blew up the erhaya recently. Considering what is going on around that world, it would be amazing if you hadn’t heard about it.”
“Heh. Right. Those pathetic pawns were trying to cut me off the path of retreat. Only now I don't know myself how the erhaya could help me in this.”
“Because of all this, in the world where I chose my assistant, one mortal was thrown out of his body and fell into another. And he turned out to be a friend of the one I chose. The one I chose demanded to contact his friend as soon as he found out about my connections with him. Well, he demanded more, but I couldn’t do everything.”
“For what reason?” Nikolay asked curiously.
“That world is sealed. I can't even get there, let alone influence it in any way.”
“Stop. Have you tried breaking into the sealed world?”
“Umm, not exactly breaking into,” the Guardian cuffed.
“Yinsani, you morbid moron! You think these worlds are just randomly sealed?”
“No, I just...”
“Never! Never do that again. What is allowed to mortals is not allowed to the ones like you!”
<
br /> “I'm ready to bear the punishment, Lord,” he fell to one knee once again.
“Get up,” the Lord retorted through his teeth. “And sit down. What is done cannot be undone. If you haven't caused any harm, it's fine.”
“Are you sure, Lord?” Asked the Guardian, carefully sitting back down.
“Even now, even here, I would have known if you'd caused harm. Anyway,” Nikolay waved his hand with a sigh, “sorry I lost my temper. You couldn't have broken anything. Your power has a different effect. All right. Have you at least established contact with that person?”
“Yes, I have. Though it wasn't long.”
“I'm impressed,” the local master shook his head. “How did you pull it off?”
“I connected their souls in a dream,” the Guardian shrugged. “Standard procedure. However, because of the barrier, it did not last long.”
“You... Tell me one more time. Connected the souls of two people, although one of them was in a sealed world?”
“Yes,” answered Yinsani in surprise.
“Ah... Were they both alive at the same time?”
“Yes.”
“You know what?” Al'Vir said, somewhat shocked. “Send me their portraits.”
“As you say, Lord,” the Guardian said, still surprised. Then he froze for a moment, looking into the eyes of his Creator.
“Good to know,” Nikolai leaned back in his chair. “Very good to know. This is yet another chance to get out of here.”
“I don’t understand, Lord.”
“This ‘standard procedure’, as you call it, does not work if one of the mortals is in a sealed world. Properties of the barrier, you know. To make it work, one of them should be... special.”
After these words, Al'Vir thought about something for a while. He was so engrossed in thought that the Guardian did not dare to disturb him with any questions. Suddenly, someone who looked like a young man startled and stared at his guest.
“It may work, oddly enough,” he said softly. “You mentioned that the person you chose is a warlock.”
“Yes, that's right,” Yinsani nodded.
“Is that just a name, or is he really a warlock?”
“Half-educated, weak, doesn’t know anything, but yes—he's a warlock.”
“What about the other one?”
“He is a warlock too.”
“Considering that you mentioned manga, I can assume that the world in which you did your manipulations is techno-chemical.”
“Yes.”
“Moscow, London, World War II, atomic bombs?”
“That's right, Lord.”
“And there are warlocks despite everything,” Nikolai concluded. “Are there other races, except human, in that world?”
“No, Lord.”
“Magic then. I’m getting rusty. Send me all the information regarding this story. Worlds, people, your situation... Well, you know.”
Once again, their eyes interlocked only for a short while.
“That's all, Lord.”
“Mk, so that's how it is. I'm going to create something. Let's call it the Messenger. Then I'll send you back, beyond the boundaries of this world, and you should rush to the sealed world, and that's where you'll drop it off.”
“Shall I hand it to the local Guardian?”
“No, the Messenger should be outside the boundaries.”
“I understand, Lord. Anything else?”
“No, that is it. Then you can fly back to your own world. Oh yeah. Warn the Guardian not to touch my device.”
“Will do, my Lord,” Yinsani nodded sharply.
“Hold on, it won't take me long,” he closed his eyes and muttered, “Well-well, a warlock.”
Whirlwind:
Book 1: Changing Masks (find it on Amazon)
Book 2: Losing Masks (find it on Amazon)
From the Author
Hi, reader!
You’ve just finished my second book in the Whirlwind series and I hope you liked it. If so, don’t forget to leave a review on Amazon, I’d appreciate it a lot!
Thank you for reading!
Enjoy and happy reading!
Good luck and have a nice day, Nicholas Metelsky
https://amzn.to/2EVld8P
About Nicholas Metelsky
Today Nicholas is one of the main Russian action sci-fi writers. His series Whirlwind was chosen to be translated for the English-speaking world, is the brightest representative of the genre, which gained enormous populatity in its motherland.
His writing started while he was a teenager and worked at the book store. Than he published the first few chapters of the Whirlwind series and they were huge online.
Nicholas never searched for any fame, preferring a calm and modest life in contrast with his internet popularity.
Follow the Whirlwind series’ Facebook page!
- Actual news on the author and series
- Contests and prizes
- Open communication with the author
- Discussions with other readers and fans
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Losing Masks Page 30
