by M. L. Greye
All good things tended to come to an end, though, and for Tiara that would be right around the corner. She still needed to find that female tutor Trier had told her about. It was all a part of some destiny Tiara – the simple Drivian – was supposed to complete. Tiara moaned softly. She wasn’t so sure she wanted to have a destiny. Life was much less complicated when she and Archrin were just running from the Kendrens instead of running their kingdom.
“I swear, out of everyone in this house, you think the most.” Olinia’s voice made Tiara jump. “Your brain just never stops, does it? On and on you go.”
“I’m sorry?” Tiara raised her eyebrows.
“You are not,” Olinia grumbled.
“I can’t just turn off my thoughts,” she retorted.
“No, because that would mean you were dead.”
Tiara snickered. “Should I try to not think so much for a little while?”
“If it means you’ll fall asleep, then yes. I won’t be able to get to sleep until after you do. Your inner ramblings are incessant.” She sat up, rubbing her eyes with her hands. “So, what sort of female tutor does your brother want you to find?”
Tiara knew Olinia discovering her secret quest shouldn’t startle her, but she still wasn’t used to being around someone who could read her mind. Her upbringing among Saerds had left a lasting impression on her. It was so strange to be near other gifted people all the time now. Growing up, it had been just her and her Equilan mother.
“There goes your brain again.” Olinia laughed.
“Oh, please. It’s not like I’m the only one who thinks all the time,” Tiara shot back.
“No, but you are the only one keeping me awake,” she pointed out.
Tiara grinned. “It’s not my fault that you can hear every man, woman, and child you cross paths with.”
“You’re forgetting the infants.”
She blinked. “You can hear babies too?”
“Yeah, they’re cute.” Tiara made out a smile on Olinia’s face in the dark. “They think in images and very strong emotions. No mixed feelings for them.” Olinia shook her head, as if to clear it. “Now, back to this tutor. What is she supposed to instruct you on?”
Tiara sighed. “I’m to learn how to see the future.”
“Well, that shouldn’t be too hard,” Olinia yawned, covering her mouth with one hand, “You can already Globe.”
“What does Globing have to do with it?” Tiara stared.
“It’s how the Fraers see the future,” Olinia replied. She cocked her head to one side. “For being the daughter of an Equilan, you don’t seem to know much about your people.”
My people? Tiara frowned. “How do you know that Fraers Globe to see the future?”
“Because I’ve been to Andin,” she said simply. “I did a little reading while I was there.”
“You’ve been to Andin?” Tiara blurted. Her pulse quickened. “Can you Globe to the future?” If Olinia had done it before, this would solve her problem of finding a tutor.
Her optimism was dashed a second later though when Olinia shook her head. “Sorry, I can’t Globe to the future. I wasn’t born in Time like you were.”
“Does that matter?” Tiara was confused.
“Only those from Time are given the ability to see the future. Time is a different realm than the Other Worlds. You being born in Time makes you from there,” Olinia explained. “So, you’re not like me, an Other Worlder.”
Tiara ran her tongue along the back of her teeth. “Did your Time reading mention how one could Globe to the future?”
“It told me the basic process,” she admitted. “But I don’t know if following that would actually work.”
Would you be willing to help me try it out?
“If you promise to shut off your brain for the rest of the night,” Olinia smirked.
“I’ll do my best, but I can’t make any promises.” Tiara grinned.
: : : : :
Sazx sat on the edge of his bed, looking at himself in the long mirror above the room’s one dresser. Although the hair of a Nagreth was dark, his was naturally so. When he went through the binding ceremony, his hair stayed the same. It was just his eyes and skin that changed pigments.
As a Nagreth, his blue eyes turned to steel and his pale skin became gray. The Saerds called Nagreth the walking dead, and for good reason. Nagreth resembled breathing corpses. Sazx had never relished in his reflection as a Nagreth, unlike most who swore themselves to Dagon. To those men, the gray skin was a symbol of the power they held in the realm. Sazx had not been one to savor such things.
Prior to his meeting of the Princess Olinia, no one had known of his ability to return his appearance to his normal self. From that very first day when the Velvitor who attended his binding struck the back of his neck with a slim poker, momentarily making him blind, Sazx knew he was not like the other future Nagreth present. The seven other men also pricked by the Velvitor didn’t cry out or have their faces contort with severe anguish. Sazx did.
He’d tried to hold in his pain, but as the color drained from his body, he could feel each infinitesimal movement the binding took within him. It was as if the binding were a foreign object that was slowly attempting to consume his soul – like a virus he couldn’t quite rid himself of no matter how hard he fought it.
Unlike his fellow newly initiated Nagreth, Sazx was bedridden for days – given to fits of convulsions. He was sure that the binding would end his life. Then, late one night, dripping in sweat from his most recent seizure, he let go of his determination to become bound to Dagon, to join the Nagreth. Almost instantly his skin returned to its natural color, stunning him. He’d never heard of any Nagreth returning to his old self, even after he retired from Dagon’s militia. Sazx had done the impossible, but how?
He realized that his body was rejecting the binding. He was perhaps not meant to be a Nagreth after all. It wouldn’t do, though. Sazx needed the money the career presented him. He was low-born without many options. His late father had been an unsuccessful peddler of various wares. Sazx didn’t want to live the rest of his life that way. The Nagreth were paid well and offered land after retirement. Sazx wished for land to build a home to one day raise sons of his own. In order for him to obtain such goals, he needed to become a Nagreth.
Yet, his body was denying him his desire. The binding was killing him. To continue his existence, he would need to live as only partially bound. He could feel the binding inside of him as a separate entity. If he were able to tap into the bound portion of his being when he demanded it, but still able to return to himself freely, then he would have a chance of survival. He could live as a Nagreth, claiming the benefits it gave, while remaining unharmed from the poison it seemed to seep into him. The question, though, was how could he pull the deed off? As far as he knew, none had accomplished such.
Over the course of that night, Sazx contrived a plan that would enable him to live as a Nagreth. Through some practice, he deduced that he could make himself gray while not being entirely bound. The next day, he was able to rise looking the part of a Nagreth without the side effects of actually being one. Even though he still felt the pull of the binding at times, he knew it was not nearly as strong as it should have been. As time went on, Sazx became exceptional at interchanging the gray and pale versions of himself to the point that he could make the adjustment with hardly any effort.
Even though he wore the gray faithfully, Sazx preferred his normal skin tone. When Dagon sent him on the quest to find information about the princess and her twin, Sazx had kept himself pale instead of gray. It allowed him to venture out during the day and not just slink around at night hoping no one noticed his pallor. It was always such a sweet release when he’d take off the gray, which was the main reason why he’d sleep pale. It permitted him a more restful night.
When Sazx abandoned the Nagreth for good, he tampered with Dagon’s binding once more. He chose to absolutely rid himself of it – to suffer no more from the litt
le power it did hold over him. Through another mental conflict, he succeeded in the complete extraction of himself from Dagon’s Nagreth. Looking back on the process now, it was as if he’d shut the binding off, like an Ethon light switch. He knew it was still inside of him somewhere, but he’d managed to submerge it deep enough to no longer prohibit his choices.
Now, as Sazx watched his reflection in the mirror, beads of perspiration formed just below his hairline. He knew what must be done – he needed to become gray again.
Olinia’s observation that her uncle could still be alive had been plaguing his thoughts ever since he’d left the Vrenyx. For weeks Sazx had avoided the simple truth that there was a way to know of Dagon’s death for sure. If Sazx were to reignite the binding within, then the answer would come immediately. From his very first training session, he had learned that the binding only lasted as long as Dagon still drew breath. If Dagon were dead, then Sazx wouldn’t be able to return to the binding at all, for it would be obsolete. What good was a binding to a deceased emperor?
This was the purpose of Sazx’s current solitude. Olinia had left with Will to visit her school for an hour or so. It was the perfect opportunity for Sazx to turn his binding back on. He refused to do so within Olinia’s one hundred yard radius. Olinia would sense his agony that would indeed accompany the binding. Not wanting to have any sort of interruptions during the process, Sazx waited until she was gone to begin.
As he silently dreaded what would follow, Sazx took several deep breaths to calm him before shifting his focus inward. With little effort, he envisioned the foreign matter inside. Since thinking of Olinia was what had broken the binding in the first place, Sazx shoved her as far from his mind as possible. Instead, he concentrated on the faces of the Nagreth he had led. At one time they were the closest things he’d ever had to friends. There had been a mutual camaraderie on the basis of similar goals. Even though Sazx had always seen the mental capacity of his fellow Nagreth as less than exceptional, for a long time they were all he knew. The Nagreth were his life and his livelihood.
Suddenly, the same searing hot pain Sazx had only experienced once exploded through his veins. Just as it had before, his vision went black only to return a second later as an array of blurred images. Sazx gripped onto the edge of the bed beneath his legs so as to stop himself from falling off. He gritted his teeth, forcing back the scream that wanted to escape his throat from the fire that wouldn’t cease boiling his insides. What had he done to himself?
Regretting his choice already, Sazx struggled to partition his mind between the binding and himself. He gasped in for air, desperate to fill his scorched lungs. His eyes cleared somewhat, and he witnessed his arms gradually turn from pale to gray. The binding was working. Dagon was still alive.
This one truth redoubled Sazx’s efforts to relieve his body from being fully bound. He needed to survive to tell the princess that her uncle was conscious somewhere. Inhaling once more, Sazx visualized his internal core as two separate parts – one Nagreth, the other himself. Slowly, he mentally dragged bits of the binding and his own consciousness to their different locations within him. As he did so, the pain subsided – the fire quenched.
When he finally finished, Sazx lifted his gaze to the mirror. A gray man with steel eyes that rarely showed any sign of emotion glared back at him. His heart pounded against his chest. The Nagreth had returned. Would he be able to depart from it at will as he once had?
Sazx waited another minute for his heart to calm. Then, without even blinking, he released his inner footing within the Nagreth and stepped into his own skin. The pale version of himself filled the mirror once more. Sazx repeated the switch from pale to gray to pale again several times, just to be certain he was still able to do so with ease.
A knock sounded on his room’s door. He turned. “Come in.”
The door opened and Archrin appeared, sweating and in some sort of distress. Sazx frowned. “What is it?”
“I-” he stopped, cringed, and went on, “I need to change. I’ve stayed human for too long.”
Ah, the animal inside the Craele needed to come out. Sazx stood. “What do you need of me?”
He winced as his body began to tremble. “Have you ever followed a hunting Craele before?”
: : : : :
After almost two weeks of missing class, Olinia decided it best to return for one last day – to drop out. Zedgry would be departing for Virginia later that day and with the arrival of Tiara and Archrin the realization that she would be going home to the Other Worlds was beginning to fully hit her. It seemed so surreal.
For the past three nights, she’d spent several hours practicing Globing with Tiara. Even though they had yet to have any success, it was exciting for Olinia that she could work with someone who actually had the possibility to see the future. She’d only thought Fraers to be able to do such a thing. Then again, she’d never heard of a child of an Equilan born in Time not becoming an Equilan as well, until she met Tiara.
When Olinia’s car reached the student parking lot, Will found a spot and shifted it into neutral, pulling up the parking brake. He had insisted that he join her. Ever since their dinner date, he’d hardly left her side, practically refusing to be out of eyesight.
This was not the Will she remembered. True, the old Will was always around, but this Will seemed to need to be close to her. Something was different. Yet, she wasn’t ready to bring it up with him. She had an inclination it had to do with the way he felt for her, and that wasn’t a topic she wished to delve into too deeply at present.
“So, where’s the office?” Will asked, unbuckling his seatbelt and yanking her from her internal reflections.
“A few buildings down,” she said as she opened her door and slid out of the car.
They walked beside each other through Olinia’s campus. Will commented on how pretty it was, while she only nodded. Something felt off. Students rushed past her and Will, but their thoughts weren’t the usual onslaught of noise. Olinia peered around at them warily. Why did they sound like a muffled mass rather than many individual voices gabbing at once? This wasn’t right.
Olinia slowed her pace and Will did the same. He frowned. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m not sure,” she admitted.
One of the passing students bumped into her, brushing the skin on her exposed forearm from her rolled sleeves. “Sorry,” he mumbled before moving on.
“No worries,” she replied automatically.
Olinia turned back to Will and gawked. The world around her had suddenly frozen. Busy students stood motionless – paused mid-step. Even Will had fallen victim to the phenomenon. It was as if someone had stopped time for everyone, excluding her.
“Hello, Olinia.”
She whirled. Porter, dressed in basically all black except for the white t-shirt beneath his jacket, emerged from between several of the stationary students, about twenty feet away. His face had that smug look on it again, and his mind was silent.
“Porter,” she said slowly, “what’s going on?”
He grinned. “I have a confession to make. When I said you’re different, I didn’t mean different from me.”
An uneasy feeling began in the pit of Olinia’s stomach. Was Porter the one doing this to everyone? Could he be a gifted Ethon? That seemed highly unlikely. She frowned and took a step backwards, closer to Will. “What are you talking about?”
“You don’t have to hide anymore, Olinia,” he said, still moving toward her.
“Hide what?” She asked.
“The ability to move things with your mind is an amazing gift. Yours is strong, especially when you haven’t had any training.”
Was Olinia dreaming? Was this a joke? Or did he actually just use the word gift? He knew she was gifted. How? And no training? She’d had training. Lots of training. A hundred questions popped into her mind, but all that came out was, “You think I’m gifted?”
He laughed lightly. “Of course you are. Not only do you fit the prof
ile – quiet loner, who goes out of her way to avoid people at all costs – but I’ve seen you use your gift.”
“What? When?” Olinia blurted. She and Legann went above and beyond to hide their gifts. It was the one request Trenton ever made as means of paying him back for his generosity. How could Porter have possibly found out?
“That’s my gift,” he winked. “By touching you, I can see everything you’ve seen within the last twenty-four hours.”
Olinia recalled the first time she’d met Porter. She’d dropped her book and he had helped retrieve it for her, briefly grazing her hand. That rush of memories hadn’t been her remembering them; it had been Porter’s doing. She’d heard his thoughts seeing her memories. It made sense now, except for the fact that he was a gifted Ethon. From what she knew of the world, mortals with special abilities were deemed fictional.
“So, you saw me move things with my mind?” Olinia bit at the inside of her lower lip. Did he not know about her other gifts? She must not have used any others that day. She was glad for that.
Porter nodded. “You don’t need to worry about not being like everyone else. You don’t have to feel like you have no where to fit in.”
If she ever felt like she didn’t fit in with the Ethons, it wasn’t because she was gifted; it was because she was from another realm. She’d spent plenty of time amid Saerds in the Other Worlds. Being gifted wasn’t the issue. “Porter, you have no idea who I am. Don’t act like you do.”
“I know about your tattoo,” he told her. “What does it mean?”
Olinia blinked. She didn’t have a tattoo. “What tattoo?”
“The one on your shoulder,” he answered. “I saw a picture of you showing it.”
The photo at the beach! He’d been interested in it when he saw her that day. She let out a short laugh. “That’s not a tattoo. It’s a birthmark.”
“A silver birthmark?” He raised an eyebrow. She could tell he didn’t believe her, but it was true.
“Yeah, I was born with it.”
