The God in the Shadows (The Story at the Heart of the Void Book 1)

by TorVald, Nikolas

  Selth shrugged her shoulders, “I’m good at stealing things.” she thought about mentioning the voice, the extra thread of conscience which had taken over and allowed her to steal so well, but Renth’s warning about what the magi of the academy would do if they learned of that kept her silent.

  Aren rolled his eyes, “Besides a propensity for acquiring objects that don’t belong to you? I hardly think that would be reason enough to attract magical attention.”

  Suddenly an idea hit Selth like a ton of bricks. The dream, that dream where she had been male and that creature, the traiganidorian, had stabbed her through her back. She’d thrown a pair of shadow daggers through a portal to Aulternanden. A pair of daggers like the ones she had held in her hands when she had appeared in her safe spot. It couldn’t be that though. That had just been a dream, it couldn’t mean anything. But she felt the idea tickle the back of her mind. It was after the dream that everything in her life had gone crazy. It was after the dream that her thieving conscience, the conscience which so acutely measured everything around her at all times, had been kicked into place.

  Aren broke into her train of thought, “What?” he demanded, “What is it? What did you think of?”

  “It’s nothing.” she said in a shaky voice, “Nothing. I . . . I was just trying to think of anything that might separate me from . . . from other people.”

  Aren snorted, “You expect me to believe that. Your face just turned white as a sheet and you stammered your way through half that statement. Now, maybe you were trying to think of things that set you apart from other people a minute ago but now you’ve thought of something.”

  Selth shook her head vigorously, denying his statement, “No, there’s nothing. It was nothing at all. I’m just like everybody else.”

  “I did mention that I’m two hundred and forty three, right?” Aren said, rolling his eyes, “I’ve been around the sun enough times to know when someone’s lying. So tell me what it is.”

  Shrugging her shoulders in a defeated manner, she told him about the dream. She said everything she could remember and when she mentioned Aulternanden his eyebrows shot up. “What?” she asked, “What’s Aulternanden?”

  Aren’s eyebrows rose even higher, if that was possible, and he moved back to his chair, deep in thought, “Aulternanden? Aulternanden’s the name of our world.”

  “That can’t be right. I didn’t even know that when I was asleep, why would I say it if I didn’t know what it was?” Selth asked, starting to panic.

  “Well you wouldn’t, if you didn’t,” Aren stated, calmly, “So obviously you did know and the reason the shadow responded to you was because it was yours all along.” he frowned thoughtfully at her, then a light flashed in his eyes, “Did you gain your thieving abilities after the dream as well?”

  She shrugged, trying to stall, “I hadn’t tried before.”

  “Tell it plain, girl.” he demanded sharply, “Do you want to know what happened to you and who you are or do you want to dance around my questions all day?”

  Selth stared deeply into the fire for several minutes, gathering her thoughts, “After the dream it was like a section of my mind, which had been shut down before, was opened up. I pushed it away at first but then Renth started training me and I got angry. So I let that part of my mind in and everything unfolded. It was like before I had been walking around with a dull cloth drawn over my eyes and I had just found out that I could remove it.” she glanced at Aren uncomfortably, waiting to see if he was going to call a horde of magi down to dissect her and figure out what she was but the old mage did nothing, “Unlike the other children I was never satisfied with what Renth had us doing. I always wanted more. More danger, more excitement, a bigger reward at the end.” she glanced sharply at Aren and added, “How did you figure that out?”

  “I told you,” he said leaning back into his chair, “I’ve been around the sun a few times. You mentioned stealing in your dream and you threw some daggers, and apparently two swords, through a portal onto this planet. We know that the daggers came through, at the very least, and you said that you were good at stealing stuff. The two just came together in my head. After so long a time of working through puzzles I’ve developed my own propensity for figuring things out.” his face sagged as he finished his statement and he suddenly seemed immensely tired. It was as if he really had been around the world two hundred and forty three times. A small voice in Selth’s head whispered that it seemed like he had been on the world for far longer than that but she pushed it away before the message registered.

  Aren stood up from his chair and the tiredness he had displayed faded to nothing. Selth hurried to do the same, “Now,” he said, “I’m curious to see what these daggers look like. Maybe find a few extra abilities you didn’t know you had. So let’s go test what you can do.” he grabbed her hand again and pulled her out of the cozy room. She yelped in shock when the door banged shut behind her. Instead of the hallways she had been expecting to see there was just an enormous room stretching out as far as the eye could see. There was no one in sight and before she could get an idea of where she was Aren grabbed her hand and pulled her towards an enormous pit in the center of the room. When they reached it Selth looked down and realized she couldn’t see the bottom. “Teleport to the other side.” he said.

  She looked up, “Didn’t you listen when I told you about the underground. I can’t do it on purpose. I don’t know what happened the other two times.”

  Aren smiled, “You don’t but, happily, I do.” Selth gave him a startled look but before she could do anything he knocked her knees out from under her and she toppled into the pit. She screamed and closed her eyes, trying to teleport herself to the far side of the pit as Aren had told her to. Nothing happened. The wind just kept whistling past her ears and tears formed in Selth’s eyes as she reached higher and higher velocities. Suddenly, the bottom of the pit was visible and with a final scream she closed her eyes, knowing she was about to die. Right before she hit the bottom, everything turned gray. Shadows twisted across Shadows all around her in impossible patterns and strange symbols and vortexes formed in the air. She couldn’t breathe but the cold was more bearable this time and before she realized exactly where she was the trip was over. She appeared in the air a few feet above the edge of the pit and came crashing to the ground. With a groan, she rolled onto her side and looked up. Aren was standing over her smiling. “Very nice job!” he said, as though congratulating a dog on a well performed trick, “Wasn’t that fun?”

  Selth rolled to the edge of the pit and threw up into the oblivion below. “No, that was not fun.” she said weakly, “I almost died.”

  “To explain a few things.” Aren talked over her in the same happy voice as before, “You had only teleported before when you were in imminent danger of dying or being discovered, a fate you considered to be equally horrible, so I decided to see if that would work again.”

  Selth slowly sat up, her whole body shaking with fright. “It still doesn’t help me teleport on purpose.” she threw up into the pit again, “Just means I can do it when I think I’m about to die.”

  Aren laughed and threw his hands up happily, “Exactly!” he cried as though she had just explained how to turn lead into gold, “Every time you teleport you’re in danger. You’re not thinking about teleporting, you’re not trying to teleport. You just do it and that’s the key. In many ways it’s the same way I work my magic. If I’m worried about how my magic works, uncertain of what the result will be, doubt fills my mind and makes it all impossible. I simply have to know that I can do it, believe I can do it, and then I can do whatever I want.”

  Selth got up, shaking her head doubtfully, “That doesn’t make any sense! Why would belief have any influence over what a person can do. You can either do something, or you can’t!”

  Aren shook his head in frustration, “You’re already doubting so of course it’s not going to work for you.” A malicious light sparkled in his eyes, “I guess you just ne
ed another lesson.” she opened her mouth to protest but he gave her no chance and she found herself falling through that seemingly endless oblivion once more. Screaming as the ground approached, she teleported back to the edge of the pit. Aren was there. “One, two, three!” he shouted gleefully. Selth held up her hands to try and stop him but she was too late.

  The same thing repeated itself over and over. By the twentieth time falling into the pit she was having a panic attack. Just before Aren’s staff came to knock her over the side of it she fell back into the shadows and appeared on the other side of the pit. His laughing congratulations came floating over to her. Then he shouted, “Now come teleport back.”

  She glared at him suspiciously and shook her head. Suddenly magical hands grabbed her by the arms. She struggled but she was too late and they whipped her down into the pit. Selth closed her eyes as she fell and concentrated on believing. She had done it before, she knew she could do it, it was just a matter of . . . she teleported. She gasped in shock when she appeared next to Aren. He was laughing happily, dancing around and waving his staff over his head like a mad man. “You did it! You did it!” he kept shouting, “You didn’t hit the ground!”

  Selth gaped at him, “I didn’t hit the ground!” she shouted suddenly filling with rage, “You mean I could have hit the ground!”

  Aren just waved her off, “Yes, yes. But we could have put you back together again, no problem.”

  “Really?” she asked, shocked.

  “No,” he replied, “but that’s not the point! It takes most people at least a week before they can get into the correct mindset to perform even the simplest magic. That’s the hardest part of teaching it, making the students believe that they can do magic from the get go. Most people are so filled with doubt of their own abilities that it takes them ages to start learning anything.”

  Selth slowly nodded as Aren finished his speech, “I guess that makes sense.” she paused then continued in an incredulous tone, “But couldn’t you guide people into things a little more slowly? I almost had a heart attack that last time!”

  Aren shrugged carelessly, “Some people do but I believe in shoving people into things as quickly as possible. That way they progress far more quickly.” he frowned thoughtfully and moved his voice to a low mutter, “Provided they don’t burn out straight off.”

  “What?!” she demanded, but he waved his hand in the air and suddenly two snarling wolves sprang up on either side of him.

  “Let’s see those daggers!” he shouted. Selth teleported across the room, “No! No! I won’t send them away until you pull out the daggers. Remember, it’s all in your head! Don’t doubt yourself!”

  Shaking her head to clear it of worries, she clenched her fists as though she were holding a pair of daggers. She looked down, nothing had happened. The wolves suddenly sprang out of the air in front of her and she teleported away again. Taking a deep breath Selth focused on her anger with Aren. Anger at him for throwing her into this without any training whatsoever. A small fire began to burn in her mind and she concentrated on that but all it did was magnify her doubts over his teachings. The wolves sprang out of the air again and she cried out, leaping to one side. She shook off the flame of anger and fell back into shadows again, appearing as far from the wolves as she could. Casting around desperately for something to take away her doubts she closed her eyes and brought her stars to mind. The burning white lights into which she fed her worries, her doubts, her terrors each time she saw them. With a sigh of satisfaction Selth realized that everything had turned to calm in her mind.

  She concentrated on her daggers and, looking down, saw they glowed in her hands – two ever shifting daggers of shadows to match the tattoos which had started to glow and shift along her arms. Smiling to herself, she waited for the wolves to appear before her and when they exploded into view she threw herself into the air. With an acrobatic flip she didn’t even know she could do Selth scythed her daggers across the necks of the wolves. The apparitions dissolved and she teleported to where Aren was waiting. She expected him to back away in shock after seeing what had happened to the wolves, but he reacted in the exact opposite manner.

  “Fascinating!” he exclaimed. “You even have all the skills of an expert knife fighter! And the daggers, they’re beautiful.” the old mage bent down to look at them., “If I had to guess, and I’m a fairly good guesser, I’d say that if I gave you any task to complete that connects in some way to the element of Shadow you could do it. That was a Shadow you absorbed and if I’m not wrong then it gave you a connection to all shadows.” Looking at Selth’s disbelieving face Aren continued, “Come on, it makes sense! You said that when you teleport it’s like falling into an ocean of shadows. And the knives! They’re made of Shadow. The tattoos on your arm are the same! The knife fighting skills aren’t related, except maybe by a thin connection of stealth and deception, the main attributes of a knife as a weapon, which are both linked to Shadow in a way. Maybe getting the daggers gave you this skill in the same way the dream gave you thieving skills.” he threw his hands up in excitement, “This is amazing!” Clapping her on the back, Aren gave a satisfied smile, “We’re going to discover all about this, you and me. All about this.”

  9

  Revisiting a Monster

  Our realms are gone, even that of Shattrenlix. I heard Az’emon laughing as he did it. He left us our power, but that just makes it seem more of an insult. Even Selthraxadinian, the devious planner, anticipator of all, seemed shocked by what happened.

  – Tel’arib to Celithic

  Selth spent the next year at the Academy of the Magi. Most of the time she was with Aren, pushing her manipulation of the powers she had gained in the underground, often in ways which would have proved quite deadly if she hadn’t been so naturally adept with them. It appeared that Aren’s idea about shadows was correct. The only times Selth’s powers worked was when she was doing something related to a Shadow. However, neither she nor Aren had discovered a limit to what she could do. Aren speculated that was because they didn’t have the right tools at the academy to test her abilities and she was more than happy to agree with him. She was uncomfortable with the idea of having unlimited power to use whenever she wanted to.

  Whenever Selth wasn’t training she would follow Aren between classes. She had learned that, wearing the blue cloak, Aren was of the second highest class of magi – a Shayden. There were very few in the academy and as such Aren was expected to teach students who were attempting to master high level magic. A few of the magi would grumble when Selth sauntered in after Aren and found a spot in the classroom, annoyed that such a young girl was being allowed to observe a practice they held in their minds as incredibly serious. She ignored these people, she already knew that they would never go far in their magical careers. Great magic required creativity, it required a freedom of mind that few possessed, and those magi who took offense at a small girl would certainly never experience it. Aren was a prime example of skill bundled in an excitable happy body. He danced about and jumped up and down whenever a student in one of his classes managed to pull off a particularly difficult piece of magic. He never sank down as though depressed or held himself above the students he was teaching.

  When she wasn’t following him around she was exploring the academy. Growing up, she had heard stories about the glory of the Academy of the Magi, both wonderful and horrifying. People said that strange beasts were chained in the dungeons of the academy and that the magi themselves were horrible hybrid creatures, more demon than man. Selth could safely laugh at that now. The magi were just like every other sort of person, they had desires and downfalls, they experienced human emotion. The only difference was that they lived for a far longer span than an ordinary human and had the potential to bring down a building if they so wished. Inside the main building where Aren had taken her the first day she had found no sign of a dungeon full of dangerous creatures nor did she find one in any of the towers she explored. She didn’t think such a dun
geon existed but it was hard to say. Strange things could happen at the academy. Every time Selth entered a building the whole layout had changed, walls moving and furnishings changing. It had taken her a while to get used to but eventually she had figured out to just keep her position relative to the outside of the buildings in her head rather than relying on internal landmarks.

  She had tried her hand at stealing from the academy as well but quickly learned that there was little to buy and that magi were far more attentive than her usual victims. The first time she had stolen from a mage, she had been chased half way across campus before remembering she could just teleport away from him without any trouble. That had proven to be a mistake as Aren was waiting for her when she got back to the room he had given her after their first day of training. It was starkly furnished with just a chair and a bed in one corner and a fire to warm her if it got too cold out. The room was in the main building and Selth was always able to find it when she wanted to get there but she was never sure how did so. The door would just appear in a hallway as she wandered about. Aren had not been happy about the theft, he had said that he would not tolerate such lowly behavior from someone who he had personally brought to the academy. Selth had meekly given the coins she had stolen back and Aren had stalked out of her room. She didn’t see him again for a week and for the whole of that time she was unable to get back to her room. She had to sleep outside in the bushes, wrapped up in her cloak for warmth. She had never tried to steal from one of the magi again.

  It was fun at the academy though and Selth was never bored as she wandered around and observed the wondrous creations of the magi. There were massive domes of glass surrounding plants that existed nowhere else in the world, dragons made of fire which flew through the skies and guarded the academy from magical threats. There were hundreds of tiny creations scattered all across the campus of the academy and Selth doubted if she could find all of them given a thousand years to search. But as the year at the academy dragged on she found that she hungered for something new. Not stealing was no fun and despite all the progress she and Aren had made she was growing bored with practicing. As the old mage had already said the academy didn’t have the right tools to push her abilities. Magi in general focused on control of the four elements – fire, earth, water and air. A few, like Aren, could control more complicated elements such as light, albeit with difficulty. All the tools at the academy were designed to test those powers – and designed to test them in a way that matched up with human magic. Selth’s magic was something else and the tools just didn’t work the same way with it.