Magium

by Chris Michael Wilson

  “Perfect,” Arraka says. “I think this should be enough context for our intents and purposes. Let’s move on to the ritual.”

  Again, the environment around us changes completely, but this time, we find ourselves on the streets of Thilias, right as the noble was threatening Ella. Flower and I are still semi-transparent, apparently, but the non-transparent version of me is standing about a dozen feet away from our current position, and so are Daren, Kate, Rose and Eiden.

  “Okay,” Arraka tells me. “This is where Daren’s ritual actually started. What I’ve been showing you so far were just fragments of his memories, so you could better understand his motivations. Is everything clear, so far?”

  “I guess so…” I say.

  “Good,” Arraka says. “Now let’s watch the show.”

  “What happened?” I hear Daren’s thoughts, echoing throughout the area, as he looks around him confused. “Is this the ritual that Arraka was talking about? Did I get sent to the past?”

  “How interesting…” Eiden says, all of a sudden. “The flow of the healer’s aura has changed completely, in a matter of seconds. It’s as if he’s now a different person from the one he was a few moments ago. What could trigger such a change, I wonder… Memory loss? No, no, no… This is something else. Time travel, perhaps? A trial from the God of Time?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Daren says, trying to feign ignorance. “Who is this God of Time you speak of? I’ve never heard of him.”

  “So you did receive a trial, then!” Eiden says, with a grin, as he sees right through Daren’s bluff. “But what could be the purpose of the ritual?… Is it to save the slave girl? Either way, I must make sure to not interfere. I would not want you to fail your trial on my account!”

  “What do you mean you won’t interfere?” Daren says, with an anxious tone in his voice. “You’re still going to give Barry the power to attack the noble, right?”

  “Is that what I did the last time you experienced these events?” Eiden asks, with a wicked smile. “Why was it Barry that saved the slave instead of you? Is it because you refused my offer? Yes, that would make sense, wouldn’t it? But this time, you won’t be able to rely on your friend to clean up your mess anymore. So, what are you going to do?”

  “This bastard…” I hear Daren thinking. “I should have known he couldn’t be trusted. But if Barry isn’t going to save Ella anymore, then that means…”

  Suddenly, we hear Ella screaming in fear, as the earl of Ollendor is now holding his knife in his hand, while approaching her slowly.

  “Please, I beg you!” Ella says, as she is desperately trying to lift all of the luggage that she was supposed to carry, in her hands. “Give me one more chance. I can still carry these bags for you. I don’t want to die!”

  “Then you should have thought of that before wasting my time, wench,” the noble says. “Now stand still. I will make your death as swift as possible.”

  Without thinking, Daren rushes to Ella’s aid, and he tries to pull her away from the earl.

  “Come, Ella,” Daren says, as he tries to pull her by the arm. “I’m taking you away from this monster.”

  “No!” Ella shouts, as she panics, and jumps back from Daren. “I can’t! I can’t run away from him. I am his property.”

  She then turns back to face the earl of Ollendor.

  “Sir, please, I promise you that—”

  Ella does not get to finish her sentence, because the noble immediately slits her throat wide open with a single slash of his dagger.

  “No!” Daren shouts, in desperation, as he immediately grabs Ella in his arms, and he attempts to cast a healing spell on her.

  Unfortunately, by the time his spell began to take effect, Ella had lost way too much blood, and she slowly died in his arms, while he was still trying to heal her.

  “Pfft…” the noble says, as he looks at Daren in disgust. “How pathetic.”

  “No, this wasn’t supposed to happen!” Daren shouts, completely ignoring the earl, as he is still trying to heal the dead Ella that he is holding in his arms. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this. She was supposed to keep living, happily, at Rose’s house. She deserved to be happy! Please… If anyone’s listening. Give me another chance. I promise I won’t fail her again, next time. Please…”

  He then starts to sob, quietly, as he continues to hold Ella’s corpse tightly in his arms. After a few seconds of silence, except for Daren’s slow sobs, a bright white light suddenly envelops the area, and then, a few moments later, we find ourselves in the same area again, but with Ella still alive, and with Daren back where he was when he first got sent back in time.

  “Ahahahahaha!” Arraka laughs. “Did you see that? Did you see how well-timed that was? Even if it were all staged, it couldn’t have turned out as good as this!”

  “Just what is it, exactly, that you are finding so funny?” I say.

  “You mean, aside from all the suffering?” Arraka says. “Well, it’s the fact that the oaf is now going to believe that he was actually given another chance, like he asked. But in reality, neither the ritual, nor the God of Time could give less of a damn about whether he saves the slave or not.”

  “So you’re saying that’s not what his trial is about, then?” I say.

  “Of course it isn’t!” Arraka says. “What kind of a stupid question is that? Didn’t you go through a trial yourself only a short while ago? You should already know what the healer needs to do to pass this test.”

  While Arraka and I were talking, Eiden was just discovering for a second time that Daren had been sent to the past, by the God of Time, and he was now getting ready to mock him once again.

  “I must make sure to not interfere,” I hear Eiden say. “I would not want you to fail your trial on my account!”

  “No, you don’t understand!” Daren says, with obvious desperation in his voice. “I need you to interfere! I can’t fail her again! I need the power that only you can give. The power to attack the noble!”

  “Oh?” Eiden asks, surprised. “I honestly wouldn’t have expected you to ask me for help so directly. But even so, there is no use in undergoing a trial if you are not going to solve your problems by yourself. I’m afraid that I’ll have to decline your request, regardless of what I may have done in your original timeline.”

  “Damn you!” Daren says. “Do you want me to beg? Is that what you want?”

  “No, actually I was—” Eiden starts to say, but he interrupts himself when he sees Daren drop to his hands and knees in front of him, with his head bowed down.

  “Then I will beg!” Daren says. “I will beg on my hands and knees. Even though I hate you with all of my heart. Even though I consider you to be one of the most evil and irredeemable people I’ve ever met. But right now, you are my only hope to save this girl from her terrible fate, and the only thing I can do is to beg for your help. So please… I’m begging you… Give me the power to save this girl, and I will do anything you ask of me… No matter how humiliating it may be…”

  While Daren was talking, I could see Eiden slowly opening his eyes, for a few seconds, with an expression of both shock and amazement on his face. Then, when Daren finished his speech, Eiden smiled, slightly, with his eyes closed.

  “You will do anything I ask, you say?” Eiden says. “Then I have only one request.”

  He pauses, for a second, as he gets a much more serious expression on his face.

  “Prove me wrong…” Eiden continues.

  The stillwater then raises his hands, and a powerful wind starts spinning around him for a few seconds.

  “Prove you wrong?” Daren asks, confused, as Eiden lowers his arms, and the wind around him stops. “What do you mean by—”

  “You have the power, healer,” Eiden says. “Now go, go! Before it’s too late!”

  “Right…” Daren says, as he gets up from the ground, and rushes towards the noble.

  “How many second chances are you going to
ask me for, foolish girl?” I heard the earl of Ollendor say, with his knife in his hand, while Daren and Eiden were still having their conversation. “Do you not realize that my mercy isn’t without limits? I’ve had enough of your excuses. This time I will kill you for good. Don’t you dare move from that spot!”

  “I won’t let you kill her, you bastard!” Daren shouts, as he rushes towards the noble, with his sword at the ready.

  “What the hell?” the earl says, just as he was about to slit Ella’s throat, and he turns to look towards Daren.

  The noble barely has the time to turn around, because Daren’s blade beheads him in an instant, and the earl of Ollendor’s headless corpse soon falls to the ground, next to its severed head.

  “I did it…” I can hear Daren thinking. “I saved her… This time, I didn’t hesitate. I finally managed to make things right.”

  All of a sudden, the now all-too-familiar white light fills the area around us all, in order to once again send Daren back to the beginning of the ritual.

  “No, no, no!” Daren shouts, as the light envelops him, but nobody is listening to him, and after a few seconds, he finds himself right back where he started, with the noble still alive and kicking.

  “Aha- Ahahahaha!” Arraka laughs. “The idiot actually thought he completed the trial! Can you believe that? And the irony is that all he needed to do for his trial to be complete was to just calm the hell down, and to shut his mouth. That way, Eiden wouldn’t have seen any unusual changes in his aura, and he wouldn’t have been able to guess that the God of Time sent him back in time. But at this rate, it’s going to take him a million years to figure it out! Oh man, this guy is such a good source of comedy!”

  “Is his ritual the same as mine, then?” I ask her. “He just needs to recreate the same events that happened the very first time?”

  “Yes, most of your rituals were made in the same way,” Arraka says. “As long as the past version of you is the one that saves the slave, using Eiden’s power, he should be fine. Well, I’m sure he’ll figure it out eventually. Come on, let’s go visit some of the other rituals.”

  “What happened?” I hear Daren’s thoughts in the background. “What did I do wrong? What does this ritual want from me?!”

  “And, our next destination is the Beacon of Hope!” Arraka says. “Hold on, tight! It’s going to be a bumpy ride. Nah, I’m just kidding. We’re already here.”

  As I look around me, I see that our environment has changed completely, in a matter of seconds, and we are now situated in the middle of a very dark underground corridor, with only a few dimly lit torches, to provide us with any light. Almost immediately after we arrive in this place, we can hear the scream of a young boy, echoing somewhere in the distance, and then we hear a little girl, screaming in pain as well, although she appears to be somewhere closer than the boy. Not long afterwards, we start to hear the terrified screams of a few other children, as well. Some of them are begging for mercy, some of them are trying to suppress their screams, and others are calling in vain for their parents to save them.

  I’ve heard the stories about this place from both Kate and Leila, but I never would have imagined it to be as bad as this. Just standing here and listening to all these screams is giving me goose bumps all over my body. I can’t even begin to imagine what it would be like to experience what those children are going through right now.

  “Wow, these lessathi sure weren’t messing around, huh?” Arraka says. “It’s like a whole symphony of horrified screams down here. Anyway, this isn’t exactly where I wanted to bring you. I’m just gonna need to take a quick look and see what your friend Kate has been doing since the beginning of this ritual, so I can spare you the boring details, and get right to the good stuff. I’ll just leave you to enjoy these melodious sounds of pure agony, while I do my thing, okay?”

  “Melodious sounds of— These are children that are screaming, here!” I shout at her. “What the hell is wrong with you?!”

  “To be perfectly honest, I couldn’t care less about the screaming children,” Arraka says. “It’s the psychological kind of torture that I usually tend to find amusing, not the physical one. That’s why the real entertaining part for me is to see your reactions to all of this. Why else did you think I went through the trouble of bringing you with me to these rituals, if not for my own entertainment?”

  “Frankly, I thought you were just bored, and decided to bring me along on a whim,” I say.

  “Nah,” Arraka says. “That’s Eiden’s shtick, not mine. I know it may not seem like it, most of the time, but I rarely do things without a reason. For example, I specifically chose this moment in time as our initial destination, because I knew they were going to be doing experiments at this hour, and there would be a lot of screaming going on. It just would have felt like a waste if I kept you waiting in a silent, empty hallway, you know?”

  “Ugh…” I say. “Just shut up and get us out of here, already.”

  “Easier said than done,” Arraka says. “I may be a genius when it comes to magic, but you still can’t expect me to comb through all of these events that have been happening here in a matter of seconds. It’s not like I get to connect myself to the Magium like this on a daily basis.”

  “You keep casually talking to me about the Magium, but you haven’t even told me what it is, yet!” I say.

  “That’s the joke, Barry-boy,” Arraka says. “I keep doing it because I know it frustrates you. It’s a good way to keep myself from dying of boredom, while I go through the tedious process of scanning these memories.”

  “Can you at least tell me how you are able to switch between past and future with so much ease?” I ask her. “And how is it that you can also access people’s memories, and transport us into them as if they were a part of our reality?”

  “When you’re linked directly to the Magium in the way we are now,” Arraka says, “terms like ‘past’, ‘future’, ‘memories’, and ‘reality’ become irrelevant. In here, everything is both real and imaginary at the same time. Allow me to demonstrate!”

  A giant, red serpent, with two wings, and four small claws suddenly appears in front of me, and it immediately flies towards me, with a menacing look in its eyes, while its whole body is surrounded by flames. I panic a little, and I jump back, trying to pull my dagger out, but the monster scratches my right leg with one of its claws, and then it disappears just as quickly as it made its appearance.

  “Arraka, what did you do?” Flower asks, shocked, as Illuna approaches me, in order to heal me.

  “Relax!” Arraka says. “Neither of us can die in here. That scratch right now didn’t hurt, did it?”

  “Now that you mention it, I suppose it didn’t,” I say, as Illuna suddenly stops healing my wound, realizing that I was never in any real danger.

  “That’s because these aren’t our real bodies,” Arraka says. “They’re just our projections. Our real bodies are still right where we left them, stuck in one of those weird trances with the glowy eyes. What I was trying to show you was that I can do whatever I want, while we’re in here. It’s like my own playground. Obviously, I can’t interfere with what your friends are doing, since we don’t really exist in their worlds, but as far as spectating goes, my options are unlimited.”

  “So, you’re saying that my friends can’t die either?” I say. “They’re just in an imaginary world, right now?”

  “No, this only applies to us, because we are projections, like I said,” Arraka tells me. “The worlds that your friends have been transported into are very much real. It’s just that they’re not our world. They are parallel worlds, similar to ours, in which the future never actually happened. Obviously, none of the changes that they make in those worlds will affect our world in the slightest, but they have no way of knowing that. Didn’t you find it strange that you managed to pass your own ritual even if it should normally have been impossible for you to perfectly reproduce the exact actions you took fifteen years ago, down to the l
ast detail? That’s because it wasn’t the laws of time preventing you from doing what you wanted. It was just Selkram, messing with your head.”

  “The God of Time…” I say, as I am suddenly filled with uncontrollable hatred, just by uttering his name. “Is he watching us, right now?”

  “No,” Arraka says. “He can’t just stay materialized in our world for as long as he wants. That would waste too much energy. That’s why he usually only comes in at the very beginning, and at the end, unless it is absolutely necessary for him to personally intervene in the middle of a ritual. Otherwise, he’ll mostly just stay in the magical plane, and wait patiently for the rituals to gather energy for him.”

  “But how do these rituals help him?” I say. “What is it about these trials that give him so much power?”

  “He’s gathering energy from your negative emotions,” Arraka says. “Hatred, anger, fear, despair… that kind of stuff. Those are the types of emotions that can be exploited in the most efficient way, through these methods. But he can’t really do any of that without linking himself directly to the Magium, during the time weaver prophecies, so he needs to squeeze as much as he can out of you guys, while he still has the chance. That’s why these trials are designed the way they are. To make sure that they trigger as many strong negative emotions out of you as they can.”

  “I’m not sure if I like where this is going,” I say. “Just what kind of messed up trial is this guy trying to put Kate through, if he needed to send her all the way back to her years at the Beacon?”

  “We will see in a few seconds,” Arraka says. “I never actually looked at this ritual before I came here with you, so we’ll both be experiencing this for the first time, together. I’m sure it will be fun. Let us begin!”