Once D’Argen was sure the others were settled, Darania led him to a private room with a door. It was one of the few such rooms in the compound and the cubbies with paper behind a heavy desk revealed it to be either her study or an office of some sort.
There were cushions strewn about near the open windows. D’Argen took a deep breath of fresh air and closed the windows. A moment later, someone knocked on the door. A Rubean that D’Argen did not recognize entered with a tray. They left a steaming pot and two clay cups on the desk and then walked out.
D’Argen eyed the door warily.
“I asked them to come, nobody else will interrupt us,” Darania assured him, as if she had taken on Zetha’s mahee and read his surface thoughts.
“Are you not needed?” D’Argen asked. Yes, he was ready to talk, he had so many questions, but that did not mean he would not do his best to delay the conversation for as long as possible.
“Good,” Darania said, instead of answering. “That tells me you want to sit down and talk for a while. I do too. And no, Lisa and Mayan can take care of anything requiring my attentions. There are also a few other Never Born here to help out. And, if it is an emergency, you would also be needed.”
Never Born. Darania still used that title even if she knew they were truly gods.
“Would you like to sit?” Darania asked, motioning to the pillows before pouring them both a cup of tea.
D’Argen felt like he could not sit still, yet he took the cup, settled in, and told her everything.
It was less of a conversation and more of him spilling every single thought, trying to keep the questions at bay and giving her the background. He told her of the boy and how his eyes bled the mahee in dark strands that tried to enter him, of those same dark tendrils and the dome of nothingness that changed from white to black when he stopped believing, of Varuba and her staff and the mortals that walked among demons.
And then he told her of that horrible white space where Lilian had tried and failed to protect him. The same place where Lilian had stabbed him with his own sword. The same place where Lilian and the other dead gods resided—were waiting for them.
Darania remained silent through it all. Even when his voice was hoarse, his eyes wet, and his body trembling – she remained quiet.
When he finally finished talking, he could not sit anymore. He was sure he had not been still, waving his arms around and fidgeting in his seat, but now that energy needed more room to be expelled. He got up and started pacing the small room.
Darania remained quiet for so long, staring at the wall even as he passed her view with every line he walked across the room.
D’Argen was starting to worry. He should have told her all of this before. He should have asked all his questions before. Maybe, now that she knew what his mind was going through, he could finally start asking away. Maybe, he could stop regretting having left her and run away from Thar.
Thar should have been here to talk to her too.
And Lilian.
“It seems—” Darania finally spoke, her voice slow and careful “—that you have done the impossible. Yet again.” She put her tea cup on the ground beside D’Argen’s abandoned one. He had not even taken a sip of it.
“Again?” D’Argen asked. For some reason, that word was what caught him most off guard.
“You are not the only one to travel to the ethereal and speak to the dead,” Darania said, carefully picking her words. “You are not the only one to consume the mahee of others. You are not the only one to use the mahee of others. And you are not the only one to see the wall that separates us all.”
Her statements had D’Argen’s head swirling. Who? Who had been there? He knew who else could consume—the thought of Vah’mor still made him shudder in fear—but D’Argen had not consumed Thar’s mahee. And the way Vah’mor used the mahee they consumed was not the same – once Vah’mor consumed, that mahee became theirs, though it did give them a chance to use some of it. Vah’mor could never run as fast as D’Argen, but they were the closest anybody has come.
But who had been to the ethereal realm?
Was it real? Was Lilian truly there?
And if they were, if all the dead gods were there and they remembered everything, even from before their fall, then why had not whoever had gone there learned the truth? Why did nobody else know that Darania had made them fall?
Too many questions and D’Argen had no idea which to ask first. He swivelled on his heel, scraping the stone floor, and turned to face Darania with an intake of breath. Before he could let it out with any of his questions though, Darania spoke up.
“I am not sure if it is because so many have already tried, even if not intentionally, and it was fragile enough on its own, but you did it. I think you finally cracked the wall.”
The wall? What wall?
“I may not remember what happened before we fell, but you were right: I was the cause of it. And I remember why I made us fall. I also remember why I made us all forget. And you… even back then, you did not listen and you did the impossible. You ran away. This time, it seems the direction you chose may be the one that dooms us all, gods and mortals and all the realms.”
“What do you mean?”
“D’Argen, have you seen the mahee acting strange in recent years?”
“Yes. Yes!” He started waving a hand around, but it was not enough. He started pacing the small room again as he said, “That’s what I went to Evadia to look for. I went to see if there were any records.”
“No. There would not be. I have explicitly stated that even Vain cannot record such matters,” Darania said, her voice tense.
That had him digging his heels in to stare at her and ask, “Why? If the mahee is acting strange, we should all know about it.”
“And do what?” Darania asked with a shrug of her small shoulders. “None of us are powerful enough to do anything about it. All I can tell you is that now… you can expect a lot more of it happening.”
Suddenly, D’Argen had a thought and it escaped his lips before he could stop it, “The ore.”
Darania nodded. “That is one thing, yes,” she conceded, hesitated, then said, “But that is not what I am most worried about.”
“Then… what is it?” D’Argen asked, wary. He had an inkling of a thought.
“Your mahee,” she confirmed his fears.
D’Argen collapsed back in the pillows beside her and took his time arranging his limbs to a comfortable position. He could not find one, but settled for leaning against the wall right under the window.
Darania waited him out until he met her eyes again. “I have one question to start it all, and I need you to be honest with me. Did you latch onto Thar’s spell?”
What?
“No,” he answered, before he could stop himself.
And then he realized why she had asked it. That was such a convenient lie. Thar was powerful, one of the most powerful among them if not the most powerful since Darania gave so much of her mahee away, but shaking the snow loose off a mountain would have been hard even for him – even before his mahee was bound. If Thar had aimed to block the cave entrance, and D’Argen had latched on and pushed his mahee harder, it could explain the avalanche that almost buried them all.
It would not explain Thar running them all to a safe a distance, but D’Argen was pretty sure that he was the only one who knew it was Thar running them and not himself.
As Darania remained quiet, her eyes focused on her hands as if she was searching for where to start her own stories. D’Argen finally let his mind wander to Thar. He felt the initial anger at thoughts of the man rise, turn to crystals in his veins and melt away, but he brushed it aside. It was not enough to get him to stand up and start pacing again, but the itch was returning.
Could Thar run like him? Did Thar feel the same frantic energy inside him, urging him to keep moving and never stay in one place too long? Could Thar… could Thar catch him?
That last question sent a shiver down D’Argen’s spine that was neither from the cold nor from fear. He was not sure about the cause of it, but a heat settled at the base of his spine that had him shifting in the soft pillows and wishing to open the window for a bit of a breeze.
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Darania cleared her throat. D’Argen discarded the thought of opening the window.
“I have so much I want to tell you, to explain to you, but I do not know where to start,” Darania finally said, her voice quiet. “I do not remember everything, but what I do remember is terrifying. Instead, it may be easier if I answer your questions.”
“You said earlier—” D’Argen started, swallowing loudly to wet his dry throat, “—that I may have doomed us all, gods, mortals, and the realm as a whole. What did you mean?”
Darania chewed on her lip for a moment. It looked like she was trying to decide whether to tell him the truth.
“Not just this realm,” she started. “There is a wall, at least that is how I explain it to myself, that separates all the realms. It is one wall. Not multiple. When we first fell, I used your speed for us all to pass through that wall without breaking it and arrive at the mortal realm. Since I was not using my mahee, I was latching onto your spell instead, and it was not perfect. I scratched the wall.”
“So, I helped you in making us all fall?”
“Not knowingly, but yes,” Darania confirmed. “There are not many things that can pass through that wall. In fact, you, as you are now, cannot do it. Or… you should not be able to. And, until this moment, I thought nothing could break it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Can you pass through this wall without breaking it?” she asked and motioned to the clay wall behind him. “Actually, you probably could, but you are much more likely to break it upon passing. Think of it… think of it like light.” This time, she pointed at the windows. “Light is fast enough to pass through the glass due to the way the glass is constructed, but not through the wall.”
“I am nowhere close to the speed of light,” D’Argen said, though he found his eyes straying to the rays of light and where they created shadows from Darania’s moving hands. The light was not fast enough to pass through her. D’Argen, however, was fast enough to pass through a mortal. Could he do it without breaking them?
“At one point, I think you were,” Darania said. D’Argen’s attention snapped back to her quickly. “I do not know for sure, but it would make sense. And even so, sound can also pass through glass, even if not perfectly, to continue with my example.”
“I am…” D’Argen trailed off. He was not faster than sound, he knew that, yet when he tried to form those words, they tasted like lies on his tongue, so he swallowed them back down.
“And, I think, your bond with Thar will help make you even faster.”
“What does Thar have to do—” D’Argen cut himself off when he noticed Darania’s eyes focused on his chest. “No,” he said.
“I did not say anything.”
“You want to check my mahee.”
“I do. I think it would be beneficial to—”
“No,” he interrupted. Immediately afterwards, he raised his chin to apologize and then dropped it fast, before she took it as invitation to touch the entrance of his mahee. “You are not a spiritualist.”
“I am as much of one as you are.”
That made no sense. “What?”
“I believe… I do not remember for sure, but I believe that the five aspects of the mahee that we all know, are only a construct for this realm.”
D’Argen’s confusion must have shown on his face because she continued without prompting, “Naturalists control nature, kinesiologists the body, mentalists the mind, spiritualists have most control of the mahee and what the mortals call the soul in themselves, and artificers control everything else that does not follow into those categories. And yet.” She raised a hand, tipped her cup of tea over, suspended the few drops that fell out of it in the air, and released the scent of her mahee.
“And yet, my mahee reaches for yours, I controlled this body, I tipped this cup, I told the drops not to move, and I made your mind focus on this movement. Therefore, I just used all five aspects of the mahee.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“Is it not? What makes your control of the body more powerful than mine?” She raised a hand when he went to answer and said, “Is it your natural ability? Is it thousands of years of use and practice? Is it the same thing that makes my control of nature stronger than yours?”
“I cannot control nature.”
Darania raised a perfectly manicured white eyebrow at him, then said, “And yet.”
D’Argen felt a flush climb up his neck and settle on his cheeks.
“This wall you talk about, you said I cracked it,” he said, trying to direct the subject away from Thar and their strange bond. Even as he said it, he felt the other’s mahee inside him – that giant iceberg that stood solid against the beating waves of the ocean.
“I believe so, yes.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means the cheetahs in the plains will breathe more of our scents, the mushrooms on the mountains will release them, and the birds of the jungle would travel further north. It means a kinesiologist bringing down a mountain and playing with the winds will be normal, the mahee joining and separating in ways not seen before will not surprise us, and an ore that just so happened to be discovered recently that somehow can collect our scents will become wide-spread and found in other regions of the land.”
The more she spoke, the more D’Argen tensed. How did she know of all those events?
“It means, passing through that wall will be much easier.”
“Is that… a bad thing?” D’Argen asked.
“You tell me,” Darania answered with a small shrug. “The wall is there to separate the realms. You have already been to at least three of them – the mortal, our old realm, and the ethereal. I believe that the dream world you mentioned may be another realm altogether. But even if not, there are at least two more that I know of that exist for sure.”
At D’Argen’s silence, she continued. “Where do the mortals go when they die? What of the demons? It could be the same place, yes. But then, there is also the mahee itself. The mahee does not reside in this realm, we all know it. We are but vessels for it. Think of our bodies as doors between the realm of the mahee and the mortal realm. So… what happens if that wall breaks? One wall. All the realms.”
There was nothing to think about. The answer was simple: disaster. If the dead were to return. If Lilian’s warning was correct and they are too powerful for this realm, if Darania’s analogy of their bodies as doors was right – it meant everything converging in one place. Would it be able to hold them all?
“What did they tell you of Lilian’s ceremony?”
“That is off topic,” D’Argen startled.
“No. Not at all. Because Lilian’s mahee did not answer. It did not come to us. Even though their vial was closer, our call was louder. It did not come, even when you released it.”
“I released it?”
Darania nodded. This time, when she reached out to poke him, she did not stop herself. Her finger touched his chest through his robes. She pulled back. D’Argen did not have Lilian’s vial on him. He did not have it when he awoke. He—
“It was not on you,” Darania interrupted his thoughts. “In fact, I went as far as asking Upates for help on tracking it. I suspect it is with Thar, but have yet to confirm it.”
“Why would Thar have it?”
“Because Lilian’s mahee is not with just you. The same way how your mahee is not just yours anymore, and neither is Thar’s. The connection you three made, that impossible bond that has never seemed feasible to any of us before, came about for you so naturally that I cannot untangle it. In fact, I fear you may be even more in touch with all aspects than I am.” Once more, she tipped her cup over. No drops fell out of it this time, but the way she stared at him seemed expectant.
When he did nothing, Darania seemed disappointed. She guided the drops of tea, those still hanging in the air, back into the cup, and set it down beside her.
“That crack in the wall means we are no longer the only ones who can use magic. And it also means that you are responsible for it.” She looked stern, sounded it too, her small frame straightening and even though she was so short, it felt like she was towering over D’Argen.
“Zetha wants me—”
“I do not care about the politics of Evadia,” Darania interrupted him. “I care about the demon rumours. I care about mortals getting their hands on our magic.”
“And Varuba?”
“I do not care about a single person, nor that stone. I have done my best to take responsibility for creating it.”
“You created it?!”
“I believe so,” she said. “Because I have scratched at that wall more than once.”
“How so?” D’Argen asked, but before Darania could answer, he felt the answer slipping off his tongue. “The Life Crops.”
Darania nodded. “I gave away a large part of my mahee to create those. When I did the spell for the Life Crops, I felt my mahee rushing out too far and wide. I was responsible for letting magic into this realm that was not controlled by us. So, in turn, I believe this realm balanced it out by creating that stone. If you remember correctly, the stone was discovered only after that.”
“You said you took responsibility of it.”
“I have been collecting the stone where possible and keeping it away from others.”
“What? I was the last conference, it was everywhere.” Not the last one, he knew. Lisa had told him about the Mahee Conference that happened a few weeks before he awoke.
Fortunately, Darania did not feel the need to correct him, instead, she just said, “I would like to point out that what you saw at the conference are pebbles, broken pieces of larger constructs.”
Larger. The thought alone terrified him. He remembered a room made of that stone. With more, there could be entire cities where the gods would be powerless. The horror was so potent that it must have shown on his face.
“That is why I closed off the Rainbow Reefs. It was easier to flood that area and the quarry there, than to try and dig it all out and figure out where to hide it.”
“But there was enough removed already…”
“Yes.”
“The demon rumours too, those are settled,” D’Argen added. “It was not demons, but a mortal. He invented some sort of device that creates images in the sky using light and colour. Some of those images looked like demons. That was all.”
“Where is this mortal?”
“I sent him to Upates in Kaariai. I thought the Master would be interested in his invention.”
“Good call. Then, the rumours are bound to die out soon, if that was all.”
Darania made a show of slowly rising from her seat and picking up both cups. She emptied D’Argen’s back into the pot and then put the cups down so lightly, they barely made a sound. D’Argen was staring at her movements so it was only then that he realized how quiet she was. The swish of her robes, the breath of her lungs, the slide of her bare feet on the ground – he could barely taste any of it to consume. Yet he did not feel the urge of it, either.
Her movements also told him that their conversation was over. He still had so many questions to ask, but at least he knew that she would answer them. They could wait. He would ask them. Soon.
Except for one that could not wait.
“Why me?” he asked when he stood up.
Darania hummed out something that had the tone of a question.
“I mean, why tell me everything? Why admit it after being silent for so long?”
Darania lifted a finger to her lips and her eyes turned high. The torchlight from outside, the one that must have replaced the sunlight at one point without D’Argen noticing, bounced off her eyes in such a way that they looked like ink. D’Argen looked away.
“Because you already know,” she answered quietly.
That made no sense. But it also did.
Darania gained her memories of the fall after the eclipse that stole their mahee. That was more than four thousand years ago. If it was D’Argen – and it had been in that horrible dream space – he would have gone insane not sharing that knowledge with another.
He knew he had to think over everything she had told him. She probably answered even more of his questions than either of them realized, but now – now it was time for him to sort it at all.
When D’Argen left the complex, he found his party sitting in the courtyard right under Darania’s window with fireflies surrounding them. The window was closed but, as Darania had said, sound could pass through glass. Yaling looked worried. She must have heard at least part of their conversation. Abbot seemed uncaring, lying back with his head in Yaling’s lap, smoking his pipe, and a row of fireflies blinking on his raised hand. Fran was helping one of the children catch the fireflies and then releasing them. Joel was looking at him and offering him a handful of grapes.
D’Argen took one to try it, then settled in the loose circle with the others in silence. The grape did not taste as horrible as he remembered it to in the past.