"A malignant tumor in the amygdala. No less than 5 cm. Tied to a network of important vessels and tissue. Inoperable."
King Silas took the news with surprising composure. Get a second opinion, he decided. After all, these new brain scanners were inaccurate at worst, and rudimentary at best, flashing quick images of tissue, vessels, and bone to diagnose conditions that for centuries man had done himself. Perhaps in another 100 years' time, they would be just as accurate as the alchemists and shaman who could take one look at a man and name all of his ailments.
He consulted a medicine man. A shaman from the country of Etwa where they molded and melded and manipulated the life energies Amina and Aminus like water.
Shamaan Paasi was a bent over, old man, with leathery white skin and long white hair. He proudly boasted the multicolored flowing robes, and the silk stoles, denoting his position in his society. He was a leader who had spent much of his life following. Following the ancient texts of his people, and the relationship between man and nature. All living things were connected, he claimed, bound together, in a network of anima that influenced fate, life and death..
King Silas has never been spiritual, never prayed to a deity or god. The closest thing to a soul was the anima crammed inside his body and vibrating in his cells that gave him breath and life. When he died, all of that life energy would bleed out, like air from a balloon and he would cease.
There was no Heaven.
Yet, as Shamaan Paasi inspected him, Silas found himself regarded him as the closest thing to a deity he would encounter in his life. Placing all his faith in this one man, hoping miraculously that he would tell King Silas he was as fit as a fiddle. In exceptional health.
Shamaan Passi pressed his grainy fingers to King Silas' temple. He murmured a chant and clasped the totem around his neck, a stern-looking mask with the face of an eagle and wide, outstretched wings. He shook his head.
"Bad and corrupted anima flows through your head. Consume you it will and leave you for dead."
King Silas ordered his guards to escort him out.
Should he consult the court physician next? Yes, he decided, one final opinion. Third time is the charm.
"Drink this," ordered Physician Shepard. He shoved a bubbling brown-grey sludge beneath Silas' nose. If the tumor did not kill him, this certainly would.
"Are you trying to poison me, Physician Shepard?"
The physician laughed. "Believe me, Silas, if I wanted to poison you, I would have done so long ago."
Silas downed the drink in one swallow. His throat burned and stomach ached. He fell into a deep, dreamless sleep and woke up, a tender spot on the left side of his head covered in a bandage and gauze. Physician Shepard was hovering over his workstation, his back to Silas in a curtain of white. The rhythmic sound of pen against paper lulled Silas into a false sense of security. He imagined Isabella cradling a white loaf of moving blankets. Lifting them back, he was met with rosy, plump cheeks billowing outward. Then, in another vision, the image of a small child with curly locks of brown hair much like his own, crawling amidst mud and dirt. Silas spotted them, tutted, and lifted them up.
"Now look Simon, your clothes are a mess," although he spoke less with admonishment and more with affection. "You've soiled your whites. Let's give go and give you a bath."
Silas was interrupted from this daydream. Physician Shepard loomed over him, white sleeves extending from his body like angel wings.
The angel of death.
Shepard fixed his glasses on his eyes and sighed. He pointed toward a picture in his hand.
Silas knew the answer before he even spoke.
"A pretty nasty mass. The machines picked up a massive concentration of anima in the medial temporal lobe. It would explain your chronic headaches... I'm sorry Silas, truly I am."
Silas' heart dropped. He did not feel sick. He did not look sick. He thought about Isabella and their unborn child. Just when we have this second chance, I may not be around to rejoice, he thought angrily. It seems fate is determined to have me die childless.
"Perfect timing," Silas noted glumly. "What are my options, Physician Shepard, and what does this mean for me?"
"Well," admitted the doctor, "the tumor is tied to too much in the brain to excise. But perhaps we can shrink it, get it down to a manageable size. The amygdala is a small region of the brain. Involved in fear and anxiety. It's a wonder you haven't suffered any mental symptoms yet, but we can take it as a good sign. Now, I can't make any promises regarding your prognosis, but I can say this- I will try everything in my power, consult the best of physicians around the world and across Culorn, and we will stop this right here in its tracks."
Silas had lived long enough, been subject to enough tragedy in his own lifetime, to know the difference between magic, medicine, and miracles. Magic carried a supernatural, almost higher purpose aspect to it. It required no explanation, could bend and warp and shift well-established rules of nature, and oftentimes was gifted from a higher power, rather than discovered. And make no mistake- the ability of a man to pull water from streams with the flick of a hand, or seemingly disappear in the blink of an eye, might have seemed like magic, but it all tied back to animus and anima. Energy of the living and nonliving. The ability to manipulate these two components of nature was a more natural rule of the world than it was the decision by some god to bestow a little more power to man. Life energy was as inexorable and unchanging as, say, gravity.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
Most people made the mistake of labeling life energy as a magic. But it wasn't. Was sound energy a magic? Was light energy? No. It was what it was. And this dangerous belief was what equated it with the ability to perform miracles, to work against fate.
It had not saved the life of his firstborn.
And if he was meant to die, it would not save his life either.
No matter how many doctors and scientists Simon consulted.
Anima could not control his fate.
Silas looked at the human body diagrams plastered against the doctor's walls. Here, the eyes, here the tympanic membrane of the ears, in the corner over there, the chambers and arteries of the heart. Around the perimeter of his room was a table attached to the wall. Not a single space was unfilled, stacked to the brim with grimy graduated cylinders, cracked beakers, and unbound journals. On the front most table was a human skull, with cavernous cavities for eyes, staring soullessly, back at Silas. This was not a man of miracles, but of hard science and evidence, so why was he selling Silas one now?
Silas cleared his throat.
It was unusually dry.
He wondered what people would say, if the details about this ailment were released. They would call him weak, no doubt. Or maybe they would hope he would drop dead. The sooner, the better. Then Victor could rise to the occasion and actually get something done.
"On second thought," Silas said, "I'd rather you keep this to your close circle for now. There is no sympathy for the ill in this world."
------
Victor had found the letter in his grandfather's old book, Art of the Fight: Off the Battle Field and On. A jaundiced flaky scroll, as brittle as tree bark, in erratic handwriting. It read as follows:
Dear Darius,
My father once said, death comes for us all, sometimes in the most unexpected of places. A man can die in more ways than one. I did not understand his words until Isabella and Valeria were taken from me. It was that day I discovered a fate worse than the physical death a body can suffer.
A death of the heart and soul.
It feels as if it were a lifetime ago, we attended Oxynbrooke Academy together, and I were your Court Physician. Do you recall the classes we took on the Philosopher's Stone and The Elixir of Life?
Well, I began to think. The root of all suffering in life is loss. And I wondered, how can we prevent this loss? Is it possible that by preventing physical loss, that traditional type of body-death, we can help to prevent all other types of loss? Emotional, mental, and spiritual?
I set out to cheat death. It was not easy. Every living thing in this world has a timer. We are bound to the rules of our physical world. Only a god could bend the rules.
Perhaps that makes me the closest thing to one.
Right now, I cannot impart to you the details, but I can say this: I have created something that has cheated death. Something our professors told us was impossible. No longer is the Elixir of Life a Myth.
And I am its creator.
When the season is right, I will divulge further details. For now, I am cautious even of the wind.
Your dear friend,
Dr. James Briar
------
It was a cold place, with the embrace of loneliness and an echo of despair.
Victor's eyes struggled to adjust to the dimly lit, narrow entryway with black wet stones on the walls, ceilings, and sides. Piss and alcohol clung to the air much like the captives behind the small, enclosed cells in the wide room the entry-way gave way to. Orange light from self-sustaining flames in wall lanterns stretched to a wide, arched ceiling, tightly packed with stone. Not a pinhole of light broke through. This was not merely a place for the lonely and desolate, this was a place of the forgotten and abandoned. The sound of dripping water was as a metronome to the embittered cries and loud grumbles of those who were unfortunate enough to call this place their home.
Arms reached out to Victor from behind the bars as he passed. He regarded those beggars with disdain. A country has laws, he thought to himself. Fail to follow those laws, and be prepared to pay the consequences. One man pressed his face against the bars. Even in the shade, Victor could see the filth and grime caked on his features. He spit toward Victor. Victor walked past him without so much as a recoil.
Heathens. They are below me.
Victor stopped at a cell at the end of the room. He peered into it. A long-limbed boy with skin so dark it was almost blue glared fiercely at him. Even in the darkness, his elongated green eyes glowed like a panther hunting prey in the twilight. In the right conditions, this young man could kill him.
Such were the eyes of the Arheimarians, Victor thought. Bloodlust runs through their veins. They only know how to fight. Rationality is overwhelmed by their instinct. That is what separates us from them.
He spoke to the boy.
"How do you know our language?"
"My master taught it to me." The boy's eyes lost none of their intensity.
"You speak it very well."
Silence.
"Your friends are dead," Victor continued. "You are the only one left."
"What do you want with me?" The boy finally asked. "You have pulled off my nails, stretched my limbs, given me over 100 lashes, yet you keep me here. If you wish to kill me, kill me now. For I will not speak."
Victor knew that. This boy had endured more than a grown man would have. He had endured more than Victor would have. He was the last of the Arheimarian prisoners of war brought here, the remaining having died ago. This boy was not a mere soldier. There was something he was hiding, something more.
Victor held a deep-seated admiration for him. He sensed a quality in him that would go to waste if killed. Victor loathed wasted potential. Whatever risk this boy carried, was inconsequential to what he might use him for.
"I came here to make you an offer on your freedom," Victor began. "One you wouldn't want to turn down."
The boy snorted. "Freedom is not an option. I would rather die."
"No one wants to die, if they can avoid it," said Victor. "Why don't you listen to my offer, over an enjoyable meal, before deciding to meaninglessly die with a blade in your back? I have a feeling you would be still be much use to your people in the war."
The boy's eyes glowered. They yielded but did not submit.
Victor had struck a chord.
"Very well," he said. "I shall hear you out."