Many Eyes; One Story
38th day of Ope in the third month of Snow’s Fall
4633 A.G.G. (Present Day)
Castle Įcħor-Nåbįlå, North of the Yavan Mountains
The Continent of Kazakoto
5:45 P.S.R. (Pre Suns’ Rising)
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Aoleon
After two hours of reading, referencing and discussion, Aoleon was now leaning forward into the computer’s screens from her father’s laughably large and ornate chair; jumping from one monitor, to another, to the pile of physical papers sprawled about the desk and back again. As if she were physically chasing information from one to the other. She was focused on it all so intently it looked as if she were planning to leap directly into the pages or the system’s displays.
Samahdemn meanwhile had seated himself on the couch after having swapped places with Aoleon during her reading. At some point, somewhat unbeknownst to her, a melancholy mood had overtaken him and he’d sunken into the furniture in depression. He slowly breathed out the smoke he’d recently inhaled from his water pipe as he lazily swished around yet another serving of the hazy green liquor that was in his glass.
“You know,” the king said sadly. “I just thought about the date. Just now. Only just now…”
Aoleon looked back at her father; knowing that there wasn’t anything that she could really say to make his revelation affect him any less. This calendar period was always hard on him; dragging him into a pit of despair whenever it came around.
“I can’t believe that I let it sneak up on me. Me, of all people. While all the time I’m sitting here writing about it.”
“Dad, you know-”
“No Aoleon. It’s fine. Things are what they are. They’re what I made them. My decisions. My doing. My…”
Aoleon could see the tears welling up in his natural eye. But then, just as quickly as they appeared, Samahdemn wiped them away and washed his emotions down by turning up his glass and quickly taking in the last of the absinthe with a hard swallow.
He’s never going to get drunk at this rate. Fortunately. I know he knows he’ll metabolize that long before it can make him forget…anything. Aoleon thought. He’ll need another glass…or three, in quick succession to even begin to broach that door. At the very least.
“Maybe I should just drink it straight from the bottle”. he postulated to Aoleon. “Maybe I’d actually be able to feel what it’s like to get drunk again. I really need that.”
That’s what I thought.
More old habits dying hard. Or, not dying at all.
After taking an excessively long pull on his smoking hose, Samahdemn immediately began preparing another drink for his nerves.
While the concepts of the water pipe and the almost ritualistic preparation of his absinthe was fascinating to her overall, Aoleon never much cared for smoking and drinking as her father always had. And she’d never felt the need to try. Although, given the fit she watched him go through earlier beyond the red room, it was little wonder to her why he indulged so often. It was, after all, systemic of her father’s inner struggles. She was honestly surprised that he wasn’t a complete drunkard or a hardened addict in his life before his rebirth. A minor miracle in fact. But, then again, he had good people looking out for him and heka to patch him.
If Samahdemn were still held fast by his mortal coil, she’d have tried to warn him off of them for the sake of his health as she used to try to do in years past. But-
It’s not like he’d ever have to worry about dying of lung cancer or a pickled liver as he is now, would he? No matter how hard he tries.
However, she still worried over whatever impact drink did still seem to have when he overindulged. In point-of-fact, there were times when he’d drink so much that Aoleon would’ve sworn that if she’d struck a match near him, he’d burst into flames.
Not to mention that the absinthe he was so fond of was of a personal brew. Laced with twice the amount of wormwood as normal. Aoleon oft felt that it set his mind in another place; that it put a glaze in his eye.
Not good for a person with Samahdemn’s damaged psyche coupled with his tumultuous gifts.
Yet to the king, it was apparently quite the opposite. Her mother once told her that to him, it was more like things were sharpened by the drink. He felt like he could perceive more. Observe more. He was tied to it. Even if it could no longer make him completely forget the world he helped create, it made him feel better about living in it. It dulled the pain of remembering, if only for a fraction of the time that it would a mortal.
“Almost five hundred people dead. Buried or burned alive. Three hundred maimings; arms and legs never to be used again...or worse. Entire family lines wiped out. All because of me.” he whispered to himself sullenly. Samahdemn looked down to the floor at Ayashe. The massive leopard had apparently drifted back off to sleep; rolled over onto her back so that her large furry paws were crossed limply over her heaving chest.
“I suppose you’ll not be staying up any longer to keep me company old friend. Can’t say I blame you.”
The leopardess must have been exhausted. After all, Aoleon had no idea how long she’d been up with her father. Together, she and her father watched her in contemplative silence as her paw spasmed sporadically and leapt into the air in her sleep.
I wonder what a dire leopard dreams of.
The silence of the moment was eventually broken by the sound of the king dipping his sugar covered spoon into his freshly concocted green færię and stirring the drink.
Aleon watched him for a bit longer as Samahdemn spoke in whispers to himself, continuing to agonize over the past as he loaded the jigger once again and prepped his sugar spoon and the fountain for his next round.
Feeling saddened and a bit helpless concerning his drop in mood, she tried desperately for the next few minutes to pull her father out of the hole of depression that he found himself in. However, it was a mostly futile effort. He wanted to beat himself up, so he was going to beat himself up. Period. At least he wasn’t slipping into and getting lost in his own memories this time.
So, Aoleon decided that all she could do was to refocus on the task at hand. While she wanted to comfort him, the desire to keep reading to discover what made him the conundrum he was, was the more compelling sell at this point. It was a mystery she could actually solve.
Tapping a metal finger lightly on the desk to pull his attention from his sad introspection, she queried-
“Dad, can I ask you something about your writing?”
“Of course you can Love.” he said as he vigorously shook his head to clear his thoughts. “I apologize. I just seem…to be in a dark place right now.”
"No, it’s okay.”
Reaching for the stack of documents, Aoleon breezed over a few more of the handwritten pages; pushing as far away from her father’s melancholy as she could with the hopes of bringing him with her. “Do you know that you switch perspectives when you write?”
“Hmm?”
“Here, in this chapter. You do it at least three times.” she stated as she started pointing at one of the physical screens in tandem with the pages. “You speak of Dåÿvįåd’s thoughts, then of Tįlåtħ’s. At one point you even speak with the voice of a dying Ǻngël. And you do it almost as if their thoughts are your own.” Aoleon flipped backward through the pages of the physical copy and pointed at another couple of passages. “I’m not sure if you mean to or if you realize you’re even doing it. How can you possibly know what’s in other people’s heads?”
“Ah.” he stated as he realized her point. “I’m not shifting perspectives. Not really. Not for me. You have to forgive me. I’ve had these memories tumbling around in my head for so long that I’ve almost forgotten what it’s like to not think…fourth dimensionally.”
“So you mean to say that you really do know what these people were thinking?”
The king slowly nodded affirmation to his daughter. “Absolutely.”
“And this is you talking? Not the absinthe?”
“One’s understanding can shift drastically when they’re exposed to the instruments of the Goddess and Gods. Fallen or otherwise.”
The albino Swalii felt herself blink in confusion; her stark white brows furrowing as she cocked her head to the side like a questioning puppy.
Samahdemn sighed. “You know what I’m talking about. Just think about it.”
“The half-saber?” Aoleon gasped.
Samahdemn gave a curt nod.
She knew that the saber was ancient, dæmönic in nature, utterly powerful and supposedly, on some level, alive. But there was apparently much about the weapon that she would never understand. She suddenly felt filled with giddy excitement and unignorable curiosity. “So it can, what? Show you the past?”
“Not in the sense you think. It…well, I…can see other people’s memories. More accurately, I experience them. They become mine.”
Questions flooded her consciousness at a maddening rate and began to overflow out of and through her hands like an unbridled waterfall; the metal appendages clanking against each other with her finer control giving way to speed of word conveyance. “How? To what end? Does it just…syphon them from people around you? What’s its limitations? Does it allow you to glimpse anyone’s thoughts at any time? Are these memories continuous? Are they over bearing? Can you remember any point in time in any person’s life?”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” he exclaimed, holding up his hands. “It’s hard to understand you when you speed sign. You’re going to have my head spinning. And you’ll not get an answer from me anyway. At least, not right now.”
Aoleon was shocked and her mouth fell agape.
“There are some things I’d rather that you discover naturally as you read. Everything in its appointed time and all that.
“You, my family, know me the best of nearly anyone, yet none of you really know me. You, your mother and your siblings are the embodiment of my motivation. And if you can’t, assimilate, understand, accept and inevitably forgive me for my transgressions through my writing, then I’ve failed and I can’t possibly expect the public at large to do so.”
“So, in addition to being your sounding board-”
“I need to know that all this helps you understand me. In the same way that I hope that those who read my story will. You’ve always known what I did in the Undercity. But you know little of how it shaped me outside of the drink and smoke that overtook my life.”
“‘Overtook’? Is that past tense I hear?”
Samahdemn smiled his way around the snark and continued. “You don’t know how the Undercity drove every action I took after. I was party to a great deal of evil before Lady Brigid touched my mind. And I’ve tried to dedicate my life afterward to being…more. But after being directly responsible for the Spire…well, I came to realize that maybe all the magickal meddling in the world can’t change one’s nature.
“Frankly, my telling you directly why something ‘is the way it is’, will leave you with the wrong impression of it. But if you’re allowed to follow the events leading up to it yourself...”
“I see.”
He nodded. “People will form their opinions about me. The Court of Public Opinion will have its day. As will you and your siblings. I just want your opinions to be educated ones as opposed to hasty ones.”
Aoleon was ill satisfied with that answer. And she pouted her discontent. However, that’s not to say that she didn’t understand it. She found herself thinking almost immediately of the slave auctions he recanted. After listening to him veer into his own form of solipsism, she did feel differently about his time as a slaver. She still didn’t like it; couldn’t fully accept it, but she felt better knowing that her father rejected it when the truth of it was forced upon him.
He had a point.
“Suffice it to say for now,” he continued, “the saber allows me to drink in the memories of those it…knows. But it has its limits. And it has its costs.”
That was cryptic. Nonetheless, Aoleon found it- “Amazing.”
“Less amazing, more like a curse. An unfortunate side effect.”
“But there are so many things that you can learn. You can see the world from different viewpoints with different ideas.”
“Coupled with witnessing horrors that you personally never caused or had any part in?” the king asked. “I’ve done things in my life that I’m not proud of Love. There are many things that I wish I could erase. Things that I wish I didn’t have to live with. And the saber isn’t selective in what it imparts to me. So now I have to live with other beings’ evil on top of my own. Such is the burden of the bearer.
“Even now, with those damnable weapons hidden down in the catacombs behind layers of runic heka, their soft voices are still in my head. They’re still singing to me. In a tone that only I can hear.” He grimaced as he seemed to open himself up to it more. “The saber’s song is…treacherously sweet. Beckoning. The remains of the broadsword sings of being sad and hurt. And the tomahawk; the tomahawk is ever warning and pleading with me.” He shook his head and placed his face in his palms; wiping it vigorously as if awakening from a dream. “It’s…a lot. I can never hold onto them for long, lest the darkness of them drag me down with their memories and power. It’s…disquieting.”
Aoleon felt sad for him. He was so much more than anyone else, and yet he was the same. He was vulnerable and weak in so many ways. He no longer knew what it meant to be human, and yet amazingly, he was still closer to being human than he was to being Dįvįnë.
“So that’s why you-”
“-Become rather ‘dark’ when I take them up. Yes. But it’s a necessary trade. ‘Ends justifying the means’ and all of that type of talk; to take up the blades out of need for the gifts they grant me. Especially during the war. And I’m sure that they’ll likely have to be taken up again one day.” He sighed. “Thankfully, the process has become much more…bearable since the war’s end. And, it’s lessened even more if wielded in concert with the tomahawk. Yen and yang.”
Aoleon thought back to an hour ago when he touched the half-saber and so absentmindedly fell into the change. “Has it really become easier?”
“It has. Believe me. When I’m focused at least. And it’s definitely better than the horror that befalls those who touch them who aren’t bonded to it and who lack a certain strength of mind. It’s-” His hands ceased all movement as he searched for the words.
“It doesn’t matter right now.” Aoleon interjected. “I’ll read it when I read it, like you said. And I’ll think no less of you afterward.”
“I hope so.”
“Neither will mom, Kŵanza or Åålįŷah. Or the other souls living under our protection within our walls.”
“I can only pray. Goddess knows that Kŵanza couldn’t possibly think less of me.”
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She smiled softly at her father. His desire for personal redemption was admirable. “He cares for you more than you think.”
Samahdemn looked at his daughter questionably.
“He cares for you in his own way.” Aoleon corrected. “Question?”
“Answer.”
“How do you deal with it? With your photographic memory constantly washing over you and all?”
“Not quite photographic.” He corrected.
“Eidetic?”
“Not that either. I’ve been told that, mnemonist, is the more accurate term. And I don’t deal with it easily. It was different before my Joining. I was far more ‘normal’. But after, well, aside from all of the other problems it brought with it, my mind was never quite right again after my Amalgamate infested my brain.”
“Regardless, I wish I’d had that gift in my youth.”
“You wouldn’t if you had it. Even without my particular Amalgamate-twisted memory-linked affliction. Total recall isn’t always a welcome talent.”
“But such a talent? To be that gifted? Who wouldn’t want that?”
“Far fewer would want it if they thought about the downs, not just the ups. And I’ve always hated that word. ‘Gifted’. Too many people have had the tendency to call me that than I’ve cared for. But I’ve never thought so. Believe me. In fact, I’ve always thought of myself as quite the opposite.”
“You’re probably the only person who sees it that way. I’ve known more than a few who’ve even gone so far as to call you a ‘genius’.”
“Goddess! She threw the ‘g-word’ at me.” The king nearly laughed at that. “You know what a genius is Aoleon?”
“I bet you’ll tell me.”
“Anyone can draw, but a genius gives life to their canvas. Anyone can write music, but a real genius can move you with their words and their symphonies. Anyone can manipulate mathematical equations, but a genius can derive from them the secrets of flight or advanced architecture. A genius is imaginative, inventive or innovative.
“I’m none of those things. I’m no renaissance man. I can’t create on those levels Aoleon. At least, not without concerted effort, application and the help of those around me; the same as everyone else. I’m a computer. A storage dump. I simply remember things better than most. I don’t see myself as anything more.”
Aoleon, at some level, felt a little disappointed by that. “I see what you’re saying. I don’t agree. But I see.”
Samahdemn shrugged his broad shoulders and started massaging his injured hand. “Your perception is your reality Love.”
“So, total recall? Sights, sounds, smells?”
“For the most part, yes. It’s not completely perfect. Sometimes I still have to fill in fine details. I used to be able to remember better, but I suppose that so many years of abusing my body with vices coupled with the process of becoming what I am has taken its toll on my mind. But I can still remember most things accurately as far back as…umm…four or five.”
Aoleon blinked in disbelief. “Five? Years old?”
“Yep.” He affirmed with a nod. “It’s not always pleasant. Or forgiving. Remembering everything. Lapsing into inescapable memory.”
The dark skinned king shifted about uncomfortably on the couch, the decorations in his large locs jingling like windchimes as he did so. He took another sip of his green drink and nodded. “I can’t explain how it feels to vividly remember every aspect of every person I have ever hurt, maimed, wronged or killed. To say that it’s haunting barely begins to describe it. Worse still is reliving someone else’s memories regardless of whether they’re good or bad. Happy moments that I never had. Loves that I never lost. Blood that I never shed. Their ghosts will follow me until…the end.”
Aoleon started to speak. “I-”
Samahdemn shook his head and held up his hands in a ceasing gesture. “Don’t be sorry for me Aoleon. It’s my penance. My just due.” He laughed to himself. “Did you know that I can even remember physical feelings? Those rarely go away.”
“Literally? You actually feel what’s happening to you when you slip into your bouts of…reminiscence? Like being in a fight?”
He nodded with a wry smile and a sip of alcohol. “Or being shot in a gun fight. I can’t control it or block it out if I start remembering it; feeling it in that way. And my body sometimes has difficultly telling the remembered pain, from actual pain.”
“So remembering being shot-”
“-Can be like being shot all over again.”
Aoleon was starting to see that Samahdemn’s life truly was a blessing and a curse. All the power and life granted him…things most people would kill for; to have it counterbalanced with so much continual mental and physical pain.
It was all so…sad.
“Okay…” Aoleon signed. Not wishing to drag her father through more unnecessary pain. “So, Jeruian and Waimund?”
“Sorry?” he signed in return before he reached to take another sip from his glass.
Grabbing the directional sphere, Aoleon scrolled to a passage on the computer and stopped. “You mentioned here that you were going to be introduced to J and Ray. While you’ve definitely mentioned them in passing on more than one occasion, I don’t think I’ve ever heard you freely talk about them.”
“Not to you or our family. That’s true.” Samahdemn tapped his glass to his forehead as if absentminded. “You wouldn’t know this, but they were your godfathers. Jeruian and Waimund. And they were honourable men. Good men.”
Aoleon leaned forward with interest. Listening to words that rarely, if ever, crossed his lips. She listened to him talk about these men whom she barely knew existed. But who’d cast a very long shadow over her for as long as she could recall. Her memory of them was hazy. How, why or when they’d first touched her life she couldn’t quite remember. But their importance was something that, instinctively, she couldn’t bring herself to question. Especially that of Waimund; the man who’d sired the line that birthed the love of her life.
“They were men of the old world. The world as it was two hundred years ago. Men who’ve been long since buried now. My friends.” A sigh escaped the king’s lips.
“If…if you feel that way, why don’t you ever talk about them? Why didn’t I ever spend time with them? Why didn’t they ever break bread with us; in our home? Under our roof?”
“Because I couldn’t-” His hands ceased to move mid sentience and light trimmers overtook his fingers. But after a moment, he managed to regain his composure. “Ñä’Kimuli knew them too. She’d befriended all of us long before she held the crown. From years before, when we’d helped her and her people in the northern mountains get rid of a fiend that had plagued them for over a fortnight and bloodied them badly. For that, they’d always had her respect. And whether you remember it or not, they even helped me save your life.”
That last bit grabbed Aoleon’s attention and made her try desperately for a moment to recall what they did. But it was a futile effort. The day she lost her arms continued to elude her recollection.
“You did work around the Tuska Mountains?” she asked en lieu of being able to drudge up her lost memories. I would have thought you would have worked mostly in Zachary or Assami since they’re adjacent to The Link’s islands. At least, at first.”
“You’re not wrong. Had things happened a bit earlier, that very well may have bee the case. But, as it turned out, Ray and J were dug in pretty well in Kazakoto already. Which worked well with the land that Brigid was working to have granted to me.
“And as you know, that ended up working out pretty well for us in the long run.
“Even your brother who never knew them respected their memory simply because your mother did.” he continued. “Arjana’s sense of self and respect are built on the foundations that they erected. And I never wanted to see that all come crashing down.”
The alabaster princess’ hair decorations jingled lightly as she shook her head and blinked in confusion. “I don’t understand.”
“I told you, I have to clear the air. The souls that follow me won’t let me rest until I do. I’ve kept too much to myself. Too many secrets. One of which I decided a long time ago, I’d keep in order to preserve J and Ray’s names. As a result, I’ve always refrained from allowing them to get too close to you. I was too afraid of what would happen if your mother ever found out what they did. She and your brother would have hated them. And I would have rather had them hate me in their stead.
“It was only right. They were my brothers, and they deserve better than what our queen and prince would have given them.”
She bobbed her head. “Everything in its proper time I assume?”
The king nodded.
“I see.” she begrudgingly acquiesced.
“Not yet. But you will.”
“And Arjana? If exposing whatever they did will affect her, she deserves to know. She should have a say.”
The king allowed his face to fall into the palm of his hand and he squeezed his temples together; messaging them roughly as he forced himself to an otherwise obvious conclusion.
His feelings were always so easy to read.
“Of course. You’re right. I should talk with her. And I will.” With that, yet another drink slid down his throat.
“You miss them don’t you? Your brothers.” Aoleon probed; keeping her father squarely on topic.
“Yes. Very much. We didn’t always agree, but we always had each other’s backs. And we had a lot of great times in spite of all the bad ones. They loved you a great deal regardless of how little they saw you. They saw the best of me in you.” Samahdemn laughed hardily. “If they were still alive, I’d apologize for being such a…gxx kiċv in those early years with them. I never got the chance to. I couldn’t have been easy to live with.”
“What do you mean you were an ass hole? You mean to say that you still aren’t? Qiy svŀv uilő gő gxx kiċv.”
Samahdemn was slightly shocked. Not by her linguistic prowess, but her comedic candor. “Really? Is that how you feel? Have jokes for days do you?”
Aoleon shrugged proudly. “You’re not the only person who knows the tongue of the Drågons you know.”
He smirked in response. “I’m not the same person I was back then. Not by a long road.”
“I know. I was just teasing.”
Samahdemn stood from the couch and ran his hands roughly through his kinky locs; adjusting the odd adornment here and there as he began to pace. The albino could see the sudden frustration plastered all over his face. “You know Aoleon, the problem with everlasting life is that it’s just that. Everlasting. I’ve found that immortality is much like the half-saber, or my memory…as much a curse as a blessing. It requires endurance; the ability to take in a lot of death and loss. To outlive-”
“To outlive everyone.” she completed empathetically.
“Sometimes I wonder if I myself have much more stamina for it. The world is ever changing and more and more I find myself pining for the way it was. I’ve become stagnant over the years; sluggish against my best efforts. I can still remember the world the way it was before the war. Before my rebirth. So much has changed. I tell you Love, I weep for the past. I weep for the friends I’ve lost.”
After a few quiet moments of contemplation, swimming in the sleepy purple glow of the lanterns and the hearth as they bled together and gave way to the bluish-white light of the wicc lanterns hanging from the graywood tree, Aoleon decided that it would probably help him to talk about it. Maybe he even wanted to…with her. So she asked her father- “Will you tell me about them? Please?”
Her father seemed to struggle with that question slightly. Regardless of what she’d find that he’d openly written about them in his mémoirs, it was obvious that he still had a hard time talking about them openly to her despite himself after years of keeping them behind a wall.
Or maybe it was grief at their absence that was causing him to hesitate. Regardless, he opened up to her.
“I’d seen one hundred and sixty years by the time I’d met them in ‘73. Aside from the fact that I was struggling to come to grips with the things I’d done after my psyche was ‘reset’, I found it very difficult to adjust to being placed in the care of people who were only about a fifth my age. They might as well have been children in comparison.
“I spent a long time adjusting to being a commoner beside them. I tended from time to time to act like I still held standing, or like my former Knighthood lent to me a certain amount of authority. Looking back on it all, I don’t know how they ever ended up calling me friend through all of my arrogance.
“To say that we had many arguments would be putting it lightly. It got to the point sometimes that I think they were content to just let me have my way and be done with it.”
“And how did that work out? Having your way?”
“Sometimes well.” His eyes rolled about. “Sometimes I’d land on my face. But regardless, I always learned something and they’d usually help pick up my slack. You know, it’s funny. I figured at first that they stood by me during those early years because of Christine or Wil’e’s influence. I mean, how could they not? I know I’d have hated being stuck with me. Especially given what they knew I’d done. But as time went on, they proved to be something altogether different. They were men of principal. They believed that almost anybody could be deserving of a chance to atone for their sins. Maybe they realized that for all my faults, I was trying to be better; that what happened at the Grand Spire, however gruesome, was very far from being my intent.
“Sometimes I wonder if they weren’t really Ångëls in disguise, they were so fair to me. Hunters with hearts of gold.”
“And your anger?”
“Oh Lady Brigid and Lord Byron’s new sorceries were impeccable. Some of the incantations that they used were far beyond my realm of knowledge at the time; spells that took hours upon hours of layering. And they only released me to my own devices after they were able to rest assured that everything that could possibly be done had been done.”
Aoleon scratched the exposed scalp between her bantu knots; pondering what Christine Brigid and Wil’e Byron must have gone through to get their spell craft to work on her father’s unique physiology. And- “Why would they even try again in the first place though? It didn’t work the first time. What made them so sure of it the second time around?”
“They weren’t sure. But that doesn’t stop a proper Magi. You see, an individual Magi has the ability to harness and control a single aspect of nature in all of its facets through the Craft. A portion of the Flow that’s naturally drawn to their touch. We call this a ‘leaning’. With the proper amount of time, study, training and raw power, there’s very little that we can’t do within our leanings; save for harnessing the power of Creation. And Brigid and Byron were among the finest in their fields.”
“Ah. So there’s limits to a Magi’s gifts? You could have fooled me. That’s interesting. Growing up around you and the rather insane company you keep, I’d never realized mortal limitations were a thing when it came to wielding the craft.”
“Not many outside of our kind do.”
“And, just out of curiosity, what happens when one of you pushes against those limits?”
The dark skinned king paused briefly to look intently into his daughter’s melanin deficient eyes. “It’s never good. Sometimes fatally so. Not that that’s ever stopped a Magi from striving to do more than what’s natural.”
Aoleon seemed unsure how to metabolize that bit of information. Was it a cautionary statement? It didn’t matter right now. She simply put it to the back of her mind and continued to listen as he pivoted back to the matter at hand.
“The thing is, that nature is funny. It will only allow you to try and permanently manipulate it in a certain way once. There were few others who had the skill to tackle a re-binding. So regardless of the risks involved, there was little other choice than for them to make the attempt themselves.”
“So, if a spell comes…what’s the word I’m looking for…undone-?”
Samahdemn nodded his affirmation to the usage of the word and completed her thought. “Then it can’t be handled in exactly the same way a second time. The Flow spreads out just beneath, over, and throughout all things, but it’s very thin and not unlike an infinite number of threads in a quilt. If an individual thread snaps, you can’t reattach it at the break. It either has to be patched over, or replaced anew.
“And just as you can make a quilt by knitting different pieces of thread together, so too can you change reality by knitting different types of energies together.”
Aoleon felt her eyes widen with sudden understanding. “That’s why Magi refer to incantations of heka as spell ‘weaving’.”
“Just so. And since my initial binding had failed, that particular aspect of my psyche wouldn’t take to the same weave again. In such cases, you can either approach the desired affect via working around it with other reinforcing weaves or, in a crunch, you can just try to force it with overwhelming force of will. Because of the urgency of the situation I’d found myself in, guess which one Lady Brigid and Lord Byron went with.”
“I see.”
“Sometimes, it seems as if time has been working against me my whole life.”
“And yet you lived such a long life before the war started in earnest.”
Samahdemn waved off the observation. “It fails to feel that way. It feels like just a few weeks ago that I was dreading the thought of another upcoming Sundras post-abbey dinner with my painfully self-important and sickeningly snoody parents. And now-”
“And now?”
“Now I have my own children that I force into Sundras post-abbey dinners of my own.” A genuine laugh rose from the duo. But Sam’s laugh had a slight bitterness to it. “And I still have so much longer to live.” he sighed. “I have outlived many people that were once important to me. And I’ll blink one day and realize that I’m burying more of the people who have journeyed with me to this point.” Samahdemn laughed a laugh that wasn’t unlike the forced joyousness that one impresses upon themselves when waving off a sudden depression that’s trying to press upon them.
It was a coping mechanism that Aoleon was all too familiar with. She’d watched him do it far too often.
“But I digress,” he signed. “Jeruian and Waimund. There were times during my travels with them that I needed to find my center, as I should’ve tried to do in Bastion. Hunting fiends, after all, was probably one of the most…difficult titles I’ve ever held in my life. More so even than my time with the Order. Outside of what I did afterwards in the war of course. But those two kept me close and taught me everything I needed to know to stay alive despite the fact that they likely thought that I deserved to be ripped apart by some of the things we hunted.”
“They sound like they were good people.”
“Two of the best.” Samahdemn took another drink from his glass. “They were the brains of our little trio. They coordinated my exodus with Brigid from the onset. They handled the logistics of the majority of our jobs. They were also the faces of our group to our clients.” He shook his head. “They were the real power behind The Tribunal.”
The high princess paused for the briefest of moments. “That’s not what I heard. More than one person, mother included, would agree that you were the reason The Tribunal was what it was. And that it was you who led the Tribunal to fell the Syndicate and eventually become the guiding hand of the Union.”
He shook his head. “That’s an unfairness. Not only are you putting the cart before the horse, but that’s not really how it was. We never set out to do anything so grandiose. In the old days, we were simply three guys who were in a life-for-coin business. We hunted monsters. Plain and simple. I was the newcomer, and they were my guides and advisors.”
Aoleon laughed half out of amusement and half out of disbelief. “So you’re saying you didn’t found The Tribunal?”
“No. Yes…well, not exactly. Look, it wasn’t really like that. You’re assigning an insane oversimplification to a very complex issue. And that’s not how it was.”
“Ok. But you did establish the Union.”
“None of us really founded or established anything alone little Ms. Jumping-the-Gun. The whole Tribunal thing was a kind of mythos that just seemed to spring up about us. It’s not like we actually walked around calling ourselves that.”
Aoleon stifled a laugh. “I see.”
Samahdemn nodded. “And the Union was something that was on its way to its own fruition from the moment we rose to the Syndicate’s view. It was an inevitability.”
“So, where did it all come from in that case? The name? The mystique?”
“Who really knows? But I can tell you that the name surfaced during the height of our skip tracing days, not during what came before or after. We were vastly successful munificences in our time. Almost two hundred contracts a year between the three of us, with a very high collective success rate. Nearly eight of every ten contracts we negotiated, we fulfilled in one way or another with little to no collateral damage.
“We weren’t above contracting for upwards of seventy percent more than other hunters for the more dangerous beasts. After all, we were worth it. We were so effective in fact that we started getting requests from outside the I.A.M.H. to hunt…other types of game.”
“The bounty hunting thing.”
“Yes. The bounty hunting thing.” the king verified. “When you find yourself in a line of work that involves legally hunting bad people on behalf of the government, local lawmen or individuals, you quickly realize that the bounties that you chase tend more often than not to be linked to some of the worst people that mortality has to offer. Not all of them, but enough of them. And if you’re sensitive to it, it can stick to you like a bad stink. It can follow you home. It can eat at you. And on more than one occasion, I found that I really needed to be alone to regain my equilibrium.
“I think it’s fair to say that I hated it. Or, more accurately, I hated where it pushed my thoughts. It’s definitely not what Christine or Wil’e had in mind when I was snuck out of The Link. I wasn’t intended to hunt people. But, despite all of that, I was good at it.
“Apparently, it seemed that it was the only job to which I was truly suited.”