Chapter 31

The Lore and Magic of Cerinya

Pamela Bain’s funeral was three days past. The spring weather outdoors had not yet penetrated the gloom of the home where death had visited not long before. Alyndia spent most of her time reading the box set of seven Harry Potter novels that Joy had gifted her. She enjoyed them very much, and the hours passed quickly when she read.

This afternoon, while the husbands and boyfriends were outdoors doing yard work, Alyndia and Connie’s sisters sat around the kitchen table sharing a Bundt cake that Felicity had baked while they sipped chamomile tea. Most of the questions centered on Alyndia and her world. Alyndia disliked discussing her world with Connie’s sisters, as the discussions usually degenerated into religious arguments.

Of Connie’s three sisters, Alyndia had formed the closest relationship with Joy. Theirs was almost a sisterly bond. With Felicity, the same was true but to a lesser degree, although Felicity tended to see everything through the lens of her faith, which rather irritated Alyndia. Her sister Faith was a bit skeptical of the metaphysical aspect of Connie’s transformation; nonetheless, as did the others, she accepted the change in her sister for all it was worth. She was also the most curious and intellectual of the three.

Now that the Bundt cake was nearly finished and the sisters’ desultory conversation about church activities and the upcoming bake sale was winding down, the topic of the discussion turned to Alyndia.

Joy took a sip of her tea. “Tell us something about the world you came from, Alyndia,” she said.

“What do you want to know?”

“Anything.”

“I think I’ve already told you a lot.”

“Well, tell us again,” Faith said. “We want to hear it.”

Alyndia sighed. “Okay. Where shall I begin? At the time of creation, I mean creation of the planet, souls came and inhabited the first living creatures.”

“Who created the planet?”

“I don’t know.”

“Our Bible says that God created the earth,” Felicity said.

“We don’t have your Bible in my world.”

“Do you have a different Bible?”

“We have religious books, but I’m not an expert in religion. I can say with certainty, though, that many gods are worshiped in my world.”

“Our Bible says there are no other gods besides Him. In fact, he’s the only God.”

“How do you know you have only one God?”

“The Bible says.”

“So, if we don’t have a Bible in my world that says there is only one god, then we might have many. Right?”

“But our God is the God of the universe,” Felicity countered smoothly. “Don’t you think that would include your world, too?”

“Felicity, how can you even be sure that your God exists?”

“Because the Bible says he does.”

“All right. What other evidence do you have?”

“I don’t need evidence. It’s a matter of faith.”

Alyndia frowned at her. “Felicity, perhaps I am constrained by my study of the elemental arts, but I don’t understand such reasoning.”

Joy broke in. “Maybe there is more than one universe. Some scientists say it’s possible. Have you ever heard of Stephen Hawkings?” she asked Felicity.

At this point, a heated discussion ensued between the sisters. Alyndia listened like a fly on the wall while demurely sipping her tea. When their anger began to rise, she spoke up. “Look, girls. Maybe we should stop this theosophical discussion and talk about something else.”

“Which god do you worship?” Felicity asked Alyndia without a beat.

“That’s a kind of personal question, but since you asked, I’ll tell you that I myself don’t worship any gods. Frankly, I think that if the gods of my world really do exist, they neither care nor want us to worship them.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Well, think about it: why does any super-powerful being need to be worshiped? So it feels good about itself? To feed its ego? No. If it’s a truly omnipotent god, it has no need of worship at all.”

The three sisters stared at Alyndia. She instantly sensed that she’d offended them, though she could not comprehend exactly how.

“Look, I’m only applying some logic to this,” Alyndia added. “You asked me my opinion, and I told you.”

“Do you have churches in your world?” Faith asked.

“Yes, but we prefer to call them temples. Some of them do look like your churches and cathedrals. Most of them are dedicated to a single, specific deity, for example, the god of healing or the goddess of fertility. Every temple has its own unique specialty spells that are available for its members. If you’re not a member and you need a spell cast on you, you have to make a donation to the temple. Some spellcasters work at temples to cast spells on behalf of the patron deity. It’s actually very common employment for mages.”

“Does the god of the temple make the spells work?” Joy asked. “I mean, if somebody went to a temple to get healed, does the patron god channel his power through the mage?”

Alyndia shook her head. “It doesn’t work that way. You see, in my world we have three different systems of magic: Elemental, Spirit, and Celestial. Without going into detail, I’ll just say that the spells of each system draw power from a different source, none of which requires the presence of a supernatural being to make it work. All temple spells, even the big ritual ones, are one of these three types. When a mage casts a spell, its power is drawn from a source dependent on the type of spell and from nowhere else.”

“So, if I understand you correctly, the god of the temple actually has nothing to do with the spell,” Joy said. “It’s the caster of the spell that makes it work.”

Alyndia smiled. “Yes. But that’s not what the priests at the temples tell you. They also tell people that the spells will work better on them if they have faith in the patron deity and make a generous donation.”

“It sounds like a racket,” Felicity said.

“A racket?” Alyndia laughed. “Oh, I don’t know about that. I’d prefer to think of it as more of a business in which the ‘brand’ is the patron deity. I can also say that the pay for mages at the temples is good, and it’s very good at the big temples—if you can get a position. You usually have to have connections for that. And as for whether the deities of the temples really do exist?” She shrugged. “Who knows? It’s whatever you want to believe.”

“Didn’t you once tell us that the creation of our world led to the creation of yours?” Joy asked.

“Yes, and I’ve already told you about that, too.”

“Tell us again.”

Alyndia sighed. “All right. After your world was created, it was struck by life. But there were not enough vessels for every being that wanted to incarnate. So, those beings who could not become part of this world decided to create one of their own that they could inhabit. You understand these beings as ‘souls’. The only problem was that there wasn’t another planet that these leftover souls could inhabit, so a spiritual world was created in which spiritual matter was fixed into permanent physical form. But being built on a different system, only some of the laws of physics applied. In order for it to have cohesiveness, the power of the cosmos was powered through it to hold it together. This was done with the collective spiritual willpower of the souls. It’s a focused mental force that you understand as spells.”

“You mean, magic?” Faith asked.

“Yes. So, these ancient spells were cast, and it all came together. The world created was a proto-world planet. Unlike your planet, ours never evolved. It stayed in the proto-form. Today, it retains an atmosphere of chlorine and has seas of hydrochloric acid from millions of years ago. But to us, because of the chemistry of the environment and the spells, they are just like air and water are to you. They support biological life.”

“And what does your race look like?”

“In time, we have taken on your form.” She smiled. “You look like us. Of course, biologically, we are much different in so many ways. For example, you have acid in your stomach. We have an alkali. Your physical form could not survive in our world. And we could not survive in yours. Your atmosphere is as noxious to us as ours is to you. Without chlorine, we would suffocate as quickly as if you were deprived of oxygen.”

Faith took a sip of her tea. “Well, I can’t imagine anyone here breathing chlorine.”

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“But there is a problem with my world. Remember I said that my world is held together by magic? Well, you all are aware of the concept of entropy. What I mean by this is that anything in the universe that is created by the organization of matter has a finite life span. That includes spells. You see, at the time of the creation of our world, thousands of spells were cast to form the physical state. In time, these spells were improved and consolidated to form the framework of our reality. Then, at some distant time in the past, they were moved to a central location on our planet. It is a physical place, a kind of structure. We call it the Atranox.

“To understand how this degradation works, you need to know what a spell is. Most spells are comprised of three parts: the willpower of the caster, the forming pattern, and a source of spell energy. The energy can come from different sources: inanimate matter, living things, and the cosmos. I told you about this earlier. Really, it’s all fundamentally from the same source, but that’s a different lecture. Anyway, there are many types of spells, but in the most common ones, a tiny bit of this energy is captured and encapsulated in the materialized will of the caster. The energy is then channeled through the container to do the caster’s bidding. After the spell is cast, it becomes its own entity and no longer needs the caster to exist; no more than a clay pot needs the potter after it is fired. Whew. Now you’ve had ten years of wizard school compressed into five minutes.”

“Which kind of spells did you cast on Cerinya?” Faith asked.

“I was trained in the elemental form of magic. I’ve also dabbled a bit with celestial spells. That’s how I got here.”

“Can you cast any spells here?”

“You know, I’ve tried. But for some reason, spells don’t work. I don’t know why. It’s definitely not like Cerinya.”

“Where is Cerinya exactly?”

“I don’t really know that either, but since we see your sun and your stars, I can speculate that it’s superimposed on your universe. When I left my world, our autumn constellations were overhead. When I arrived here, I saw our spring constellations. From this, I can only speculate that our worlds orbit 180 degrees opposite each other around the sun or that there is a time shift of some sort, or maybe both.”

“How did you get here?” Faith asked.

“It was a spell,” Joy answered for her.

“Let Alyndia tell us herself. Go on, Alyndia.”

“Connie’s spirit and mine traded places when a spell I cast didn’t do what it wasn’t supposed to do. Actually, it was a series of spells, but that’s not important. I anchored my spirit to a bracelet that I’d given to Gerald through a portal we’d created between our worlds. He was supposed to put the bracelet on his comatose wife Elise, and through it, I was supposed to take over her body. Unfortunately, your sister kind of insinuated herself into the process by putting the bracelet on herself. The magic I put into it bumped her out and sent her to my body on Cerinya while allowing me to inhabit hers.”

“That sounds like the plot to a science fiction novel,” Felicity said, pouring herself more tea.

“I’m telling you—it’s true.”

“How did you and Gerald find each other?” Faith asked.

“It was quite by accident. I was experimenting with some old and rare celestial spells, searching for a way to escape the apocalypse of my world, so to speak. Gerald happened to be doing his own experiments with light. While my spirit was on the astral plane, I saw these exquisitely lovely beams of light. I followed them to the source, which let to his lab. That’s how we found each other.” She took a sip from her tea. “At first, I appeared what seemed to him as a ghost. I tried speaking to him, but he was terrified, and I quickly left him. A few months later, while I was continuing my experiments, I saw the rays of light again. That time, I returned to him with a magical device that translates languages, and we talked. Eventually, we worked together to join magic and technology together to form the portal we called an aperture. Gradually, and maybe inevitably, we fell in love.” She sighed. “To be frank, I wasn’t looking for anyone, but my life wasn’t going very well up to that point, and his gentle words were like a balm to my restless soul.” She sighed. “I guess I’m digressing. Sorry.”

“What is this aperture?” Joy asked.

“You can think of it as a kind of tunnel through the astral plane in which physical and living things can pass. It’s a wondrous thing. Through it, I was able to visit Gerald here with my physical body.”

“I thought you said you breathed chlorine.”

“I did, but Gerald made this clever chamber that he filled with chlorine that my body could survive in.” She smiled. “He’s very clever, you know.”

“Where is Connie’s soul right now?”

“In Cerinya.”

“What is she doing there?”

“Believe it or not, she’s on a quest.”

“What quest?”

“I’ll get back to that. As I told you, some spells decay over time. The spell of the Atranox is no different. Now, the Atranox is a powerful spell. The wizards who created it were geniuses. But over the millennia it has been cast, it has begun to weaken. Because of the bifurcated structure of the spell, another lecture, it does not simply quit working. Rather, it goes through a kind of decay. Consider it like a tower in which stones randomly crack or fall out. After enough bricks fall, the tower crumbles. The construction of these stones is also like the code of your DNA. The more parts that get broken, the more it gives rise to mutations. At the time I left Cerinya, the gradual failure of the Atranox had reached a critical level. Your sister is on a quest to remediate the problem, to restore the Atranox. Unfortunately, she is unfamiliar with my world and knows nothing of magic.” Alyndia sighed. “I don’t predict a good outcome for her.”

“You mean, she’s in danger?” Felicity asked.

“Well, yes. And there is another problem. Now, as I told you, the Atranox creates the framework of reality there. As the spell decays, it causes aberrations in the world. These aberrations are called Chaos. Imagine an intangible force of spiritual and physical randomness fed by the life forces it consumes. This Chaos is overcoming my world, spreading like cancer. As the Atranox spell decays, Chaos becomes stronger and more widespread.”

“Are you saying that if the Atranox isn’t restored, your world will end?”

“As I know it, yes. That’s what I meant earlier when I said ‘apocalypse.’”

Felicity spoke up. “Our world is destined to end too.” She explained to Alyndia the prophecy as outlined in the Book of Revelation. “…And when the devil is cast back into hell, the world will have a thousand years of prosperity.”

“It’s not anything like that,” Alyndia said, shaking her head. “To my knowledge, there’s no supernatural power orchestrating things. And if our world ends, it’s done for good.”

“Can we save Connie’s spirit somehow and bring her back here?”

Joy frowned at Felicity. “You actually want Connie to come back and have her be like she was?”

“Well, she is our sister.”

“You should have been here the other night when she came back,” Joy said. “Ask James if you don’t believe me.”

“She can stay in Cerinya, as far as I’m concerned,” Faith said, smiling warmly at Alyndia. “Alyndia here is more of a sister to us than Connie ever was.”

“Is there anything you can do here to bring Connie back?” Felicity asked.

“There’s nothing we can do from here. As I’ve already said, I can’t cast any spells in your world. The process has to be reversed from that side.”

“Maybe they can send another bracelet.”

Alyndia shook her head. “Nothing physical can pass between our worlds without an aperture of the sort that Gerald and I created. The Wild won’t allow for it.”

“Then create a new one.”

“Gerald would have to agree to that. I’m not sure he would.”

“Won’t the spell that brought you here expire?”

“I’m afraid not.”

Felicity spoke up. “I have a question. You say that you were about to embark on a trip to restore the Atranox before you left. If this quest was so important, why did you choose to come here instead of going on it?”

Alyndia paused. “Why are you asking that? Are you implying something?”

“You just told us that his Atranox spell is so important that the reality of your world depends on it. Why would you leave if you are needed there so badly?”

Alyndia closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “I don’t know how to say this without sounding selfish. There are a few reasons. The first is my love for Gerald Layton, whom I’ve already told you about. I wanted to be with him. I felt that my life would never be complete without him. As for the other reason, well, I have little confidence that the quest will succeed. My contribution to its success would have been minimal. Cerinya is doomed whether I am there or not.”

“In other words, you were looking to escape your world.”

“Yes. I will not deny that. But before you call me a coward, let me tell you about the situation of that quest. It’s a fool’s quest. There is no Atranox spell. The great wizards who cast it in the days of yore are long dead and turned to dust, and there is no longer any record of how to cast it.”

“I don’t believe how something so important could be forgotten.”

Alyndia let out a short, ironic laugh. “Oh, my! Do you think that your world has a monopoly on stupidity? Since the spell was cast, a multitude of wars, kingdoms, and social orders have come and gone. In time, the Atranox has itself been forgotten. To the average person, it’s only a myth, a fairytale. Nobody thinks about it. The fact that the structure that houses lies in a remote, inaccessible location hasn’t helped the situation.”

“I still find it hard to believe that such knowledge could be lost,” Faith said.

“Okay. Think about your Library of Alexandria and the vast sum of irreplaceable knowledge it contained. What happened to it? Suppose the spell for the Atranox of Earth had been located there.”

“So, if there is no Atranox spell, what is the purpose of the quest? What are they going to do?”

“I have heard of an artifact called the Stellarad Marax. I’ve never seen it myself and can’t describe to you what it looks like to you, but it supposedly contains the imprint of the Atranox spell. Consider it like DNA without the cell.” She sighed. “Well, the spell inside the Stellarad Marax is not the original Atranox spell itself—it’s a reconstruction of it. You see, several centuries ago, those in the know realized that the original spell had been lost. So the wizards of the time set about to reconstruct it, knowing that this day would come. This process has been going on for centuries, with hundreds of wizards and thousands of hours dedicated to the reconstruction, like an epic math problem to be solved. Now the time has come to use it. But there are two problems. First, the spell, because of its nature, cannot be recast from the Stellarad Marax itself. It must be physically taken to the place where the original spell was cast. Second, the spell imprinted inside the Stellarad Marax has never been tested. For that matter, it cannot be tested, and nobody knows if the instructions encoded within it will work. Some wizards who have analyzed it claim that some of the instructions are incomplete or have errors. They claim that a hundred years or more of work is needed to complete it. But there is no more time. This is Connie’s quest.”

The three sisters looked at each other.

“Our Connie is doing this quest?” Felicity asked.

“Yes.”

“You didn’t know her, though. She’s not like any of us. She’s like—James Bond.”

“Who is that?”

“She means Connie’s as tough as nails. Nothing stops her.”

“She wouldn’t go to church, either,” Faith added. “Nobody could force her, not even Mom.”

“I sensed her strong will when we met,” Alyndia said. “She’s very strong in that regard. But, you understand, tough or not, Connie has no spell knowledge. She can’t contribute to the quest in any meaningful way. She’ll just be fodder for Chaos.”

“How did she return the other day, then?” Joy asked.

“The apprentice of a sorcerer named Calicus cast the spell that sent her back. I’ve met this sorceress. She’s very powerful.”

Faith picked up her tea. “So why were you chosen to go on this quest?”

“It’s a long story, but my father belonged to the same order as this other wizard, and I was kind of tied into this as payback for my tuition at the wizard academy I attended. You know this Harry Potter thing you have here isn’t that far from reality. But to be perfectly honest, I don’t consider myself all that great of a sorceress, and the celestial spells I cast to get here, I’ll admit, were several notches above my ability. Casting them was a risky thing to do, and now we have this situation. All I can say is that it seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself, Alyndia,” Joy said, stroking her back.

“Can we help Connie in some way?” Faith asked.

“There’s nothing we can do for Connie now except hope for the best.”

“Or pray for her.”

“Or pray if you think it will help. This quest she’s on is so dangerous. And, as I told you, it’s a fool’s quest, quixotic at best.”

“And what are your plans now?” Felicity asked.

Alyndia wrapped her hands around her warm cup of tea. “I just want to spend my time with Gerald for as long as we have, because if she dies, and she can die at anytime, I will die with her,” she said morosely.

“Well, we’ve already bought your ticket. You’ll be back in his arms in only a few days,” Joy said.

Alyndia smiled at the thought of this. “Yes. I mustn’t forget that. I can hardly wait to see him again.”