CHAPTER THIRTY—DUALITY OF POWER

The voice came to him, like before, slow and ponderous, both from without him and within his own mind. “Power… Give…”

Raz glanced about even though there was nothing to see. He did not know why, but he sensed a certain urgency all around him, like his thoughts were racing, and yet they were not his own.

“Power…” the voice persisted.

Narrowing his eyes, Raz lifted a finger. And how am I supposed to do that? “It is not a bag of coins—I cannot just ‘send you my power’! Besides, what do you want it fore?”

There was a long pause. “Escape…”

“Escape? You think we can escape from here?”

“Yes.”

The adventurer sighed heavily. He wondered how his brother and the others were getting on. Were they destroying the Angor even as he floating about this strange void?

Raz still did not know how he got here in this void. But he was no careful fool—he was an adventurer, he took risks, he took huge risks.

All the time.

It’s no big thing.

“All right,” he said. “How do I ‘give you my power’?”

“Not give…” the voice said. “Open… Open your aura—release your tether.”

“My what?” Raz shrugged. He had no idea what this voice was talking about. “Hey, by the way—did you tell me your name? I am certain you did not.”

“Not important.”

“Ha! I would at least like to know who I am dealing with, yes?”

“No time…”

He sighed heavily. This voice, this disembodied spirit or whatever it was, annoyed Raz, and he glanced about suspiciously. But there was nothing else for it. He saw no way out of here, and he didn’t expect that he would just… slip out of here on his own without some kind of special knowledge of this place.

“Concentrate… Explore.”

He sighed again. “All right, all right. I will ‘concentrate’ okay!” Raz glanced about one more time, and then he folded his legs underneath himself and tried to relax, to concentrate.

The relaxation part was not a problem.

He was not afraid. The great adventurer Raz is never afraid. I am very relaxes. I am only impatient.

“All right—I’m concentrating and I am”—he chuckled with derision—“relaxed.”

“Good,” the voice breathed all around him. “Now… quest out with your aura.”

Raz cleared his throat. He thought this was silly. He was no sage, and here he sat, like a buffoon, trying to do sage things. “All right.”

“Search…”

“For what?”

“Me…”

Eyebrows moving about with heavy skepticism, he quested out, searching for other auras. He sensed many. He sensed his brother. It was very small, and he almost laughed, but instead of making fun, he concentrated on the others he felt.

He felt Shiro, and his lovely jinni—and Debaku, yes. Ah, and that is Samira. Very beautiful.

“Concen—“

“I am concentrating, man.”

There was a long pause. Then the voice was all around him, slow and ponderous once again. “Concentrate.”

Right…

Other than Shiro, Debaku, Samira and Jessamine, he sensed his own aura—not a thing he often took stock of. Who searching for their own aura? No one.

But there was something else.

Raz knit his brows together. It was that other powerful aura he had felt before, the one inside the Angor monster. “Yes,” he said. “I sense you. Are you the Angor?”

“No…”

“How do I know that?”

“Too many questions… must… escape…”

Shrugging, Raz agreed. Now was not the time to worry about whether or not he was making a deal with a terrible monster that wanted to consume them all, magic and flesh alike.

The adventurer almost laughed.

Then he sighed.

Not long ago he was playing at being one of the new sultanah’s bodyguards. Then he found himself in a sticky, biting jungle. That had been fun, actually.

Now this…

It was fun. In a way—but very different than anything else he had ever experienced.

But he was getting distracted.

Raz quested out, found that powerful aura once again. “You seem… a lot like Jessamine.”

“Jessamine…” the voice said, chewing on her name like a thought that had been long in the coming. “Yes—Jessamine. We are… of a kind.”

Raz’s eyes shot open. “Wait, you’re a jinni, man?”

“Yes.”

His heart beat a little faster. “That is very interesting,” he said, a smile coming to his face. He must have looked greedy, because Raz certainly felt greedy.

The voice said nothing.

“Hey,” Raz said, “you sound like a man.”

“Silence…” the voice said. “Reach out… for my tethers.”

“All right, all right,” Raz said, and he concentrated, questing out for the aura, for the “tethers”—whatever they were. He did sense that power coming closer.

“We are… near one another… in this void… Search.”

“I am searching,” Raz said. “I feel… something close.”

“Then…” the voice began—

But Raz quit listening. He was no sky sheep to be led like a babe in the arcane arts of magic. He opened his eyes, saw something waving in the open space. It was… white? Blue? It seemed to change colors.

“Yes,” he said. “I have found you.”

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“Take hold…”

He did, and he pulled, and the aura of power neared Raz as he found another strange looking thing—this one coming from him. “Hey, what is this string coming out of my chest?”

“It is… your tether in the void.”

“Very interesting, man.” He pulled on it, yanking whatever was at the other end forward. He saw nothing. The space, it was so enclosed, and yet so tiny as well.

“I hope…” the voice said, “the vessel is nearby.”

“I don’t know what you mean by that, but how can you get us out of here?” Raz asked. “You sound half a sleep, man.”

“My power… is linked to the monster…”

“Ah, so once we leave—it gets weaker?”

“Perhaps… I am coming nearer…”

Raz looked around. “Where? I don’t see you anywhere!”

“I see you…”

“Wait—what?” he turned, his blood pumping a little faster. Not in fear, but in anticipation. But the adventurer saw nothing.

Until suddenly he did.

“Wait! I see you!”

He pulled on the tether, like a rope. The jinni came forward. He was like a man, big, tall, bald and broad shouldered.

“Yes,” Raz drawled. “As I thought. An ugly man.”

The jinni had a thick mustache that overhung upon the sides of his lip, and pierced in his ears were many rings of precious metal. His skin was much like his own—coppery, not pale like Shiro, and darker than Jessamine.

The jinni’s eyes widened slightly, and to Raz, he looked to be half asleep. “You have… saved me.”

Lifting a skeptical eyebrow, he said, “You look like am Abassir man.”

“I am… from near here, a time before Abassir men.”

“All right, who cared. Now how do we get out of here?”

“You must… open your aura to me.”

“That sounds downright scandalous, man.”

The jinni narrowed his eyes. In fact, they looked a lot like… Snake eyes?

“Hey! Do you know Debaku?”

“Debaku… yes.”

“Wonderful,” Raz said in disappointment. “You are probably his pet jinni, yes? I heard he lost a jinni, but I did not know it was in a nothingness like this.”

“My name is…”

“Wait!” Raz exclaimed. “I got it!” He snapped his fingers. “Archy!”

The jinni looked at him.

“Ar—Ar—Ardolophogus! No, that is not it…”

“You fool,” he said, reaching out toward Raz, but he lurched away.

“Do not touch me, you big strange bald jinni!”

“My name is Archaemenes.”

“That’s what I said.”

“Must… escape.”

“All right,” said Raz. “Let’s escape!”

“Open… your—“

“Yes, yes, my aura—open it. Whatever that means.”

“Lower… your defenses.”

“Uhh…” he stammered for a moment on the edge of indecision. “Ah—to the hells with this. Fine!”

He spread his arms and did his best to “lower his defenses”—whatever that truly meant, as he had never done this before.

The jinni’s eyes widened and a smile actually came to his face—one of hunger and lust for escape. “Good.”

Then he shot toward Raz and he screamed, cringing in on himself as the jinni—

It… It went… inside me?!

He glanced about wildly and a flood of magical power went inside him, and that aura—Archaemenes aura, filled him up, filled him so completely it hurt—it really, really hurt!

Raz screamed, his arms spread as everything all around him became white light, fire touching his eyes and all of his inner organs. He thought he would burst and die, when suddenly it all stopped and he doubled over in a gasp.

Breathing heavily, he glanced about in a sudden terror.

“Where are you? Where did you go?”

I am here. As his own thoughts assailed him in a way he did not aspect, his mouth opened and the same words “I am here” came out.

“What the—“

He covered his mouth, clamping it shut.

I am here—inside your mind.

Oh my gods.

Yes, and I am invigorated, Raz. You have much power.

Hey—I never told you my name! I NEVER TOLD YOU MY NAME!

We share a mind now…

Not for long!

Until we escape, at least.

Razz moved, except he was not the one who told his body to move. He screamed, and words came out of his mouth that he did not speak. “Do not be fearful.”

“Hey! Are you using my mouth?”

“Yes,” he said. “I thought that controlling your body would cause you less fear than to project myself inside your thoughts.”

“This is plenty scary, you fool!” he spat, and as he said the words, a thrill jumped inside him, that, and amusement, as he realized, if someone had seen him now, he would appear to be having a conversation with himself.

He laughed.

“It is not funny.”

“I think it is funny.”

“We look mad…”

“So, mad is different—mad is good. Women—they love men of mystery.”

“But not men of madness.”

“Hmm—you might be right, my friend.” He raised his arm and tapped his forehead. “Great plan by the way.”

“Watch!”

“Watch what?”

“This!”

His arms spread and magic coalesced there in his palms.

“Whoa! I’m strong!”

Then, as if of their own accord, his hands opened and his arms moved as if grabbing something—no, he was grasping something. It wasn’t physical, so much as magical.

When Archaemenes pulled Raz’s arms it was as if he were opening a door, and a portal appeared to another plain, one darkness and of mist and thunderstorms.

Warn air swept in past him in a terrible gust that threatened to push him into the void as magical coalesced all around him in a corona of white and yellow and red, tendrils of energy striking out.

When he stepped forward, he pulled free of the energies within the void—free from the entrapment.

There was a separation and a terrible lashing out of power as it attempted to pull him back in. He grasped at the edges of that tear and screamed, trying to get out with all of the power given to him by his merge with the jinni.

Suddenly something gave way and he was released.

Raz feel out of the tear into the physical plane, his knee hitting the dirt and his outstretched hand stopping him from taking the fall in his face.

As he rose to his feet, the tendrils above him from the Angor’s stalk writhed and wriggled, strangled of their source of intense magic that was Archaemenes the jinni and Raz the adventurer.

The sheer face of the purple material behind him was like a naturally formed keep of plant life. The plates rubbed against one another with a noisy sliding of membranes as something exploded out of the top of the Angor where they couldn’t see.

The tendrils then slackened, both the green and the others. They wilted and feel, writhing feebly upon the ground where they had impacted all around Raz and Archaemenes.

Turning, he glared at the monster, a deep seething hatred taking hold of his emotions, and Raz knew these feelings not to be of his own making.

Opening his palms up to the sky as he looked into the mist, he screamed with fury and vengeance and sweet delight that was his new freedom.

And then his eyes fell upon the Angor—the beast, the monster that had entrapped him for so long, that had devoured him for years, sucking and syphoning his magic, his sanity and nearly his soul.

“Hey,” Raz said. “I understand your anger—I can feel it, too. But try not to grind my teeth like that, yeah?”

He stepped back. He, being Archaemenes and, pulling his arm back and flattening his hand as if it were a blade, he summoned his magical energy, and though he was weak, with his communion with Raz, he was more powerful than any of the auras nearby, and far more powerful than the husk that was the Angor.

Debaku strode forward with a determination, not only to save himself and Samira, but to save Shiro and to prevent the jinni Jessamine from suffering a fate far worse than death.

As his fingers tightened around the hilt of his scimitar, a sudden explosion of the aura he believed to be the Angor’s attempt to trick them all, revealed itself and he stopped in his tracks.

“What is happening?” Samira said, and she glanced about. “The tendrils! They are…”

But Debaku could not hear her.

It was then that he understand, truly knew that that Aura was Arcahemenes. My friend…

A smile broke his face.

The pressure in his neck and face lessened suddenly and the blackness that threatened to overtake Ali receded.

His is vision came back.

Ali gasped as everything all around him pulsed and flashed, but he cared not about the ruckus all around him. The only thing the Abassir man wanted was air as he sucked in in greedily as if he might never breath again.

Chest heaving, he began to glance about once his airflow was more normal. He tried to speak, but no words came out of his mouth.

“Vizier!” Yasser cried, and he fell over Ali, taking him up from under his arms and dragging him out from underneath the body pressing down upon him.

Ali helped by kicking his legs, but his attempt was feeble, as his disorientation and shock still prevailed upon him as he coughed and hacked and put his hand up to his neck.

He held her, held her close, knowing he would never be able to again, save for perhaps in the afterlife, but then—

“Shiro,” Jessamine breathed.

He pulled back and looked into her eyes, but she wasn’t looking at him, she was glancing all around them. He turned his gaze to what she was seeing and realized the tendrils were not reacting very aggressively.

“What is happening?”

“I don’t know,” she said, “but now is our chance to escape!”

With a quick cry of excitement and effort, Shiro cut through the tendrils that were surely loosening even of their own accord. As he cut through them, their juices and saps spurting and drenching them, the tendrils did not recoil, and indeed, remained mostly still, as if hardened from a cold frost—a think he had yet to experience in the Abassir lands at all, though which were common in the Urutai Steppe.

While he cut his way through, Jessamine pushed up beside him and launched a spout of fire forward and it burnt and singed the tendrils to ash, leaving a wide swath—like a tunnel, leading out of the morass.

Pausing for a moment, Shiro allowed himself to hope as his heart beat in his chest with that hope. He regarded at Jessamine and she looked at him with big brown eyes. Then they both looked down the corridor before them of blackened and singed stocks.

None of them moved, and all was quiet.

Save for Debaku, who called to Shiro.

“Here!” he said, and he took Jessamine by the hand and led her down and out of the corridor. When he lifted his head in to the night, Debaku and came up on his left.

“Shiro!” he exclaimed. “You are alive!”

“Hai…” he said, unsure if it was true.

Samira brought up the Black Cobra’s read. “What has happened? I do not understand it?” she glanced to the Node for emphasis and they call looked.

The natural fibrous plates were loose and opened, and Shiro thought he smelled something sweet in the air as the thick stock from within protruded out into the air. It arches and hung where the large sticky polyp remained unmoving, but not dead.

Just not moving.

“Shiro,” Debaku said. “I must tell you something.”

“I sense it too,” he said, knowing where Debaku was headed with his train of thought. “We should go.”

Debaku nodded. “Yes.”