Timilehin stood at the entrance of Forlorn’s cell a behemoth of a man. With his size he covered the entire doorway.
He stepped into the room with Forlorn and came under the pale blue light, a weak facsimile of the moon’s. Under it Forlorn could make out much of his brother. It seemed his journey here had not been simple. He bore bruises and cuts. His cassock had tears and holes. One of its sleeves had been ripped hazardously from the shoulder, and he bled from a deep cut above one eyes.
However, the sight did nothing to quell Forlorn’s fear. His brother had gone through eight gold authority seminarians and this was the best they could do. It made the rumors feasible. Maybe he truly had hacked a gold in two when he was only Iron.
But that was not what he needed to worry about. There were greater things afoot and the reasonable did not complain of the heat when their house was on fire.
The event about to play out before him had been one of the potential worse case scenarios of messing with Seth. He was prideful not foolish. None of their brothers were willing to go against Timilehin. It was part of the reason they were more than pleased when their brother succumbed to the commands of Seth. With his leash held in the hands of their reasonable brother, he was most unlikely to hurt them. It was part of the reason, while he feared its possibility, he continued to torment Seth.
Their brother was too reasonable, and his logical behavior made him a fool. He knew Seth would never command Timilehin to come for him. He knew whatever punishment Seth intended for him, whatever revenge, he would do his best to bring it by his own hands. Why? So that his beloved brother would not be punished by whatever consequences would be born of it.
But here Timilehin stood, an unbroken demon. His very presence proved he’d been wrong about Seth. Perhaps it was because his authority was higher and his brother had come to understand he would never be able to take vengeance on him by his own hands.
So he had sent the monster of their group. He had sent Timilehin, bloodied and beating, but still standing. As much as he’d like to believe the harm inflicted on him had weakened him enough to make a difference. His completely black eyes showed a resolve of steel. His brother still had more than enough fight left in him.
Timilehin was not a monster he could fight. But if he could touch him with his convergent skill, maybe he could stand a chance at escape. The seminary would understand it this time. They would understand his actions were born of a need to stay alive.
“Now we don’t have to do this, brother,” he said, cautiously, as if approaching a wild animal, though he did not move an inch. “What happened between our brother and I was a mistake. Igor stopped us and I thought it was done.”
Timilehin said nothing. He remained silent, watchful. This was the reason none of them liked talking to him. In the beginning it had been their annoyance at his constant spreading of rumors. Everytime he had a rumor to share and a shamelessness to share it with. As time grew by he’d ceased sharing his rumors with anyone but Seth and they disliked conversations with him for another reason.
For all their attempts to talk to him, it was like talking to a brick wall. He never had anything to say and never reacted to what was said to him. Even the priests were unable to get more than the required word count for the required answer. Only Seth received more than a few words.
However, when Seth spoke the boy’s hands would fly into a cacophony of signs and words bountiful enough to flower every tree in the misty forest. Sometimes Forlorn had wished he’d put up with the boy’s useless rumors long enough to have such a power over him.
But what ifs and what nots were the purview of the weak, those unwilling to cast their eyes from the past. He refused to be one of them. Instead, he cast his gaze on the future and how he was going to survive Timilehin.
One of them would move to initiate whatever would happen now and he was certain he would not be as fast as his brother. So he had to move first. He had to strike preemptively.
And he did.
He gathered his will around the working of his skill. Pulled it to his hand as he’d learned on his evolution to silver. He felt it gather slower than usually. It was like walking a mule only to discover two of its legs were broken while one was riddled with frostbite. Why now of all times? Work faster, damn it!
Enough of it pooled to his hand when he moved. One minute he was crossing the distance between him and his brother when he found himself shoved up against the uncomfortable wall.
Timilehin held him up against the wall by his neck with a hand big enough to wrap around it. His hold was casual yet tight, and Forlorn struggled for air as his feet dangled beneath him. Such strength was terrorizing to behold.
Timilehin cocked his head to the side as he studied him. He seemed, for the most part, curious of something that wasn’t him.
Taking Forlorn by the neck was an appropriate strategy. Until Barony, a mage could not cast his skills if he could not speak. And with a hold so tight around his neck, speech would be difficult for anybody. But Forlorn wasn’t just anybody. If Timilehin wanted to silence him, he’d need more power than this. His skill came easily.
[Die]
He felt his reia leave his core sluggishly. Where it had once flowed like water from a damn, it moved like syrup or mud. It spread through his channels like the last struggles of the dying, adding to his fears. Was he really going to die here simply because a giant retard was angry with him and his skills chose now to work at their own pace?
Surprisingly, Timilehin continued to stare like the retard he was. While he did, Forlorn’s skill made its completion and he dropped a reia riddled hand on the arm that held him up.
There was a deep sizzle like the marking of cattle with a hot rod. It was not the effect he’d expected to get and slowly he realized Timilehin did not care what he sacrificed for this endeavor. All for Seth? He wondered. Is he mad?
The green of his reia was beginning to spread beyond where his hand touched his brother’s arm when Timilehin spoke.
“Rumor has it no good will come of killing you. Not for me, and not for him. But there are other things I can do. Things that my brother will not scold me for.” He paused as if recalling a memory he didn’t like. “I don’t like when he scolds me,” he muttered most likely to himself. “So I have chosen this way to do things.”
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He talked slowly. His African accent had waned in the time he was here but it hadn’t left him completely. Coupled with his sluggish speech, he didn’t sound like a retard. He simply sounded unsure. As if he wasn’t making the entirely right choice.
“Seth would not be happy you did this,” Forlorn croaked out. “It will displease him.”
Timilehin looked at him as if surprised he could speak. “And what do you know of my brother?” he asked.
“I know enough to tell you he wants to take his revenge on me personally.” If he could convince Timilehin with words, then he stood a chance at surviving this. “He would want to reclaim his pride by besting me himself.”
Timilehin shook his head. “No.” He blinked twice, then once more, like the confused. “You know nothing of my brother. To him you are a nuisance. A stress he would rather not have to deal with. Your presence does not make him stronger. And rumor has it only killing you would, yet he is not allowed that. Sadly, neither am I. Your death at my hands will not please him, and I will most likely be scolded for it. I am confused. I have made it here but I don’t know what to do.”
“You can always release me,” Forlorn suggested, gathering his reia again, surprised that Timilehin had not even flinched from his convergent skill that continued to eat his hand.
“No,” Timilehin replied sharply, lifting him higher, pressing him harder against the wall. “I cannot. You have not earned your freedom yet.” Then he turned contemplative. “But I do not know how you should earn your freedom. I should have asked.” His brows frowned. “Rumor has it there are many ways to earn your release in many holy books that are read in churches.”
Forlorn stared at his brother, confused. What did holy books and churches have to do with this?
“Perhaps, there is a way,” Timilehin continued. “Perhaps there is a—”
[Death Rain]
Forlorn activated the skill. Reia gathere above them and spikes of green came down on Timilehin riddled with death reia. They pierced him, digging into his skin and corroding his cassock where they touched it.
Timilehin groaned in discomfort like a man who’d gotten up too quickly and suffered the effects of mild vertigo and Forlorn’s fear chilled his core.
“What are you?” he asked, terrified.
“What am I?” Timilehin repeated. His eyes turned away from Forlorn as he thought the question over with spikes of death reia buried in his skin.
After a moment, he met Forlorn’s eyes and Forlorn found something different in them. They were black orbs of nothingness. They had always been. But now they were worse. The blackness extended beyond his eyes and creeped beyond them in veins of black that made him look the devil.
“W…what are… you?” he sputtered in the hold of the devil.
When Timilehin finally answered, it was precise. “I am Oluwatimilehin Adio. Only son to a dead mother. Walker of the misty forest. Rumor-Monger. I am my brother’s guard. My brother’s brother. I am his protector. His confidant. His executioner…” His hold tightened around Forlorn’s neck and sealed off the air that came to his lungs. “I am his blade at your neck.”
There was a heavy silence that followed in the wake of his words. It was pregnant with ominous retribution. In it Forlorn saw countless possibilities of his death. His mind summoned up methods he did not even believe possible.
“But tonight,” Timilehin’s voice broke his self terror, “I am his mercy.”
He reached out a death pierced hand and grabbed Forlorn’s fore arm.
Looking into his brother’s terrifying eyes, black with growing veins of corruption at its edges where the old carried wrinkles of crowsfeet, Forlorn remembered an old passage Josiah had often used from his holy book: An eye for an eye. A tooth for a tooth.
Timilehin’s hand wrapped around his forearm. His grip tightened and the arm shattered in his hold.
Forlorn felt it break in too many places and wept in pain.
When Timilehin released him, he crumpled to the ground like a dropped rag. There he sobbed and cried like a child who’d been flogged.
He wept like the weak, and it echoed through the corridors.
Timilehin turned away from him, shattering the spikes of reia embedded in him, and walked out of the room. Beyond the cell the seminarians had returned to their feet, petrified witnesses of the chaos that had named itself Mercy.
Eight golds stood witness to it as Timilehin walked past them.
None of them dared to stop him.
……………………………………….
“It seems you’ll be able to keep the arm, Jabari,” Kyle said, wrapping a length of bandages around his hand. He spun it into a neat bundle and kept it on a table covered in herbs and potions Seth suspected were experimental.
He’d woken up a few hours ago to the peace of only a throbbing pain he knew had once been mind bending. His fore arm was wrapped in white bandages and was emanating the pain he still felt. Whatever the seminary’s healer had done for him, he was glad for it. He showed his gratitude in simple words.
“Thank you,” he said.
The healer turned to him with a touch of surprise. “Thank me?” he said. “Oh, no, child. You have only yourself to thank. You see, I had initially intended to heal you. However, I noticed…”
“You didn’t heal me,” Seth asked.
“No. You didn’t let me.”
Seth frowned, confused at the man’s words. How had he not allowed him when he was unconscious.
Seeing his confusiong, Kyle pulled up a wooden stool. He dragged it to the side of the bed Seth laid on and sat on it.
“Let me explain,” he said like a father about to give his son a lesson in their family history. “Every human has in them different aspects of reia. There is mind and there is blood and there is life and there is death. That and others, I believe, make up the human body. But we rarely have any affinity for them. Only the select few do. Healers like me, develop an affinity for life reia. We wield it in the same way one might wield wind reia or ice reia or fire reia. However, when we choose to heal someone we stimulate the life reia in them, force it to work harder and faster than it should. We do that by infusing them with more life reia than they already have. I do this from time to time and I’m proud to say I am quite versed in it.
“You, however, proved a bit of a challenge. You see, every being has command of their body to a certain extent. The way their reia flows. The way their blood pumps. The way they breathe. It’s all down to the most minute detail. So they reject a few things, and it is my job to work around these rejections to avoid reia poisoning. Do you know what reia poisoning is?”
Seth nodded.
“And what is reia poisoning?”
It seemed all priests took a chance to lecture seminarians. “Reia poisoning,” he said. “Is when foreign reia is forcefully injected into the reia channels of a mage. If it gets to the core, it’s like poison. Symptons include fevers, deliriums, vomiting.”
“Correct. So to prevent it, we healers inject our reia slowly and gently. We introduce it to the body in mild doses so that the body slowly grows accustomed to it, and it’s healing processes are sped up. For surface injuries that are not too deep, we simply incite the life reia in the body and supplement it with ours. That has next to no risk of reia poisoning. But you, Seth. You, I couldn’t heal.”
“Why?” Seth asked. “And if you couldn’t heal me, how am I going to keep the arm?”
“You seem to have a purifying factor. Your reia, that is.” Kyle scratched a stubbled chin with a look of amusement in his eyes. “Each time I injected you with some of my reia, yours fought it until it was cleansed. Like antibodies to intruders. By the time you’d made it a part of your reia, there was no life aspect left of it. I tried each time, increasing the dose each time, and came to one conclusion. To heal you, I would have to overwhelm your reia and that risks reia poisoning.”
“Then what happened?”
“Oh, that.” Kyle shrugged and got up from his stool. He walked over to the table he’d dropped the bandages and began mixing potions. “Your brother has an affinity for death reia. His skill injected enough into you to necrotize your arm. While your reia purified mine from your system, it did the same to his. Or, more accurately, it’s still doing the same to his. You’re purging his reia from your system, purifying it. In another day your arm will be good as new. If you can learn to activate it at will, make it active rather than passive, you’ll be able to purge things like this from your body faster.”
“How can I do that?” Seth asked, hopeful. A new skill was always welcome.
Kyle shrugged again. “I take it you don’t have a skill that does that, so if you continue on your path… Nope.” He shook his head. “You won’t be able to do that. I can only see that happening at Baron and seeing how pure your reia is, that’s an authority you won’t reach. At least, not with a pure core.”
“Oh.”
Kyle raised a bright green potion in a stoppered small glass cylinder and swirled it around. “Now run along. The Monsignor has an announcement to make to your group. Something ludicrous from what I’ve heard.”