Mystic Pursuit, page 9
“Oh my, my, no.” Tiig gently lowered his head and mumbled something. A brief moment later, he raised his head back up and smiled at Thayliss. “The closest specimen to our present location who meets our needs for strength, stamina, carriage, and overall wellbeing. Should do nicely.”
Thayliss looked around but saw nothing at first. But then came the sound. A deep hum that joined the chorus of the whispering wind. The hum grew louder, finally coinciding with a dark gray spot jostling over the horizon. That shape, that movement—Thayliss had seen it before.
“Oh no,” he muttered under his breath. “Not that.”
Slowly but steadily, a lone bastik wolf made its way toward the two travelers. By the time it arrived, its mouth was agape, panting, exposing a row of nightmarishly wicked, angular fangs. Tiig remained on his pack mule, appearing rather pleased with himself.
“Shall we?” he asked, gesturing toward the murderous beast.
“I think I’ll walk,” Thayliss replied.
“Nonsense,” said Tiig. “Completely within my control. It seems quite often that the more savage the beast, the easier to persuade. I suppose it’s only natural—less evolved intellects are almost always more readily manipulated. Take humans, for example.” He laughed, clearly pleased with himself. “Come now, it’s perfectly safe.”
Reluctantly, but sensing no alternative apart from perishing in the desert heat alongside his former Ohlinn brethren, Thayliss approached the beast. As he drew nearer, the bastik wolf lowered itself down to the ground, beckoning its rider.
“This is not normal,” said Thayliss, slowly putting a leg over the filthy, gray animal until he had it sufficiently mounted.
“He likes his neck rubbed, you know,” added Tiig. “They don’t all like that, but some of them do. This one surely does.”
“Well, that’s not going to happen.” It took all of Thayliss’s strength just to remain calm as the animal extended its long, narrow legs and began trotting alongside Tiig and his pack mule. “Let’s just get where we’re going, preferably as quickly as possible.”
“Very well,” replied Tiig. “To Sani-jai. My kin will take care of you.”
The two entranced animals burst into a full gallop through the desert. Thayliss, forced to grasp the scruff on the beast’s thick neck just to stay atop it, shut his eyes and prayed for the ride to be over. Tiig, meanwhile, let his arms hang free, a smile across his lips as he felt the dry, hot breeze against his face.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The moment had arrived. Lakos took his first steps into the Inner Realm, bathed in the light of a deity. He was a deity. Now encircled by the immense curved face of the great crater, he felt at once safe and invincible.
The ridge’s massive gray outer fringe had been specked with minute fragments of shimmering stone; an odd exterior juxtaposed against the dull desert surrounding it. Standing within the Inner Realm, however, Lakos now knew that such obscurity was but the subtlest allusion to what existed within its seemingly impenetrable walls.
The entirety of the volcanic crater’s curved inner wall was immaculate. A sheer face of white, marbled stone completely encircling the vast domain within it, so perfectly smooth as to appear almost metallic.
“This must be five hundred strides across,” said Lakos, eyeing the distance from where he stood to the realm’s far wall.
“Six-hundred-twenty-eight,” corrected a voice behind him.
Lakos turned to see Gris Hallis push past several soldiers as he crept his way through the crudely burrowed tunnel and into the Inner Realm. The soldiers, unfazed, continued busily widening the archway.
“Quite striking, is it not?” Gris Hallis asked, surveying the space before him.
Lakos’s sense of awe continued as he glanced down at the ground. From where he stood, it appeared as though the realm’s entire surface was covered in a homogeneous layer of fine, white powder. Only upon crouching down to inspect it further did Lakos notice the occasional yellow-white pebble mixed in, and rarer still, a stone of more substantial size. Still, nothing so large that it could not be enveloped within his clenched fist.
“The sacred tower. Is this all that remains?” asked Lakos, grasping a handful of powder and sifting it passively between his fingers.
“Indeed, it is. Obtaining the stones required to line every corner of every prison wagon was a most arduous endeavor, I assure you.” Gris Hallis knocked a small stone with his boot.
“But there were scarcely enough stones to entrap three hundred Ohlinn. What of the others? The Masdazii? The Lii-jit? In their entirety, the five realms contain a mystic population numbering easily in the tens of thousands. We lack both the resources and the manpower to control them all,” questioned Lakos.
“Fear not, my lord,” reassured Gris Hallis. “With these three hundred, we need not coax the remaining mystics from their hiding to bring them here. Once the sacred tower has been restored, they will come to us. And then you will have all the mystic energy you could ever require at your fingertips.”
“And what of the sacred tower?” asked Lakos. “The legend spoke of its destruction at the hands of the Gray Mystic, Noryssin. If this is truly all that remains, an open field, strewn with pebbles and dust, I question how you hope to resurrect it. We cannot rebuild what no longer exists.”
Gris Hallis lowered his head subserviently, the faintest smirk creaking across his face. “My lord, I respectfully remind you that within these stone walls, we are no longer bound to the world of the material. Within the border of the Bray Ridge, inside the great Inner Realm, we now stand at the gateway between all worldly existence and the beating heart that sustains it.”
“Spare me your theology,” said Lakos. “And do not disappoint me. You have brought us this far, and for that I am grateful, but it will all be worthless if I am to rule from a palace made of dust.”
Gris Hallis paused for a moment, then continued. “This is a notion no doubt foreign to the innate human sensibility, but to govern all is truly to govern all. Your tower will rise, my lord,” he stated firmly. “But it will not be built strictly from forged steel, milled lumber and quarried stone. For such things comprise but one-third of your kingdom.”
Lakos looked around the immense, cavernous expanse. “So where do we begin?”
“My lord,” replied Gris Hallis, “we have already begun.”
Looking toward the now-widened archway, Gris Hallis glanced to one of the soldiers standing guard and nodded. Within moments, an Ohlinn prisoner was led through the tunnel and into the Inner Realm. Rather, he was not led so much as he marched through under his own cognizance. Or so it seemed. The Ohlinn prisoner lacked chains or restraints, not so much as a sacred stone clasped to his wrist.
Immediately behind the Ohlinn was another. And another. Soon, a steady stream of Ohlinn captives poured through the archway and into the light of the Inner Realm. The prisoners, seemingly locked in an oblivious, trance-like state, marched past where Lakos stood, making their way toward the center of the vast crater. As the first spellbound Ohlinn approached the center of the great circular space, he stopped halfway to its origin. The spirit-mystic behind him moved to his immediate left before he, too, stopped. So the pattern continued, prisoner upon prisoner shuffling passively through the tunnel, toward the center, and settling to the immediate left of the one preceding.
Lakos looked on, mesmerized by the silent procession, until he saw the final Ohlinn captive take his place. The Ohlinn formed a perfect inner circle within the greater cylindrical wall. In unison, the mystic collective knelt down on the white, powdery ground and bowed their heads.
From beneath his feet, Lakos could feel a peculiar sensation emerge. A guttural, penetrating rumbling from far below.
CHAPTER TWENTY
As their journey to the Sani-jai rainforest progressed, Thayliss’s apprehension toward the grizzled gray bastik beneath him gradually softened. Its brash, labored breaths possessed a natural rhythm with the beast’s long, loping strides, and its broad, thickly padded feet touched the ground with only the slightest sound of impact. It was a rather striking animal, maintaining high speeds for long durations over widely varied terrain, the rocky desert having given way first to a gentle, hilly grassland, and now a misty, green thicket. Thayliss marveled at how the bastik’s giant skull never bobbed, never wavered as it ran, maintaining a perfect balance with the blur of ground beneath its feet. This also made for a mercifully smooth ride atop its back. Its musculature was also quite remarkable. Layers of thick muscle wrapped around the bastik’s oversized neck, pulsing and twitching to meet the extreme physical and gravitational demands of motion.
Thayliss found that by leaning forward and practically resting his chin upon the coarse, matted fur atop the creature’s head, he could peer out and imagine the world from the wolf’s perspective. Recalling the bastik’s reputed lack of visual acuity only served to enhance the beast’s impressiveness. A deadly weapon, perfectly suited to its needs. Occasionally, they would pass by a pack of shrews or their close relative, the striped badgett. Doing so, Thayliss could feel the bastik break stride slightly, recoiling a paw almost as if having stepped upon a thistle. This behavior would be accompanied by the faintest muscle twitch in the side of the beast’s neck closest to its prey.
However, in each instance, the bastik would regain its rhythm with the next step and continue forward beside Tiig and his equally steady, if decidedly less dynamic, pack mule. Seeing Tiig riding merrily along served as a vital reminder to Thayliss that this was indeed a rare and privileged ride, as his fateful attempt back at the Valla Forest had illustrated.
The two travelers spoke nary a word since their departure from the Bray desert, which suited Thayliss just fine. There was therapy in nature, as he had come to learn during his childhood. While reclining amongst the leaves by his treetop dwelling, Thayliss had spent countless nights observing the star formations, imagining what worlds existed in those faraway celestial realms. He had asked Leonorryn an unending stream of questions during his youth, about where he came from, where all life came from, and where it went from there. More often than not, the wise old mystic was able to placate the boy with anecdotes and comforting words. However, his paternal counsel was often flecked with caveats surrounding the limitations of human thought. An endlessly just and civil Ohlinn elder, Leonorryn always seemed to possess a slight aversion toward humans, which Thayliss had found rather peculiar, especially in light of Leonorryn having willfully elected to raise one alongside his very own Ohlinn daughter.
Leonorryn taught him that while humans theorized that the stars were where spirits traveled upon departing this world, this notion was false. He told the boy that humans had an inborn blindness to worlds existing beyond their own senses. They longed to know where they went when they left this world, he would say. And since their limited intellects necessitated a tangible answer to even the most ethereal of questions, they looked to the sky.
Even some of the more enlightened humans, he continued, were still incapable of appreciating the true magnitude and majesty of the world. The so-called truth seekers and other wise men likened the next world to a continuation of this world, just beyond human comprehension. An ability, a sense, to which different beings were afforded varying degrees of perception. A bastik wolf sensed ground tremors to a degree greater than human or mystic capability. It was still a sense possessed by all parties, it was simply the magnitude of the ability that separated them. But the next world, reasoned Leonorryn to the young Thayliss, as with all mystic powers, existed on a plane so foreign to humans that it could not be justly described or understood. Unfortunately for humans, this seemed to violate the one, most powerful innate drive they did possess—the need for answers.
“Infernal humans,” were the first words to break the silence and pull Thayliss from his musing.
Thayliss looked over to Tiig, who rode beside him, having slowed both animals to a trot.
“I’m sorry?” asked Thayliss, uncertain how to take the comment.
“Infernal humans,” Tiig reiterated, a look of disgust on his tawny, cherubic face.
Through the sparse outcropping of tall, green shoots, Tiig pointed toward a lone figure in the distance, pacing back and forth, appearing to stand watch.
“A sentinel,” Tiig whispered. “A human soldier, stationed here to survey and assess the environment. We are nearing the Sani-jai. I do not know why he has come here, but humans never cease to foreshadow death and tyranny. And once he reports back to his lord news of our meager numbers, we will perish, all of us. The humans do not send their kind to regions they do not aspire to conquer.”
“But you are Lii-jit, a life-mystic. How can you harbor such resentment toward another life? Another manner of being entirely?” Thayliss asked.
“Because true human life ceased with the demise of the Gray Mystic, when the world fell into chaos. My kind have spoken of it since before my birth. That which breeds only death cannot in itself be deemed a life. The human order is a plague, worse than any drought, famine, or flood. It has disconnected completely from all rational notion of need, with a hunger that never abates. It grows, competes, and burns, scorching all in its wake. My kind protects all worldly life—all but that which exists only to harm it.”
Thayliss did not know how to respond. He apparently still bore the outward appearance of the Ohlinn. But there were more pressing concerns to be addressed.
“The sentinel—can you not just summon some nearby beast to dispatch him?” he asked.
Tiig shook his head, leaving the back of the pack mule and hunching down amidst the reeds. “Do you not think I already tried that the moment I first set eyes upon the loathsome being? I could not. There’s a block, preventing me from exerting any influence within a twenty-stride radius of where he stands. Perhaps the same force that robbed me of my abilities back in the wagon. The stones. And they’ll undoubtedly use the very same to entrap my kin, as they did yours.”
The little Lii-jit motioned for Thayliss to dismount his ride. “We must walk the rest of the way to Sani-jai. If the wretched human sees us, his cunning may somehow deny me my power. Were that the case, I would not envy the soul within range of a bastik wolf’s footsteps.”
Thayliss slipped from the back of his bastik, pausing to caress its side as he walked past it and into the mist. Tiig nodded silently to both the bastik and the pack mule, sending them swiftly off in the direction they had come from, though at an ever-widening angle respective to each other.
“The bastik yearns for sustenance,” said Tiig, “but my pack mule deserves a day of mercy.” He returned to the task at hand. “Now come. We must return to my home deep in the rainforest and warn the others. A war will soon be upon us.” He crept further into the damp, steamy thicket, away from the distant soldier.
Taking one last look at the pacing sentinel, Thayliss followed his companion into the mist, his sapphire eyes dimming slightly.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Feeling the ground beneath him rumble with steadily increasing fortitude, Lakos stood firm. He turned to Gris Hallis. “What is this?” he asked, his voice wrought with concern.
Several of the soldiers who had ventured with him into the Inner Realm anxiously pushed past each other to seek shelter under the carved stone archway.
“There is nothing to fear, my lord,” laughed Gris Hallis, a trace of condescension in his voice. “It is merely the next step in fulfilling your destiny.”
The vibrations aggressively resonated through the ground, shaking the very foundation upon which they stood. Like dust on a tightened drum, the vast, circular ground grew obscured as the fine white powder hovered in a diffuse cloud around their feet. The ring of Ohlinn still knelt, transfixed by whatever divine end they had been assigned to.
Then, contributing no sound to the guttural din, a tall, narrow entity of translucent white began to rise from the very center of the circle. Like a silent specter, the pointed veil of light rose higher and higher, growing taller and wider from a foggy, ever-expanding base. From the other side of the entity, the faces of Ohlinn still deep in meditation remained, obscured by the mist before them but still visible. Up rose the form until, mere moments after its emergence, it reached the very threshold of the volcanic ring’s upper rim. Without slowing, it ventured further, seeming to extend endlessly into the sky.
Lakos watched in awe as the mighty form continued upward for some time before finally freezing in place. A precise, conical dream. A colossus of hazy white, seeming to dwarf the otherwise imposing Bray Ridge surrounding it. Lakos was speechless.
“Your tower, my lord,” said Gris Hallis.
Lakos approached the tower with sheer infatuation, but as he drew nearer, he could see that the mystical structure before him was, in fact, no structure at all. It retained its vaporous texture, devoid of brick or stone or any tangible material at all. By the time he stood at its base, having walked between two oblivious Ohlinn, he grew angered.
“This is no tower,” he cried back to Gris Hallis. “This is but mystic trickery. The mere illusion of power, nothing more.” He extended his arm directly into the mist, swatting furiously as the vapor swirled in the wake of his hand before dissolving back into the sea of luminous white air.
Gris Hallis walked toward him. “This is the work of three hundred Ohlinn. Spirit-mystics whose energy resides within the ethereal. The transparent. Once we have harnessed the power of the other two mystic orders, those rooted within the material and the living, your sacred tower will become as real as the ground you stand upon. And with it, your kingdom. The Inner Realm, the tower, and I, shall be the instruments through which you will exert influence over your domain.”
The sentiment caught Lakos off-guard. “When I assume the throne of the Voduss Grei, will I not have direct control over the world beyond?” he asked, perplexed.
“My lord,” said Gris Hallis apologetically, “the power will be yours and yours alone. However, as a human, you will need a mystic life through which to truly blend with the energy of this world. To channel your desires and see them realized. And I will loyally serve you to that end.”
Thayliss looked around but saw nothing at first. But then came the sound. A deep hum that joined the chorus of the whispering wind. The hum grew louder, finally coinciding with a dark gray spot jostling over the horizon. That shape, that movement—Thayliss had seen it before.
“Oh no,” he muttered under his breath. “Not that.”
Slowly but steadily, a lone bastik wolf made its way toward the two travelers. By the time it arrived, its mouth was agape, panting, exposing a row of nightmarishly wicked, angular fangs. Tiig remained on his pack mule, appearing rather pleased with himself.
“Shall we?” he asked, gesturing toward the murderous beast.
“I think I’ll walk,” Thayliss replied.
“Nonsense,” said Tiig. “Completely within my control. It seems quite often that the more savage the beast, the easier to persuade. I suppose it’s only natural—less evolved intellects are almost always more readily manipulated. Take humans, for example.” He laughed, clearly pleased with himself. “Come now, it’s perfectly safe.”
Reluctantly, but sensing no alternative apart from perishing in the desert heat alongside his former Ohlinn brethren, Thayliss approached the beast. As he drew nearer, the bastik wolf lowered itself down to the ground, beckoning its rider.
“This is not normal,” said Thayliss, slowly putting a leg over the filthy, gray animal until he had it sufficiently mounted.
“He likes his neck rubbed, you know,” added Tiig. “They don’t all like that, but some of them do. This one surely does.”
“Well, that’s not going to happen.” It took all of Thayliss’s strength just to remain calm as the animal extended its long, narrow legs and began trotting alongside Tiig and his pack mule. “Let’s just get where we’re going, preferably as quickly as possible.”
“Very well,” replied Tiig. “To Sani-jai. My kin will take care of you.”
The two entranced animals burst into a full gallop through the desert. Thayliss, forced to grasp the scruff on the beast’s thick neck just to stay atop it, shut his eyes and prayed for the ride to be over. Tiig, meanwhile, let his arms hang free, a smile across his lips as he felt the dry, hot breeze against his face.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The moment had arrived. Lakos took his first steps into the Inner Realm, bathed in the light of a deity. He was a deity. Now encircled by the immense curved face of the great crater, he felt at once safe and invincible.
The ridge’s massive gray outer fringe had been specked with minute fragments of shimmering stone; an odd exterior juxtaposed against the dull desert surrounding it. Standing within the Inner Realm, however, Lakos now knew that such obscurity was but the subtlest allusion to what existed within its seemingly impenetrable walls.
The entirety of the volcanic crater’s curved inner wall was immaculate. A sheer face of white, marbled stone completely encircling the vast domain within it, so perfectly smooth as to appear almost metallic.
“This must be five hundred strides across,” said Lakos, eyeing the distance from where he stood to the realm’s far wall.
“Six-hundred-twenty-eight,” corrected a voice behind him.
Lakos turned to see Gris Hallis push past several soldiers as he crept his way through the crudely burrowed tunnel and into the Inner Realm. The soldiers, unfazed, continued busily widening the archway.
“Quite striking, is it not?” Gris Hallis asked, surveying the space before him.
Lakos’s sense of awe continued as he glanced down at the ground. From where he stood, it appeared as though the realm’s entire surface was covered in a homogeneous layer of fine, white powder. Only upon crouching down to inspect it further did Lakos notice the occasional yellow-white pebble mixed in, and rarer still, a stone of more substantial size. Still, nothing so large that it could not be enveloped within his clenched fist.
“The sacred tower. Is this all that remains?” asked Lakos, grasping a handful of powder and sifting it passively between his fingers.
“Indeed, it is. Obtaining the stones required to line every corner of every prison wagon was a most arduous endeavor, I assure you.” Gris Hallis knocked a small stone with his boot.
“But there were scarcely enough stones to entrap three hundred Ohlinn. What of the others? The Masdazii? The Lii-jit? In their entirety, the five realms contain a mystic population numbering easily in the tens of thousands. We lack both the resources and the manpower to control them all,” questioned Lakos.
“Fear not, my lord,” reassured Gris Hallis. “With these three hundred, we need not coax the remaining mystics from their hiding to bring them here. Once the sacred tower has been restored, they will come to us. And then you will have all the mystic energy you could ever require at your fingertips.”
“And what of the sacred tower?” asked Lakos. “The legend spoke of its destruction at the hands of the Gray Mystic, Noryssin. If this is truly all that remains, an open field, strewn with pebbles and dust, I question how you hope to resurrect it. We cannot rebuild what no longer exists.”
Gris Hallis lowered his head subserviently, the faintest smirk creaking across his face. “My lord, I respectfully remind you that within these stone walls, we are no longer bound to the world of the material. Within the border of the Bray Ridge, inside the great Inner Realm, we now stand at the gateway between all worldly existence and the beating heart that sustains it.”
“Spare me your theology,” said Lakos. “And do not disappoint me. You have brought us this far, and for that I am grateful, but it will all be worthless if I am to rule from a palace made of dust.”
Gris Hallis paused for a moment, then continued. “This is a notion no doubt foreign to the innate human sensibility, but to govern all is truly to govern all. Your tower will rise, my lord,” he stated firmly. “But it will not be built strictly from forged steel, milled lumber and quarried stone. For such things comprise but one-third of your kingdom.”
Lakos looked around the immense, cavernous expanse. “So where do we begin?”
“My lord,” replied Gris Hallis, “we have already begun.”
Looking toward the now-widened archway, Gris Hallis glanced to one of the soldiers standing guard and nodded. Within moments, an Ohlinn prisoner was led through the tunnel and into the Inner Realm. Rather, he was not led so much as he marched through under his own cognizance. Or so it seemed. The Ohlinn prisoner lacked chains or restraints, not so much as a sacred stone clasped to his wrist.
Immediately behind the Ohlinn was another. And another. Soon, a steady stream of Ohlinn captives poured through the archway and into the light of the Inner Realm. The prisoners, seemingly locked in an oblivious, trance-like state, marched past where Lakos stood, making their way toward the center of the vast crater. As the first spellbound Ohlinn approached the center of the great circular space, he stopped halfway to its origin. The spirit-mystic behind him moved to his immediate left before he, too, stopped. So the pattern continued, prisoner upon prisoner shuffling passively through the tunnel, toward the center, and settling to the immediate left of the one preceding.
Lakos looked on, mesmerized by the silent procession, until he saw the final Ohlinn captive take his place. The Ohlinn formed a perfect inner circle within the greater cylindrical wall. In unison, the mystic collective knelt down on the white, powdery ground and bowed their heads.
From beneath his feet, Lakos could feel a peculiar sensation emerge. A guttural, penetrating rumbling from far below.
CHAPTER TWENTY
As their journey to the Sani-jai rainforest progressed, Thayliss’s apprehension toward the grizzled gray bastik beneath him gradually softened. Its brash, labored breaths possessed a natural rhythm with the beast’s long, loping strides, and its broad, thickly padded feet touched the ground with only the slightest sound of impact. It was a rather striking animal, maintaining high speeds for long durations over widely varied terrain, the rocky desert having given way first to a gentle, hilly grassland, and now a misty, green thicket. Thayliss marveled at how the bastik’s giant skull never bobbed, never wavered as it ran, maintaining a perfect balance with the blur of ground beneath its feet. This also made for a mercifully smooth ride atop its back. Its musculature was also quite remarkable. Layers of thick muscle wrapped around the bastik’s oversized neck, pulsing and twitching to meet the extreme physical and gravitational demands of motion.
Thayliss found that by leaning forward and practically resting his chin upon the coarse, matted fur atop the creature’s head, he could peer out and imagine the world from the wolf’s perspective. Recalling the bastik’s reputed lack of visual acuity only served to enhance the beast’s impressiveness. A deadly weapon, perfectly suited to its needs. Occasionally, they would pass by a pack of shrews or their close relative, the striped badgett. Doing so, Thayliss could feel the bastik break stride slightly, recoiling a paw almost as if having stepped upon a thistle. This behavior would be accompanied by the faintest muscle twitch in the side of the beast’s neck closest to its prey.
However, in each instance, the bastik would regain its rhythm with the next step and continue forward beside Tiig and his equally steady, if decidedly less dynamic, pack mule. Seeing Tiig riding merrily along served as a vital reminder to Thayliss that this was indeed a rare and privileged ride, as his fateful attempt back at the Valla Forest had illustrated.
The two travelers spoke nary a word since their departure from the Bray desert, which suited Thayliss just fine. There was therapy in nature, as he had come to learn during his childhood. While reclining amongst the leaves by his treetop dwelling, Thayliss had spent countless nights observing the star formations, imagining what worlds existed in those faraway celestial realms. He had asked Leonorryn an unending stream of questions during his youth, about where he came from, where all life came from, and where it went from there. More often than not, the wise old mystic was able to placate the boy with anecdotes and comforting words. However, his paternal counsel was often flecked with caveats surrounding the limitations of human thought. An endlessly just and civil Ohlinn elder, Leonorryn always seemed to possess a slight aversion toward humans, which Thayliss had found rather peculiar, especially in light of Leonorryn having willfully elected to raise one alongside his very own Ohlinn daughter.
Leonorryn taught him that while humans theorized that the stars were where spirits traveled upon departing this world, this notion was false. He told the boy that humans had an inborn blindness to worlds existing beyond their own senses. They longed to know where they went when they left this world, he would say. And since their limited intellects necessitated a tangible answer to even the most ethereal of questions, they looked to the sky.
Even some of the more enlightened humans, he continued, were still incapable of appreciating the true magnitude and majesty of the world. The so-called truth seekers and other wise men likened the next world to a continuation of this world, just beyond human comprehension. An ability, a sense, to which different beings were afforded varying degrees of perception. A bastik wolf sensed ground tremors to a degree greater than human or mystic capability. It was still a sense possessed by all parties, it was simply the magnitude of the ability that separated them. But the next world, reasoned Leonorryn to the young Thayliss, as with all mystic powers, existed on a plane so foreign to humans that it could not be justly described or understood. Unfortunately for humans, this seemed to violate the one, most powerful innate drive they did possess—the need for answers.
“Infernal humans,” were the first words to break the silence and pull Thayliss from his musing.
Thayliss looked over to Tiig, who rode beside him, having slowed both animals to a trot.
“I’m sorry?” asked Thayliss, uncertain how to take the comment.
“Infernal humans,” Tiig reiterated, a look of disgust on his tawny, cherubic face.
Through the sparse outcropping of tall, green shoots, Tiig pointed toward a lone figure in the distance, pacing back and forth, appearing to stand watch.
“A sentinel,” Tiig whispered. “A human soldier, stationed here to survey and assess the environment. We are nearing the Sani-jai. I do not know why he has come here, but humans never cease to foreshadow death and tyranny. And once he reports back to his lord news of our meager numbers, we will perish, all of us. The humans do not send their kind to regions they do not aspire to conquer.”
“But you are Lii-jit, a life-mystic. How can you harbor such resentment toward another life? Another manner of being entirely?” Thayliss asked.
“Because true human life ceased with the demise of the Gray Mystic, when the world fell into chaos. My kind have spoken of it since before my birth. That which breeds only death cannot in itself be deemed a life. The human order is a plague, worse than any drought, famine, or flood. It has disconnected completely from all rational notion of need, with a hunger that never abates. It grows, competes, and burns, scorching all in its wake. My kind protects all worldly life—all but that which exists only to harm it.”
Thayliss did not know how to respond. He apparently still bore the outward appearance of the Ohlinn. But there were more pressing concerns to be addressed.
“The sentinel—can you not just summon some nearby beast to dispatch him?” he asked.
Tiig shook his head, leaving the back of the pack mule and hunching down amidst the reeds. “Do you not think I already tried that the moment I first set eyes upon the loathsome being? I could not. There’s a block, preventing me from exerting any influence within a twenty-stride radius of where he stands. Perhaps the same force that robbed me of my abilities back in the wagon. The stones. And they’ll undoubtedly use the very same to entrap my kin, as they did yours.”
The little Lii-jit motioned for Thayliss to dismount his ride. “We must walk the rest of the way to Sani-jai. If the wretched human sees us, his cunning may somehow deny me my power. Were that the case, I would not envy the soul within range of a bastik wolf’s footsteps.”
Thayliss slipped from the back of his bastik, pausing to caress its side as he walked past it and into the mist. Tiig nodded silently to both the bastik and the pack mule, sending them swiftly off in the direction they had come from, though at an ever-widening angle respective to each other.
“The bastik yearns for sustenance,” said Tiig, “but my pack mule deserves a day of mercy.” He returned to the task at hand. “Now come. We must return to my home deep in the rainforest and warn the others. A war will soon be upon us.” He crept further into the damp, steamy thicket, away from the distant soldier.
Taking one last look at the pacing sentinel, Thayliss followed his companion into the mist, his sapphire eyes dimming slightly.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Feeling the ground beneath him rumble with steadily increasing fortitude, Lakos stood firm. He turned to Gris Hallis. “What is this?” he asked, his voice wrought with concern.
Several of the soldiers who had ventured with him into the Inner Realm anxiously pushed past each other to seek shelter under the carved stone archway.
“There is nothing to fear, my lord,” laughed Gris Hallis, a trace of condescension in his voice. “It is merely the next step in fulfilling your destiny.”
The vibrations aggressively resonated through the ground, shaking the very foundation upon which they stood. Like dust on a tightened drum, the vast, circular ground grew obscured as the fine white powder hovered in a diffuse cloud around their feet. The ring of Ohlinn still knelt, transfixed by whatever divine end they had been assigned to.
Then, contributing no sound to the guttural din, a tall, narrow entity of translucent white began to rise from the very center of the circle. Like a silent specter, the pointed veil of light rose higher and higher, growing taller and wider from a foggy, ever-expanding base. From the other side of the entity, the faces of Ohlinn still deep in meditation remained, obscured by the mist before them but still visible. Up rose the form until, mere moments after its emergence, it reached the very threshold of the volcanic ring’s upper rim. Without slowing, it ventured further, seeming to extend endlessly into the sky.
Lakos watched in awe as the mighty form continued upward for some time before finally freezing in place. A precise, conical dream. A colossus of hazy white, seeming to dwarf the otherwise imposing Bray Ridge surrounding it. Lakos was speechless.
“Your tower, my lord,” said Gris Hallis.
Lakos approached the tower with sheer infatuation, but as he drew nearer, he could see that the mystical structure before him was, in fact, no structure at all. It retained its vaporous texture, devoid of brick or stone or any tangible material at all. By the time he stood at its base, having walked between two oblivious Ohlinn, he grew angered.
“This is no tower,” he cried back to Gris Hallis. “This is but mystic trickery. The mere illusion of power, nothing more.” He extended his arm directly into the mist, swatting furiously as the vapor swirled in the wake of his hand before dissolving back into the sea of luminous white air.
Gris Hallis walked toward him. “This is the work of three hundred Ohlinn. Spirit-mystics whose energy resides within the ethereal. The transparent. Once we have harnessed the power of the other two mystic orders, those rooted within the material and the living, your sacred tower will become as real as the ground you stand upon. And with it, your kingdom. The Inner Realm, the tower, and I, shall be the instruments through which you will exert influence over your domain.”
The sentiment caught Lakos off-guard. “When I assume the throne of the Voduss Grei, will I not have direct control over the world beyond?” he asked, perplexed.
“My lord,” said Gris Hallis apologetically, “the power will be yours and yours alone. However, as a human, you will need a mystic life through which to truly blend with the energy of this world. To channel your desires and see them realized. And I will loyally serve you to that end.”
