Curse of Sekhmet, page 27
part #3 of Casters of Syndrial Series
And that was how Omen got his name.
* * *
When the dogs were ready, we continued our journey. Even though we could use magic, I couldn’t transport Painter, myself, Omen, both dogs, and Mekueha’s body to the tribe. The dogs powered through their exhaustion, though, and we made it back to the village we had left that morning.
The tribesmen immediately wanted to know what was going on and what happened to their queen. Using his painting ability and what few words he knew, he explained it to them. He acted like it wasn’t agonizing for him, even though I knew it was.
While he ordered the tribesmen to head north, I took Omen to Mekueha’s fauxuni. The adult fauxuni didn’t show any aggression towards me or the pup, so I stepped close enough to the creature that it could sniff Omen. After it did, it licked Omen’s head, so I set the pup down. The pup ran to the adult and settled on the ground beneath its belly. The adult then lowered itself onto its elbows so that the pup was protected without being crushed.
I nodded. “Okay. I’m going to count this as a successful adoption. Enjoy your new kid.”
I joined my brother, who was arguing with the tribespeople. Several of them pointed to the trees and Painter hesitated.
“What is it?” I asked.
“It seems they can’t survive away from trees. That sucks for them. I didn’t realize they’re so weak. Let’s go. I thought you were going to get rid of that thing,” Painter said, pointing to my feet.
Sitting at my left was Omen, politely waiting for a break in our conversation. When we looked at him, he put his front paws on my leg and stretched up to lick my hand. I sighed. “Go back to your new mom or dad.” He ran off excitedly as I had ordered. “We can create a portal that will take them straight to the north, where there will be trees. We can open the portal and leave. They can spread the word to the whole tribe.”
“I don’t have the energy to keep a portal open all day.”
“We can combine our power and then...”
There was an amazing feeling of pride and confidence that I felt when I successfully completed an escape room. This was better than defeating a PC game, or kicking ass at Dungeon’s and Dragons. It was even better than graduating from the university with honors.
It was the same feeling I got right then, because the plan that came to mind was absolutely impossible and terribly dangerous.
And it would work. “I know how we’re going to stop the volcano from destroying Syndrial.”
“How’s that?”
“We’re going to erupt it.”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“I will definitely explain before it’s too late, but let’s go now. Forget the portal; the tribe will be fine. Just tell them really quick to move to the outer edge of the forest and send the dogs north. I have to get Ahz to his trials right now. We’ll meet at the High Temple.” Painter was confused, but I didn’t have time to explain. For my plan to work, it had to be done as soon as possible.
Probably even sooner than possible.
I picked up Omen, who was hanging on the hem of my shirt by his teeth, and transported myself and the pup to the historians.
Chapter 17
Asgard wasn’t like other people. Since he was born, he saw things in his mind that had never happened to him. Before he knew how to speak, he knew what people were saying to him. He could feel their thoughts and intentions.
The problem was that he had no idea who he was most of the time. He didn’t know when or where he was, either. Ahz could talk to the world he was on, and it spoke back to him, as did the elements around him. Numbers and puzzles comforted him. When someone touched him, his power focused on that person, which was never pleasant.
Although Ahz felt love for his mother, he couldn’t express his emotions, and he often didn’t know who she was. It was especially frustrating when he wanted his mother and she was right next to him, but he couldn’t tell that it was her.
Upon arriving at Syndrial, he felt the new world. It was a stranger to him... and it was home. He belonged there. He also felt its pain.
The world’s plea for help was overwhelming. He was seven... sort of. His body and magic were only as developed as a seven-year-old caster’s, but his mind had experienced things far beyond his years. He couldn’t keep up with it. It was slowly destroying him.
Then he met Verjafriðr, who taught him to create a filter around his mind. It took many layers, but the relief was immense. Verjafriðr also began training him to control his abilities rather than letting them control him.
Along with his intelligence and elemental abilities, he would someday be a powerful wizard and caster. He would also develop the ability to read minds without looking someone in the eyes. Only with his mind quiet and present could he use his magic reliably.
* * *
Nathan appeared in Ahz’s room and interrupted him from painting. It didn’t bother him that Nathan didn’t explain to him what was going on; he knew. Nathan transported him to the High Pyramid and told him he had to take his trials immediately. Ahz could feel Nathan’s urgency.
Another caster was there, but Ahz knew better than to meet the old man’s eyes and read the secrets that he kept. Nathan said something to the man that wasn’t worth listening to. Then Nathan handed him a lit torch and told him to enter the pyramid. Ahz didn’t know what was ahead of him, which he liked.
When the door closed behind him, he aimed his torch ahead and made his way through the hallways. They were made of sandy blocks covered in artwork and the sacred language. He wandered for a short while before an ominous rumbling filled the chamber. He knew he was safe; Syndrial told him so. He could feel it in the sand and stone.
The ground disappeared and he fell, losing his torch along the way. He never lost consciousness, so sand reached for him like a wave and slowed his descent until he landed softly in a round room. There was a wooden staff in the center of the room, upon which was a glowing white crystal, and seven identical doors surrounding him.
The doors were each at least twelve feet tall and six feet wide, made of dark wood with metal brackets. The tops were rounded. They didn’t have knobs or handles. Instead, each door had the burned mark of an animal.
“To begin your trials, you must answer three questions,” said a deep, commanding voice.
Ahz was so used to voices in his head that he didn’t question it. Instead, he took a deep breath, as Verjafriðr had taught him, and fortified the walls around his mind. He reveled in the peace and quiet for a moment, and a thought occurred to him.
He had no idea who he was.
He knew who he would become if he survived, he knew who people thought he was, and he knew what was expected of him, but he spent so little time in his own presence that he was a stranger.
“What is the most important trait in friendship?” the voice asked.
He couldn’t read the voice’s mind like he could everyone else’s. He liked that. He had never experienced friendship for himself, but he had seen it. He considered the possibility of getting a friend himself, and acknowledged that such could only happen if the other person understood his needs. Of course, even if they understood it, that didn’t mean they cared. “Respect,” he said.
“What is the most important trait in defeating your enemies?”
He did have an enemy. He knew who had sent Assassin after him; he had seen her in his dreams. She wanted to use him and his magic. Fortunately, when she tried to control him, his power easily overcame hers. This was quite the shock and insult to her.
He didn’t hate her for wanting to use him, or for attempting to kill him. He was a threat to her because she wasn’t one to him. Trying to convince her that he wasn’t out to steal her power was useless, because she wasn’t reasonable.
That was why he would defeat her someday, if he survived this. He would face her and win because he could understand her. “Empathy.”
“What do you offer if a god chooses you?”
This one he didn’t have to think about. “I am Asgard. I am a caster and a wizard. I ask nothing from the gods except what I need to save Syndrial. I owe nothing to them. My magic protects the world and its people.”
With that, all seven doors opened.
When the gods made Syndrial their home, it became their responsibility to protect it. Ahz knew the gods could kill him and that he needed their help, but he wasn’t afraid of them. He let Syndrial tell him which door to choose. He didn’t even look at the animal on the door.
The hallway he entered was completely black, but he didn’t need light. He could feel the walls around him. When he reached the end and faced a door, he ran his hands across it and felt the numbers and blanks etched into it.
––––––––
1 _ 2 _ 5 8 _ _ 34 55 _ 144 _
––––––––
Ahz understood the concept. He had never heard of the Fibonacci sequence before, but his mind found the pattern instantly. “One, one, two, five, eight, thirteen, twenty-one, thirty-four, fifty-five, eighty-nine, one-forty-four, and two-thirty-three.” When nothing happened, he put his hand on the door. “Open.” Nothing happened. Syndrial, clear my path so that I can help you.
Six torches lining the wall lit up and the door opened. He wasn’t interested in physical puzzles.
As soon as he walked through the doorway, a fire ignited itself. He was in a large room that was empty except for a pit of fire in the center.
“If Syndrial is to trust you, you must prove that you can protect it,” the voice said.
“Syndrial can feel me.”
“Syndrial knows you want to protect it, not that you can, or what you are willing to do for it.”
A gold egg levitated out of the fire and into Ahz’s hands. It was a foot tall and heavy as a rock, but he could feel its power. He wouldn’t let it get hurt.
As soon as he decided this, a large phoenix rose from the fire. Its wings were red, darker on the outside and lightening to a brilliant yellow on its chest. Its beak and talons were ash-gray while its eyes were sky-blue. The phoenix’s tail feathers were on fire.
It soared high against the ceiling and then dived at Ahz. Ahz clutched the egg to his chest, focused his mind, and created a shield over himself. This was the first time he’d ever done caster magic, and it came to him as easily as breathing. The phoenix struck the shield and shattered. Another phoenix instantly formed out of the fire and attacked, but this one passed through Ahz’s shield like it was nonexistent.
Burning talons stabbed into Ahz’s back, causing him to shout. After three seconds, his brain switched off his pain receptors. That didn’t heal him, though. Drawing heat from Syndrial’s core into himself, he fused it with his energy and shaped it into lightning, which he shot at the phoenix.
The phoenix burst into ash. A moment later, another one formed and attacked. When he struck with his lightning again, it didn’t even slow the creature down. He reached out with his power and hand. One of the rocks of the fire pit broke loose and smashed into the bird.
Two seconds later, another one materialized. Ahz broke off another rock, but it passed through the phoenix as easily as the other one had passed through his shield. He didn’t get discouraged, though. He didn’t know that emotion.
The phoenix swooped down on him, clawing his face, breaking his left arm, and burning his shirt. He nearly lost his eye. He reached out with his power and seized the creature’s mind. It wasn’t an object being manipulated; it was a real creature of magic...
And he could control it.
This was not caster magic but power he had inherited from his father. His powers were still developing. He struggled to keep his magic contained when his mind was never quiet. Verjafriðr’s lessons on quieting his mind were more valuable than his lessons on controlling his magic.
The phoenix relented and vanished back into the fire. A moment later, a door formed and opened. Ahz walked through it fearlessly, taking the egg with him. He entered an empty room with a loose-sand floor. Above him, a dozen candles floated.
The door closed behind him. When the floor in the center of the room started to sink, Ahz felt a warning from Syndrial. Levitation wouldn’t work, because doing so required pushing against the ground. Instead, he created a bubble of energy around himself, and with magic he hadn’t yet learned, he reversed the gravity in the outer layer. He “fell” upward and crashed head-first into the ceiling.
He cradled the egg in his right hand and protected his head as best as he could with his broken arm. His mind could block the pain, but he couldn’t seal the wounds or stop his blood loss. Healing was one ability he didn’t have.
The small sinkhole quickly grew into a whirlpool of sand, spanning the entire room. After a few minutes of getting nowhere, he focused his mind as the dragon had taught him. He called to the world to guide him, and what he felt was a sense of trust. Syndrial wouldn’t hurt him.
He had to trust Syndrial. He released his magic and fell. The moving sand softened his landing like water. He took in a deep breath just before he was sucked underground.
He could suddenly breathe again as he landed on a solid floor. The falling sand shifted away like there was an invisible bubble around him. Now he was on the side of a cliff that dropped into the abyss. Across the fifteen-foot-wide chasm from him were another ledge and a lit torch.
There was a limit to how high someone could levitate.
Ahz motioned with his hands, and the sand flowed in front of him to form a bridge. Of course, sand couldn’t hold him, so he pulled heat from Syndrial again. The ground rumbled with resistance, but he ignored it. Instead of forming lightning, he melted the sand until it formed a crude, thick, glass bridge, and then drained the heat from it once he was confident in its strength.
Still cradling the egg, he walked across without hesitation.
A door appeared and opened. In the following room was a black jaguar. She was two hundred and twenty pounds of ferocious cat, adorned with gold jewelry. She sat between him and the door.
“I am a guardian of Syndrial,” she said when the door closed behind him.
“I am Asgard, son of Ritelia.”
“You are strong,” she said, “but not ready to defend this world.”
He was too young, but that didn’t matter, because he was out of time. “I will defend Syndrial anyway.”
She stood and stepped out of the way. As Ahz approached the door, it opened for him. The following room was just like the chasm room, but instead of empty space, the two ledges were divided by a river of lava. Also, there was no sand with which to make a bridge. This didn’t slow him down; he motioned with his hands to the lava, shaped a bridge, and drew heat out of it. It created a smoldering, jagged, dark gray, stone bridge. Once again, he strolled across it confidently.
The door opened and he entered a small room with only a three-hundred-pound black dog and a stone pedestal. Without being ordered, he set the egg on the pedestal, where it balanced itself perfectly.
“You are a difficult person to test, Asgard,” the dog said.
“Syndrial knows my heart. Why am I really here?”
“You are being tested because the gods need to know that you are worthy of their help.”
“I am.”
He looked into Ahz’s eyes. No words were exchanged for several moments as the creature read his mind. Ahz allowed it, and even let the creature see what he wanted to see, although Ahz could have stopped him.
Finally, the dog broke eye contact and stepped out of the way. “You have proven your skill and mind to them. Now you must prove your heart.”
A door formed beside the dog and opened. Ahz walked through it, unafraid. He wasn’t worried about what was in his heart.
The room was circular, filled with ascending, circular steps so that the platform in the center of the room was high above him. Three gods were standing around a seven-foot-tall brass scale. Other people saw the gods as they expected to, but Ahz saw their power. He didn’t notice how anyone looked.
Ahz approached the three gods and stopped in front of the scales. Someday, he would have the power to make gods obey him with a simple thought, but that power was far off. He had plenty of time to decide what kind of person he wanted to be. Whether he took after his mother, who ran away from her home and dedicated her life to protecting the defenseless, or his father, who strived to destroy as many lives as possible for entertainment and power, Ahz had the choice.
At seven years old, he only found enjoyment in drawing, solving puzzles, and playing with his new kitten. He would decide if he liked saving people after he saved Syndrial. He would decide if he liked hurting people after he defeated his half-sister.
Anubis reached into his chest and pulled out his heart. It wasn’t his physical heart, of course; it was the essence of his heart. It was redder than the actual organ. Without it, Ahz couldn’t feel emotions.
He didn’t have an opinion about that because he didn’t feel any different. Ahz liked numbers, facts, and puzzles, not emotions. Emotions really only got in his way, so he blocked them most of the time.
Anubis placed the heart on the scale, and Ahz watched as it bobbed up and down for a moment. When it finally stopped, the three gods were stunned. The heart was precisely even with the feather, which was something they had never seen.
“Does that count?” Anubis asked Thoth.
“For the sake of Syndrial, I will say yes,” Thoth said.
As a sign of her agreement, Ammut reached her front paw up and pressed on the feather, causing it to sink and the heart to rise.
Anubis picked up the heart and put it back into Ahz’s chest. Again, he felt no difference. He wanted to draw and see his cat, but he knew they had to wait. Nathan’s plan wouldn’t work if he wasted so much as an hour.
