| |
Windmoon 5, 2604 R.M. — Outside Haluum, Springfield, Elvandar
DERITH SYLVARADO CRACKED his eyes open slightly. He was atop a circular pillar of wood in a circular room. A tall man in a white lab coat and shades appeared at the door. He had long silver hair surrounding his otherwise bald scalp like a headdress and a crooked smile with yellow teeth offset by his bulging nose, the hair of which clearly contributed to his unkempt mustache.
“Welcome to my laboratory,” he said. “I dwell here alone in the tree in the center of Springfield. Allow me to introduce myself. I’m Dr. Adalim Alkejhuo. I suppose there should be a ‘cot’ in there, but I’m not much for Syl tradition.”
Silver stared at the strange man. Recognition of the name clicked in his mind. “You’re the one...”
“Yes. I’m the fool who took innocent children and ruined their lives forever,” he said nonchalantly. “I know. I know. You may hate me now.”
Silver tilted his head. “You don’t... look... or sound like an Elf. Not even a half-Elf.”
The man shook his head slowly. “Well, what does an Elf look like? Or a half-Elf for that matter?” He raised a knowing eyebrow. “I’m no longer one with the Syl,” the Doctor continued. “And they’re no longer one with me.”
It was Silver’s turn to raise an eyebrow. “That made no sense. Seems to fit the mold. I guess you really are an Elf...” All of a sudden, his memory rushed back to him. He sprung from the column. “Where’s Niri?” he shouted.
Alkejhuo frowned. “Who?”
“Niri!” he insisted. “The Syl prince your demented experiment twisted!”
“Ah,” the Doctor nodded his understanding. “Your friend must have changed his name while among the Gil’an. Among the Syl, they call him Thyrius. That means ‘Uniter of Nations’.”
“Okay! Whatever! Where’s Thyrius?” Silver remembered hearing that name from Ecseivie but had never assumed even for a moment it was Niri’s real name.
Alkejhuo closed his eyes. “Follow me,” he said softly.
He led Silver through a tubular hallway, talking to him as they went. “I have spent the last two hundred and fifty-one years, almost to the day I will have you know, perfecting an antidote to the Gil’an curse,” he began. Silver was afraid he was going to have to listen to the doctor’s whole dissertation before he saw his friend. “It would never work on a full Ladrian, such as yourself. I’m not sure if you would even want me to try. For broken ones, such as Niri, it can drain the body of Tresnasi in ten hours, barring any unforeseen circumstances.
“Allow me to explain,” he continued the way an obsessed scientist did. “I study the Ladrian and especially Tresnasi Borträg. How long have you been a Ladrian? Your whole life?”
Some explanation, Silver thought. “Only about six months,” he answered, not sure if he should be saying that.
“Ah, good,” Doctor Alkejhuo exclaimed, clapping his knotted hands. “So you were part of the Borträg. Excellent. When the Ladrian you killed...”
“Found,” Silver insisted. “He was dying when I found him, probably from poison. I didn’t kill him.”
Dr. Alkejhuo smiled. “Fine. When that Ladrian you claim you found died, he emitted a colored smog from his mouth. Blue in color, I’m guessing?” Silver nodded. “That much you know. What you don’t know is why that cloud passed his power to you. Inside the Tresnasi is a dormant agent that is, in and of itself, very much alive.”
“I knew that,” Silver said, remembering something about it in the book he read all those months ago.
Dr. Alkejhuo smiled slightly. “Do you really? Well, that should make this easier. I had taken you for a rube.” He smirked. “No matter. Knowing that Tresnasi is alive is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Tresnasi is, in fact, a symbiotic creature that gives the host incredible strength and powers at the expense of their Humanity, or whatever race they are, and adding weaknesses to common conditions.”
“And a symbiotic creature is...?” Silver wondered.
“Excellent question, especially from a rube such as yourself.” Silver gritted his teeth. “A symbiote could be any organism that benefits due to another organism. Some benefit only themselves while some, in fact, harm the host. In the case of Tresnasi, the host is primarily enhanced, but Tresnasi itself receives no benefit other than sustaining its existence. However, the organism is far from fully sentient. It’s more like an insect, driven only to sustain and support itself. When Tresnasi fuses with the cells of a creature, it becomes one with those cells, sustaining itself from the sustenance of those cells but feeling everything those cells experience.
“You may have noticed it since becoming Ladrian,” he continued. “A deep desire to hurt someone or a lust for revenge?” Silver’s heart pounded as he remembered the times, even last night with the Syl guard, when he had felt those very emotions. “That is Tresnasi’s only defense mechanism. It cannot defend itself from the pain experienced by its host. Such pain is so overwhelming that Tresnasi is constantly fighting to protect itself.
“It infiltrates the mind and fills it with endorphins, chemicals that, in this case, make the host angry, perhaps even murderous. It’s like an itch you can't scratch that gets worse and worse with time. The more Tresnasi a Ladrian possesses, the greater the itch. If the Ladrian ever does kill someone for the purpose of scratching this itch, so to speak, the Tresnasi will draw signals away from the parietal lobe, the part of the brain that controls everything from recognition of objects to feelings of pain. It creates a shield against pain, but, in turn, blocks the Ladrian from identifying friend from foe, right from wrong, you get the idea.”
Silver nodded uncomfortably. He certainly did not want to lose the ability to identify good from evil.
“It is this forced sociopathy that drove some of the ancients to terrible deeds and that has spawned nearly universal hatred of a species. At its core, Tresnasi is no more evil than, say, a honey bee that stings to protect her hive or a mother bear that attacks someone who approaches her cubs.” He took a deep breath.
“So?” Silver asked shakily, avoiding eye contact with the eccentric scientist. “What’s your point?”
“My point is: I wanted to learn to exploit the creature living in every Ladrian, to harness its power and remove the negative side effects. In particular, I hypothesized that, if Tresnasi’s drive to shield itself becomes exponentially stronger with linear increase in Tresnasi, a decrease in Tresnasi would exponentially limit the power of that itch to kill.”
“So, the stronger the Ladrian, the easier the Ladrian is to provoke,” Silver summarized. “Which means someone with as little Tresnasi as Niri should theoretically have less Ladrian power but less rage. Is that right?”
Dr. Alkejhuo smiled, clearly impressed. “Indeed, Rube. Well assumed. Needless to say, the idea of super strength with no drawbacks was enticing to more than just me. Met’prys’syl has lived with shame since his race was forged with frail bodies. They are stronger than Humans but don’t have the fortitude nor constitution to maintain that strength.”
“So Met’prys’syl wanted you to erase his greatest mistake?” Silver stated more than asked.
“Met’prys’syl’s greatest mistakes are legion,” Alkejhuo said with a sigh. “But he has the experience and ego of twenty-five hundred years to buffer him against his own consequences. Still, he has always longed for the strength of Ladris without also inheriting his depravity. The problem was determining how little Tresnasi was needed to give the body an acceptable fraction of Ladrian power while keeping that murderous itch we talked about to a minimum.”
“Is now where you call me ‘Rube’ again?” Silver asked, his attention zoning in and out with the doctor’s dry voice.
“Maybe later,” he said. “But this is a monologue, not a dialogue. I experimented on it for years. It worked on all the animal subjects, giving them incredible strength, speed and agility without changing their species, allowing me to give them all Ladrian powers at an epsilonth of the cost. Then, it was time for intelligent subjects.”
“Let me guess,” Silver started. “The not-so Great First Elf asked you to give him Ladrian power. You told him you would test it on one or two people, but he asked you to try it on every last kid in Haluum, and then the rest is history.”
Alkejhuo frowned and nodded at the same time. “Not quite, Rube, but close,” he said with a somewhat playful wink. “I asked him if I could try it on a volunteer adult. It would work differently on a half-Elf like me, as you might be aware. I needed a pureblooded Syl to solidify my research for the sake of Haluum. The King, as predicted, refused. He insisted I had invented the weapon of the future and demanded all the children between ten and thirteen, who are the absolute most sensitive to magic, be subjected to my experiment. If even one was a success, all would be spared his wrath and worthy of that most elusive reward of all: his favor. Thus, the list of lab rats began with none other than his own daughter, the young Princess Ecseivie.
“The first few on whom I experimented became deaf and mute psychic children, the Gil’an as they were called. I explained that the power they received seemed to be only a magnified fraction of a very specific Ladrian power.”
“Wait, what power is that?” Silver asked, wondering if he had a still dormant power of telepathy he had yet to discover.
Dr. Alkejhuo waved his hand. “‘Tis an obscure power fewer than one in a thousand Ladrian ever experience. It’s called Lesadegah or ‘Mind Link’. It only connects two Ladrian and does not enhance their power other than letting them communicate mentally with each other. It’s fundamentally useless in its original form, but these sub-Ladrian I had created were able to Mind Link with anyone.
“After Ecseivie’s mutation, I thought each child may develop different powers, but when the first three all came out with the same ability, I told Met’prys’syl it was likely due to the nature of the sample Tresnasi and none of the children would develop Ladrian strength nor stamina. Still, Met’prys’syl insisted I keep trying. Even when Thyrius told me he knew my plan was going to fail, I was obsessed and continued until I had done it to every last one of them.”
Silver rolled his eyes. “And now the rest is history.”
Doctor Alkejhuo waved his hand. “Yes, yes. Useless history. Failed science. Fiddlefaddle, poppycock, drivel, tripe and udder, complete and total nonsense. We were banished, and my work was discredited. The Gil’an moved away and I have wondered for the longest time if they were well. Thyrius changed his name to Niri which means ‘Reason’. He always told me I was not listening to reason, so clearly, he viewed himself as the voice of reason I did not listen to. I’ve worked ever since they left to find a cure. Just two years ago, I was able to find one that works.”
“How did you know it would work?” Silver inquired.
The Doctor stopped him in front of a rounded door. “I tested it.” Alkejhuo pulled back his silver hair. The tips of his own ears were colored a faded yellow. The conversation dropped.
Alkejhuo tapped a series of brightly colored buttons. The door slid open and he beckoned for Silver to come inside. The room on the other side was stark white and relatively cluttered compared to the rest of the house. The floor was littered with scientific equipment and bottles of bright liquids. Niri sat in a large glass dome with only a single tube of recycled air to sustain him. “What’s wrong with Niri?” Silver gasped. His friend did not seem to be recovering from the poison.
Alkejhuo looked at Niri, asleep, but not peacefully, in the glass container. “I gave him a choice. I could flush the venom from his system, or I could use the same procedure on him that I did on myself. I could not do both. The poison was so far spread that, even with an untested antidote, he would still only survive another day at most.”
“What... did he choose?” Silver asked, tears flowing like a fountain from his eyes. He would not admit Niri was about to die.
Alkejhuo did not answer. He turned to the sleeping form in the dome. He pushed a button and the dome opened. “Thyrius, you have a visitor,” he said out loud.
Niri turned his head in response. Silver walked up to him. For the first time in several hundred years, Niri spoke. “Derith...is that you?”
Silver failed at choking back the tears. “Yes, Niri. I’m here!”
“Good. Now I can die in peace.” He closed his eyes.
“No! Niri, I can’t let you die!”
“My death will be the uniting force between the Syl and the Gil’an...”
“No!” Silver wept. “You won’t die! You can’t die! I need you!”
“No, Derith. I have taught you what I can. You have learned what you can from me. My time is spent. My battle is won.”
Silver clenched his jaw. “Don’t say that! There’s always another way! You’re gonna live! I will find a way!”
Niri shook his head weakly. “It was you who once told me: ‘when you are literally staring death in the face, you will think differently’.” He smiled. “You were right. People do crazy things when they know they are about to die. I took the arrow for you, Silver. My life was over anyway.”
“Why do you say that?” Silver pleaded. Tears were running over Silver’s Ladris Unit, but he barely noticed the pain. “Your life is not over!”
Niri nodded. “He knows that I know,” he said. His eyes were swimming in and out of focus. “It is his fault, not yours. He did not want me to tell you. All I can say more is... stop...” His voice trailed off.
“What? Stop what?”
Niri started shaking. His voice was weak and his breathing obscured his words. “I saw into... mind... the evil one...”
“What are you talking about?”
“It was...” Niri’s voice cut off.
Silver cried. “Niri! Come back! Niri, I need you!”
Niri’s eyes flickered open for the last time. His voice touched Silver in his ears and in his mind. “Derith... he who has the soul of the Silver Wolf... the Hunter of Evil... Guard the power...”
“No!” Silver shouted. Niri exhaled a small yellow plume of Tresnasi. As he fell into peaceful slumber, passing his life energy to his closest friend, Silver fell unconscious in a puddle of his own tears.
