Seth was lying under a tarpaulin, listening for the noises of the jungle. The whole southern forest acted like one giant insect, ready to spring and suck the life out through his neck. He was reluctant to admit it, but after the silence and peace of the desert, his mind was slowly turning inside out, surrounded by all these indiscernible noises and shaded glades. He could barely wait until they left all this behind for the familiar mysteries of a Secret Room, the humming of ancient machinery, and the usual challenges, rather than nature’s constant presence.
It was an arm’s length away, through a dark cave opening, although for reasons the Hanits hadn’t shared, they just lay in wait, expecting something. Contrary to the cliché, Southerners rarely explained anything, only spoke short sentences, informing their Seir guests what was expected of them at that moment. Even Temitope wasn’t much help.
Just before Seth could slip into slumber, Temitope entered the tent. He had worn the same adoring expression since they had struck down the marid, although much of it was reserved for Chai.
“The capital sent word. The king has opened the gates for you.”
How these clever jungle-dwellers sent messages across the untamed wilds was a mystery. Seth’s best guess was through mosquito bites. He swallowed any discontent and got up, ready to finally lay eyes upon their goal here.
Chai had already prepared, avoiding Seth’s gaze and staring into the cave instead. The priests still accompanying them handed out lanterns giving off an eerie white light, then proceeded, inside chanting some ritualistic song. Seth and Chai followed them, still ignoring one another.
The light drew menacing shapes onto the walls. The dripstones all around them looked like fangs as if they were marching into the open jaws of a hungry beast to uncover the treasure inside its belly. Luckily, the ceiling was steady in its motionless state, unwilling to swallow them, and only the rocky floor kept going deeper until it ran into a wall.
Or at least, at first sight.
On second glance, Seth discovered the cracks running around on the smooth surface, outlining a door, not unlike the one he had found at Shardiz, deep under the palace.
“Aneesa?”
Nothing happened. The mysterious spirit didn’t answer, neither did the door open miraculously. The priests stared at him confused before one of them stepped to the door and touched something.
A shimmering tablet appeared, hovering in the air, with lines of strange symbols that looked like text. Before Seth could compare it to the ones he saw in his vision, another priest reached into the tablet and turned his wrists to either side, as if he was handling a doorknob.
The door creaked, its wings sinking into the wall. Seth fought through his embarrassment, following the priests into a short corridor that led to another door and a small chamber behind it. It was barely larger than a wardrobe, or an especially cruel prison cell with no light and a lack of air.
“This is where the spirits decide if they will let you enter,” Temitope said, translating the words of the high priest.
“I thought they have already decided with the visions.”
“Spirits are capricious, their will shifts like the wind. We’ll pray for you.”
Seth wasn’t quite convinced with that answer, but lacking a better option, he stepped inside the chamber. The door closed behind them, trapping him, Chai, and Temitope in utter darkness, only comforted by a familiar broken voice.
“Prime medi… cility, groun… vel…”
Aneesa’s voice didn’t crackle this time, it simply left parts out as if someone held a hand over her mouth periodically.
“At least our version wasn’t the least understandable,” Seth said, only daring to whisper. “What now?”
“I don’t know,” Temitope said. “I’ve never had the honor of entering this place.”
“When the priests fumbled with the door,” Chai said. “What were they doing?”
“I only know that it’s their sacred duty to study this place. Has been for generations. They know more than anyone about the spirits residing here.”
Chai wasn’t deterred by the lack of information. She started running her palm along the walls, followed by a soft click, then the whole chamber started sinking down.
“Sorry,” she said, this time honestly surprised at her own achievement.
“What did you do?”
“Pushed a circle on a tablet… I think.”
“You think?”
Seth stumbled against the wall unsure if they were floating or just plummeting towards their doom. The clattering given off by this rusty machine wasn’t reassuring either, so he just closed his eyes and awaited the spirits’ judgment with bated breath.
They must have passed because the slide didn’t end with their demise. The clattering stopped, the chamber stood still, and the door opened with a hearty tinkle, revealing another corridor.
Temitope wasn’t exaggerating the priests’ work, that was clear from first sight. This building was just as old as the Shardizian Room, but there was no dust or dirt anywhere. The metal plates covering the walls were picked apart, the cords running in the walls, arranged and connected, just like Chai had done at home. It was frankly frightening how far these Southerners got; bold and ingenious discoveries were the norm here, and anything Seth thought of as revolutionary had already been done before.
The three of them stepped out of the moving chamber and set off down the corridor. Neither Seth nor Chai and not even Temitope could resist peeking into the many doorways opening on the sides, even though they all held the same sight: small chambers stripped of anything other than a few rusty bedframes. Seth had never seen anything like them. They were simple, almost rustic with only hints of what could have been sheets and pillows, yet it was obvious even in their ruined state that someone used them daily. They stood on wheels rather than legs, and all had short lattices as if the Forebearers were afraid they’d fall out in their sleep.
The Forebearers.
This place was like an underground city, built and used by the Forebearers, supplying their strange demands. They were strolling through the past, in a world before the Old Garden, among spirits of the past.
“What do the priests call the spirit living here?” Seth asked.
Temitope turned away from the strange bedrooms and shook his head. “They don’t. You’d be foolish to call any spirit by name and offend it. And this is a holy place, housing many spirits.”
Seth cleared his throat and looked up at the shining streaks illuminating the corridor.
“Aneesa, can you hear me?”
“Use… Sethar…rei… command…?” the voice crackled.
Other than the obvious relief of redeeming his previous failed attempt, Seth didn’t want anything particular from her. Nonetheless, Aneesa’s presence somehow calmed him.
“I think this Room is a harder nut to crack,” he said, rubbing his stubble.
Chai nodded. “It’s large. Way larger than the Shardizian, but also familiar. From the visions.”
“I’d suggest we look around,” Seth said.
Chai took the lead, limping across the corridor into a larger room. It must have served as some vista in its prime, with a shattered window onto a level below them. Seth walked up to it, avoiding the sharp edges, and looked down.
There were almost a dozen glass cylinders along the walls, some shattered, some still hung up but—luckily—empty. The floors were covered in strangely lifelike body parts; metallic arms like on the throne’s guard, similar legs, small spheres that upon closer inspection turned out to be eyeballs, and a variety of other, unrecognizable organs.
But Seth saw all these only briefly before his eyes went to the most prominent feature in the entire room: a chair, standing proudly in the center. The same, or at least very close to the infernal machine that had almost killed him.
This one didn’t have needles, only straps, and manacles, but it was intact enough to send Seth spiraling into darkness. His pupils widened, the air ran out of his lungs, and his legs were about to give in to the dread. He saw a monster, a slumbering beast ready to strike at him any moment.
“That is the chamber of warriors,” Temitope said. “I heard that our greatest heroes come here to sacrifice a part of themselves, to gain strength without equal.”
“I thought the priests attached the new limbs,” Seth said, trying to shake off the growing panic. He wasn’t winning, but he tried his hardest.
“I don’t know the details, but they say the priests only pray. The spirits do most of the work.”
The spirits, or the Foremagic. Perhaps the two were the same.
Seth walked even closer to the edge, unsheathing his sword by an inch, summoning a gale strong enough to tear at their clothes–then simply jumped off.
He was gliding on the updraft for a few seconds, gradually weakening it until his feet touched the cold floor just next to the chair.
Chai couldn’t resist hovering down after him, and only Temitope remained at the vista. This warriors’ chamber was more familiar to what they had seen at Shardiz, but it still differed somewhat. There were fewer beeping machines, but more accessories on a tray near the chair, from needles and scissors to small, knife-like blades with long grips and short edges.
“This one’s older,” Chai said. “Similar to ours, but less advanced.”
This chair couldn’t make a mejai out of anyone, that was obvious. That wasn’t its function. This was more like an altar, where dignified warriors could lie down and endure as the spirits tore off their old bones and muscles to replace them with living metal.
Chai stooped down and touched one of the legs lying about. “Let’s test it.”
Seth was no fool. He knew exactly what Chai could have felt when Temitope talked about how this Room could grant new limbs, but she had spoken so much madness in the past days that every word she uttered now sounded alarming. Even that obvious sentence brought out an instinctual fear inside his heart, something that demanded to save her from everything.
“I doubt that’s a good idea, Chai.”
“What else did we come for?”
“We’re here because a shining dot on a shining ball led us here. We know practically nothing about this thing. It took me years to figure something out of Aneesa’s systems. This could take more.”
“Yes, it could, if you refuse to try anything.”
Seth turned his eyes away from Chai. If she was this stupid, let her be. They had argued enough for a lifetime. Instead, he walked around the room, watching the glass cylinders.
For some reason, Chai followed him. “I was inside these during the vision,” she said.
“So was I. But I wasn’t exactly myself. Like I was reliving someone else’s memory:”
“Do you remember much?”
Seth shook his head. “Not much at all. And what little I recall makes no sense, either. I saw people, Forebearers perhaps, in long robes or holding weapons, and djinn hearts in front of some gate, and a green-eyed man who shattered these cylinders with an axe.”
“Djinn hearts?” Chai’s brows rose. “I missed those. But I remember the man, he tried to free us.”
For a moment, Seth could make out his own mirror image on an intact cylinder. It wasn’t his face in the vision, but they were his eyes. The same, unnatural, almost shining green, the unique mark of Aneesa’s work.
“Who was he? Another mejai?”
“Obviously. Before meeting you, I wouldn’t have been sure, but now…” Chai frowned as she looked at her own reflection, looking for the color that wasn’t there. “Green. Interesting.”
“Why?”
Chai just shrugged, which Seth learned was her way of heralding something she thought was remarkable. “A yann’s eyes are like mother-of-pearl. Efrits have ember-like orange irises, while marids are said to have sapphire eyes, although I haven’t seen one, so I couldn’t tell. They are all unnatural, unlike anything humans have. Just like yours, only green is… not taken yet.”
Since Chai already made it clear she had met two out of the three djinn types, it was easier for Seth to brush off and focus on her other suggestion. The accusation he heard since his childhood, but nobody could prove it.
“You wouldn’t be the first to suspect I’m a djinn, but I have a solid argument–djinns don’t age.”
“I’m not saying you’re a djinn, I’m saying you’re something similar. You’ve said you saw djinn hearts, but those were just hearts, without a body. The green-eyed man, on the other hand, looked quite human.”
She took a brief pause, getting tangled up in her own line of thought, eventually just huffing a rogue lock of hair from her eyes. “I don’t know. There has to be a connection, I just can’t put a finger on it. Maybe they used the djinns to create us? Like a source?”
This made a surprising amount of sense, so Seth didn’t argue. It was possible—even probable—that the Forebearers were capable of hunting and draining djinns to use their power to create their own magicians. This, however, raised the possibility of Aneesa being one such drained djinn, and it terrified Seth, so he tucked it away where all his other dreadful theories were hiding, in a dark corner of his mind.
Instead, he tried looking for a way to power the machines here, as the boxes at home. They were abundant here as well, even considering this place was way more spacious than the Shardizian Room. And this wasn’t even the sole level; looking up they saw half a dozen other vistas above each other. Opportunities were aplenty, perhaps more than they could have studied in a lifetime. No surprise the Hanits had worked on this for generations.
Seth walked up to the chair, taking a deep breath. As a child, he could wake Aneesa by connecting with the machines, and this couldn’t have been that different, but… No. He didn’t dare to even think about it. He just stood there like a salt idol, staring at the chair before he forced himself to look away.
“A… Aneesa, show us a power source,” he said slightly heaving. Someone touched his arm, followed by Chai’s voice from up close.
“It’s all right.”
Marvelous. Now even his daughter saw the wounds torn into his mind, the scar between his memories he wasn’t remembering fondly.
Before he could sink into self-pity, Aneesa’s crackling roused him.
“… gener… level twenty-three… supplementary… rator: lev… ten.”
Chai’s silhouette sprung up at his side, faster than he ever could have imagined without her trinkets. She hopped into the chair and lay down before Seth could even shout.
The chair growled, the metal straps rose and formed rings around Chai, showering her with blueish light.
“Something’s happening!” Temitope shouted from above. “There’s a picture here, with… a human shape, I think!”
“Chai, no!” Seth cried out, as if he just awoke from a dream, pointing his sword at the chair. “What if this tries to kill you too?”
“It won’t.”
A sharp, painful force constricted around Sethar’s throat. The world shrank and collapsed, burying him under the silent pictures of a growing catastrophe. Temitope kept shouting something, but Seth couldn’t hear it. He couldn’t hear the creaking of the metal arms either, as they came alive, opening a compartment inside the chair and picking out a metallic leg perfectly aligned with Chai’s own, fixing it with monotone precision to her stub.
He heard, however, the scream coming from Chai. The painful cry reverberated through the deafening silence, jumped around the glass cylinders, and smashed against Sethar’s chest.
There were no needles used, no evil fluids, the machine touched nothing other than Chai’s stub, but Seth still stood there motionless as if he was watching his own death throes. He saw his own terror behind Chai’s closed eyelids, his own flailing arms, and his own pain.
Yet he couldn’t move, just stood there grasping the sword until his fingers turned white, watching the machines finish the procedure. What could he have attacked? The rings? The leg? He couldn’t make up his mind, the backlash from his own fears was too strong, so he just kept standing, only approaching his daughter when the voice allowed him.
“… replacement… successful…”
Seth had never felt this cowardly. He wasn’t Idranil, rushing to his aid without a thought. He wasn’t a hero. He hadn’t even noticed that he was baring his teeth from the stress while staring so intensely his eyes ran dry.
Eventually, he took a few steps towards the unconscious girl and gently shook her shoulders. Not that he tried to be gentle, only that it was all the strength he had. The machine still whirled around his newly attached leg, bandaging the border of flesh and metal after dousing it in a foul-smelling brown liquid, but that didn’t wake Chai up.
“The spirits have gifted her,” Temitope suddenly said. Seth hadn’t even noticed he had come down. “She will heal. And she will walk.”
“If she won’t?” he asked, almost too softly to hear.
“That’s impossible. It was a success, the spirit said so herself.”
“Success for a spirit isn’t the same as for a human,” Seth said. “They don’t care what the result is, only that the procedure is finished. They just want to fulfill their purpose. They want someone to command them. Can’t you see, Temitope? These are your spirits!”
He grabbed Temitope’s shirt, tugging him closer. He was trampling everything the Hanits thought holy, abusing their hospitality, but he couldn’t care. Every hardship, regret, confusion of this trip poured oil onto his heart and the sight of Chai’s agony set it aflame.
Temitope’s eyes remained calm, his fingers wrapping around Seth’s hand.
“You’re upset because Chai’s gift comes with pain. But spirits always worked their wonders before, and they will continue, because men can’t command them. Only ask.”
He was seemingly unshakable in his devotion, and Seth didn’t know why he was even trying. But he was. He wanted Aneesa to follow his orders like a trained hound, to see the sudden realization on Temitope’s face. He wanted to shatter his whole life, to make him regret ever worshiping the spirits that dared to hurt Chai.
Temitope didn’t grant him that relief, only patting Seth’s shoulder in an almost friendly manner and walking past him. That cold indifference sent a deep rage roiling from his stomach to his throat–and tore a hole into a place where voices seeped through.
They were ready to summon a wildfire to cleanse this whole building in flames, or sweep it away in a tempest, but it was too much for Seth. The anger used up all his remaining strength, so he just slid down by the chair, resting his back on the cold metal.
“I’m sorry,” he said, hugging his knees.
“You don’t need to apologize to me. And I think the spirits aren’t angry either. Look!”
Seth glanced over his shoulder at a slowly waking Chai, struggling to sit up.
“For fuck’s sake, this stings something bad,” she muttered, pushing the heavy metal leg over the chair’s edge.
“So you’re alive after all,” Seth said with a smile of relief. Suddenly he felt really foolish and wanted to be far away from everyone.
“I am,” Chai said. “And I’ll walk, without crutches and without magic.”
“Yes. You will,” Seth said before hugging his knees, trying to shrink as small as he could.
This trip was slowly turning out more than he bargained for.