Crystal Throne (Book 1) (4 page)

“That is not always a bad thing, though with magic it can prove to be deadly,” Thad replied patting his son gently on the shoulder. “Magic is a gift and one that we do not choose. I have known men who could sing better than any troubadour, yet they hated crowds. Magic, like any other gift, is only one part of us and we shouldn’t let it decide the course of our life. Yet you should still yearn to learn to use it properly.”

“I wish you would have been around to say that when I was younger,” Bren said with a weak laugh.

“So do I,” Thad replied his voice catching slightly on the words.

The two sat in an eerie silence; nether knowing what to say to the other. After the silence became deadening Thad stood up and went back to his bed. He found the cushions no more comfortable than before, but he was tried and when one was tried even a rock would look appealing after a while.

CHAPTER IV

As the days went by, Thad found little chance to talk to Bren. It wasn’t as if his son was never alone, it was that each time he saw him it didn’t feel right. Besides watching Bren’s back, Thad spent most of the quiet days looking around at the scenery.

For the past two days, Thad had seen what appeared to be buildings in the distance. At first he thought it was a large mountain, but the closer they came the more clear it became. They were massive, tall, and just like everything else, they were made of gems. Once Thad knew they were buildings, he thought that they would reach them in a matter of hours, but as the days passed and the buildings grew closer, he began to be amazed. He had seen tall buildings such as the tower he had helped build, but that was like comparing a blade of grass to a tree. The tower had no more than ten floors, but some of the buildings he was seeing in the distance were easily four or five times that height.

Thad had met a few of the gods during his travels when he was younger, but the few meetings he had with them had not made them friends. Just as Thad started to feel utterly alone Humanius dropped back and started to walk beside him.

“You have been keeping to yourself for the past few days,” Humanius said. “Even when you wanted nothing more than to cut out my heart you would still talk. Is there something on your mind my friend?”

“Many things,” Thad said nearly laughing to himself. “The magic here is so strong I have to constantly drain it away. Then there is my son who I am finding it hard to connect with. At the same time, I have found myself alone with only my staff for company. It is not the first time I have been alone, but it’s different this time. There are people around me, but everything and everyone feels so distant.”

“You are home yet nothing is the same as you remember it,” Humanius said. “That is completely understandable. You son is ages older than when you last saw him in person and though you watched him it is not the same as having been there with him as he grew. To make things worse, instead of a grand reunion your life has forced you to come on a journey that you and I both know will most likely take your life.”

“I could live through it,” Thad replied. “It’s just not very likely,” he added with a smile.

“Let us place the hard topics aside for now,” Humanius said. “What do you think of my homeland so far?”

“It is unique,” Thad replied. “I can see why you and your sister have such strong magical powers if you came from here.”

“It was not always like this,” Humanius said as he looked in the distance. “Long ago there was real grass and trees. You must understand that it has been more than ten thousand years since I have been home. I don’t know when the wall fell nor how long afterwards my homeland was turned into this.”

“Does it bother you?” Bren asked his godly friend.

“Yes and no,” Humanius replied. “I have been gone so long I find it really hard to see this as my home. The only things that I loved here were my sister and my father, and my father is long past gone and my sister is still here with me. In all honestly, we lived less than five hundred years in this land so if I had to choose, your world is also my own.”

“I guess that should be comforting,” Thad said. “At the moment though it doesn’t seem to really matter.”

“What could matter more,” Humanius replied. “As I told you, there are countless worlds, and for over thirty years hundreds of thousands of people from this world were sent to other worlds. There is even a chance that your ancestors might have come from this world.”

“I understand what you are saying, but it is a little much for me to think on,” Thad replied. “Where I come from never concerned me as much as where I was going. To know now that we might be connected by more than chance is… I don’t know if it is comforting or not. Not to mention that there might be many other worlds with people on it that are connected in the same way.”

“I know it is a lot to think on, but having something to keep your mind busy might be a good thing everything considered,” Humanius said with a slight grin. “I have lived a long time and understand being apart better than any other. Knowing that there are things larger than yourself is sometimes helpful in these situations.”

As the god picked up his pace and started to head back to the front of the group, Thad looked at his son. Bren was a lot like him but in many ways he was better. He was confident and strong, never having to look to others for answers. Thad was proud of him.

I raised him as best I could in your absence. That devil of a wife of yours didn’t make it easy, but I believe he turned out ok, though he never learned my lesson about women. Just like you, he will have to learn their dangers on his own.

“You have done a fine job my friend,” Thad said to Thuraman. “Speaking of Maria, how was she when you last saw her?”

I guess it was too much to believe that your feelings toward her might have changed. She was much the same as when you left. At the time, she was fighting with Eloen as usual over something that didn’t matter. Your daughter was doing well too. For a female she isn’t as bad as many of the others, but she still has years to come into her own.

Thad let out a long laugh that drew the attention of his other companions. Shrugging his shoulders he turned his attention back to Thuraman. “I have missed you my friend. As much as I have complained over the years about you and your quirks, without you I felt more than lost.”

I felt much the same way. Your son was a good companion, but it was not the same. When you left it was as if one of my gems had been ripped from my body. I know one day you will leave me, but I could still feel you. It was weak, but I knew you were there somewhere. It is the reason I pushed your son so hard to find you.

“Then you are partly to blame for this situation,” Thad said, his mental voice sounding slightly sharp.

Yes, though I believe it was still worth it. I am a creature of pure magic and no fool. I knew that there was a chance that the veil would be completely destroyed. I didn’t care, what mattered was that you returned.

“I always forget that you are like that,” Thad said shaking his head. “You never care about the consequences, you only care about what you want. I think one of these days when this is over we will have a long talk about this.”

I am not human. I have no real feelings, or at least not in the way you feel them. Through my connection to you I can feel some of your feelings; that is why I don’t like Maria. She is the only one who can hurt you so badly. Why should it matter to me if the world ends? I care nothing for the rest of them. They mean nothing to me.

Thad could think of nothing to say. It was easy for him to forget that Thuraman was only alive through magic and was no more human than the rocks on the ground. It was a tool, it was just one that happened to have its own thoughts.

Thad turned his attention back to their surroundings as they walked. Everything looked much like he would expect with grass and mountains; they even passed a few buildings. The only real difference in this world and his own was that everything had been turned into crystal.

After countless hours of walking, Thad’s foot started to ache. For a while, he thought that he might have gotten a small pebble in his boot, but he didn’t have the time to stop and check. By the time the sun went down the pain had moved from a slight annoyance to nearly bringing tears to his eyes.

That night they picked a large tree to camp under. The sky was clear, and Thad had seen no sign of rain in the sky so he saw no real reason to look for a place to stay dry, but he figured it was more of habit then for any real tangible reason.

As soon as he had found a place for the night Thad began to strip off his boots. When he took off his first boot it revealed a metal leg that was attached right above where his ankle should have been. Thad ran his fingers slowly across the cold metal as he remembered when he had first lost his foot. It had been ages since the Ablaians had captured him during the war. They were a warlike nation and their way to keep prisoners from escaping was to remove one of their feet.

Thad looked over the boot and checked it for wear. It was still in good repair though the heel was slightly more worn down than the rest of the sole. Setting aside the first boot, Thad removed the other. Thad had to hold back a shocked yell as he looked down at his foot. His pinky toe was stiff and hard and had a slight sparkle to it. Thad didn’t have to think hard to figure out what had happened. Just like the other things on this planet his body was slowly turning to crystal and it wasn’t a painless transformation.

“Thuraman can you do anything about this?” Thad asked having no clue himself about how to solve the problem.

I have been draining away the excess magical energy as fast as I could, but it looks like I was still too slow. It is amassing in your body and crystalizing much the same way it does within the earth, though in this case it is doing it much faster. Unless you can block the magical energy or harness it somehow there is nothing that can be done to stop the process.

“What about the others?” Thad asked a slight trace of concern in his voice.

Unlike you, they can hold a lot more magical energy and most of it is naturally drained away though some still lingers.  Should they spend enough time here the same thing would happen to them though it would take years for them to start showing signs. That includes your son.

“That’s some good news at least,” Thad said as he probed his crystal toe. “How long do you think it will take at its current rate to completely take over my body?”

It is hard to say, but my best guess would put it at no more than twelve days.            

Twelve days was not that long and Thad was sure that it would take longer than that to reach their destination and return home. He had to find a solution, and fast, otherwise he would become nothing but a burden to the others.

Thad opened his magical senses. Everything around his radiated magical energy. Usually there was small lines of magic running through the world around him, but now it was almost blinding. There was not a single place where magic had not permeated. His own body was no different though it didn’t shine as brightly as his surroundings with the exception of his one crystal toe which shined as brightly as the rest of the world around him.

It was odd to see the magic gathering in his body. It had a different feel than the magic he was used to. He had long known that magical energy had its own direction. It wasn’t so much as thoughts but simply a direction for its course. The magic in this world was different…It was much stronger and had a hostile feel to it. Thad could almost see the small pieces of magical energy attacking his body, trying to take it over. He felt as if he just listened a little harder he could hear it as well. Thad had to force himself away from the energy and its almost hungry pull.

Thad began to look at the rest of the world and its eerie crystal structure for answers to his problem. He had always considered himself skilled in magic, but compared to his son and the other gods, he was nothing more than a babe, but he still had one skill that he believed was unmatched, maybe not in power, but at least in drive and ingenuity.

Thad had spent years with different gems, learning how they worked and why. The crystals here had much the same structure to them, though they were far more pure and dense. It was almost like the difference between copper and steel. There were plenty of gems around for him to use. All he had to do was break off a blade of grass and it would be of more use than the purest diamond in his own world. He still needed a body for an enchantment and with nothing in sight beside gems that would be the hard part, but Thad had a few ideas running through his mind. The real question was how to make an enchantment that would draw the energy from his body and not the vast amounts of energy present in the world around him.

Thad wished he had days or weeks in order to come up with a solution, but that wasn’t possible. Every day that passed, the more of his body would be lost and as soon as he lost his foot walking would become a problem. Each passing second was time that he couldn’t afford to lose.

A solution entered his mind shortly after he began to think about the problem. It wasn’t a pretty solution, but it was the only one he had at the moment. Taking out a small knife he had gotten from the village, Thad mentally prepared himself as his fingers tightened around its hilt. After a few moments of heavy breathing, Thad cut his toe from his foot and quickly used the staff’s power to heal the wound. His toe was gone, but so was the crystal and now the magic would have to retake its hold on him.

As the sweat beaded and slid down his forehead, Thad quickly continued with his work. Unable to tap into the magical energy around him out of fear of what it would do to him, Thad focused his thoughts through Thuraman causing the knife’s metal to bend and fold around his discarded toe until it was fully enveloped.

Thad felt tired. Working through the staff was much harder than doing the work on his own as he had to allow Thuraman full access to his mind. The staff always had a link to him, but he subconsciously blocked it from interfering with who he was. Those blocks had to be taken down, making him and the staff the same as long as he was working magic. This was the only way to use his gift without burning himself out. When he was finished and Thuraman was once again out of his mind, Thad felt the lingering effects of the meld. He could see how Thuraman viewed the rest of the world. It was nearly maddening, but after a few seconds the thoughts and feelings passed from his mind and Thad continued with his work.