Aeternitas by M Mixson (free ereaders txt) 📖

of Venicia back,” he told his two friends.

Zese shrugged his shoulders. “I can only assume that he’s going to seek revenge on you now. For whatever reason you’ve spiked his ire and caused him to dislike you.”

Zese’s sword clanged against the entryway as he turned to leave. “I wouldn’t worry about it. You can defend against him easily enough. Especially now that you know the magic of Venicia is dead.”

“That doesn’t exactly make me feel any better,” Eian told him a bit wryly.

Ohiel clapped the two of them on the shoulder and spoke, “Why don’t we go investigate this city and see what we can find? We might learn something about why the magic no longer exists in here anymore.”

Eian turned to Isia to ask her a question before his whole body stuttered and the familiar feeling of pain came over him. Isia was gone, dead. She would never be around again. A friend since childhood…gone. Eian at nights still had nightmares about her death, over and over and over again. He couldn’t seem to escape them no matter what he tried. He’d talked to many medics and healers who gave him opiates and medicinal herbs but nothing worked. Her death consistently haunted his nights.

He’d been getting less sleep and the less sleep he got the more sleep deprived and snippy he’d become. Some of the soldiers had noticed the change in his attitude and commented on it. “Your first kill often changes you,” they said and when Eian snapped back,

“My friend is the one who died!” they patted him on the shoulder and told him that it definitely got easier with time no matter what anyone told him. One soldier said to simply keep pushing forward, keep busy, don’t think about it, do your job, save other people.

Eian had tried to take the advice to heart but it was hard. More so now that his hair was white instead of the darker color it had been before. People stared and whispered behind their hands, commenting on the strangeness of it all. Eian had done his very best to ignore these whispers to write them off as people not understanding the sacrifice it was.

Others who understood magic asked if he’d stolen it, or how he managed to get it because they wanted to know how he’d obtained magic power and all he could answer them with was that “she and the magic came to me. I did not seek them out.”

Now that Eian thought about it, perhaps that was the trick. You had to not want something, or to really think about it, to get it. But if that were true more people would have magic. And so he reasoned it out to the simple fact that some people were born to use magic and others were not.

A soldier he’d talked to about this had become furious and shouted at him that, “It’s simply not fair! No one person should be able to have that much power! It’s an addiction! It deserves to die!”

Eian guessed that this man lost someone to magic and he really didn’t want to interfere with something as traumatic as that probably was.

The nightmares after that evening with the soldier had become worse. He’d dreamed he was the one killing off all the people, that he was hell bent on destroying the whole world and to do so he killed randomly and without cause. He slaughtered innocents, men, women and children. He’d been so horrified he’d had to run to the latrines to be sick. His captain had found him there and wasn’t too amused to see him out of bed and making a mess of the newly cleaned latrines.

He was even less impressed when he heard what the dream had been about. “You have to get over this fear and horror of killing. You are a mercenary. You work for money. Do your job or it’ll be you who dies.”

Eian had fled after that with barely a backward glance. He’d huddled in his small tent, shaking and crying as he tried to gather his composure and go back to sleep. He simply couldn’t. He clutched the blankets up to his chest and prayed that the nightmares would go away.

Then the thing with Jiliy happened.

Jiliy was watching him carefully from his perch on the newly formed hill. “What can you do, you little brat? You’re barely into your training and your Source is dead! Now you’re a half source and I bet the other Source’s probably think that you’re ridiculous!”

Eian had growled and launched a magical earth-attack at the man but he’d dodged it with uncanny ease.

“That’s not going to stop me, baby User. You need to use more magic, much more if you ever want a chance in hell of beating me!”

“I only need one moment and you will be dead!” Eian had hissed back in anger.

Jiliy laughed himself sick for a few minutes before rising up and putting on a serious face.

“You think you can take me on? I’ve had so many years of training, there are no repercussions once you go to dark magic. I mean, besides going dark. But what is the problem with that? You have more power! You don’t have to hold onto your control! You can kill, you can do whatever you like!” He laughed with ease. “I enjoy this, you would be able to to if you only let me help you, bring you to the edge.”

“And how would that come about, this extra power and ability?” Eian asked.

Jiliy laughed. “So you are interested?! Good good!”

Eian wasn’t really but he hoped to tease out how exactly Jiliy got his power.

“You have to kill another human being, preferably someone close to you. It’s the only way.”

“Not interested,” Eian had replied and launched his next attack, making the earth slip and slide and bringing Jiliy closer to him.

For a little while these subversive attacks didn’t work, but Eian knew that he was slowly wearing down Jiliy because Jiliy kept launching fast, hard and massive attacks that would drain his magic quicker. Even if he did have more stamina and agility magic could only bring you so far and once you’d exhausted your magic you could very easily kill yourself. Eian was simply waiting for the chance to destroy him. Destroy him with a human weapon and not magic. He couldn’t take that risk.

Finally he got his chance and was about to plunge the dagger into the man’s heart when a cry was raised and a battle broke out.

Eian had been distracted long enough for Jiliy to slip away. After the battle with Jiliy Eian was hopeless. His body was tired and exhausted. He was in no condition to fight so he was taken back to his tent to rest for a while. A while turned into several days and when he was finally better another battle stalled their journey.

And so, Eian thought as they wandered through the lost city, our journey continues.

Chapter 28: Through the City, Truth Revealed

Their journey through the city was unproductive at first. But as they wandered about they found several unique – but odd – things about the city. The first was that there was a whole district completely cloaked in darkness. Not darkness as in night darkness but as in magic darkness. And within that depth Ohiel had sworn he’d seen something moving.

Zese had put it off saying they were still hyped up from seeing Jiliy again and Eian was inclined to agree with him. Carefully Eian stepped around a dark, large watery puddle. But as he stepped around it, it seemed to reach out with a hand. Or at least, water in the shape of a hand. It freaked him out just a bit so he walked on the other side of the street that lacked the strange and mysterious puddles.

Ohiel leaned over one of them before poking a piece of a building into the puddle. The black “goo” rose up around the piece of building and started devouring it. Ohiel dropped the building piece and leapt back, watching warily as the piece disappeared completely.

This of course had garnered Zese’s interest and he poked at the puddles with his sword. But they shied away when they touched the metal wrapped silver.

Zese grinned. “Little fiends don’t like silver it seems.”

Eian winced at how loud Zese talked. It seemed as if one should talk in soft tones, that this city should be revered as sacred because Ohiel said to Zese, “Keep your voice down. You don’t know what you can disturb here in the city.”

Zese frowned but kept his mouth closed as they moved further on into what they had started calling the “Darkness District”.

Every footstep was carefully placed so as not to disturb anything that might accidentally rile an unforgiving enemy of the light.

Light, Eian though, was what was missing from this city. It was dim and dark and cold and lonely. There was nothing good or true about this city. In fact he wondered how people could have ever lived here.

“Is magic supposed to do this?” Zese inquired.

Eian shook his head. “I don’t think so. Dark magic maybe, but even then this is very strange.”

Eian buried his fingers in his pockets. “It’s freezing though and it’s strange. The city looks untouched by water. Almost as if it were frozen.”

Ohiel looked up at the spire of a “church” as they were called. “It does, doesn’t it? This icy-blue glow. Strange. I wish we had more time to study it.”

Zese pointed towards a rather large building. An ornate building, one of beautiful pure white stone. In fact it looked to be the only white thing in this Darkness District within the city.

Of course Zese automatically headed towards it. Eian and Ohiel did their best to keep up with him and didn’t have time to stop him when he threw the doors to the, what the realized later was, palace.

The inside held some of the similar icy-blue hue, but this one looked natural. It looked as if it had come from a winter wonderland.

Eian approved of this immensely. He thought it was absolutely lovely and enjoyed every second of it as he walked through the palace behind Ohiel and Zese.

Soon they reached what looked like a throne room. Zese flung the doors wide and stared around.

“Th-this is!” he stammered.

“What is it?”

“This is the same room from my vision – except it is colorless!”

Eian stepped up to his side and stared in curiosity. “It looks like the current throne room of Aniatea, doesn’t it?”

“It does now that you mention it,” Ohiel agreed as he explored some of the areas, “except it’s in different colors. I wonder what that means.”

“It means,” a voice spoke from the darkness, “that you’ve invaded my territory.”

Eian looked up expecting to see Jiliy but instead he saw a twisted and dark creature, one that didn’t look to be the slightest bit human.

It hissed and grinned at them. “There is no escape for you know, little humans. You are no match for a vampire.”

“A vampire?” Zese mouthed to himself and looked towards Ohiel who shrugged.

Eian stepped forward. “You were created from Dark Magic, or dark