Chapter 9: Tainted - I
Isetzar stood like a demon with his monstrous greataxe.
The mists of blood had tinged his black hunting gear a shadow of dark crimson. A slight metallic scent wafted in the air and filled the nostrils of the House of Sasan–now visibly horrified at what they were seeing.
Solahi prepared to go on the offensive–wrapping herself in rings of razor wind, and Arbaz was beginning to conjure lightning from a specially crafted dagger.
Ul-Sasan raised a hand and bade them to stop.
"Solahi. Arbaz. Enough."
Ul-Sasan turned to face them with a stern look on his face.
"You're not going to beat him. No one here will. Not now. Not like this."
He then returned to face Isetzar.
"You said you had questions? Fine then. I now speak to you as the Head of House Sasan. In the name of my House, and as Archmage to His Majesty, state your inquiries, your terms, and then let me give mine in kind–also allow me to explain why our Nuriya has to die."
"Yeah, no," Isetzar answered plainly. "She won't. Gramps, you know me better than this."
"Gramps?" Ul-Sasan let out a sad chuckle. "Can you honestly still call me that? Heavens above, I am probably but a child to you! Is our Setzya still inside there somehow? Are you 'you'? Or are you someone else? Are you my grandson? Or are you the soul who now wears his face like a mask?"
Everyone in the room was dumbstruck and gripped in terror.
"That hurts, Gramps. I'm still me. I think? I suppose it's better to call myself a 'we', though?"
"You poor boy…" the grandfather remarked. "I'm so stupid, how could I not have seen this?"
"Father? How is Setzya doi–"
"He's a harqa, Arbaz!" Ul-Sasan cried out in a voice tinged with hurt. "Cursed! Tainted! A soul that never went through the purification of The Wheel! He's using powers from a past life!"
Arbaz looked on. His face was still as a statue. He was always close to his brother's children. He watched them grow up. He played with them. He taught Setzya he didn't need to be gifted to learn about magic himself. He taught Nuriya how to use her first instrument. Hearing all this felt like a bad joke to him.
"If I had to make a guess...He was a mage from an long-gone era. He's using magic from a system no one to my knowledge is currently practicing…A system from an age far too ancient. One which we can't counter."
"System?" Isetzar smiled. "My, why must people nowadays have such a cold, mechanical view of what we used to just call living? Or maybe you can call it the godsway? Anyway, good guess, Grandfather! You're on the right track, but you're still missing a couple of de--""
"Ask your questions, 'Setzya': What do you want to know?"
"Just a few: when did you find out about Nuriya and how exactly did the mages here get the message that something was off? I, or rather we, are all genuinely curious."
"I'll start," said Baratzar, still tending to his unconscious father. "Setzya…Grandfather caught our attention because he said Nuriya was already three times his power at his peak. That shouldn't be possible."
"Explain."
"We know Nuriya is already several times more powerful than the grand-mages of other nations. But that would only roughly put her on half his level."
"Which, just that? Is to be expected," continued Ul-Sasan. "She is, after all, my heir-apparent."
"But we're comparing her to Ul-Sasan. Ul-Sasan! To be three times more powerful than Ul-Sasan himself at his best?" continued Baratzar. "All before an age where we haven't even taught her the last part of her training?! That's unheard of. Ever. No, it's unnatural."
"Last part?" Isetzar raised a brow.
"Well, Setzya, we thought you were ungifted," said Solahi. "So we never bothered to tell you."
"Advanced spell construction," Baratzar spoke as his father stirred on the floor. "All Nuriya knows is spirit theory and spirit command."
"So she's a one-in-a-million freak of sorcery. Big deal. Shouldn't that be a good thing?"
"I'll answer that one," spoke his aunt, Solahi. "If she is that strong now? Then she's worryingly powerful. The kind that turns worlds upside down. The kind no responsible mage should leave alone. What she did in Burseti? She shouldn't be able to do that."
"Why?"
"The place is dead! No life to be found!" Arbaz burst into the conversation yelling and still incredulous. "It's called wood as part of its history! Burseti has been a barren wasteland for centuries, Setzya! It's large, wide, and dead! Gods, I didn't even know she did that for His Majesty?! Whatever spirits that linger over there are scarce and barely alive. And it doesn't matter if you come with your own hosts! No! Because the place was rendered that way by a spiritbane curse! Which means she not only got rid of that curse, but also cured that whole place using her own raw power! No calling of hosts, no rallying them into forms and formations, and no need to call higher powers. No, just her. Her own magic. All her."
"The place is now as green as Sali…" Ul-Sasan said. "Water now flows through it from the Garal river and animals and spirits have now returned to that place. What was dead? Now lives again."
"And?"
"And? Well, 'Setzya', that's not the work of a mage," said Ul-Sasan "That's the work of a god."
Nuriya stirred and weakly opened her eyes. She saw her brother standing above her, his back facing her, and he's now directly talking with their grandfather–though she still can't quite make out the specifics of the conversation. She heard "Burseti" and "unnatural"
"So that caught our attention…" Baratzar returned. "Aside from higher-tier spell construction. Grandfather taught us when we entered the third phase of our education how to notice when he wants to tell us something."
"I see…" Isetzar tapped his forehead. "That explains it! All this time I thought you had a code! I thought it was something only mages nowadays were privy too! Something 'he' didn't have back in his time. Well, that's nice to know. I was afraid I might have missed something! So...Turns out, gramps here called you guys to attention, and only AFTER THEN he explains to you all why Niya has to die? Well, that satisfied my curiosity."
Everyone nodded.
"And because she is supposedly so monstrously powerful? That alone justifies her death?
"No!" Baratzar replied. "We saw som--"
"What did our grandfather say to convince you, no, all of you to kill my sister?"
Isetzar banged his axe on the floor and threw everyone a piercing look.
Ul-Sasan narrowed his eyes, and took something out from his sleeves. "Oh, don't make me laugh! As if you didn't know!"
He threw a blackened crystal ball to the floor.
"All of you? Here in this room? Yes, even the young ones! Use your magic to peer through this ball!"
Everyone paused.
Isetzar stayed silent and wore a look of complete disinterest.
Nuriya listened on…
"What's in the ball?" she wondered.
Everyone in the room, the mage-servants, the family members, her cousins, her family's young apprentices all did as her grandfather bade them to do.
She did the same…
One by one she saw everyone tremble and cry out. They held their heads and couldn't stop themselves from falling to their knees and gasping in terror. A couple of them started throwing up.
And when she finally saw what they saw…
"I see…"
Nuriya's eyes welled with tears.
She now understood.
"I'm…going to be the death of everybody."
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