Chapter 1
Two years ago, on the Gardens mountain, the king and his friends mocked the strangeness blending into the night sky. Their laughter had neither spite nor hate toward the night. They'd been as drunk as the nobles that they were -- used to be. Some of them were half-naked from drunkenness. They belched and laughed like hyenas. One or two barfed on the bosom of serving girls who wiped the foolish nobles before getting shooed off for being disgusting.
It's hard to believe the kind of humans people allow to rule them; the king, Ekenin, had thought then. If the king was the best of them, what sort of humans made his constituents? Ekenin sometimes thought himself disgusting, hypocritical, and tyrannical. Sometimes, he showed none of the grace required of a king - just madness, lust, fury, and drunkenness. On the night of the Melding, he'd been too drunk to even mount his horse. The usually sharp edges of his mind mulled to foolish bluntness by the fine, slow-killer of a wine.
Ekenin wondered how differently destiny would have unfolded had he rejected revelry that one night. Maybe he'd have had time to muster his army. His self-damning thoughts ran rampant like rabid wolves panting after a moose until he remembered the shimmering figures. Fire and earth, lightning and air, wood and metal, and lies that walked. Lies.
No army would have stopped them, Ekenin thought. No army in the world would've stopped the Emis.
Everyone called the visitors Emi. That is to say, Spirit.
"Your majesty."
Agin's gruff low growl snapped Ekenin back to the surrounding forest with a sharpness akin to the snap of a dry twig.
Ekenin reined his horse in and muttered softly to the beast. Immaculate white and royal, Henise was not the beast for a king fleeing death. Ekenin determined to trade the horse in at the first village they saw. The one that wasn't up in fire and smoke. Surely, the kingdoms to the south should be safer. His hands tightened around the rein and his fingers chilled inside his leather gloves. An acidic taste had begun growing in his mouth since the night of the Melding and his skin grew paler by the hour. Ekenin attributed these changes to fear and cowardice, now, however, his conviction faltered.
Three of his guards fell out of their saddles the night before. Dead as fish, they were. Their skin was as pale as sour milk and dotted with a strange silvery color. More than terror, the Emis brought plagues to Earth.
The company stood at a clearing surrounded by tall pine trees. At the centre of the clearing were a broken shack and a pile of dry wood.
"We can rest here for the night," Agin said, gesturing at the shack ahead. Agin was a short man with hard black eyes, hair pulled into a ponytail, and a deep cleft. He wielded a sword the length of his arm and never wore anything that wasn't armour. Even to his wedding ceremony.
He was also captain of Ekenin's guards, as Agin's father had been to Ekenin's father, and as Agin's dead son should have been to Ekenin's dead son.
The shack had a door hanging by the top hinge. Moth-eaten curtains fluttered in and out of the windows like leashed ghosts. Ekenin could see the web of cracks and vines slithering along the walls as though it was early dawn even though it should've been midnight.
However, the world now had two moons. Or one and a half. The moon the invaders came with was never full and never left the sky even during the day. They also brought another million stars with them. Enough stars to burn the darkness out of Earth's nights.
Ekenin didn't hope there'd be a bed inside the shack. He doubted that he'd use the bed if ever there was one. Enough rain had poured that day to soak any bed all year long and with a roof caved in like that, the bed would be a torture.
A frog croaked and a cricket chirped deep in the forest. Once both of them. Once and then silence. Ekenin shuddered.
"We camp here tonight, Agin," Ekenin said, keeping his voice steady and loud enough for the twenty horsemen behind him. "Sleep close to your horses and with your swords half drawn. We may need to rise at a moment's notice."
Agin stood at attention, clasped his right hand across his chest, and bowed. "Yes, my king," he said, bowing. He turned his horse with the graceful efficiency of an old killer. His motions were methodical and lacked any excessiveness. "Guards of the king, dismount!"
The twenty men dismounted with practised uniformity. Their feet thudded with the harmony of a timed clap. Two men handed their horses over to a nearby soldier, threw their dark hoods on, and slinked into the surrounding forest like enchanted shadows to scout for incoming enemies. Ekenin was tempted to tell the men off; their new enemy would kill them before they saw it. But as king, Ekenin had learnt that men liked to have roles and purpose regardless of how futile the effort was, so he let the men pretend that they could save him or themselves from the Emis.
Ekenin urged Henise a few steps closer to the shack before dismounting. Agin stood by his side, a good head shorter than his king, but a thousand times more dangerous. Yet, for all the skill and strength Agin possessed he was a plaything where the Emis were concerned. Anyone of them would burn through him like fire in a dry goods store. Or perhaps, freeze him to ice. Ekenin had seen a man freeze to rock and then explode into small solid chunks of frozen red meat. The man's name was Ferevor, his bookkeeper.
A shudder gripped Ekenin's spine at the thought. He sighed and massaged his temples, missing the soft hands of the palace maids.
"Why do we run, Agin?" he asked, handing Henise's rein to Agin. "A dead king is better than a fleeing king."
"There's no such thing as a dead king. Who would you rule over, the dead? A dead king is like any other man, only dead. He is not better than anybody." Agin ground his teeth and inhaled sharply. "You blame yourself for what happened, don't you?"
"Not without good cause, Agin. I was drunk the night our enemies came."
Someone started a campfire and Ekenin began walking toward it. He hadn't realised how cold he was until he saw the bright yellow flames dancing off the burning twigs and branches. His fingers grew colder as he neared the fire.
A soldier with hard blue eyes and a dark cloak approached Agin and took Henise's rein without a word.
"If you'd organized the army we'd all be dead now. I hate to admit it, King Ekenin, but we're still alive because you were too drunk to organize the army."
Ekenin sat on a log by the fire and stretched his hands outward toward the warm glow of the crackling fire. He chuckled. Three days ago, he had a marble hearth roaring with enough fire to melt a brass monkey in his throne room, now having a small fire in an open soden night was a miracle he'd kiss a pig's ass for.
"I saw them move, Agin. They had no body even if they had the shapes of men... and their voices... Agin..." Ekenin swallowed, hard. "They smell like death would smell and they make my hairs stand on their ends. They make a king feel very puny indeed, Agin. Such immeasurable power. I felt like a fragile child in the path of a circus bull."
Agin put his sword on the log beside him. He glanced around with furtiveness and purpose. The men had set up three other fires and sat hurdled about them. Their swords and horses were within arm's reach. Agin nodded in satisfaction.
"The men and villages we passed through whisper superstitions, Your Majesty." He paused. Agin loathed superstitions. He had a bookkeeper's love for cold hard facts and numbers.
"Speak, Agin el'Amadar," Ekenin said with a grunt, clenching his fist beside him. "Bones and iron, speak already."
Agin smiled. "A king should not curse."
Ekenin snorted. "Do you see a fancy gold crown on my head?"
"The crown does not make a king. But," sensing Ekenin's growing impatience, Agin rushed on, "the people say that the Emis were sent by the Endless. That they are here because of our sins. The sins of our fathers--"
"It's never made sense to me why a son should bear the sins of his father, don't you think?"
Agin furrowed his thick brows at the sudden change in topic. But as Ekenin suspected, the man would never pass the chance to argue philosophy.
"It makes sense, my king. After all, the son is a consequence of his father's action."
"Or inaction if he allows another man to mount his woman," Ekenin added, thoughtfully. "The astrologers mentioned something about a new star sighting. They said that it was as big as our world itself and looked quite the same. Not that I would have done anything, Agin. I am a king, not an Endless. How am I to attack a star? I doubt the old world knew how to attack a star either. But they said the star was not there a day before and then it was there the next day."
Agin bent took a twig and threw it into the crackling fire. His features were as hard as ice, but Ekenin thought he could see a twinkle of uncertainty and fear in those black eyes.
"Stars don't suddenly appear, Agin. They move slowly. I don't think it's a star they saw."
Agin nodded.
King and his guard fell into mutual silence after that. They were both hungry, having finished the last dried meat earlier that day. But they sat with the stillness of a rock and watched the crackling fire as it danced and shot sparks into the night.
Something is wrong, Ekenin thought.
Two gutturals screams broke in the distant night and forest.
-
When Ekenin was just a boy, about eight or nine years old, his father began taking him to executions. Partly because Ekenin was the prince-heir and partly because his father had hoped that Ekenin would share his appetite for watching men get torn apart from limb to limb by six plowhorses. His father enjoyed the horror screams, but Ekenin did not. And while Ekenin no longer had dreams of human arms tearing from shoulders and white bone sticking out from bleeding flesh, he couldn't quite forget the screams of a man in pain.
-
The two guttural screams ended with an ominous abruptness. Agin's face grew dark as he reached for his sword.
The air grew still and heavy and difficult to inhale. A putrid and sweet pungent stink permeated the wind. Ekenin stiffened as his hair stood on its end. His eyes widened in their sockets. The king's jaws lost their grip. He clenched his fist and squeezed tight to stop the trembling.
Suddenly, one of the soldiers sitting at a fire burst into blinding white flames and winked out of existence a second later. Another man jumped to his feet and threw himself to the ground. He writhed on the floor like a salted worm and howled in pain before his skin burst into white flames - another man followed, and yet another. One of the men drew his sword and buried it into the neck of his companion, he laughed and chopped his head off. The body took two staggering steps forward, its headless neck spurting blood like a geyser, and crumpled down in a heap.
The horses neighed and reared with fright. They broke free and galloped away into the night. Henise didn't move. He was either well-trained or too stupid to have any fear.
Agin rose and drew his weapon.
Ekenin laughed. "I've never seen a man take his own head, Agin. Shouldn't that have been physically impossible?"
What was left of the men formed a circle around Ekenin. The blades of their drawn swords gleamed in the moonlights like white stalactites.
Agin looked at Ekenin. Despite his hardened features, his face betrayed his thoughts.
Ekenin shrugged and chuckled.
"There!" one of the men yelled, pointing at the sky.
White clouds churned above them like a tornado on a broiling sea and a pillar of lightning and lies formed before them.
One of the men broke into a delirious scream, fell to his knees, he spat something dark and bloody out - his tongue. Agin drew his sword and put the screaming man out of his misery with a strike to the heart.
The tornado ceased and in its place stood two giant human forms. One of the forms looked like strands of lightning trapped in a glass while the other was a form of voices and lies.
Neither of them had flesh or bones. They both stood three heads taller than Ekenin, and Ekenin was considered tall among his peers.
"That wasn't necessary now, was it, brother?" the body of lightning said to the body of voices and lies.
"What to do, Sango? They die too easily. And... they're rather disappointing too. It's hard to believe that these are the same people who called to us a mere two hundred years ago."
Agin held his blade up and took a defensive stance, but Ekenin brushed past him.
"Ekenin! What are you doing?" Agin cried out in horror.
Ekenin halted, turned around slowly, and smiled at Agin. "This is a battle of kings, old friend." He pushed through the wall of guards and stopped some six feet away from the two Emis.
Ekenin thought that he could hear the men's ragged breathing behind him. Their knuckles were white around their swords and their poses were as stiff as cooled wax. Here, death was accepted, not welcome.
The Emi of voices and lies took one step forward and halved the distance between itself and Ekenin in that one move. Ekenin could hear a million and one lies, a thousand and one manipulations, a hundred deceits, and ten different madness. The earth under the Emi's feet groaned and shifted as though to flee.
"You're not mad yet," the Emi said, chuckling mischievously. They put what appeared to be a finger to where their chin should be. "Maybe there is still hope for your kind. Maybe."
"Esu, do not harm the human," Sango, the lightning Emi, said. "He may yet serve a purpose in saving this world."
Esu didn't seem entirely pleased, although he had no face to show his displeasure with. "Very well, brother. Very well." He chuckled and returned to Sango's side.
But Ekenin thought he heard a hint of impatience and desperation in Sango's voice. If they were willing to talk to him, maybe they needed him. Maybe he wouldn't die like a man drawn by six plowhorses.
Sango stepped forward. Lightning and fire humming within its form. Ekenin winced at the heat; it felt as though he'd brought his face too close to a blacksmith's forge.
"I have questions," Ekenin said, dryly. "Who are you? What are you doing in our world? What do you want?"
"Your people call us Emis. Let us keep it at that. We are visitors to your world..."
Indignation filled Ekenin as though a part of him remembered that he was supposed to be a king. Rage seeped into his voice like mercury into a mad hatter's skin. "Seeing as my army is gone and I am on the run, I'll say you're invaders rather than visitors."
Sango snorted. Esu hissed behind him.
"Let me at him, Sango. Let me show him the futility of his existence."
"No, brother," Sango half-snapped. "As for you, human king, I'd choose my words carefully if I were you. My brother may listen to me now, but if you provoke him, he will kill you before I can react and no fighting him will bring you back from Isaoku."
"You will not speak to the king so!" one of the soldiers roared behind Ekenin. "For the king!"
Time dulled and slowed as Ekenin turned around to see his men charging to their deaths. Agin looked lost trying to control them.
Esu laughed. "Here they come! How they run!" He laughed again. This time with the cruelty of a farmer about to torch an anthill.
Two soldiers charged at Sango and plunged their swords into his body but they began to convulse violently as soon as they did. Their hair caught fire, their skin withered, blackened, smoked, and oozed a nauseating odour. Those who touched Esu simply went mad with pain, fear or laughter. Eventually, only Agin and Ekenin remained.
Esu laughed louder. Like Ekenin's father, he had a taste for the screams of dying men. Something told Ekenin that Esu had something to do with his men charging blindly. They were trained soldiers, not delusional cult members.
Sango stood before Ekenin and leaned over. "The only way you survive this is if you form a pact with us. Then you get to keep your life and throne."
Ekenin forced himself to swallow the bitter metallic taste forming in his mouth. "What pact?"
Esu came forward. "One in which we possess your bodies and steal your free will."
A bitter scoff escaped Ekenin. "I might as well join the men you drove to madness."
"Listen to me, human king," Sango said, crackling with energy. "we will dwell in your soul and give you our powers. You become better and stronger because of us."
"What's in it for you?" Agin asked, suspicion heavy in his voice. "Why not just wipe us all out? Unless you're dying as well."
"Nothing," said Esu, laughing wickedly. "Absolutely nothing is in it for us."
Sango spoke up again, "We dwell in your body as a symbiote, but the more you use our powers, the more you yield control to us."
"Until eventually you're in control of our body," Ekenin said, scoffing. "And if we say no? As Agin said, you're doing this because your future depends on it too."
Sango straightened and appeared to shine even brighter. "If you don't take this offer, we will destroy your world. We have enough time to wipe you out before the last of us fades out."
Ekenin exchanged looks with Agin and looked back at Sango. "Fine," he said, gulping hard. "We will be your vessel and you will be our essence."
