The King's Challenge #255 and #256

TKC 255 and 256

A rustle in the low foliage has me swivelling my eyes without moving my body. If someone is there, it will not do to warn of my awareness.

I realise Damn is entirely focused on Iniri, while my sister has bent her full will and being to Damin. They hear nothing. I hope they at least hear each other.

Removing their words and presence from my conscious thoughts, I send questing tendrils out.

Someone is definitely hiding in the undergrowth, and that someone is listening carefully.

Unmoving, I wait for the action that will herald mine, and give thought to how it is the Warrior gene I was born with enabling this kind of focus. Truthfully, though, the overriding impetus comes at the behest of the orb.

How is a green orb given to me by my father under a blue dome in a place far away not only in space, but time also, able to confer such abilities? How has it been with me since? Most pertinently, however, how is Iniri the embodiment of an orb?

Here is the story, strange as it is.

On the day my father placed the glowing item into my palm, was also the day Iniri Makar received the Greater Talents.

Know this; Ilfin are born original and each receives a ‘gift’ in that originality. This is true to this day. Any Ilfin born on Makaran is original in body and soul. The concept of souls being born new is beyond my ability to explain, and yet it is. It happens all the time, although with less frequency as time marches on. There may be other races out there that also receive original souls for born bodies, but I know only of the Ilfin. We are the reason the Glonu seek to enslave us. They desire by conquer to have what we receive naturally.

Thus, on that day under the dome, Iniri and I kneeled before my father as new souls seeking destiny, the path into the long future. We understood we were on the cusp of a different kind of longevity. Every moment of our childhood had brought us to that point. Every day we were prepared for the event. It is the Ilfin way.

It is about binding. Souls need support. They do not need it to live; they require it in order to act. Act. Without a binding, a soul may become complacent, happily inhabiting a vessel without ever making itself known. In a binding, a pull and push is engendered, and thus the souls need to do something … or a soul is subjugated. One can say a complacent soul is by nature subjugate, and yet that is a choice and therefore it is not subservience. A linked soul, on the other hand, will be a servant to the other unless it chooses to act.

My father is a master of links. It is the reason he has ruled Makaran long. Few Ilfin are able to link souls for the purpose of action, and thus they come to my father. The reasons, though, for the need to link are complicated and perhaps a tale for another time.

We kneeled and my father bade us clasp hands. Placing his around ours, he held us together and whispered words over us. Lightning bolts raced through our veins.

I admit, I was in awe of my father that day.

He withdrew a part of Iniri’s essence and joined it to mine, thereby creating a tangible object. The Orb. The orb is our link. The reason he did so was to free us onto separate paths. Iniri could thus go her way and I mine; we did not require proximity to maintain the need to act or be as less.

We went our separate ways thereafter, but understood, on the day our mission becomes action to exactly the same end, the orb would be absorbed. We would be together. She is again the orb.

Iniri, after all, has all the Greater Talents … and only now do I understand the gift was our father’s. He possesses the Greater Talents also and, on that day under the dome, he linked not only Iniri and Enris Makar; he linked us to him.

Closing my eyes, I understand, far away, on Makaran, our father is aware of exactly what transpires here on Massin.

The Greater Talents …

… I hurtle up, sword drawn, lips pulled back.

Our hidden assailant has decided it is time to act.