Elora Pt. 1: The People of Magic

Europe, Early Eighteenth Century

The haggard looking man walked to the end of the street, just outside of the town. Walked would be being too generous, his movement could be best described as a shuffling. It was a late May afternoon, the sun dipping slowly towards the horizon, like it did every day. He looked intently at the sun, shielding his eyes with one hand and extending the other towards it. He flattened his fingers, and approximated the distance of the sun's bottom edge from the horizon in units of his fingers. Six fingers away. The age-old technique of approximation told him there was still about an hour and half left before it turned dark. He had to make it quick. If he couldn’t make it out of town tonight, there would be another day’s wait, and he couldn’t afford that. The people of the town had started talking about him, and soon, they would realize that he was up to no good. The disguise of a homeless invalid refugee was good, but only for a finite amount of time.

The look of being homeless was not really a disguise for Benedict, wandering the towns had become the way of life for him. He did have a home, but he had no desire of ever returning to that place ever again. In fact, he wondered if he could go back even if he wanted to. Afterall, he was made to flee the place for his life about five years earlier, and he had no intention to find out if there was anyone still waiting for him. Being a nomad, a pickpocket and a filthy repulsive human being was what his life had boiled down to. Though it hadn’t been like that since the beginning.

Benedict’s family had been slavic, and they were rich, owning a good share of fertile land in northern Europe which had brought them riches for many generations. They had been peaceful farmers all along, and Benedict, though being born to riches, was very much accustomed to hard labor. Although, being peaceful and unoppressive to anyone doesn't guarantee a life without conflict.

When Benedict was seventeen, a land demarcation dispute reared its ugly head between his family and their neighboring farmland. The ensuing conflict lasted for a year before turning into a full on feud and ultimately to a land war. If there’s any case of the world turning against you overnight, this was it. Things had turned from mildly annoying to insufferably distressing in the span of a single planting season. Then one night, they came. The four men were obviously goons hired by the other ones and were armed with heavy blades, rifles and other forms of delivering quick, painful death and gruesome injuries in general. They demanded the land be cleared by the next dawn, claiming that the ownership was forged and counterfeit. In reality, all of this had happened because someone decided that a single family owning that much fertile land was not good for society in general. And when a simple legal forgery had not made them give up their place, they had resorted to violence. When Benedict’s grandfather — who still had an air of command about him — tried to intervene, it turned out to be the last straw.

Guns blazed, blades swung, and the man was struck dead before another word was uttered. It was pretty much clear at this point that they had no intention of waiting till morning, and giving Benedict and his family a chance to leave in peace. They were here to kill every last one of them. Benedict saw it all from the balcony on the first floor. Terror and grief stricken, he did the only thing that made sense to him. Grabbing hold of his mother, he ran. The men had already captured his father, and were in the midst of tearing out his entrails, with gleeful enthusiasm, it seemed.

He got on the first horse with a saddle he saw in the stables, pulling his mother along onto it. She was visibly in shock and was completely incapable of disagreeing with anything that he did. She wasn’t even sobbing, her face seemed to be set in stone. The men followed on foot, and among the gunfire, the hooves of the animal carrying them trotted on the ground almost soundlessly. He thought himself to be lucky when not a single bullet hit the horse, and it continued to run.

Once the sounds of the men and their weapons had died down enough, he wanted to stop. But he knew that that would be a mistake, probably the last one he could make. Even on as dark a night as this one, standing still in a flat land on top of a grey horse was nothing but suicide. He urged the horse forward, riding another few miles or so until he reached the edge of the woods.

“Mother,” he said softly, when she didn’t let go of him a few moments after they had stopped. There was no response from her. “Mother,” he said again, turning a little towards her. Her arms slacked around his waist a little, and then she fell clean off from the horse to the land below. “Mother,” Benedict screamed, his eyes going wide in fright. He jumped down from the animal and kneeled before her, clutching her to him, trying to figure out what was wrong. The wet stickiness hit him like an ax to his stomach. The woman’s back was covered in blood, she had been dead for a while, maybe more than ten minutes, holding onto him only because the muscles in her hand had locked in position. Luck wasn’t really with him after all. Or in a dark twisted way, the luck was indeed there, only to turn the poor woman into a human shield that had saved him from the bullets that would have otherwise been buried in his flesh.

As much as he wanted to just sit there and grieve, he didn’t really have a choice now. They would be following him, and if they found out, he would be no better than his mother soon. And then his mother’s death would be in vain. As lucrative as the prospect of giving in and ending it all at once was to him at that moment, the instinct for survival won out in the end that night. With enough effort that threatened to wrench his soul out of his body, he left his mother’s still warm corpse behind, climbed onto the horse and rode off into the night, never to look back, embarking on a life he had no hopes for.

Of course, reminiscing about the past wasn’t going to solve anything. Benedict stood up from the green patch of grass he was sitting on. He wrapped the thick wool shawl around his shoulders a little more tightly, and walked back into town. He didn’t remember now where he had stolen the shawl from, but it was a very handy piece of clothing. The material was thick wool, pressed into a dense yet light cloth. It gave him warmth on cold nights, and it was a really effective cover when it came to shoplifting and pickpocketing. He had even turned in a corner and tied it with a string to make a hidden pocket.

Traveling from town to town and living his life on the road was now as natural a thing for him as the seasons of the year and the cycle of day and night. He had almost perfected the art of walking with a limp, and being generally invisible in plain sight. Nobody wanted to look at him, nobody wanted to talk to him, nobody wanted to have anything to do with him. They simply ignored him unless he were to stumble on someone on purpose, which he never did. This suited him especially well, since with a practiced and swift sleight of hand, he could lift away edibles from almost any roadside seller, provided it was small enough to fit in his shawl without creating a bulge, which it usually was.

He waited for the evening market to set in, when the streets would be bustling with people, before everyone turned in for the night. He wandered the streets, taking care to stay away from the wide ones and focusing instead on the darker, narrower alleys. By the time the sun had fully set, he had scored four apples, two loaves of bread, a small bag of mixed nuts, some bananas and a bundle of dried meat slices. Quite enough for a couple days on the road. Water was easy to get by when you practically lived on the streets. He was almost spotted a couple times, but the recent years had taught him to be aware of his immediate surroundings at all times. These days, the sense of his immediate surroundings was freakish, some might even wonder if he had a pair of eyes hiding away below the mottled hair on his head. And that proved handy, as he knew all too well when someone might be looking in his direction.

The dirt road leading out of the town also led him further east, the direction Benedict had been traveling for some months now. It was mostly a whimsical decision to travel east. He didn’t know how long his weakened body would keep driving his legs, so he just continued to travel, one day at a time, towards a place he couldn’t picture in his mind even if he wanted to.

The moon was overhead, casting its dull silvery glow onto everything around him, turning them into shapeless blobs, blending in together, forming shapes and patterns like only the moonlight can — a dull charcoal painting of a plain, spotted with dark blobs of trees and a silvery trail passing through. Benedict had found this trail leading east by chance when he had left the town behind, and took it instinctively since it was cleaner and easier to follow than the grassland around. It didn’t hurt that it was more or less a straight line.

The path soon led him into a rather dense grove of trees. Skeptical, but believing that it would also lead him out — hopefully on the other side — he kept walking. The increased darkness made following the path difficult, but he slowed his pace and kept putting one foot in front of the other nonetheless. He had a plan for complete darkness too. There was flint and some oil in a leather pouch inside his shawl, and he could light a fire, or a torch. But survival warranted a bit of forced hardship to save up on resources for the truly worst time.

A metallic glint caught his peripheral vision to the right. He turned in that direction, but couldn’t see anything. He was sure that he had seen something shiny though, so he took a few steps back and walked forward slowly, keeping his eyes focused in the general direction he believed the light came from. Sure enough, there it was again, a dull blue glow coming from between two tree stump shaped objects. Even from this distance, and the trees around the spot, he could tell that the things were not mere tree stumps. Curiosity flared in him, but he decided to be cautious.

He kneeled down, and took out the oil pouch. After gathering enough grass and some small sticks from the forest floor, he wrapped them around a larger branch. After just a few strikes of the flint he had a glowing torch. He walked carefully towards the spot, and soon discovered that the two halves were made of stone. Together they would have formed an elongated capsule-like shape a little taller than his height. Though it was completely out of his understanding why or how someone would put this thing in a place like this. Between the two halves of stone, there was something that looked like a piece of glass. Upon closer inspection, he found that it was faceted, like a gemstone.

‘Well, hello!’ Benedict thought out loud, with a smile on his face. A real gemstone, one that glinted as spectacularly as this one in the moonlight was definitely a great find. If he was smart about it, he could very well sell it for a small fortune. That would solve his immediate needs. Or he could just keep it with him as a nice souvenir to look at while he took his last breath, whenever the time came. And yet, he stopped himself from thinking too far. He still looked like a complete nomad. If he were to try selling it anywhere, he would be handed over to the authorities and his lucky find would be confiscated.

Putting all of those thoughts aside, he put his hand in between the two stone halves, but was unable to reach it. He tried a few times with the same result. Then an idea struck him. He picked another piece of branch from the ground around his feet, and put that in between the stones. The branch hit the shining piece of gem and dislodged it. Benedict feared it might fall deeper, so he was careful to reach it only from below and not from the side.

After a few tries, the gem came loose from its place and rolled along the stick and onto the ground. Benedict dropped the stick immediately and turned around with the torch to not miss where it went. He soon found it a few feet behind him. He bent down to pick it up. He noticed without much thought that the grass it had landed on was completely black, as if burnt. He inspected the gemstone between his fingers, admiring the gentle blue glow it emitted in the moonlight.

All of a sudden a sharp pain shot through his arm as if he had plunged his hand into an angry hornets’ nest. Thousands of little needles seemed to prick his hand from every direction. His reflexes wanted him to drop the item immediately, but he found that his fingers on that hand of his were not responding to the commands of his brain. The torch fell from his other hand, as a scream escaped his mouth. The searing pain was climbing slowly up his arm and in the yellow glow from the torch, he witnessed the terrifying vision of his arm turning black. Inch after inch, the skin took on a charcoal like shade. His body couldn’t decide when to breathe and when to use that air in his lungs to expel another scream. The moonlit world around him was turning darker as his vision blurred from the unbearable pain that threatened to drive him mad.

Instinctively, he reached with his other hand to pull out the gem from the other and drop to the ground. As soon as his hands touched together, the already blackened hand broke off from his arm. It seemed whatever was happening to his body was turning his flesh into a dark pile of dust. The shock momentarily lifted the pain and his scream was caught in his throat. He stumbled forward, retching violently. He fell on top of the dark charcoal-like mass that was once his hand. Unfortunately, this also meant that his chest was directly on top of the gemstone.

The moment it touched his partly bare chest, it did what it had done to his arm. Freezing and burning at the same time, turning his flesh into a black glassy mass as well. His chest, his ribs and then his heart, all turned black, brittle, crumbling mass. His head was alive till the end, hearing the cracking of his chest as the live flesh of his lungs tried to breathe in and collided with the already frozen part. And then everything disappeared from his vision.

He had thought the glittering piece of stone would be his souvenir in death, and even that was something the gem had decided not to grant him.

London, Late December, Present Day

Kavya closed the old book that she was reading and took a deep breath in. It was probably the tenth time she had read the verbally graphic tale of Benedict the homeless from the many ancient works of literature in this library. She liked this place, being surrounded by ancient books on every kind of subject and sections which were dedicated to the historical records and stories of the mystic arts. Of course this story was heavily embellished with a lot of imagination thrown in for extra effect, because nobody had truly written a first-hand account of what the gem truly was or its true origins. All the literature available regarding the gem of marzanna was in the works like this. And even though she had read through all of them at least twice by now, it sent chills through her every time she opened one of them.

“You look rather adorable sitting with your legs crossed surrounded by ancient spellbooks, you know that, don’t you?” The deep voice made Kavya jump and she turned around to find Damion standing there in the doorway, looking at her. He had a lopsided grin on his face, which — though she found attractive — would never compliment on.

“First off, they’re not spellbooks, they’re stories of the gem, why do you keep calling them spellbooks?” She stood up from the rug she was sitting on, lifting a few books along with her. “And second, don’t you have to be somewhere?”

“David is nowhere to be found. That leaves only you who can help me get there.” Damion said sheepishly.

Kavya rolled her eyes, placing the last book in her hand on the shelf, and picking a few more. “I’m busy, go away, look carefully, you’ll find him. Or ask the spirit of one of your dead detectives to help you find him for you.” She said, teasing him on his ability to talk with spirits and beings of the underworld in general, although with a mischievous smile.

“Oh come on,” Damion said, dragging on the last syllable like a child.

“You’re insufferable. Come stand here.” Kavya said, putting the last of the books on the shelf. She spread her arms out a little, her necklace glinting slightly. Damion walked to her and stood a few feet in front of her. The library walls glowed with patterns like those on soap bubbles in sunlight. For Damion, the effect was as if the walls around were dissolving. Soon everything turned white for a split second before he found himself in the house in Norway, where he was to conduct an exorcism.

Damion always preferred the way Kavya teleported people than the way David did. His charm caused everything to spin very fast around him, which left him disoriented and nauseous. Kavya on the other hand had a more gentle charm, soap bubbles and rainbow colors. The experience, overall, was a lot less jarring with her way. He wondered if she knew that he found her unbearably attractive, with her wheatish skin and jet black hair. Damion smirked when he exited the gateway.

“Damion,” He turned around to see Kavya looking at him through a small window that looked like a bubble. “Be careful.” She said, the window shrank, and then disappeared completely.

Once done with Damion, Kavya looked around the library a bit more, trying to find something she hadn’t read already, though the number of books which fell into that category was dwindling every day. For the two years she had been here in this mansion, there wasn’t a single day when she hadn’t spent at least four hours in the library. Every other member of this little mystical society was free to access any reading material here, but she was the only one who took full benefit of that. She knew almost everything there was to know about the society she was part of, the Returners. She knew a lot about the mystic arts, even though her only proficiency was in teleportation, a skill that she was still learning to control fully. She was good with teleporting herself and one person along, but anything more than that, she risked leaving them stranded where they began, or worse, leaving them somewhere in between. Fortunately that had never happened.

She knew everything there was to know about the gem of marzanna too, the slavic gemstone of winter and chill. It contained within it the very essence of winter, if the literature was anything to go by. She knew it followed an awakening cycle of three hundred years, and this was the year of another awakening. She knew what to expect during an awakening. There would be a chosen one — a human picked at random from anywhere in the world, but never a sorcerer like herself — who would be immune to the devastating powers of the gem, and would be able to wield its power as well if they wanted to. If the chosen one were to forfeit his claim on the stone, it would fall back into another three hundred year long slumber, and the cycle would repeat. And if they chose to wield it, the gem would stay awake and accompany them until their ultimate death before the cycle started again.

The chosen one would have visions, would innately gain knowledge of the stone, and would be drawn without choice towards it. Much like falling in love but later realizing it's nothing but a toxic relationship, Kavya thought with a smirk. All of that would happen even before the stone had fully awakened. And gradually, the bond between the stone and the chosen one would deepen. And once the stone had awakened fully, the chosen one would be able to interact with it in all the ways possible.

Kavya knew all of that. And she also knew that it was a time of rather great unsettlement among the Returners. They were after all the only ones who could guide the chosen one, and make them not use the gem to bring about any untoward effects in the world. It was their self-imposed duty to keep track of who the chosen one was, what they were like, and to keep them away from the stone if it was found that they were not a good enough fit for the stone or if they had ulterior motives of any kind.

Still, Kavya suffered from what might be called the curse of knowledge. The more she learned about it, and the effects it had on the things around it, the more terrified she became of the gemstone. She couldn’t decide what to feel about being born at a time that would have her experience first hand an awakening in her lifetime. She couldn’t even decide if being a sorcerer by birth was something good or not.

‘Kavya, come upstairs, we have all arrived.’ The gentle feminine voice of Elora sounded in her mind. She was never going to get used to that woman. Elora was one of the Returners, a telepath, being able to communicate with anyone anywhere in the world instantly with only her thoughts. It was an impressive skill, but it made Kavya uncomfortable around her. Elora knew what Kavya thought of her. She had told her and tried to assure her multiple times that the kind of telepathy that she could do only allowed her to broadcast and receive thoughts and it didn’t let her consciously read another person’s thoughts. Yet, Kavya wasn’t convinced. She had read extensively on telepathy too — like she had done on most other kinds of mystic arts that the Returners practiced — and she didn’t like what she read. And that made her a bit uncomfortable around her. She couldn’t figure out how everyone else was so trusting of her with the possibility that someday things might change, and she could read all about every one of them just like an open book.

‘I’m coming, are you all in the hall?’ She thought back, knowing Elora could listen, and started climbing the steps.

‘Yes.’ Came a reply almost instantly.

Kavya reached the hall to find almost all of the people who were part of the Returners there. Arsoz was there, the eldest of them all at seventy-seven years of age. Kavya regarded him the most. Aa a matter of fact, everyone regarded him the most. Arsoz descended from the bloodline of the founders of Returners. They possessed the same ability throughout their generations — borrowing any other sorcerer’s ability temporarily, and figuring out what trait any particular sorcerer possessed, even when the sorcerer themselves had no notion of it. Of course, it helped that he had an imposing aura about him as well.

There was Elora, of course, with her white outfit. She always wore a white outfit, the style may change, but the color never did. She had chosen this day a sundress that made her look younger than she was, her platinum bracelet glinting on her right wrist. David was there too, having teleported everyone else here, his alexandrite ring changing color to a dormant green as they spoke. Sofia was to the very right, her face beaming with a smile. Kavya found her very intriguing. Ability to control water — something that appeared gentle but had the power to cut through mountains if she so chose. She had specifically learned sign language to talk to Sofia since she couldn’t hear or speak. Although she claimed she could sense vibrations and make out what someone was saying if there was even a slight bit of moisture in the air. That left only Natasha, who was gone to run some errands and get the groceries. Elora had already talked to her, and she would be back soon.

All of them had come back from David’s new house in Australia. Kavya had seen it before, and so had Damion, both having helped him with some things over the past three months. David had decided to postpone the housewarming party until after the awakening of the gem had passed, but he agreed that everyone should see it at least once before then.

“Has Damion already left.” David asked.

“Yes, apparently he didn’t know that you were out too.” She replied.

“Let’s hope he gets the work done quick enough and is ready to come back.” Arsoz said, his voice a little coarse. “I see you have been reading about the gemstone again.” He added with a warm smile. It took Kavya by surprise. She sometimes wondered if Arsoz secretly possessed the power to read minds and actions as well. Of course Elora could have told him that she was in the library, she could locate her. But she had closed and replaced the books by that time. So how did he — “You forgot to put the pin back in the cover of that book, it’s tangled in your kurti.” Arsoz clarified, probably noticing the unease on her face.

Kavya sighed with a chuckle. Arsoz’s eerie observation frightened her a little once more. “I’ll put it back,” she said, turning around. Arsoz stopped him.

“Don’t bother right now, we have to talk about the awakening, Elora has found some things that need our attention. Let’s settle in. And Sofia,” he turned to her, ‘could you please get me some tea for my throat.’ he gestured at her. Sofia nodded and walked into the kitchen.

Elora spoke first. “I found out the location of the awakening. It is somewhere in northern Siberia, although I can’t be too precise right now. For all I know right now, it could be anywhere in Siberia, even out in the Kara sea. I am still trying to attach my thoughts to the gem’s frequency, but it is not so prominent yet. So I don’t yet know who or where the chosen one may be. But there’s something else that needs to be taken care of.”

“What is it?” Kavya asked. Sofia came in with the tea, and put it on the table beside the recliner Arsoz was sitting on, his hands clenched together, his thumbs on the chin, he was listening with his eyes closed. It reminded Kavya of the intriguing Sherlock’s stories she used to read when she was little.

“I have been sensing another strong thought line. It is not linked to the gem’s frequency, but I am pretty sure this person knows about the stone and they are actively looking for it, and apparently they know that this is the year of the awakening. There is nothing to indicate what their intention is if they acquire the gem, but it is clear that they are very strongly motivated.”

“But even if they find it, how would they use it?” Kavya chimed in, she was the youngest among them, but when it came to asking questions, she never shied away. “From all that I have read about the gem, if it comes into contact with anything, it would freeze and disintegrate whatever is trying to hold it.”

“Wrong, it would freeze and disintegrate any living or organic thing that comes into contact with it. You can safely hold it with a pair of pliers or even a metal glove and you’ll be fine. Although if the pliers were covered in oil or something that would be a different story.” David added, Kavya nodded in understanding, but her questioning expression remained as it was.

“But that still doesn’t explain how someone could wield it, considering they want to do so. I mean, the literature clearly says that it needs a kind of conversation with the stone to make it do something. And I don’t think it listens to anyone but the chosen one. It is sentient, right?”

“Those stories are written by sorcerers, yes, but they were written at least a couple hundred years ago. They didn’t have any way to experiment or prove any of these facts back then, did they?” Elora said. “There still might be things we don’t understand. Maybe Arsoz can give us further insight.”

“The gem is sentient, Kavya is right about that.” Arsoz spoke upon being actively made part of the conversation. He unclasped his finger, but didn’t open his eyes, “But to make it do something requires not a conversation but intent. A very strong, focused intention to do something that falls under its abilities has the potential to trigger it.” He opened his eyes then, looking at all of them. He saw the slight confusion on all of their faces, most prominently on the young and curious Kavya’s face. He lifted the cup and took a slow sip from it, smiling, liking the taste.

“What I am trying to say is, anyone of you — if you so chose — could wield its ability. Although it would tax you immensely, and may even prove fatal. Of course, all of this is speculation. My forefathers understood this but they never tried something like that. If there really is someone who is intent on finding the gem, and using it, there’s a pretty good chance that they too understand the risks.” Arsoz paused to take another sip. “And even after all that, if they are not stopping now, we may need to try harder to find them and the gem before they find it.”

“Damion says he’s ready to return.” Elora said suddenly, then turned to Kavya. “You sent him there, right? You know exactly where he is, open the gateway.”

Kavya did and Damion stepped into the hall. He was sweating a little. “Are you okay?” She asked.

“Yeah I am fine. It was a pesky spirit. I saved the boy though.” He said, then he noticed everyone else. “Arsoz!” He said, nodding to the wizened sorcerer. “There was something else too. This spirit, it gave me something that I didn’t understand. A note. The bloody thing threatened to burn the boy’s eyes off. I had to let him write it. Maybe you can help with what this really means.”

“Go ahead,” Arsoz said.

Damion handed him a note from his pocket. It was a little crumpled from being in a jeans pocket. Arsoz took it from him and opened it. There was a small sentence on it. Arsoz read it, and his brows furrowed. His finger tightened on the arm rest of the chair he was sitting on.

“Everybody, leave. I need to think about this a little.” Arsoz said.

“What is it?” Kavya asked.

“Leave. Now.”