Aftermath

This chapter required me running from one story to another, to another. It was nice to write and to bring things together but I'm kind of afraid that I might have messed up on the information and it'll be one of you guys who catches it.

Ayan's acting a bit... odd. Even knowing the little thing in there with the whole... yeah... I know how Ayan should act and he's acting odd. I mean, for starters, he wouldn't be talking off the ear of some stranger.

I can just picture the confused, possibly bemused look on Lel's face when Durth asks how someone can kill a person without actually killing a person...

Anywho

Read, Review and Enjoy.





Durth rubbed the side of his head and groaned. Two days later and his head still hurt like an army was doing a quick drum beat and march through it every hour or so. Ayato didn’t show his face and Raya seemed intent on staying out of sight. Ayan was his constant companion as Una did a little ‘tending,’ whatever in the hells that actually meant.

Ayan nattered constantly, as in all the time. It seemed the young man had suddenly gained the ability to talk non-stop and suddenly lost the need to breath. Ayan talked about his family and the forest and his clothing and his lessons and wasn’t this so nifty?

Durth blinked at Ayan’s outstretched hand. A giant butterfly had landed in the palm of his hand, coloured black and white, its wings moved just slightly.

“Father taught me how to catch butterflies last week!”

“That’s interesting-” Durth caught a thought and realised why that was such an odd comment, “last week?”

“Uh huh, he said that since brother was away, that I should learn things that would be useful in this village. So he taught me to track and to climb the binta trees and how to tell a vine from a creature,” Ayan nodded.

“Last. Week.”

“Yeah.”

“Your father wasn’t with the troupe last week.”

Ayan went a funny colour. A pale gray sort of colour, “oh. Right. Well you see-”

“You aren’t Ayan, are you?”

“I am too Ayan, I was born Ayan and I will die Ayan,” the young man snapped, causing the butterfly to take flight, “oh, damn it. That butterfly is worth fourteen ears of corn back in the village. That’s enough to feed my family for a week!”

“Then if you’re Ayan, who was travelling with me and Una?” Durth growled.

Ayan hesitated, then cringed just slightly before he said, “Ayato.”

“Ay…” it made sense, the way everyone had acted when Ayan, no, when Ayato, had joined them, as if they were used to calling him something else, “Ayato was travelling with us? The entire time? He was. But Raya is Ayato’s lover.”

“Mate. Raya is Ayato’s mate. And Raya will do anything and everything for Ayato, including walk himself off a cliff. So if Ayato said not to give it away, then Raya wouldn’t have given it away. But he never elicited any such promise from me.”

“Ayan,” Lel, Ayan’s father, stepped around a tree. It was so easy for people to just appear and disappear in the forest that Durth had gotten used to it in just two days. The villagers simply came and went as if they were all Sidhe, had all grown up in the forest, “There you are, go find your brother, he’s hidden long enough.”

“But Durth and I were just-”

“Ayan. I said. Go.” Lel met Ayan’s eyes and Durth could see the practiced look of a patient father, “find your brother.”

Ayan fled the area without saying a word. Lel waited a moment before he looked at Durth, “you’ve been avoiding me.”

“No I’ve not,” Durth protested, “I’ve not been avoiding you. Why would I be avoiding you?”

“Because you’re supposed to kill me?”

“I’m looking for someone named Rel.”

Lel squinted for the briefest of moments before he sighed out, “I never pegged you for stupid. You’ve been told that you’re looking for me, Ayan and Ayato’s father. The first Whisper reborn. The one who was born named Rel DeAniege.”

“Right,” Durth nodded as if he had forgotten, “right. I remember. Just kind of got distracted by Ayato using me as his personal play thing.” truth was, he didn’t really want to kill Lel, he certainly didn’t want to hurt the man. He had spent his days with Ayan trying to come up with some sort of plan of action. Tried to figure out why Vera wanted him to kill Rel. And… in which way.

“You realise that you can’t lie to me, right? I can walk your mind like Ayato can walk your body. The moment you entered the forest, you were mine.”

“You mean. You could have stopped me this entire time?” if he hadn’t been indecisive since the night Vera had told him… no, he had been indecisive right from the start. If it hadn’t been for that, Durth would wonder if, perhaps, Lel had already done something.

“I could have killed you before you entered the village. Yes.”

“And you didn’t?”

“No.”

“Why not? If you knew that I was coming. Why wouldn’t you defend yourself or protect yourself or stop me or something? I could have seriously hurt you.”

Lel shrugged, “if it makes an entire generation feel better about themselves and their position in this world, what else could I do? The world believes that with my death, they will feel better. It is a wrong assumption, but who am I to stand in the way? This is only my second lifetime, after all. I’m nothing compared to the mechanism that is the race of people.”

“That’s not true,” Durth said, “you brought down a civilization, ended the world as anyone knew it. You alone made this all possible. You aren’t insignificant. You’ve raised two bright boys and while I’m bound to find one and beat the crap out of him, they’re powerful and. For the most part, responsible with that power. You’re not some random face in the crowd. You’re the guy everyone else wishes they could be. For once, the future of the world didn’t depend on Raya and Ayato.”

“And that’s not true,” Lel shook his head and frowned, “it was my decision that ended the world, certainly, but all I did was shut down the power.”

“Did I kill you?” Durth asked hopefully.

“No, Durth, you did not kill me.”

“Damn it.” he huffed out, “how the hell do you kill a guy without actually killing a guy? If I’m immortal and Vera said I have to kill you but didn’t specify how and I want to not actually kill you, then how do I kill you and not get her pissed at me for eternity?”

Lel blinked at him, “Vera said what now?”

“That I have to kill you.”

“Kill who?”

“Kill… Rel?” Durth squeaked out.

“Damned immortals,” Lel growled, “Rel, as the Sidhe called the meek, beaten and abused me, died years ago. I am no longer that man, hells, I wasn’t even a man at the time. I was eighteen, barely legal and already a failed marriage and two counts of murder on my record. Killed my ex-wife and her lover. Who she had seduce me so that she could divorce me and take me for half my worth and no, before you ask, I didn’t do it on purpose. It was my power manifesting.”

“Ew,” Durth had tried to say ‘oh’ but picturing someone killed with power came out… bloody.

“No, I’d say that Rel finally died when I came to be at peace with the idea that I was not the one who ended the world.” Lel shrugged, “once I realised that it wasn’t my fault, that I was just a catalyst, just another link in the chain, I shed off the ways of my old life and took on my new one.”

“Whhhaaaat do you mean you were just, you were only-” Durth frowned, then recalled what Lel had said earlier, “wait. You only shut off the power? Buildings disappeared, cities vanished over night. Pacemakers burned out of peoples’ chests, artificial limbs-”

“Were eaten away, along with glasses, clothing and all medical equipment, I know. I was there.”

“How does turning off the power result in things vanishing? The kind of power that would be needed to do that and the fact that everyone has power now-”

“Not. Power as in… power… power, as in electricity, how the lights worked and the music played, I shut off the electricity.”

“Then who…?”

“It was a young boy, technically speaking. Outwitted me, that’s for sure. Made something called a nanobot. This little thing that was so small you couldn’t see it, smaller than the cells in your body. You recall science class, yes? Well, smaller than those little cells that make up you and me and everything in the world. And he gifted them to everyone. We all thought he was just so generous but when the power went out the first time, the bots started spraying markers on everything. We thought it was part of their construction, as these bots were said to be able to end world hunger and repair broken items.

“The second time the power went out,” Lel’s eyes got a distant sort of look to them, “that was when the true purpose of the nanobots was realised. They ate everything they had marked, which was everything that was not a hundred percent natural. The world crumbled. Literally. Sand piles and heaps of useless odds and ends were all that was once left of the mighty nations of the world.”

“Who would do such a thing?”

“Raya.”

“Alright,” Durth said after a moment of thought, “I could see him doing that. But who actually did it.”

Lel frowned, “Raya did it. He was the heir of the Tele corporation.”

Just like that, Durth remembered. Remembered his father coming home with that little box and the control unit, remembered the commercials and the blond haired little boy telling the world how to use their nanobots.

Raya had done it. Raya, his master, Cousin and Brother of the Aniege… had ended the world.


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