If it won’t stretch, it might explode!
Kae fed the flames burning inside his separated self with all the rage he could muster. He let the memories come. Bandits killing his mother and father. Dead Ann with blue flowers in her hair, beaten to death by her husband for laying with a Protector. Issa laughing on the cliffs holding Kae’s hand, as they leaned into the strong gusts of wind. Entan telling him he must never see Issa again. The priests don’t allow love; Protectors must do as priests command.
Kae’s separated self exploded in a red sunset. A sunset of fire and death.
Orcs shrieked and screamed as flames engulfed them. Those nearest turned to ash in seconds. Flames danced on the ones farther out. The catapults broke as their arms were swallowed by the fire.
Kae’s separated self was the fire, burning all in its path as it covered the land to the south, east, west and north. It had no beginning, no end. Yet still remained a part of him. His essence made fire.
The Protectors and steel-clad warriors atop the wall beat their arms against invisible flames.
Yet Kae could not control the burning.
“Leave the wall!” His proper body yelled to the men and women atop the battlements. “Leave or be burned alive!”
They obeyed, scrambled into the courtyard.
All the Orcs, all the thousands upon thousands of them were shrieking, dying or dead.
Kae’s separated self was unyielding flame consuming the world.
He did not know how to call it back.
He imagined it taking the shape of his copy.
It wouldn’t.
He called it back into his chest.
It didn’t come.
The river, cold, deep and green flowed through his mind when he called it. Flowed over the flames of his raging separated self. Evaporated in clouds of steam as it doused its flames.
The sandy bottom showed before Kae’s separated self was contained again. A man again. His copy.
All the Orcs lay smoldering beneath the walls. Their bodies covered the ground all the way back to the ridge, and as far as sight could reach on all sides.
Shouts of joy at a battle won broke the silence. First one or two, then enough to fill the courtyard.
Kae’s separated self wavered and waned, turned translucent, its strength spent. Kae no longer saw through its eyes, no longer saw the thousand dead Orcs.
Baynard was sitting up next to Kae, a bandage covering his wound. Beside him, a man in brown robes was repacking bandages and ointments into a leather bag.
Baynard looked into Kae’s eyes. “I saw what you did! Truly, you have more skill than me.”
Ryon lay in a puddle of congealing blood to Kae’s left.
The healer followed Kae’s gaze and whispered. “Him, I can do nothing about.”
The scarred Protector grasped Kae’s arms. “It was you who caused the burning? You killed all those creatures? Amazing!”
Other Protectors slapped Kae on the back, congratulated him on the victory.
Captain Entan pulled Kae away from them. “Was it you? Did you cause the burning?”
Kae nodded, didn’t have the strength left to speak.
“The Head Priest must never know of this, Kae. You must deny it. He will never let you live, if he knows you possess such strength!”
Entan’s separated self was cowering beside the man. Kae looked away from it, didn’t want to see the Captain’s weakness. Entan was holding the shirt of his uniform, his hands shaking. “Promise me, Kae! You must deny this.”
Kae pried Entan’s arms away. “I am as I am, Captain. A Protector.”
Return now! All Protectors are needed back at the Palace. The Head Priest’s voice filled Kae’s mind.
The walls of Ebulon opened into the underground hall of the Priest’s Palace.
Entan cleared his throat, turned away from Kae and ordered them to leave.
Kae tried to lift Ryon’s lifeless body to carry him home for burial. He didn’t have the strength. The fire took it all. Another Protector pushed him aside and picked Ryon up.
“You will need rest to recover after what you did with your Life Force,” Baynard explained as they walked through the opening.
A row of priests waited inside the underground hall of the palace. One of them grasped Kae’s arm, and suddenly the man was in his mind. Seeing the battle, the Orcs and the flames, plucking it all from Kae’s mind as though weeding a garden. Kae tried to fight the man’s touch, prevent him from taking his memories. Yet he barely had the strength to stand.
Ebulon, the Orcs, Ryon’s head a bloody mess, rotting cooked meat, his separated self exploding in burning death… all disappeared from Kae’s mind, as smoke escapes through an open window.
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Entry Point 4 - by Neil Shooter
As he stepped through the shimmering vortex, the elation, the purpose, the emotion that had called him suddenly faded away, leaving him confused, and disoriented. And cold.
“Ebulon! Ebulon!” the voice inside his head had seemed to say, but what was Ebulon? Was it this place? This wintry city?
The crowded square was bustling with angry men and women, and he recognized nationalities from all over the Kinnon, and some from beyond. Snow swirled intermittently around them all.
It didn’t make any sense. A few minutes ago, he had seemed so sure about everything. There had been a fire burning inside him, his heart throbbing with desire to save, to protect, and he had gone out into the night, until he found the thing that was pulling him, the vortex, shining and dancing with magical light in the dark alley. It was as though he had been drunk on the finest Aristian white one moment, and then suffering the blasted hangover from it the next. Someone stumbled into him, and his arms went up reflexively.
It was a young woman with clear blue eyes, and she held her hands up in a poor attempt at defence.
“Apologies,” he mumbled, and took a step back. She didn’t respond, as though she didn’t understand his words, but she staggered away from him, afraid of what he might do to her.
The vortex swirled in the air just a few feet from him, and as he looked, a middle aged woman appeared, in little more than a bathing robe. The disoriented woman launched herself towards him, and he barely had time to react to the attack. He grabbed her wrists, and managed to hold her back, despite his wiry frame, and her enthusiasm. She was furious.
“What wouldst thou from me?” she demanded. “Sorrow mightest thou know for this!”
He understood her, but it took him a moment to realize that she had spoken to him in Maynari, the lay dialect of the capital city of the Kinnon. In the same language, he replied, “Not I, lady-fair. Look about: come are we are all, alike, and ’gainst path. Becalm thyself, and together shine light we shall.”
She freed herself from his loosening grip, and looked about, taking in the scene. “Name thyself.” She seemed a woman accustomed to making commands, despite her state of relative undress.