HOME | DD

Description
Inlé dropped up into the air above where he had first arrived. He nimbly righted himself in the air to land above the ring he had fallen through. He grabbed the ring up and shrunk it back to the size of a bracelet, which he returned to his wrist.

Inlé headed down to the city, emotionlessly cool. As he approached, he began to pray, "Lady Thyacin, find for me what I seek. Grant me the favor of the hunt. Lord Namryd, see for me when I cannot see myself. Grant me the favor of the sun. Lady Lanie, grace me with flight, for I may need it. Grant me the favor of the wind."

He leapt into the air then, and hung. For a moment, Inlé moved lightly, learning how he could move in his flight. Then he continued into the chaos before him.

Floating above the screaming people as they ran past--chased, no doubt, by their own demons--Inlé looked for the menace causing the chaos. He was untouched by the plight of those around him, feeling not even pity as he saw a man torn apart directly in his path.

Higher Inlé flew, into the pink clouds and the rain above them, searching. Higher still, until he was in the impenetrable darkness of the riling smoke. For a moment, he could not see. Then his vision changed to some other spectrum, and the smoke no longer bothered his eyes.

There. By the tear in the sky, Inlé saw someone floating and drinking its blood as it poured out. Inlé knew the man and called to him.

"Larjam," Inlé said, as he approached the once-man. "Or should I say Lord Larjam? You do consider yourself a god, I suppose."

Larjam turned his blood-smeared face toward Inlé. Wild golden eyes stared coldly at emotionless green ones. "I am he. Who are you?"

"No one of importance," Inlé answered. "May I ask how it is you now have such power?"

"It is mine!" Larjam cried, cackling wildly and frothing the blood around his mouth. "It is mine, and none of you can stop me! Come at me in ones and twos, and I will take you all in ones and twos!"

He lunged at Inlé, who sidestepped the attack with little effort. Larjam received a kick to the ribs for his trouble.

"I have no desire to fight you, sir," Inlé said. "All I wish to do is talk."

"That's what you all want, isn't it? To talk. Talk, talk, talk." Larjam flapped his hands at each other madly. Purely, simply mad.

His eyes became clear--insanely sane--as he looked back at Inlé. "But that isn't what you want at all, is it? You want my power. That's what this is about, isn't it? This power I have that I took.

"I. I took. Not you. Not anyone else. It's mine, and you can't have it. No one else can. This world will die with me, and I will take everything with me. As I took those who came before you."

Inlé moved just out of reach of the next lunge, this one much closer than the last. "Others came before me? How many?"

"How many, how many," Larjam mimicked. "You know well, you do. You don't fool me. No! not fool me at all. I know."

"Know me, Larjam? Not likely. This is my first time in this world. You, of all, should be able to tell this. Have I ever been in your domain? You would feel the connection, would you not? You can feel the rest of this world. Can you feel me, Larjam?"

Confusion washed over the mad godling's face. "No ... From outside? There is no outside. No outside. Who ... what are you?" He lunged at Inlé with renewed fervor. "No outside! None! No gods! Silly girl, there are no gods! If there were, why are they not seen?"

Larjam no longer saw what was around him. Trapped in his own mind, in his own hell, all he could do was attack this newest offense to his sensibilities. He swung wildly, but Inlé evaded the attacks with increasing difficulty as they became more focused. And faster.

"No outside! There can't be! Impossible! You'll believe anything, won't you? Are you stupid? Do you take me for such a fool?" His hand caught Inlé's sleeve, and held it. His face curled into a snarl. "You're mine! How can you go to someone else? No! I'll prove to you I'm right! Then you must love me. Look only at me!"

Inlé's sleeve was torn off at the shoulder as he was pulled toward the demented Larjam. Inlé saved himself by leaping off Larjam's growing chest.

And grow it did. Larjam tripled in size in a matter of moments, crackling with divine energy, cackling with human madness. "You will die, outsider! I will destroy you and your outside! As I destroyed the five who came to take my powers before you! Come at me in numbers, come at me alone. I will destroy you utterly."

He rushed forward again, and this time Inlé was too slow to get out of the way. Down the two plummeted, crashing into the city streets below. From the crater rose the mad Larjam, cackling madly. "Fool! This is the fate of those who oppose me!"

The calm voice from above surprised him. "What fate is that, Larjam? Please, celebrate my death when my death is confirmed, not before." Inlé slowly lowered to stand a short distance from Larjam, adjusting the bracelet on his wrist.

"Impossible," Larjam gasped. "I had you. Had you. No one can live from a fall that height."

"Then I did not fall," Inlé answered. "Larjam, listen to reason. I wish only to speak with you. Where, pray, is the danger in that? What did I say to convince you I was an enemy? Perhaps I am an ally. Think reasonably."

Larjam calmed, but the madness was chaos in his eyes. They flickered through the spectrum as they looked at things, eyes opposing the colors they saw. "Ally. Yes. That would be good. There is so much to do. So much. Help is good."

"Good. Yes, it is. But if I am going to help you, you must let me be like you. Is that fair?"

"Fair. Like me. Yes. How, like me? Like me how?" Larjam's faculties had not entirely abandoned him. He was still shrewd, Inlé saw. Inlé was suddenly glad that his enemy was mad. The madness would aide him.

"You want to destroy these ... gods."

"There are no gods!" Larjam bellowed.

"Yes. There are no gods. But ... I can not kill them. I do not know how. How did you kill them. If I were your ally, would you not tell me?"

"Are you my ally?"

Inlé paused, wondering if a direct lie that his foe was already inclined to disbelieve would be too apparent. Or whether one of the gods killed would be able to discern lies. But there were always backdoors. "Would you like me to be?"

Larjam stared quizzically at Inlé for a long moment. "What are you called?"

Inlé replied automatically. This was an answer he had. "I am called many things. I am often called the Worldwanderer. I am sometimes called useful, always called reliable, and occasionally called friend. But titles matter little, what might you call me?" No lies. Honest, but vague. Give nothing away.

Larjam laughed. "Very well, wanderer--Wanderer! I like that. Very well, I will tell you how I stole the power of my first god."

Inlé listened as Larjam told his story. He--Larjam--had studied the scriptures pertaining to the god Rensyd. It was in them that he learned that once every few generations, this god died on a mountainside, so he could know the flow of mortality. It was in them that he found the pattern that allowed him to determine where that mountainside was, and that the next death would come in his lifetime.

And he waited. Waited a year, telling those who listened that he would disprove the gods. Waited until he left for the mountain alone, to face the nothingness that was said to be a god. And there he waited for anything to happen.

But he was far from overjoyed to meet a fellow traveller on the mountainside. A tall man, young looking, but with eyes that were too old. The two talked for a time, watching the sunset. And as the sun set, the man beside Larjam laid down and died. Larjam did not know what to believe at the moment, so he believed that the man was only a figment of his imagination.

He disbelieved and disbelieved until he believed the man to be a part of himself. But as Larjam rose, he again touched the dead man. And believed the man was truly himself, and not another person. And the man ceased to be.

It was only days afterwards that a second man appeared, telling Larjam to return the god Rensyd. Larjam argued that there was no god Rensyd, having forced disbelief into a partial amnesia.

The man revealed himself a god, though, and forced Larjam to remember his night on the mountainside. Larjam was driven mad by this revelation. And his madness and his stolen divinity gave him the power to kill the man before him.

But his shattered mind could not believe he was capable of such murder--not yet, at any rate--and his disbelief pulled the other god into himself, granting this once-mortal more power. And more madness.

"See, Wanderer? I am as I always was! Only the world around me has weakened! I am the same today as I was yesterday, and life is no different from birth to death and beyond."

"I thought you said there was nothing after death."

Larjam howled. "There is nothing after death! Nothing!"

"Then how is that the same as life?" Inlé asked.

"Life is nothing also! Everything is nothing, and all of it is not!"

Inlé stood calmly watching this insane man-god. He stood silent for a long time, as opposite him the frayed edges of a beleaguered psyche seeped from the cracks of their host and burst like sparklers all about.

He shifted as he said, "So. Disbelief is enough to draw the power of your enemy into yourself. This you believe and understand to the degree that it has become truth. I am sorry."

Inlé began to walk slowly toward Larjam. "Truly, I am sorry. You have done nothing wrong in all of this. In the least, not deliberately. You followed protocols never before acknowledged, but nonetheless existent in this realm. After the theft of power, though ...

"There you made a mistake, Larjam." Inlé shook his head. "Had you adhered to your newfound responsibilities, you would be blameless. But you chose instead to deny even your responsibilities. Laws are laws. Here you must be punished."

Larjam's eyes bulged when he found himself unable to move as the strange boy before him advanced. Retreat was impossible, and he could feel it. Knew it to be true. "What have you done to me, Wanderer? What have you done?"

Inlé shook his head, his stony visage eternally emotionless. "You do not understand, do you, Larjam? I have no intention of aiding you. I was brought here for the purpose of removing you from the equation. I am here to erase you."

Larjam's rage was complete. Breaking free of whatever hold Inlé had had on him, the man-god attacked wildly. Inlé did his best to react before he was torn asunder, but his adversary's potential was rapidly developing.

Inlé was grabbed and flung by the ankle, tearing silver shoe and soft flesh. He hurtled through the air, muttering quiet prayers to every god in turn.

Larjam charged wildly, slashing, grabbing, lunging at Inlé. Occasionally, his rage would bleed off of him in a concentration of hatred so strong as to become a living thing striking independently at Inlé. Buffeted and battered, Inlé weathered the storm manifest by his foe's fury. The storm circled the two, tearing at Inlé's body, forcing him into positions allowing easy attacks for Larjam.

Then, subtle as the first frost, sudden as the first snap, Inlé was released from his storm-wrought bonds. He was able to move freely again, and gained control of himself. Larjam's final blow did not land as so many had before. Instead, Inlé captured it between his hands.

A trickle of blood spilled from his mouth as Inlé said, "My last prayer be to Lord Masod. Grant me the power to appraise this soul before me. Bless me with the favor of the court, over which you yourself do preside. And may my judgement be upheld upon this world, even unto its foundations."

Inlé closed his eyes. "Larjam, Usurper and Lord of many facets, I do thus find you guilty of theft of power not meant for such as yourself, of invalid use of such power as was achieved, and of damaging the surrounding world in blatant disregard to the warp and weft of said world with said power. The punishment for this crime is death, that the possibility of a return to equilibrium may be realized.

"I am sorry, but you are now dead."

And with that, Larjam died. The souls bound within the fragile human body tore out at their release, flaying their former host as they did so. His remains crumpled to the ground, a puddle of refuse no longer human. Without so much as a glance at the remains, Inlé turned and began to repair the damage about him.

He climbed first to the tear in the sky. Putting his hands upon it, he said, "This wound will not do you justice, Lord Sky. I thus take it upon myself, that your recovery would be accelerated." The festering, bleeding wound closed quickly, a bloodshot eye, closing to rest.

Inlé grunted in pain as the flesh across his chest audibly tore in time with the closing of the sky's injury. A red patch grew on his jacket front.

"Now," Inlé said, "where to begin? I have much to do, repairing this damaged world."

Description
Inlé dropped up into the air above where he had first arrived. He nimbly righted himself in the air to land above the ring he had fallen through. He grabbed the ring up and shrunk it back to the size of a bracelet, which he returned to his wrist.

Inlé headed down to the city, emotionlessly cool. As he approached, he began to pray, "Lady Thyacin, find for me what I seek. Grant me the favor of the hunt. Lord Namryd, see for me when I cannot see myself. Grant me the favor of the sun. Lady Lanie, grace me with flight, for I may need it. Grant me the favor of the wind."

He leapt into the air then, and hung. For a moment, Inlé moved lightly, learning how he could move in his flight. Then he continued into the chaos before him.

Floating above the screaming people as they ran past--chased, no doubt, by their own demons--Inlé looked for the menace causing the chaos. He was untouched by the plight of those around him, feeling not even pity as he saw a man torn apart directly in his path.

Higher Inlé flew, into the pink clouds and the rain above them, searching. Higher still, until he was in the impenetrable darkness of the riling smoke. For a moment, he could not see. Then his vision changed to some other spectrum, and the smoke no longer bothered his eyes.

There. By the tear in the sky, Inlé saw someone floating and drinking its blood as it poured out. Inlé knew the man and called to him.

"Larjam," Inlé said, as he approached the once-man. "Or should I say Lord Larjam? You do consider yourself a god, I suppose."

Larjam turned his blood-smeared face toward Inlé. Wild golden eyes stared coldly at emotionless green ones. "I am he. Who are you?"

"No one of importance," Inlé answered. "May I ask how it is you now have such power?"

"It is mine!" Larjam cried, cackling wildly and frothing the blood around his mouth. "It is mine, and none of you can stop me! Come at me in ones and twos, and I will take you all in ones and twos!"

He lunged at Inlé, who sidestepped the attack with little effort. Larjam received a kick to the ribs for his trouble.

"I have no desire to fight you, sir," Inlé said. "All I wish to do is talk."

"That's what you all want, isn't it? To talk. Talk, talk, talk." Larjam flapped his hands at each other madly. Purely, simply mad.

His eyes became clear--insanely sane--as he looked back at Inlé. "But that isn't what you want at all, is it? You want my power. That's what this is about, isn't it? This power I have that I took.

"I. I took. Not you. Not anyone else. It's mine, and you can't have it. No one else can. This world will die with me, and I will take everything with me. As I took those who came before you."

Inlé moved just out of reach of the next lunge, this one much closer than the last. "Others came before me? How many?"

"How many, how many," Larjam mimicked. "You know well, you do. You don't fool me. No! not fool me at all. I know."

"Know me, Larjam? Not likely. This is my first time in this world. You, of all, should be able to tell this. Have I ever been in your domain? You would feel the connection, would you not? You can feel the rest of this world. Can you feel me, Larjam?"

Confusion washed over the mad godling's face. "No ... From outside? There is no outside. No outside. Who ... what are you?" He lunged at Inlé with renewed fervor. "No outside! None! No gods! Silly girl, there are no gods! If there were, why are they not seen?"

Larjam no longer saw what was around him. Trapped in his own mind, in his own hell, all he could do was attack this newest offense to his sensibilities. He swung wildly, but Inlé evaded the attacks with increasing difficulty as they became more focused. And faster.

"No outside! There can't be! Impossible! You'll believe anything, won't you? Are you stupid? Do you take me for such a fool?" His hand caught Inlé's sleeve, and held it. His face curled into a snarl. "You're mine! How can you go to someone else? No! I'll prove to you I'm right! Then you must love me. Look only at me!"

Inlé's sleeve was torn off at the shoulder as he was pulled toward the demented Larjam. Inlé saved himself by leaping off Larjam's growing chest.

And grow it did. Larjam tripled in size in a matter of moments, crackling with divine energy, cackling with human madness. "You will die, outsider! I will destroy you and your outside! As I destroyed the five who came to take my powers before you! Come at me in numbers, come at me alone. I will destroy you utterly."

He rushed forward again, and this time Inlé was too slow to get out of the way. Down the two plummeted, crashing into the city streets below. From the crater rose the mad Larjam, cackling madly. "Fool! This is the fate of those who oppose me!"

The calm voice from above surprised him. "What fate is that, Larjam? Please, celebrate my death when my death is confirmed, not before." Inlé slowly lowered to stand a short distance from Larjam, adjusting the bracelet on his wrist.

"Impossible," Larjam gasped. "I had you. Had you. No one can live from a fall that height."

"Then I did not fall," Inlé answered. "Larjam, listen to reason. I wish only to speak with you. Where, pray, is the danger in that? What did I say to convince you I was an enemy? Perhaps I am an ally. Think reasonably."

Larjam calmed, but the madness was chaos in his eyes. They flickered through the spectrum as they looked at things, eyes opposing the colors they saw. "Ally. Yes. That would be good. There is so much to do. So much. Help is good."

"Good. Yes, it is. But if I am going to help you, you must let me be like you. Is that fair?"

"Fair. Like me. Yes. How, like me? Like me how?" Larjam's faculties had not entirely abandoned him. He was still shrewd, Inlé saw. Inlé was suddenly glad that his enemy was mad. The madness would aide him.

"You want to destroy these ... gods."

"There are no gods!" Larjam bellowed.

"Yes. There are no gods. But ... I can not kill them. I do not know how. How did you kill them. If I were your ally, would you not tell me?"

"Are you my ally?"

Inlé paused, wondering if a direct lie that his foe was already inclined to disbelieve would be too apparent. Or whether one of the gods killed would be able to discern lies. But there were always backdoors. "Would you like me to be?"

Larjam stared quizzically at Inlé for a long moment. "What are you called?"

Inlé replied automatically. This was an answer he had. "I am called many things. I am often called the Worldwanderer. I am sometimes called useful, always called reliable, and occasionally called friend. But titles matter little, what might you call me?" No lies. Honest, but vague. Give nothing away.

Larjam laughed. "Very well, wanderer--Wanderer! I like that. Very well, I will tell you how I stole the power of my first god."

Inlé listened as Larjam told his story. He--Larjam--had studied the scriptures pertaining to the god Rensyd. It was in them that he learned that once every few generations, this god died on a mountainside, so he could know the flow of mortality. It was in them that he found the pattern that allowed him to determine where that mountainside was, and that the next death would come in his lifetime.

And he waited. Waited a year, telling those who listened that he would disprove the gods. Waited until he left for the mountain alone, to face the nothingness that was said to be a god. And there he waited for anything to happen.

But he was far from overjoyed to meet a fellow traveller on the mountainside. A tall man, young looking, but with eyes that were too old. The two talked for a time, watching the sunset. And as the sun set, the man beside Larjam laid down and died. Larjam did not know what to believe at the moment, so he believed that the man was only a figment of his imagination.

He disbelieved and disbelieved until he believed the man to be a part of himself. But as Larjam rose, he again touched the dead man. And believed the man was truly himself, and not another person. And the man ceased to be.

It was only days afterwards that a second man appeared, telling Larjam to return the god Rensyd. Larjam argued that there was no god Rensyd, having forced disbelief into a partial amnesia.

The man revealed himself a god, though, and forced Larjam to remember his night on the mountainside. Larjam was driven mad by this revelation. And his madness and his stolen divinity gave him the power to kill the man before him.

But his shattered mind could not believe he was capable of such murder--not yet, at any rate--and his disbelief pulled the other god into himself, granting this once-mortal more power. And more madness.

"See, Wanderer? I am as I always was! Only the world around me has weakened! I am the same today as I was yesterday, and life is no different from birth to death and beyond."

"I thought you said there was nothing after death."

Larjam howled. "There is nothing after death! Nothing!"

"Then how is that the same as life?" Inlé asked.

"Life is nothing also! Everything is nothing, and all of it is not!"

Inlé stood calmly watching this insane man-god. He stood silent for a long time, as opposite him the frayed edges of a beleaguered psyche seeped from the cracks of their host and burst like sparklers all about.

He shifted as he said, "So. Disbelief is enough to draw the power of your enemy into yourself. This you believe and understand to the degree that it has become truth. I am sorry."

Inlé began to walk slowly toward Larjam. "Truly, I am sorry. You have done nothing wrong in all of this. In the least, not deliberately. You followed protocols never before acknowledged, but nonetheless existent in this realm. After the theft of power, though ...

"There you made a mistake, Larjam." Inlé shook his head. "Had you adhered to your newfound responsibilities, you would be blameless. But you chose instead to deny even your responsibilities. Laws are laws. Here you must be punished."

Larjam's eyes bulged when he found himself unable to move as the strange boy before him advanced. Retreat was impossible, and he could feel it. Knew it to be true. "What have you done to me, Wanderer? What have you done?"

Inlé shook his head, his stony visage eternally emotionless. "You do not understand, do you, Larjam? I have no intention of aiding you. I was brought here for the purpose of removing you from the equation. I am here to erase you."

Larjam's rage was complete. Breaking free of whatever hold Inlé had had on him, the man-god attacked wildly. Inlé did his best to react before he was torn asunder, but his adversary's potential was rapidly developing.

Inlé was grabbed and flung by the ankle, tearing silver shoe and soft flesh. He hurtled through the air, muttering quiet prayers to every god in turn.

Larjam charged wildly, slashing, grabbing, lunging at Inlé. Occasionally, his rage would bleed off of him in a concentration of hatred so strong as to become a living thing striking independently at Inlé. Buffeted and battered, Inlé weathered the storm manifest by his foe's fury. The storm circled the two, tearing at Inlé's body, forcing him into positions allowing easy attacks for Larjam.

Then, subtle as the first frost, sudden as the first snap, Inlé was released from his storm-wrought bonds. He was able to move freely again, and gained control of himself. Larjam's final blow did not land as so many had before. Instead, Inlé captured it between his hands.

A trickle of blood spilled from his mouth as Inlé said, "My last prayer be to Lord Masod. Grant me the power to appraise this soul before me. Bless me with the favor of the court, over which you yourself do preside. And may my judgement be upheld upon this world, even unto its foundations."

Inlé closed his eyes. "Larjam, Usurper and Lord of many facets, I do thus find you guilty of theft of power not meant for such as yourself, of invalid use of such power as was achieved, and of damaging the surrounding world in blatant disregard to the warp and weft of said world with said power. The punishment for this crime is death, that the possibility of a return to equilibrium may be realized.

"I am sorry, but you are now dead."

And with that, Larjam died. The souls bound within the fragile human body tore out at their release, flaying their former host as they did so. His remains crumpled to the ground, a puddle of refuse no longer human. Without so much as a glance at the remains, Inlé turned and began to repair the damage about him.

He climbed first to the tear in the sky. Putting his hands upon it, he said, "This wound will not do you justice, Lord Sky. I thus take it upon myself, that your recovery would be accelerated." The festering, bleeding wound closed quickly, a bloodshot eye, closing to rest.

Inlé grunted in pain as the flesh across his chest audibly tore in time with the closing of the sky's injury. A red patch grew on his jacket front.

"Now," Inlé said, "where to begin? I have much to do, repairing this damaged world."