Tales of Midbar: Religious Intolerance

“I think there are a few things you need to consider,” said Poslit. “Firstly, although children can’t be charged with crimes, adults who knowingly assist or encourage them can. Therefore I can’t help you in this and must advise against it, much as Lishrashic disgusts me.”

I knew he was trying to help us while making it sound as if he was trying to stop us.

“The first point is you can’t have adult assistance. The second is that Lishrashic is still living in his house, as it’s easy to defend. He’s guarded by ten police officers, some of them nibeyim or magi or both.”

“Those who help your enemies are also your enemies,” said Cloud.

“I think that’s a bit simplistic,” said Poslit. “These probably aren’t very happy about this job but they won’t fail at it unless it at least looks as if it was very hard for them to succeed. Therefore it will be hard to deal with them. There’s protective magic in the house and Lishrashic has a protective artifact, to prevent attack by remote magic. You’ve also got to deal with that. Iandris is still in hospital in Taunbrit, I think. I’m not sure if or when she’ll be back so you may have her to worry about.”

I was also doing some difficult test on a computer, swimming in a pool with some friends and having a really bad stomach ache as a man held me.

“Remember this will be difficult and it’s an awful responsibility to put on children but adults can’t help you, the police guarding him will be difficult to deal with, you can’t use remote magic, his wife might return, possibly with some sort of help for him and removing the spell is pretty much impossible. Now I’ve thourily convinced you not to go ahead with this, I’ll leave and the rest of the adults should also.”

After the adults had left we formed a circle on the playing field and started discussing how to kill Lishrashic. I don’t remember much of this because I kept getting flashes of things from the past or future or perhaps other planets. I was on space ships or floating in just a space suit some of the time. I saw ancients and XT’s and space ships and a girl who looked like an older version of Breeze kissing a strange looking man with wings and a comet hitting a planet. I think the discussion was fast turning into an argument about who should be in charge. Pardnis thought that he could go to Lishrashic and pretend to betray us because he wouldn’t expect Pardnis to be helping us. Nendia wanted to be in charge but she didn’t know anything about magic. Narim thought he should be in charge because he was an expert on magic. Cloud claimed that as the oldest Winemaker, he probably knew more magic.

The teachers called us in for lessons. I’d only just sat down at my desk when I saw some ancients attacking me and I started screaming for people to, “Seal the hatches,” and “open fire.”

Kerdnan took a look at me, particularly my eyes and sent me to the nurse. She asked me a few questions, how I felt and if I’d eaten anything unusual. She didn’t ask if somebody had transferred associates to me and I didn’t tell her. At least I don’t think I did. At one point I started telling her about the effects of different drugs and nanites. She shone a light in my eyes, I pictured a space ship exploding, and she decided that I was too sick for school. A lot of children seemed to be off. Breeze took me to the Vineyard saying that she was going to get me healing. The journey was terrible, a space ship crash here, an ancient attack there, I walked through an unfamiliar street spreading death then I’d become dizzy and felt as if I was falling for no reason.

“What have you done?” asked Ice as Breeze led me through the Vineyard.

“I had to start some time,” said Breeze.

Ice picked me up and carried me, “You had to start by experimenting on your best female friend?”

“They told me to,” said Breeze.

“Who told you to?” asked Ice.

“The associates. They wanted to be transferred to her. I think it’s a Mechanism thing.”

“So you just did it on the way to school?”

“It wasn’t as easy as I expected and we need to deal with Lishrashic.”

“Do you really need to deal with Lishrashic that quickly?” asked Ice.

“I thought binding an associate to Eleprin would help,” said Breeze. “The other kids just kept arguing about who should be in charge and I couldn’t tell them I was an anavah magis.”

For some reason we ended up at the shrine but Breeze opened the doors behind the altar and they took me into the crypt. It was fairly dark, like a cave on some planet with an unbreathable atmosphere.

“The engineering team!” I said, looking at the statues.

“The trouble with being a magis,” said Breeze, “is that there isn’t really anybody to train you. Well I don’t know what the other magises do. Fortunately there’s some associates bound here that contain information on how to use my powers.”

“Can you remove the associates?” asked Ice.

“Not sure.” Breeze stood in the center of the circle of statues with her hands spread out and stared into space.

“What’s she doing?” I asked as I felt as if I was driving a car down a rushing river and teaching a baby to walk.

“I think that’s how she connects with whatever this thing is that gives her instructions,” said Ice. “I really don’t know how it works, I don’t think even the old magises did.”

“Why can’t I remember that?” I asked.

“I think the problem is that the two associates are bound to each other,” said Breeze.

“Where did you get them from?” asked Ice.

“The artifact she had in her backpack.”

Now I was kissing a teenage boy.

Ice opened my bag and tipped out its contents, “What does this artifact look like?”

I was crouching down trying to catch a baby that was coming out of a woman.

“It’s an idol of Tianamet we inherited from our Trulist ancestors,” I said.

Instead of the beautiful idol of a large breasted woman wearing an astronaut helmet, there was some dust and lumps of stone.

“Perhaps removing them isn’t a good idea,” said Ice.

“One of the associates is a type that modifies psychic signals,” said Breeze. “When it was in the idol it made people think the idol belonged to their korbar so they liked it. In Eleprin it amplifies her psychic signals and boosts her powers. That’s not what I intended. I was trying to make Lishrashic like her so he wouldn’t hurt her.”

“I think the problem is that Lishrashic likes girls too much,” said Ice.

“What do you mean?” asked Breeze. “How can you like somebody too much?”

“Let’s deal with this associate,” said Ice, “or are there two associates?”

“I meant to transfer one but they’re bound together so I transferred both of them. Then I got interrupted when I was adjusting the bindings and I’m not sure what happened. Yes, actually I should have the bindings how they go naturally rather than trying to make it do what I want it to although it’s nearly right. I just need to change that,” she reached out towards me, grabbed something invisible and twisted it.

Instantly, I felt like my head was going to explode with people talking and music playing. Breeze seemed like one of the bright lights they use to light Ermish temple at night while Ice shone like a yellow dwarf.

“I’m not sure that helps,” I said.

“She’s reading rather like a powerful adult nibeyah,” said Ice.

“It should increase her powers and the second associate will help her to use her powers to defend herself,” said Breeze. “Not what I intended but it should be useful.”