Ch. 1

I am a Revenant

“Another year has passed and I’m alright.

I lick the salt from my wounds morning to the night.”

- The Distillers

Seth smiled politely across the table at the beautiful, stately woman with the cold, violet eyes. The woman he had known most of his life.

She looked up from a form she was reading at her desk as he sat down. “How have you been, Seth? I haven’t seen you in quite some time.”

She asked as if she cared.

“Fine, Lady.”

As a serving member of Zyhire’s governing council ‘Lady’ was one of her professional titles, although surely he had known her long enough to call her by her use-name, T’ien.

“I’m glad to hear you’re doing well. I had heard less than favorable rumors about you.” Her sharp features softened a little with concern, although her straight, black hair was pulled back into a severe bun. Lady T’ien almost always kept her hair pulled back and there was a popular bet amongst her office staff on how long it actually was. Seth guessed it would fall below her waist if she let it down.

He was pretty sure she was fishing. T’ien had gotten him into the Zyhirean Defense and Intelligence Organization, ZIDO, and she probably wanted to confirm rumors she’d heard that he had made Class 1 since the last time she’d met him. Either that, or she wanted to confirm rumors that he was causing trouble for his boss, Deputy Secretary M’alkan Terasmus. Both were true, though it was hardly breaking news.

“You’re a busy woman. Surely you didn’t call me in here to ask about my health.”

She smiled guiltily. “You’re correct. I was wondering if you could do me a favor.”

Seth narrowed his eyes. “What kind of favor?” He’d learned the hard way not to agree to something without being certain of the details.

“I took on a Terran charge some time ago—”

“Did you miss me?” he asked, sarcastically. “Or do you care that much about kids from Earth?”

“Terra,” She corrected. “And if you must know, I did it as a favor.”

“Who’s above you that you need to do favors?”

Her expression hardened. “I did it at the request of my family.”

As in, ‘not you.’ It figured she’d go in for the sucker punch. Seth was no longer amused. “What’s the favor.”

“Before you interrupted me, I was trying to explain that I enrolled my charge in an integration program. She’s never been to Tyrn before, but she needs to meet with someone in Seln to gather her paperwork, the way we did yours. Do you remember?”

Seth remembered. T’ien had wanted to take him to a professional and avoid the long, DMV style wait at the immigration office, but had been unable to. It seemed she was trying again with her second ward. “Is she going for full citizen or just provisional?”

Zyhireans were a very old and intelligent race. Elementary school children learned trigonometry and spoke multiple languages. In order to become a full citizen, you needed to pass an exam that proved you could successfully integrate into society. Those who did not pass had the option to become provisional citizens. They could live and work in Zyhire normally, but did not receive government aid, did not pay taxes and were subject to a slightly different bill of rights than regular citizens.

“She took a preparatory course for the exam, so she’ll try for full citizenship by the end of the month. ” T’ien picked up a pen and began to fill out a form as she spoke. “ I was supposed to take her for her papers today, but as you know, the security report ran long and now I won’t have time. Would you please take her for me?”

Seth rooted through a tray of paperclips on her desk looking for nothing in particular. “Why wouldn’t you have someone from your office staff do it?”

“My reasons are my own.”

“Feel like sharing? ”

T’ien carefully and deliberately put down the pen she was holding and looked up from her form. “I’m asking you to do this for me. Will you do it, or not?”

Obviously something more was going on here that he—the Terran—was too stupid to understand. He didn’t’ much like it, but he had known his answer from the start. “I’ll do it, if it’s what you want.”

She smiled. It was a warm, girlish smile that meant she was really pleased and not just being polite. Seth had gotten himself in trouble before for that smile, and he had a bad feeling about it now.

“Thank you, Seth. She’s outside working in the office right now. You’ll find her without any trouble. Her name is Hazel Conway. She’s a redhead.”

She was on the money about that redhead thing. All Zyhireans had straight black hair. It was the result of a series of genocides way back in their history, before the entire dimension was united under one government. They wiped out everybody who wasn’t dark haired and pale. As a result, Hazel’s Terran locks were easy to spot.

That, and she appeared to be the office gossip. He found her sitting on a desk, surrounded by a knot of girls who stared silently as he approached. He sighed. He was sure he should be used to this by now. He’d been born with what he could only assume was some kind of birth defect. His skin was sheet white, like printer paper, or hospital walls, or snow, but his hair was black. For a while dermatologists thought that he had some form of fetal Vitiligo, but it turned out that his skin didn’t truly lack color—he seemed to have some strange mutation in his melanin that caused it to be pigmented white.

When he left the dimension and gained his powers he became even more conspicuous. He’d gotten the base powers of telepathy and telekinesis, and also gained an elemental: moon. It gave him invisibility and night vision, but he’d also become very sensitive to changes in light. The upside was that it allowed him to see in the dark, the down side was that a brown out could give him skull-splitting headaches, so he had taken to wearing sunglasses, even indoors. Even if they had managed to get around the skin discoloration, it was still possible they were just wondering who the dork in the black with the indoor sunglasses was.

Hazel finally spoke. “Are you some kind of albino?

“Albinos are blond.”

“You could have dyed it. I would have.” She shoed the other women out of the way and began collecting her things. “Not black like yours, though. I’d just wash myself out. And I’d come out terribly in photographs. Anyway, T’ien says it’s very important for you to get me to the appointment. Are you going to be a good escort?”

“Sure. Whatever. Let’s go.”

“Sounds like somebody has a bad attitude.”

“Get moving.”

Seln was the capital city of the Northern Kingdom of the Dimension of Tyrn. That meant that they had to leave the dimension of Zyhire and go through the inter-dimensional Universe to get to it. You could leave the dimension from anywhere, but when Zyhireans had first discovered dimensional travel, one of their scientists had made a tear in the dimensional fabric in the area around Saryidney trying to find a way through. Therefore, anybody leaving the dimension had to do so though a special gate located in the back of the city. The government took advantage of this inconvenience and used it to keep track of who was coming in and out of the city. Those who didn’t use the gate risked being lost in an alternate reality.

The attendant before the gate seemed cautious about Hazel’s temporary identity card. It said she was a ‘Light Elemental’ and elementals tended to be more unpredictable than energies in the way that their powers manifested. Light was a Terran element, not a Zyhirean one, therefore the attendant was unfamiliar with the powers it might grant. When she decided to take her to get her abilities evaluated Seth pulled out his own provisional citizen ID—which listed him as an employee of ZIDO. The attendant eyed Seth, decided that he was someone not to be messed with and reluctantly allowed them through.

The Gate was about forty feet high, and made of large, identical stone blocks. According to Zyhirean sources, the gods had put it there to contain the tear. Seth wasn’t sure if he believed that, but the stone blocks went all the way through the dimension and were visible from the outside, and Seth didn’t know how any human could make something like that.

There didn’t appear to be anything in the gate—you could see straight through to the wall and landscaping behind it—but every now and then a breeze would pick up where there was none or the view of the other side of the gate would look distorted, as though you were looking through imperfect glass.

It was only the second time Hazel had seen it, and she demanded to go read the historical plaque at the base of the structure. She then proceeded to relate the entire plaque to an uninterested Seth.

When he finally got her to go through the gate she was amazed all over again. Seth had been outside of the dimension a number of times, but he had never grown fully accustomed to it.

They stepped out onto nothing, and stood there comfortably. They weren’t weightless, but neither did they fall. The environment around them was a hazy mauve, punctuated by other dimensions hanging in the distance as far as the eye could see—globes suspended by nothing. The dimension of Zyhire loomed behind them, several stories high. Dimensions tended to be larger on the inside. They moved towards Tyrn, and though there was no ground, each step beneath them was firm. Neither of them was breathing, but neither noticed the absence.

Time was difficult to gage. Seth knew that when people left for Tyrn, the usually arrived 15 minutes later, but between the dimensions, the walk could have been 5 minutes or an hour. Thankfully the girl was awed into silence.

When they reached the dimension, they were folded gently into it’ layers. Seth navigated it like an aerial map, using landmarks such as mountain ranges and rivers to bring them over Seln. Each layer brought them closer and closer to the life-sized world.

Seln was a large, sprawling mess of two to three story wooden buildings and dusty unpaved streets. Since it was the capital of the Northern Kingdom on Tyrn, and that kingdom had a healthy trade relationship with Zyhire, it received a fair amount of inter-dimensional traffic. They had areas set aside for people to fade into, to prevent from arriving at the dimension inside a wall or someone else’s body. Seth selected the one closest to their destination and guided Hazel through.

There were lots of distractions, since Seln was rich in outdoor performers and street vendors. Seth was certain that they were going to be late to Hazel’s appointment, since she had to stop and look at every single thing they passed. Everything she looked at, she talked about. Seth was pretty sure she had no inner thoughts simply because the sheer amount of dialogue coming out of her mouth left nothing to the imagination.

Hazel had a map that T’ien had given her, so he tuned her out and let his mind wander. He hadn’t seen Lady T’ien for a few years—since the last time he’d gone with M’alkan to present the security report for council—and even then she’d only greeted him in passing. Why would she try to contact him after so long—and for something so stupid? This girl was twenty-four for Christ sake; she didn’t need a babysitter.

They were almost at their destination and wandering through a narrow side street when he felt a tugging on the side of his shirt. It was the redhead, and she looked worried. Wonderful. “Yeah, what?”

She bit the bottom of her lip and discretely leaned closer to his ear. “I think that guy over there might be following us.”

Seth took the map from her and pretended to study it. “What guy?”

“Aren’t you some kind of secret agent or something? I thought you would notice.”

He clenched his teeth. She was right. He’d been oblivious. “Nobody knows who I am. Who would stalk me on my day off?”

She sighed. “The guy in the wide-necked shirt behind us.” She rolled her eyes in his direction. “He’s been stalking us ever since I—oh.”

Seth glanced around as though he was searching for a street sign. When he caught sight of the man he cringed inwardly. The man in question was a Zyhirean that Seth had worked with on his most recent assignment in Seln. He was very close to the top. If Seth’s identity became compromised, things were going to get complicated at work. Very complicated. “What’s ‘oh’?”

“Four or five bocks ago him and his creepy friend tried to pick me up.” She rolled her eyes. “Gross. So I told him not to mess with me because you were an assassin and you worked for the government and you’d scatter his body parts and rain blood upon the city if he tried anything.”

If T’ien was going to send him on a stupid escort favor, she could have at least mentioned he was escorting a functional idiot. “You…told…he…I…what?”

“Jesus! Don’t freak out. I didn’t tell him you were my boyfriend or anything. Besides, it’s not like you’re actually an assassin—”

Seth glared at her in mute fury.

Realization dawned on her slowly. She inched away from him. “You’re an assassin?!” She said, careful to keep her voice to an angry whisper. “What the hell was T’ien thinking to send me with an actual assassin as an escort?”

‘SHUT UP. NOW.’ Seth sent to her telepathically. Along with the dialogue, she also received a taste of his current, rather unfriendly emotional state.

‘What do we do now?’ she sent back meekly.

‘You take the map and run.’

Hazel ran. Seth sized up the man that had been following them. He didn’t think he would be too much of a challenge, but he didn’t plan on killing him outright. There were a few things he wanted to know.

He turned when he heard Hazel shriek and nearly did a double-take. Creepy didn’t even begin to describe this guy. He now had serious doubts about Hazel’s 6th sense in addition to her common sense. The man was young, almost a boy. He looked to be in his early 20’s. His irises were completely yellow and the whites had a yellowish cast. Seth could feel with a 6th sense the power surrounding him. The flesh around his eyes seemed to be rotting away in black and red patches, as if the human vessel couldn’t contain the power inside of it. At odds with this was his face, which was delicate and beautiful, like a girl’s. At the moment, his expression was a cruel, unnatural-looking smile. The clash between the features and the expression only increased the sense of foreboding that Seth felt.

He was too strong to be one of the Seeded. The seeded were named for the seed of Stryfe that Zythan planted in them. Zythan was a demi-god of stryfe, and his domain was pain and suffering. When the seeded inflicted those upon others, the seed would grow and eventually consume and kill them—but not before granting them great power. After they died, Zythan sometimes revived them as intelligent and powerful undead, but they tended to be scarred and hideous, and frequently hid under cloaks. This boy was too beautiful to be one of those. Seth suspected that he was dealing with a case of possession, but he wasn’t sure which type. He had dealt with partial possession before, where the host usually had autonomy but could be subverted at any time by his master. Unfortunately, Seth suspected that this might be full possession—where Zythan remained in his host at all times—and that would be trouble.

He didn’t have time to bother with the man that had trailed them. All the answers he needed would be with this new attacker. Seth turned back to the first man and used his telekinesis to tear out the top vertebra in his neck. The man choked and dropped instantly. At that moment, Hazel chose to use her element—light—to blind the second man, who was attacking her. Unfortunately, she nearly blinded Seth.

Now he would be fighting a headache as well as the possible embodiment of evil. Lovely.

When Seth reached out mentally, he could sense that the energy shields around the young man were practically impenetrable and he knew that this would not be a battle he could win through brute force or magic. He was outmatched in both areas. Fortunately, his specialty was stealth.

He closed his eyes and reached in. He could feel the place where the power of his element sat inside of him. He felt it surge outward throughout his body and when he opened his eyes, he was invisible. Because his element was moon, his invisibility was more than simple camouflage. He was transparent because he was shifted slightly out of the dimension, just out of range of human sight. From this vantage point, he could see not only things and people, but also the energy they produced—their Aura. He looked at the attacker.

From this vantage point, he could see two Auras competing for the same body. The sickly, yellow Aura seemed to be suppressing a shimmering emerald one. He supposed the host body must have been an earth elemental. Seth could see that the two Auras were joined over the heart. He reached into his Air and drew out a long, thin knife with a translucent white blade. This knife had the ability to cleave the soul from the body without doing physical harm. If Seth could wedge the blade between the two Auras, he could free the host. Of course, the blade drew power from the wielder, so if it didn’t work, he would be in some trouble…

He glanced back to where he had been standing in the visible world. Hazel, was looking around fearfully. Not knowing about his element, she had probably assumed that he had popped out of the dimension and left her. If he didn’t act soon, she would probably be targeted again.

Seth lunged at the attacker and jammed the blade into his heart. When it pierced his skin, it was as if he had unleashed a storm in the dimensional layer. As a vacuum was created inside the body of the boy, an inky black cloud was forced into the space around him. Seth was yanked back into visibility and struggled to hold on to the blade, even as he felt it draining him.

The eyes of his attacker widened, and the yellow drained out of them to reveal a clear, effervescent green. Almost as if he could see through Seth’s glasses, the boy locked directly onto his eyes--his expression intensely grateful—before his lids drooped and his eyes dulled with exhaustion. As the last of the yellow left the eyes of the boy, a pair of yellow eyes blinked open in the black cloud. It stared at them for a few moments as a mouth with pointy white teeth began to appear, before disappearing with an angry howl.

The boy in front of Seth was swaying with exhaustion, and Seth yanked the dagger out before it could expel the second aura. He tried to do it gently, but his own limbs were heavy and uncooperative. The force proved to be too much for the young man, and he toppled forward. Seth tried to catch him, but the blade had drained more than he had anticipated, and they both fell to the dusty street.

His head felt oddly disconnected from his body—as if it were floating above it—and darkness was creeping into his vision. As he fought to stay lucid, a blur of orange curls loomed over him. Before he could tell Hazel not to touch the dagger, he blacked out.