Some say the most gruesome way to be executed was by electric chair. Strapped to a chair, hunk of metal on your head, crying, waiting for death. Horrifying images from late night internet searches come to mind. A dark chapter in the history of the world. When decency gives way to perceived convenience. When even the executioner can not help but feel his stomach churn. That is death by electricity.
The kamikaze were the so-called divine winds that helped spare Japan from the Mongol hordes that swept through the rest of Asia. Conquering China, sacking Baghdad, and making the largest contiguous land empire in history was no small feat. There can be little doubt that the Japanese would not have been a match for the Mongols. Thus, the importance of these divine winds in the Imperial Japanese military mythos during the second world war was understandable. Kamikaze attacks, aimed at felling entire ships through suicidal attacks by planes were harrowing and for modern sensibilities, quite incomprehensible. Why would a pilot willingly execute themselves for a war that was being lost, an imperial elite that did not care for them, and commanders who had clearly made mistake after mistake?
It was in this moment that I understood why. I understood why somebody would be compelled to go down with the enemy. It wasn’t a rational decision. The brain did not think. The neurons lay idle. No, a decision like this was motivated purely by emotion. Overwhelming emotion. The kind that kicked all considerations aside, thought not of the future, and filled the present with a blinding emotional light.
A blinding light not unlike the one coming from the book in Noel’s hand.
My electricity arced towards the metal walls. A few white tendrils shot towards Noel. Upon contact with the sides or the body, Noel would face the same inhumane, undignified death that came from the electric chair. My own body would face the same pain, the same death, but my heart would insulate itself with the insanity of suicide.
The book fluttered.
A sane thought finally broke through my mind. A mind I did not recognize. A mind that did not feel like my own. Not a mind that had been taken over by another, no. This was a mind inundated in wild emotions, chaotically clashing against each other and making it impossible for rationality to break through. To calm me down. To stop the spell before it took down myself and a person whom I still did not actually want to kill. All for a book that I still did not know anything about. In my moment of clarity, I recognized the insanity of my actions, the savagery of my emotions, and the futility of my rationality in this moment. There was nothing I could do to stop myself.
A flash of light. Dazzling. It enveloped the lightning, drowning out its brightness and replacing its crackle with an incessant ringing. Pain assaulted my eyes. I looked away. I blinked. The world was swimming, bleary. I blinked again, rubbed my eyes, waited for my vision to settle. The pain faded. My vision stilled. I looked back at Noel.
Noel stood with the book held out in front of her. The book’s pages were blank but uneven. Each page seemed to have been cut arbitrarily, and the binding itself looked rough and unprofessional. Its pages fluttered in an absent breeze. The ringing in my ears died down. My flared up emotions also disappeared. I felt like there was a hole in my chest. As if something had drained out of my body alongside those flared emotions. I felt weak in my knees. I couldn’t stand up for much longer.
I collapsed. A sharp pain ran along my body as my knees hit the stiff metal floor. The pain jolted me awake once more, and I felt another exaggerated emotion flying out of my mind as well: lethargy. I was still tired, of course, but there was something strange going on with my emotions right now. I could barely collect my thoughts enough to recognize what it was, but I could tell it had something to do with whichever emotion I was feeling the strongest at the time. If I felt angry, my anger was amplified. If I was tired, I felt like taking a nap regardless of the circumstances. I held my forehead in a hand and groaned. From one eye I saw Noel looking down at me, the book of Annihilation in her hands.
I stared at the book. Frustration began to bubble and froth. It would surely mature into rage once more, and then I would try to do something stupid again. No. I couldn’t let that happen. Since when had I become such an emotional wreck? Clearly somebody was messing with me. If I was to feel rage, it had to be at that person. I had to be enraged by whoever was making me angry!
That line of thinking could have become a cycle of intensifying rage, but miraculously, it seemed to have deflated my rage instead. I breathed out. Calm. Calm and tired. I had defeated the strange magic. Or perhaps whoever had cast it had finally let me go.
I frowned. Had Noel cast this magic? No, remember, magic like this was too complicated. Not even I could do that yet. I wouldn’t be able to do something like this until I had a ton of modern equipment and data. Was an Immortal involved? Perhaps. But why now? There had been better opportunities to mess with me, opportunities where I had been on the verge of death. It would have been better to interfere at those opportunities, if the intention was to kill me or mess me up.
Except, what if that was not their intention? The first thing that had happened with this spell was that I had been consumed with a blind rage that made me want to kill both Noel and myself inside this metal room. If an Immortal had cast this spell, their goal wasn’t to help Noel take the book. No, they wanted to stop her from taking it out of this room.
“Do you understand now, Cas?” said Noel. She was still looking down at me with the fluttering book in front of her.
“Understand what?” I said, absentmindedly.
“We are not the only ones who can cast magic,” she said.
I frowned. “Of course I know the Immortals can cast magic. I never denied that. All I said was that their magic system is different from ours.” My words were slow, with many pauses and gaps in between.
“You say their magic is different because they can do what you cannot,” said Noel, “but just because you do not know how to fly, does not mean birds are doing something you cannot. If you understood how birds fly, you could do so too. The problem is that you do not know.”
“Right,” I said, with a quiet chuckle. “Birds. That’s what I need right now.”
“Are you sure?” said Noel.
“The only reason you beat me, Noel, is because you had his help. That madman in the moon. You sold your soul to him, but I guess it worked. I can’t stop you. But if you can get an Immortal’s help, than so can I,” I said.
“You’ve already received their help, haven’t you,” said Noel.
I didn’t reply.
“You said you were sent back to the past. But you didn’t learn much, so you couldn’t have come back very far. And the other Immortals would not have let Desire do as it pleased for long enough to send you back very far,” said Noel. “No matter. You came back in time but you lost.” Noel held the book up and walked forward. “I will be taking this.”
“Noel,” I said. “Please. Tell me. Tell me about Annihilation! I don’t care, okay? You can take the book. I don’t even know why I was trying so hard to keep it from you. Just tell me. Tell me how to go home.”
Noel frowned. “Go home?” Noel nodded slowly. “Why do you think this will help you go home?”
I blanked. “Your master. He said the secret was annihilation. I’ve been following that clue for ages. Don’t you remember, you were there?”
Noel blinked. “Annihilation? Annihilation. Yes, I see. Your translation magic. It translated it that way.”
“I knew it!” I said, with a pained smile on my face. “I knew it would be something like this! I heard it in my language, but the Immortal must have said it in another. Quickly, tell me what you heard. What does it mean in the elfin language, I’ll deactivate my translation magic to hear what you are saying! Please. Tell me. I won’t come after you anymore. I’ll leave this world behind, you and your master can have it. Just, please. I want to go home.” I didn’t realize when the tears had pooled in my eyes. “I just want to go home.”
Noel stood in place. We couldn’t hear anything from outside the metal room. Even the fluttering book didn’t make a sound. Noel took a step forward. Then another. She walked up to me, looked at me collapsed to the ground with barely enough energy to speak. She shook her head and kept walking. Walking right past me.
I turned. “No, please! Please! One word. My translation magic is off. Say it in the elfin language. Just one word, please! Noel! Noel!” I fell forward. There was no energy left in my body. “Noel!” I shouted one last time.
Noel stopped. She didn’t turn around. She didn’t say anything.
I saw something in front of her. A flutter. Wings. Feather. There was a bird in front of Noel. The bird whistled. Noel flinched.
The whistle echoed around the metal room, ricocheting off the walls until there was a haunting echo everywhere.
The echo kept going. Growing stronger and stronger until it turned into laughter. Unbridled. Incessant. Maddening.
Laughter.
