k_a_webb | The World Walkers: Quiar: The Case of the Counterfeit Enchantments (part 9, 58th continuation) (Reply)

“I’m not certain, if I was in her position, that I would have believed him,” Lucille said, unsure she even believed Emrys when she lived within the Web that he had helped to create. “To me it makes sense that connection Athare to other worlds would have had the same effect as creating the Web.”

“For a while I thought he simply used that argument because he wanted to be able to experiment more than the fae wanted us to, because I didn’t believe his argument that we needed to create the Web, but then he showed us what would happen if we didn’t. He used a small amount of magic to create an example to show us all, even though he didn’t have to, so we could understand why he had said what he did and why exactly we were creating the Web, instead of simply following the fae’s plans.” Meriwether smiled. “What we had in front of us was a central world, Athare, with a drain on it, which represented the fae. No matter how hard we tried to convince the rest of our race that not everything needed to be done using magic they simply wouldn’t accept it as a valid alternative, although there may have come a point when they had no choice.

“Emrys created five worlds around Athare, linking them together in the way the fae assumed we would, so that each world was only connected to Athare by a strand of magic, nothing like the tubes we created as part of the Web. Anything that the races of those five worlds created could be used by Athare to keep the core of herself strong, but as we saw, there was nothing returning to those five worlds – even though the races of them continued to make small amounts of magic that the worlds could gather into themselves it wasn’t enough. We knew what was going to happen then, because we’d been through it all when we were living on Kalinia.

“As each of those five worlds was drained of their magic they became wastelands, where no one could live, so they couldn’t keep Athare strong any longer. Finally the fae managed to use up all the magic within Athare’s core too and the world that we came to because we destroyed Kalinia with our selfishness became another wasteland, home to a race that couldn’t leave it, even though they wanted to, as there wasn’t enough magic within Athare to make a door that would take our race to another world. Emrys also created a comparison, showing a Web with only five worlds, that worked much better, although the time still came when there wasn’t enough magic within the cores of all them to be able to keep Athare’s core full of the magic we used. That’s why we needed so many worlds, especially as we knew that each of the worlds would have their own problems, although we didn’t know how bad they might be.

“We should have done really.” Meriwether sighed. “Each world that I have travelled to has been home to races that were abandoned at a time when they needed us the most, when they were young and still coming to an understanding with what they were, which is something we could never understand no matter how hard we tried. The bonded races, the races of the many Gaeloms, the animal races that live on Kniroch’s sibling worlds and their connection with the world that we created, the Witches of Raenarin… the list of races we should have been there for goes on and one, because we followed the orders of our elders, stupid though they were. As their creators we should have helped them, even if it meant angering the fae, and then we gave the job to the Moonjumpers.

“Moonjumpers who were quickly curtailed by the rules that they were given by the fae, because of their fear they wouldn’t be in control. There are still those who do what needs to be done, instead of acting the way a race who have no understanding of the Web think they should. People like you, Lucille, within the Council, natural Moonjumpers outside the Council, all knowing that at any moment they might be found out and stopped from doing their job. The job the worlds evolved them to do, as the worlds realised that the Moonjumpers were needed in order to fix any problems that might arise due to the choices we made at a time before we realised that we knew more about the Web than our race ever could, so we should have made our decisions based on what we knew instead of letting their fear get the better of us.

“Then we still felt a loyalty to them, to our families, because they’d raised us, even though they’d made some mistakes we really shouldn’t have forgotten. We should have known that they couldn’t understand what we were doing or why we’d done thing the way we had. Emrys suggested we show them the demonstration models he’d made, to help them, but we all told him it wasn’t worth it. No matter what we said or what we did or how often we tried to get those who weren’t a part of the creation process to accept that the choices we made were for the good of the fae it was never going to convince them we were right. Unfortunately they’d already decided that the only reason we’d created the Web was so we could experiment.

“Even though we were grateful for the chance that wasn’t the reason we were creating the Web. We could have done more than enough experimenting on five worlds and I know that it was difficult to keep thinking of magical races we could place on each of the worlds, knowing that every single one of them needed to gather magic in order to keep Athare and the rest of the Web strong. Not all of them have stayed that way, which actually turned out to be less of a problem than we thought it would be. I know there are a couple of worlds that have very little magic in their core on a regular basis, because they don’t need it, and so what they do gather they give to the others. Fortunately none of the worlds need as much as Athare, as we tried our hardest to make sure that we didn’t create another race like the fae, who simply take magic from the core of a world.

“Normally there is give and take. A race will take magic in order to use it and then return it in a different form, which the core of the world can then transform back into the type they need to keep in their core. The fae just take. We don’t transform the magic we use – somehow we destroy it, but I don’t know how. It’s something we should have tried to understand, but we chose not to, because it was easier to walk away and start again, even though that left behind destroyed worlds that no one can live on now. Kalinia, from what I’ve heard was lucky, because she was sentient enough to gather some magic into a hidden place so she could begin again once we left. Unfortunately she wasn’t sentient enough to be able to stop what was happening to her or to save some of the races that had lived on her surface for much longer than the fae.”

“How much do you know about Kalinia as it is now?” Lucille asked, surprised he knew some of what Quiar had told her, because she didn’t think Meriwether had ever had a connection to one of the worlds.

“Talking to the worlds isn’t the only way you can find out things. I’ve spent a lot of time talking to people who were Moonjumpers during at least one lifetime and there were some who had been born fae, so they wanted to know what had happened to the world they’d left behind. Obviously, as they stayed outside the wards, they’d had a chance to make amends for our mistakes, and I know several of them weren’t even a part of the creation of the Web. They chose to stay outside the wards because they wanted to be a part of the new creation, even though their families tried to convince them they’d be better off safe inside the settlements, where they wouldn’t get hurt, because the fae’s greatest fear was the races that we had created.

“I think, in part, it was due to what had happened with the Dragons, which was something we all had to live with from the time it happened, and it wasn’t something we could wipe from our own history, the way we had with other mistakes that we made. No, the Dragons were there to stay, no matter how much we wished things could be different. To be honest I never had a problem with the Dragons, they mostly kept to themselves, and the few I met were nice enough, although I know there was a time when there was a civil war as some of them thought their King was being too soft with the fae.”

Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.