The Nextworld Invasion and the Death of Magic - 15. Chapter 15 - The Human

“You can hear me! Can you see me as well?”

Tigath, Othri, and Lestralin stayed where they were, but Nuji and Kilial approached, and Kilial swiped her long spidery fingers through the hovering image. It rippled, but the Human’s face remained.

“Oh good, you can see me!”

“Who are you?” Kilial barked.

“And how is a Human doing this?” Nuji added in disbelief.

The woman looked relieved. “My name is Dorjin. You need to stay away from the big city and the islands!”

“What are you talking about?!” Kilial snapped.

“I’ve been able to watch you for a while,” Dorjin replied quickly, “but I was only just able to open the barrier.”

Kilial was furious. “What barrier?! How are you doing this?”

“I’m using magic.”

Nuji let out a laugh of disbelief. “Humans can’t do magic!” she scoffed.

Dorjin was confused. “Of course we can,” she declared defiantly. “We’ve been studying and copying your magic for generations!” Everyone was surprised by the revelation, but Dorjin continued before anyone replied. “You need to stay away from the islands you were looking at on the map. We don’t call them the same thing that you do, but phalanxes have been sent to both islands, and the major harbor on the mainland is the next target.”

“You mean Springdale?” Lestralin asked from behind Kilial.

“We call it Bhathdiclen,” Dorjin informed him, “and yes, it’s the next strike point.”

Tigath spoke up from beside Othri. “Why are you telling us this?”

Dorjin’s countenance fell. “Not all of us are part of Kalthrin.” Those aboard the Mermonster did not know what the word meant. “I used to be,” Dorjin went on, “but I’ve turned my back on them. If they find out I’ve figured out how to open the barrier on my own…” She trailed off, and Tigath addressed her again.

“But why would a Human help us?”

“A few of us don’t believe in what Kalthrin are doing.”

Kilial asked what they all were thinking. “What is the Kalthrin?”

“Kalthrin are what is attacking your world.”

Kilial glared at her. “We just call them Humans.”

“But not all of us are bad; we aren’t all part of Kalthrin!” Dorjin insisted.

“Don’t change the subject,” Kilial snapped. “We aren’t talking about whether some of you monsters are good or not. The Humans are wiping out the free peoples of Earth. We are not going to get into a debate about which ones of you are killing us; it’s you.”

“You’re right,” Dorjin replied weakly. “I only wanted to help. My opening through the barrier is about to disappear, and I needed to tell you not to go where you were planning on going.” Her voice fell even more. “My people have already done so much damage, but there is a rebellion of your races gathering at an abandoned outpost off the mainland in the region of Earth where you are.” Dorjin began to sound more excited. “The rebels are looking for others who can fight back, and Kalthrin don’t know where the rebellion is yet, but they’ll destroy it when they do, so you’ll need to get there fast and make a plan.”

“How is this our responsibility? The attackers are your people! You’re on the inside! And how did we even become your targets?”

Dorjin became more serious. “We’re taking back our world.”

“Your world?!” Kilial repeated with an incredulous laugh. “Humans have never come to this world, not until you invaded.”

“That’s not true,” Dorjin implored. “It’s where we came from, and your people exiled us! We’re just trying to come home.”

Everyone aboard the Mermonster fell into shocked silence, and the portal with the woman’s face vanished.

“That’s not… true, is it?” Tigath asked the group at large.

“It can’t be,” Othri replied, “can it?”

Nuji was shaking her head in disbelief, and she said nothing.

Kilial and Lestralin also remained silent, but a groan from across the deck drew all their attention to Alydrael.

*

Dorjin was alone in her private quarters. “Damn it,” she grumbled. There was more she had hoped to say before her window closed.

She was standing on solid metal flooring, but the walls of her room were moving. This was nothing new; the walls were always moving.

The Humans had developed technology unlike anything made by the Urcai, the Rothians, or the Noktar. The advancements of Nextworld revolved around living organic matter fused with machine-magic.

Dorjin was stationed and lived on a gargantuan aircraft that was anchored high in the atmosphere above Nextworld. The floating master-ship was an oblong, grey blimp of enormous proportions, but the girthy dirigible was not made of canvas. The living ship was like a supersized whale. It stretched for more than half a mile through Nextworld’s unearthly sky, and the monstrous thing cast a vast shadow onto the ground beneath it.

The fleshy material of the blimp was encircled by rigid rings at matching intervals, but the majority of the biomechanical dirigible was made of soft whale-like tissue that could be loosely defined as alive. Magical electricity crackled across the vessel’s exterior, and the bolts flickered in and out of existence.

The Humans’ means of spellcraft was no less grotesque than their organotechnology, and flesh was required to accomplish their magic. Unlike Rothian spells that helped to enhance and uplift the natural world, Human magic was achieved by twisting nature. Organs and tissue were necessary for every spell, but just like with the Rothians, only certain Humans were capable of accessing vast quantities of magic.

Dorjin was one of them, and she did not mind the gore. She sighed as she sloughed the cloned entrails that had been required to perform her spell, into the biological wastebin at the end of her casting table.

The Humans had a vast cloning facility where miscellaneous body parts from countless species could be acquired. When the Humans first began developing their spellcraft, they slaughtered the Nextworld wildlife to have enough material for their new magic, but as animal species began to go extinct, cloning became the common practice for generating the required flesh.

Dorjin had filled and emptied her biological wastebin multiple times during the day and a half that it had taken her for the casting. She could not guess how many pounds of cloned organs she had used to accomplish her brief conversation with the group of Earthians. Her spells had worked, but her communication with the group she found did not go as well as she had hoped.

It took a significant effort for Dorjin to cast the spells on her own that were required to peer through the barrier between Nextworld and Earth, but once a peephole was open, finding a powerful source of magic on the other side was easy. Her tiny window had homed in on the ship with its hodgepodge crew. Onboard were two of the long-limbed beings, who the Humans of Nextworld knew were magical, and they were who Dorjin suspected had drawn her view to them. The ship also bore three of the taller, green-skinned people, and a single man of the stocky race. There was also a strange animal that Dorjin was not familiar with, but she did not think it held the magic that pulled her spell to the group.

Performing the grisly charms to actually speak with those who were on the other side of the window had exhausted Dorjin’s energy. She knew she would not be able to do any more magic until she had slept. Major spells required multiple Humans casting them in unison, but Dorjin was uniquely skilled among her fellow magic-users. None of her superiors knew how advanced she had become.

Until very recently, Dorjin had been a member of Kalthrin, and although she still wished for herself and the other Humans of Nextworld to make it through the barrier to Earth, she no longer felt aligned with Kalthrin’s mission of annihilation. Unbeknownst to anyone, Dorjin was a rebel.

Everything had been so clear in the beginning. The leaders of her people had proclaimed to the citizens of the three Human cities on Nextworld that they were finally going home. The warriors of Kalthrin were preparing the way, and Dorjin had been honored to be accepted among their ranks. She was there when the barrier was first opened above Vuliburge, the city her people referred to as Blathriolint, and she had been proud to strike down the descendants of those peoples who had banished her ancestors. During the slaughter, Dorjin had rejoiced.

It was not until after the fires died, and she was witness to the wanton destruction, that her heart changed. She had been part of a squad in charge of clearing the streets of the dead, but moving the countless corpses of the three unique races broke whatever resolve Dorjin had initially felt. She had remained in Nextworld for the subsequent attacks that took out the other urbanscapes all over Earth that now lay in ruins. She knew the devastation in each city was as great or worse than what she had helped do in Vuliburge, and she was grateful to have been approved for non-assault assignments behind the scenes during the recent attacks.

Dorjin was exhausted, and she stretched her arms overhead. She turned to the grey flesh wall of her room and its sphincdoor. The muscular entryway that led out of her private quarters was like a tightly puckered, lipless mouth. Dorjin activated it, and the organic opening expanded wide enough for her to walk through. The wall clenched and sealed again behind her.

She headed down one of the internal arteries of the massive whale-like living machine that led to the mess hall, but an angry voice shouted her name.

“Oi, Dorjin!”

Dorjin cringed at hearing who it was, and she replied through her teeth. “Yes, Captain Vurlo?” She looked up at her superior.

Captain Vurlo was a tall, severe woman, whose harshness was only outdone by her cruelty. “Dorjin, you’re joining the next attack. I know you’re a powerful caster, but I won’t hear another word about you staying behind, no more of this bolstering-magic from Nextworld. You’re an eighth-tier haruspex, and you were instrumental during our initial attack on Earth. I’ve already informed your eel shuttle pilot that you’re on your way. He’s waiting. Get your gear. This is a direct order, and it won’t be disobeyed.”

“Yes, Capt…” Dorjin’s voice cracked, and she swallowed hard.

“What was that?!” Captain Vurlo barked, looming over Dorjin.

“Ye-yes, Captain Vurlo.”

The powerful woman shoved her way past Dorjin and up to another sphincdoor that stretched open for her.

Dorjin let out a breath when the woman was gone, and she growled, “How am I going to get out of this?”

The Humans had already killed so many people from the three races of Earth, and Dorjin was grateful that she had managed to remove herself from the attacks after the destruction of Vuliburge. She did not want to be part of any more of the killing; she just wanted to go home. Humans were raised to think of Earth as their home, even though no Humans had been to Earth in recorded history. The ancient stories of Nextworld told of Human origins on Earth.

Dorjin lived on the floating techno-organic whale aircraft, and when she realized what she was doing felt wrong, she wanted to leave, but there was nowhere for her to go. Her entire life had been with the military, Kalthrin. She knew no one except soldiers and officers. She had no connections to anyone on the outside. Dorjin had come up with no other option but to remain aboard the living blimp and request assignments that would not require her to do any of the killing herself. It had felt like the best she could do, until she managed to reach out to Earth by herself.

The fleshy entrance to her quarters opened again, and Dorjin reentered. Her flight suit was packed away in her closet.

“Haven’t put you on since the attack on… what did they call that city, Vuliburge?” She shook the suit and laid it onto her bed. She needed to hurry, but she paused as she grabbed her pack. It was full of everything she would need for the mission.

Dorjin had an idea!