Chapter 5: The mahee conference – part 2

As much as D’Argen hated the crowd, he loved the sounds of it. As someone who consumed sound the same way most consumed water and food, the conference was the perfect place to replenish. It was a little harder to pull the sound into himself with most of the gods wearing Simeal’s charms to dampen their scents, but D’Argen was able to easily ignore the inconvenience simply due to how loud it was. He loved all the sounds and rumble around him; the conversations that faded in and out, the music that somehow both overpowered the people and was hidden by them, and the sounds of building, bartering, cooking, shouting, singing, and screaming.

And all of that, from the back of the medical tent where he lay with his eyes closed. If he could handle the crowd, he would be standing in the midst of it where it was even louder.

There was a loud thump, like a drum being hit. D’Argen opened his eyes to look at the top of the tent. It was much darker with the last of the sun’s rays shining over the conference. He had not even noticed the time passing and had to wonder what was taking his companions so long to locate Vain.

Another thump and D’Argen sat up, his eyes wandering to the sound even though there were multiple tent layers and stalls and people between him and the platform where the sound was coming from.

The crowd was quieting down.

Another thump and every other sound faded away completely as if Yaling had released one of her silencing spells. He knew exactly what those thumps meant. It was the first day of the conference and Acela was due to give the opening speech.

A quick glance around the tent revealed that Simeal was not there and he expected the god to be already outside the tent and facing the stage. D’Argen was slow to leave. It was like everything stopped. When he exited the tent, the mortals only looked at him briefly before moving out of his way. He did not go down the path that was opened for him, but it did reveal the stone stage in the centre of the field with Acela standing on it.

D’Argen noticed a few of the other gods speckled throughout the crowd, draped in beautiful and elaborate robes with hints of glinting jewels and metal on them. He recognized each of them by face but Acela drew all his attention away from them and back on her.

Even from such a distance, she looked resplendid in a light gown that shimmered and metal bands on her arms and around her neck. Her long hair was loose, spilling over her shoulders. The only thing that kept it from blowing freely in the wind was a thin circlet resting on her head. It was there for the mortals, not for the gods, to show her status as Queen.

The mortals believed that the gods had one leader. The truth was that they all looked up to the First Five. They were the most powerful in each of the five aspects of magic the mahee was based on. Acela, although not the most powerful of the five, was unanimously chosen by the rest to lead them in the mortals’ eyes.

Standing right behind her was Zetha, another of the five and her husband, King of the Gods. He was dressed as finely as Acela though in a medley of different cuts and shades rather than the light of his Queen. Like her, he had a thick metal band around his neck and a thin circlet keeping his long dark hair down. Unlike Acela, his curls could not be held down by such a simple band and they danced to the breeze.

D’Argen had not seen his Queen and King in a very long time. In fact, he had not seen any of the First Five in a long time, but the other three were not on the stage. Still, the Queen and King were a sight for sore eyes, even if Zetha had taken on the mortal custom of the northern towns and had grown facial hair. It was closely cropped and shaped neatly, but the mustache and beard threw D’Argen off. He looked older now, and it was strange because time did not touch any of the gods.

One final thump sounded and it echoed around the silent grounds. Even the camps outside the pillars and caravans still on the roads quieted completely.

“Mahee calls to mahee,” Acela said the words in the ancient language, the one the gods rarely even used anymore. The words themselves were like a spell.

D’Argen had all of his attention focused on her and his mahee thrown wide open. He watched as the world around him faded away into a blank canvas, each stall becoming a blur, each mortal turning into a dirty smudge, and each of the hundreds of gods in the field becoming a dark silhouette.

Instead of opening his mahee to run, he reached for his queen and then for each of the dark silhouettes spread around the blank canvas. As he watched, the silhouettes became lighter and blurry, streams of them dislodging like ink drops dissolving in water. Every single strand, no matter how faint, reached out for one another until they all created a giant net that covered the entire field. A few of those strands streaked away from the field, fading only due to distance, and more appeared out of the distance to reach for Acela, standing in the middle of them all.

D’Argen knew that even if not all of the gods were there, some continents away, at that moment every single god in all of Trace was facing Acela. He had been in distant lands, talking to mortals or running the oceans during previous conferences when the spell touched him and made him stop to face Acela. It was not a comforting feeling at the time. Now, it felt like finally made it home.

For a moment, his mind wandered and he thought of that cheetah running out in the Oltrian fields. He wondered if it too stopped what it was doing and bared its neck and belly this way.

A light smudge near him started swaying and D’Argen closed off his mahee a little. The smudge became a silhouette and then a man’s features slowly appeared on the blank canvas. D’Argen closed off his mahee even more, reducing his scent to keep it from overwhelming the man.

The mortal was clutching at a tent post to keep from falling. Most of the mortals that D’Argen could see were either already on the ground on their knees or had their heads thrown back and facing the sky with ecstasy clear on their features.

He knew that some mortals came here for the euphoric high they experienced when surrounded by the scents of the gods. He ignored them and faced Acela once more. Her scent was strong enough for him to doubt she was wearing one of Simeal’s charms. It was crisp, clean, a scent that could only be described as sunlight on a warm summer day.

It spread out from the platform like a blanket and covered him in comfort and love, security and peace, and it told him that he would listen. Acela’s mahee was based on the essence aspect of magic, able to connect with that deeper part inside both gods and mortals that made them each unique. As one of the First Five, she could do even more than that. She could make every single person at the conference, god and mortal alike, listen to her every word and obey her orders.

Persuasion, she called it when asked.

D’Argen felt that tug inside him telling him to lift his chin higher.

Control, the rest of the gods knew.

Through their connections with the mahee, Acela guided them all into a silent spell.

The mahee was something only the gods possessed. To their knowledge, only that accursed stone and a few metals affected the mahee in any way, but no mortal had ever been able to interact with it. The mahee was what gave them the scents of magic, what gave them the power to create these lands and their inhabitants, and what made them deities to be worshipped.

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While every single one of the gods had the mahee inside them in different aspects and unique scents, the mahee was not many. It was one piece that had split apart to become each of them. It belonged together.

When Acela opened the conference, she was not just saying random words.

Mahee calls to mahee.

This was what it meant to be a god – a Never Born, as they called themselves in their ancient language, learning the words god and deity only after arriving in the mortal realm. They were created from the mahee and belonged to it, never born to a body but kept inside one all the same. They allowed the mahee to live inside them and they were it. Every single one of them was connected to the others.

At that moment, with that spell and the blanket of sunshine over him, D’Argen was no longer himself and he was the mahee, along with every single Never Born in Trace. As he became they and they became one, all of the bodies turned into empty shells waiting for the mahee to return to them.

Once the scent of sunshine faded, D’Argen remembered that he was one and returned to his body as himself. He felt Acela’s hold on him release and he dropped his chin. He reached for his mahee and let the scent of the ocean spill out of the cage of his body only for a moment, to confirm that he was himself and separate from the others. Once that was done, he checked his body and rubbed his throat. It was just bare to the entire crowd around him a moment before, leaving him vulnerable. He hated that feeling, no matter how euphoric it felt to connect with Acela and the rest of the Never Born. He would definitely be looking into those metal bands he noticed most of the gods wearing around their throats. They were probably gold, bouncing the scents of the mahee back into the body if it escaped like a mirror would to light.

A quick glance at the mortals around him revealed them all rising and steady on their feet. For some, their eyes were slightly glazed, but the high they experienced earlier was gone. Not one of them made a sound other than to shuffle their clothes as they all looked up to Acela like the god they claimed her to be.

“I welcome you all,” Acela started speaking again in the common tongue. “I see some new faces here and I want you to know, you are always welcome.” She was speaking to the mortals in the crowd, those that were here for the first time. As she continued her usual speech of welcoming them, D’Argen thought back to the first few conferences with mortals present. Back then, he believed that Acela recognized all the old faces, those that were changed by time, and could easily point out the new ones.

Now, he knew better.

He did not dare move from his spot, Acela’s magic still keeping him controlled even though her scent was faint, but that did not mean he had to pay attention to her words. This speech was the same as the last time he heard it. As it had been for the past one thousand years.

Acela barely made a full circle, facing each side of the platform, before her speech came to a close.

That was new.

D’Argen focused on her last words, hoping to catch what the differences were from before.

“As we spend this time together to learn from one another, I wish you all to look to us for guidance and help. We are always here for you.”

It sounded the exact same as before. He must have missed where she cut her speech short.

“You are home,” she finished the speech with the traditional saying, one that was originally meant only for the Never Born. Now, she spoke it in the common tongue so the mortals would understand it too.

D’Argen raised his chin in respect to her, as did every other Never Born in the crowd. The mortals around him did the opposite, bowing their heads and some even dropping to their knees on the ground. He did not understand where that custom had started but it was one that all mortal nations used, in one form or another.

D’Argen dropped his chin and rubbed at his throat as if to check that the entrance of his mahee was still safe and unharmed.

The bustle and commotion of the crowd returned and shortly after started music, right from the platform. The crowd had started moving again so D’Argen did not see who was playing, but it sounded uplifting and happy. He would not be surprised if Yaling was up there and dancing.

“I did not know you would be here.” A male voice startled him into jumping to face its owner.

D’Argen found himself looking down at Vain, Chief Scholar and God of History, also known as The Historian though many of the Never Born considered him nothing more than a librarian. He was the one in charge of Evadia’s library and all of the written knowledge they possessed. He was, also, the one that sent D’Argen running around all of Trace at a whim, trying to fill in the blanks in his records.

“I was looking for you,” D’Argen replied with a smile. The scholar was so quiet that D’Argen did not notice him sneaking up on him at all. There was no scent coming from the man either, but a quick glance revealed his throat bare of both metal band and Simeal’s charms.

“To report something?” Vain asked. He looked the exact same as the last time D’Argen saw him. The man had skin so pale that it looked almost translucent, making him stand out from the crowd even when completely covered in his long robes. He was almost a full head shorter than D’Argen, his long dark hair held back in a half bun and a pair of delicate wire-rimmed glasses before his eyes that he did not actually need. He looked too young for many of the mortals to take him seriously, barely a boy out of his teens, even though he was the highest-ranking scholar in all of Trace.

“Not exactly a report,” D’Argen finally answered. The crowd was starting to get loud again. “Do you have a moment?”

“I was about to ask you the same thing. I wanted to speak with you.”

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