Present time
Silence hung in the air as we struggled to comprehend what Iban had just said. The death of his master hung dry and heavy, enough so that Caiden moved closer to me in comfort, his shoulder brushing mine in as if thinking about that death brought up some uncomfortable thoughts of his own.
"And "him"? Who was that?" I finally asked, hoping to break the tension that I didn't want to be in. Iban continued to stare into the fire before his gaze slowly lifted to mine.
"After Zing died, I went back to our house and searched the place. Of course, the humans had ransacked before I arrived; hoping to steal whatever notes Zing had and use it for themselves. I had no idea what they had taken or even what Zing deemed important. It would take another couple of days before I would even find the stash of notes he had beneath the floorboard of our bed. They were mostly gibberish to me, but I would keep them until I found my second mage who was able to read them accurately enough. He couldn't read everything, since even he was restricted by the language that Zing wrote and his own findings. However, he could read a lot of them." Iban turned to stare at me, "The ones that you read the other day were some prophecies that my second mage had deciphered from Zing. He was also the one who deciphered some new formulas to allow us to create new familiars, like me." Iban sounded almost proud as he talked about his second master. Making me wonder if sometime down the line if he would talk about me like that as well.
"So, Romand told me that humans couldn't actually create familiars. Does that mean...?" I trailed off, letting Iban finish my sentence.
"He's right. Humans probably tried to read some of the incoherent notes that they stole from Zing years ago, but they would've been incompletely and utter nonsense. And even if they did manage to read them... I'm not sure they would understand. Because only demons can create demons." Akan nodded in response, but the look on his face told me there was definitely something more to this person than they were letting on.
"So, this other person that Zing was referring to... the "him" was your second master?" Caiden asked. Iban shook his head.
"No, but he was important to our operation." Iban then looked over at Akan, who was looking down at the fire, his gaze distant. Akan took a deep breath and looked up at us.
"His second master was Melan; he was able to create a plan based on the notes that Zing left behind. He wasn't particularly extroverted, but people listened to what he had to say. He became a makeshift king of sorts." Akan took another deep breath. "He was also... my brother." My brows scrunched up in confusion. I was already pretty startled, I will admit, learning that demons could look like humans. But to think that they had familial relationships was entirely something new.
"Brother?" I asked, hoping he would continue. When he did not, I asked some more, "I didn't even realize that demons could have siblings, but you had a brother?" I was trying to be gentle because I realized he referred to his brother in the past tense, but I was extremely curious to push Akan to tell the story, especially because he wasn't saying anything for a long while. Luckily, Akan nodded and continued.
"He was incredibly smart. When Iban first came to our home looking for him, I thought that he was trying to get Melan to come with him to do dirty work. But Melan didn't mind. Iban trusted him to do something important, and Melan loved the attention. He was the one to figure out that Zing had planned just about everything related to Iban and his future. It was as if he could see into the future. We still don't know how he did it but it's like he knew centuries upon centuries of knowledge." Akan shook his head in disbelief. "He even planned his own death."
"His own death?" Caiden asked incredulously, "But, how? Why didn't he...?" Iban shook his head in a shrugging sort of way.
"It wasn't like he knew exactly what was going to happen and when. But he knew relatively when he was going to die, and what I would do next. Which was to seek out Melan. He even planned for both of us to meet. Well, I'm not sure if he had planned out everything to the exact detail because Melan refused to reveal everything he had discovered. Regardless, Zing knew we needed to get together and create a group that would unite to look for "him". That is how Akan and I got acquainted." Iban looked over at Akan who nodded in response. Akan though, still looked sad to discuss his brother. I glanced over at Caiden, who was watching Akan in pity. And, despite knowing that it was an insensitive question, I couldn't help but want to ask it. I, of course, felt some sort of sympathy for both of the people in front of me because they had lost someone so important to them, but I was more curious about the information than I was worried about their mental stability as much as Caiden might be upset about me for it.
"And Melan? What happened to him?" I probed, earning a little bit of a glare from Caiden. Akan sighed and gave a soft, sad smile as if saying it was fine to ask the question.
"I know I have to tell you, but I just don't like to bring up sad things." Akan scrubbed a hand into his hair, almost angrily ripping out a few strands, the smile stripping from his face. "I grew up with my bother raising me for as long as I could remember. I don't know what happened to our parents, so all I had was him. Given that, he was a bad guardian. He didn't know how to take care of himself, let alone someone else. I spent most of my days searching around for our food and getting necessary items. He mostly stayed inside and read books and loads of other information that he could get his hands on." Akan gave another soft smile, bringing his knees up to his chest so that he could rest his head on them. "He loved it when I brought home books. And even though he spent every day inside our house, he never let me feel alone, even though we were ostracized by the other demons." Akan took a deep sigh and shook his head. He buried his face in his knees, slightly shocking me because I had never seen this side of Akan. He always seemed so aloof and emotionless so I was a little taken aback to see him expressing himself.
Iban noticed that Akan seemed too overwhelmed to be able to speak, so he continued to tell the story.
"Because of Akan and Melan's parents, the other demons of their neighborhood would go out of their way to make their lives horrible. I don't know what happened, because Akan and Melan were in a different place than I was, but..." Iban looked over at Akan, who continued to stay curled up. Iban shook his head and looked back over to us. "I was looking through some of Zing's notes with some people from my first town and we figured out that he wanted me to find Melan and Akan. So, I traveled for a few weeks to meet them, carrying only a few notes because the rest was too much for a familiar like myself to carry.
"It took me a while to get close to them, mainly Akan. But because Melan was really interested in learning and reading through Zing's notes, he was more than willing to leave the house and go back to Zing's. There, he spent years pouring over the contents of Zing's notes; finding them all over the house, in places that I didn't even have a clue about. He used them to tell the people of my town what next steps to take after Zing's death. Then..." Iban looked over at Akan, who lifted his head again so that he could rest his chin on his knees.
"One thing that was common among the people was getting revenge against humans." Akan interrupted. "Of course, that wasn't possible. There wasn't anything that we could do as a race. We weren't prepared for war after losing so many people, especially our king. Though, people were still angry. And, because Melan could read Zing's notes, they wanted him to become the new king." Akan shook his head sadly. Allowing his head to turn on his knees so he was staring outside. "Melan wasn't fit to be king. He could hardly take care of himself; how would they expect him to take care of an entire kingdom." Akan let a chuckle, one that told me he couldn't believe what happened next. "Then, one day, he was gone. People were upset that he wasn't taking the responsibilities that they placed on him. And they grabbed him... he was taken from me forever. I'm not sure why, but I believe that in their heads, if they got rid of the one with the most power, then someone else whom they could manipulate would replace him." Akan, throughout his speech, slowly gripped his knees tighter, to the point that even I thought it looked painful. Caiden beside me had placed a good majority of his upper body weight on me throughout the conversation, which was probably the only reason that I managed to stay quiet and grounded during the discussion. I had wanted to interrupt multiple times, especially to ask questions about what Akan was doing during the time. But I felt that if I did, it wouldn't be something that Caiden wouldn't appreciate; same with Akan and Iban. So, I stayed quiet, letting Akan talk all he needed to.
It was another beat before Akan spoke again, clearing his throat to get rid of whatever emotions were bubbling up. He turned his head back to stare at the fire before he continued talking. "It was only after his death we realized that Melan, too, knew when he was going to die and how. He knew that the people would end up killing him, and that was all part of his plan to get us to gather the research and the information he had gathered over time. So, we did that, Iban and I. Though, I was so pissed off at the demon race as a whole I almost didn't want to do anything with Iban." He let out a genuine small chuckle at this and looked over at Iban as if reminiscing about the situation. "But I did, and we fled. After we found a relatively safe place to stay, we read what he had translated from the notes for us." Akan and Iban looked at each other, long enough so that Caiden spoke up.
"What happened? What did he say?" Iban looked over at Caiden, then at me.
"Well..." Iban scratched his head, letting his head hang low so that he could rub his paw against his ears. The movement was almost awkward and embarrassed as if he didn't want to answer the next question.
"It was basically to let the demons fall to ruins." Akan blurted out. He finally put his knees down and was sitting upright to poke at the fire. The fiery blaze reflected in his eyes, almost mirroring the scenes that Iban described earlier. "He wanted us to let them run wild, essentially; let themselves get killed and to collapse as a society. And... he wanted us two to find the next mage on... Ekalen." Iban shook his head incredulously.
"It was unheard of. Finding a mage outside of our own community was crazy to think about. But we had trusted Zing's information from that point on, so we had to do so again." Iban stood up, allowing himself to stretch. "So, Akan made his way onto Ceapan, looking for the third mage that Melan wanted us to find. I stayed on Ekalen, waiting." Iban then looked up to me, sitting down in the same exact position I had found him in all those years before. "Then, we found you."
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Hello everyone! Saph here! Thank you all so much for reading! I'm sorry if you're not a huge fan of dialogue or story outside of Caiden and Alan's interactions, but this is just as important. I wanted to write a flashback for Melan and Akan because I think I would like Melan as a character as well; but I ended up not doing it because I thought it would be a bit too overwhelming, haha. Maybe one day I'll have both Zing and Melan in a situation, (obviously, though, not at the same time, since they never actually met).
Anyway, I really hope you all enjoyed this chapter. Also, Happy Holidays! I feel like I should've said that last chapter, but I kind of forgot and got too lazy to add it into there, lol. So, I hope you all, depending on where you live, have been having a great winter holiday season so far, regardless of what you do during this time. I'm mostly happy because I get a break from the stress of being a senior in college, haha. It was nice to get to play video games with my siblings, get to build Legos, and I even got Just Dance! So I've been spending the time off well, and I hope you all have been taking time for yourselves as well.
Regardless, I hope you all have enjoyed this chapter! As always, please let me know if you have any questions or concerns or if there is anything I need to fix or, simply, how you liked the chapter! I'm excited to see where we are headed next and I think that, while we are getting close to the end, it'll still be more than the 10 chapters I claimed a while back. I'm not totally sure, but I'm ready to see more and get to the end!
See you guys next time! Stay safe out there!