… Lamech had spoken the secret unto his wives, and they rebelled against him, and declared these things abroad, and had not compassion; wherefore Lamech was despised, and cast out, and came not among the sons of men, lest he should die. And thus the works of darkness began to prevail among all the sons of men.

I went northward through city after city then into the mountains. It amazed me how many people there were in the world. Some of the cities I passed had hundreds of thousands. After climbing the foothills I was relieved to finally be in the wilderness again. It took about a month of walking to even get that far. With winter setting in, I thought it might be good to find a faster mode of travel. On a frosty morning as the sun just rose over the rim of a high mountain clearing I crept silently to where a herd of cureloms was shaking off the night chill. What I was doing was foolish and I knew it. Cureloms are big animals and they can break you and leave you for dead as easily as a wyrm or behemoth, they just won’t eat you afterward. But they were also fast. If I could catch one and somehow tame it I could make it home in weeks instead of months.

It was a medium sized herd of maybe a hundred. They had huddled in the center of the clearing and had a few keeping watch while the others had slept. Now the herd was waking and with more eyes watching the sentries were taking their places grazing among the others. I had watched one smaller male that was still on the periphery. If I could get close enough before he retreated I might be able to get him while the others ran away. The leader of the herd would not be so eager to save a future rival.

I could hear him breathing and smell his musk past the ice in the air that was becoming dew in the sun. He lifted his head and looked back. “Not yet,” I silently chanted. I was so close. I inched my way forward so close I could almost touch him.

He snorted and looked right at me. I froze, getting a good long look at his horns and wondering what damage they could do to me. His toes scraped the frozen earth as he pawed the ground. That was when I realized how stupid my idea had actually been. Even as he put his head down to charge I rolled out of the way. The herd immediately took flight but the one turned back to face me and stomped his foot in challenge. I stared at ten times my own weight of curelom and tried not to imagine my bones crunching beneath his hoofs until finally I simply yelled at him.

His eyes went wide and he charged then thought better of it, pulled away, and ran. I suppose I found out a few things then. I learned how to stave off the cold. I learned that once again my voice had done something to save me. Most of all I learned that I was a fool with a deathwish. 

A hissing sound started near the edge of the clearing which grew to a full throated laugh. I looked for the source but saw nothing in the tall grass.

“Who’s there?” I called.

“You have a little power there don’t you,” the voice said, this time closer.

“What do you mean?” I asked. Now I thought I saw something bobbing its way toward me, but it was small, a fair bit shorter than my adolescent height.

“I’ve never seen that power in a human before, though the cursing Atlanteans sure like to throw it around with their machines.” A short man, and he would be offended to hear I called him that, emerged from the grass. He looked like a man save for his large pointed ears with tufts of hair falling off the ends, Like a lynx perhaps, though that is a rough comparison.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“A little soon for names isn’t it?” he asked in return. “Besides you have enough power without my name though I don’t think you know how to use it.”

“Why are you here?” I asked.

“Questions. So many questions. What were you doing trying to kill yourself with a curelom?”

“If you won’t answer then why should I?”

The man smiled. “Not so foolish after all,” he mused. He was older than I first thought because of his height, past youth but not past his fifth century. He wore no shoes and had thick hair on his feet.

“What are you?” I asked.

He smiled. “I never was fond of labels, but they are sometimes more useful than names. I suppose a puka is as close a thing to me as anything. For the sake of speaking you may call me Grist.”

“I’m Namir,” I said and held out my hand to him. Grist shook it and laughed. He was a gruff little puka but always quick to laugh.

“So, out gallivanting alone in the mountains and you just thought you would catch a curelom, huh?”

“It would be faster than walking the whole way,” I said.

“Perhaps, but you won’t get there at all if you’re dead. It would be entertaining for me though.”

“Are you one of the fair folk?”

His ears twitched and he narrowed his eyes at me. “What do you know about the fair folk?”

“Seth seemed to think you were maybe a type of djinn or a creation of the watchers.”

“Ignorant humans,” he huffed. “No wonder you are so clueless about your own power. Listen, there are some basic things you need to know about the universe itself. First there are elements that everything is made of. Man was made from the water and the earth. Djinn were made from fire and air, though all things have a bit of everything in them. Next are the forces that act on everything whether heat or attraction or resonance, right?”

I nodded though this was the first I had heard of it.

“Don’t think of the fair folk so much as created beings but as a force of nature,” he said. “Lastly, there is the governance. Things like gods and angels. You steer clear of them, you hear?”

I nodded when it was clear he expected an answer. “Well, I have a long way to go and no curelom to get me there,” I said.

“Perhaps, perhaps,” Grist said cryptically. “Maybe I could help you.”

“You think you could catch one?”

He glared at me and nearly stormed away but after a few deep breaths he answered. “You have enough power you could convince that curelom that it wants to carry you. I could teach you to do it.”

The opportunity seemed too good to be true, mostly because it was. “You’ll teach me?” I asked.

“I’ll teach you how to use your power and catch a curelom if you’ll do something for me,” he answered.

“What do you need me to do?”

“I have a neighbor who needs help moving,” Grist grunted. “I’m a little small to do the heavy lifting.”

“Okay,” I said, and that was all it took. I assume the fae are still around, so I warn you, should you ever meet one, do not say “Okay”. Bargains with the fae never favor anyone other than the fae.

“You have to change the way you look at the world,” Grist told me. He had been lecturing me for days and now at the edge of the curelom herd I was ready to try again. “All things are one, whether they be material or force. Feel the space between them. Feel what fills the space.”

I stood as I had each day for the past week. The same curelom on the edge of the herd looked at me. I listened and let my voice out in a murmur. The curelom was strong. He needed to show it. He wanted to prove himself. I matched my voice with him. “You want glory,” I said. “I can take you to the far reaches of Eden. You want to prove yourself, I will take you into danger and back.” His ears pricked and he slowly stepped forward. I could feel the sound coming back from him. I reached out and he came.

“Hador,” I said. He responded, not with a vibration that jarred me like the atlanteans but with a soft sonorous warmth and eagerness. I almost couldn’t believe it, though I had done it. Grist nodded his approval and smiled as I climbed onto Hador’s back and relished that rather than throw me he merely stamped with annoyance for a moment. Hador would be my closest companion and friend for the next sixty years.

I was very pleased with my new steed and newfound control over the world. Little did I know that it is much easier to persuade those who want the same thing as you. Living things are always harder to persuade than things like water or stone. Grist helped me learn the basics of what I could do but it would take me decades, even centuries, to define its limits and refine it into something more than a mere cudgel.

I sat smugly atop Hador and smiled down at Grist, who in turn saw my hubris for what it was and laughed. “Now,” he said, “I need you to fulfill your end of the bargain.”

“Lead the way,” I said. I rode at a leisurely pace as he led me westward along the peaks and canyons of the Red Mountains and three days later we reached our destination. It was beginning to grow dark and I could smell the bite of coming snow.

“You won’t need Hador here,” Grist said.

I shivered and dismounted. “Tomorrow we go north,” I told my curelom. He snorted in response and I followed Grist away to a small rise. He crouched low and beckoned me to follow him to look down into a vale. Flakes began to drift down around us as I peeked over the lip of the hill and saw movement in the small valley. There were about fifty shadows that could have been people or animals as well as one that was something more. Its shape shifted making it hard to determine what it was in the failing light, but I could at least see that it was huge. I had never seen one before but I imagined it might be a behemoth.

“That’s your neighbor?” I asked.

“I need you to get her to go somewhere else,” Grist said.

“You said you needed me to help a friend move. I thought that meant hitching up Hador to a wagon or something.”

“We are evicting her, and I believe I asked you to do the heavy lifting.”

“I thought you meant literally, not slaying a behemoth!”

“That isn’t a behemoth,” he said matter of factly. “It’s a marid and a lot of new human friends.”

It was lucky for us that snow had begun to fall and muffle our voices or the sound of us arguing would have carried to the crowd below. I kept my eyes on the moving figures. Something about them seemed wrong, or possibly familiar.

“What is a marid?” I asked.

“A djinn,” Grist said. “Not as aggressive or strong as an ifrit, but a power in their own right. You’re lucky this is a little one. You would have a really hard time getting rid of Bahamut.”

“I’m lucky? There is no way I’m trying to get that thing to go anywhere.”

“We had a bargain,” Grist said. Now there was an edge to his voice. “I am a minor force, but not one to take lightly or to steal form.” His voice was colder than the wind and his eyes had changed to a solid luminous blue. I was more frightened of him right then than of some unknown horror.

“Okay, but I am helping, got that? I am not going down there alone.” I looked down into the valley once more and squinted through the snow. Not all of the things down there were human. They had dogs with them. Big dogs. Then I felt it, a humming between them and the waxing moon that hung overhead. “Lamech’s down there,” I whispered.

“Who is Lamech?” Grist asked.

“He killed my brother,” I growled. “He made a pact with the fallen one using my brother’s blood as the price.”

“Ah,” Grist said in acknowledgement. “Those wolves down there didn’t feel natural to me.”

Knowing Lamech was down there changed things. I wanted to go down now. I wanted to challenge him with my newfound power and make him pay for all that he had done. If only there hadn’t been so many of them. I had to think of a way to get their numbers down or affect all of them at once. “Alright Grist,” I said, “if we’re going to do this I need to know exactly what you can do.”

He glowered suspiciously for a moment then groaned. “I suppose you have a point. I have influence with living things, particularly plants. I use my powers mostly to stay hidden but it is also possible for me to hide other folks. Even against their will and knowledge.”

“What?”

“I can make them lost,” he acquiesced. “If, if you can separate them, I could probably lose ten of them not including the marid.”

“That only leaves forty for me,” I scoffed. “One of those being a giant djinn that would probably watch the fight with delight to keep the victor as a pet.”

“Hey, I didn’t know they would have friends.”

“Well, if you want this to work instead of both of us dying, then we have to come up with something to even the odds.”

“For one thing, you two need to speak more quietly,” someone behind us said.

Grist and I both clung to the rocks to hide us as we turned around. There stood Elara and two women that it took me a moment to recognize. “Elara,” I said with relief, also a bit quieter. “How did you… When did you… What are you doing here?”

“Namir,” Elara greeted. “It’s good to see you too. Still have that foot in your mouth I see.”

“Why are you with them?” I asked. The two women with her were Adah and Zillah, Lamech's wives. I wasn’t about to forget the part they had played in Fauron's death.

“We don't expect you to forgive us,” Adah said. “We only ask that you let us help you stop him.”

“You would betray your own husband?” I asked. “No, when the time comes you will go back to him and leave us for dead.”

“We will not,” Zillah said. “It is true that we helped him gain this power in the first place. That was because he told us the prophecies. He convinced us that his son, Noe, was the chosen one to save the world from destruction. He never told us that he was the one who was going to destroy the world in the first place. I had little love for you Edomites and you can still all burn for all I care, but he wants to rule everything. Even conquering our own people.” In her eyes the same hatred burned as before, but now it was tempered by fear. “He would burn down all of Eden just to rule over the ashes,” Zillah concluded.

“You will fight against your own husband,” I asked again, “your own children?”

Both of them flinched before giving their assent.

“Okay,” I said through my teeth. “But, you go first. I want you two where I can see you. Elara, Grist, and I will deal with as many as we can if you think you can split them up.”

“And you wouldn’t abandon us to be murdered, would you?” Adah said.

“Listen kids,” Elara said and I didn’t doubt she had used the same tone on arguing children before. “If we want to do this then we have to trust each other. Unless any of you think we can do this alone.” She looked to each of us in turn. “Okay then, here is what we’re going to do…”