Excerpt: Trials of Salvation

The monotonous sound of a pestle grinding ingredients together in a mortar was the only noise to break the silence. Dark brown leaves were crushed with the heavy weight of the pestle, moistened by the juices of the smooshed berries. Long, slender and tan fingers added a whiff of spices to the strange mix, and continued turning and pushing the pestle, all around in the mortar, to turn the ingredients into a paste.

“Atemu-janu,” a nagging voice sounded suddenly from the left, “Atemu-janu, what are you doing?”

He ignored him. Crimson red eyes focused on the work in his hands and added some more of the berries, followed by a pebble-sized concentrated ball of another mysterious ingredient. It sizzled as soon as its shell was broken by the weight of the pestle, and added liquid to the paste, smoothening it out. The golden rings on his fingers clicked against the rim of the stone mortar as he turned the object around, constantly working the pestle until he was satisfied. Putting the pestle down on the wooden tabletop, he picked up the mortar and looked into it, scrutinizing the contents. He was so occupied by staring into the dark running paste that he didn’t notice that the pestle was surprisingly gently lifted up from its resting place by another tan skinned hand.

However, his outward concentration wasn’t as intense as he made it out to be.

“Marik-jashu, I told you not to lick off the pestle,” he said, voice low and stern. He didn’t look into the direction of the other, who sat in the corner in a relaxed manner, long legs stretched out on the floor, purple cape covering half of his body.

“I’m not licking it,” the other denied indignantly, even though he was holding the pestle shimmering with more than just the fluids it had grinded together just a few moments ago.

“I told you not to lick it because you never know what I’ve been preparing,” the wizard at the table said, though not looking into the other’s direction, “and you could get seriously sick from it.”

“I love it when you’re so serious,” Marik grinned and flicked out his insanely long tongue, wrapping it around the pestle and licking it off once again. “Mmm, berries.”

“You’re a very lucky jashu for not dying on the spot. You don’t even know what I’m preparing.”

Marik shrugged and threw the pestle down on the floor again. “Everything you prepare taste good, Atemu-janu. Just like yourself…”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

He got up from the floor and was so fast at Atemu’s side that he had to blink; he hadn’t seen the other move. Marik wrapped his arms around Atemu and laced his fingers together, gathering the wizard in an extremely tight hug. He coughed.

“I really should make you taste yourself one of these days, then you would know what I mean.” He bit in Atemu’s ear, just above the large earring. Atemu knew better than to squirm or yelp in front of Marik; showing that he was in pain was the other’s excitement, and you’d never know how it would go from there. Besides, he was about to try out a new potion, and that had his priority right now.

“Marik, I need to work,” he said.

“You always need to work.”

“If you worked, you would become a janu too,” Atemu said, not disdainfully. Marik reacted to voice intonations as well; a little too much disdain, annoyance or irritation or he would fly off the handle, just like a small kid throwing a rather vicious temper tantrum. Marik shrugged again. He wasn’t interested in much, except if it had to do with pain. He liked pain, both experiencing himself or inflicting upon others. Atemu wasn’t so sure what kind of hold he had over the other; Marik seemed to behave around him, for whatever reason. Was it because he was the only janu of the three of them?

The three of them. Bakura-jashva had to be around here somewhere, if Marik was here with Atemu in his room. As a janu, the highest in wizard ranks, Atemu had first rights on whatever facilities, and he had chosen the largest room in the house. It was a perfectly square room, and he had used it to its fullest potential by covering the walls with his extensive library, filled with the most extensive books and works on magic in the world. In the middle of the room, in front of the huge window, he had placed the giant desk, covered with ingredients, work sheets, some more books, and all kinds of objects he needed for his work. As many other wizards, Atemu was interested in potions and how to create or to improve them. He was willing to experiment with them and take the steps necessary to go out of his ways to improve them. There weren’t enough potions with healing capacities, for example. He longed to find that potion that would bring people back from the brink of death, to battle those rough fevers sweeping the lands ever so often…

Bakura came in second, even though his jashva rank wasn’t second to Atemu’s janu one. He was simply a wizard, but he had the baffling power to manipulate the shadows. He wasn’t interested in potions, he was interested in pretty objects made out of gold or jewels. Atemu didn’t know what fascinated Bakura so much about the objects, but he thought it was more about the adrenaline and intensity of stealing the objects instead of possessing them. Atemu was usually the one to give the items back to their rightful owners; Bakura never commented on it, he just went out to steal from someone else. It was a problem, but as long as nobody made a big deal out of it and Atemu could return everything, it was a ‘dead’ problem… everyone was just silent about it. In reality, and Atemu was the first one to realize it, everyone was just afraid of his strange shadow powers.

Marik came in third, but a jashu was nothing more than an apprentice-wizard. Still, and Atemu had already detected these powers, he had control over darkness. Rough, uncontrollable darkness in the hands of someone who was more than unfitting to have any kind of power over them. Even a janu like him couldn’t control the darkness, and a childlike person like Marik, as unstable as any kind of potion, had. This was a serious problem, and the only reason why people didn’t stone him to death was that he barely came outside. Marik liked darkness, so he stayed inside and had called the basement his home. None of the other wizards in the house ever came down in the basement.

Wizardry was common in the world of Najpa. There were all kinds of wizards, ranging from your average fortune-teller to the ones that could really work miracles. Safe for the realm of the dead, wizards had power over everything else in the world; there was a different wizard for everything. Each one of them had a price, and one was more approachable than the other, but none of them were the stereotypical reclusive wizard wearing ankle-length swirling robes or a hat, and carrying a staff. It could very well be that your neighbor was a wizard; besides, the name ‘wizard’ was often acknowledged too fast to anyone proving to dispose over the faintest powers. That’s why nation-wide it was decided that the profession of wizard held several steps and ranks, and that everyone rising above the rank of jashu, apprentice-wizard, needed to find themselves at least a jashva to get proper training.

A jashva was an apprentice to a janu, though a jashva had learned more of course and had better control over his powers than a jashu, who was just starting out. Many people didn’t get farther than being a jashu; as long as they had control over their powers, they hold on to that title as if they were a janu themselves. A janu was the highest rank one could reach, but magic powers only could get so far… there were very little janu, and Atemu was known for even rising above the rank of janu.. for which they didn’t even have a name.

He could summon Gods.