The World Walkers: Athare: Mab: Mab’s Story (part 3)
Part 1
Part 2
Mab brushed a hand through her hair. Was her only option really to go along with the plan that her new elders had come up with? It was, sadly, a plan that did make a lot of sense. The more she thought about it the more certain she was that creating other worlds, and placing races on them that would create the magic the fae desperately needed, was a good idea, but she had this niggling doubt in the back of her mind, which wasn’t due to what they were possibly going to be doing. No, the doubt was caused by her people. Right at that moment they were all terrified. After coming so close to extinction all they wanted to do was survive and that was understandable. She felt the same way some days. Yet that fear was going to fade away. They’d become comfortable again, complacent, maybe even start to think that they couldn’t possibly destroy their new world the way they had the old one.
If they wanted Athare to survive they were going to have to do something different. Should that something different be create other worlds? Who would be involved? Mab had so many questions that she couldn’t answer alone, but fortunately the one person she truly trusted was going to be at home. Seward was the only person who’d never berated her for the decisions she’d made, because he knew how hard they’d been for her, and more than once she’d gone to him in tears, wishing that she wasn’t Queen at such a difficult time. Handfasting had never been something she’d really wanted to do, so the day it had happened she felt as though she was making a huge mistake, until she, slowly, started falling in love with him… and when that happened they really started to have a relationship.
As she walked in the door her eyes met his. “How did it go?” Seward asked, and it was easy to hear the worry in his voice. He hadn’t wanted her to go alone to the meeting, but she knew she’d need the time to think on the walk back.
“Better than I thought it would. They all hate me, which is to be expected, but they were willing to talk to me.” Mab shrugged. “Well, maybe it was more telling me what their plans were and expecting me to go along with them, which wasn’t going to happen, not after everything I’ve been thought to get to this point.”
“What are their plans?”
“The Blue elder thinks we should create another world…”
“She wants to create another Benira and Lorasia.” Mab stared at Seward blankly. “It wasn’t something our fae did, but we weren’t the only group with the ability to create worlds. They were experimenting with what they could do with the magic of creation, at a time when they had no idea it was possible for us to do something like that, and somehow they ended up creating two connected worlds. Unfortunately I don’t know very much about what happened, otherwise I’d be able to tell you more.”
“Why was I never told about that?”
“Our race like to forget the mistakes they made. I was lucky enough to find a journal in Father’s attic when I was younger, written by someone who’d actually been a part of the creation of the twinned worlds, but Father found it and destroyed it. At the time I didn’t dare ask him why, because he was so angry when he realised what I’d been reading, and after that it became harder and harder to bring it up, even though I wanted to know why he felt the way he did.”
“Do you know about any other worlds?”
“I wish I did. You have no idea how much I’d like to be able to help you.” Seward nibbled his bottom lip. “There is something I worry about though.”
“Tell me.”
“From what you said the elder’s plan is to create another world.”
Mab nodded. “It’s a very vague plan. She needs to talk to her family to see what options they have and I can’t help thinking she’ll return in the morning with something bigger.”
“One world doesn’t make sense. Not in this context. Right now we have one world, a world that has a magic core, and that world only has a certain amount of magic within it. If you were to create another world you’d double the magic, but the problem would be balancing it. Say this world is getting low, so it takes some from the other world, which leaves that world low… and the other think you have to take into consideration is the races of these worlds. We’re going to need more than us, there are going to have to be people on the other world, but there are no guarantees that we’ll be able to create the right races.” He sighed. “You’re going to need to create something more. It can’t just be a world, or two worlds…”
“How many?”
“I don’t know for certain. This sort of thing isn’t something I know as much about as I like, but I do understand magic. With this sort of thing you’re going to end up making a web, of sorts, so the magic flows around it in such a way that none of the worlds become unbalanced, because if the worlds become unbalanced you’re going to end up with a bigger problem than you had with Kalinia.”
“Okay…” Mab sighed. “Fancy coming with me tomorrow?”
“Not really, but I’ll come if you want me to. The Blues should be able to explain this better than I could, because they’re the ones with the ability to be able to create things, and if the elder has any sense she’ll ask Riordan to talk to you. Before we left Kalinia he’d created this city in a box, to test out what he could do with his abilities, and Bronwen, a Yellow who has more skill than she was ever permitted to use, made him a race of people to live there. So, hopefully, the elders will ask them for help explaining what it is they need to do to protect our new world from the same fate Kalinia had.”
Mirrored from K. A. Webb Writing.