32 Arash - Reason

In the house which once reeked of unruly boys, a flower bloomed inside it in the shape of Mehru. She was shy at first, but under the infinite love of Amna and her tireless efforts to bring her back to health, Mehru came out of her shell. She would laugh and giggle and play around with the boys. She was treated like a treasure in the small house, but she was also a source of trouble for Arash. At first, the boys were jealous of the attention he got from their father, but now they were angry at the love he received from Mehru.

Once even, the four decided to beat him up, but with the little help from Najwah, Tamresh became Arash and suffered at the hands of his brothers. These fights became a routine in the household. Sometimes even Adam would join in for the fun. Mehru would cheer from the side, urging them to fight on. Her giggles were like music to the boys and they would exaggerate their actions to make her laugh even more.

Arash couldn't but smile as he saw how much his sister loved to see them fight, but in moments like these, he felt terribly afraid. His smile curdled as he remembered how he lost his eye and the terrible hole inside of him, the faceless brother of his long lost and forgotten. Even though he couldn't remember anything about him, every once in a while, he couldn't help but wonder what would happen if one day someone would take away Mehru. Arash clenched his teeth as determination shone in his eyes. "I need to become strong. Stronger than anyone!"

He took a long breath as he closed his eyes and slipped into a perpetual state of detachment. With time he had become proficient in the manipulation of Najwah's rune. He dived into his sea of memories, each memory globe connected on another by an invisible thread. They floated in the sea of eternal darkness like the stars in the sky. Looking at them, he could see some of the missing links in the memory chain. He couldn't help but think about his brother and what he looked like. Najwah refused to talk about him while Arash couldn't remember anything.

He focused on the memory of strength rune and once again performed countless iterations to figure out the correct sequence to form the rune. He focused with all his soul-strength on a single node of the ever-present green mist around him, Instead of forcing two nodes to connect with each other. He formed a small sphere of will around the node. He strained all his senses to feel the repulsive forces of the green node.

At first, he felt the shape of the sphere, felt tiny little vibrations of the green node as it fought to once again became the part of the rolling green mist. "No, I need to know more about it." Arash squeeze out every single bit of his will and used it feel the green node. Suddenly, he could feel the invisible field around the green little node. The field moved at an incredible speed. "No...It's not the field that's moving it's the node... But it's" Arash concentrated his will around the node, trying to slow down the spinning. At first, he felt a strain on his consciousness, but he persevered and forcibly tried to stop the node's rotation. But no matter how hard he tried, the node wouldn't stop moving. He strained his consciousness to the limit as black veins popped on his forehead... "Argh!!!" He howled in pain as his will was shredded by the spinning of the node. His head throbbed with a biting pain as he reeled back from the shock. It took awhile for the pain to subside. Even though his experiment ended in failure, he managed to gain an insight. Just before his will was ripped apart, he glimpsed at the true nature of node's protective field, but, it was vague and unclear. "I need to see it more clearly. But..." He was afraid of the pain, his determination wavered under the thought of going through the pain again. He opened his eyes, and a small doll-like girl appeared before him. His heart softened at the sight of her and just like that, he pushed back the fears as he once again slipped into the state of perpetual detachment.

Arash focused on a single energy node and pulled it out from the sea of rolling green mist. It buzzed with a strange rhythm. "I could try all different sequences...No! It will take too much time and there is no guarantee that it will work even after that."

Arash engulfed the green energy node with his will and tried to slow the rotating speed to minimum level without destroying his will. He slowly throttled the rotation speed of the energy. At first, the node was spinning so fast that it appeared as if with was stationary. Within a few moments, Arash managed to slow it down to a level that he could barely make out a soft blur. Still, the node was spinning too fast to be of any help. "I need to... Argh!" Once again his will shattered under the spinning of the soul. This time, the recoil was more painful than before. He couldn't even think straight for a few hours as he regained his senses. He found a little black snake writhing in pain.

"You fucking retard, you ignorant twit. What the fuck are you doing?" Najwah rained down on him in anger.

Arash blankly stared at him as finally, the incoherent noises turned to tangible words. He noticed tiny silver dust floating around in his sea of consciousness. Arash called out to the silver dust and it conjoined together to form a dense silver cloud. "It got smaller." Arash studied the manifestation of his will. At first, it was the size of a fully grown human head, but now it shrunk to the size of a child's fist, but it had more substance to it.

"I was trying to form the strength rune." Arash finally answered.

"Great fucking job you have done!" Najwah scoffed at Arash as his eye shot daggers at Arash. Being a rune, he didn't know the concept of pain. He had countless memories of peoples' suffering, but the sharp biting pain that came from the shredding of one's will shook him to his core. "Stop this damned thing. Immediately! Let me make some of that white mist for you and make your soul stronger. Nice and easy. What do you say?" The little snake said with a ingratiating expression.

"It's too slow. I need to get strong fast." He ignored the pleading of the snake as he once again started studying an energy node with his strengthened will.

"No! please don't do that." Najwah screamed in horror, but before he could say anything else, the pain once again came. His form distorted as his eyes rolled to the back of his head. The cycle of pleading repeated again and again.

"You are doing it all wrong!" Najwah let out a painful scream, his body still twitching in pain. Arash wasn't better of himself, his will had reduced to the size of a soya bean. But instead of a mist, it appeared more like liquid

silver.

"What do you mean?" Arash asked weakly even though his eyes shone brightly, but he was mentally and physically exhausted.

"You want to stop the essence of the mother. How stupid can you be? She is a god. No matter how much you try, you will never be able to succeed." Najwah said with a mixture of scorn and misery.

"There has to be a way." Arash said stubbornly.

"There is... I have been following it for millions of years--"

"Your way is flawed. It is dependent on chance."

"Chance is much better than this stupidity. Know your limits... Damn you, dragging me down on your fool's errand. Dammit." Najwah miserably said as tears shone in his eyes. "You have been looking at it the wrong way. It's not the sequence. It's the speed at which they collide with each other." Najwah brought out the memory of the soul-bond rune. "Look at this carefully."

Arash intently stared at the scene before him. Nine energy nodes floated in front of him. Each of nodes collided with each other a certain sequence. Najah shook his head as he read Arash's thought. The scene before him replayed again and again as Arash finally noticed the angle and the speed at which the two nodes combined with each other. His eyes opened wide in realization, but soon disappointment flashed on his face as he saw the rune disintegrate.

Najwah sighed with exasperation. "This technique of mine doesn't always work. But it works and it has worked for me."

"But the field--" Arash wanted to protest.

"Damn the cursed field. What is the point of something when you can't even see it? You talk about being slow. The chances of you stopping the field are one in a trillion and that's if you don't drive yourself insane first. Learn from my memories. They work at least."

Arash sat silently as he contemplated on his recent experience. Countless images of two nodes connection together flashed before his eyes. He dived into each every memory of Najwah's failure. "It works like this, but when I attack it diagonally it doesn't work... But the way these two join together are different and they rotate differently." Arash studied each and every rune Najwah had ever formed. He learned the different rotations of each node. The more complex the rune got the slower it rotated. He studied the structure of each and every bond formed between the two nodes.

Najwah frowned at the human before him, he grumbled something under his breath but was glad that the soul-shaking pain had finally ended. Arash almost studied the collisions between the runes for a whole year. He would only take a break to eat and sometimes to play with Mehru. Najwah took care the rest of it.

Even though Arash gained insight from Najwah's experience, he still clung to his own theory and each day the snake and the man would argue with each other. Soon, Najwah realized the futility of arguing with his master and made peace with the pain.