Ephisas: Part 2

Part 1

One month previous.

The sun reflected harshly off the chrome finishes and bright white walls of the city. I carried a handful of signs, and sweat beaded at the ends of my long black hair. One of the signs fell forward, and I smiled. I had been particularly proud of it:

Your child won’t be safe when the Mordalk arrive.

The red paint had dripped so as to look like blood. I was sick of playing nice with society. We would all pay if we didn’t change our ways.

“Eymar! Wait up!” Isma’il caught up to me. We walked together through the greens of downtown Ephisas. I loved the city and didn’t want to see it destroyed like so many others since the Dawn of Parados.

Ephisas was one of the few cities fully designed from the ground up as a sustainable haven. All the buildings had the latest trend of grand, swooping arches and smooth domes. The mere sight brought a sense of peace and tranquility.

It was unlike the nearby New Pittsburgh, designed around the old buildings. Everything there felt old and grimy and inefficient. The new structures couldn’t erase the old.

The two of us panted in the heat. It was only February, but it seemed to break into excruciating heat earlier and earlier each year.

Isma’il caught his breath and said, “It’s always my goal to change one person’s mind at these things.”

I never liked this incremental attitude. The blood moon was only a month away, and I feared we would be next if something major didn’t happen right away.

“It’s something. We all do the best that we can.”

I set my jaw to keep from lecturing him. He was thirty years my senior, and I figured I would become more conservative as I aged—if I aged.

All signs pointed toward Ephisas getting hit next. The pattern was clear. Whatever city used the most Parados drew the wrath of the ley lines as they shifted. People wanted to say it was unpredictable. They said it was like an earthquake: nothing could be done to prevent or predict it.

We arrived at the protest of about twenty of us. We held our signs and chanted. Hardly anyone engaged. Instead, they shook their heads and tried to keep away. It enraged me how complacent everyone had become.

The end was near, and no one wanted to think about it. They would rather live their lives in ignorance and claim surprise when disaster struck than try to deal with it now. I wanted to shake them and scream that it could be avoided with the smallest amount of personal restraint.

Then I saw a man from a great distance. He gave us those glances that said we infuriated him, but he wasn’t sure if he should stop and confront us. I had seen the type many times in the past. He looked at us like we were scum and beneath help.

At the last moment, he turned and said, “You’re just a dirty naturalist.” It sounded like it was the most vulgar swear word he’d ever heard. “You want to go back to the Stone Age and let children die.”

I could take a lot of stuff but not that. Fury bubbled up into my chest. These uneducated fools! How could they believe the propaganda?

I shouted back, “You’re the one that’s going to cause death and suffering. Using Parados Magic to solve our problems now is so shortsighted. One day it will catch up to us, and people will wish they’d gone back to the natural methods.”

“There’s no evidence of that. You want to sacrifice lives now just in case some random bad thing will happen in the future?”

Isma’il stormed over, ready to join the fight, but then I noticed something was wrong. He held his chest, and his face had turned bright red. He gasped out wispy sounds, but none of them sounded like words.

“What is it?”

He stumbled toward me and collapsed into my arms. I gently laid him onto the grass. The heat must have gotten to him, so I used my sign to fan air onto his face.

I yelled out, “Someone get help! Isma’il has heat stroke.”

The man who had confronted me said, “My name is Fearghas Matasan. I’ve been trained as a Parados Mage. I can help him. It’s not heat stroke. He’s having a heart attack.”

“No!”

I stared into Fearghas’s hazel eyes. His features had gone soft. He really did want to help.

I said, “It goes against everything he’s out here fighting for. We will get him to a hospital and use real medicine.”

“There is no time for that! Do you know CPR?” I shook my head. Fearghas continued, “Let me at least do that much if he goes into cardiac arrest.”

I looked back to Isma’il as Fearghas knelt beside him. There was so much fear in his eyes.

Isma’il said, “Use the Parados.”

Before I could protest, I heard the ancient words invoked. Life came back to Isma’il in that instant. Tears of joy streamed down his cheeks, and he hugged Fearghas.

I looked on in awe. I had never actually seen it done before. I always imagined more pomp and ceremony, maybe candles and incense.

But then I snapped out of it. This man had done the unthinkable. I stormed away from the protest. I couldn’t be a part of a demonstration full of hypocrites who would cave at the slightest moment.

We stood for something much greater than ourselves, and if Isma’il didn’t understand that, I didn’t want any part of it.