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Cara was exhausted. Her back hurt, and her vision was blurry after her third round of explaining the true nature of magic and dragons to the applicants. Despite her weariness, Cara had to admit that she was hopeful for the first time since she had started interviewing for this position. She still didn’t fully agree with her father that humans had to learn how to use the Divinium in the first place. And she certainly didn’t believe that a human was necessary to develop a better interface for the cubes. It wasn’t that she didn’t like humans or even that she didn’t respect some of them to some degree. But what she usually felt when watching humans try to adapt to the cubes was akin to what humans probably felt when they were teaching chimps to fit geometric shapes into matching holes. Proud but also superior. But to her father’s point, she understood that the two of them were the only two of their kind in Tysons Corner, and that there was a lot of work to be done. Regardless of whether magic was involved or not, running a startup company in Northern Virginia was no joke, and procuring the right talent was a challenge to say the least. It was so much so that Cara had not expected to find even a single qualified candidate out of the three when the morning began. Instead, as she sat recovering from her long morning, she had potentially found not one, but two.
First there was Natalie. Probably more qualified than Chris on paper and by job experience but moody to say the least and an inflexibility of the way she thought about the world. She also seemed to be intense and very serious about everything, which was not bad in of itself, but could cause problems in the day-to-day work environment. That kind of focus for her work reminded Cara of herself a bit, but it was often not much fun to be around.
And then there was Chris who seemed perfect for the job in many ways. He was young and open-minded. He got the cube so quickly for a human that it was astounding. Even Cara had to admit that his natural talent combined with his computer programming experience might come in handy developing an effective cube interface for the humans to use. And, if she was honest with herself, she did find herself a little attracted to Chris. It may have been something about the combination of his enthusiasm and his obvious intelligence. The fact that he was cute didn’t hurt either.
Finally, there was the quiet one, David. He took to the cube better than the average human, but certainly not as well as either Chris or Natalie. He didn’t ask that many questions, and Cara thought his logical mind was just having a difficult time accepting what he had learned that morning. However, there was one thing that did stand out about him during his interview. It wasn’t that he took the longest amount of time out of the three candidates to figure out how to operate the cube. What was odd was that after he finally figured out how to make the plant grow, David only barely glanced at the plant itself. Instead, he kept his eyes on Cara the whole time as if he were studying her. Or maybe even judging her. Cara had felt especially tired after David’s interview, although she chalked that up to the fact that his interview was the last one of the day.
In the end, Cara had decided to hire either Chris or Natalie, but choosing between them wasn’t going to be a black or white decision. Luckily, the final choice belonged to her father, Ohman. For once, she was grateful that her father had a hard time delegating authority.
4
Chris, Natalie, and David followed Cara back to the elevator and took it to the fifth floor. According to Cara, it was finally time to meet the mysterious Ohman.
On the ride up, Chris pondered the day to this point. It had been a strange morning to say the least. It wasn’t even lunch time, and Chris had seen and experienced enough already to completely upend his understanding of the world and to make him believe that something else existed, interspersed with the normal world he had grown up believing in. Whether it was magic or another state of energy that they had discovered here, Chris was excited and anxious at the same time about being a part of it.
Chris glanced over at Cara as the elevator climbed. She looked a little worn out, and Chris hoped that this wasn’t because of her time with him. Despite his nervousness, Chris thought that his interview actually had gone pretty well. His only concern was that he may have come across as a little too eager during his discussion with Cara, but he hoped that his excitement had registered as healthy enthusiasm versus unprofessional ranting.
When the door opened at the fifth floor, the three candidates followed Cara as she led them along the open walkway that passed by the top of the ancient yew tree Cara had called Oodrosil.
Without warning, Natalie leaned over and whispered into Chris’s ear.
“I’m having a hard time with all of this,” Natalie said.
“What?” Chris replied in a hushed tone. “What are you talking about?”
“This whole magic thing or whatever they’re messing with around here. It’s fascinating on the one hand, but what if we’re dealing with things that God never intended us to play around with? Something just doesn’t feel right about it.”
Chris wondered why Natalie thought that whispering would be effective around someone who had just revealed she could hear sounds beyond the range of human perception. Chris just shrugged his shoulders in an attempt to show Natalie that he had heard her but also to let Cara know that Natalie’s opinions were hers alone.
As they passed within a few feet of Oodrosil’s branches, Chris swore that he saw the bark of the tree expand slightly outward as if it were actually breathing.
The four of them continued past the tree and stopped at a set of heavy wooden doors. Cara turned around to address the three candidates.
“You are about to meet my father, Ohman, the CEO and founder of Rune Corp. He’s a very smart old man who has done more things in his life than you could ever imagine, so despite the congenial way he will address you, please treat him with respect, as I know each of you will. I also want to say that it was a pleasure meeting each one of you today, and I think you are each very talented in your own way. That being said, I will not be making the final choice about who gets the job today. That honor will go to my father.
“I know you are all aware that we are choosing only one person for this position and that you have all verbally agreed to not disclose anything you’ve seen or learned at Rune Corp today. This information is not classified in a standard U.S. Government kind of way, but if it were, I’m sure you’d agree that it would be protected at the highest level possible. That means that we are putting a lot of trust in you and that we are depending on you to keep your word regardless of who is chosen for this position. I’m sorry we don’t have enough room for all of you at our company right now.”
Cara paused and looked at each of the applicants squarely in their eyes as if to reinforce her seriousness and her sincerity.
“OK, enough of the warnings,” Cara said. “Please follow me.”
Without Cara touching it at all, the heavy wooden door opened as if it were suddenly light as a feather, and the four of them walked into Ohman’s office.
Sitting behind a large wooden desk sat a wiry, but strong-looking old man with white hair in a long ponytail and a closed-cropped white beard. Dressed in a white robe that for some reason didn’t seem out of place, he got up from his chair with a fluidity of movement Chris would expect from a trained athlete, and walked over to greet the three of them.
After warmly shaking hands with Natalie then Chris, Ohman shook David’s hand, holding it for a second or so before stepping back and addressing the group.
“Welcome to Rune Corp,” Ohman said. “I am very happy to see the three of you, and of course my lovely daughter, Cara, on this fine morning. I hope you have each learned a great deal today, and that you have had a chance to digest everything Cara has taught you. Now, of course we come to the part of the interview where one of you is selected and the other two are released back into the wilds of Tysons Corner.”
Ohman finished his introduction with a large smile that seemed genuine, Chris thought, but was also resembled slightly the kind that po
liticians used when addressing a large crowd.
“Usually,” Ohman continued, “this is the time where I speak to each of you separately and deliberate with my daughter before making my final decision. But…today we will be deviating from that regular process.”
Chris figured this to be another test until he saw what appeared to be genuine confusion on Cara’s face. Whatever was happening with Ohman was not scheduled.
“But before we get going, Cara, I was wondering if you could share some of your thoughts about each of our applicants.”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea in front of everyone?” Cara said.
“I think it’s fine, Cara,” Ohman said. “Just share some of your conclusions. I’m sure you don’t have anything that negative to say about any of these fine people. Please proceed.”
“OK,” Cara said. “Well, each of the candidates was talented in his or her own way and came across very well in the interviews. They all eventually did get how to operate the cube and its prototype interface, which was pretty impressive in itself. I have to say that just on speed of getting acquainted with the divinium alone, Chris was the winner, with Natalie coming in a close second. Skill-wise, I think Natalie has more experience and is more senior in her programming abilities, although how much that would bear on working with the divinium interface would have to be determined once that person was on the job. Team fit? Once again, I think it has to go to Chris as far as willingness to adapt to new technology and the overall concept of magic. And, quite frankly, Chris also wins based on sheer enthusiasm about working here. I guess now that I hear myself saying this out loud, I would have to say that my first choice at this point is Chris. I would choose him and Natalie if we had a second position open.”
“But you would not chose David?” Ohman asked.
Chris, Natalie, and David, each reacted to Cara’s summary of their eligibility for the job. Chris was ecstatic and tried to contain his jubilation. Natalie’s face turned red like she was holding back her frustration at the situation. David, however, fidgeted and suddenly looked like he wanted nothing more than to escape the building.
“Did David seem almost not interested or unexcited upon learning that magic actually existed in the world?” Ohman continued.
Ohman walked over to stand only a few feet in front of David.
“David,” Ohman said, “I think you didn’t really want to be hired today because you knew that sooner or later we would figure out who you really were. I believe that you hoped to enter our building and to steal whatever you could, hoping that you would not be discovered in so short a time.”
Cara stepped closer to her father, as if ready to protect him from attack, the whole time staring at David whose face was changing from a mask of fear to one of determination.
“I strike for the Queen, traitor!” David yelled as a deafening barrage of sounds flew from his mouth like the sound of the very continents crashing together. The entire room shook, and parts of the smooth wooden floor underneath Ohman’s feet heaved and cracked. Ohman deafly leapt into the air and landed slanted sideways with his feet planted on the far wall of his office.
Ohman responded with a set of short phrases that rang out like dried sticks and leaves being viciously ripped apart.
David fell to his knees, his hands clutching his throat, unable to get enough air into his lungs to breath. Even as his face went from red to a tint of blue, David reached his hand down to his side and pulled a divinium cube bundled with an enunciator collar and a set of earphones from a leather pouch that was suddenly visible to everyone in the room.
Cara’s eyes went wide when she saw the cube, and she darted for David, trying to wrestle the divinium from his grasp. Before she could close the distance, David threw the cube directly at Ohman. This desperate move caught the old man off guard as he moved to catch the in-flight cube and lost his concentration for just a split second. In that moment, David sucked in a lungful of much needed oxygen, and quickly followed with a booming set of commands that filled the room like the cracking noise of a strained tree trunk right before it fell to a mighty gust of wind. Ohman’s wooden office desk and chair exploded into hundreds of deadly shards that shot across the room at Cara. Surprised by this deadly attack, Cara spoke a few quick words that allowed her to successfully dodge or deflect many of the wooden projectiles. But she wasn’t fast enough, and was struck in her right leg and her back by several jagged shards of wood that struck powerfully enough to immediately draw blood.
Seeing Cara hurt, Chris instinctively jumped to his right and tackled David. The tall, lanky David landed sharply on the hard wooden floor with Chris struggling to get on top of him and to pin him down. Before Chris could get fully into position, David intoned one of Terrada’s words, and Chris was thrown violently into the air, landing hard against the nearest wall. Realizing that his true opponents were now behind him, David ignored Chris and turned to face Ohman and Cara. David spared only a fleeting glance at Natalie as she stumbled for the cover of an overturned table on the far side of the office.
David looked around franticly as if searching for a way out, while Ohman picked up the fallen cube and tossed it away, well out of David’s reach. Suddenly, Ohman rose into the air and headed straight for David while uttering a series of grumbling noises like giant rocks scraping and grating against each other. As David started backing up, the wooden floor split open and individual planks reached up to wrap around David’s legs, stopping him suddenly in mid stride. David screamed in agony as his legs were wrenched almost to the point of breaking, but he quickly recovered his mental focus and held his hand up as if trying to block the approaching Ohman. With only a whispered word from David, Ohman stopped in flight, unmoving a few inches off the ground, his face registering now an inkling of fear.
David laughed.
“Do you think I would come here armed with only the most basic of Terrada’s words?” David said. “Our Keepers have prepared me well for this day, and I hold the power of many of our ancestors in my mind this morning. You were once a Keeper before you were our Ard Righ, our very King. Surely, you must remember the name of Diarmade mac Cumaill! Born with no limbs, his dreadful life was one of immobility and sorrow, and his is the name I invoke for the sake of the Earth Clan now.”
Chris rejoined Cara, and they both moved toward David, but even though his legs were still encased in the wooden floor, David held up his other hand, and both Cara and Chris were immediately frozen in mid-stride.
The room was still. No one and nothing moved for several seconds, and then David spoke one of Terrada’s words that shattered the wood encasing his legs. He slowly limped toward Ohman who suddenly appeared weak and shriveled, as he remained hovering just off the ground, unable to move.
“You violated the trust of our people, Ohman. You mated with…one of them and sired your aberrations for your own twisted schemes! She is a blasphemy to the natural order of things,” David said, pointing at Cara. “You bring shame to Terrada, and now you teach Terrada’s words to the humans so that you can one day rule this world. For your past and future offenses, you must die. But I will have your name before I take your life just as the Earth Clan will have the secret to your cubes to help us regain the full power of Terrada’s tongue.”
David produced a small knife with a pulsating divinium blade from his leather pouch. He touched the tip of the blade to the top of Ohman’s leg and slid the blade slowly into the old man’s flesh. Ohman screamed in pain, still unable to move. Chris and Cara wore expressions of terror while they too were held immobile by David’s magic.
“Tell me your creation name, traitor,” David said. “You owe us that much at least. Do something good for once before your energy returns to the mighty Terrada.”
Ohman’s face relaxed slightly, and took the form of a wry grin.
“Do whatever you wish to me, boy,” Ohman said. “You will never have my name. Your kind is simply not worthy.”
Chris could tell that Ohman was
baiting David, but to what end Chris didn’t know. It was as if Ohman no longer cared whether he lived or died. In a strange way, his indifference made Ohman appear stronger despite the fact that he still was unable to move. Whatever Ohman’s reasoning, his taunting ignited David’s fervor even more.
David wrenched the knife from Ohman’s leg and raised the still-bloody blade in preparation for a killing strike.
“For the Queen!” David yelled.
As David started to bring the knife down, he abruptly stumbled and fell forward into Ohman, only grazing the old man’s face with his knife as he crumpled the rest of the way to the floor. Chris peered closer at David’s feet and saw that they were tightly entangled in what looked to be a lone tree branch that had snaked its way across the floor unnoticed during the melee. As Chris watched, more and more branches sped across the floor and joined in until David was completely enwrapped in wooden tendrils. A second later, Ohman, Cara, and Chris felt themselves released from the hold of David’s magic. Chris and Cara both rushed to Ohman’s side just in time to catch him and to keep him from crashing to the floor, but with his leg pouring out blood, the old man seemed weaker by the second.
Cara instantly laid her hands on her father’s wound and started reciting words from Terrada’s creation language. Slowly, the flow of Ohman’s blood decreased and then stopped. When Cara removed her hands, the skin was still bloody, but remarkably the wound itself had closed. Relieved that Ohman was doing better, Chris’s gaze followed the tree branches and saw that they emanated from the hallway outside of Ohman’s door. Without even looking, Chris knew that the branch had to be from Oodrosil, the mighty yew tree that stood outside Ohman’s office, a wooden sentinel ready to protect its family as it had just now done.
But how had the tree known it had been needed? Maybe Ohman had somehow secretly called for its aid during the fight.
Chris shot another quick glance around the room and saw Natalie lying on the floor at the far end of the room. He hurried over to her until he was close enough to see that she was only a couple of feet away from the discarded cube and that she was wearing the headphones and the enunciator collar they had all been trained on earlier. As he inched closer, Chris held his hand over his mouth to help suppress a rising reflex of nausea. Natalie’s face was unmoving and deathly still, pressed into the floor in a pool of blood with several pieces of sharpened wood shrapnel embedded deep in her throat just below the collar.
Chris turned and looked back at Ohman and Cara who were watching Chris expectantly. Chris simply shook his head and lowered his gaze to the floor. Chris had tried to save Cara during the fight, but Natalie had been the better and wiser person. She had come out of her hiding place and exposed herself long enough to retrieve and then use the cube to summon the one creature, Oodrosil, who could and did save them all—everyone except for Natalie herself.
Cara and Ohman slowly made their way over to where Chris stood over Natalie’s unmoving corpse.
“She gave her life to save us all,” Cara said. “That extra time she took to figure out the cube this morning—she must have used it to explore the other parts of the lexicon and must have found the entry for Oodrosil.”
Chris debated on whether to comment on the fact that Natalie had also risen above her prejudices and her problems with magic and had done what it took to be a true hero. In the end, he decided that to even bring that up would not do justice to Natalie’s final act. Instead, Chris silently wondered if he would ever be able to live up to the example that Natalie had set in her dying breaths.