The Gift of Madness by D.K. Holmberg

Author:D.K. Holmberg [Holmberg, D.K.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BA
Publisher: ASH Publishing
Published: 2017-09-11T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nineteen

The air in the Old Forest carried a dampness and an edge of a chill. Jakob sat on a fallen tree, Anda by his side, and stared into the darker section of the forest. They’d been here for a while, as Jakob tried to process the memories that he’d gleaned from the host, but he couldn’t make sense of them. They were jumbled. Was that because of the challenge he’d faced leaving the host or were the memories jumbled for the host, too?

“How much of what I saw do you know?” he asked.

Anda took a deep breath. He didn’t look over at her. He didn’t need to to know that she stared ahead in much the same manner as he did.

“If you walked back to witness what happened on the river, then I know much of it. It is something the daneamiin keep within ourselves. When we visit—or visited—the Cala maah, each of us sees this. We do not know why, though most think it’s a pivotal moment for the daneamiin.”

“I was a groeliin, wasn’t I?” Jakob still wasn’t certain, not even after claiming the memories from the host, but what else could he have been? What else would have allowed him to use the ahmaean in that way so that he could destroy with a fog of power?

The memory of that had lingered. He thought he could recreate it were he to have the need, but why would he ever have the need to destroy like that? What purpose would there be for him to slaughter others with his ahmaean? Such a thing went against what he considered the purpose of ahmaean, how it bound the world.

Anda sighed. “I wasn’t sure what form you would take when you went back.”

He looked over to her. She clutched the fabric of her skirt in her lap, and her fingers twisted it. “Have you been back in other forms, then?”

She closed her eyes, a sweep of her eyelids that went in from the side. “Most have gone back as the same host you seem to have had.”

“And do you see the excitement when he attempts to kill the daneamiin?”

“They all died, Jakob Nialsen. They were daneamiin, and though they were also tormenters, they did not deserve to die, but this creature killed them all.”

Jakob wasn’t sure the first groeliin had killed the others. He had shifted his host to the north before it could do any more harm and left it there. Hadn’t he? Did his action change the past, or did the groeliin, indeed, carry out its attack and kill those daneamiin? Jakob had no answers, but Anda and many other daneamiin had seen the same thing. The killing. “You understand what happened. Tell me.”

She shook her head, and her eyes came open. “What is there to say beyond what you would have seen?”

“How deeply do the daneamiin go back?”

“We see the same as you saw.”

“That’s not what I mean. Do you go back to observe or do you walk in the host’s steps?”

Anda frowned.

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