Exaltation (Insight #11)(62)

“Touché.”

The painful grip on Rydell’s energy Revelin had been seizing him with, began to loosen. Rydell didn’t dare to act relieved. He knew Revelin only did that so if Rydell spoke out of line he would be able to bring the pain right back.

“I’m ordering you to bring your faction home. I let you have your fun. Everyone deserves a hiatus. I understand, which is why I have been so gracious with you,” he said as he circled Rydell.

“You know just as well as I do this is not a hiatus. I left you.”

“Nonsense. You don’t have the strength to leave me.”

“If you’re going to kill me do it. I’m not coming back.”

“Trust me, son. I would if this were any other time,” Revelin said, as he stood before Rydell once more.

Now that he was a few inches from Rydell, he could see Revelin looked just as weathered as he did. That was normal. When the First is weak the sovereign feels it. They can sense all of their followers, but the First they feel intently.

“You’ve been busy on the lower planes,” Revelin said, as if this were a casual conversation.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I understand you have decided to explore education. Though I’m not really sure why. It would have to be a bore for someone as well read as you.”

Rydell glanced to the dark streams, not sure how Revelin had any idea what he was doing. “Maybe I’m reliving the childhood I never had.”

At that he laughed. “That or there’s a girl who has your attention.”

Rydell had no choice but to play the cruel card with him. He knew Revelin well enough to know if he was aware Rydell was interested in anything, he would take it away. He had before. “A girl. As if one girl could ever keep my attention.”

“You were always the ladies man. If I do recall, that was how I taught you to evoke exaltation in the first place. You’d bring a girl right to her peak then walk away with enough energy, from the emotion we rule, to feed countless members of my line.” He chuckled. “Yes, you were a little devil back then, breaking hearts and souls hour by hour.”

“I don’t like to get personal anymore.”

“Yes, what was it your little faction was doing?” he said, as he folded his arms and circled Rydell once more. “Fairy Godmothers—was that it? Floating around and granting wishes.”

“I don’t grant anything. I do my thing and if someone else gets a kick out of that, we both win.”

Another dark chuckle. “King, you are more like me than you will ever admit.”

“I’m nothing like you. You never give them what they want, only the illusion. You spawn obsession with the act.”

“Politics. We all need allies.”

The lines of obsession and exaltation had been close allies in the past but the line of obsession had moved on to feeding off one host. When that happened Rydell argued with Revelin that they should give the souls what they sought. Let them feel the sweet emotion. Even though his alliances were null and void Revelin didn’t agree. Which is why Rydell left.

“Yet every emotion is to be felt. You never allow them to feel it all,” Rydell argued.

“You think you understand this emotion? The gravity of it?”

Rydell wasn’t going to engage in an argument they’d had a thousand times over.

“It is an emotion birthed in the warriors, the gamblers, the superficial. Driven souls who have a point to prove. Who have overcome fear, disquiet, and grief. Who have to embrace obsession and exaltation, and laugh in the face of anger and shock. Souls that move this world in their own awkward way.” Revelin clucked his tongue, a thing he did when he was supposedly thinking aloud. “At most points in time you only have to deal with one breed of them. But in the point of time you are lurking in, you have them all: warriors, gamblers, the superficial. I suppose if I were to have a temper tantrum like you’ve had I would have gone there, too.”

“Is there a point to this?”

“The point is you broke away from me in order to lead a faction correctly, but you have done no such thing. All you have managed to do is create a new generation of our line.” He stood before Rydell, unfolded his arms, and pulled his shoulders back. “Your point has been made. You will bring your faction home and I will allow them to continue to grant little wishes across the universe.”

“I don’t want that.”

Apparently he shocked Revelin because he stared at Rydell for an endless moment. “What exactly do you want, King?”

“You cannot have your entire line doing what I do. It’s flawed. There’s a curse that follows every desire we grant. The universe will plummet. Souls would move back instead of forward.”

“Yet you engage this curse daily. The curse I admittedly warned you about.”

Not anymore. “I’m exploring this. I can control my faction. The entire line will lose control. You know they will.”

“Then I would suggest you come home so you can teach them the right way to ‘grant wishes.’”

“Not until I understand the curse.”

“That’s what you want? If you understand the curse you will return?”

Rydell’s stare met his. “You know how to stop it?” If that were true it would take everything Rydell had not to strike him. Rydell may have hid behind the “circle of life” phrase or even “they do it to themselves,” but it never settled right with him. He didn’t even want to think about all the souls who had perished because his faction engaged them.