Saving The Dark Side: Book 1: The Devotion

by Joseph Paradis

  Cole opened his eyes, taking a deep breath. His fingers were black and smelled of burnt meat. An ear-splitting crack hammered his ears as the gratia stone splintered down the middle, flickering until the light died out completely. He felt a hand on his shoulder.

  “Still your heart, Wisdom Walker. You have suffered much.” Lileth embraced his hands with her own, joining each of her fingertips with his. Feeling returned to his hands as his charred fingers reverted back to a supple pink.

  His breath deep and calm, Cole examined his fingers, flexing and stretching them. “That’s three times now.”

  “So it is,” Lileth replied in an offhanded manner, as if Cole had made a comment about the weather. Her eyes locked with his, and suddenly he recognized where he knew her from.

  Before Cole could say a word, she turned on the spot and disappeared in the shadows beyond the light of the remaining two gratia stones. Cole shivered. The rest of the group wore looks of mingled confusion and apprehension. Alvani approached him, face somber.

  “That is twice now that a student has surpassed my skill with Passion, only a few hours apart no less.” Alvani removed a swath of robe from her shoulders, wrapping it around Cole. “I think we have learned enough today,” she said, addressing the remaining five as Valen had stormed off after Lileth. “Storn, as Cole’s custodian, I’ll ask you to take him through the markets on the way back to the barracks. See to it that he is outfitted with the basic-issue.”

  “You can count on me, Master Alvani.” Storn puffed out his chest, casting a sideways glance at the others, as if checking to see if they were watching. “Let’s go, new blood. I won’t have my newest protégé walking around The Sill half-naked. Your dagger’s falling out by the way. No, not that one.”

  Chapter 14

  Orientation

  He flexed and smelled his newly healed fingers, checking to make sure they were fully functional as Storn led him away from the trees. He looked to Storn, pulling Alvani’s scarf tight around his shoulders. “Did I just use magic?”

  Storn gazed down at him, anger flashing over his square face. “Do you think I’m stupid? I’m not you know, even if everyone else says it.”

  Cole readjusted the dagger tucked at his waist, jogging to keep up. “No, I don’t think you’re stupid at all. If anything I feel like the stupid one around here. What happened with the tree back there? Did I do something wrong?”

  Storn slowed for a moment, considering him. “I thought you were making jokes on me. You’re not stupid, you’re just ignorant, which is lucky for you because stupidity can’t be cured. At least that’s what Master Roth says. The gratia stone and the tree did most of the work, but you had to get the process started. I told you not to hold on too long.”

  “I’m sorry. I got caught up in it. I went somewhere else in my head and I sort of lost it.” Cole felt like he was caught in one of his middle school pranks. “Am I in trouble for breaking the stone?”

  “Probably. I’ll talk to Chiron so you don’t get into too much trouble. The elders like me. Probably because I’m one of the best students. I’m the most deadly for sure.” Storn flexed his fingers as they stretched into black blades longer than Cole’s dagger.

  Cole noted once again how the shroud didn’t seem to cover as much of Storn’s hand as it did on the others. “Is it really indestructible? The black stuff on your hands?”

  “There’s nothing tougher than our munisica, that’s what our hands and feet turn into, and the shroud protects us from anything. I could reach my hand into a forge and crush a glowing ingot without feeling a thing,” Storn said, sporting a look that reminded Cole of Joshy’s cool-guy face.

  “I hope I learn how to do that someday.” Cole squeezed his hands, imagining them as powerful dragon’s claws.

  “Worry not, new blood. With me helping you’ll grow some munisica in no time.” Storn took a swipe at a large boulder, showering the dirt path with sparks and rock chips.

  Storn led them back towards the markets. The maze of trees and crisscrossing bridges made Cole’s head spin as he tried to remember the circuitous route they took. Left at the weird gadget shop, right at the stand selling wiggling critters in jars, slight right and up the stairs at the bookstore. The markets were less crowded this time, allowing Cole a covetous gaze into each shop. He wouldn’t know what to do with any of the items on display, but he would love to have a few unsupervised minutes to poke and prod. It took a herculean amount of self-control not to run his fingers over what looked like a typewriter that shot puffs of colored smoke and jets of light into the air. The last thing he needed was to break something. He had already broken the gratia stone and had no way to pay for it. The thought of money put an abrupt halt to his fantasizing.

  “Um, Storn?” Cole asked, feeling very naked in his tattered wrappings.

  “What’s up, new blood? You didn’t break something else did you?” Storn asked, sidestepping a group of women dressed in casual leathers. He puffed out his chest a little, his eyes following the women as he passed.

  “No, nothing’s broken. I’m not going to be able to buy anything. I don’t have any money. Not with me anyway.” Cole kept his eyes on the ground. Even here on Aeneria he was poor.

  Storn laughed. “I don’t know what you Underkin use for money over on the Light Side, but I promise it won’t do you any good here. You’ll be able to pay for your equipment no problem. The gratia stones aren’t just for growing trees. We use them for our currency, or I should say they hold our currency, which is energy. You put your own energy into the stone as payment. The shopkeeper can then use this energy to power machinery or fuel spells. Some shops only have specific stones that take a certain type of magic, like how the tree’s stones only took Passion.”

  The thought of going back into the cobblestone alley set Cole’s heart fluttering again. “Can we find a shop that will take Rage or Wisdom from me? I don’t think I can handle doing the Passion thing again.”

  “It will have to be Rage then. You aren’t ready to give up your Wisdom. Those stones will take your memories from you. Chiron would send me to the back side of Oberon if I let you at a Wisdom stone.” Storn shot an annoyed look back at Cole, who still struggled to keep up.

  Cole tried to wrap his mind around the strange concepts as they wound their way through the upper levels of the markets. He held out as long as he could, but eventually had to ask Storn to slow his pace when a cramp threatened to split his stomach in half. Cole flat out refused Storn’s vehement offering to carry him, the Aenerian insisting that it would be as easy as carrying a child.

  Hundreds of feet off the ground, they arrived at a shop near the very top of one of the shorter trees. A single vine-covered walkway led to the entrance of the odd store. The tree’s upper branches curved upwards, forming walls before reaching up towards the stars, giving the shop the appearance of a bark-clad pineapple. There was no shopkeeper, merely dozens of shelves that grew out of the walls. The shelves were filled with orbs of viscous gasses, all organized in neat little rows. Each shelf held orbs of differing shades of the same general color, and there was a strange metallic smell in the air, as if the room were charged with static electricity. Cole ran his fingers over the brass labels embedded in the shelves, unable to discern anything from the foreign letters. In the center of the room stood a dark wood pedestal with three gratia stones sunken into its surface. One crimson, one jade, and one soft lavender.

  “These are cyphers,” Storn said, indicating the rows of gaseous orbs.

  “You’ll need a couple of the green ones. Just put your payment into one of the gratia stones. The red one in the middle accepts Rage.”

  Cole tested the middle stone, tapping it gently. Satisfied he wouldn’t burn himself, he closed his eyes and tried his best to invoke thoughts of anger and fury, focusing on every fight he had ever been in. Nothing. He thought about times when he had broken bones and had a doctor sentence him to four months in a cast. Still nothing. Frustrated, he grew angry at the
stone itself, willing it to break like the last one. The stone remained a cool, dim crimson.

  “I don’t think it’s working for me,” Cole said, dejected.

  “Definitely not. It’s okay though, everyone is born with a different mixture of the three magics. Maybe you just have a more passionate soul, eh?” Storn chided, “There’s nothing wrong with that you know, we need healers and artists too. Just leave the fighting to me. You sure you don’t want to try the Passion stone?”

  “Very sure,” Cole said, backing away from the gratia stones.

  “Fine, I’ll cover you this time.” Storn nudged Cole aside, seemingly eager to display his competence with the stones. “You can pay me back when you’re brave enough for Passion. There’s a set of focusing shards downstairs that I’ve been saving for. Supposed to help you with Wisdom. You’re lucky these cyphers are simple so they’re not too expensive.”

  “I’ll find a way to get you those focusing shards. I promise,” Cole mumbled, feeling like he was back in grade school asking his friends for lunch money.

  Storn grunted as he placed a hand each on the Passion and Rage stones. His face twisted into a comical mixture of compassionate fury. Cole didn’t dare laugh however. He had no urge to upset someone nearly twice his height, and he needed all the friends he could get. The stones hummed with light, one a vibrant lilac and the other pulsing crimson. A sheet of light that Cole didn’t notice before shimmered in front of the lower shelves.

  Storn lifted his hands, looking tired and panting slightly. “All right, new blood, they’re unlocked. Start with the bottom right shelf.”

  Cole walked over to a shelf lined with greenish spheres, settling on the olive one on the bottom right. “Um, do I eat it or something?”

  “Sorry. I forgot you don’t know anything.” Storn averted his eyes, apparently interested in the top shelves. “Yeah, pick one up and eat it.”

  Not wanting to annoy him further, Cole picked up one of the orbs. Olive clouds swirled lazily through the sphere, and as soon as he put his fingers on it, Cole could hear a sound like wind whispering through the trees. The hairs on his arm stood on end as his skin began to tingle. He brought the orb to his mouth, wondering how he was supposed to eat something as big as his fist and hard as glass. He fumbled for a full minute trying to fit the thing into his mouth, stopping when he heard an odd spitting and hissing sound coming from the other side of the shop.

  Storn was bent over, clasping his hands over his mouth as he shook and coughed. Cole ran across the shop, wondering how one was supposed to perform first aid on someone so large.

  Panicking, Cole shimmied his way up a shelf for a better look at whatever Storn was choking on. “Storn calm down! Did you swallow one of the cyphers?”

  Storn exploded with laughter, placing his hands on his knees. “Maybe you are stupid after all! Eat a cypher, ha! How did it taste? I’ve never tried one myself.”

  With a mixture of anger and embarrassment, Cole hopped down from the shelf. He didn’t like people making jokes at his expense, but he thought he must have looked ridiculous. “Well how am I supposed to know what to do with these stupid things? You’re supposed to be my guide aren’t you?”

  “That doesn’t mean I can’t have a little fun.” Storn clapped Cole on the shoulder with a de-clawed hand. Cole’s knees almost buckled under the force, however. “Hold it up to your eyes and look inside. Really.”

  Cole decided to play along. If it was another joke he would just have to entertain Storn until the pranks had run their course. He held the ball up to his eye and looked into its cloudy depths. He felt his eyes shift in and out of focus as his breathing slowed. It was as if he were about to fall asleep, though he was intensely transfixed. He couldn’t look away if he wanted to. Shapes appeared in the olive clouds, only to vanish a second later. He longed to see what they were. Just as he thought he saw what looked like a spinning wheel, he found himself staring at his empty hand.

  “What happened? Did I…” Cole blinked as he felt a disturbance in his thoughts. A profound sensation of deja-vu teased him, tempting him to remember something he felt like he should have known all along. Just when he had the thing in his mind’s grip, the feeling slipped away, leaving him yearning for it. “Did it work? I feel like I dropped it before it set in.”

  “Look at the shelves. The labels.” Storn wasn’t smiling this time.

  “Okay, I’m looking but I don’t-” Cole gasped, “There are words! The words on the shelves, I can read them!”

  “Of course you can. You have the cypher for our written language now.” Storn crossed his arms and leaned against the wall of the shop. “Now do the same thing with the next cypher. Don’t try and eat it though, wouldn’t want you chipping a tooth.”

  “Thanks, Master Storn,” Cole said, injecting as much sarcasm as he could. He side-stepped to the next shelf, which had the word ‘TIME’ carved into it with choppy letters. The orbs on this shelf were a rich emerald color, and the clouds coalesced in weaving, linear patterns. He held the sphere up to his eye, trying to catch the moment where it vanished, but as before he was struck by a powerful feeling of deja vu. Before he could identify the newly forgotten memory, the cypher was gone and his hand was empty. He felt no different.

  “That one should give you a better idea of how we measure time on the Dark Side. You Underkin use some backwards way where your days last forever.” Storn picked another cypher off a shelf, tossing it in between his hands.

  “I don’t get it.” Cole gripped the sides of his head. “It seems off when I think about it.” He thought about time and how it was measured back on Earth, but the concepts were slippery.

  “It might take a while to get the hang of it.” Storn’s voice softened a bit. “I grew up with these ideas so don’t ask me how they relate to whatever the hell you use. We’ve got the second, the minute, the hour, the day, the month, and the Cycle.”

  As Storn said each unit of time, thoughts and concepts echoed in Cole’s mind, new ideas mixing with what he already knew. When the echoing subsided, he had a general idea of how each measure compared with his concepts of Earth-time. Everything was longer to some degree. A cycle felt close to seven Earth years. A month was simply the time Aeneria spent in a local planet’s house, which felt like four Earth months. Aenerian weeks, days, hours, and minutes were each several times longer than their Earth counterparts. The concepts were difficult to wrestle and differentiate, but they made sense enough. He rubbed his head, realizing he had developed a throbbing headache.

  “You feel up for one more?” Storn asked, tossing another cypher to Cole.

  Cole snatched the orb out of the air, afraid of dropping it. “I think so, is the headache normal?”

  “Yeah. You just learned a lot real fast. Not everyone’s minds can handle it. I could probably take in the lot, but I already know this stuff.” Storn motioned towards the moss-colored sphere in Cole’s hand. “This last one will give you a mental map of The Sill. Wouldn’t want you getting lost. I’d have to go out and hunt you down, though you smell so bad I could probably sniff you out.”

  Cole resisted the urge to lift his arm and take a whiff. He wasn’t offended because he knew it was true; there had been no way for him to clean himself. Cole tried to think of the last time he’d bathed or changed his clothes, but had no idea how long he and Habbad were on the river. He hoped he would reunite with his friends soon. Habbad was like a rock for Cole, always knowing how to react and what step to take next. Though he could feel Goran vaguely through the strange link, he wanted to see him to make sure he was okay.

  Cole spun the orb in his hand. “Any chance for me to clean up before the end of the day? I’d rather not go around smelling like swamp muck.”

  “When we finish up at the markets we’ll get you settled into the barracks. There’s a shower that will peel that layer of stink off your hide. Hurry up with that last cypher and we’ll get you some real clothes.” Storn raked his eyes over what was left of Cole’s fra
yed Underkin wrappings.

  Cole was reluctant to leave the shop, though his headache now shot spikes of pain into his molars. There were multitudes of cyphers left for him to explore. Dozens of shelves displayed every shade of red, green, white, pink, gold, and even black. He promised himself he would return once he figured out how to safely use the gratia stones. They exited the shop, Cole quickly taking the lead as he was now oriented and knew the quickest route. Storn stopped him however, staring off the bridge as though waiting for something.

  Storn held up a finger to the sky, which sparked emerald and let out a high whistle. A few moments passed in awkward silence, but then a massive sun lily leaf shot down from the canopy to greet them. The leaf docked itself at the side of the walkway where the vined handrails split wide to embrace it. They stepped on and the leaf lunged into open air. Cole plopped himself low for fear of falling off. Storn threw his chest out and posed for no one, hair whipping by his ears like a movie star. Cole looked back at the bell-shaped shop, memorizing the name emblazoned in neon vines: ‘THE CORDIAL COMPENDIUM’.

  Far off in the distance, Cole spied a sprawling cluster of stone buildings emitting captivating music and alluring lights. The cypher suggested he call it the ‘Arts District’. Cole added the site to his mental list of places to explore.

  The constant breeze of the open leaf had Cole shivering before long. Thankfully, the next shop they stopped in was a clothing store. The shopkeeper dressed like a butler, and his scowl gave him the appearance that he’d rather be anywhere else than at work. He turned his nose up when Storn explained they needed clothes for ‘the Underkin’. Cole hoped the look of disgust was because he needed a bath and not because of some sort of prejudice. The man had a reedy appearance of a well-dressed walking stick in Aenerian form. He used only his hands and fingers to measure Cole’s body, tapping a clicking silvery gadget worn around his neck after each measurement. When he finished he pulled out a massive set of thick cloth armor, along with matching boots that Cole could have sat in. Just as Cole was about to point out the obvious, the shopkeeper waved his hands as jade light shone onto the sturdy cloth. The clothes shrank until they were the appropriate size. Then the shopkeeper snapped his shining fingers and the fabric shifted from pale brown to a deep jade that matched the rest of Cole’s unit.