by RMGilmour
I watched the ceiling loom closer with each second, but I wasn’t slowing, and my excitement quickly turned to fear. I tried to raise my arms above my head, but they wouldn’t move. My body was stuck speeding toward a collision, and my scream was stuck in my throat.
At the last moment, my head and shoulders tilted backward, arching my back and I swerved along the line of the ceiling. Then circling downward, I found myself speeding toward the floor.
Watching the green mat rise up to meet me was not as thrilling, but at least I was sure I wasn’t going to crash, and the downward movement did not feel like falling at all. It felt more like I was pulling myself toward the floor.
Several feet off the floor, my body arched again, circling me back up and I stopped. My arms rose from my sides and my knees gently bent, and I landed one foot at a time in the center of the rectangle.
The moment the center released control of me I dropped to my knees, gently shaking inside the suit, needing to catch my breath and my brain.
“Trainee Lydia, please stand,” came a voice around me, though not from one specific location.
I looked up and about to see who may be speaking to me, but there was no one near. A moment later the voice repeated its request and I forced myself up, one leg at a time, although I wasn’t as steady as I would have preferred.
“Are you ok?” I heard Lena call.
I looked up to see her flying toward me, and she landed just beyond the green floor with ease.
“Yeah,” my voice shook. “It was just… unexpected. Why couldn’t it give me a moment to sit and recover though?”
“If, at the end of an exercise, you’re not standing, you’re either hurt or defeated.”
“And I hope to never be either.”
She laughed as expected though. I was pretty sure there was a lot of pain and defeat on its way.
“Because you’re in training, the center knew you weren’t hurt, and was providing instruction.”
“Why didn’t it just force me up in the suit?”
“There are some things you need to find the motivation to do yourself.”
“Is this where everyone trains?” I asked, looking about. The room was empty now except for the two of us.
“This is where we learn or warm up if we need to,” she grinned. “Now back to it.”
I watched her take off, back up to the ceiling where she performed a complex set of swirls and dives, avoiding oncoming cylindrical objects that glowed bright red when they came too close to her. Though as she drew near to one, she held a hand out toward it, sending a ripple through the air, obliterating her target.
I was in awe watching her and hoped one day I would be able to move like that. And if this was only a warm up, I couldn’t wait to see her in action.
I stepped back into the center of the rectangle and breathed. The second time around, I paid careful attention to the movements of my body, the force with which I’d pushed off, and the angles and lines I needed to maintain, to avoid crashing into either the ceiling or the floor.
On my fifth attempt, I was in complete control of my suit, and I managed to get myself to the ceiling and back. However, as I neared the floor I didn’t turn soon enough, and I realized I didn’t have enough room to land. But before I crashed, the center took over, bringing my body in upon itself, and I rolled across the floor. The moment I came to a stop, I thanked the center, and stood up to let it know I was ok.
I would need to remember that last move, in case I ever had trouble landing. On my next try, I nailed the landing without any assistance.
“Good job,” Lena said applauding. “Jordan did it in three.”
“What?” I asked, astounded at her revelation, but more so because she knew of him.
“Well, he wasn’t born with all of those muscles. I hear when he started he was rather scrawny,” she said, wrinkling up her nose, as though the idea of a man out of shape was abhorrent to her.
“How long has he been training?”
“He and Mason have been coming here at least fifty years… that I know of. He tends to drag Jordan into all of his schemes.”
“Why?” I asked, although I didn’t really need to as I thought of my brother and I when we were kids. I followed him into construction sites and across the canals. We even rode our bikes to the edge of town and beyond, on numerous occasions. Most of which our parents knew nothing about, but he kept life interesting.
Though as these memories passed briefly through my mind, I looked back up at Lena, still waiting for her to respond. She only stared back at me, as though she was waiting for me to hear what she had to say.
“To help him feel alive,” she eventually said. “Until you came along, he was an empty shell, oblivious to everything around him. This is why Mason sent him out into the void looking for you in the first place.”
I smiled, but only half-heartedly. I didn’t want to think about the years of misery and loneliness he’d suffered through.
“He never told me about any of this,” I said. It didn’t bother me though, after all, he had five hundred years of life to catch me up on.
“That’s hardly surprising,” she snorted. “The way he looks at you, I’d be amazed if he had a single coherent thought in his head.”
“So, he did it in three, huh?” I asked, trying not to dwell on her comment. If she’d seen me with him, I had to wonder how many others had. But I needed to divert the conversation. He wasn’t with me now, and up until this point I’d been necessarily distracted.
She only nodded.
“What else did he do well?”
“Why, up for a challenge?”
No, I really wasn’t, but I liked her candor. I needed that.
12
Crumbling Walls
“Should I begin level three?”
“Not today. Step off that mat, ascend to the ceiling and keep moving.”
I followed her instructions, pushing myself up into the air, and heard Lena call Level one, once more.
Turning before reaching the ceiling, I began a dive downward, then turned again, flying toward the wall. As I did, a small object came spiraling toward me. I ducked barely missing its glowing red exterior, but then corrected my balance, and swept upward to avoid a collision with the wall. But upon turning, the cylinder aimed itself at me once more. I swerved to the left and turned to see it also returning. I swerved once again, but it did as well, and with each turn it zoomed closer to me. Swooping downward, I turned at the last moment, hoping it would collide with the floor, but instead it resumed its course toward me.
“How do I stop it?” I called down to Lena.
“You don’t.”
“How did you?” I asked in disbelief.
“Something you haven’t learned yet,” she called up to me, as I neared the ceiling.
I wanted to question her further, but I came too close. I arched my body just enough to curve along its edge and down the wall, and rolled around to see the glowing red object accelerating toward me.
It was too late to move. It had me.
I raised my arms to stop it from hitting my head, and it dissolved into my right forearm.
Most of the force dispersed around my suit in a shimmer, but at the point of contact, a torrent of pins and needles shot up my arm and into my shoulder.
Stunned by the pain, I slid down the remaining side of the wall, and crashed to the floor. Thankfully, I wasn’t that far up when it hit.
“What was that?” I groaned. I held my arm to my chest as the pain slowly subsided. I forced myself to my feet, reluctant to go through any more painful exercises.
“Just to test your skills, get you moving.”
“And the point of the little red rocket was what?”
“An added incentive,” she grinned. “It won’t last long.”
She was right about that. After several more moments the pain had almost completely diminished, and I fell in step behind her as she l
ed me around the walkway to the other side of the Arena.
She showed me where to stand, then moved several feet away, and we stood side by side, just as the warriors had done. She slightly bent her legs, indicating I should do the same, and then called the program to begin, activating the almost invisible wall around the green floor.
The suit moved my body through each of the movements, forcing my legs and arms to move and stretch in ways I was sure were not natural for me. And after running through the exercises so many times I lost count, the suit began again to relinquish control to me, little by little. Though Lena stopped before I’d gained complete control, for which I was grateful; my moves were nowhere near as graceful or as powerful as hers.
She led me to a wide cabinet at the end of the mat, made of the same dark metal as the walkways. Rising out of the top of the cabinet was a tray holding a vial of dark green liquid. She handed it to me, and told me to drink.
“What is it?” I asked.
“It will help to lessen some of the pain in your muscles and your joints once your suit is removed.”
I remembered the first day after I’d begun jogging along my river; I had welcomed the pain. Feeling something had been better than nothing at all.
But now… I could do without it, and I rose the vial to my mouth.
“I had hoped the suit was taking care of that,” I mumbled, through a grimace at the bitter fluid.
“Not a chance,” she laughed.
“What’s next,” I asked, looking up, hoping for more flying excitement.
“Nothing more in here. We started a little late today, we can forgo the rest. You need to begin defense.”
“What does that involve?” Although again not sure if I wanted the mental image, before plunging into it.
“Defense,” she reiterated. “At the Arena, hand to hand.”
“This isn’t the Arena?” But as I asked, the rest of her statement registered. Hand to hand. Pain, humiliation, defeat. I sighed. It was coming sooner than expected.
“No,” she scoffed, barely getting the word out as she led me along the walkway to the side of the dome.
“What about the council you were coming to see with Haize?” My weak attempt to change our course.
“I wasn’t. Haize, Aleric and several other Rathe were coming. I fight, not talk. I would only be detrimental to Haize’s plans, if they included me in their discussions.”
“Why? Wouldn’t it be best to form a plan, a strategy of both offense and defense, strike when not only both warriors and hunters were ready, but at the moment when the wards and the Guardian would least expect it?”
“Maybe you should join Haize,” she frowned, and pulled me through the dome wall.
The landscape on the other side of the wall stopped my heart. Below me was a town of widely spaced, white marble walls, flat rooftops and walkways. Exquisitely interspersed with tall thriving trees, flourishing plants, flowers and an abundance of lush green grass. All of which stretched toward a perfect aqua ocean.
“This is Tira-Mi. Home,” Lena whispered. “Almost home,” she corrected.
“It’s breathtaking. Why do you live in the Colony, if you have this?”
“Because we don’t want the wards here interfering, or trying to destroy what we’ve built. We choose to keep the peace.”
“Do they know it’s here?”
“Most likely, although I’m sure they’ve never been this far away from the Guardian. But still,” she swung around to face me. “We don’t speak a word of this in the Colony, nor even in the fields.”
“Not a word,” I breathed. “Are we going into the town?” I hoped to be immersed in its beauty.
“No,” she said, and walked along the same walkway that had continued through the wall and traveled around the outer shell of the dome.
“We go there,” she said stopping, and pointed toward a series of tall towers.
Their columns were thick and black, but did not reflect the sunlight, and at the top of each was a platform constructed of a cross-work of beams, also the same black shade. We were too far to see what was at the base, but every now and then I could see a small shape fly up and swirl back down at break neck speed.
“Flying hand to hand combat?” I asked, a slight tremor entered my voice, but I fought to control it.
“Not for you,” she chuckled, and I hoped she didn’t hear my sigh of relief.
She led me further around the dome, and the walkway ended in a terrace with no way down, at least none that I could see. Lena stepped to the edge, motioning for me to join her there and asked if I was ready.
“Ready for what?” But I knew what.
She leapt off the edge and up into the sky.
I took a deep breath, slowly bent my knees and prayed I knew what I was doing. I then leapt up into the air, joining her.
The ground was too far down. I kept my eyes averted from its call of certain death, and focused only upon Lena, trying to hear her instructions.
“Just stay close to me. When we get there, you’ll see where we can land,” she glanced at me. “Don’t look so green. You can do this!”
We soared through the air, side by side, toward the black towers, the wind sweeping across my face. I squinted my eyes against the force to better see what we were approaching, but everything was mostly a blur. I glanced over at Lena as best I could, and she appeared to have no trouble keeping her eyes open.
Dropping back a short way, I kept her just in front of me, to make it easier to follow her movements when we landed. But by the time she began her descent I could barely see.
I mimicked her movement by tilting my head and shoulders, arching my back to raise myself upward, then slightly bent my knees, awaiting the landing. And I touched down upon solid ground.
Wind-blown and a little sore, I looked about to see we were balanced upon a narrow terrace. Lena was several feet away with her back to me, and I tread slowly toward her, hoping not to fall.
“Open your eyes wide and look up,” she said, as she turned.
I did and felt a gentle mist spray across my face. As I blinked away the coldness, the pain in my eyes rapidly subsided, and when I opened them next, I could see.
“Couldn’t I have worn goggles?” I complained. “And how come it didn’t hurt your eyes?”
“Everything you do, or rather everything I put you through, is all part of training. You landed where you were supposed to on your first try, that’s what matters.”
“Why?”
“In battle, we aren’t always protected and need to know how to cope with whatever comes,” she told me, and pointed across the landscape. “Look.”
I turned to see we were still quite high up. There were many raised platforms such as ours, that held several men and women as they trained. Below us was a deep pit, the bottom of which I couldn’t see, but it was more than twice as wide as the dome. The sides were raised stone, cut to a point at the top. It was nothing as glamorous as I’d expected, not like their city, or the dome. This served a specific purpose.
From within the pit, flew out several warriors, some locked in fight, others alone but diving back in for the attack. I watched one use a pulsing force upon another, halting his opponent, knocking him out of the air and sending him crashing toward the ground. I had no idea how high up they were, or we were, and hoped the warriors had a soft landing. But somehow, I knew they wouldn’t. Others attacked their opponents with a searing white light, leaving deep cuts and welts upon their skin. And others still, fought hand to hand, struggling against bone-crushing grips.
“You fight like this too?”
“Well, I didn’t get these scars falling down a mountainside,” she informed me. “This is what you’ll be learning over the coming days or weeks, depending upon how much time Haize can wrangle.”
Days! There was no way I would be able to learn that in a matter of days, or weeks even! Though I kept this complaint to myself.
“What’s at the bottom?”
“It’s a training ground like any other,” she said, as though I was supposed to know what a training ground looked like.
“And we’re going down there?”
“Not unless you want to get killed,” she stated. “We’re going under.”
“Under,” I repeated. “Why couldn’t we just train back in the dome?” I trailed off, stealing a backward glance, only to see the dome was not a dome, but instead a great, shining, silvery-grey ball, free-floating against the side of the cliff.
“Because it’s designed to help you move, it will force the movement out of you if you don’t do it right. Down here it’s just you.”
I turned back to Lena, a question surfacing about the globe, but she was no longer beside me. Peering over the edge, I groaned when I saw her free-falling down toward the darkness below, and I jumped, trying to mimic her movement; one knee bent, arms and hands to the side, but slightly raised.
I hoped to find light below, and also for the landing to not be a bone-breaking crash. The further down into the darkness we dropped the more worried I became about landing safely, and I inhaled long and deep, halting the hyperventilation that tried to take hold.
The light began as a pinpoint, quickly enveloping me. I outstretched one foot, planting it firmly upon the ground and I then extended the other. I glanced back up through the darkened shaft, and wondered how far below ground we were. But it wasn’t important.
What now lie before me, was a long room of cut brown stone. A line of light emitted from the top of each wall as it met the ceiling, illuminating the beat-up and crumbled condition of the walls. There were several areas with light grey floors, much like the dome room only wider and much longer. Except these floors were covered in fresh red-brown stains. It was a room with one purpose. Pain.
I gulped back the fear that tried to stir my stomach at the sight, and kept my eyes upon Lena’s back as she led me toward a corner of the room.