by Marc Mulero
“What shall we spar for today, I wonder?” Dee said coyly, pretending not to know what she would request.
Eres shut the sliding door behind him as they entered a dojo-like arena. Nothing but grey cloth and steel beams closed them in. Blocks of fabric dipped from the ceiling like a canopy, where dim light snuck through from the structure above.
“I know what I will be asking when I win,” Eres joked.
“Mmm, something boring I’m sure.” Ohndee pulled the blunt sparring sword from her belt.
Eres did the same with a grin – much more confident in his skills than when he was taken from Kor. He loved dueling her. She was no Zia, of course, but having been raised as a Swul highborn awarded extensive training that few were privy to.
Ohndee charged first, energetically, assuring to switch up her tactics each session with him – to stay sharp – a desire that was otherwise lost within the spire’s walls.
Eres, too, had progressed. His showy display had grown from deserving an auditorium of observers to a stadium. His skills had tripled since he’d been dropped off there, and it was obvious where they’d been derived: Herim Vasa. Flips and spins were as necessary as they were awe-inspiring, met with the rigid, forceful approach of a high-ranking Swul. After ten full minutes of blunt Crule-less metal clashing, the day eventually went to Eres.
Both panting and grinning at the soon to be colorful bruise that would appear on Ohndee’s ribs, they sheathed their weapons and bowed.
“Swul’s honor, something my mother used to say after she’d whack me senseless with the flat of her spear,” Ohndee said.
“To be honest, I would never have taken you for a Swul when I met you.” Eres took one last long inhale and straightened.
She gasped, jokingly offended. “My parents would have tossed you from the top of this spire had they ever heard you say that.”
“Glad they’re not here, then.”
“Well, anyway, tell me why.” The last words came out in a high pitch as her face suddenly contorted to release a sloppy sneeze.
He held out a hand to emphasize his point. “You’re a goof.”
“Hmph, and you’re a shit.” She ran a hand under her nose and folded her arms.
“Such elegance they teach in ivory Swul towers…”
“And arrogance in your dusty old forests… okay, on with it. What do you care to know?”
The two of them played this game endlessly to introduce some reward system into their lacking lives. Otherwise, they would risk becoming what everyone else was in Elesion - zombies.
“I refrained from asking this after my many wins because I thought perhaps it was too private of a question.”
“Oh, Mustae,” she rolled her eyes, “out with it!”
“Okay… obviously you’re a Dawn, but where’s your mark?”
Her pale cheeks flushed pink.
Eres cursed to himself, immediately regretting the question.
Ohndee then stomped over to him as Eres quickly backed up. He waved his hands in apology, but she led with her angry face and ended with a scolding punch into his chest.
“It’s on my backside, okay? Happy?”
Eres tried his hardest not to burst out laughing, “Your… butt?”
The glaring follow-up awarded Eres another jab; her thinly muscular arms packed a punch.
“How do you think I was kept among the nobles for so long? Hmm? Obviously, my parents were able to hide me. It’s because I don’t have those stupid things running down my face.” She pointed to one of his T marks.
Eres didn’t even pretend to be offended, because at that point, how would it benefit him to be sore about something so far out of his control? Instead, he let out the laughter. “Because Mustae only spanked you. I’d ask to see… but I don’t want you to get the wrong idea.”
“Jerk!” Dee’s entire face turned scarlet. Her insult had backfired, and the crush she’d been hiding for a year was so nonchalantly rejected that she wanted to scream at the top of her lungs.
He chuckled innocently at the jest as her thoughts of pouncing forward and strangling him were manifesting. They subsided quickly though after a few rage-fueled paces, like they always did, leaving intrigue to take its place. How did Eres really feel about her? She needed confirmation, now.
“What wrong idea? It’s not like we can get into trouble… can’t get pregnant… remember?” She pointed to her groin section and gaped at him like he was a moron.
Windel formed in Eres’ mind, when she hooked arms with him on Meeting Day.
Tingles ran through his body from the recollection, as if it had happened just moments ago. Then guilt followed – was he supposed to just wait here, lethargically in some purgatory? Or was he supposed to do more? Then he was reminded of Agden’s plan, Lorfa’s execution of it… he was supposed to wait. The only thing he could do with his time was educate himself, something he was fond of doing.
The smile had been wiped from Eres’ face, and the tingles that he felt faded. But not for Ohndee. She felt them for entirely different reasons, and was eagerly awaiting a response.
“Where’d you go, jackass?” she pried.
“Ugh, you just made me think of those two we saw last month, lazily doing noochi,” he lied.
Dee stomped her foot. “Kissing? Really? Now you’re getting upset at people for trying to enjoy each other?”
He knew he had to commit to the lie… “Not that, it’s just weird. You know it is too. They’re both miserable when we see them in class, like everyone else. It’s depressing when they try to get out of their misery and fail.”
“Well… we’re not like that.”
Eres’ eyes expanded, and he knew he had to pivot to get out of the situation somehow without hurting Dee’s feelings. “I’ve been wondering about that…” He watched her eyes sparkle with hope and immediately realized he may have phrased it wrong. “Why do you have energy like me?”
He already knew the answer, truly. It was because she was out in the world before being dropped in Elesion, functioning without stigma for a good portion of her life. It’s only when the feeling of not belonging takes hold, of being forced to hide, that feeling when solemn defeat begins to manifest like a slow poison rotting arteries, it’s only then does hopelessness seep through. It reminded Eres of when he was so comfortably tethered to his chair for all those years, back in his breathing bocktali boned shack with Ooma. But anything to distract…
“That’s an easy one, Eres - because I know this isn’t the place where I die.”
He agreed. “And because you know of a life outside of Elesion. It seems to me almost everyone here was dropped off at birth.”
“Well, duh… it’s illegal not to. But our parents have guts! And I know mine will find a way to get me out.”
“I know they will too.” Eres’ smile was genuine.
Dee walked over to the back end of the dojo, grabbed a towel, and proceeded to wipe down her neck. “Okay, food time. Let’s get out of here.”
They both made their way to the main spire’s entrance. She was mostly quiet now, rerunning the conversation in her mind, taking the hint that maybe he just wasn’t interested.
“Coming?” She cocked her head upon noticing Eres had fallen a few steps behind.
“Later, maybe. I have some things to do.”
“Ugh, to the library again, as usual. So boring… and here I thought there was still life left in you.”
Even the spirals were less hurried in Elesion. Eres felt like he was rising for a full three minutes, whereas in Kor he would’ve zipped to the top in twenty seconds. The sight he waited for never got old, though. His ooma’s promise was true – a library full of books that stretched from floor to high ceiling, cut in two by a bronze candle-lit chandelier with, oddly, a fireplace resting in its center. He craned his neck up while walking past, watching the chimney-cut hole in the ceiling absorb the smolder like it was enjoying the warmth of hot tea beneath it. It gave Eres goosebumps of comfort… the c
rackling of burning wood and puffing smoke made him feel warm inside, a coziness that brought him right back to his chair in Ombes.
He then crossed paths with another Dawn on his way, who greeted him with a book in hand. It was a high spire teacher – like all the rest, gathering their material from the available books rather than experience. Eres detested the idea, but it wasn’t their fault that they were trapped there. It was a terrible cycle - learn of what others in the world had accomplished, pass the information down, repeat. All while the sexless barrens sit in the sky waiting for death to claim them.
This was an opportunity though, and he reminded himself daily to marry the knowledge of this sanctuary with that of his esper. He wanted to piece together the puzzle of the Skrols – their history, the training required to become one, the mysteries of the First Seer, to decipher religious texts, even the ones he despised as a child, because now he understood the power of Reach, and its value.
Even though he tried every night, sitting cross-legged in the cool breeze, concentrating like his ooma had taught him, nature would not bend to his will. The grass under him and the trees across from him wouldn’t answer his calls, not even whisper back to him. None of it. For a while he thought maybe it was because he was a Dawn. That was until his esper had revealed a shirtless barren with an unmistakable green gash running across his torso who managed to raise the tree roots from the ground to defend himself against a stoning.
Instead of dwelling, though, Eres spent time doing what he did best: learning, absorbing. When the depressing thought popped into his mind that maybe he did, in fact, belong with the rest of the uninspired Dawns, destined to be a spire teacher, he shook it off and reminded himself that it was temporary like everyone had promised.
True to his nature, Eres found an exotically carved chair near a window and plopped himself into its deep cushion. He curled up and stared at the book in his lap. Within a leafy boarder, it read:
Exso Sindah
by Apa Kernikus
The tome was a praised work by a great Umboro philosopher, Exso, which translated to “discovering,” and Sindah was the theory of melding Gushda with Rudo for a more complete consciousness. This idea was more fascinating now to Eres than ever before thanks to his esper, though the book was so complexly written that he often found himself reading the same lines over and over again. When the pieces eventually fit together in his mind, however, ideas felt more profound, like they were being discovered, and he was soon convinced that the author was a genius, who perhaps wielded some key into Gushda back in his time.
The excerpt Eres was stuck on read:
I descend from the tunnels of Rudo, where my extremities freeze from the bite of frigid gales and warm again from an inviting hearth. I leave that plane behind, and I fall into something else. I am nothing now but a wisp of matter strung together by my thoughts. I see everything that was fleeting in my old body so clearly in the new. It is memory supreme.
Then I realize, I have been here before, not only because my old paths are outlined like streams of misty water, but because I know. This isn’t the first. Perhaps the second, perhaps not. But certainly not the first.
This made Eres’ thoughts race. His own experience of coming in and out of Gushda replayed at the forefront of his mind in trying to decipher what lay beneath the surface of Apa’s text. He thought he may have figured out what the author was trying to convey, that even though Apa left most of himself behind in Rudo, something transferred back and forth as he switched planes, whatever the self was… harbored memory, rational thought, it all went with him on the journey. Though at the end, was Apa trying to explain that there was a price? Confusion perhaps? Doubt about what was real?
At this moment he wished Proctor Ren was with him, or Wudon, to have a meaningful conversation that had some kind of depth. This train of thought, the one with figments of his old life, eventually led into fear.
What if the plan went awry? Maybe I wasn’t meant to be here this long. Ooma is old… she may have… or maybe they were found out. That weird pilot who brought me here, Ooma, whatever Skrols were left in my fata’s Alliance… maybe they’re all gone.
He began to yearn for something familiar, anything, and so he pulled the decorative blanket hanging on the backrest of his chair and draped it over him to conceal any shine that would emit from his esper. Then, with an intense thought of Gushda’s endless walkway, followed by the willpower to enter, Eres felt the recognizable wrench of being yanked out of his body. He was traveling at an incomprehensible speed, one that would have withered his physical form to dust. His senses were lost before being reborn into his acquainted ethereal self.
A sigh of relief echoed in his underwater voice. The many planes of history that existed permanently in the Eternal World played out around him, and when he turned, environments shifted like a hologram would. If not for the feeling of standing on solid ground, vertigo may have claimed him.
He wondered where his journey would lead him today. What breadcrumbs left by his father would he find this time?
The paths previously taken pulsed with misty vapor, just like Apa Kernikus had described, but he had walked those already. It was time for something new. An adventure.
Eres willed himself off the solid ground as if he’d jumped off a cliff, but was able to control the speed of his fall. Face first he dove, past a séance of overzealous priests, through a screaming couple that he didn’t recognize, until finally, in the depths of Gushda, Agden’s voice could be heard. Eres slowed tentatively to a stop in this memory of choice.
A cave… somewhere deep underground, he thought.
His tiptoes touched cold stone before he lowered quietly to his heels, foolishly thinking that someone would be able to hear him. Onward he crept, around corners and down hallways, his father’s voice becoming more prominent with each step. Stone eventually turned to ice the deeper he went. Finally, beyond an arching metallic door that was left open, in the center of a vast frozen room, stood Agden Way. His breath was as smoky as a fireplace, but it was even. Calm. He was younger, not yet boundless, Eres figured, and was talking to someone’s back. Someone a head taller than he.
Before the volume of their conversation settled into Eres’ ears, he took a quick survey of the layered walls surrounding them… all neatly packed ice, like a manmade cave of crystal blue.
“Where are they? Is this the Verglas Sphere?” he said aloud to himself.
Then the tall figure spun to face Agden, and a very uemon shiver trickled down Eres’ ethereal spine. The man in Proctor Ren’s octor, the one who murdered for what Eres was wearing on his finger. It was Seren Night.
“And what do you believe that strikes such fear in your heart?” Seren’s voice was low, deep, and confident. He stepped closer to Agden to better assess his folly.
“A thousand demons waiting to claim us after this life, a price that we may have paid to live, an all-powerful treasure that would drive us mad if we found it… it could be anything, Seren. It truly does not matter. The First Seer was wise, and the generations that he entrusted after him have kept true. We took an oath to do the same.”
“And what if it is some grand discovery that alters the course of ulmanity? Some puzzle piece of knowledge that here, today, could save countless lives? A new god, perhaps? One that gives us more than Reach. What then, Agden?”
He sighed, “Why would the First Seer have hidden such greatness?”
“Because he didn’t believe in us.” Seren’s voice became a powerful whisper. “And now, thousands of years later, we are the fools who carry on his faithless legacy, blindly following the traditions that spawned from mistrust.”
“Search your esper, Seren. You know that the dustings we have of his essence are pure.”
“I know none of it! And neither do you.” A long finger poked Agden in the chest. “Ask Wukaldred what purity he knows in his. You play on circumstance – cunning creature that you are. My esper has the best of us, and you know it, yet still I st
and before you, a non-believer in blind trust.”
Agden shook his head. “A damn shame that the Ostara esper was handed down to you.”
“As is your gift of Reach,” Seren rebuked. “Clever, talented, destined for greatness you are, yet robbed of the ability to decide for yourself. Something that cannot be taught.”
Agden tried to dispel their bickering. “Masarian didn’t arrange this meeting so we could each yell at a wall.”
With arms folded under a ragged cloak and eyes shadowed beneath a wide brimmed hat, Seren retracted. “What do you want to accomplish here? Why have I traveled to the end of Ingora when you and I should be far separated?”
Agden hesitated. Eres rounded his father, noticing that something was amiss even though he appeared calm. And so, Eres exercised a skill that was taught in one of the instructive memories he’d found in Gushda – submerging his ethereal self within his father’s imprint.
He’d done this a few times before, but none of those instances brought on such despair. Eres could feel Agden’s fear beneath a tough exterior – dry throat, sweaty palms in a cage of ice, even some of his thoughts filtered through Eres. Agden had a hunch, even back whenever this was, that Seren would be the bane of the Skrols’ heritage.
Eres could feel Agden’s heart racing, thoughts jumbled from anxiety, perhaps even anger. But what came out was cool and collected.
“I’ve come to remind you of an oath, Seren, one that you took at the same time as I. We are bound to protect ulmanity from uniting our espers. I beg that we hash out your doubts here and now, before it’s too late…”
Seren cackled lowly before raising his head. “All of these years we trained to become lone wolf warriors, where one hundred rangers would count for one of us. We’ve meditated in lonely mountains for years to retain sanity amidst barren Armageddon. We’ve studied history of our forerunners, through esper and through book. Tell me, Agden Way, who better than to amass the secret hidden for centuries than one of us?”