Jonas had been on one of those ships, away on the Race for the better part of two years. Erin had been in an induced meditative state, serving as his Prophet throughout. Over the course of that time a collective identity had formed between the two, a whole they each now belonged to and that they felt absent from whenever apart.
But three months had passed since Erin was last inside Jonas’ head. Some things were the same, some things were different. Standing outside the room, she had the security of the partition and the knowledge that Jonas was only a few paces away, that part was the same, but she couldn’t feel him, and that was different. For the two years she’d lived inside his mind, his thoughts were her home and she felt warmth and security there. Then she left and she’d been cold ever since. She was still cold now.
“Do you want me to come in with you?”
Erin startled at the sound of Mother Elaina’s voice. She’d forgotten Elaina was standing behind her. Seeing Erin flinch, Elaina rested a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “I’ll be right beside you.”
“No. I should do this alone.”
“Then I’ll be right here when you come out.”
Erin gently removed Elaina’s hand from her shoulder. “Thank you Elaina, but that won’t be necessary.”
Studying Erin’s eyes, Elaina frowned but didn’t protest. She turned and walked back down the corridor, eventually rounding a corner and passing from sight. Erin kept her gaze fixed on the point at which Elaina had disappeared, looking on for a few more moments before returning her attention to the door that separated her from the man who, up until recently, had been her entire world. Taking a deep breath and settling herself, she closed her eyes and concentrated.
The door opened.
*****
He stood with his back to her but she recognized him immediately, despite only having met him once before in person when all the Academics in the Race had come to the Prophecy to meet their counterparts before shipping off. Seeing him now again after three months of being apart, cognitively as well as physically, Erin was disappointed to find she did not feel the same connection she had felt with him throughout their time together as a conscious unit. This troubled her.
When she awoke after those two years, a part of her had been missing. His thoughts had been missing. She had yearned to go back to that place where her thoughts and feelings were one with his. But this physical form standing in front of her brought back none of those feelings to share with her. He was just a man.
Jonas had not heard her come in, engrossed as he was with the woman lying on the bed before him. The woman appeared to be unconscious, although whether she was just sleeping or suffering from something more severe, Erin could not as yet tell, at least not from her current vantage point. She also couldn’t tell who the woman was, but she had a fairly good idea.
Watching the two of them, Erin felt like an intruder. She looked back at the door and wondered whether it might be better for everyone if she just left, but then she faced forward again he was staring directly at her.
“Erin?”
At first his face registered uncertainty. It was the look people give when they think they recognize someone but they want to be sure before letting their guard down.
“Jonas,” replied Erin, smiling hesitantly in a way that confirmed his suspicion.
“Erin!” he repeated, his features changing from uncertainty to a mixture of surprise, relief and happiness, all rolled into one. He stepped forward and hugged her. The gesture was so unexpected that Erin didn’t quite realize what was happening before he had released her, taking a step back and holding her at arm’s length. Her biceps burned from his touch and hiding behind his eyes she spotted that part of her she’d lost three months prior. He then let go of her completely, long before she was ready to be released, and now her arms felt like they had lost something, too.
“I’m sorry, I know Prophets aren’t supposed to...” he turned back towards the woman lying in the bed.
“No, we can... hug, and...” she trailed off. He wasn’t paying attention to her any longer. She came up beside him, joining him in his vigil over the woman lying on the bed.
She wasn’t sleeping. Even without venturing a probing Thought Erin could sense the woman’s brain waves functioning on a much deeper level of consciousness. Under the sheets that covered the woman, Erin could make out the long limbs of someone from Shwellous Island, which didn’t seem to belong to the small and rounded, childlike face resting on the pillow. What was most startling about this woman, though, was her hair, or rather what had replaced it; locks of pure light, shining brilliantly and flowing from her scalp the way normal hair would. Erin had never seen anything like it. The contrast with the woman’s caramel colored skin was both stunning and unnerving, all at once.
“What happened to her?”
When Jonas answered he kept his eyes on the woman in the bed the entire time. “It happened after I lost your Sight. We were beginning Entanglement but there was a complication and someone had to go out onto the hull. I could barely think, let alone read the Waves so close to the Black...”
Jonas turned to Erin and she could see the guilt he obviously still harbored, burning inside him like fading embers deep within the black cavernous voids of his pupils. “She’s not hurt, Erin. Not in a natural way. The Prophecy understands the mind differently than we do. I thought perhaps... maybe the Grand Mother... or...”
“I’ll work with her,” she blurted out, the thought escaping her lips before she had the chance to process it. Meanwhile, Jonas’ face went blank.
“I can’t ask you to do that. Not after what you’ve been through.”
“You didn’t,” assured Erin, realizing that she had to at least attempt to own the situation she’d gotten herself into.
Jonas was obviously conflicted. His lips pursed together as his conscience battled it out with his emotions over whether to resist Erin’s offer further or accept what a large part of him had hoped she would have volunteered all along.
“Look, I’ll be fine, and if she’s still in there, if I can, I’ll find her.” Erin didn’t really know if she could find her. She didn’t even know if she was ready to try, or how dangerous trying might turn out to be. All she knew was that she wanted to help Jonas. To do something for him as she had done every day for nearly two years while living as a part of him.
Jonas’ shoulders went slack as his conscience surrendered and he smiled with gratitude. Again, he reached over and grabbed hold of her, his touch, like a bolt of lightning sending all her senses into overdrive. It was dizzying.
“I owe you,” he told her, and then throwing his head back, he laughed at himself. “Actually, I already owe you for a year and a half of saving my life, don’t I?”
Erin smiled weakly. “Closer to two,” she said offhandedly, but once again Jonas’ attention had already moved on to the next critical issue on his mind. Erin recalled the incredible elasticity of Jonas’ thought process. How he would jump from one matter to another without skipping a beat. In the beginning, when she’d first begun Prophesying for him, she had to struggle to keep up with it. He used to fight the same way, acquiring a new target before he’d finished slicing through the old one. Eventually she learned his rhythm and was even able to anticipate his thoughts before he thought them.
“I hate asking,” he prefaced, “but there’s one more thing I’m going to need you to do for me, if you can. It’s important.” Erin watched Jonas’ lips as he spoke. She didn’t know what he was going to ask, or what it would require of her, but she already knew that her answer would be yes.
*****
Jonas stole one last look into the room. Erin was still standing over Gensala, staring back at him with those forest-green eyes of hers. He didn’t know what he would have done without Erin with him all along on the Race. In fact, he wasn’t quite sure how he’d made it back without her, especially after what had happened to Gensala. Looking at the two of them now, he was comforted knowing that h
e was giving up his own guardian angel to watch over the woman lying in the bed. There was no one he would have trusted Gensala’s fate to more than Erin.
And the panel slid closed.
Jonas remained standing there thinking about the two extraordinary women inside the room he had just left. He would have liked to have stayed and helped, but there were things he had to do first. Clearing his mind, he started to head back toward the docking bay.
“She needs you now, you know.”
Jonas stopped short and trained his attention on a Prophet Mother emerging from the shadows of the corridor wall she must have been leaning against, waiting. He had no idea how long this woman had been standing there or how much she had heard.
“Excuse me, do I know you?”
“My name is Elaina, and I doubt it. Just like I doubt you have any idea what Erin has been through?”
“I think I do. I was the one there with her, remember?”
“No. She was with you, and for two years at that. Do you have any idea what two years in the Box does to a Prophet? No. You don’t. How could you?”
Jonas had no idea who this Elaina Prophet was, but two things about her were immediately clear: One, she cared deeply for Erin, and two, not very much for him at all. He had a good idea of what was about to follow and mentally donned his thick skin, suiting up for the incoming barrage.
Meanwhile, Elaina hadn’t stopped to breath as she continued pouring it on. “Did you know that of the fifty ships to have had Prophets accompanying Academics for the Race, twelve Mothers never even survived the Entanglement? Did you know that none of the Mothers, other than Erin, made it past a year in the Box with their consciousness being stretched across the galaxy as it was? Some have never been the same since we brought them back.”
Of course, Jonas knew most of this. He was there when it happened. This Prophet Mother was wielding guilt like a Wave Whip, lashing out with one attack after another, but Jonas had become an expert on guilt, facing off with it countless times over the past two years.
It was he who had to find ways of communicating with the other Academics on the Race without the help of their dead or mentally compromised Prophets. It was he who had to coordinate defense and attack strategies with every other ship, to make the choice, over and over again; save another Academic or save the one ship and crew he was charged to protect. He knew all these things, but he also knew that mentioning them would not help to reshape this woman’s perception of him. So he held his tongue and the Prophet continued with her onslaught, unchecked.
“Did you know that Erin was in a coma for three months after she broke connection with you?” This revelation Jonas was unaware of, and equally unprepared for.
“You think she’s fine now,” continued the Prophet Mother, smelling blood, “because you see her walking around on her own two feet, but she’s not. She’s still lost. For some reason, Creator knows why, the idea of you is what’s kept her alive. But it’s also the idea of you that’s keeping her lost, and may ultimately sink her back into that unconscious prison again.” Then, to Jonas’ surprise, Elaina’s tone began to resonate with a tinge of reasonableness. “But the real you - not the idea of you - the real you, may be able to help her find her way back, for good.” And then the tinge was gone. “She needs you now, not all of your complications. How could you ask her to treat that woman for you?”
“I didn’t ask her,” said Jonas, defending himself, “she volunteered.”
“And you honestly believe that?”
Jonas glanced back at the door where the two most important women in his life struggled with their respective demons. He thought about how even though he was back and the Race was over, he was still being asked to make the same Race-like choices, over and over again. Then, it was weighing Academics vs. his personal crew. Now, it was Erin vs. Gensala.
He turned to face Elaina, staring her dead in the eyes.
“Gensala needs me too,” he said flatly, and left.
Chapter 8: Catch
The Academy, Osmos
There were few excuses for a Student to find themselves on the eleventh floor of Userus Hall where the Armory was kept. Picking up a Wave Whip on the eve of a Final Year duel was one of them, and that’s exactly what Kelerin was there to do.
The Wave Whip was the epitome of practical academics as far as the Academy was concerned. It manifested Wave theory through the combining of physical technique with cutting edge engineering to create a weapon, the power of which was in direct relation to the educated ability of the one wielding it.
Appearance wise, it might not have seemed like it had much to offer in terms of power emitting potential, being only a simple staff of approximately half a meter in length and five centimeters in diameter - but as Wave theory was often apt to profess, simplicity was not generally something to be trifled with. The reality was, Wave Whips were chock full of power wrapped in beautiful packaging. These elegant looking batons were made for generating, manipulating and weaponizing energy waves through movements defined by a geometric artistry that was as stunning as it was deadly.
As far as build, Whips were comprised of two halves joined together by a central band. The lower half below the band housed a clean reactor for energy generation. The half above the band consisted of two spiraling tubes, intertwining with one another and forming a single braided unit capped off with a spout-like head.
Upon activation, the reactor generated a subatomic potential that was funneled upward through the braided tubes and released out of the spout in an energy neutral stream. Once flowing, streams were poised to be whipped, arced and angled into highly destructive energy waves, a conversion process requiring both extreme precision and a deep foreknowledge of the inner workings behind Wave theory. In other words, only a well trained Academic was capable of wielding a Wave Whip safely, let alone effectively.
Each intertwining tube of a Whip had its own specialized internal structure serving a select purpose. One produced non-lethal Deflection Waves, powerful and even destructive at times, but not inherently designed to kill. The other produced the very lethal form of Disruption Waves. These affected matter at the subatomic level, cleanly separating into halves whatever they touched.
To activate a Wave Whip an Academic had to twist its top and bottom portions in opposite directions along the central band. Twisting the top half to the left set the Whip to Disruption, to the right activated Deflection. Held at the center and the Whip was powered down.
Student-Class Whips were the weakest of the three classes. They lacked a Disruption setting and even their Deflection strength was significantly scaled back. It was certainly possible to throw an opponent some distance with one, but on the whole they would be left relatively unharmed.
Teacher-Class Whips, on the other hand, were serious business. Set to Deflection and with minimal effort, bones began breaking. Put a little back into a swing and solid stone walls could be smashed all the way through. Set to Disruption, both life and property were forfeit with ease.
As a Final Year duelist, Kelerin would be wielding a Teacher-Class Wave Whip, something he hadn’t had the privilege of doing in all his years at the Academy. The closest he’d ever gotten to one occurred when Professor Jonas, his lifelong mentor and somewhat of a father figure to him over the years, was offering him a few last words of encouragement before setting off on the Mandate Race nearly two years prior. The memory that now played out in Kelerin’s mind was so lucid, it made part of him doubt whether it hadn’t actually happened yesterday:
Jonas had invited Kelerin for a walk in the Quad where he showered him with departing clichés like, “I need you to be strong,” and, “I’m counting on you to keep this place in order while I’m gone,” which to Kelerin sounded like a long-winded, guilt-ridden version of, Goodbye and good luck, I’m outa here. But then something interesting happened.
They had sat down on a bench for a rest under the shade of an old tree when, without warning, Jonas placed his own Teacher-Class Whi
p into Kelerin’s hand and asked him if he could feel its power. Kelerin distinctly remembered feeling something but not being able to tell whether it was the power of the Whip or his own trepidation that had his hands tingling and the hairs on his neck standing on end. He nodded in the affirmative anyhow, not wanting to disappoint his mentor.
“Well, that’s unfortunate,” Jonas had lamented.
The response had confused Kelerin. “Why?”
“Because, you obviously haven’t the slightest clue as to what real power is.”
Jonas’ words were more baffling than hurtful to Kelerin at the time. Little did he know, the clichés were done with and his lesson in humility was only just beginning.
“Allow me to fill you in on a little secret,” Jonas had continued, leaning in conspiratorially and motioning for Kelerin to do the same. He did so eagerly, ready to hear whatever it was Jonas would reveal about the class of Whip shrouded in so many levels of mystique for so many Students at the Academy. “What you’ve got there, young man... is a stick.”
Kelerin remembered it taking a moment before realizing he was being played the fool. When it finally sunk in, he rolled his eyes and called Jonas on unfairly baiting him. “I know it’s a stick, but you know as well as I do, Teacher, that this stick can generate Waves powerful enough to cut down pretty much anything in its path.”
“True enough,” Jonas had admitted. “In fact, watch this.” He snatched the Whip from Kelerin’s hand and set it on the floor between the two of them. Kelerin remembered feeling robbed of power and trying to ignore the sudden sense of nakedness in his hand as he stared expectantly at the lifeless Whip on the floor. There was nothing to see. He was still being played.
Allowing a few uneventful seconds to pass, Jonas’ expression changed from one of intense concentration to that of casual disappointment. “Must be a dud,” he concluded.
Kelerin was getting tired of being schooled so easily. “That’s not what I meant. Obviously a Wave Whip has no power on its own.”
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