“But with people it does have power?” Jonas interrupted him, reading into his words the logical flipside of their meaning. “Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”
Thinking back on the question now, Kelerin laughed at his own ignorance. It was either that or smack himself for it, which he was tempted to do, especially given the way he had responded by simply shrugging his shoulders and answering, “I guess.”
“Only one way to find out.”
Once again Jonas snatched up the Whip, and this time, tossed it nimbly over to Kelerin. A memory of fumbling the thing due to an irrational fear that it might somehow have activated on its own called up forgotten feelings of self doubt Kelerin thought he’d long since banished from his psyche. Even as he was remembering, he reaffirmed an old promise he’d made to himself to never be intimidated by irrational fears or grant inanimate objects unwarranted respect, ever again.
“OK,” Jonas had said, rising to his feet and positioning himself at an arm’s length away from Kelerin, “give me your best shot.”
This was the moment, Kelerin recalled, when it had finally dawned on him that he was completely out of his depth.
“It’s not a request, Student,” Jonas had insisted, more seriously this time around.
“I… I can’t.” He had been reduced to a stammering fool, but that didn’t seem to be enough for Jonas. His so-called father figure pressed on with the merciless indifference of a complete stranger.
“Are you telling me that even though you have a Teacher-Class Wave Whip in hand, and I’m unarmed, that you still feel powerless to act?”
Kelerin had been frozen, unable to say or do anything. All that was left was to wait for the torture to end. It was at that exact moment that Jonas wrapped an arm around his shoulder and imparted this final lesson before leaving for the Race. Kelerin recited the words to himself in tandem with the Jonas of his memory:
“Power is not the mere manipulation of energy. Manipulation is the job of a tool and tools are the slaves of those who wield them. Power is a description of the creative process. It’s a reference to the actions of the Creator of all that is. Only through innovation and our own creative process can we hope to mimic those actions, and if we’re lucky, tap into whatever true power is actually out there.” He had paused at that point to let his message sink in, eventually concluding with, “That’s the closest we can get, Kelerin. Mimicry. Is any of this making any kind of sense to you?”
Kelerin had nodded yes but his expression could not mask his confusion at the time and he remembered Jonas laughing out loud, that full-of-life laugh he missed so very much. “It will, Kelerin,” he had assured him. “I haven’t a doubt. One day, it will.”
With that, Kelerin’s mentor boarded his Ship and left for what had so far been two years and counting. He still thought about Jonas often, wondering when his mentor might one day return. He tried not to think about the very real possibility that such a day may never come.
*****
Having left his memories behind him, Kelerin found himself standing in the foyer to the Armory. In typical Academy fashion, the foyer was built unnecessarily large with a domed ceiling, unique in that it was made up entirely of glass paneling embedded within a thick framework of sheethem wood. The glass of the dome extended downward all along the eastern wall of the foyer, overlooking the cliff face at the easternmost edge of Academy Island. Stealing a look outside the glass, Kelerin was treated to a view of a shimmering, bluish green ocean below and a fiery horizon beyond.
The Armory was restricted and had a twenty-four hour watch rotation. This, despite its location on an Island protected by a state of the art surface-to-air Pulser cannon defense system and a disproportionate concentration of some of the greatest fighters Osmos had to offer. Still, the paranoia was somewhat justifiable given the amount of destructive force unassumingly stocking its shelves.
Kelerin pressed a call button on the side of the entrance and the overhead surveillance camera atop the door panned down. He waited, expecting to be asked to state his identification and purpose of visit. When no request was forthcoming, he decided to provide the information unsolicited. “Student, Kelerin, reporting to pick up a-”
“I KNOW WHO YOU ARE, STUDENT,” the camera’s microphone crackled loudly, breaking Kelerin off mid sentence. “PLEASE WAIT.”
Kelerin complied, feeling like he’d done something wrong, even though he had no idea what that something might have been. The feeling was short lived, as the panel door soon opened, granting him access.
Although primarily designed for practicality, the Armory’s architects had nonetheless dressed up what was essentially a vault in thought provoking style. Its walls were awash in blue and white patterns, an effect achieved by the strategic placement of the stored Wave Whips resting neatly in their racks. Student-Class Whips had a uniformly white color while Teacher-Class Whips were given the honorable distinction of a royal blue center band. Professor-Class Whips were further distinguished by the entire upper half being colored blue. The resulting effect of this color montage on one entering the Armory was their being treated to a visual journey of rolling and tumbling patterns of blue and white, crashing like frothing waves all along a four-sided square ocean.
One thing that escaped the eye upon entering the Armory was the administrative desk placed strategically to the immediate left of its entrance. The intention of this layout was to afford the on duty Academic some added reaction time against unwelcome intruders, its effectiveness now on full display as Kelerin busied himself with admiring the wall patterns and not noticing Professor Harris off to the side.
“I hear you’re going to be one of the duelists tonight,” remarked Harris.
Kelerin was startled out of his distracted state and turned to find the Professor studying him much the way he himself had been studying the Armory walls a moment earlier - that is to say, inquisitively. He knew little about Professor Harris. In all his years at the Academy, Kelerin never had the man for a class. He wasn’t even sure what classes Harris taught. One thing he did surmise, though, and rather quickly, was that Harris was a shrewd character and he would do himself well to stay focused while dealing with this particular Professor.
“That’s right,” answered Kelerin.
“It’s in about an hour, isn’t it?”
“Just about.”
“And are you ready?”
“Just about.”
Harris squinted at Kelerin’s showing him some cheek. “I hear this Valix is quite the duelist,” he continued in probing style, searching Kelerin for the slightest reaction to his provocations. “Tell me something, does that motivate you more, or does it scare you?”
Kelerin found it odd for Harris to be so familiar of the details of his duel. Not that it was a secret or anything. On the contrary, it was because of how common a thing Final Year duels were. Unlike the open viewing of officially sanctioned duels between Teachers or Professors, which were rare and celebrated events at the Academy, Final Year Student duels were benign, monthly affairs, usually not very well attended at all.
Yet here was Professor Harris with intimate details of his duel that evening and Kelerin was curious to know why a Professor would have been interested enough to have sought after that kind of information. Asking was out of the question, of course, so Kelerin was forced to let the matter lie for the time being.
“To be honest, I don’t invest much in the opinion of my peers, Professor,” he answered at last.
Apparently satisfied with this, Harris’ squint gave way to an approving smile. “A Teacher-Class Wave Whip for the duelist,” he announced, and tossed over a blue banded baton in Kelerin’s direction. As the lethal weapon twirled in the air, Kelerin had a flash from the memory he’d recently revisited of the last time a Teacher-Class Whip was tossed to him. Catching the Whip one handed, and this time without so much as a flinch, Kelerin thanked the Professor, slid the weapon into the shoulder sheath of his cross-sash, and left.
Harris was indeed shrewd and prone to noticing things. What impressed him about Kelerin was how, unlike most every other Student coming to him for the first time to collect a Teacher-Class Wave Whip, Kelerin seemed far from enamored by the hardware once having it in hand.
Or as Harris remarked to himself while staring after the now closed slide panel that Kelerin had just exited, “The boy didn’t even bother to look at the thing.”
Chapter 9: Ready
The Prophecy, Caras 1
With its new location on Caras 1 the Prophecy offered several stunning, not to mention humbling views of the lunarscape and of the rich ocean blue sphere that was Osmos in the distance. Aside from the bridge, the best vantage point to fully appreciate Caras 1’s beauty was from the lookout centers atop the Tower located directly opposite the Greenhouse to the far west.
The Tower housed the Central Consciousness, or CentCon as it was commonly referred to, and it was there that all outbound Prophesying took place. CentCon combined the Academy’s brilliance in Wave technology with the apex of human consciousness, nurtured by the Prophecy and amplified through Mist. The byproduct of this unlikely marriage was the ability to project targeted Wave Thoughts from the Tower to pretty much anywhere a receiving Academic might be. It was, for all intents and purposes, an antenna for Osmos’ entire planetary system.
The Child Prophets congregated in the Tower foyer, standing in long established cliques and speaking in animated fashion about the upcoming evening’s Prophecy sessions: Which Students would they be paired off with, what kind of exercise would they be participating in, and of course, whom among them was likely to standout in the race to achieve Motherhood?
Analel and Quinn stood off to the side and kept to themselves as this charged social dynamic unfolded around them. Their exploits earlier that day had left them with the unshakeable feeling that an invisible barrier now stood between themselves and their fellow Prophet Sisters. They had deliberately and successfully altered their own fate. Doing so set them apart from everyone else, whether they liked it or not.
“Did you, by any chance, get a look at the Reader of the Prophet you’re going to be going up against?” asked Quinn.
“No, I didn’t. There was no time.”
“I wonder who she is?”
Analel glanced over at Quinn and then followed her gaze around the room. They searched the crowd with the half hearted hope of fools who think merely wanting to know the answer to a mystery was enough to have it give itself away.
Quinn’s roaming eyes fixed on the approaching figure of Lyza, another Child Prophet both she and Analel got along with well enough. Lyza was a social butterfly and had no permanent residence in any one particular clique but was a welcome visitor in all. Her fluttering about brought the happenings of individual clique dynamics to the attention of everyone else. Letting Lyza in on a secret was tantamount to a public broadcast, but she was amiable enough and it made for an easy way of disseminating information among all Child Prophets without having to get Mothers involved.
“Peace and purpose, Sisters,” greeted Lyza as she neared the two loners in the room. “Why are you girls standing off to the side, all by yourselves?”
“We’ve been waiting for good conversation to come and find us,” answered Quinn, dryly.
“Witty, but ultimately a deflection,” responded Lyza, shrewdly. “You girls are up to something.”
Lyza gave brief, friendly hugs to both Analel and Quinn and then settled herself in between the two of them, dutifully contributing to the ongoing crowd search. The fact that she hadn’t the slightest inclination as to what they were all looking for didn’t seem to faze her one bit. Lyza was used to figuring things out as she went along.
“Does whatever it is you’re not telling me have anything to do with your skipping the morning meditation session?” probed Lyza of Quinn while continuing to scan the crowd.
The question had Quinn abruptly cut her scanning short. “What? Who told you I skipped meditation?”
Analel sighed, irritably. “Arah.”
“Arah?” asked Quinn, “What about Arah?”
“She told you too, then?” chimed in Lyza, only mildly surprised.
“Will one of you please tell me what’s going on before I scream?”
Sighing for the second time, Analel launched into an explanation. “While I was looking for you earlier I ran into Arah. You weren’t in your meditation chamber so I asked her if she’d seen you around. She said she saw you up in the North Wing and suggested that I check the dining hall. That maybe you might have gone for an early lunch and skipped out on meditation.”
“And you believed her?”
“No, of course not. I came straight away to the Greenhouse. She must have just assumed.”
“She has no business making assumptions.”
“She was only concerned, Quinn,” said Lyza, placating. “You know how Arah gets.”
“Yes, in fact I do. She has an ego the size of Osmos that needs to constantly feed on the perceived helplessness of others. If she can’t find any hapless victims to rescue, she’ll create a few of her own.”
“I think you’re being a little over dramatic,” let in Analel.
“I’m being dramatic. Do I need to remind you about this morning, Annie?”
“What happened this morning?” asked Lyza, her curiosity piqued.
“Nothing!” snapped Analel and Quinn in unison.
Now Lyza was certain there was some juicy gossip to unearth, but before she could press the issue further Analel spotted a team of Mentor Mothers entering the room. “Here they come,” she announced. The evening’s training session was about to begin.
Quinn and Lyza joined Analel in watching Mothers Fersha, Sagus, Panthea and Jeserel enter the room. All four women had varying shades of brown hair, which along with their grey cloaks had the collection of them looking like what one might imagine to be the living embodiment of autumn.
Jeserel was the ranking Mother of the four. Her no-nonsense stride under her long cloak gave off the impression that she wasn’t quite walking as much as being carried by a stiff breeze. Clapping to the various cliques on her left and right and drawing their faces after her, by the time Jeserel reached the center of the foyer she had everyone’s complete and undivided attention.
“Peace and purpose, Children,” she greeted with a forced smile, more intimidating than reassuring. Jeserel was tough on the Children of the Prophecy. Warmth not being her strong point, she didn’t sympathize, empathize or play favorites with anyone in any way. Excellence was her only interest. If Analel and her fellow Sisters would have been pressed to name one thing they liked about having Jeserel as a mentor Mother it would have to be that, if nothing else, the woman was fair, sometimes to a fault.
“Gather round, gather round,” Jeserel called in a singsong fashion that was far from soothing.
“This should be fun,” muttered Quinn, and she began making her way over to the middle of the room where the other Children were congregating. Analel and Lyza fell into step beside her.
“We’re going to be dividing up into four groups today,” announced Jeserel. “The first will be going with Mother Fersha and will be working with ninth year students - remember, this is their first year working with flesh and blood Prophets, so please play nice.”
Having a foreign consciousness invade one’s own can be quite the disorienting experience for the uninitiated. As such, younger Students worked exclusively with simulated Prophets during their first few years at the Academy. On the Prophecy’s side of the equation, only the oldest Children were allowed to venture into the minds of actual human beings.
“The second group will be going with Mother Sagus and working with tenth year Students,” continued Jeserel. “The third will go with Mother Panthea to work with eleventh year Students. Please listen carefully for your name to be called and start making your way over to your assigned mentor Mother without delay.”
Analel and Quinn waited with bated
breath as one by one their Child Sisters were called by name and moved off to join a mentor Mother’s group. When Quinn’s name was called to join Panthea’s group, she wasn’t all that thrilled about it. “Uch, I hate eleventh year Students. They’re so immature.”
“More so than ninth year Students?” asked Analel.
“Ninth year students are a bunch of cuties.” Quinn gave Analel’s hand a final squeeze, looked into her eyes and knowingly offered her one last, “Good luck,” before darting off to join the small group of Prophet Children already congregating around Mother Panthea.
Analel continued to wait while one by one her Sisters’ names were read aloud. There were whispers and muted laughter as friend was paired up with friend and quiet conversations fed a contagion that was slowly but surely infecting the atmosphere with a palpable excitement for the exercises to come.
No one was immune to this contagion, aside for Analel, who was suffering from a plague of a different sort; an unfounded paranoia filling her mind with the fear that perhaps she wouldn’t be called at all. Of course she knew this wouldn’t be the case, having seen to it personally. Still, none of her foreknowledge helped in keeping such poisonous thoughts from seeping through. She had to force herself to stop obsessing and focus on something else; like the identity of the other Child Prophet whom she was to be facing off against in short order.
Scanning the room, the only one left Analel could find was Be’ertra, a sweet looking girl with a kind disposition and a good feel for Wave patterns, but nowhere near her level. I can do this, she thought, her nerves beginning to settle for the first time since arriving at the Tower that evening. But her private celebration was cut short when Be’ertra’s name was called and she too hurried off to join one of the now well-formed groups. Analel was left standing alone.
So who is it, then?
“Looks like it’s just you and me, Sister.” Analel turned with a start to find another Child Prophet standing next to her. “Isn’t this exciting?”
Arah! Of course it had to be you.
Wave Mandate Page 9