The Beginning After The End 08

by Turtle Me

  Beside me, Three Steps let out a hiss before taking a seat on the snow, drawing my attention back to her. My mentor’s sharp feline eyes looked at me seriously while she began speaking in her language. I watched her face carefully. Her eyes were darting from my face to my chest, and her feline mouth was turned down in a slight frown as she spoke, her whiskers twitching.

  I couldn’t understand a single word she had said, but I didn’t need to. Three Steps held out her paws, and, as we had done so many times now, I completed the connection.

  As I expected, the memory she shared with me was the exact scene of her talking to me just moments ago, except it was from her point of view and I could understand what she was saying to me, even as I looked at my own self through her eyes, staring back in obvious confusion.

  “I have shown you enough of our ways to be comfortable asking for something in return. I would like to know more about your unique abilities, passed down from the Creators, even if it is not something I can learn myself,” she said before my vision shifted to a memory she had shared with me previously in which she and Sleeps-in-Snow conversed about their purpose.

  The vision faded as my host pulled her hands back from mine. She waited, her eyes unblinking, until I nodded and held out my hands to her.

  Three Steps looked at me once more, but her expression had changed. No longer did she look at me as if I were a child trying to learn the very basics of shadow step. She regarded me with respect, perhaps even a hint of wonder, remaining dazed even after several minutes had passed since our hands disconnected.

  Reliving the memories hadn’t been easy for me, either. This was the first time I had shared the memory of my arrival in the Relictombs after losing the battle against Nico and Cadell. Three Steps had just witnessed my entire journey through my eyes, from the giant chimeras and aetheric millipede, all the way to the titan. She had felt my darkness and pain and sense of loss as I struggled to keep fighting, and she had witnessed the evolution of my aetheric abilities with nothing short of awe.

  I held back a deep, weary sigh, not wanting to give Three Steps the wrong impression.

  I had found the Shadow Claws’ method of communication to be long and tiresome, but it was now that I realized how much more effectively you could express your meaning through the sharing of memories.

  Three Steps knew more about me, about my journey, than Alaric or even Caera, who had been by my side throughout this ascent. Being so open was honestly somewhat scary, but at the same time, seeing Three Steps’ expression of empathy and sadness… it was as if a large weight had been taken from my shoulders.

  As if sensing my emotions, Three Steps patted me on the shoulder before motioning for me to follow her once more. This time, with most of the storm having passed, the Shadow Claw led me out of the protective confines of the village and to the base of a jagged mountain nearby.

  Once again, my host held out her paw while shooting me a playful grin. Curious, I touched her hand with mine and felt my mind slipping into hers.

  In it, a young Three Steps—though she wasn’t yet called that—and two other Shadow Claws, Tumble Down and Spear Rider, were training in the same jagged mountain just above their village. It was a sort of competition, where they each teleported as far as they could across the deep folds of the mountain, and whoever made it the farthest from the starting point won the round.

  It was Spear Rider’s turn to go first. As I watched the strong-jawed, dark-spotted Shadow Claw chart the course of his shadow steps, I found myself considering his bravery, and the awkward thought that he would make a fine mate to raise a kitten with some day passed through my mind.

  Though I knew this was part of the memory, it was still an extremely strange thing to find myself thinking.

  Outside of the memory, Three Steps pressed harder against my hand, perhaps sensing my distraction. I refocused as Spear Rider, having chosen his course, made two quick shadow steps, bringing him to a shallow ledge of rock about halfway up the next ridge over from our starting point.

  It was a fair effort, but there was another path using a boulder just past the column of stone he had used as his own middle step that would take me farther.

  Tumble Down must have had the same thought, because he chose the boulder to step to. Unfortunately for him, it was loose. The stone shifted under his feet, forcing him to shadow step to safety. He howled in frustration from a shallow bowl in the mountainside nearly fifty feet below Spear Rider.

  Glad that Tumble Down went first and showed me the loose stone, I scouted the mountainside again, looking for a safer path that would take me farther than Spear Rider, but couldn’t find one.

  “What are you waiting for, Soft Heart?” Tumble Down yelled. “The mountains to move closer together before you take your steps?”

  Spear Rider laughed at our friend’s teasing. “Perhaps she will wait until the next storm and let the wind carry her to the mountain’s peak!”

  “If you don’t hurry, Soft Heart, your name will become Slow-as-Stone!”

  “And yours will be Dumb-as-Rock, Tumble Down!” I threw back, eliciting another howl of laughter from Spear Rider.

  Making up my mind, I set my feet and prepared to catch myself on the loose boulder. If I waited for it to settle, and it did not break loose entirely, I could make it to a shelf of stone twenty feet beyond where Tumble Down stood.

  Taking my eyes away from the stone and snow of the mountainside, I focused on the shadow paths, the purple lightning-fork cracks that would lead me to the boulder, and then the high shelf.

  Though the memory flowed at the speed of perception where I could experience Three Steps’ thoughts as she was formulating them, the actual act of her looking into the aether and teleporting was nearly instant.

  Even after days of nonstop training, my own view of the branching aetheric paths was still immensely more complex and burdensome than her own. It was yet another reminder of how far I had to go if I wanted to utilize the full potential of my aether art.

  In the memory, my surroundings flashed as I took a shadow step from the high ridge to the small boulder. My body tensed, expecting the boulder to shift, which it did. My plan was to let it settle, then step to the shelf.

  Beneath the wide pads of my feet, the boulder turned—and kept turning. In a second, it was sliding away from the mountainside, and suddenly I was riding the unsupported boulder as it plummeted down into the ravine.

  Rising panic had made me too slow to make my second shadow step, and when I finally did, I was already falling. Looking up, the first thing I saw was the column of standing stone that Spear Rider had used to step to. Following the purple pathways to the peak, I took my second step.

  I misjudged it badly, appearing on the side, not the top, of the column. My aetheric claws scratched at the smooth stone, scoring deep lines into it, but failing to catch hold of anything as I slid downwards, at risk of falling nearly a hundred feet to the bottom of the ravine and my death.

  A stray, dislodged thought floated through the back of my panicked mind: Why had the Creators given the Shadow Claws the power to see the aetheric paths and step through them, but only allowed us to do it twice in a row?

  It was with some bitterness that I—or Three Steps, it grew difficult to tell our thoughts apart during longer memories—thought that if only they’d given us the ability to shadow step three times in a row that I wouldn’t be about to die.

  The sudden shift in gravity jerked the thought away, and I watched with horror as the branching paths, still there but unreachable, jumped and twitched, showing me a path to safety I couldn’t take.

  As Arthur watching the memory, I was fascinated by the way Three Steps was able to keep near-automatically adjusting the path that would take her to safety. More than that however, it was the first time I realized that, while the Shadow Claws were able to visualize the aetheric paths, they weren’t necessarily seeing it through strictly their eyes.

  Through Thre
e Steps’ memories I could sense the aetheric paths all around me even as I was falling. I’d thought of them often as vibrations, but it took the combination of Three Steps’ senses and my own to realize that there were other ways to see them than with my eyes.

  There was a music to them, a beckoning, quivering eagerness, almost as if the aether wanted to help, to show me the way out. Almost without thinking, I reached out my paw and followed.

  The pain was so intense at first that I wasn’t sure if I had shadow stepped or if I had crashed into the ground and was taking my last breaths before my inevitable death. A purple fog obscured my vision, but something cold and hard was pressed against my body, flattening my fur.

  There was shouting in the distance… then the shouting was right next to me, and strong paws turned me over.

  The purple fog faded. Spear Rider and Tumble Down were both standing over me, their eyes wide, their whiskers quivering as they waited to see if I was alive or dead.

  My heart was thumping so hard I thought it might burst. Meanwhile, there was a terrible ache gripping at every inch of my body, and a severe case of backlash was overtaking me.

  Still, I was alive.

  As Arthur, I felt myself grinning as my mind slipped back into my own body. Three Steps was giving me a toothy smirk as well, obviously proud of the memory she had just shared with me.

  “So this was your secret,” I said, my body twitching in excitement.

  As if understanding my words, Three Steps held a furry finger over her mouth.

  I nodded in agreement as I thought through parts of the memory Three Steps had just shown me. It was obvious that she had been holding onto this memory until she felt I was truly keeping my end of the bargain, because through it I learned something crucial—more than that, I was able to experience it firsthand.

  As I ignited God Step, I let my gaze unfocus, but this time, I went a step beyond. Instead of concentrating so hard on limiting the aetheric paths through my eyes, I expanded my focus toward my other senses. While I couldn’t smell, hear, or taste the aether in any capacity, I was able to expand my intent toward the aether paths around me.

  Every aetheric stream, while intertwined with or branching from one another, had a beginning and an end. And these streams acted as highways that I could travel through. However, with my intent fully connected to the aetheric paths, I didn’t try to read these intricate and complicated routes.

  Instead, I let the aether feed the information I needed to me.

  Going a step beyond Three Steps, whose feline body was already adept at sensing the aether paths, I shrouded myself in a thin layer of aether and let my body be an anchor for the aetheric paths to send information to.

  This was where Three Steps’ training to focus on only the most immediate routes and limit the distance at which I perceived them was crucial. With so much information being fed to me from the aetheric pathways, I was only able to properly make out those that would teleport me just two feet away. If I tried to expand my focus out beyond that radius, it felt like hot rods were being shoved into my brain.

  Taking a deep breath, I withdrew God Step and, in my excitement, I couldn’t help but give my mentor a hug.

  It was only a small step forward, but I knew now how to improve. For the first time, I could see myself not only catching up to Three Steps, but, with my aether core, surpassing her.

  319

  Parting

  A bead of sweat rolled down the side of my face as I carefully lifted my back leg and slowly brought it forward. I had learned and relearned how to walk throughout the span of two lifetimes, but this single step took more concentration than even the most intricate, multi-elemental spell that I had mastered with the use of mana.

  My heart skipped a beat in excitement as the aether paths continued to hold strong and provide me with updated information based on my new position.

  I prepared to take another step when a tap on my shoulder broke my concentration. The intertwining streams of violet crackled and distorted, sending me a barrage of chaotic information in the form of a hot knife pressed against the inside of my brain.

  “Gah!” I recoiled in pain, but the feeling of losing my streak was even more agonizing.

  “I was on my twenty-third step!” I groaned in frustration at Three Steps.

  My mentor scoffed and spoke in her language before holding out a paw.

  I pressed my palm up against her warm pads in resignation, letting her memories in.

  “It’s childish to get angry at me for not being able to keep your concentration. Besides, the day is ending and my tribe members should be back from their journey.”

  Letting out a sigh that coalesced as a cloud of fog around my head, I nodded.

  Three Steps smirked, revealing a sharp canine before she disappeared with a shadow step. I looked down to see her on a thin nose-shaped rock about a dozen yards below from the wide mountain peak we had been training on.

  I ignited God Step once again. In that moment of focus, I felt the draining presence of Regis within me. He had remained unresponsive no matter how much I called for him. When I tried to eject him out, I could feel my aether core anchoring him inside, leaving me no choice but to remain patient.

  Focusing my senses on the streams of aether that had lit up around me, I appeared next to Three Steps with a crackle of aetheric electricity.

  Without pause, my mentor disappeared once again, her body becoming a dark blur before appearing another several yards below me, near the base of a winding ravine.

  The two of us had made our way up this particular mountain using only our teleportation abilities. Three Steps had shared with me that many of the mountains surrounding the village were sort of obstacle courses for the Shadow Claws to use for training.

  With how much difficulty I’d had God Stepping up the narrow ridges and jagged peaks leading to the very top of this mountain, I refused to believe that this was one of the easier courses.

  I continued to follow after Three Steps down the mountain, my breath fogging in front of me and sweat leaving a chilly trail down my face and back.

  With all of the unknowns in my life always weighing on my mind, focusing solely on training made me feel more… in control. And with a mentor helping me progress, it wasn’t as frustrating as nearly killing myself over and over to see some actual results.

  I didn’t want to admit it, but I was enjoying myself for the first time since my training in the flying castle.

  My mind flashed to memories of learning elemental magic from Buhnd, Kathyln, Hester, and Camus back in the castle. We’d had fun then. Kathyln and I had enjoyed listening to the elders complain and gossip, and I couldn’t remember when learning magic had ever been more enjoyable.

  At that time, we’d been at war, yes, but there was still hope that we could win. And I still had my father.

  I still had Sylvie…

  Three Steps was waiting for me on a flat protrusion hidden by snow-capped trees, gazing at me with a small frown.

  One of the things that I had noticed early on was how hyper-empathic Three Steps was. She told me it had to do with how the Shadow Claws communicated using memories, allowing for a deeper sensitivity of not only scenes shared between their tribe members but also the emotions that followed.

  When I didn’t immediately meet her paws, she frowned deeper and stretched her arm even closer toward me.

  I shook my head, not willing to share these particular memories.

  Three Steps looked as if she might press the issue, but the cry of a bird high above us made her flinch and fall into a crouch. She stared upward, trying to see through the clouds.

  I followed her gaze, unprepared for her excessive reaction. It was only a bird cawing—

  The black body of a human-sized bird, with a beak shaped like a spear, dipped below the surface of the white clouds. It wheeled once around the mountain top, then rose back into the white sea and vanished.

 
“A Spear Beak,” I said, more to myself than to Three Steps. Turning away from the sky, I found her practically flat against the ground, the fur along her neck and back standing on end, her teeth bared in a silent hiss.

  I gently tapped my mentor’s arm and pointed to a shallow cave in the face of the mountain.

  After a moment, we made our way to the cave, though Three Steps never took her gaze away from the sky.

  Standing with our backs flat up against the shallow cavity on the side of the mountain, I couldn’t help but wonder at the Spear Beak’s visit. What would bring a lone member of their tribe all the way to the Shadow Claw village? A scout, perhaps, looking for Caera and me, or maybe just for Swiftsure.

  Staring at the Spear Beak weaving up and down the clouds, an idea struck me. I knew it might be a long shot, but I had been fortunate enough to receive a warm welcome from both their tribes. If I could provide at least a small bit of mediation, then it might be easier for us to retrieve the pieces of the portal arch.

  With more to gain than to lose, I grabbed Three Step’s paw and sent her the image of Swiftsure saving us and leading us to their village, of our welcome there, and of being fed. I only provided snippets of the conversation we had with Old Broke Beak, as I didn’t want to upset her.

  Three Steps pulled her paw away from me in surprise, looking at me with confusion, or perhaps concern. The Shadow Claws’ feline faces were still difficult for me to read.

  “It’s okay,” I said quietly, mustering up a friendly smile for her and holding out my hands again.

  I wanted to share more memories, the moments I had spent with Swiftsure on our journey from the Spear Beak village, but before I could send them, I began receiving one instead.

  In it, I was again with Spear Rider. We were a little older than before and this memory took place high in the mountains. He was running, sprinting along the snow-dusted stone, and from the emotions I felt through Three Step’s eyes as I watched his back, I knew that their relationship was far past mere friends.