Bastion

by Kyle West

  Isaru looked at Fiona. “What about your journey to Sylva?”

  Fiona nodded. “Soon. I had meant to leave by now, but yesterday’s attack has made travel more difficult. Most of the Askaleen are being used for guard duty. That said, I plan to leave as soon as I am able.”

  “By the time you’ve returned, I might have learned more about the Prophecy,” Isaru said. “I’ve only read half the book so far. It’s quite the tome.”

  “All the same, I’d recommend you use Isandru as a resource — at least for what he’s willing to discuss. He grew up in Hyperborea and may know things about the Exile that others never recorded. Though Isandru was far removed from the Exiled Generation, there might have been some alive while he lived in the city.”

  It was hard to imagine Isandru ever having been young.

  “You said previously that he’s guarded about his past…”

  “Yes,” Fiona said. “I haven’t been successful in getting much out of him. All I can urge is patience.”

  “Do you really think the Prophecy is in Hyperborea, Isaru?” I asked. “If it is…what does that mean about the plan to return to Colonia?”

  “We would either need an army,” Fiona said, “or a very sneaky person. None, in the end, can escape the eyes of the Mindless, and I don’t mean just dragons. If you get close enough to the Crater, the land becomes deadened and hostile to anything Elekai. For Isandru to want to attempt anything, the proof would have to be indisputable. Even if he knows Hyperborea is a possibility, then he obviously considers trying the Red Bastion to be safer.”

  “I still need to do more research,” Isaru said. “I think I’m on the right track, though.”

  It was quiet for a moment, and my thoughts turned to the dragons that had attacked.

  “I think those dragons might have been after me.”

  “Why do you say that?” Fiona asked.

  “Maybe I’m wrong,” I said, “but one of them seemed to attack me exclusively. Me and Isa both. Do you think they might know…what I am?”

  “If so, that’s not the part that is troubling,” Fiona said. “The Mindless are just that: Mindless. They only care for themselves, or whatever they perceive to be a threat. To say the Mindless traveled hundreds of miles just to attack you demonstrates that they aren’t Mindless. If they know your identity, and are hostile to it…that means they’re something else.”

  Fiona trailed off, lost in thought. Whatever she was thinking, it didn’t appear she wanted to share it.

  “There’s another power at work here,” Isaru said. “And the key is Hyperborea. Before that city, there were never any reversions. There were never any Mindless. Even if the Prophecy isn’t there, answers will be.”

  “What are you suggesting?” I asked.

  Isaru shook his head. “I don’t know. If anyone knows anything, it’s Isandru. If we can discover a way for the Mindless to be stopped…maybe that’s the reason for Anna coming back. The fact that dragons are this far south demonstrates something…that the Wild is changing. For years, it has building toward a breaking point, and when it does break…there will be another Mindless War. The Second Darkness.”

  “In the Third Century, they believed they were living the Second Darkness,” Fiona said. “I’m certain the Exiled believed they were living it, too. There are always a few people in every generation who think they’ll live to see the end of the world.”

  “Only this time, we have Anna,” Isaru said.

  “Good point.”

  “Anna’s getting stronger,” I said. “The way she controlled me in the ring…it’s terrifying. Sometimes, I don’t know where I end and she begins…”

  “You are having trouble accepting it?” Fiona asked.

  “I don’t think I ever will accept it,” I said. “It’s…incomprehensible.” I shook my head. “If they were after me, I might not be so lucky next time. It means they’ve found me out. It means…I can’t stay here.”

  “What are you suggesting, Shanti?” Fiona asked.

  “I mean this: we need to return to Colonia sooner than Isandru wants. He wants us to train for months, even years. But we don’t have months, and we definitely don’t have years. When I enter a Battletrance, it’s as if Anna is controlling my movements. I will be as safe as long as she protects me.”

  “Is that safe, though?” Isaru asked. “To let someone from the past control you?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. Probably not. For all I know, she wants to completely supplant me. If that’s the case, I don’t know if there’s anything I can do to stop it. Stopping the Second Darkness is Anna’s burden, not mine. In the end…I might have to make some hard choices. Colonia offers other answers as well. All the things we learned in the reversion, my parents can confirm. I’m still worried sick over them, and I can’t wait any longer for that reason. I have a feeling that my parents are in danger, and the longer we wait, the more dire their situation. If they raised me, then it could be that Quietus delivered me to them. If that’s the case, they might know something about her that no one else on Earth does.”

  “Is there any reason for me going to Sylva, then?” Fiona asked.

  “Of course. I could turn out to be completely wrong. But even if my parents don’t know anything about Quietus, they will know something.”

  “Before we decide anything, we need to speak to Elder Isandru,” Fiona said. “Together. We have to be on the same page.”

  “What if he says no?” Isaru asked. “Shanti seems pretty determined, and I’m inclined to agree with her.”

  “We must respect his decision,” Fiona said. “He’s the Elder.”

  I couldn’t argue with that, but my mind was already set.

  “When will we meet with him?” Isaru asked.

  “Tomorrow afternoon.”

  “That’s when I normally meet with him,” Isaru said. “The fourth bell.”

  “We can join Isaru for his session tomorrow,” Fiona said.

  She looked at me. I didn’t think the Elder would be too keen on my plan, but it was worth a shot. It was time for him to stop hiding his past, and I would wrangle the truth out of him if it was the last thing I did.

  “That works.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  THE NEXT DAY, THE THREE of us stood in Isandru’s study.

  Isaru didn’t waste any time getting started. “Elder…have you read Trails of the Exiled?”

  Isandru’s eyes widened a bit, clearly surprised Isaru had heard of the book. He recovered quickly, signified by his nod. “Yes. An interesting tome that I had nearly forgotten about.”

  “Is it true, then? Could the Prophecy have been taken to Hyperborea?”

  Elder Isandru did not speak for a moment. It was hard to tell what he was thinking. “Yes, I admit the possibility exists. However, there isn’t much you can find in Trails of the Exiled that isn’t already mentioned in the Commentaries of Annara. And the information you can’t find anywhere else cannot be corroborated.”

  “But it could be true, right?”

  “Of course it could,” Isandru said. “But it’s still more likely to be held in Colonia…and Colonia is far less dangerous, as difficult as that may be to believe.”

  “What if it’s not, though?” Isaru said. “What do we do?”

  “We haven’t arrived at that point yet, Isaru.”

  Isaru went quiet; the Elder’s tone was firm and conveyed that he wasn’t in the mood for argument. It almost made me not want to bring up my own point, which I was sure was going to be shot down.

  “Elder Isandru,” I said, “on that note, I have something I’ve been meaning to say.”

  Isandru arched an eyebrow. “Oh? What’s that, then?”

  “I think we should consider going to Colonia sooner rather than later.”

  He leaned back in his chair, steepling his fingers. “You deem yourself ready?”

  I nodded. “I think I proved myself in the tournament. It will be dangerous, no matter how much trainin
g I receive. So long as I can enter Battletrance…I think I should be okay. Better would be not having to fight to begin with, but I think I’m ready.”

  “Indeed,” Elder Isandru said. His eyes were tired, and he looked every one his years. “I’m inclined to say no, but the dragons from yesterday complicate matters.”

  “They were after me, weren’t they?”

  “After you? What makes you say that?”

  That made me blink. I thought for sure that was what he had been referring to. “I mean… it seemed that one of them was attacking me specifically. Isa and I got away in time, but it seemed to be focused on me.”

  “Mindless, once they find a target, don’t let up until it is either out of sight or dead. More likely, it merely saw you and chose you as its target. There is no way it could have known your identity, and to even suggest that it knew gives them far too much credit.”

  “That was what I thought,” Fiona said.

  “Why did they attack then, Elder?” I asked. “How does this complicate matters?”

  “That a Mindless would know your identity seems beyond reason, but it is possible that they coordinated an attack to endanger as many people as possible. The fact they attacked at the height of the Festival points to that. As the Xenofold weakens, the capabilities of the Mindless become greater. We learned that during the Mindless Wars of the late Third Century. It could be that these Mindless Wars run on a clock that no one can see or predict. If so, none of us are safe.”

  “What makes you say that?” Fiona asked.

  “Hyperborea’s Scar will not easily be healed. Indeed, I do not believe it can be healed, not without a restoration of the Sea of Creation. And the Sea cannot be produced out of nothing.”

  “How did it get there to begin with?” I asked.

  “Long ago, when Ragnarok first crashed into the Earth, it unleashed the power of creation. The Wild spread, and it was several decades before its growth slowed. It was during this time of explosive growth that the Two Seas were born: The Seas of Creation and Destruction. Their melding in the middle is what gave rise to the Xenofold.”

  “Maybe that power of creation can be tapped into again,” Isaru said.

  “Without sufficient quantities of ichor, it is impossible,” Isandru said. “Besides, we no longer have the means, as Hyperborea once did. And that is a good thing. Would that the Sea had never been found, and Hyperborea never built.”

  Isandru saying this triggered my memory. “I had a dream last night — something that seemed to corroborate the fact that the Samalites had the Prophecy in their possession when they went north.”

  “What dream?”

  So, I told him, a bit more efficiently than I’d told Isaru and Fiona. Within a minute, Isandru had listened to and understood my words.

  “Another clue,” Isandru said. “Even if the Prophecy is in Hyperborea, its ruins are vast, and would take days — if not weeks — to search. And that is assuming one were to survive the journey. It is far too dangerous — not when Colonia was the Prophecy’s last known location.”

  “Hyperborea is impossible to reach, then?” Isaru asked.

  “Very little is impossible…but it might as well be,” Isandru said.

  “What can you tell us about the city?” I asked. “You lived during that time. You’re the only one alive who can tell us about it. It’s clear that it is the center of the problem the Red Wild finds itself in.”

  Elder Isandru went quiet, seeming to brace himself for the question he knew was coming.

  “What I mean is,” I said, “we need to know everything about it. Everything you know.”

  “I can only tell you so much,” Isandru said. “Suffice it to say, most say the hubris of Hyperborea is what destroyed it, and they would not be far wrong. For Hyperborea’s pride, for its misuse of the Sea, many of its children were born disconnected from the Xenofold. I have told you before that ichor contains the collective memory of the Elekai — well, take that memory away, and it weakens the Xenofold. Our bloodlines have weakened…our connections to the Xenofold have weakened…and the Wild as a whole has weakened.

  “This was noticed even during Hyperborea’s time. During the beginning of the city, a child being born Giftless was unheard of. Today, it is common. Gifts today are well-known to skip generations, and someone with three is considered blessed. Just to think, in those days, most children had the capacity to train all Twelve Gifts, so the fact that there were children being born that couldn’t manifest any was cause for alarm. They identified the symptom, but not the cure — it was realized, too late, that the draining of the Sea was causing the disconnect. Or perhaps Hyperborea blinded itself, such was its desire for power.

  “A man named Rakhim Shal — a powerful Prophet — gave to the Elders of the original Seekers’ Sanctum the solution which they were looking for — a solution which did not necessitate their stopping the use of ichor. Shal proposed a plan that, today, would sound like madness — the creation of a separate Xenofold, one far more powerful than the Elekai Xenofold.”

  “What do you mean, a separate Xenofold?” Fiona asked. “How is such a thing possible?”

  “Hyperborea achieved the impossible. They prided themselves on it. Indeed, it was believed anything was possible with ichor, the very power of creation. With ichor, one is only limited by imagination in what they can accomplish. And that, in essence, is true power. No boundaries, able to do what you will. It was all possible with ichor.”

  “Incredible,” Isaru said.

  “This Xenofold, in fact, was created. It was powered by a massive tower, where the ichor of the Sea was hyper-concentrated. This tower — the Tower of Shal — channeled enough power for any person not born with one of the Twelve Gifts to be so imbued.”

  I had been taught the Xenofold was the most powerful thing there ever was. It was spoken of with reverence, and it was the place where the old gods lived, and it was where the Elekai returned when they died. To say that Hyperborea had created an entirely new one was hardly believable — and tantamount to sacrilege.

  “With ichor,” Isandru said, to fill the silence, “it is possible to imagine one’s way into building anything. Once one has had a taste of that power — it would require the world ending for them to give it up.”

  “What happened after?” Isaru asked.

  “The city lived on, and the Sea lowered. The Tower of Shal and the Thought Dome required so much ichor that the Sea was drained faster than ever before. And the Shen War was the final nail in the coffin, where the Sea was drained beyond any hope of recovery.”

  “I can’t find much written about the Shen War,” Isaru said. “Most everything written about that time is pure speculation, and most of it doesn’t seem right.”

  “There wasn’t time for people to write much of anything, then,” Isandru said. “And what was written was lost when the city finally fell to the Mindless.”

  “Would that knowledge still be in Hyperborea?”

  Isandru blinked. “If it wasn’t destroyed. But no man can reach Hyperborea without being killed by the Mindless. Men have often obsessed about Hyperborea to the point where they believed the city could be reached. And every time, they have been wrong.”

  “But you might know a way,” Isaru said.

  “Have you ever been back?” I asked.

  For a moment, it seemed as if the Elder would answer. In the end, though, he just shook his head.

  “We received word from King Taris, Isaru,” Isandru said, changing the subject. “He’s to arrive soon for a visit to the Sanctum.”

  Isaru’s eyes widened; he didn’t seem to be particularly pleased about the news. “When?”

  “We received the letter just a couple of days ago,” Isandru said. “I would have told you sooner, but with the Festival and then the attack…he is due to arrive at the end of this week. He also wrote that he had an important announcement.”

  Isaru’s pale face blanched even further.

  “What could it be?�
�� Fiona asked.

  “I have an idea,” Isaru said. “My training here was only supposed to be temporary. Something to instill a little discipline into me and keep me out of trouble…at least, according to my father.”

  “Are you saying you’re leaving?” I asked.

  “I can’t leave,” Isaru said. “I feel as if I’m only beginning to learn.”

  “We Elders will do our best to persuade your father the King, if that is the nature of the announcement,” Isandru said. “However, even if you do have to go to Haven for a time, the Sanctum will always be open.”

  “I will never be a Seeker if my father doesn’t will it,” Isaru said.

  “Does he control your destiny?” Fiona asked.

  “He does,” Isaru said. “I will do what I can to convince him, but he is…strong-willed.”

  “As all kings are,” Isandru said. “He will be spending the majority of the visit with us Elders. Word of the dragon attack will soon reach his ears, if it hasn’t already. How he reacts to the news remains to be seen.”

  “He may want me out of the Sanctum altogether,” Isaru said.

  “The possibility exists,” Isandru said, “but your father is a man who can be reasoned with. You will have all of the Elders vouching for your continued training — at least until your apprenticeship.”

  Isaru blinked. “That isn’t a sure thing, yet.”

  “Your potential is great, and your progress so far has been amazing,” Isandru said. “The only way you will not become an apprentice is if you decide not to.”

  “Or if my father decides.”

  “Let we Elders take care of it,” Isandru said. “But back to Shanti’s point, concerning Colonia…”

  “Can we leave sooner?”

  “There are many problems that need to be worked out,” Isandru said. “How to get in the Red Bastion reliably is the key.”

  “So, how do we do it?” Isaru asked. “If the Prophecy is there, it will undoubtedly be under heavy guard.”