by A F Kay
The exit here didn’t have buildings surrounding it like back home, just a hole in the mountain's side. The road didn’t exist either, and the group weaved their way through the trees. The sky swirled with clouds of dark and light grey.
Ruwen kept his voice low. “What can you tell me?”
Kaylin laughed softly. “That’s a broad question.”
“It’s safe to say I know very little. So anything you tell me will probably be valuable. I’m interested in everything since you’re the first Champion I’ve met, but we should probably start with the Spirit Realm and everything after.”
Kaylin nodded, but kept scanning the area around them for danger. “I’ve been here for almost four hundred years. Naktos did it, same as you. Uru found me shortly after it happened.”
“She came herself? Is she safe from the weather here?”
“No, she’s not. She met with me many times initially. On one occasion, a severe storm dissolved the mountain above our cave. She Harvested the colored spheres near us, but they injured her. She said something about missing Meridians and raw essence.”
Ruwen shook his head. It would only take some poor luck for Uru to damage her pathways. “You must be important for her to risk her divinity.”
“Uru cares about everyone. But when she first found me, she was furious.”
“At you?”
“No, at herself. This new capability by Naktos surprised her, and I don’t think that happens very often.”
This glimpse into the past fascinated Ruwen. “What happened?”
“She explained she couldn’t help me directly or return me to the Material Realm without breaking some rules. But she promised to figure out a way to get me back.”
Ruwen already knew about the Pact.
Kaylin continued. “Time here is meaningless, so I don’t know how much passed before she found me again. Excitement poured from her. She told me Naktos might have solved a ten-thousand-year-old problem for her, and my banishment here might be the first step in fixing the universe.”
Ruwen didn’t know how to respond to that.
Kaylin smiled. “I thought she’d gone crazy, and I would spend eternity here.”
“What changed your mind?”
“She kept coming back and studying my Meridians, and her excitement rubbed off on me. It was certainly better than thinking about an eternity of this.”
Kaylin remained quiet for a minute, and Ruwen wondered if she had finished. “One day, Uru arrived and told me I’d soon have company.” Kaylin turned and smiled at Mica. “Things were a lot better after he showed up.”
Ruwen’s heart beat faster. He still hadn’t sorted through his feelings about Tremine’s betrayal, or even if it was a betrayal. “So Uru put Mica here on purpose?”
Kaylin nodded. “And Una. They both volunteered.”
“Volunteered? Why would they do that?”
“Uru must have convinced them.”
Ruwen uttered the next sentence without thinking. “Why didn’t she ask me?”
“That I can’t answer, but you’re definitely the youngest. All of us had a decade or two on our swords before coming here.”
“Did Uru visit after Mica and Una arrived?”
Kaylin nodded. “She did something to both of them before their Ascensions and then studied them both after they arrived here. The last time Uru came, she told us she’d succeeded, and that the next person to come would take us all home. That was you.”
“How do you know it's me?”
“Uru said you’d enter somewhere near Deepwell, and that we’d sense your arrival. She guessed most of your body would be covered to hide your Spirit, and that we should listen to you if we wanted to go home.”
Ruwen tried to hide his anger. “She never told me anything. Tremine betrayed me, and I –”
Kaylin shook her head. “Did you learn about the five people who mentor and protect you?”
“You mean the Hand?”
“How do you know that already?”
Thankfully, the Scarecrow hood hid Ruwen’s discomfort. “Like I said before, I died on my Ascension Day, and Uru had a second chance to talk to me.”
Kaylin gasped and stared at him. “I thought you were lying. You really died at level one? How many debuffs did you have?”
“At some point this last week, I think I’ve had them all.”
“That must have been horrible.”
“It was. And it was Tremine who killed me. Then he turned me over to Naktos.”
Kaylin remained silent for a bit before continuing. “I can’t explain what happened to you. But I know Tremine. He was one of my Hands, and he worked with Mica and Una to get them here. I would trust him with my life.”
“I just wish I understood what was happening,” Ruwen said.
“Oh, that she told us. You are the beginning of the end. You will tear down the heavens and free the universe.”
Ruwen studied Kaylin to see if she was making fun of him. She couldn’t see his face, but his body language gave him away.
Kaylin smiled at Ruwen. “Don’t worry. Look at what you’ve accomplished in a week. She’ll probably give you a month for the rest.”
Ruwen looked away. He could hear the joking in Kaylin’s voice, but the fact remained that Uru had used these people to perfect something. He placed a hand over his birthmark: to perfect him.
There were so many pieces: these Champions, Io, Ruwen’s parents, Uru’s manipulation of his Meridian paths, an ancient problem Uru solved by coming here, and what sounded like a plan to destroy the gods.
Ruwen desperately wanted to find his parents. Not just to understand the truth of the terium shipment, but now, to learn the secrets they’d kept from him.
Chapter 24
Ruwen stood on the beach of the Frigid Sea and watched Sift, waist-deep in the water, releasing Shelly. Lylan stood next to Sift with a hand on his shoulder. They had been out there for ten minutes, but Ruwen didn’t rush his friend. Visiting the sea had been on Sift’s vacation list. Although none of them thought it would look like this.
Instead of waves striking the beach, the sea barely moved. Ruwen had expected wind, but the Spirit Realm didn’t seem to have weather. The violent Spirit storms were the only exception.
It had taken them four days of straight walking to reach the coast from the mine. Ruwen figured they’d traveled over three hundred miles. Not stopping to eat or sleep made for quick travel. All the walking changed his perspective on travel, though. He’d always thought of Deepwell and Stone Harbor as only two days apart, but that was by air sled. The five hundred miles between the cities seemed far more significant if you had to walk it.
Ruwen had spent the journey to the coast Refining Spirit through his Meridians and thinking about the Plague Siren and how, when she’d used her Spirit, it had sounded like music. He wanted to understand that.
Sift and Lylan returned to the beach, and Sift looked so sad that Hamma hugged him.
“She’s so little,” Sift said. “I hope she’s okay.”
Ruwen patted Sift’s shoulder. “She was born to swim. You did the right thing.”
Ruwen turned to Lylan. “Well?”
“There is definitely a southern current,” Lylan said. “The farther from shore, the stronger it gets.”
“What are you thinking?” Kaylin asked.
“I’m tired of walking,” Ruwen said.
More precisely, he wanted to do more than just walk. He desperately needed to improve his fighting skills, and you couldn’t do that while stepping around trees and rocks.
“Do you think Shelly is safely away?” Ruwen asked.
Sift nodded. “We watched her swim away, and the current grabbed her. She’s long gone.”
“Okay,” Ruwen said, and then walked to the water’s edge.
With so much time on the way here, Ruwen had spent some of it contemplating how his Spirit worked. And no one had flicked him in the head or made him feel guilty about all the thinking. Whe
never he’d come to a conclusion, he’d talked it over with Rami until his hypothesis seemed sound.
When using raw Spirit, Ruwen needed to use a form, or touch Meridians with a mental hand, to provide the Spirit a framework on how to act. Since the raw Spirit contained all twelve essences, it could literally do anything. And if he used too much Spirit, chaos orbs would materialize from all the unnecessary essences in his spell.
When Ruwen had frozen the lake in the dungeon, he’d activated his Order and Dark Meridians along with a pinch of raw Spirit. This had left ten unused essences to contaminate his spell, which then formed chaos orbs. He wanted to try again, but this time he would only use essence from the required Meridians.
Again Ruwen cursed the fact he couldn’t see his stats. He had no idea how much essence each of his Meridians held. In the last four days, he had Refined continuously, and he hoped it would be enough.
Ruwen turned around to face his group. “You might want to back up. Sometimes things don’t go like I plan.”
“That is the world’s biggest understatement,” Sift said and then jogged away.
Ruwen frowned but knew Sift had reason to worry. Ruwen faced the water again but didn’t close his eyes this time. He wanted to use this technique in a fight and shutting your eyes would get you killed.
Warmth traveled down his spine and filled his chest as Rami hugged him. Start small and build. You’ll do great.
Thanks, Rami.
Ruwen took a few deep breaths to slow his heart. The Order Meridian in the middle of his spine and the Dark Meridian near his liver were near each other. He sensed all twelve Meridians now, and they all felt different. The new sensations might have been because they were filling with essence now, or possibly because he had become more familiar with his Spirit, or maybe a little of both.
With one mental finger he touched his Order Meridian, and with another, he touched his Dark Meridian. Looking at the water near his feet, he flicked the essence outward.
Nothing happened.
Ruwen tried again, but this time he touched the water with his mental fingers.
Again, nothing happened.
When he’d used the raw Spirit, he only had to put it out into the world. Why didn’t the essence work the same way? Maybe, despite days of Refining, his Meridians were still empty of essence. Maybe breaking down Spirit into its components took longer than he thought.
And with that last thought, Ruwen knew the problem. Spirit contained all the essences, mixed and ready to use. His were separated and needed combining before focusing them on the outer world.
Ruwen repeated the process a third time. This time he rubbed the Order and Dark essences together and then slapped his mental hands on the water near him.
A sheet of ice started at Ruwen’s feet and fanned outward to the horizon like Ruwen stood at the apex of a giant frozen triangle.
Oh my, Rami said.
Sift laughed, but Ruwen ignored him.
I think essence might be a little more potent than raw Spirit, Ruwen said.
Yes, and there’s no essence contamination in your spell.
Within a minute, the ice sheet broke as the current pulled it southward. Ruwen jogged down the beach, following it.
“Let’s see how long it lasts,” Ruwen shouted.
Ruwen accelerated to a run, trying to keep up with the ice chunks, but most of them quickly outpaced him. Some pieces floated closer to shore where the current remained weak, and Ruwen focused on those. He found one sizeable chunk and followed it for twenty minutes before the beach turned from sand to rock and made following impossible. But he’d seen enough.
Grinning, he turned to find Sift and Jagen behind him.
“You shouldn’t run off like that,” Jagen said. “It’s not safe.”
Ruwen nodded. “Sorry.” He pointed to the distant ice. “It worked. If the sheet is melting, it’s happening slowly enough for me to fix periodically.”
“That was impressive,” Jagen admitted.
“What he means is, you don’t have to freeze the entire ocean,” Sift said.
Ruwen nodded. “I know. Give me a bit to learn better control.”
They returned to the main group. In response to Ruwen’s success, the entire group moved even farther from the beach. He thought the distance excessive but didn’t take it personally.
A touch of raw Spirit seemed okay, a swipe powerful, and a pinch overwhelming. It appeared a touch of essence raced right past overwhelming to ridiculous. He needed a mechanism to retrieve far smaller portions of essence, which made him think of Alchemy.
When Ruwen mixed volatile components in the lab, he would use glass or stone rods to retrieve the tiniest amounts of liquid. Instead of using a mental finger, he could visualize rods and even make them thinner.
Ruwen created two of the thinnest rods he could imagine while still holding them mentally. He touched a rod to each Meridian, merged the rods in his mind, and then placed it on the water in front of him.
A piece of ice the size of a fingernail appeared. Ruwen watched it for ten minutes to see if it would dissolve, but it didn’t.
It took him half an hour to create a set of essence rods in his mind. He numbered them from level one, the fingernail-sized ice, to level one hundred, the equivalent of using a mental finger and freezing the surface to the horizon. He now had a way to control precisely how much essence he used.
Ruwen walked up to the group. “I’m ready.”
“What’s the plan?” Hamma asked.
Ruwen wished he could rub his forehead, but the hood over his head prevented it. “We stand at the waterline. I freeze some water. We run out together and get on a big piece. Float south.”
“What happens if we float out to sea?” Slib asked nervously.
“That’s a good point,” Ruwen said. “Whoever is on watch will also monitor the shoreline. If we drift too far away, I’ll push us back.”
“What happens if it suddenly dissolves?” Hamma asked.
“From what I’ve seen, it appears stable for at least an hour,” Ruwen said. “Let’s all pay attention, and I’ll refreeze the platform if necessary. Worst case, we drop to the ocean floor, and it will be like the lake in the dungeon. The direction of the shore will angle upward, follow it, and we’ll regroup on the beach.”
Everyone nodded, and Ruwen strode back to the shore. Now he needed to decide what essence rod to use. From his brief experiments, they started small, but by the time he hit an essence rod of forty, he affected what looked like a thousand feet. After forty, the essence rods grew quickly in power. Sixty had frozen maybe two miles out to sea, and the one hundred he already knew would freeze it to the horizon, over twenty miles.
Ruwen waited until everyone had grouped up near him. “Ready?”
Seeing they were, Ruwen created two essence rods, each level thirty-two. That should freeze an area around four hundred feet. He touched one to Order and the other to Dark, combined them, and then touched the water.
For once, everything worked as Ruwen planned, and he dashed out onto the frozen sheet, heading for the far edge. He heard groans and pops as the ice sheet came apart, and he slowed as the platform bobbed in the water. Stopping, he turned to see if everyone had made it.
They had, and Ruwen let out a long breath. Their platform looked around two hundred fifty feet long and about fifty feet wide. The shore raced by as the current grabbed them.
Ruwen looked south. They were finally headed toward the Iris and home.
Chapter 25
The group spent the next half hour watching the shoreline to make sure they didn’t drift out to sea and the ice float to make sure it didn’t melt. When nothing bad happened, everyone relaxed a little, and Kaylin set up a rotation to make sure there were always eyes on the coast, the sea, and their platform.
“How fast do you think we’re moving?” Ruwen asked.
Lylan kneeled at the edge of the float and let her hand drag in the water. “About fifteen miles per hour, I�
�d guess.” Everyone stared at her. “What? I grew up in Stone Harbor and spent some time on boats.”
Kaylin bit her lip. “Speaking of Stone Harbor, if Lylan’s correct, we’ll pass it in about twenty-four hours.”
“Why do you look worried?” Hamma asked.
“The Spirit storms,” Ruwen said.
Kaylin nodded.
“We could go ashore and walk around Stone Harbor,” Jagen said.
Mica rubbed his forehead. “Not a bad idea, but it would take all day. If we risk the water, we’d be through the worst of it in under an hour.”
Everyone looked at Ruwen. Now that they were finally moving, he didn’t want to slow down, but he also wanted to arrive back home in one piece along with everyone here. The risk of the storm didn’t justify the time they’d save.
Ruwen turned to Lylan. “Where’s the best place to go ashore?”
“The coast around Stone Harbor is rocky for twenty miles each direction,” Lylan said. “We must go ashore in Brewman. Since the city doesn’t exist here, we’ll know the spot because the foothills reach the sea. Then the shoreline climbs, and your next safe port is Stone Harbor.”
“I know it,” Una said. “I’ll help watch for it.”
Ruwen looked at both women. “Thank you.”
Sift lay on his stomach, his bird helmet next to him, and both hands in the water. He spoke without looking up. “Lylan says the real sea is a million times better. She’s going to take me there.”
Ruwen looked out at the endless water. “It’s still amazing.”
“Yes, it is,” Sift said.
“Which is why I feel a little bad for asking this,” Ruwen said.
Sift rolled onto his back and then sat up. “Did you have another idea?”
“Yes,” Ruwen said.
“I wish you would stop thinking.”
“I know, but I think I found another way to benefit from being here.”
“Rain does not hurry, and yet the oceans are full,” Sift said.
“Another Shade’s rule?”
“No, my dad’s.”
Ruwen squatted down and stared at Sift.
