by R. T. Donlon
Nevertheless, Velc kept his eyes fixated on her forehead.
“In a few moments you will begin to feel a growth within you. You have done an impressive job suppressing the Darkness inside thus far and, due to that, it has been pushed so deep down now that it is barely recognizable. It’s still there—small, but there. It has existed within you for nearly a decade, growing in strength, growing in anger. It knows every inch of you. It has mapped out the network of your brain, how you think, how you will compensate when it takes over. If you do not begin controlling it soon, it will someday control you, even with the aid of the amulet. So,” he continued, “you either prove to yourself that this power within you is harnessable or you die trying.”
He won’t let me die, she thought.
“You will have no help from me,” Velc continued as if reading her mind. “This is something you must do on your own.”
Velc stepped back with his arms stretched outward behind his back. He upended his hood and let it fall over his eyes in a baggy pocket of fabric. Before Kyrah could speak another word, Velc had drifted into the tansij, completely unresponsive to her pleas for help. At the very least, her teacher would be enclosed for a quarter of an hour. If she were going to survive this, it would be by her own doing.
Out of nowhere she felt the snap.
Kyrah closed her eyes and bundled each hand into a fist. Behind her heart, somewhere located around her ribcage, she felt the Darkness expanding. She pushed further inward, focusing every bit of energy onto the growth.
Contain it, she thought. If you stop it from growing, you can keep it from taking over. Focus…
She thought of nothing else in those few fleeting moments. Her mind settled into tansij—blank and formless—lost in nothing else but the settling block of black in her chest. The Darkness morphed for a second time from a sort of smudge into a living, moving box, swiveling through the confined gap between ribcage and blanketing her heart. The force of her intensive tansij sent a violent shiver through it and, for a moment, the Darkness box shifted and shrunk, wrinkling like an attacked virus.
I have it, she thought. This is easier than I—
Her tansij focus broke, shattering into a million displaced thoughts. No longer could she envision the black box in her mind’s eye. She could only feel it attaching to her insides like entangled vines, grasping as tightly as possible to every inch of tissue it could find. No longer did the Darkness expand. Instead, it climbed the towers of her bones and muscles as a thousand insects would. It swarmed her entire being, covering her from the inside out with a mess of thick, black fluid.
“H—H—Help,” she called out through a whisper. “Please.”
Velc remained ensconced in his own tansij, settled deeply into the shade of his hood. In the palm of his relaxed hand, the amulet dangled in an orb of deep red energy.
The Darkness was visible now. Thin lines of it branched outward from her shoulders—still under the skin—following the tributaries of arteries and veins upward through the tightening tendons of her jaw, then splaying out into a blast of splashed ink across her cheekbones.
Focus, she thought. You must!
But her thoughts meant nothing against a raging beast overcome with the need for hunger, with the need for a host.
“Teacher!” Kyrah screamed. “I’m dying! Help!”
Yet Velc remained stationary, completely unaware of Kyrah’s inability to control the Darkness within her.
She fell to her knees and clutched at her chest with stubbed fingernails. She began ripping hard at the skin just below her sternum. The pain brought back memories, reverting her mind back to her four year old self, crouched in the brush of the fields of Relu’s Wall, hoping that somehow the Shadow above her would stop, somehow wishing it to run away in a fit of mercy. She remembered how it felt to be so close to death. She remembered how it felt to beg a distant god to save her—a god only concerned with pain, with suffering. She remembered how vulnerable all of it truly felt.
Her knees could no longer brace her weight, so she fell to her stomach in a collective of deadweight. Her neck surrendered to her angled head and slammed down hard against the sawgrass-layered ground, producing an onslaught of silver-gray shimmers that shot like spears into her vision.
This is bad, she thought, but the amulet. If I can get to it…
Inch after painful inch, she crawled through the blades of sharpened grass, which cut her skin into thousands of undetectable slices. Miniature splotches of blood coalesced into slow moving streams down her arms and legs. She moved quickly through it, gritting her teeth against the constant pain that emanated from the Darkness within.
Am I too late? she asked herself. Is this the End of me? Please Xan, no…
Yes! a voice called from deep below. Surrender!
She breathed heavily, then released a final prayer to Turisic.
The gods cannot help me now, she thought.
The Darkness had reached the top of her skull and began descending in a wave of solid black down to the ridges of her eyes. No longer could she see the world around her. Darkness blanketed every facet of her vision. Color had all but disappeared, leaving only crude shapes and bulges. It reached her nose, then her mouth. She could not breathe, although she tried desperately to pull shallow breaths through the Shadow membrane. Onward she reached—only inches at a time—to the bulge of solid gray that hovered over her like a statue. The amulet’s chain dangled at the curve of her teacher’s fingers.
Reach, she thought. Reach!
She raised a blood-soaked arm—dripping from hundreds of sawgrass cuts—and felt her fingers touch something.
Metal, she thought. The chain!
Amidst the gray of her vision, a dull red glow broke through the plain of Darkness.
A single sharp clasping sound sent her into a hunched ball of agony. The Darkness had finally consumed the muscle of her heart. It attached itself with a final, terrifying click. She tried to straighten her back, but no longer could muster the energy to do so. It simply did not exist. She gasped repeatedly for more air, but no oxygen met her lips. She would be unconscious in mere seconds and, in only a few more, Xan would finally be able to claim his prize.
The red dot in her vision had nearly vanished now, but with a single last act of desperation, Kyrah managed to swing her arm limply across the air. The momentum originated from the joint in her shoulder and, although she had put every ounce of force into it, its power held no support from the elbow or hand. Everything about the swing shot blindly from the ground. Only by sheer luck did the point of her index finger brush the metal chain of the amulet, sending it from the palm of Velc’s hand to somewhere in the sawgrass directly in front of her.
As the Shadow sting of unconsciousness took her away from the Great Range, she shifted her nearly lifeless hand so that her thumb grazed the amulet’s rock. That was all she needed.
No more, she thought. No more pain. I am—
Her vision folded in on itself, consuming her senses with nothing but emptiness. A final tremor coursed through her body as the lack of air systemically ran its course and, as a rose wilts in the face of winter, Kyrah wilted into the most fragile form of herself—a body toeing the line of a noble death and that of a world of Shadows.
Death, she thought as she descended into the bowels of Darkness, I pray. Turisic save me from my fate. A life as a Shadow is no life at all.
But the gods offered no help and, as she continued to fall deeper, she thought she could feel a familiar burning sensation bubbling somewhere outside of herself, but that, too, felt distant.
The first thing Kyrah noticed before she opened her eyes was the pungent smell hovering about her nostrils. It resembled nothing she had ever smelled before. She forced herself to breathe through her mouth—avoiding the uncomfortable odor altogether—but her throat nixed the idea before she could inhale. The nearly insurmountable state of thirst she found herself in nearly sent her deep into a terrible fit of coughs, but like any good Warr
ior of her caliber, she had trained herself to focus, to take away the urge to surrender to her body’s needs.
“Cough inward,” Velc had said countless times in trainings. “Your body wants you to exert stimuli, but you must show no fear. You must show no weakness. Coughing included.”
Her eyes opened, but the light of day nearly sent her vision back into a blinded darkness. From what she could decipher through the rays of sunlight breaking through the window, the room in which she sat was a large one, nearly empty, and open at the roof. A hinged atrium opening kept the air warm and good. She lowered her eyes to scan the walls, but found her Teacher quiet in the chamber’s corner.
Velc Tahjir sat completely still—hands facedown against his legs—observing his apprentice’s every movement.
“Teacher,” Kyrah spoke through raspy syllables. Her voice was coarse, filled with the hiccups of disuse. “Where am I? What happened?”
Velc quietly rose from his seat, venturing over to the bed.
“You mean you do not remember?” he asked. “It is imperative that you do.”
Memories flooded the expanse of her mind—both significant and insignificant projections—falling away from her mind’s eye in every direction. She reached up with both hands and clasped the sides of her head with tense fingers. She rocked against her legs a little more than she should have, but not enough for her Teacher to speak disapprovingly.
“The Darkness!” she exclaimed, excited that she had remembered. The memories returned and, as she replayed the disappointing turn of events that brought her to this room, she lowered her voice significantly in shame. “I did the best I could, Teacher. I had it controlled, but—”
“You are not the first to succumb to the powers of Darkness. However, you are the first to harbor it within yourself. This is new territory—even for me. There is no shame in this.”
She smiled inwardly at her Teacher’s words, maintaining an emotionless facade otherwise.
“If you remember what I told you before you were taken over,” continued Velc, “you have no choice but to learn how to overwhelm what is inside of you. Someday the amulet will no longer protect you and, when that day comes, you must be prepared to survive without it. You must be able to carry on as Warrior Elite.”
“You left me there to die,” she said.
Velc hinged at the hips as though halfway into minjori, but he stopped before he finished the entirety of the bow.
“No,” said Velc. “I left you there to conquer what you fear. If you do not experience it now—alone—how can you expect yourself to overcome even greater problems when the Portizu Tribes depend on only you?”
“But—”
“Are you dead?” Velc interrupted. “Has Xan taken you?”
She did not know how to answer these questions. She peered up into the skylight to avoid more questioning, watching the sun blister and melt away from her already fragile vision.
“It is afternoon,” her Teacher continued. “You are behind in your meditation times.”
“Afternoon?” she asked. “We left in the morning! I’ve missed nearly an entire day of training!”
Kyrah panicked, swiveling her feet out from under the blankets and pressing them softly against the dirt floor of the room. Velc quickly placed a strong hand on her shoulder, pushing her back down to the mattress.
“You must rest,” her Teacher corrected.
Another wave of panic surfaced within her, but the strength of Velc’s hand guided her gently back to the mattress. He reached for a clay cup sitting on the nightstand adjacent to the bed. Its contents steamed, swiveling thin ribbons of vapor into the air. “You must drink this. It is one of the only medicines I know to be effective in your state.”
The cup changed hands and Kyrah held it up to her mouth, tilting it so the liquid inside hit her lips, but before she could taste it, the same blinding odor she had masked herself from nearly sent her vomiting into her own lap.
“You must drink,” Velc repeated. “It is not a request.”
“It smells…horrible.”
Kyrah managed to speak the words through elongated, gagging heaves.
“Our Portizu ancestors knew it as crinaco,” her teacher continued. “Three ingredients—the eye of a wild animal, the hair of a domesticated one, and the blood of an inseparable bond.”
She gagged deeper at the thought of drinking human blood, Portizu even.
“It will suppress the Darkness. You’ve allowed it to grow, to maneuver wildly within you. It has already planned for the next time you attempt to outdo it again. It will understand your decisions before you make them.”
Kyrah held the cup up to her face, tilted it back, and chugged. Somehow she had managed to hold it down, closing her eyes to make certain it stayed there.
“You will feel better in a matter of minutes,” said Velc, “Hurry. We have five days of training to catch you up on.”
Five days!
The thought nearly sent her back into the unconscious.
“It took fifteen doses of crinaco to get you to start breathing again. It had reached your lungs and your heart. It did some serious damage. You can thank the drink for your recovery. Not me.”
Velc stood now, turning his shoulders to the door. He had only took three steps before the sound of Kyrah’s voice stopped him from continuing forward.
“Teacher?” she prompted.
He did not turn back to her, but instead, kept his chin tilted upward and his ears opened, listening.
“I don’t know if I can do this,” she continued. “However much Darkness there is in me, it’s too strong. It’s—”
The fear in the girl’s voice was enough to change Velc’s demeanor. No longer could he uphold the air of a stern, rigid Master. Today, he needed to be a sense of comfort. Without it he feared that Kyrah may never desire to overcome the Darkness inside of her. That, above all else, was his main prerogative—not physical strength, not superior intelligence. No, Velc wanted nothing more than to build unbreakable courage in his student.
“Do you remember it?” the Teacher asked.
Kyrah appeared confused.
“Remember what?” she asked.
“All of it,” he replied. “Do you remember how it felt to have the Darkness take over?”
She swallowed hard against the uncomfortable topic, but the warmth in Velc’s eyes dangled something in front of her that she had never seen before. She could see emotion, feeling.
“Teacher,” she gasped. “What are you doing?”
Her wide-eyed expression coupled with that nervous question proved Velc’s suspicion. It had broken her, returning her to her childhood, to that traumatized four-year-old girl crouching helplessly in a scruff of desert bush.
Velc loosened his shoulders. His arms rested comfortably on top of his lap. He kept his vision plastered to her scared expression.
“The Portizu Tribes have never really been involved in a great war. Not really,” he said. “You are lucky. You have grown up in a time filled with peace.”
“This is peace? You consider the Wall problem a peacetime affair? We have been battling the Shadows since as long as I can remember…” She scoffed at her own words. “…and it seems the problem is only getting worse.”
Velc held up a palm, signaling her to stop. She should have known it to be wrong to interrupt her Teacher. She huddled deeper into the blankets, slinking her shoulders.
“You wish to know why I put you through the tasks I do? I will tell you a story that my Teacher told me before I entered the realm of Warrior Elite, but first,” Velc said, reaching for another clay cup filled with steaming crinaco, “you must drink.”
She closed her eyes, tilted the cup backward once more, and waited for her Teacher to begin.
Relu and the Light King
As his eyes traveled up the side of the mountain, Jennison Fairtherre wondered if he could even traverse these steepening footpaths without being killed, either by the hand of the natives or simply by
nature’s cruelty. There had not been a river or standing body of water for days and, now, as he entered the jungle at the cusp of these foreign mountains, the first pangs of serious thirst came rushing to his mind in nervous droves.
By the sun’s position in the cloudless sky, he marked the time as early afternoon. The dark of the jungle told him the sun would no longer be an asset once he entered, so he lifted his face for a final time and enjoyed its warmth as a bird would enjoy a final flight in the wind. He considered turning back, retreating to the Glowing Mountain from where he had come, and confessing to the King that no savage villagers lived in these parts of the Great Range after all. But how could he call himself a true diplomat if he could not instill diplomacy in foreign lands? How could he tell the King that he had found no one when there had already been twelve witnesses accounting for sightings of men and women in these lands over the past five years?
Do not be a coward. This is your chance to prove yourself worthy of a royal position! he convinced himself, so he pressed on, hoping to find the ancient people of the Mountains.
Into the jungle Jennison went, walking cautiously enough to follow the disappearing path through hanging vines, branches, and weeds. Fields of moss and ferns covered the ground in blankets of varying shades of green. It wasn’t long, however, before Jennison had lost his way, circling back to himself again and again.
The fluttering of large birds to his right quickened his pulse. The snap of a tree branch to his left nearly sent his heart into fibrillation. A scream projected through the canopy—one so calculated that the jungle itself seemed to come alive at the sound of it. Jennison stood completely still, closing his eyes. He reeked of fear. His hands trembled. His legs quivered.
Why didn’t you just stay home? he thought. Coward. Filthy, lying coward.
“You should not be here,” he heard a deepening voice project from the trees behind him. “Do not move. There is a knife pointed at the base of your neck. If you try anything, if you speak out of turn, I will kill you faster than it will take you to pull a final breath.”
