by R. T. Donlon
“But nothing!” Jae yelled. He had heard enough. “You are disrespecting the rights of Turisic! This is sacrilege!”
Something in the dim shimmer of Reana’s eyes caught Kyrah by surprise—the briefest flicker of transient blue.
No, Kyrah thought.
A surging panic rose in her chest and, suddenly, she remembered. Velc’s eyes had had the same blue flecks just before he died.
“Get out!” her father screamed. “Get—”
“Father, please! Let her speak.”
Kyrah held up her hand in hopes to calm him. She returned her vision to Reana’s childish face.
“I heard his voice,” Reana said.
“Turisic? You heard Turisic’s voice?”
“It spoke your name. Kyrah…”
Reana mimicked the voice several more times. Her mouth moved to fit the whisper.
Another shiver ran cold through Kyrah’s frame. She breathed, but her lungs kept her from doing so completely. Flashes of Velc’s brightening blue eyes ran through her mind. Nightmarish visions clarified once more—the way her Teacher had raised the dagger to his throat, the way his body fell lifeless into her arms.
“It is Turisic, isn’t it?” Kyrah asked.
Reana only smiled.
“Only you can know who speaks. Walk forward. Know your purpose.”
Suddenly, Kyrah’s legs refused to work, frozen in the moment. Another faint glimmer of transient blue broke the plain of Reana’s glossy eyes.
“WALK FORWARD AND KNOW YOUR PURPOSE.”
“Kyrah,” her father whispered. “Don’t.”
But she knew she must. Hesitantly, Kyrah approached the altar. Outside, the howl of an arctic chill ran through the Northern Lands. It rattled the thatched walls and dimmed the sunlight amidst a blanket of clouds. Black flames exploded from the meat. It rose into licks of the hottest fire Kyrah had ever felt. She tried to pull away, step back from the edge of the altar, but her feet were anchors tethered to the ground. The flames burned darker, so intensely that her skin blistered and broke across every inch of her, bubbling a sea of cooked flesh.
“Kyrah!” her father screamed.
He took a step forward to pull Kyrah away, but Reana’s strengthened grasp kept him from moving any further.
“Let him finish!” Reana screamed.
The temperature lowered. Ice drizzled across the summer brush outside. The sky through the windows grayed and dimmed. The pain consuming Kyrah forced her to her knees. Thick streams of blood streamed from her eyes and bubbled at the base of her throat. Even her bones screamed in agony. The black flames rose higher, alighting the room with the dull ache of a thousand dark suns, until they reached the vaulted ceiling’s highest point.
“What’s happening to her?” Jae asked.
He attempted to pull away once more, but Reana held him still and grinned at the asking of the question.
“Your daughter owes this world nothing, but she will give of herself everything,” Reana explained. “You cannot possibly understand what I am telling you, but you must understand that this—what you see here—is necessary. This is why your daughter lives.”
“You,” Jae spat. “How can you do this? How can you watch her die like this?”
Tears welled at the corners of his eyes. His voice quivered between syllables. He spoke as if the strength of the Portizu had left him, deserted him in his most aching time of need. Reana kept her eyes fixed to Jae, allowing the flood of untapped emotion to run its course.
“Dying? Who said anything about dying?” the girl said.
A sudden change of focus emerged from Jae’s panicked expression.
“Your daughter is not dying. Your daughter has found her calling. She may finally live.”
The pain Kyrah endured in the heat of the flames no longer felt like pain. Instead, only tranquility rushed through her veins. The bubbling sores across her arms and legs were nothing more than afterthoughts now. The melting sensation in her chest seemed nothing more than a memory. She simply existed somewhere deep in her own thoughts. She held out her hands, opened her bloodied eyes, and peered into the flames that continued their roars across the surface of the altar.
This is the power of Turisic, she thought, but they were not her thoughts. Allow it to guide you. Allow it to show you things you were never able to see before. Today, your vision of the future may appear set, but it is far from that. You must find the way alone, but I trust you will. Find me and I will help you find yourself…
The voice thundered through her brain to the point of excruciation. She rolled her eyes into the back of her head, fell backward and slammed the back of her skull against the ground. Her brain collapsed. Everything drowned into black—a deep, undying black that allowed nothing to permeate, nothing to breathe. She was helpless in her own skin, lost in the waves of fire and heat. Everything burst into a firework of lightening shades of gray, shattering like rocks turned dust, until she sensed the power within her—the power the voice told her she would soon have.
What am I supposed to do with this? she asked.
The voice inside had already begun to evaporate, but its call was still perfectly clear.
Anything, it said. You can do anything.
When she awoke, she found herself in bed. Seven faces stared down at her as she opened her eyes, including those of her father, Razz, and Reana. The sweetened smell of cooking elk fat allowed her to relax. She was fine, home and comfortable, and the Turisic blessing had worked.
She sat up. The burns, the sores, the horrible feeling of melting flesh had all vanished. Only newfound strength flooded her from top to bottom. She felt alive. She felt satisfied, but to sway suspicion, she lifted a hand to the back of her neck and rubbed at the base of her head, grimacing.
“What do you remember?” her father asked.
A bit of tension riddled the question, something unexpected.
“I remember the flames,” she said, her voice trailing away, “the pain…”
The others looked away, all except her father.
“I’ve never seen anything like that,” he said. He ran a calloused hand across the curve in her jaw. “But it worked. Turisic blessed the meat. We have a harvest for the first time in years.”
Kyrah smiled, knowing full-well she was not supposed to do anything of the sort.
“All because of you,” her father continued. “I don’t know what you did, but you’ve made us proud. Every one of us.”
“Kyrah—my daughter and conduit of Turisic—will be our next Warrior Elite. We must prepare for the Election.”
All exited the room, relieved. Reana closed the door behind them. The Laeths were finally alone.
“What do you know?” Jae asked his daughter. Heat pulsed through the skin of his face. “I saw…it…in Reana’s eyes. Tell me.”
Her father’s anger pressed Kyrah into the mattress, shocked by her father’s rapid change.
“I think I heard him,” Kyrah said. “I think I heard Turisic.”
She told him everything the god had said to her—every word. She told him about Velc’s eyes that morning on top of the plateau. She told him about the similarities in Reana’s as she ushered her forward toward the black flames of the altar. But amidst her confessions, somewhere beneath the explanation and its awe, Kyrah knew she spoke lies. The voice was not that of Turisic at all. It was something else entirely, something she had never experienced before, something no one in the Portizu Territories had ever experienced.
“You must listen to me,” whispered Jae. He turned his head as if suspicious of eavesdropping ears at the door. “If the gods need you, you must not disrespect them. You saw what Turisic can do to you. You saw what may come of us if we go against their wishes. If they have plans, you must accept them.”
She had not expected her father to cave so easily.
“This could tear us apart, Father,” Kyrah whispered.
Jae shook his head, still cautious.
“Did he give you anyt
hing? Turisic?” he asked. “The prophecies speak of gifts, of power.”
Images of bleeding eyes and boiling flesh returned to her. She remembered the pain, the searing need to make it stop.
“I—I don’t know,” she responded. “There’s something different about me. I can sense it.”
“Here,” her father said.
He reached for his daughter’s hand and placed it against the right side of his jaw. “Touch me. Really touch me.”
“Father—”
He cut her off with a flick of his wrist—a do-not-disrespect-me-now type of glare—so she did as she was told, concentrating hard, focusing the entirety of her energy to the tips of her fingertips.
“Sweet Turisic,” her father whispered. “It’s true.”
A thin film coated his jaw, then bubbled and opened into a sore. Jae grimaced, clutching at its location with a shaky hand.
“I’m sorry!” Kyrah blurted. “I—I’m so sorry!”
“Do you know what this means?” Jae said.
He suddenly sounded morose, gloomy. The wound flittered, then disappeared below the surface of his skin, away from view. The pain of it settled and her father’s grimace returned to calm.
“You have much more behind that,” her father continued. “The question is—why would Turisic give you the ability to inflict such pain? We must be very careful. The gods are tricksters, liars.”
“Father? Do you think I’m ready for this?” Kyrah asked. “Could this be the Darkness? What if the wall is giving way? What if this is their plan to destroy us?”
Her father bent to one knee in front of her, suddenly silent, suddenly calm.
“You are only as ready as you feel. You must not give in to the fear of the unknown. Where is your sense of bravery? Where is that stubborn girl I have raised from the beginning? This is no longer about your training, my daughter. This is about destiny.”
Kyrah swallowed hard, fighting to keep her emotions hidden. Fear, despite her best judgement, despite her father’s constant assurances, bubbled loudly in her chest. Somehow, she kept it at bay, but not easily. This was foreign territory for her, for anyone who called themselves Portizu.
“Listen to me,” Jae whispered. He lifted a gentle hand, once again, to Kyrah’s chin as a loving father does for a daughter. “Turisic has given his permission to be the real you. He wants you to be the next Warrior Elite. There is no doubt now. Not even the slightest. When a god gives his blessing, you accept. And that is what you will do.”
What is it? she thought. This is everything I have ever wanted! This is everything I have worked for! So why do I feel this way?
“Tomorrow we will leave for the Highlands and you will be nominated for the Elite,” her father said, “and you will make your village prouder than we have ever been before.”
She nodded, then bowed into a hesitant minjori.
“Thank you for all you have done for me,” she said. “You have always supported me…through everything.”
“And I will always do so,” he replied. “Now sleep. Tomorrow your life changes.”
Her father closed the door behind him as he left her alone and, in the silence of the empty room, she tried to convince herself to be pleased, but apprehension had already begun to chisel away at the joy in her heart. As much as she tried to find satisfaction in what she was about to do, she could not shake the terrible image of Velc’s mad eyes from her mind. It had burned itself into her memories, playing unendingly across the surface of her retinas—the puddles of deep blood running from the slit in his throat, the lifelessness of his body in her arms, the culmination of every moment of her training ending in a few lonely seconds of violence.
How? she asked herself. How will this all end?
Yet fatigue quickly overcame her and she closed her eyes to the sounds of dreams dancing across the lattices of her thoughts.
FLAME AND PYRE (BEFORE)
“Relu’s Wall is under attack,” her father whispered. “If we don’t leave now, the North could be Dark in a matter of days.”
Kyrah listened to her father from the crack in her bedroom door. The lamp in the corner of the open room wiggled slightly, shifting the adults’ already animated silhouettes.
“It’s worse than it has ever been,” her mother said. “What do we do if there are more now than there were before?”
Jeras ran a finger down the side of his chipped attar blade. It had seen the ugly side of many battles, but he stared at it as if it were a lost friend finally returned home. The hilt of it had worn against her uncle’s grip, bending against the curve of his fingers. They were one—Jeras and the sword.
“We fight our way through,” Jeras replied, “as we always do. Our life and home depend on it.”
From the doorway, Kyrah’s heart jumped. They were talking of Shadow Wars.
“Two days,” Jae called. “Two days and Relu’s Wall will fall. We must gather the remainder of the attar blades and make quick work.”
Taris turned toward the door, noticed the crack in Kyrah’s doorframe.
A bolt of panic shot through Kyrah. She bolted from the opening, hit the mattress, and slid the blankets up over her chin. The door creaked open just as she stilled. She breathed long and deep to calm her quickened heart raking against her ribs. Taris Laeth approached her baby girl, sat quietly at the mattress’s edge, and ran her fingers down the strands of hair pressed against the pillow.
“My daughter, you have much to learn about eavesdropping. Do not worry. We are leaving, but it is necessary,” her mother whispered, “Not only for the sake of our family, but for the rest of the Portizu Lands. We must protect our home from the Darkness. Two days and we will be back.”
Kyrah opened her eyes. Her mother—so beautifully gentle in her softened gaze, her unwavering nerve—suddenly appeared no more than weary, broken against the weight of the future.
“Let me help,” said Kyrah. “I’m old enough now. I want to do my part. I want to help our people.”
“Velc will have no part in that. You are the apprentice to the Warrior Elite. One day, my daughter, you will be something great. You will need to be. All of the Portizu Lands will look to you for guidance and strength. If we—if I—risked your life in a battle as inconsequential as this, what would that say about your parents?”
Kyrah spoke clearly, eyes wide from her position across the bed.
“I will not wait here while my family fights the Darkness alone—you, father, Uncle Jeras, Aunt Shara, Velc. I will revoke my apprenticeship if it means—”
“You will do nothing of the sort!”
She had rarely heard her mother speak with such vivacity, such heated volume in her words. Taris’ frame lowered against Kyrah’s body, gently now, until her eyes met parallel with those of Kyrah. Anger leveled to calm and, again, the mother Kyrah knew surfaced—the caring, unendingly patient woman of insurmountable poise.
“It is only two days, my daughter. We will return as we always do and the Darkness will be driven away from here for the final time. I am certain of it.”
Taris’ short smile deadened against the moment’s intensity. Kyrah could not tell what this meant, but it startled her. She allowed her mother to kiss her forehead.
“I love you,” Taris whispered.
Kyrah did not want to sleep, she wanted to fight its embrace with everything she could muster, but the sounds of the shutting front door and her father’s voice trailing far into the Northern winds numbed her enough to fall deep into slumber.
The uneasiness of the following day hovered in the air like a heavy fog. She spent hours in traji beside the Eldervarn trees at the far end of the jungle, but her thoughts often led her astray. She trained at midday, but without Velc, her training seemed pointless.
“You are distracted,” Reana said. “Warriors in positions like ours must understand our duty. Our plans hold much greater value than the battles against Darkness. We must uphold the legacy of the Portizu Tribes above all else.”
Kyrah turned her eyes to the girl sitting cross-legged opposite her. Reana had only begun her training as a potential Pack Leader, but had taken to it seriously. The gold in her eyes had given the village leaders—her Uncle Jeras, her father, her mother—the needed confirmation to accept her scrawny, otherwise useless frame into Portizu tradition. The sudden urge to cry overcame Kyrah, but she held the pang in her throat just deep enough to allow it no control.
“Your mother and father are some of the bravest people I have ever known,” Reana continued, “but they have different plans…as we do.”
At this, Kyrah bowed her head. The weight of destiny had been spoken of too often. She had never wanted to uphold the responsibility of the Tribes, never wanted to wield so much power within her. The curse of the Darkness within her had changed everything and, for awhile, she believed she had overcome it, but now, wading in the apprehension of impatience, she could feel the familiar itch of the Shadow trying to claw its way to the surface.
“You have come a long way, Kyrah,” Reana continued, “but you have an even longer road ahead of you. Stick to what your Teacher has told you and you will one day save our people from the Darkness that threatens us.”
What an odd thing to say in such a moment! Kyrah thought.
“Did I say something wrong?” Reana asked.
There was a hint of anger in her voice, but not enough to interpret her words as anything more than clarification. Kyrah lifted her eyes to the girl and softened her expression.
“It is not you,” Kyrah said. “My family…they have—”
Something pulsed at the center of her chest. She straightened her back and tightened the cross of her legs. She could see Reana’s eyes examining her posture, waiting for the best moment to interrupt. The amulet dangled against her neck, glowing a violent shade of red.
“How do you feel?” Reana asked, keeping her eyes fixated on the attar amulet’s bulge against Kyrah’s chest. “You don’t look well.”
“My control is still lacking,” Kyrah murmured.
It was not for Reana to hear, but the girl leaned in closer to Kyrah. She had not meant to nearly confess her Dark secret to a girl so young, but for some reason, it seemed a moment to loosen the grip of her private thoughts. The voice of Velc suddenly flooded the framework of her brain.
