by Marc Mulero
“Procter Vasa…” Windel’s mouth hung open.
“What is going on…” Eres was at a loss.
Crow sneered. “Not everything is a revelation, orphan. She’s a former Champion of the Colliding Spheres, remember? Of course she would be invited to future main events.”
“Are you guys claiming to know Herim Vasa?” Dee questioned. “The Herim Vasa? It didn’t click before when you said ‘Proctor Vasa.’”
“Who do you think taught me and Windel how to handle ourselves with a blade?”
“Ah,” Dee had a revelation, “that’s how you became such a difficult sparring partner. Everything makes so much more sense now. That bitch.”
They all chuckled.
“C’mon Windel,” Ohndee hooked her arm and began to stroll over, “introduce me, please.”
“Sure, it would be great to catch up.” Her voice trailed as they walked away.
Eres turned to Crow. “You realize this narrows your voice down to one, right? It’s Vindom Decalus… he’s the invisible hand wrangling us all together.”
“Delusional.” Crow’s eyes were still on the crowd. “The voice felt nothing like his. You’re connecting dots that aren’t there. Just like back at Kor, when you thought Windel was the one betraying you. Hah. You haven’t lost that knack for following cold trails.”
Eres pushed Crow with enough force to make him lose his footing. “What’s your problem?”
He finally earned the orphan’s gaze. “My problem, Eres, is that I accepted transfer to Kor Blu to rid myself of my old life… yet somehow I’m surrounded by it again.”
“Running away? You? After all of that challenging, bullying, right to live crap? You’re less of a man than I am, then.”
“One more pathetic jest and I’ll do the honors of breaking you limb by limb. I’ll summon vines to crack your bones like twigs until you’re a puddle of useless skin.”
“I’ll slice your throat before you get the chance.”
They were inches from one another’s faces, with two Sindus assassins circling them as a final warning.
“I’m not the same child you met at Meeting Day, Crow… wait. Wait a second,” he backed off, “why would you still be acting this way? You tried to free me for Mustae’s sake.”
“For her!” Crow raised his voice for the first time, finger pointed outward. “And every time, every damn time things seem to level out… you get in the way. Even if you’re not here, she chases, somehow finds you.” He took a breath to calm himself. “Against everything I am, I begged her not to get on that ship with Alfonze Ren to rescue you from Elesion. It was suicide. And when I heard about the crash… I thought I lost her, because of you.”
Eres was speechless. He expected none of this, didn’t think his old Kor rival was capable of such emotion. There was always the assumption of malice, jealousy, vengeance, which was all truly there. But apparently there was something else underneath it all, he cared.
Crow cared.
He loved Windel in the same way that Eres had. All of this was becoming more confusing by the minute, on top of the fact that Seren knew exactly who Eres was now.
“So, winning her wasn’t enough for you, huh? You fight and plot and stalk… then you catch.” Eres squeezed his fists tight. “You won her for Mustae’s sake, yet still you walk away from your prize. Why? Because things became a bit difficult? Sounds like the biggest excuse in the book to me. I always knew you were off, Crow. But I never could’ve imagined how far you’ve spiraled. Self-sabotage, is that it?”
Crow’s jaw tensed again.
“Oh, did I hit a nerve? Maybe you feel undeserving? Hmph. The mighty Crow, doesn’t know how to accept his rewards. Making excuses that it’s too hard. Sureee… that’s it.”
The orphan was about to lift his fist and accept whatever lashing the Sindus had to give for one Reach-filled hook to break his rival’s face, but the assassins suddenly bowed and slipped away as if dismissed. He felt a shift in his surroundings - the sound of footsteps clacking closer beside them, and then a familiar voice.
“Eres,” Herim spoke softly, knowing not to call attention to him. Ohndee and Windel followed closely behind.
She may not have been as tall as she once had seemed to her former students, but she was just as dominating and regal as they’d remembered. Her arms were open for an embrace, gleaming tassels spanning like wings on her strapless dress. Gold and black both wrapped her, eyes still lit with fire - she was a battle-angel in her gentlest form.
“Proctor Vasa.” He was suddenly a student again in Kor… then a defender alongside her when they were attacked. His first and only kill. It all rushed through his head so fast. “I never got to thank you.”
“For what, child? It is I who should thank you. A Kor’s warrior, only to be hauled off by the worst of us. You are the most noble,” her fingers reached to frame his chin, “and you are free. I don’t know how, but it’s what the fates will. Something that should be so. Not a day went by without your injustice plaguing my mind.”
There was silence among them while her last words lingered, while she studied his face and thought about how much it’d changed in such a short time. If it was awkward for everyone else, it wasn’t for her.
“I was telling the Champion how well she did with you guys. My parents had me train with the most ruthless duelists, and somehow we still go back and forth.” Ohndee tried to change the tone.
“Nothing but a groveling genderless barren,” Crow mumbled.
If Herim heard the orphan, she didn’t show it. Instead, she went on. “What kind of alt-host would I be if I didn’t show you around? How about a tour of the Colliding Spheres arena, my old playground?”
The girls’ eyes lit up along with Eres’, but Crow’s face remained one of stone – unamused.
“I must warn you though, it’s one hundred times more threatening at night. I’ll show you how to use the sky to judge the waters and how to read an arena map. How does that sound for a proctor’s lesson?”
“But your friends, proctor?” Windel reminded.
“We’ve had our fun. I see them often. My old students though… of the savior’s class, the Kor defenders. That’s not something I get to enjoy regularly. All of you were brave that day, and for that my attention is undivided. Come.”
Crow and Eres shouldered each other behind everyone’s backs while Windel and Ohndee took turns whispering to one another like giggling school girls. A moment of normalcy for very abnormal beings who were always thrust into opposite orbits from meteors of chaos. But somehow, some shining star guided their way back together… an invisible hand they could not see.
Sindus silently stepped aside for Herim – airy sleeves grazing the ground, bodies bowing to appear as crimson statues framing their path. It made them feel important, like royalty. Even Dee was at a loss… the Sindus never blinked for wealth or political clout, but here they were bending for a warrior, a Champion, only for the most renowned of fighters. Eres and Windel registered what it meant to be taught by a celebrity back in class, but to see their proctor’s influence in her element was something else entirely.
Past long archways and high ceilings, down into majestic caves of marble, each threshold transformed the space slowly from awards show décor to battle annex – like a coliseum in Rome, something like what the gladiators must’ve seen as they stomped into the arena with blade in hand.
Finally, they made it to some end point where Herim strode over to a panel, rested her hand for registration, sifted through different arena layouts before saying “Aha!” and confirming the blueprint she wanted.
The others were more focused on something else, however – an enormous barrier laying before them. The one trembling from something heavy bashing against it. They knew what it was, how deep they’d traveled. Ocean waves stirred by the fires of hell – moaning, yawning, making hearts flutter with every crash. Like a child experiencing the world for the first time, fear forked among the group, whether written on t
heir faces or not, with only the calmness of an experienced parent to comfort them.
They could hear the mechanical under-workings of this unfathomable structure shaping, undoing, and reshaping the underwater arena so only the platforms Herim Vasa chose would rise above sea-level. Endless muffled clanging and crunching echoed from beyond the blockade, gears circulating in epic fashion. But that wasn’t all.
Out churned five body-shaped contraptions from the walls beside them, and around spun Proctor Vasa to engage her old students.
“Don’t be shy… everyone inside. You will be wrapped in specially Artificed Glite. Resistant to water pressure, adjustable to the wild gravity shifts that come with the collision of two planetary spheres. It will be like no arena you’ve ever considered. You will tread carefully, follow my lead, and experience a quantum war passing through your body like no other.
“Are you ready?”
The crew climbed into their respective chambers, backs flat, eyeing each other hesitantly just before the covering slid smoothly shut, locked, and began emitting steam through its sides. Eres could hear his own grunt echo all around him, a pale white panel inches from his face. Close. Too close. He was used to the open world, the vastness of his esper. He wondered if he should’ve retreated to avoid this feeling? His ribs suddenly felt like they were too small for his body… he couldn’t expand his chest or belly to breath… what was happening? Mist began to rise around his legs.
It’s just temporary.
Before he knew it, he existed within a cloud of smoke. His wonderfully fitted suit was mechanically peeled off and sealed in some tucked away compartment, and before he could feel the steam against his bare skin, scales of Glite began to unpack over his chest, snaking around his body snuggly. Soon after his toes felt confined too. Of course, flenos boots fastened onto his feet. Click. He felt around to his belt, where an impeller was unmistakably clipped to his side. He was becoming battle ready. But even with all of these distractions, there was still only panic.
He held his breath.
It has to be over soon.
Then the contraption opened its mouth so Eres could exhale. Wide-eyed and shaking, he looked at his peers, tried to pretend that he hadn’t just freaked out, and admired everyone’s new looks. New Glite for all. Crow’s was black as night to match his hair, only the light of his blue eyes and fair skin visible in the corridor. Ohndee was in the deepest electric blue, form-fitting, attractive, dangerous. And Windel, always Windel, appeared pleasantly surprised to be wrapped in peach-colored armor. Who would she look at first to share her wonder?
Then there was the battle-angel, Proctor Vasa, facing them with the door at their backs now open. Waves clawed for them to come out and play, crimson lightning flashed at her back, the vastness of the Verglas Sphere directly behind.
She spanned her arms like a bird would its wings. “Welcome to my world.”
Chapter 26
Gone are the Winds
Proctor Vasa ignited her flenos boots, skidded off the stone, hopped over a wave like a pole vaulter without pole and landed immaculately on the first risen platform.
“C’mon!” She exaggerated her gesture so they all would follow.
Most were unsure, but Crow was already in motion. He strutted up to the edge first after nearly walking through Eres and caressing Windel’s shoulder on the way. And with a cocky look back, he flattened the waves that were converging to crush him and leapt with sparks at his feet.
His Reach has progressed… Eres thought.
Windel started performing high velocity figure eights to test her new gear, turning hard to the side and touching her hand to the ground with each shift like a speed skater in those Surfetch games they used to watch.
“Show off,” Ohndee jested.
“What? Normal Carrier warm-ups.” She giggled. “Let’s go.”
And with that, she misty flipped high over her obstacle to reunite with the rest.
That left the troubled couple alone for the first time since the jungles of Dundo-Ba. So much had happened since. Eres’s past burst through their gates to tackle them. What were they going to do now? What was there left to even say?
Eres dropped his eyes to the floor, bashful, ashamed, knowing.
“I guess I was just a fling, huh? Because no one else better was around at the time… no one at all, really.”
Eres’ heart sunk into his gut. He knew this was coming, even though he’d chosen to ignore it. He couldn’t any longer.
“That’s not true.”
She willed back her Glite glove so her bare hand could trace his shimmering chest. “Back in Elesion, I knew my parents would never give up… when my father told me, ‘I will tear through the spheres to find you again Ohnnie,’ I knew I would eventually get out. But when I found you… an Umboro no less.” They both laughed mildly. “A fellow Dawn with the same passion as me. I… suddenly didn’t want to leave, Eres.”
Eres opened his mouth to speak, but she stopped him.
“Don’t… please. I know you were always on your way out, with or without me. And I can’t fault you for that. I chose to follow you. But what a fool I feel like now.
“Of course you had unfinished history… another life before you were taken away to the sky. Mustae, you even told me about it. But I wasn’t enough for you to let go of it, was I?”
Eres was faced with a thousand options running through his mind at once. Deny it and roll the dice. No, she’d see right through it. Lie to save whatever morsel of a relationship they had left. What good would that do for anyone? Well, he’d have time to think then, to figure out all of these crazy feelings. Or, the truth. He opted for the truth.
“You complete me Ohndee. You’re viciously honest, think in opposite ways than I do, keep me in check. So attractive – exotic, from a faraway place that I never knew could foster such beauty. And to boot, we’re both Dawns.”
“But?” She dragged out the word, ignoring Windel’s call from across the sea.
“But it’s true that I was thrown for a loop when she popped into my life again. She was my first crush… is my first crush.”
Ohndee’s face darkened at the vocalization of the obvious.
“The first person who was nice to me at Kor, for no reason at all. And now she’s with my mortal enemy. I don’t know what it means, I just know how it makes me feel, and it hurts.”
“That’s it, huh? Those are all of your thoughts in that giant brain?”
“No, Ohndee, I’ve put myself in your shoes more times than I can count. I know how it must make you feel, and it’s killing me. It’s all killing me.”
“You, you, you. Well, let me make it easier for you. We’re done here, Eres. I’ll have Ilfrid drop me somewhere, and I’ll find my own way. But this,” she pointed back and forth between them, “is over.”
She coughed, sniffed, and then leaned in to kiss his cheek. “Father always told me that I’d know when a special connection was made. He hugged my mother to show me, against everything a Swul family was supposed to express to their young, but he did it anyway. I wanted that. He didn’t tell me though, that when I’d thought I’d found it that it would eventually slap me in the face.”
“Ohndee…”
“Goodbye, Eres.”
And with two sparks at her feet and an impeller at her back, she hopped angrily to the other side, leaving Eres alone.
His surprise melted him down like searing magma. The protective shell developed back in his Kor days to shield him from things like this had disintegrated. All that was left was a severed heart that spewed anger instead of blood. Seething anger. And he had nowhere to put it. Nowhere to direct it. He would just have to boil from within and begrudgingly go on with what was supposed to be the coolest experience of his life.
Brow furrowed, he looked to the encouraging faces staring back at him, egging him on. Even Ohndee sarcastically beckoned for him to join. This was an impasse with no way out. He felt trapped, like his own body was now pumping black
bile through his veins. Again, he wondered if this was how Crow felt. Is this what it was like to live in blackness? His arms were suddenly hot inside his Glite, lips torn from biting them nearly off. He knew where the feeling came – synapsis firing to trace back the sense of betrayal, when he thought Windel sold him out, when Crow nearly ruined him, when father always disappeared… now Ohndee, without thinking twice.
He knew he caused it though. But what was the right answer? This felt like the first time he’d gone into his esper - a world of endless possibilities, none of them good.
With a snarl, he clicked the impeller at his back and let the wind carry him straight toward an ocean wave. Gasps on the other side – he couldn’t hear them, but could feel them. It was his turn to show off; they weren’t the only ones who’d grown in the past five years.
Another click, this time with the impeller positioned to the side of his body, thrusting him to the left just a split-second before he would’ve crashed head on. He was soaring now, fast, within a curling wave, nearly running on it like a surfer would ride it, racing within a funnel of white foam. He was determined. There wasn’t an ounce of worry even though he was closed in.
Three of the four onlookers were horrified as if he’d just committed suicide, before he burst through unannounced to shock them all. Not a drop of water covered him. He was completely dry, stomping down inches from Crow. A look of disgust was given, then a hard shoulder hit while walking past. Flip the script, he kept thinking.
“Impressive, Eres. Like Esil Octanious himself. I couldn’t track you!” Vasa commended. “But don’t do that again. It would be quite embarrassing if I had to call medics and the Sindus to recover your corpse.”
“Of course, proctor,” he said through gritted teeth, making it obvious to all that something had just transpired.
