by Marc Mulero
“Yeah Eres!” Mudry roared with three drinks in hand.
Before he knew it, Ram was at his back with a conga line of hand-flailing Dagos moving in a rhythm he’d never seen before. Another girl swiped him for a quick dance, and the next thing he knew, he was up in the air, crowd surfing. He looked down to his right, to his left. “Ram!” he roared. “To the Five Hearts!”
“The Five Hearts!” everyone shouted back.
This is great. Insane… this is…
The last thing he remembered.
“Ughhh.” Eres awoke the next morning with a groan. He tried to move, but it felt like there was a ton of bricks resting heavily on his back. “Boo,” he mumbled, knowing there was nothing else to do but just lay there, useless, one bloodshot eye half-open, mouth crusted with dried saliva. Everything was spinning, only this time in a bad way.
He tugged himself forward with all of his strength, arms shaky. One heave, two, just enough so his face was hanging over the bed. The way he was reaching, the struggle in his expression, it looked like he was stretching over a cliff attempting to save someone. But really, Mudry was nice enough to leave a bucket next to him, one that was already a quarter filled with his vomit… “Ugh, that was nice of h-”
He yacked again.
“Make it stoppp.” He wiped his mouth with a dirtied sleeve and flung himself onto his back. “What’s happening?”
“Big hangover, big!” Mudry had let himself in, holding a tray of breakfast steady by the handles and with a towel folded neatly over his arm. “Life of party! Go Eres!”
Eres recounted snapshots from the night before - hazy, hilarious stills of different parts of the event. Everyone was shouting with bright smiles and funny movements. It was strange knowing how energetic he was then and to feel the total opposite now. It made him want to turn the other way, to hide in shame. But Kyta popped up, hanging onto Mudry’s arm, and he knew there was no hiding now.
By the time he blinked, her mousy face was inches from his.
“Good morning sunshine!”
“Oof,” he rolled and flung a blanket over his head, “have you ever even seen the suns?” His voice was muffled.
“Uh oh, how much memory did you lose from yesterday? Don’t you remember, in the springs? I told you my life’s story.” Kyta rocked his body under the covers to further annoy him.
“I remember, I… stop!” he begged. “I remember up until the dancing.”
“Yes,” Kyta egged on, still rolling him within his blanket like a burrito, “quite the dancer you turned out to be. Never in a million years would I have guessed.”
“Mmm.”
“Mustae, it smells like alcohol in here.” Kyta suddenly realized and pinched her nose.
“Is that what was in our drinks?”
“Duh,” Kyta ripped the sheet down to look him in the face, “what did you think?”
“Elehol… like the drinks in the Colliding Spheres.”
“No, no, we weren’t trying to have a pleasant sit down Eres. We wanted to party!”
He nearly puked again at the mention of it.
“Eat, Eres, then feel better.” Mudry placed the tray over him. “Up sit.”
“Do you remember being carried?” Kyta plopped herself at the foot of the bed.
“Yeah, by a group that Ram was leading, right?”
She chuckled. “That was only the beginning. One of the dancers hanging on a string reached for you… and you jumped to grab her hand, and up you went.”
Mudry started to shake with laughter at the recollection.
“What?” Eres couldn’t help but laugh at the absurdity. “Are you guys screwing with me?”
“Nope.”
“Then how the heck did I get down?”
“You two twirled down all the way from the ceiling like you were a natural. I’ve never seen the soldiers cheer like that, Eres. What other secrets are you hiding?”
“Never been a performer, so I don’t know what you’re talking about. I suppose yesterday was fun though, wasn’t it?”
“Yes!” Mudry shouted a bit too loudly. “Night to not forget.”
“Do you remember the shooting star?”
“Yes, in the beautiful night sky that shines so brightly in the UnderSpire,” Eres replied sarcastically.
“Oh, I see you’re waking up a bit,” Kyta said before smacking him upside the head. “The man on fire! He lit himself aflame and let the string pull him from one stage to the other. Risky stuff!”
“Hmm,” Eres shut his eyes, “yes. Yes! The one who came down afterward reeking of kerosene and asking everyone if they saw him.”
“Yep. That’s Malfus… great actor. Really into his work.”
“I see. Loves to party too, huh?”
“Huh.” Mudry confirmed.
Eres winced as he tried to bring a forkful of cooked torpa egg up to his mouth.
“Eat up… need to put stuff in belly or hurt all day.”
“Okay, okay.”
The first bite was the hardest, but once he saw it might stay down, he kept on. “Thanks guys. You’re good friends.”
Mudry gave a cheesy smile and Kyta looked away shyly.
After a few minutes of nothing but the sound of Eres chomping, he finally grunted and said, “Okay, back to bed.”
Kyta almost burst out laughing, but held it in. “No, silly.”
“No?”
“No.”
“Eres no want to miss this, I think,” Mudry said.
“Huh?” He looked back and forth.
“We’re going to the consortium, Eres. You have about ten sifs until it opens, so get moving. We’ll be out front.”
Suddenly his purpose rushed back into him like a spirit collided into his body. The Five Hearts, the discussions with Ramillion, the sculptures…now this. What he’d been waiting for. Books with the promise of concrete Skrol knowledge. Yes, he would get up for this.
His eyes nearly twinkled with delight.
“I’ll take that as a ‘yes’.” Kyta rubbed his leg before getting to her feet and grabbing Mudry by the arm for them both to leave.
This better not be a witch hunt like Elesion’s library. Great as it was, everything was so in between the lines. Give me some Mustae-damn history.
Even though his brain was starting to think again, motor function was another story. He hopped on one leg while trying to get his pants on, then fell, then yacked again. “Ugh…” it looked like a murder scene, only instead of blood, there was vomit.
“Eres okay?” Mudry’s muffled voice came through.
“Yep. Great.” He wiped sludge off of his bare shoulder, kicked off his pants, grabbed some tissues and tried again.
After more than ten sifs, he finally emerged a little more hunched than usual, normally silken hair a bit out of place, smooth skin a tad cracked. Put it all together and Kyta had to pull her head back in dismay.
“You… good?”
“As good as I’m going to be if you’re not going to let me sleep.”
“Right then.”
Eres followed along with one hand on Mudry’s back for balance. His eyes were heavy, blinks long and slow, all while his friends were talking as if they’d drank nothing at all the night before.
“How? How are you guys so… awake?”
“Well,” Mudry turned his head, “we got mootsy,” he teetered his hand, “but you, got splurged.”
Eres didn’t respond… those were two foreign words not of any language he understood, so he just stared at him, and eventually looked to Kyta for help.
She snickered. “Mudry means we had a moderate amount of alcohol, while you were flooded with it. Not to mention it was your first time. It had to be. Ram got you good, that’s for sure.”
“Mmm.” He grunted.
Another ten minutes or so of wading between early risers, a few of who greeted not just Kyta and Mudry, but even Eres. They welcomed him, praised him for being such a fun addition to the party the night before, and he did
his best to force a smile. But again, it was weird to feel so alive then and so dead now, like a comedian, or maybe a clown in this case, unable to make someone laugh the second time around.
“Okay Eres, you – no! Close eyes first.” Mudry looked back with a grin, both hands pressed onto massive crystalized doors. “You ready?”
He nodded, then heard what he came to understand as the sound of porum encased ice sliding – or in this case, those massive doors opening.
“Open!”
Some more life returned to Eres’ eyes as he crossed the threshold of a library. A palace even, one that harbored tomes. Two large concave walls were full of them, with translucent crystal ladders ten times his height ready to be rolled on their tracks to explore unreachable heights. In the middle was a large vine of the lightest blue. Its leaves were book holders, and it was rotating about ever so slowly. Or at least that’s what Eres thought.
Eels of fire were trapped in lanterns – not that the consortium needed light – but rather they may have served a different purpose. Decorative perhaps? An indicator? Because these weren’t normal flames at all. They didn’t sit in place or sway. They were alive, slithering rhythmically.
All of it left Eres speechless. And so, he did nothing but continue down on Mudry’s lead: crossing into the next section where he was compelled to gaze up at a pendant sparking with electricity at the center of a bookshelf. Soon it was gone, they were past it, and the next area brought forth a sensation of wind that began funneling from his feet. It felt good for a second. But then the gyration made him nauseous again.
Kyta noticed and tried not to laugh.
“Oop. C’mon, c’mon, let’s get you out of the gales.”
“What,” Eres finally said in a low voice, “is this place?”
“The cons-” Mudry got cut off.
“I know, I know… but.”
“It’s enchanted, Eres. A Kujin and Dagos duo began this sanctuary centuries ago in a quest for direct knowledge of Sindah, with a heavier focus on Sorcery. So, naturally, sorcerers have had quite the incentive to continue the tradition of reapplying enchantments once a year. This is my second that Ramillion let me handle. What do you think? Cool, right? I worked really hard on it. I-”
“It’s astounding.”
She blushed again.
“Am I going to get electrocuted though… or burned alive if I try to touch a book?”
“Hah, no, of course not. It’s decorative unless the UnderSpire is somehow under attack. Then, well, it’s not.”
“Yikes. Ever have any accidents?”
“You’ll be the first.” Her lips curled into a smile. She then turned and ran her fingers across a high shelf, counting the volumes. “Librarians work to reorganize everything year after year. We come together to enchant it properly, to best represent the authors, Skrols, and ghostwriters, in their appropriate categories.
“And I have access to all of it?”
“All of it,” Kyta assured. “Based on what Ram says, we may not have been able to get you out of here for the play yesterday had we shown you this first.”
“Hmph, probably right.”
Kyta got onto her tippy toes and pulled a tome out of its row. “Hmm.” She wiped her hand across its face to feel the softness of leather, then flicked one of the metal edges to inspect its durability. “A fine book that still holds the test of time. Learnings of my Foremothers. By Princess Dorescle.” She handed it to Eres. “As good a place to start as any. Guess who she was… hah, I can feel what you’re about to say, and you’re right! A not-so-distant descendent of that Heart. The one who got dragged across stage.”
“Gimme. I have a large puzzle to begin piecing together.”
“That you do,” she replied.
“Okay bye friends. Time I go back to my cave,.” Mudry scratched his head.
“Why not stay with us, Mudry?” Eres asked.
“Me? No. No like reading, no fun. I sculpt when Kyta come here. Me just came this time to see reaction. Was worth!”
Eres plopped himself down in one of the ornately crafted crystallized chairs that was way more comfortable than he expected. But of course it would be, right? Any good reading session had to have the right seat. Not too cozy that he would fall asleep and not too rigid that he would be fidgeting every few minutes.
As soon as he opened the book however, he remembered something - his awful hangover. His eyes felt like they were rotating in two different directions, unable to converge, reading the same line over and over, which looked less of a line and more of a wave.
“Ugh, stop.”
After a few hours of some hard read pages, he finally fell back into that daze. Some of the wording was weird because of the tome’s age, sure, but this read already felt a hundred times more direct than the books in the Elesion library. No time to waste.
I return from my esper to speak to you here, in Rudo. I’ve come to tell you about the hundreds of memories I’ve witnessed, how I can peer into the hearts and minds of everyone in a scene like I am Mustae herself. A gift. A true gift my mother gave me. And although my great-great grandmother deserved no such bestowal, if not for her, this gift would never have reached me. Unlike her, I assure you that I will not waste it. So hear me through my words:
When I crossed into Gushda, I found a snowy passage of gaseous matter. I followed it, yes, but I also didn’t. ‘The Founder put this here,’ I thought to myself. Did he though? It could have been my mother. It could have been her mother. It could have been anyone. So, I followed it. But I also didn’t. You see, reader, what I mean by this is, Gushda is not linear. A road traveled straight away does not mean the age of the memories along its path are chronological, for Gushda does not measure time, for Gushda is eternal.
You, however, are not. I, however, am not.
What do I mean by this? I’ll tell you.
I can walk a predefined snowy path of gaseous mist and see the events long past like clashing storms. Such vibrancy… but don’t be distracted. You must retain what you are if you are to make sense out of the Eternal. A finite being in the infinite. You must think. I know history, right? I know my people. I look to one storm – what do I see? A princess long before me, but by the descriptions of my ancestors I learned of in Rudo, I can identify her in Gushda.
What is the significance? I’ll tell you.
You, I, all of us, can make sense of the infinite, or at least sections of it, by applying your finite principles – what you know. Her clothing is of one hundred years past, her mannerisms, her curtsy – outdated. I apply the arrow of time. I make sense of the Eternal. I remain sane where my great-great grandmother could not.
It is only with this founding principle can I walk on.
The first few chapters went on with this – principles of surviving and understanding as a being in Gushda. Eres could relate completely and wholly, but he knew all of this already by way of experience. He wanted to learn something he didn’t yet know. A trick or a tip to help him navigate more efficiently. Maybe a new understanding that would help him make sense of things.
Days passed, and after breakfast with his friends every morning, they began to go back to work – Mudry to his porum encasings, Kyta to her training with Ramillion, and Eres, as expected, went to the consortium. Addicted.
Another passage, a particularly useful one found deep in the night:
I merge my essence with my mother in this instant. What do I feel? A coolness. A prickly sensation. It is unlike anything else in existence… but do not be distracted, for the inconceivable is happening: You are reading someone’s thoughts and feelings in this moment, in their moment. You are one with them.
You think you are spying. But no. You are not.
You think you are tampering with the nature of things. But no. You are not.
You are becoming. Now a piece of them lives in you. You are inheriting. Taking slices of the Eternal back with you when you return, like an explorer coming home to tell of their travels. When I told
you before, in passage 16:571, I quote myself: “I leave the path and dive into a bottomless pit. Courage, I find. A light, I chase.” And there, at a seemingly endless bottom, is my mother. She tells me, ‘It takes courage to jump, young princess. Now sit the same as I, where I sit, so you can understand what it is to be me, as I did with my mother before me.’”
I came back from this into Rudo with my mother’s temperament. A skill in writing that I never had. She gave it to me. I wasn’t perfect like she was. I was still me, after all, but she gave me something. I felt it, I developed it. Like a seed ready to grow. I was the water, if I wanted to be.
“By the fires of hell…” Eres almost threw the book on the floor, coming up for air with a new epiphany. “That is what Skrol training will be… I’m going to learn from my ancestors. I’ve been stumbling through this whole thing,” he said to himself. “Without history and without lessons, except for those messages from my father. I learned, but I never applied. That’s what Skrol training will be.
“Mustae,” he said again, more thoughts swirling in his mind. “Can I pull my father’s Sindah, his Reach? Can I learn how to use it for myself?”
“No,” a familiar voice replied, “I told you once. Wukaldred has too. Perhaps others…”
Eres looked up to see Ramillion.
“You are stubborn, Eres. Don’t give me that face… it’s a good thing, really, for it will carry you far. But listen to me. In all of my years, I have never understood one to pull Reach or Sorcery without the affinity to do so. So please, don’t waste your time or dwell on the impossible. You have so many other talents. Use them. And what Princess Dorescle meant by inheritance was an adaptation of the mind. Patterns of thinking. It could be about tasks, perspectives, many things, but not Mustae-given gifts. Okay?”
Eres sighed lowly, hope crushed right out of him. “Alright…”
“Please, Eres,” Ramillion noticed, “don’t take my words as deliberate inductions of pain. That would be cruel. I am merely saving you time, if you’ll entertain me.”
