by Marc Mulero
“Stop it, Eres. How the hell are you going to reinsert yourself into the world after this? You aren’t mad. Know yourself. You still have to confront Seren Night. Get everything in order here. You have to.”
Somehow, in some unexplainable way, he knew that he was approaching the end of the road here. Maybe it was what Seren had said before he flew toward this landmark in the octor recording or maybe it was the mere fact that he was out of the Northern Grottos. That had to mean something, didn’t it? And what could possibly top an Aegod? Nothing. He’d already endured the finale. Now it was time to declare his purpose and exit this hell.
Eres gulped. “First determination – I, Eres Dawn of the Way lineage, will not hide in the storms or the shadows. I will not hide at all. For that, Fata, I am sorry.” He looked down at Proctor Vasa’s blade and found strength within it.
He lost his footing for a second when he saw flakes of snow begin to tremble and then eventually swirl into a small funnel at the center of the crown. He held his breath for a moment. Was he going to be swallowed?
“Second,” he kept on to distract himself, “I will not reside in Gushda to live through others. I will only learn from those who have lived before me. My trips will be to understand history. To explore, perhaps, but never to get lost. I will stay rooted in Rudo, with the memory of Windel as my anchor. I will post meaningfully in there and I will not falter. Ooma… I know your pain from losing Mota, but I cannot live as you do. I can only learn from you. Of that I hope you can be proud.”
The winds climbing over the crown kept biting at his face. His cheeks were already getting numb and his lips felt foreign and tingly. He wouldn’t last very long up there with the cold rising. He considered going back.
No. Keep going.
“Third - I will fight for those who stand for good. For freedom. And against those who terrorize, kill and destroy. This I promise. Unlike those who’ve come before me, I will be a Skrol who stands in the open, not hiding in some faraway cave, one who stands together with his friends, for all to see. I will become a beacon. That is my purpose.”
He thought back to when Kor Vinsánce was invaded by Kovella’s Quittance, how dreadful that experience was. How it defined him for so long, how it got him banished just because of his gender, or lack thereof.
“And fourth, lastly…”
The funnel at the center of the crown suddenly began to reverse like water swirling down a drain in the opposite direction. It was only then he noticed that the hole where these sinking flakes were dwindling into was a dark tunnel that was clear for seconds at a time when the ice flashed. It was as if this see-through glacier had an esophagus. A startling one. As he got to his tippy toes for a better look inside the hole, he could only make out figments. And during those intervals, he could see something rising. A speck gaining in size.
“Lastly,” he repeated, “when I was inches from the Founder, before the memory collapsed, I got a glimpse of something. Felt something. I think I know what aged that man,” he spoke louder to hear himself over the winds. “I think I have an idea of what the secret might be, Seren. And if by some insane notion that you can hear me now, I know that you’re wrong for creating the Silent War and for forcing the Skrols into damnation. For my fourth and final determination, I vow to show you the light, even if the Ostara could not. On the grave of my fata.”
Once Eres’ last words were thrown into the winds, it was as if any remaining warmth was sucked away with them. Were temperatures plummeting even faster or was it that he just hadn’t noticed until now? Nonetheless, it was happening – fingers were becoming numb inside his Glite, his face went from tan to white, to blueish within minutes. It was time to escape. This wasn’t the way.
“Mustae,” his jaw quivered, “I do have to go back to that tree, don’t I?” He whipped out his impeller to see a streak of red - a heater within it activated by the cold - and it made him smile. “Of course you planned for this when you gave it to me, didn’t you, Fata? You knew my travels might lead me to Verglas.” He looked up to the twilight sky. “Okay. Here it goes.”
He cranked the device to the max, contorted himself into a one-handed bridge, and burst toward the heavens.
Woosh.
His flight was short-lived however, for as soon as he was parallel with the uppermost spikes of this crown, he met resistance unlike any that he’d felt before. Each layer of wind was getting thicker and thicker. And then he was sprung back down.
“No!” He whistled through the air. Crack. Glite against sinking snow. His back arched from the shock of it but he was okay. Thanks to his armor, he could still move.
“Ugh, damn it. Another enchantment? I thought we were done with those, Ramillion!”
It didn’t feel like an enchantment though, but more like a temporal anomaly. A funnel created by the winds and the shape of the glacier. Maybe. But it wasn’t even worth considering right now, because if he didn’t find a way to warm himself he’d be a frozen cube within the hour. He’d be dead.
Then he noticed another thing within the swirling bits, within the flashing ice. A speck buried too deep to make out what it was, was rising, siphoned upward by the endless corkscrew of snow.
“Why is this happening?”
He could barely hear himself think at this point, let alone move his mouth to speak the words, for the winds were whipping too hard, too punishingly. His brain was becoming a scrambled mess of desperate hope.
I’m supposed to be here, right? This couldn’t have been a coincidence. Seren made his way here and lived, so now I must too.
And so, he could only fixate on whatever was making its way to the surface. His last chance to understand his purpose.
“Please be something useful,” he whispered to no one. “Not just some frozen bones.”
He squinted, eyes burning and dry.
Crunch.
Something finally peeked through the swirling snow, emerging to the surface. It was glowing from what Eres could tell. Circular. A disc. Oh, he knew for sure what it was now.
A corpse’s Glite armor? That’s what reeled to the surface? It feels like another trick, or a hand-out maybe. Am I supposed to retract my own and dive for this one?
That would be suicide, Eres. Don’t do it. A voice in his head steered him away.
“I hate you, Ramillion.” He meant what he said. Everything hurt… and not in a fatigued muscle sort of way, and not the after-battle exhaustion either. This was a raw encumbering feeling that his heart was simply not healthy enough to pump blood any longer. It took thrice the effort just to move at this point. No more excitement, or hope, or anything really, just the biting cold tearing at the warmth of his flesh, leaving only numbness. Just barren nothingness and death.
More games. He was sick of it, of being a puppet. Even though Seren was his sworn enemy, it turns out that he did understand how Eres felt back in the Colliding Spheres.
He could access the memory bright as day because of how profound it was – back at that card table in the Ozgulo Annex. Seren almost pitied him, how he was being jerked around in every which direction, feeling like he was missing a giant piece of the puzzle. It was unbearable to feel so lost. Especially at points where he was being tortured. Like now.
“Fine, you prick.” Eres took a deep breath and coded his Glite armor to retract into a disc at his chest. He held it in his quivering palm before shoving it into his bag with an appendage he felt wasn’t his own. “You want me to suffer this? Fine!”
Tears were starting to flow, mucus frozen around the rims of his nostrils. His heart twinged, chest spasmed from the sudden shock of uninhabitable temperatures. No more protection. He would die if this wasn’t part of his training. But that thought – the one where this was all a small piece of some grand plan – as much as he hated it, it’s what kept him moving.
The wrath of Verglas, he thought, standing valiantly against the growing vortex of wind. Ramillion, the elements, and everything in between. You’re a poison I must suffer.
A necessary evil to stand amongst the others. Isn’t that right? I have to be a Skrol. I will be a Skrol…
Another breath. He was psyching himself up.
I am a Skrol.
You know what you have to do.
His legs were like frozen cinderblocks. His body didn’t want him to jump. It was suicide.
But he did it anyway.
He dove straight toward the center of the funnel into the sinking flecks.
Crunch.
“Arghhffff.” Eating a heap of these strange beady shavings was not fun. The substance may have looked like snow, sure, but when it quickly turned to cold, sticky mush in his mouth, he knew that it wasn’t.
“Pfah,” he spat while rotating against his will. But he didn’t dive for nothing. In fact, he rolled onto his belly: one arm extended, curled fingers clinging around the glowing disc he’d just grasped while at the mercy of this corkscrew.
With another heave, he spun to be on his back, the stars just spinning trails of light. Dizziness. He couldn’t feel his feet or hands, and was pretty sure he was urinating all over himself but couldn’t know for certain. It could‘ve been just false sensations.
This was rock bottom.
No friends, no guides. No one. Just endless nothingness.
“Not the type of Skrol I’m going to be. I won’t be a reclusive hermit running from his shadow. I’d rather die!”
And with that, he slammed the Glite onto his chest and activated it.
He looked down triumphantly, waiting for something to happen as the armor began to gracefully form around his body. Nothing… yet. But the armor was glorious in white and blue, camouflaging him so that he was nearly invisible within the elements.
Then, all of a sudden, he fell forward while standing still. A trigger of some sort seemed to have activated. The funnel was beginning to reverse, forcing it to corkscrew back in the other direction. The snow was going down fast, like quicksand had just grabbed hold of him. What’s worse, something felt wrong on the inside. As the last bits of armor formed over his face, he came to a terrible realization.
Why was it colder within the Glite than outside of it? This was supposed to warm him…
Now it wasn’t just his limbs that were numb. It was everything. He was going into shock.
He was dying.
This was supposed to be a final gift for completing his Skrol training. An earned artificed piece of armor. Loot for marking an Aegod.
Then why did everything feel so fruitless? Why were the only memories coming to mind the ones of him sitting on a chair in his ooma’s shack all of those years ago, of his childhood crush in Kor, why was he seeing only those now?
Because it was true. He was dying.
Shooting pains forked from his fingers, up his arms, through his shoulders and finally consolidated at his chest as if all the veins underneath his skin were being strangled, tapping out furiously, signaling that he had to break free of whatever it was he’d been dragged into. But that was impossible. His body was still twirling downward into this strangely hollowed out glacier. Flashes and blinding light were all that he could see as his body failed him, as the sinking particles hardened around his limbs.
His heartbeat was thumping in his ears. Not the frantic type like he’d experienced so many times before in the face of danger. This was slower, sadder, like a final melody before the end. It was almost peaceful.
Once the shooting pain had subsided, the last thing he could feel was his tensed-up neck muscles, his head frozen, brain numb.
He could retreat into his esper if he wanted to. But how long would that buy?
Maybe it wasn’t about preservation any longer. Maybe it was about legacy. There was something to post. One final thing.
“Fine.” His voice was feeble.
He squeezed his eyes shut to focus on this final memory - this epiphany - to bring it into Gushda like he’d trained himself to before his final goodbye.
“Here it goes.”
And within what seemed like an instant, his amber esper somberly came to life before going dark again. Eres did his final deed just in time to feel the life draining out of him.
“It’s just a physical shell,” he said, smiling. “There’s a whole Eternal World to float into after this. Maybe I’ll get to explore it. By the grace of Mustae… maybe with my ooma’s prayers, I’ll be allowed to navigate through it again.
Eres coughed weakly into a laugh. “The old me would be hitting me over the head for saying such nonsense. But she was right. Ooma was always right.”
Beyond numbness, beyond acceptance, there was still a grueling chill of death that took hold before the end. It was slow and lingering, waiting for his heart to finally cease.
“Fata. After all of this time I still don’t understand your decisions, but I hope to see you again wherever I’m going. We can sort it out there.”
He suddenly heard a muffled noise far overhead. A shider, he thought, Ilfrid. You came to save me, didn’t you?
But that was nonsense. A desperate attempt to grab at a phantom hero.
Sad, really.
He didn’t want to die… not now. Not like this. He still had so much more to do. And that made his brain grasp at straws, scrambling reality to create some kind of fairytale utopia. It was all in his head.
More noise. More shiders. It reminded him of Kor Vinsánce all over again - running from Kovella’s Quittance, hiding when all of those ships thumped down after his father had sacrificed himself. It was that same dreadful feeling. Fear.
This is what it was like before the end.
The last thing he felt was getting spit out by the funnel at the bottom of the glacier into the freezing depths.
This was how it was supposed to be, right? He had done it. He completed his Skrol training. His heart finally stopped.
Chapter 38
Clayborne
Zchunk. A shock to Eres’ heart jolted his entire body. His muscles twitched and spasmed, but still he was just a shell.
Zchunk. The sound of a defibrillator made his limbs jump in place once more, but his heart was still frozen stiff.
Zchunk.
Silence. Maybe it was time to lay his form in Rudo to rest.
…
…
Zchunk.
“Ahh! Ilfrid stop!” His body was warm now, limbs still tingly, but thawing. “What the! Mustae. What.” He looked around frantically, but he could barely move. Where was he? Ilfrid wasn’t there. No one was. He was just living out that fairy tale playing out in his mind before things went dark. Back to reality.
He tried to gather his wits.
“Another channel,” he realized. “I’m underwater. The last thing that happened…” his eyes were still darting, oxygen swirling around his brain to revive it, “I fell into the ocean. The glacier. I died.
“But then how am I back?”
The waters were endlessly thick, dark, with only silhouettes of tremendous creatures whizzing by as he zipped through at blinding speeds.
Bubbles exploded out of his Glite more than once. What was it doing?
Then it hit him. His eyes widened inside the odd helmet. “The armor killed me… and then revived me? Umus tou – all things bad. Ramillion, did you try to… actually… no. He did murder me. What kind of training is that?”
Schools of fish dispersed all around him as he slid past on this subversive slide leading to who knows where.
He cursed to himself and shut his eyes, praying for this trip to be over so he could get on with what he’d set out to do. If he wasn’t meant to die yet, then he’d confront everything and everyone he’d left behind. That’s what he learned in the Northern Grottos. Not to be part of some disconnected ancient society, but to be him. Stubborn as that may be. He didn’t die and return just to be forgotten.
Then he was suddenly thrust up feet first, feeling blood rush to his head, pressure increasing in his temples. He looked past his new pearly white and blue Glite to see the water lightening up a
bit. It was getting brighter and brighter until he could see three sources of light sending piercing rays to spear the ocean. The suns.
Splash.
Eres was launched outward onto the surface of Ingora once more.
Air. Fresh beautiful air. He immediately retracted his mask while still airborne, taking one long breath in before he fell.
Wham.
Eres landed hard, reduced to one knee as everything caught up with him in this moment.
He had frozen to death, hadn’t he? Now he was questioning himself. His breath was heavy as he relived it – the chilling pain, feeling his limbs die off one by one. “Wooh…” He touched a hand to his heart to make sure it was still beating.
Then he remembered the panic boiling into helpless tears. Being stuck in a downward spiral as if pinned to a sinking cross. Being unable to move, to see, to think. And worst of all, he was alone. No one to hold or comfort him in his last moments. It was a terrible death.
“All part of the journey, right?” He scoffed as he looked around.
But now he was here. Where?
“One thing is for sure,” he said as he gazed around to see a familiar world. A green one. “My Skrol training is over.” He touched the blades of grass with his palm. “No Sorcery can create life like this in Verglas. Not even you. I’m back in the Osa Sphere.”
A rush of contradictory thought suddenly came to the front of his mind to rebuke this. Ramillion. He could see his tiny form: ice blue hair, iridescent eyes and oversized robes. The moments right before he was sent off to the Northern Grottos, the conversation that disarmed him:
“Why did you give me these few weeks of joy before sending me off? Why did you give me time with Kyta and Mudry?”
“Oh ho, that’s an easy one Eres.” He sounded like he was joking, but it was obvious that he wasn’t. There was sincerity here. “The Skrol journey is terribly long. We wanted you to feel like you have a home to come back to.”
