by Vitaly Zykov
The feelings were quite strange. The consciousness immersed into the darkness left the body and began to gradually dissolve, disintegrating under the influence of streams of chaos. But he had experienced something like that before, these feelings were familiar to him. After Roshag's death, Yaroslav's soul had already been standing on the edge of death, but that time he was able to get out, even though with external help, but he still managed to. And he began to struggle again. With exorbitant efforts he built the frame of his body, protecting it from decay. The twinkling spark of his dying soul slowly began to flare up. Waves of the darkness covered the flickering light again and again, and the little spark faded away and flared up again. And again the anger and stubbornness made Yaroslav start all over. Each time, it became easier. Finally Yaroslav could isolate himself from the surrounding darkness with invisible walls of his will. Not a single trickle of darkness could penetrate inside. But only toughness of his will was not sufficient for his imprisoned soul, and he tried to strain all his senses and look around.
It turned out that the surrounding darkness was filled with some sparks of light. Yaroslav reached to the nearest spark. It did not move. In order to catch the spark, Yaroslav strained like mad, so that the barriers of will began to stagger. But he still caught it. He could not explain how, but main thing was that he had managed. Grabbing that spark, Yaroslav pulled it inside his prison. Approaching the fortress walls, the spark was sucked in it and joined the fire of Yaroslav's soul. Was it just him or had it really become easier to hold on?! What would happen if he caught another spark?
So, one by one, Yaroslav pulled in the nearby sparks. The light from the fire of his soul recaptured the space from the darkness. However, another problem appeared now… The array of absorbed sparks did not want to merge into a single stream. The influx of forces had stopped. He had to do something. Just on a whim, Yaroslav tried to turn his mind into a sphere. It was not easy. Having made, it seemed, a million attempts, he got a small fireball with a shimmering trail of sparks. Then he tried to twist threads from the sparks and reel them on his mind as on a roll. Now he was getting somewhere. The diameter of his sphere of the light was increasing until it absorbed all the surrounding sparks, and turned into a little sun.
He tried to reach other sparks, but nothing happened. Then Yaroslav tried to move. And he did it! This victory filled his consciousness with sparkling joy. The process of absorption accelerated significantly. His forces were increasing.
Having got stronger, Yaroslav began to look for an exit. The bright rays of his small star easily pierced the darkness. After infinitely long walks when despair like a snake began to creep into the corners of his soul, he found a nearly invisible trail leading somewhere. Hope stirred in his despairing soul. Following the curves of the trail, passing clusters of blackness, distinguishable even in the surrounding darkness, passing clusters of bright sparks, the little star raced to some goal. After a while, the surrounding darkness flowed into the flashing wall of a tunnel. Then, after ages, or maybe after a moment a glimmer of light appeared ahead. It was coming near, growing and finally absorbed the little sun aspiring to it.
Yaroslav grimaced – transition from the spherical to the normal human state was quite painful. He was doing limbering-up of aching neck while his eyes were searching for the damn statue. But the situation around was quite different now. Instead of the dilapidated temple there was a tightly closed crypt. Unexplainably, but Yaroslav could see perfectly in the surrounding darkness. The pedestal with the stone monster had disappeared. The ceiling, the walls and the floor were smooth, without any holes. Only in the center of the floor there were two deepenings in the shape of human feet. And no any way out.
– They've bricked me up, the demons! – The quote from a famous movie brought no reassurance. Yaroslav mechanically noticed the lack of clothing, but his mind was feverishly looking for an exit. Even in the dark, when he had had no habitual body, it had not seemed so bad. He had been fighting at the time.
His eyes fixed some movement on the verge of sight. Yaroslav jerked his head but saw nothing. Some mysterious trembling could still be fixed by the very edge of his eye. It felt as if it was shaking the surrounding world itself. As if someone had pulled on the mask of the world, but it strove to slip off.
– Let me out, you bastard!!! – Yaroslav yelled, he thought he knew whose these pranks were.
He jumped to the nearest wall and hit it with his fist with all his strength. The wall turned real. At least, the feeling of shock was real. Yaroslav fell to the floor, curled up in a fetal position and hid his hand breaking from the pain between his legs.
The pain vanished unexpectedly fast. Yaroslav rested for a while only to calm his overwrought nerves and stood up. He remembered the deepenings with the shape of human feet in the center of the floor, and came to that place. These God knows whose footprints were glowing a little. With a filthy curse he stepped his feet into the glowing footprints, and stood there a little bit. Nothing happened. With some disappointment, he tried to move, but could not. His legs did not obey. Yaroslav lunged stronger, but without result. His soles felt some tingle as if weak discharges were hitting into his unprotected feet. Suddenly a heavy blow pierced his feet and his head. Due to the pain he saw little devils became dancing in his eyes. Yaroslav began to frantically wipe his eyes as if they were filled with sand. The inner side of his eyelids was aching badly.
Having blinked through, he saw that the fragment of the wall in front of him lit up with dim light. With sharp strokes an invisible brush began to draw the lines of a strange hieroglyph, which was strongly resembling an eye with three pupils. But something did not let to call it a simple drawing: a certain subtle touch and some light shimmer of the air revealed the strangeness of this symbol.
– Ir'Rg the Sing. The Sign of memory and concentration – suddenly uttered a hissing voice. – Repeat!
The last word echoed in the stone dungeon.
Irr'g – stunned Yaroslav repeated without much effort. Before he could finish, another lightning of pain, even a stronger one, shot through his body and forced him to grit his teeth.
– Wrong, – the unknown interlocutor noted with satisfaction. – Ir'Rg! Repeat!
Thus began the studies with an invisible master. Yaroslav was forced to repeat the strange words, achieving the perfect pronunciation. The slightest mistakes entailed inevitable punishment. His education was strongly stimulated. Infernal pain was the stick, while the carrot was missing…
It turned out there were forty-nine of such signs in total. Among them Yaroslav met the already known R'rag sign of Force, and Ka'tol – the sign of inner purity he had met twice earlier. The signs were changing regularly, the questions came with great speed. Yaroslav's head was throbbing with ache. Finally the invisible tormentor was satisfied with the result. Yaroslav was allowed to rest. The power enforcing him to stay on feet disappeared, and he lay helplessly, or rather, fell asleep on the ground.
He was awakened by the hissing, monotone voice repeating:
– Get up! Get up! Get up!
Yaroslav woke up after the first word, but the fear of resumption of the dreadful learning made him to delay his getting up. However, after the third command he was hit in the, hmm… the place below his back by such a lightning, that he jumped and screamed wildly.
– Good morning! – The invisible hiss greeted him happily.
Yaroslav silently stood up and looked at the floor. The unknown footprints disappeared. The part of the wall glowed up again. Ir'Rg the sign started to appear slowly on the wall as if drawing by an invisible brush. At that time the task was changed – Yaroslav was required to repeat mentally the whole process of drawing of a given sign. He had to draw the sign on the inner side of his forehead, and to say its name with all diligence.
Exhausted by the previous lesson, Yaroslav decided to cheat. He stood for a while with his eyes closed and said:
– Ready!
The answer was not long in coming. A
lightning hit his head with such force that blood gushed from his nose and salty flavor appeared in his mouth.
– Do I need to repeat?! – The tormentor asked mockingly.
– No need! I get it, – Yaroslav breathed with hatred, spitting blood.
He did not make such attempts henceforth, performing all the tasks with maximum diligence. He scrupulously was imagining drawing a rune on the inner side of his forehead. It turned pretty easy. Then he got an order to repeat this exercise for forty times. Then another forty, then another, and another and another…
That was lasting for a very long time, until Yaroslav could imagine the sign so clearly that it was filled with force and got volume. A fresh breeze swept through the consciousness of Yaroslav, taking away with it the toxins, garbage, all the things that did not let his brain work well. The extraordinary clarity of thoughts struck Yaroslav, but he did not have time to enjoy the pleasure.
– The next sign. – The invisible being said in mentor tone.
The next was Ss'ka – the sign of endurance. With it everything was much easier. The steady flow of thoughts eased the task incredibly. Finally, this sign was also flashing with power in the mind of Yaroslav. And the warm wave washed through his whole body. His unbearable fatigue passed off, his tonus increased, he became ready for further achievements.
After that there was one more sign, followed by another and another… It continued until the apprentice was able to reproduce all the signs in his mind. During the training, it became clear that only twenty-one signs had influence on the internal state of Yaroslav, the others did not cause any reaction. Hisser, as Yaroslav decided to call him (inwardly, of course, if you call him this name aloud, he could hit in return)… so, Hisser said that these twenty-eight signs work with certain energies. What kind of energies, Yaroslav did not understand.
After the hard work followed a break for sleep and after the rest it all began again. Each time it became easier and easier for Yaroslav to «draw» the runes. For umpteenth time touching in his memory the learned symbols, he understood that now there was no need to imagine the process of drawing in all details. It was enough to think about a certain symbol and it appeared in his mind in all its splendor. Invisible Hisser was pleased.
A new task followed. Now Yaroslav had to run through all the symbols for several times. Then there was a lecture about preparation of complex symbols from the forty-nine available. As Yaroslav understood, these symbols formed a kind of alphabet of a language. Here, however, it was quite specific – it was the language of spells.
The magic of Words, Gestures, Thoughts and Sings was described in short, succinct phrases. Hisser very rarely allowed Yaroslav to ask questions, so he could only listen.
But one day a significant event occurred. Since lately, Yaroslav began to feel a constricting barrier in his mind looking quickly through the alphabet of the unknown language. It seemed that this barrier, was like steel shackles and did not let further development. With each repetition the barrier grew thinner and thinner. Yaroslav was gripped by passion. He wanted to break this wall and look over the edge – what's there? And soon he felt the strength to break through. He gathered his will in one powerful fist, and hit the unknown membrane. The runes were forgotten, but watchful Hisser did not react this time.
The barrier withstood, but Yaroslav could feel some cracks in it. Encouraged, he struck again and again. His blows rained down one by one, finally the barrier collapsed and Yaroslav stopped in front of it. From the resulting hole a dark stream poured in, the huge universe covered the consciousness of Yaroslav. These moments of confusion nearly cost him his life. He almost lost himself in this stream, but the trained mind managed to take control of the Elements at the end.
Yaroslav acquired new knowledge. He got the Inner vision. A whole new world appeared before his Inner eye. His memory became an open book, he could now revive any event of his life, he remembered every word of Hisser's lectures. Yaroslav learned what the absolute memory is. In addition, he could see his every internal organ, he could increase or decrease the blood flow. He could…
At this point, some unknown, irresistible force pulled him out. He saw himself sitting on the floor, panting and shaking his head dumbfoundedly. The furious words of Hisser were rolling in the closed-space stone bag, like giant boulders:
– Even an idiot should be wise enough to understand that before you break something, it is necessary to explore it! Do you understand, you whelp?! I do not hear the answer!
– Yes!
– What is «yes»?!
– I will not do anything, until I understanding what I do!
– Especially for snotty puppies like you, I'll explain where exactly you have messed up. – Hisser's voice sounded more peacefully, but had not lost its sarcasm. – One very stupid snotter was lucky to exert all his miserable strength and enter into the state of Sat'tor. For blockheads, I'll explain, that in the Great language Sat'tor means the state of insight. Now you have to regularly enter into this state and observe functioning of your human body, trying to understand its internal structure, improving and deepening your inner vision… Do you understand?!
The last shout forced Yaroslav to jump and distracted him from thinking why Hisser had sneered that way uttering the words «human body»?
Yaroslav continued training. Now he spent hours deep in the state of Sat'tor. His consciousness was sliding easily inside his body. Yaroslav learned a lot about his body, but Hisser forced him to strive for more. Exercises with the Inner vision and long lectures about internal and external subtle energies and the laws ruling their flow replaced each other. Unfortunately, it was purely theoretical knowledge. The practice was absent. His fingers were wildly itching to start experimenting. But Hisser forbade experiments with external energies, moreover – Yaroslav did not know how to start… The internal energies were unavailable as well. He simply could not feel them.
Yaroslav lost track of time. He could not tell the day from night and did not know how long he had been staying in this stone vault. It seemed that years had passed. He became resembling a fly, bogged down in the web of eternity. Finally, after countless training with Inner eye and the state of Sat'tor everything changed.
There were no breakthroughs or insights. The internal subtle energies or Sat'irr had long since become an annoying commonplace for Yaroslav. He easily dived into the depths of his psyche, traveled along the rivers of Sat'irr, learned the intricacies of the smallest flows of the Force, he knew where, what and how to apply for improvement of certain properties of his organism. But he was not able to apply that knowledge in practice. Any attempt to do even a simplest experiment caused a severe punishment. The strikes of the lightnings were monstrous in their strength. Previously, one such attack would be enough to kill him, but his will had grown with his skills. Yaroslav learned patience. He found a new area to explore. It were the lightnings themselves. The mechanism of their work was astounding. A wave of energy from unknown source like an unstoppable tornado swept through the natural channels of flow of Sat'irr, distorting and twisting them. A single stream of hostile energy split into smaller ones, they turned into even smaller, and so on, spreading weightless streams throughout the whole body and replacing its own energy. But human energetic withstood that, assimilating the hostile energy, and the normal flow of life restored.
Yaroslav became frightened at a single thought of what would happen if that flow of energy was made a little more powerful or highly directional. There was a universal weapon before him. Yaroslav was gripped with excitement of researcher. And the answer was found, at least, Yaroslav thought so. He suggested that if he should expand the domestic reserves of Sat'irr and fill them by taking energy from the environment, the weapon would receive quite a strong battery. With the same energy he could be protected from the similar energy strikes. He needed a little experiment: just to look with his Inner eye for flows of external energy…
– Who would have known that such crooked pathways would lead you
to the correct target. – Hisser's sarcastic voice appeared as usual at the crucial moment. – At this point your training can be completed. Soon you will be free, and your future development will depend on you. As your mentor, I only have to open your True name for you… A little later.
For some reason, the last phrase amused Hisser extremely, he literally choked with laughter.
– I don't understand… – Yaroslav bleated in a low voice, frightened with strangeness of Hisser's words.
– So this is the most charming part, – Hisser burst with laughter again. There was an impression that he had refrained himself during the entire training of Yaroslav. – This is the most charming part…
At that point the surrounding reality seemed to have been crushed by a giant hand. The familiar picture of impenetrable chaos and twinkling sparks appeared before the man (if a man at all). The body has disappeared, and again Yaroslav felt like a small sun, hovering in some space.
– Remember the whip of Nergal… It could be useful… – the voice came from unimaginably far, fading away like faceless echo.
A sharp jerk became a complete surprise for Yaroslav, who had already sank into despair. As if someone pulled an end of a rope to which Yaroslav was tied. The jerks became frequent. Yaroslav was moving in long jumps like a hare. Finally, the jerks stopped and the movement started accelerate smoothly. There was a familiar feeling of movement through some dark tunnel to a rapidly approaching light spot of an exit. Hope had just cheered Yaroslav up, when the brightest light flooded all around, and the man's tortured consciousness drowned in its soft waves…
Warm water was running down his face leaving a taste of freshness on his lips. There was soft rustle of rain. His consciousness perceived all that distantly, as if from the outside. «Where am I?! – Thoughts were heavily rolling in his head. – Where am I at this time?!»
