by Jared Stone
“Get off me!” Lucian heard Blake’s voice shout from behind him. Turning, Lucian could see through his swaying vision his roommate pulling in vain at another vine which had wrapped itself around his left foot. Knowing he had to help, Lucian started moving in that direction.
“Hold on…, I’ll help you,” Lucian announced with as much fervor as he could muster, stopping beside Blake. He closed his eyes and began to empty his mind. As thoughts started to dissipate, Lucian felt his consciousness slipping not into the open connected-ness of enlightenment, but rather into the closed separateness of sleep. He snapped his eyes open and shook his head back and forth again. Closing his eyes once more, he attempted to empty his mind.
“Dude, they’re on you now, too!” Blake’s voice cut into Lucian’s mind. Cracking his lids open with great difficulty, he looked down and saw what appeared to be a green serpent making its way up his calf.
“I…,” Lucian started to mumble.
Before he could finish formulating his thoughts, the tunnel into which his vision had crept exploded with a searing red light. This jolted Lucian awake enough again to get a bearing on his surroundings. He saw the vines which had previously been entombing Blake and him shoot back across the border of the path, but other ones had already begun slithering their way toward them in relentless pursuit.
“Wake up!” Lucian heard a voice shout. He then felt the very abrupt sting of reality as something slapped him across the face.
“We have to move!” Schuntz commanded sternly, slapping Blake across the face as well.
“Heyyy!” Blake exclaimed, reaching up to rub his cheek.
“We must continue to move forward,” the professor repeated, yanking the boys along behind him as he struggled to pull not only his own weight but theirs as well.
“But, Schuntz,” Lucian said, feeling himself already tumbling into a delusional daze yet again, “I wanna rest. So tired….”
“No, Mr. Aarden,” Schuntz countered. “You do not wish to die here. The very meaning of Sloth is a surrender to lethargy and apathy. To counter this, you must bring to mind something to fight for. Something to live for.”
Lucian was confused by what the professor meant. Schuntz continued to tug them along.
“Tell me what you are fighting for, boys!” Schuntz commanded again. “Yell out whatever it is you wish to live for!”
“Mom!” Lucian heard Blake shout out suddenly. “I gotta get back for my mom!”
“Good!” Schuntz called out. “Keep her in your mind. Fight for your mother!”
“My parents!” Lucian shouted. As he did so, images of his mom and dad floated into his consciousness. Then another image appeared as well.
“And Gus!” Lucian shouted, imagining the smiling human face of his friend who had just recently made it back to him from across the divide of death.
He then glanced down at his clenched fist. Wrapped around his wrist were the prayer beads that caused yet another face to also arise in his mind.
“And Sam!” Lucian shouted, picturing the smiling countenance of his first real love. He still didn’t know exactly what he and Sam had together, but he was certain of one thing: it was worth fighting for.
“Good!” Lucian heard Schuntz shout as he let go of his grip on the boy’s jacket. “Then fight for them, dammit!”
Lucian felt a new determination flood over him. As if he had just chugged an entire pot of coffee, a fresh wave of energy surged through him, and the weights which had previously seemed to cover his entire body had lightened, even if only slightly. He kept the image of his family, Gus, and especially Sam in his mind’s eye as he powered forward.
Do it for Sam, Lucian commanded in his own head. You’ve gotta get back there for Sam.
Lucian continued surging forward, just one foot after another, driven by an unquenchable desire to overcome and return to those he loved. From off to his left he saw a green vine slither across his path.
“HRAH!” Lucian screamed, blasting the fiend away with a ball of qi before he even realized he had generated it. The plant shot backwards out of his way, and Lucian continued to storm forward, just daring anything else to try and stop him.
From out of the corner of his eye, Lucian saw Blake marching forward with such speed and determination that he would soon leave Lucian in the dust. Fearing that he would be left behind, Lucian picked up his pace even more, eyes fixated ahead. As they came to the top of the next hill, Lucian beheld the most beautiful sight he had ever seen: the swirling emerald vortex of the next portal.
“We have made it, boys!” Schuntz announced. Upon reaching the base of the portal, the professor turned around to face them. “Hurry!”
Lucian and Blake both powered forward with all their might, using what seemed like the very last of the life left in their bodies to cross the finish line. Blake reached the portal before Lucian and tumbled through head-first. As soon as Lucian reached it as well, he collapsed to his knees on the ground.
“Professor…,” Lucian began. “You go….”
Schuntz stood there, leaning against the arch of the portal. He summoned another ball of red qi in his palm and fired it off against a vine which was slithering toward Lucian. “No, Mr. Aarden,” he said, almost completely out of breath. “You go. I will follow after you.”
Lucian looked up into the deeply wrinkled face of the terminally stubborn professor with amazement and admiration. Schuntz continued to stare unwaveringly at the unceasing onslaught of hungry vines.
“Professor, what are you fighting for?” Lucian asked.
Schuntz shot a quick glance down at his student that held within it both deep sadness and unbridled willpower. “Mr. Aarden…,” he began, “I have been fighting my whole life. It is all that I know….”
Following this, Schuntz fired another blast of red qi. “Now, go!” he commanded without room for debate.
Lucian mustered up his last amount of strength to crawl on his hands and knees into the portal to Envy, knowing better than to hope there would be much of an improvement in conditions on the other side.
15 - Envy
???
Lucian came through the other side of the gate still on his hands and knees. As each hand hit the ground, he felt scorching hot sand between his fingertips, flowing up and over each digit with a fine, powdery consistency. He looked up ahead of him and saw a vast expanse of dunes cascading in sloped, repeating patterns off into the distance. Though the sky was dark as night, marbled with red streaks as if it was a river of flowing magma, Lucian found that he was no longer even remotely fatigued, as he had been just moments before. He did, however, feel the dry heat flow over him like an oppressive wave that made it almost uncomfortable to breathe. As he stood up and swiped his hands against one another to brush away the tiny white particles, he saw that Schuntz was already standing there before him, gazing out over the vast, arid landscape. With a puzzled look, Lucian began to trudge through the sand toward him.
“Professor?” Lucian asked warily, fearing some sort of test or trap. “How’d you get over here already? Where’s Blake?”
The professor turned around. His eyes were wide behind the thick lenses of his glasses.
“Holy crap…,” Schuntz said.
Before Lucian could even respond, he heard some-one come through the portal behind him. Whipping around, he saw the blonde boy who had just stumbled through pause for a moment, then look up. As his teal eyes made contact with Lucian’s own, Lucian found himself locking his gaze with… himself.
“What the heck?” Lucian whispered.
“Lucian, what’s going on??” Schuntz asked of the boy who had just come through the gate.
Lucian turned around. “I’m Lucian!” he insisted to the professor.
The professor stared at him. “There’s no way you’re Lucian!” he exclaimed. “I don’t know what the Hell you are, but you’re not Lucian!”
“And it would appear that you are not who you seem either,” the Lucian look-alike said f
rom next to the portal. Lucian turned back to examine him.
“And who are you?” Lucian inquired.
“I am Professor Schuntz, Mr. Valenti,” the blonde boy clarified.
“Hey! I’m ‘Mr. Valenti!’” the old man insisted.
“Ah,” the blonde boy said thoughtfully, nodding his head. “I see.” He then turned to Lucian. “And I presume, then, that you are Mr. Aarden?”
“Of course I am!” Lucian scoffed, growing angrier as each moment passed in this real-life parody of a stand-up sketch. “What’s going on??”
“Dude, you’re, like, in my body or something…,” the professor behind Lucian stated.
Lucian narrowed his eyes in critical disbelief at the man, but then looked down. The hands he beheld before him were not his own. Each finger was thick and meaty, and the top of his wrists were covered in dark hairs. The jacket which cloaked his muscular forearms and biceps was the black ski jacket that Blake had been wearing, and the impressive pecs which protruded out beneath Lucian’s field of vision were certainly not his own. Shocked, he shot his gaze over to the professor.
“Blake??” he asked.
The professor just nodded his head. “Yeah, man,” he said.
“It would appear that we have all somehow shifted physical forms,” Schuntz said from Lucian’s body, coming over to stand next two the two bewildered boys.
“But… w-what…?” Lucian stammered, completely unprepared for a twist of this magnitude.
Schuntz nodded Lucian’s head. “I fear that this is somehow connected to this challenge, Mr. Aarden,” he stated seriously. “Some sort of ‘walk a mile in another’s shoes’ nonsense, I am sure.” It was weird for Lucian to hear this in his own voice, and he was shamefully reminded of how nasally and obnoxious it sounded to others when compared to what he heard in his own head.
“Dude, this is seriously not cool!” Blake said in Schuntz’s deep, professorial tones. “I am ancient! I hurt, like… everywhere!”
Schuntz let out a laugh. “Welcome to my life, son,” he stated with an impish smile. “Youth is certainly wasted on you foolish youngsters.” With this, he held Lucian’s thin, toned arms out in front of him, moving the nimble fingers around in deep appreciation of his newfound virility.
“Well, how are we gonna fix this?” Lucian snapped, irritated that no one had yet started in on finding a solution. “I don’t wanna be stuck in Blake’s body forever!”
Blake narrowed Schuntz’s scrutinizing eyes. “Hey! What’s wrong with my body?” he asked defensively. “My body is pretty great, thank you very much! At least you got the super strength now! All I got was wrinkles and arthritis!”
Lucian hadn’t thought about it until now, but Blake actually had a point. He was now in possession of all the strength and power he had been so jealous of over the past few months. It would be kind of nice to try it out for a while, even if it wasn’t permanent.
“I will have you know, Mr. Valenti, that my body, though advanced in years, still houses a substantial amount of energy!” Schuntz countered, pointing a young finger at the old man. “If you would just concentrate for a moment instead of running your mouth, you would see how easy it is to generate my qi.”
Blake looked disgruntled for a moment, scrunching up his elderly face in obvious disapproval. He then begrudgingly held out his withered hand and focused his gaze on it. Within seconds, his palm was glowing bright red as a sphere of energy pulsated within it.
“Wow!” he exclaimed, staring at the brilliant ball in awe. “That was so easy! I’ve never had that much luck generating my energy in my body!”
Schuntz flashed a bright smile. “That is what many years of training and perseverance will afford you, Mr. Valenti,” he stated proudly. “It is as if my body instinctively knows by now how to call upon the energy stored within it. If you just concentrate and hone your focus….”
With this, Schuntz held out Lucian’s hand. Staring into the boy’s palm, he squinted as he attempted to will the energy to appear. Yet, there was nothing.
“That’s not exactly how it works for me, professor,” Lucian interjected, seeing the man struggling. “I can’t just force the energy to form. I have to empty my mind of all thoughts. It’s only when I let go of trying to force it to happen that it ever actually works.”
Schuntz glared at him, and Lucian was taken aback by how clearly one could see irritation in his face. “I have never relied upon meditation, Mr. Aarden,” Schuntz insisted. “From my earliest memories, I have always been able to generate bursts of energy by simply focusing my mind. It should not be any more complicated than that.”
Lucian shrugged. “That’s just how it works for me, I guess,” he said. “Maybe we just all have different ways of generating our qi.”
Lucian then closed his eyes and focused on emptying his mind. As he released the thoughts which tumbled about in his head, he felt the peaceful emptiness which lay behind them flooding in. Yet, suddenly, he felt something flash in his mind’s eye like a firework made of darkness. Instead of emptiness, what lay crouching behind his consciousness somehow felt much more sinister, pushing aside Lucian’s own mind and squeezing into the gap that was left in its wake. As this was happening, images flew across Lucian’s perception. He felt as though he was running through a darkened wood, and he could smell burning and hear screaming from behind him. Everything was confusing and jumbled. He tried to open his eyes again, but he found that he couldn’t. He felt himself picking up a knife and running it across some poor creature’s throat, experiencing the sickening sensation of steaming blood pouring out over his fist. Lucian screamed in terror, eventually gaining enough awareness again to regain control of himself. He opened his eyes and found that he was kneeling in the sand, panting and sweating profusely. Looking down at his arm, he found that, instead of crimson blood, it was coated in a thick sleeve of pulsating dark energy. This demonic manifestation twisted and writhed about, as if an evil octopus had somehow attached itself to his limb.
“Dude, are you okay?” Schuntz said from his right, stooping over and laying his hand upon Lucian’s shoulder. It took Lucian a moment to recall that this was actually Blake.
“Yeah…, uhhhh, I’m fine,” he mumbled, watching as the mass of demonic energy twirled back up his forearm and under his skin. “I just had something weird going on in my mind or something.”
Blake nodded. “Yeah, now you know what I dream about, man,” he said, patting Lucian on the back supportively. Lucian was silent as he pushed himself up from the ground, a little ashamed that he had never given much consideration to what Blake had had to deal with every day since his possession.
“We should go now,” Schuntz cut in, surveying their surroundings carefully. “For, whatever this challenge might be, I do not anticipate that our hesitation will benefit us at all.”
Lucian nodded. “Yeah, let’s,” he agreed, hoping to put whatever had just transpired in his – or, more accurately, Blake’s – brain aside and focus instead on finding the next portal.
Schuntz immediately headed off away from the gate behind them into the vast desert expanse. Lucian and Blake followed after him. Schuntz stayed out in front of their caravan, practically jogging up and down the dunes, reveling in the joy of an adolescent body. Lucian stayed close behind him most of the way, shocked at how effortlessly he was able to scale the steep sides of mountainous masses of sand with the abnormally powerful leg muscles at his disposal. After a while, though, he was completely drenched with sweat again, and he had to remove the black ski jacket and tie it around his waist. Blake moved more slowly than the other two, lagging quite a ways behind with suit coat in hand.
“Yo, hold up, will ya!?” Blake called out sternly with Professor Schuntz’s harsh voice. He was stumbling through the sand, seemingly having trouble standing up at all, never mind walking. “You guys gotta slow it down! I’m just so freakin’ OLD!”
Schuntz turned around. “I do not recall you being so willing to moderate your pace
for me in our previous challenges, Mr. Valenti,” he said bitingly.
Blake stopped walking and stooped over, resting his hands on his knees. “Dude…,” he panted. “If I had known…. I mean, how do you even go on living in this thing? I feel like I’m falling apart over here! I woulda just given up by now!”
Schuntz sighed. “You would be surprised what one may learn to tolerate when the transition is slow and incremental, Mr. Valenti,” he said in a wearied tone.
“Would you guys just stop complaining!?” Lucian exclaimed, fed up with all the whining around him. “The faster you move, Blake, the faster we can just be done with all of this!”
“Duuude!” Blake shouted, lifting up his arms in exasperation. “You’d say the same thing if you were stuck in this corpse instead of me!”
Schuntz narrowed his eyes at this, but Lucian didn’t have the patience to even engage. “Come on…,” Lucian gruffly mumbled as he trudged up the next dune and left Schuntz and Blake behind to catch up.
They crossed over two more towering mounds of sand in much the same fashion as the prior ones, without any incident other than hearing Blake moan and groan with each creaking bend of his knees. Lucian looked up at the flaming sky as he hiked, wiping the beads of sweat from his brow and beginning to wonder what else might be in store for them. Sure, switching bodies was an inconvenience; but, when compared to the previous challenges, a long walk through the desert seemed too lenient. As Lucian came to the crest of the next sandy hill, he caught something out of the corner of his eye.
“What’s that down there?” Lucian asked, pointing at something glinting faintly with the dull red light cast from the sky. Schuntz came to stand by his side and look down as well, while Blake continued to struggle to ascend the steep incline.
“I am not sure,” Schuntz said, squinting his eyes to get better focus with his new, imperfect eyesight. Watching him, Lucian wondered if he really looked as awkward when he did the same. “It appears to be a circular disk of some kind.”
