The Beginning After The End 08

by Turtle Me

  I forced the memory away before she was completely gone, as if by doing so I could keep it from already having happened, and hoped that the Shadow Claw didn’t take offense from my unintended memory. All was blank and silent once again.

  While I waited for a reply, I grew anxious wondering how Regis and Caera were doing. While my wolven companion might be able to manage, Caera definitely didn’t have any training in mental communication. If one of the Shadow Claws decided to communicate with her, our plans could be run to the ground.

  Fortunately, the connection broke without issue and the world came whirling back into existence around me. Three Steps unfolded from her seated position, using her thick tail to push her to her feet. She then gestured for us to stand as well.

  I glanced behind me. Caera and Regis hadn’t moved, though they were both watching me nervously.

  ‘Where the hell have you been?’ Regis asked, touching my mind. ‘You just sort of… went away for awhile when that thing touched you. I couldn’t sense your mind at all.’

  I stood and offered my hand to Caera, but she hopped to her feet without my aid. Turning to Regis instead, I said only, “We made some progress.”

  Three Steps announced something to the rest of the Shadow Claw clan, sending a ripple through the twenty some creatures. Some bowed respectfully. Several quickly suppressed looks of surprise, but Left Tooth and two others shook their heads in disbelief and looked as though they might argue.

  Before they could, however, Sleeps-in-Snow knocked the end of his stick on the frozen ground and spoke briefly. Whatever was said, it seemed to quell any rising tension, at least for the moment.

  The half-circle of Shadow Claws opened, allowing Three Steps to walk through. She gestured for me to follow, which I did. I watched Left Tooth from the corner of my eye as we passed through the line of cat people, most of whom stood no taller than my shoulder, but he remained motionless.

  Three Steps led us through the town to a humble home next to the pool of water, then held the door open and waved for us to enter, which we did.

  The interior was simple, just like at the Spear Beaks’ and Four Fists’ villages. A woven grass rug covered much of the floor, while a round bed of mounded yellow grass was pressed against the far wall. A white-feathered headdress hung just inside the door, and a short stack of slate plates sat next to the bed. Like the picture we’d found on the slain Shadow Claw, the top plate was etched, though I couldn’t quite make out the image.

  Space is a little tight in here, I thought to my companion. Why don’t you remain on standby while you recharge?

  “Meal time,” the shadow wolf said, licking his muzzle before jumping into me and disappearing into my body.

  Three Steps watched this carefully, her bright eyes widening when Regis vanished. Then the old Shadow Claw leaned forward, peering closely at my chest, and her eyes went even wider. She said something in her own language, stopped, and shook her head. She pointed where Regis had been, then pointed at my chest.

  I nodded.

  Three Steps let out a sharp, yeowling laugh, surprising both me and Caera. She was grinning wildly, though I couldn’t be sure what she found so entertaining. Seeing my look of confusion, she gestured to my hands, which I held out, then pressed her soft paws into them again.

  I wasn’t taken away from the world this time, though I still received a vision of Three Steps’ memory. Six Shadow Claws were standing in the circular training area on the other side of the village. I was explaining something.

  We were discussing the nature of the Creators’ power, how each tribe had been gifted with unique abilities that suited their needs. I was explaining how they should never stop climbing the mountain of knowledge because it had no peak. Just because they had never seen a thing done, did not mean it couldn’t be done.

  After the lecture, they began to practice with their claws and their teleportation ability. I corrected and encouraged them, provided guidance and feedback, and through the memory I began to understand something of how they used aether.

  To the Shadow Claws, calling on aether was as natural as using their lungs to breathe or their hearts to pump blood. It was likely the djinn—their Creators, I assumed—had given them these abilities, much like the chimera had unknowingly manipulated aether to move, fight, and even rebuild themselves.

  The speed with which they teleported was impressive. They didn’t need to stop and look for the correct path like I did, something that hindered my ability to use God Step in combat.

  The vision ended and Three Steps pulled her hands back, but I had an idea. I moved my upturned palms toward her, trying to communicate that I wanted to connect again. She seemed to take my meaning, and touched my hands.

  I sent her snippets of memory throughout my journey through the Relictombs. In each one, I was practicing some form of aether art, trying to learn to control my new abilities, to hone them and get better at using them.

  It took several minutes, but when I broke the connection I could feel the hunger for knowledge emanating from Three Steps. Our hands had barely parted before she pressed them back together and another memory filled my mind.

  I was sitting next to Sleeps-in-Snow, somewhere in the craggy peaks above the village. We had been speaking, dancing around a subject I wanted to broach, but was nervous to do so.

  Sleeps-in-Snow wasn’t quite as old as he had been when I’d seen him only minutes ago. He hadn’t yet taken to using the walking stick. “What is this thought I see hiding behind your eyes, Three Steps?” he asked me, his own stormy purple eyes burrowing into mine.

  “What is our purpose, Sleeps-in-Snow?”

  The old Shadow Claw watched me closely for a few long moments before answering. “What is the purpose of the mountain? Or the snow? Or the fish in the stream?”

  I had expected a response like this. “The mountain is our home, the snow our protection—and the fish fills our bellies when we grow hungry.”

  “This is how these things touch our lives, yes, Three Steps, but is it their purpose?” Sleeps-in-Snow kept his face carefully blank, but there was something teasing in his tone.

  I pressed my paw into a blank snowdrift, then pulled it carefully out, leaving behind a perfect imprint. “They do not themselves have an inherent purpose. It is up to us to decide their purpose.”

  Sleeps-in-Snow raised a brow as he replied in a challenging tone. “And who are you to decide such a thing? Are you the master of the mountain and the snow to tell them what their purpose should be?”

  I shook my head, realizing I had fallen into his trap. “No, I am not the master of the mountain or the snow.”

  Relaxing into an understanding smile, Sleeps-in-Snow wrapped his tail around my shoulder. “Minds both clearer and deeper than ours have pondered the question of our purpose. Only by climbing the mountain of wisdom may we see more of what lies around us.”

  “And if we never climb high enough to find the answers we seek?”

  Sleeps-in-Snow stretched and yawned, and the cracking of his old joints echoed down the cliffside. “Then hope that those you teach climb higher than you, when it is their turn.”

  My eyelids fluttered open as the vision ended. I didn’t even realize I had closed my eyes, but this memory had felt much more intense than the others. I couldn’t help the sense that I’d been shown something very private.

  Three Steps was watching my face closely, though how well she could read my features, I had no idea. What I did know was that she was hungry for knowledge, and it was possible she had as much to teach me about aether as I could teach her.

  “Grey?” Caera said softly from beside me, making me jump. I’d nearly forgotten she was there. “Not to interrupt, but what’s the plan? Are we guests here? Are we prisoners?”

  I locked eyes with Three Steps before turning back to her. “We’re guests.”

  The Alacryan noble let out a sigh, her horns practically sagging in relief. “What about the
portal piece… do you think they’re willing to give it to us?”

  “I haven’t asked yet,” I replied. “For now, I think we should stay here and wait out the storm.”

  “Is that really necessary?” Caera asked with a frown. “We’ve already spent so much time in this zone…”

  Her voice trailed off as I looked at her—truly looked at her. She had been holding strong without complaint, but Caera had definitely lost weight and her complexion wasn’t healthy. Her cheeks, splotched with dirt and blood, were sunken, and dark bags clung underneath her eyes from lack of proper sleep.

  She had been following me, someone who barely needed any food, water, or sleep to survive, and had done so without protest.

  She couldn’t complain, since she had been the one to lie and hide herself in order to follow after me. Despite who she was and what her blood implied, a small part of me felt bad.

  “Let’s get you some rest,” I said gently. “I’ll ask if we can wash up, and I’ll take watch while you sleep.”

  Caera nodded wordlessly, but a faint smile played across her lips.

  “Hang in there,” I added.

  We still needed to find the Ghost Bears and the ‘wild things’, then figure out how to get back to the Spear Beaks.

  But before all of that, I needed to stay here. I couldn’t just ignore the chance to learn from the Shadow Claws. Not just their ability to teleport short distances, but their ability to conjure their most deadly weapons completely out of aether.

  Perhaps I didn’t need to find a replacement for Dawn’s Ballad. I could just make one.

  318

  Shared Memories

  “Whew.” Caera dipped her head before walking in through the entrance of the straw hut. “This storm is getting stronger by the day.”

  Even as she spoke, the noise of the wind rushing through the craggy mountains protecting the Shadow Claw village drowned out almost all other sounds, including her voice. However, even with the doors open and the hut exposed to the cold air, the wind itself was barely a breeze by the time it reached the secluded village.

  “It seems like you’re enjoying yourself out there,” I said, almost jealous.

  Caera had grabbed a woven towel from a table near the entrance and began wiping away the sweat that ran down her neck and arms. “We’re stuck here. If I ever hope to catch up to you, I have to do my best to train as well.”

  I raised a brow. “Is that what that was? All I saw was you chasing after the little kittens.”

  The Alacryan noble frowned. “Says the one that’s had his behind firmly pasted to the ground these past three days.”

  “I’m not just sitting around,” I corrected. “I’m learning how to filter—ouch!”

  Rubbing my head, I picked up the wooden spoon that had been thrown at me from the other side of the woven home.

  Three Steps, who had been quietly stirring a stone pot, let out a sharp mewl before pointing to her feline eyes with her paw.

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. I was just replenishing my aether a bit,” I grumbled, knowing that she couldn’t understand me. Caera let out a chuckle.

  I let my gaze unfocus and put both Caera and Three Steps out of my mind before igniting God Step once again. The rune on my lower back grew warm as aether surged out from my core. I couldn’t help but grow annoyed, and slightly worried, by the shadowy presence clinging tightly around my aether core.

  Regis. It’s been three days now. Either answer me or stop hogging all of my aether.

  After waiting for a response for several more minutes, I gave up. Something had happened to Regis after arriving in the Shadow Claws’ village. He had been taking a nap—meditating—when all of a sudden his eyes bolted open and he shot into my body, refusing to come out.

  Since then, he’d been absorbing an unusual amount of aether, and I could feel his presence shifting back and forth from my core to my godrunes.

  At least with Regis eating up so much of my aether reserves, it’s allowing me more breaks in between training sessions with Three Steps, I thought somewhat grumpily.

  The past few days had been exhausting in a way that I never thought was possible with my asuran physique. After Three Steps had agreed to mentor me in the aether arts of her own kind, she started off by sharing her memories of her own tutoring by a younger Sleeps-in-Snow. They had often discussed the Shadow Claws’ aetheric abilities at length and in great detail, providing a very solid base for my own learning process.

  Through it, I had learned that Shadow Claws are born with the ability to see the aetheric passages that allowed one to travel across space instantly. However, for newborns, this ability was actually a curse. With so much information bombarding their undeveloped brains, some of the weaker-willed infants actually died.

  It was up to the parents and mentors to properly guide their newborns, to help them learn to first shut off their “mind’s eye” until they were old enough to start learning how to shadow step, which was their term for the aetheric teleportation technique they used.

  Most of the memories I’d been shown guided me through how the Shadow Claws honed their shadow step ability. Three Steps didn’t understand my godrune any more than I could fathom how she manipulated aether without runes, spellforms, or an aether core, but by learning the way they learned, I hoped to grow stronger—and quicker—in my use of God Step.

  Apparently, I wasn’t even at the level of a two-year-old Shadow Claw cub, because that was the age that they started learning how to filter out the countless paths of aetheric streams.

  Seeing it firsthand through the eyes of Three Steps as she filtered out the paths was both fascinating and humbling. There were only a dozen or so around her, which she always kept track of in order to be ready to shadow step at a moment’s notice.

  With over two lifetimes of experiences in different worlds, I considered myself fairly intelligent and sharp. However, compared to how the Shadow Claws constantly focused and kept track of the aetheric paths, even predicting how those paths would move based on their own movements was mind-boggling.

  My gaze remained focused on the boulder in the center of the pond just outside of Three Steps’ home. Hundreds of branching paths of violet intersected in the space around me, and while I had found the aetheric path leading to the boulder a long time ago, I had no intention of using God Step.

  I continued to take in my surroundings through my unfocused eyes, trying to filter out more and more of the aetheric paths that drowned my vision. It was like trying to flex a specific set of muscles somewhere between my eyes and brain in a subtle, yet precise, order.

  During these last few days of Three Steps showing me countless memories in hopes of expediting my training, I had learned how to contract my vision in order to filter out the aetheric routes that went past my chosen destination. Three Steps had been particularly excited about this breakthrough even though I wasn’t quite as satisfied.

  I trained God Step constantly, even while Three Steps and Caera slept, stopping only when I needed to replenish my aether reserves. I knew that my time here was limited, so it was crucial that I make the most of it.

  It was only when Caera appeared again in the corner of my eye that I realized I had gone through another night training my focus on the aetheric pathways.

  “How is your progress, Grey?” Caera asked, taking a seat on the ground beside me. She was dressed in a tight sleeveless shirt, giving her a much more casual appearance than I had grown used to. If it wasn’t for the gleaming pair of horns circling her head like a dark crown…

  I performed the mental equivalent of biting my tongue, not allowing myself to finish the thought before answering the Alacryan noble. “It’s going well. The fact that I barely need sleep certainly helps.”

  Caera hugged her legs and shivered from the cold. “You know, I used to really envy that particular ability. Perhaps even more so than your ridiculous regeneration ability.”

  I raised a brow. “O
h?”

  “I kept thinking to myself how much stronger I would be if I only needed a few hours of sleep a week in order to stay completely healthy, how much I could get done, and how useful it’d be both in and out of the Relictombs.” Caera rested her chin on her knees, her gaze far away. “But after being with you for this long, I’ve realized that it’s as much of a curse as it is a blessing.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  The Alacryan noble turned her head to me with a solemn smile. “You always look lonely or in pain during the night. It’s why you’re always training, right?”

  I stared at Caera, not knowing how to respond. My mind flitted to all of the times when memories of my family and friends in Dicathen ate at me, even when I was awake. But it was worse at night.

  “It’s not like that,” I lied. “There are things I have to do, and if I want to even hope to succeed, then I need to utilize every advantage I have.”

  “With how strong you are already, it sounds like you’re preparing yourself to fight the gods themselves,” Caera said with a thin laugh.

  Before I could answer, a stern mewl drew our attention behind us. Three Steps, who must have slept and awoken again while I was lost in training, was motioning for me to follow her before walking out the door.

  “Will you be okay by yourself?” I asked Caera, who was still sitting by the entrance.

  “You’re not the only one that has training to do,” she said with a grin.

  I smiled back this time, admiring her mental fortitude. She had been stuck with me in zones far more difficult and deadly than she had ventured through before. Yet, despite almost starving to death, nearly dying several times, and almost freezing to death on multiple occasions, she was still able to stay positive.

  Following after Three Steps, we made our way toward the rear end of the village, away from the curious gazes of the Shadow Claw villagers.

  Much of the storm had subsided overnight, allowing some of the Shadow Claws to go back out of the village. While it was still hard for me to tell the Shadow Claws apart from one another, one of them did stick out to me. It was Left Tooth.