The Duelist 6, page 15
“What-- why is that a question?” I huffed. “Are you saying you don’t want to meet dazzling Me? I’m offended, especially because we’re good friends.”
“We are?” His head snapped up from where he was looking down at the ground.
“Yes.” I balked when I felt like I might be giving too much away, but then again, what did I know? A big part of me knew I was basing things on the little science had to say on the subject of time travel.
The rest I might have just been filling in the blanks with movies and pop culture.
The young ram-lord seemed to understand my shortness came from a lack of knowledge in this situation and not because I was just being rude.
“I know you cannot say certain things, but can you stay?” he blurted out. “Just for a little while. I’m--”
The tortured young man bit off the end of his sentence and clenched his jaw.
“Sit,” I said as I came to a decision. Really, I should be getting back to my body, but seeing the dark hollows of his eyes made me pause once again. “Come on, sit with me, I think I know what you need.”
Young Gav lowered himself stiffly to the ground and copied my cross-legged posture.
When he was sitting across from me with his expectant yet haggard expression, I was reminded about how not too long ago, our roles were reversed.
“How have your dreams been, Gavlain?” I asked the same way he asked me when he could read the inner turmoil all over my face.
“Why… Why would you ask me that?” he wondered in a wrought voice and then rubbed his weary eyes with his fingers.
I froze for a millisecond when he repeated my line of this future-- past-- conversation almost verbatim, and something in the back of my mind itched and scratched.
A glitch in the Matrix was always important to pay attention to, and I knew my decision to stay with this much more troubled Mec was the right one.
“How old are you?” I suddenly asked.
This question was just irrelevant enough to snap him out of his depressive spiral, and he lowered his hand. “I am about to come into my twenty-seventh season.”
So, he was only a few years older than me at this time. If I did the math correctly, I gathered this was right around the time Mec’s mother was pregnant with Amaya. This was also the time when his mother went insane from the grief of losing her husband to the Passing Rite. Based on the Duelist Stone around his neck, I could tell the Rite had already been enacted, but I wasn’t sure if his mother had done the tragic thing of trying to drown herself in the ocean yet.
I knew this was one of those Don’t Spill the Future Beans scenarios deep in my gut, so I eased my mind away from that line of questioning.
“You are going to have to be stronger than this,” I told him instead, but I made sure to keep my tone free of judgment and make it sound like fact. Because that was what it was in the end. “So many people are going to need you.”
“Like you?” the young lord asked as he tilted his head.
My thoughts were actually drifting toward the oryx-woman he would soon have to take care of if he wasn’t doing so already. But then his question made me nod my head.
“Yeah,” I said with a grin. “You sort of become a mentor to me. But there are a great many others you help during your Lordship on Nata.”
“So far, I’ve caused nothing but pain,” he scoffed bitterly. “I thought this would be the honorable thing. A ‘seppuku’ to somehow make up for--”
“You were just being a good son,” I interrupted, and his bronze eyes flashed to mine.
“I’m not sure I can get used to this,” the horned man said with a wry smile.
“Imagine how it is for me,” I mockingly grumbled.
“So… what do we do now?” Young Gav asked after an odd but not unpleasant beat went by.
“I don’t really know,” I said with a shrug.
“Can I ask you questions?” he ventured.
“Yes, although I’m not sure if I can answer all of them,” I said. “I can’t explain it, but there’s this odd feeling every time I might be influencing too much, and I don’t want that to happen.”
“Okay, time-traveler,” the ram-lord said, and his eyes lit up at the challenge of asking me the right questions. “Can I at least know your name?”
I thought about it for a second, but that weird gut clench instinct curdled through me. “Better not.”
“That’s highly unfair since you know mine,” he pouted but let the notion go. “I’m still Asher Lord when we meet?”
“Yeah.” I smiled and considered what I was about to say next. “You also have a daughter.”
Bronze eyes went wide after I said this, and a small smile tugged at Gav’s lips. “I do?”
“Yes, and she is a handful,” I chuckled when an image of the mischievous little deer-girl swam to the forefront of my mind. “But you’ve never loved someone as much as you love her.”
“I see…” That smile finally unfurled properly.
“Do you, though?” I ducked my head a little and caught his eye again so he would know I was serious. “Do you see what you have to look forward to?”
“Yes,” he sighed and rubbed his forehead in a gesture I was well familiar with, and I was reminded of another past conversation the two of us had.
“How is your meditation going?” I asked.
“I can’t settle my mind after my dreams, and it distresses me, if you couldn’t tell,” he joked weakly. “Do you know what the dreams mean?”
“All I can tell you is that it is different for everybody,” I parroted. “It depends on what you think Aventoll is trying to tell you. Even then, some people never figure it out.”
“Great,” he huffed, and again the world aligned in some backwards parallel way I could only describe as… Resonance.
“It is great,” I said solemnly, and my serious tone seemed to catch the young ram-lord off-guard because he grew still. And then, just like my mentor did for me, I reached my hand out and placed it on top of his head for a moment. “Not everyone is so lucky to be able to hear Aventoll’s voice. A lot of people with Traveler blood can hear, but not everyone can understand. It’s a blessing.”
I removed my hand after this odd benediction and returned to resting my wrists against my knees.
Young Gav stared at me with his mouth slack.
“My grandfather would do the same thing,” he said. “Are you sure you’re not him in some strange form?”
“No, definitely not,” I laughed. “That would be all kinds of weird, and I would not be handling that as well as I am now, trust me.”
The other man laughed back and shook his head. His hair wasn’t the same long shaggy mess it usually was, but it was still long enough to cover his eyes when he lowered his head once more.
“Hey,” I said. “Meditate with me.”
“It might take a while,” he grumbled. “I’ve only just begun my Awakening, and I often get trapped here.”
“Don’t worry about it, I’ll help,” I dismissed. “Just close your eyes and listen to my voice.”
Young Gav looked at me with a skeptical expression, but he sighed and did as I instructed. “Alright.”
“Picture yourself standing on the beach, and the Ocean Mercedes is lapping at your feet. Each time the waves go out, you’ll exhale, and every time they come back in, you will inhale. In, and out. Breathe with me.”
The ram-lord copied my breaths, and little by little I could see him settle into that stillness I remembered from my first time navigating meditation.
“Mm,” he hummed drowsily through his nose as his smooth chin slowly sank toward his chest.
“Now, picture yourself standing on the shore, and every time you exhale with the waves, you sink a little further into the sand.” I lowered my voice to match the peaceful imagery I was trying to inspire. “Don’t forget to breathe. In, and out. The sand is up to your knees, now. In, and out. Up to your waist and getting higher with each breath. In… and out.”
The Resonance lapped at the air between us like the shimmer of a heat wave, but only I could see it because my eyes were the only ones open.
A feeling of completion flowed into me like everything had come full-circle, and instead of tearing apart how the weirdness of the time loop worked, I let it go and watched the young ram-lord fade away as his meditation successfully carried him out of the Dark Realm.
“See ya, Big Guy,” I chuckled to myself, and then I caught the tail-end of the peaceful atmosphere as it trailed by me like a kite string.
It was easy to finally fall into the lull I was familiar with, and for the first time in a long time, I was able to meditate truly and fully.
It was wonderful.
Glorious, even.
But after a while, it became apparent there was only one problem: I was still in the Dark Realm, and no amount of meditating seemed to change that.
Mercedes, be.
Chapter 13
I tore my eyes open after the fifth attempt to meditate back to my body didn’t work, and I was still in the clearing with the stone altar where I’d last seen Young Mec.
“What gives!” I yelled up at the uncaring sky. “I’d really like to get out of here now!”
I huffed when I predictably got no answer and then stood up.
There must have been something I was missing about this, and I only needed to think about things logically.
What did I know?
I could leave the Dark Realm by willing yourself back, or if I had a cool son with Dark Realm superpowers with me.
The thought of calling for Rylan again entered my mind, but when I recalled how washed-out and transparent he looked even in his canterfly form, I still held off.
There had to be a way back. Aventoll wouldn’t give me this new power and then strand me here.
Would she?
No. It was something obvious, I knew it was… maybe if I retraced my steps?
It was a start, and I headed back into the forest between the circular clearings until I came across the tar pit and the abyss. The tree where I’d hidden the stag-beetle blade was still there, and so was the blade itself when I peered inside the hollow.
Before I’d heard Mec’s distressed muttering, I’d planned on plunking down right next to the tree in order to meditate, but now something stopped me.
This clearing, like the last one I was in, was tied to a very specific time that was clearly not the time I was currently from. If that was the case, maybe my current timeline was connected to the clearing I’d started out in.
I felt like this idea was the most solid given the limited knowledge I had on all things Timey-Wimey.
From there, it was just a process of retracing the destruction the stag-beetle left behind to get back to the clearing where Mozz and I first started out.
“Here goes nothing,” I said as I sat back down and bullied my way into another meditation session…
Only to rise through the depths of my unconsciousness like a submersible heedless of how fast it was going until I was practically ejected from the murky sea of the Dark Realm.
“Oh, Goddess, he’s alive!” someone-- Thas, maybe-- exclaimed when I groaned.
Something heavy was on my chest and leaving a damp patch over my sternum, but when I twitched, the pressure lifted with a gasp.
“Alex?” Zoie was by my head, and when I finally opened my eyes, her upside-down visage was the first thing I saw.
“Hello, gorgeous,” I croaked out in a rusty voice.
“Give him some water,” Sskern said like a proper mother hen, and seeing him fuss was amusing.
“I’m fine, Sskern, really,” I said as I took the water skein he practically shoved into my hands, but the raptor-man wouldn’t unpin me from his fierce gaze until I took a sip of the water.
And then, before I knew it, I was guzzling nearly the whole thing.
The raptor-man was temporarily appeased, but then he turned his ire onto the young blue-haired girl, who was still dabbing at her eyes and sniffling pitifully.
“You!” the Regent snapped. “You are incredibly lucky my friend was not harmed by whatever insolent stunt you pulled, witch.”
“I’m-- I’m sorry,” she said, and more tears cascaded down her light-green cheeks as she turned to me. “When I got back, I tried my hardest to undo what I did.”
“What did you try to do?” I asked with a curious tilt of my head.
“There were tears inside your mind,” the Terran girl attempted to explain, even though her frown told me how inadequate she found her words to be. “I think that’s how I managed to fall into the Dark Realm with you. So, I tried to go in and pull you out through the holes, but instead of you coming out, it’s like… the tears turned themselves inside out, and they sealed me out again. But I really did try to come back for you.”
I eyed the troublemaker with a shrewd look. “Now, why would you ever do such a thing as that?”
“You saved me when I did something horrible to you,” she murmured as Captain Tharfin’s large hand came to rest on one of her thin shoulders.
“Mozzy,” he said in his deep voice and waited until she looked up at him. “What you’ve been doing is not okay. You’ve put several people at risk. How long have you been back after you vowed to desert us?”
“I never left,” she confessed and returned her gaze to the ground. “And I’m terribly sorry.”
“I know you are, but that still doesn’t make up for the destruction you’ve wrought on our people,” Tharfin said. “You need to head back to our lodge, young lady, and we will discuss your punishment later.”
“Yes, Uncle,” she whispered and sent me one more regretful look before she left to do what the captain said.
After she departed with Thas, the dome-headed man turned back to me.
“Ambassador, are you truly well?” he asked with a concerned frown marring his brow.
I took stock of myself before answering right away.
In reality, I felt fit enough to run five miles without breaking a sweat if I wanted to. The overload of meditation did me well, and as annoying as it was at the time, at least the failed attempts at trying to zap myself back to my body didn’t go to waste.
“I feel fantastic,” I answered, and then I climbed to my feet so I could do a three-sixty. “See? Perfectly intact. And also, I’m super clear-headed, and I need to have a meeting with you and your top able-bodied men, like, hasta pronto. When will you be ready?”
“The men you see before you are my trusted sergeants,” Tharfin said as he straightened his spine. “We can be ready for you in the Miner’s Mess immediately when we get back to the town square.”
“Excellent,” I said, and then I did a double-take at the smoldering remains of what used to be the grain silo. “Was anything salvageable from that?”
“It doesn’t appear so,” he sighed and pursed his lips together.
“No worries,” I dismissed.
Tharfin nodded and then ordered the men milling around to finish up their work with the burned storage bin.
“Alex, are you sure you are well?” Zoie finally got a chance to ask as we joined some of the other townsfolk on our way back to the square.
“I really am okay, kitten,” I said. “I think I just realized how much we need to get out of here.”
“Alex?” Amaya chimed, and she finally came up to me now that the crowd had dispersed. The oryx-woman wrung her hands together and shifted on her feet, and I realized she’d probably been wanting to do this ever since I collapsed.
“C’mere.” I gestured. “Come check me out and make sure I’m okay.”
Amaya hurried up to me as if she’d been trying to contain the urge to sprint up to me and do just that the second I woke up. Her warm palms cupped my face, and her forehead pressed into mine as she sighed in relief.
I closed my eyes and let her soothing Touch wash over me, and I couldn’t help but turn into her caress as if it had been ages since I’d last felt it.
Which, in reality, was a little bit true. It had been ages.
It seemed as if my time in the Dark Realm passed differently because what seemed like hours and hours for me was apparently only a few minutes, topside. I knew there was some temporal displacement in the Dark Realm, and meditation tended to throw off my internal clock, but this felt a bit more significant.
I made sure to mentally dog-ear that little detail for any time I experienced the urge to travel through the In-Between.
Which was hopefully not very often, thankyouverymuch.
“Mozz did what she said,” came Amaya’s assessment as she lowered her hands back to her sides and stepped back. “There is something like a scar over the wound I’m not sure will ever go away, but it is no longer festering. Maybe once Shay returns to us, she might be able to lend her healing touch.”
Shay.
Oh, my heart stung, and I felt like my body was missing a limb.
“That will be a most welcome reunion,” Zoie said with the same amount of fervor I felt.
“All the more reason why I think it is time we left Lower Terr,” I added, and then the three of us made our way to the Miner’s Mess Hall arm in arm as we chatted idly.
The door closed behind us with an unexpected boom, and whatever non-essential thing I happened to be in the middle of trying to tell Zoie was forgotten at the dead silence that followed.
The eyes of Sskern, Tharfin, and about twenty to thirty men stared at us when we walked in, and I cleared my throat as I scanned the faces in the crowd.
About a half dozen men were familiar to me, since they were the ones I made it back from the hunting trip with. They were a loyal group, but the camaraderie was never with me or Regent Sskern. We were very much treated as Outsiders, or completely ignored.
All cordially, of course.
But the atmosphere wasn’t exactly easy or uneasy.
Now, however, the intense looks sent my way seemed like they were on a spectrum anywhere from Vaguely Curious all the way to Malicious Intent.
“Now that the Ambassador is here, maybe he can answer for himself.” A lizard-man with striking black and yellow stripes on his skin stood up from one of the long tables.
