The Duelist 3, page 17
Once the steam started to roll off the water in earnest, an explosion of horns, drums, and string-type instruments broadcasted the fact the water was now free to wade into.
A heartfelt cry circulated around the fountain as the spectators jumped and splashed into the water baring pitchers, clay jars, and anything they could use to scoop up the purifying stones.
My feet throbbed, and the stones started to flow faster until my toes were almost completely buried.
At first, the growing puddle of tithes freaked me out into thinking that was the amount of blood I was losing, but then I remembered it only takes one drop of blood to create one stone, so I relaxed.
“Oh, Alex, the water feels so wonderful,” Shay said as she followed the example of everyone around and submerged herself up to the neck as best as she could in the shallow water. “Zoie, come in!”
“I am content where I am,” my cat-wife said where she sat on the ledge and simply swirled her feet through the water.
“What does it feel like?” I asked Shay, who was now patting some of the water into her face with her bandaged hand as if it was the fountain of youth.
“There’s a cooling feeling long after the water has evaporated,” she answered and preened the golden feathers at her temples with a contented little sigh. “It is wonderful.”
“Dad!” Rylan called.
I turned as best as I could with the shield and watched my foster-son lead the rest of Team Ithaca toward me, and they were all laden with vases and jars of their own.
“Hey, bud,” I managed to say without breaking my concentration.
“Mr. Jenner told me you need to focus, so I won’t talk for long,” he babbled, and I smiled at him good-naturedly for him to continue. “I just wanted to tell you I have everything under control back at the campsite so you don’t have to worry about anything, and even Redburn’s camp is under control, too. I should probably go tell him that, but I don’t want to bother him.”
“Ahem,” Jenner said as he took a seat next to Zoie and began taking off his shoes. “Now, lad.”
“Oops, I’m talking too much, I’m sorry.” He smiled sheepishly. “I’ll just gather some stones, but I just wanted to tell you that. Oh, and also I’m proud of you, Dad.”
I smiled at my foster-son when he hugged me quickly around the waist, and I was able to hold the shield extra high because of it.
The rest of the waning afternoon passed by in some idyllic dream where I watched with a full heart as the members of my rag-tag family enjoyed themselves in the fountain like everyone else seemed to be doing.
Rylan, Arvid, and the raccoon-brothers made several trips back and forth to refill the pitchers with the tithes that would hopefully last until the Duelists were once again called upon to give their blood to the people.
The best part, though, was that Shay and Zoie stayed with me the whole time and helped me maintain my focus especially when my arms began to twinge with the beginnings of fatigue.
However, the night was soon approaching, and eventually, the spectators were made to leave the pool’s waters at the booming sound of Gatetown’s evening cannon.
The cannon was the signal that Nata Isle’s large gate was to be closed for the night, which effectively sealed the inhabitants inside the island’s walls.
“Hang in there, Asher Alex,” Mec intoned from beside me in a faraway voice. “When the sun officially sets, the Trials will begin.”
The odd enveloping energy suddenly added a weight to the burden above my head, and I breathed deep through my nose as my muscles trembled. It was almost as if there was a riptide threatening to drag me along the invisible rapids swirling around me.
I dug my throbbing heels in harder and attempted to focus on my task.
The feeling of cool hands danced on the backs of my heated shoulders. Two familiar voices spoke to me, but I was too deep within my pseudo-trance to really make out what they were saying. Still, I registered the voices had to have belonged to my wives based on the kisses I could feel bestowed on my face and lips.
I wanted to return the gesture, but an unnamed force began to grip me in its throes, and I was unable to even form words.
The shield grew heavier the darker the sky got, and I started to feel the ache in my forearms that was always the start of my troubles.
Whenever I practiced with the heavy-ass disc, I was only ever able to make it about three hours before the pain and exhaustion forced me to stop. I had already surpassed that point thanks to all the bark and tea I was jacked up on, but I knew it wouldn’t last forever.
Sure enough, when the moon finally began to rise and the heaviness of the shield began to increase, it became a struggle to keep my breathing calm.
It was as if the oppressiveness of the moonlight was wearing each of us down just as relentlessly as the erosion of the sea, and my legs shook as my shield dipped.
Then, when I thought I was at my limit, the added weight bearing down on me suddenly vanished.
However, I found myself feeling less relieved than I thought I would be when the surface of the water burst into flames all around me not even a second later.
Chapter 12
What.
The.
Fresh.
Fucking.
Hell.
A roaring inferno devoured the water in front of me, but despite my best efforts, I could not unglue the soles of my feet from the bottom of the fountain in order to jump back.
When I lifted my head so I could look around for help, I noticed I was suddenly transported to a different time and place.
Instead of standing in the flaming fountain at Gella Vane’s estate, I was suddenly standing naked in a very familiar clearing surrounded by an eerie blue glowing forest.
What did Rylan call this place again? The Dead Zone? The Dark Space?
Realm.
The Dark Realm.
Somehow, I had managed to fall into that liminal space between waking and dreaming my foster-son was so worried about.
I pressed my thumbnail into the cut Mec had made into my finger earlier when he was demonstrating the numbing effects of the kebbar.
“Ow!” I hissed and watched as a trickle of blood traced down to my knuckle.
I guess the Super Bark wouldn’t work in the Dark Realm, and I reminded myself to be careful.
Even though Rylan and I came up with our vegetable-based code word in case I landed myself here again, I didn’t tell him I never planned on using it. If this place was dangerous to my physical body, it was no doubt just as dangerous to Rylan’s, and taking that chance was just not an option.
But I also remembered this was the place where Aventoll spoke loudest to its Travelers, so I readied my stance and peered into the dimness.
“What are you trying to tell me?” I asked, and my voice fractured and split as if I was shouting inside a fishbowl.
Nothing answered, but I felt like I had the attention of whatever presence occupied the realm.
A sudden blast of heated air nearly knocked me off my feet, and I stumbled back a few steps to catch my balance.
When I opened my eyes again, the forest around me was engulfed in flames.
“Holy fuck!” I exclaimed and jumped back to the center of the clearing. The inferno roared and hissed as it consumed the tree line and drew closer.
The heat was incredible, and my skin felt like paper set too close to the fireplace, all tight and hot. I spun in a circle frantically and looked for a break in the ring of flames that I might break through and try to outrun the conflagration.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” I chanted as no solution presented itself, and my circle of uncharred earth shrank even more.
A searing pain ignited around my right forearm, and I clutched the scar the cruel Archus Doler gave me as his final parting gift when he died. The pain caused my stomach to clench, and my eyes were streaming with tears as the heat from the flames practically licked at my face.
I slammed my eyes closed and held my breath because I was sure the fire was a hair’s breadth from swallowing me whole.
A beat went by. And then another, until I finally realized I wasn’t being cooked alive.
The out-of-control inferno stopped just short of burning my face off, and I glared at the fire like I was offended it decided to go off script from what I was expecting to happen.
“Really?” I scoffed. “What gives?”
The wall of fire loomed an inch closer.
“Wait, wait, wait, that’s okay, stop!” I said and backed up the little I could in my ever-shrinking circle of dirt.
The flames still roared and hissed, but they stopped short again as if they were waiting for me to catch on to something.
Now that I wasn’t panicking about being barbeque, I once again reminded myself these terrifying experiences were designed to help me in some way.
At least I didn’t have to fight my Shadow-self again in a weird symbolic drama about being my own downfall, or something. Even though said ‘lesson’ primed me against the fight I had with Doler. In that Duel, if I had relied on my own time-trance powers in order to defeat him, the curse he put on me would have drained my life-force every time I tried to tap into it.
So, if that was the case, what was the reason for this wall of fire?
I definitely couldn’t go around it, or under it, but staying here was slowly becoming Not An Option as I nearly stood on my tiptoes trying to stay away from the encroaching flames.
“What do you want from me?” I yelled at the fire.
Because it was fire, it didn’t answer, of course, and part of me really just wanted to punch my way through.
Through.
What if…?
No, that was crazy. I couldn’t just walk through Dante’s Shower Curtain of Hell. But what choice did I have?
“You better be right,” I scolded my gut since it was nagging me to do something totally off the cuff and potentially deadly.
Then I closed my eyes and ran through the wall of fire.
Instead of being waylaid by the feeling of my flesh burning off, I ended up stumbling forward and crashing down to my hands and knees in front of the Ancient Tithe Pool back at the Sun Temple.
I blinked around at the serene space and glanced at the shining surface of the mirror-like water. I remembered what happened the last time I just looked into the Pool’s surface willy-nilly, and I rubbed absently at the scar around my arm that looked like a snake eating its own tail.
But the answer I sought was just there glimmering within my reach, so I crept forward and chose to look down at my fate.
A long winding corridor filled my sight, and it reminded me a little of the underground weapons cache under Ithaca. The walls of this corridor were a bare white stone almost like marble, and there seemed to be no end in sight.
But, finally, a shape began to materialize in the distance, and I hurried toward it faster and faster.
As I got closer, the shape revealed itself to be two identical black doors, and the longer I stared at the doors, the more my instincts got a feel for what they were.
The right door was easy because it radiated a feeling I was beginning to relate solely with Ithaca and the belonging that comes with all things home, but the left door was a little more obscure.
It seemed familiar but remote at the same time, like coming home to a vacant apartment after being gone for so long. The stuff was still there, but the warmth of being lived in was wholly absent.
The more I pondered the second door, the more it started to dawn on me what it was.
What they both were.
The left door represented Earth and my old life, and I knew for certain if I chose to go through it, I would be returned safe and sound to everything I was familiar with, Blue Pill, Matrix-style.
But the right door felt like Ithaca because it represented that warm lived-in place I had grown to associate with Aventoll.
Almost without my permission, my hand reached for a door…
“Alex!” a deep and compelling Voice caused me to rush to the surface of my subconscious as if my waking mind was attached to a buoy.
I gasped and opened my eyes, which was a mistake because the dawning of a new day on Nata Isle just about blinded me. The strength drained out of my arms and legs, and I collapsed.
“Woah, lad, steady,” the Asher Lord said as he caught my arms and prevented me from crashing down to my knees. Then, before I could even adjust to being back in the waking world, Mec stood me next to him and raised my fist in the air. “Behold! Our brother Asher Brightwood has succeeded in the Trials and has outlasted us all!”
The Duelists and the spectators who were all gathered offered up a hearty round of applause.
“W-Wait, it’ssss morning?” I slurred as I tried to lift my shield up again, but it was proving impossible when my muscles felt like rubber noodles.
“Don’t worry about the shield, son, you have passed the Trials with ‘flying colors’ as my grandfather used to say,” the jovial ram-lord said as he took the heavy object from my stiff fingers and helped me out of the fountain. “I knew you would take to the ceremony, but you have surprised me yet again with your fortitude.”
The things he was excitedly babbling about did little to penetrate my exhausted brain, and the only thing I could think of saying was: “Great, another ‘morning person.’”
“Oh, Alex!”
I suddenly had my arms full of a vibrant Shay who was nearly in tears as she smothered me with kisses.
“Oh, husband!” she gasped. “When the sunrise came and you didn’t drop your shield, I didn’t know what to think, but Lord Mec snapped you out of your trance. Are you alright?”
“Yeah,” I said and tried to shake the cobwebs out of my head. Other than being a little tired, my strength was returning almost tenfold. “Yeah, actually, I feel great. What was all that about? Do I win some sort of prize for being the one who held his shield up longest?”
“You gain the pride and accolades that come from being the strongest one to outlast,” she said and hugged me again.
“Oh, more accolades, good,” I mumbled sarcastically but pulled my phoenix-wife closer while Vane’s concubines relieved me of my shackles. I looked down at my ankles and expected to see them rubbed raw from the unforgiving metal digging into my flesh, but I was surprised to see my skin was just as pristine as usual.
“Isn’t it grand?” Shay asked as she stepped back and then unwrapped the bandage from around her finger. “Look, mine is all healed, too!”
She held up her hand for me to inspect, but before I could examine her unmarred fingers, a bone-white hand seized her wrist and made her gasp.
“Look at that,” Gella Vane said as he turned my wife’s hand this way and that before releasing it too quickly for me to have the opportunity to break his fingers.
I saw red for a moment, and it took all of my willpower not to drag his skinny skeletal ass over to his own fountain so I could hold his head underwater for a minute.
Or twelve.
“Asher Vane,” I said again through gritted teeth and moved my wife slightly behind me.
“Brightwood,” the owl-like man greeted as his jaundiced eyes pierced mine. “Impressive display of fortitude. That is a trait that will serve you well. Come, I would like to offer you a bit of extended hospitality to you and your… wives.”
“How generous, but I am afraid I have business with Brightwood back in the Valley,” Mec interjected in a sorry-not-sorry way as he smiled a cold smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “You should rest, Gella. You’re looking pale.”
“What I am is none of your business, Gavlain!” the owl-man suddenly snapped, and the harsh lines and wrinkles in his ashen face were made all the harsher by his ugly sneer.
“Regardless, thank you for hosting the Ceremony,” the ram-lord said placidly, which only seemed to add fuel to the other man’s rage.
Vane honestly looked like a volcano ready to go Mt. St. Helen’s, but at the last moment, he derailed his impending explosion and replaced his indignation with a benign grin.
“Good day to you both,” the Magistrate of Gatetown said with a falsely polite bow as a disgusting smile crawled across his face. “Milady.”
“What a creep,” I growled the moment he was gone.
“Yes, Gella has been a thorn in my side for quite some time now,” the ram-lord agreed and then turned to Shay. “Are you alright?”
“I’m fine,” she said, and she sounded more annoyed than anything. “He didn’t hurt me, he was just appallingly rude.”
“Well, he needs to keep his oily hands off you,” I said and scowled after the owl-man as he disappeared into the milling crowd.
“Are you ready to go back to our campsite?” Shay asked.
“Yeah, but where are Zoie and Rylan?” I wondered as I finally noticed their absence. “Didn’t they want to come?”
“More than anything, my darling, but I’m afraid our Rylan developed a sickness during the night, and Zoie decided to stay with him,” she said.
“Rylan’s not feeling well?” I asked with a concerned expression. “But he was fine yesterday!”
“Ah, not to worry, lad,” Mec said and clapped me on the shoulder with sympathy. “As much as it pains us to see our children suffer, they are stronger than we think.”
“True,” I conceded, but something about Rylan’s mysterious and sudden illness didn’t sit well with me, even if it was just a typical head cold. I would have to just check him out for myself in order to assuage that annoying little niggle in my gut.
Speaking of my gut.
A loud rumble tore out of me as if my stomach was actually trying to do an Aliens on me and chew its way out of my abdomen.
“By the way, is there, like, a ‘grab-n-go’ breakfast situation to look forward to, or…?” I asked, and the big man threw back his head and laughed.
“You must be ravenous,” Mec said as he led us from the fountain, and he traversed the long corridors of Vane’s castle-like estate as if he had a map. “Typically, there is a large feasting celebration held all over the island, but I’m afraid we do not have time to partake. We must make it to the Battle Hall before the day gets too long.”
