“You’re good to go. Be careful out there,” Professor Irina sighed, satisfied by Elwin’s recovery. It had been five weeks in their calendar from the day of his triumph, and his fractured ribs and skull were whole again under the auspicious care of modern philosophy and medicine. He was free to see the outdoor sun again and the pleasant spring air.
But before that, an occasion awaited him.
The Groundsmaster appeared by the doorway.
“Mr. Elwin Eramir,” he relayed, “Headmaster Abraxas calls for you in his office.”
“Will be right there!”
He strode deftly to the atrium, but before taking the first step on those grand spiral staircases he hesitated momentarily – half of it was from expectation of pain in his ribs, an expectation to which he had grown accustomed, but half of it was from the memories that those marbled steps called to him.
The first time he stepped onto those staircases, he was following behind Headmaster Abraxas after his assault on Lucian, when he did not know who he truly was, huddled pitifully in that fortress of solitude, terrified of every being including himself. How far he’d journeyed since then; how much he as Elwin had metamorphosized.
He knocked on those great oaken doors three times, his knuckles hueing red.
“Enter,” the headmaster greeted, with his customary thunderous cadence.
Elwin carefully creaked shut the doors, and rode with decorum on the burgundy carpet that overlaid the cuts of granite.
“You wished for me, headmaster?”
“Correct,” he answered, swiveling in his chair to face him, expression still as ever. “How holds your constitution?”
“It’s as good as new, sir. I am grateful for Professor Irina and our physicians.”
“I am satisfied to hear that.” Seeing Elwin’s expression, he assured him, “You are in no trouble, so be not afraid. Take a seat.” With a swift motion of his Quan he pulled towards him an armchair from a distance.
“Have you the knowledge of why I called you today?” He queried to him, his eyes fixed on Elwin’s, carefully heating a porcelain teapot on the mahogany table with a finger.
Nothing obvious came to mind.
“No, sir.”
“Very well. I shall explain it to you,” he continued, his voice becoming gentler. He spoke no more for a good minute or two, until he carefully poured out two precise cups of tea the hue of persimmon. The headmaster softly laid one cup into a saucer, and presented it upon Elwin.
“Quite steamy,” he added, “I suggest you pull some heat before savoring it.”
Elwin did as he was suggested, reaching for the instinctive thread in his mind that tugged and calmed the tango of atoms into a waltz. He sipped it carefully as he saw the wealthy do, as Dr. Varus did. When their dance landed upon his tongue he envisioned a painting of a faraway land, of great porcelain roofs dyed orange and red in the color of dusk, a great continent-empire that lay West to where the Sun always set.
“Do you know where this tea comes from?”
Elwin mused his answer. “From the Empire of Jin?”
“Precisely.”
Elwin awaited the headmaster’s approaching wisdom.
“As of now, our Mythrisian Republics – Unified Mythrisian Republics, and the Empire of Jin, maintain cordial relations. But there were periods in our history when such was not so. Do you know of what I speak?”
“They invaded us twice,” Elwin answered immediately, recounting his middle school years. Though he had learned so much more since then, he remembered his history vividly – because he once wished to visit Jin with his father, but was disappointed to learn that it had been hostile to his birthplace.
“Once a millennium ago, and more recently two centuries prior,” Elwin added.
“A monumental tragedy for both of our nations,” remarked Headmaster Abraxas, gazing out the window to the Sacred Mountain. “Of lives lost and wealth squandered, of the innocent trampled under the boots of armies.”
Elwin continued to listen.
“Do you know why nations wage war, Elwin?”
“No, sir... is it – is it for resources, for wealth?”
“Adequate guesses, but not all war is so. During my tenure as President, I’ve come to realize a solemn, sobering truth. And it is that independent of those at the administration, each nation possesses a spectre that guides its hand, just as the soul guides ours.”
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“...What do you mean, sir?”
“Allow me to employ an analogy. When you feel hungry, Elwin, what do you do?”
“I am driven to eat.”
“Correct. Do you consciously decide to become hungry?”
“‘Consciously,’ sir? No... it is something that my stomach tells by instinct, and...”
Headmaster Abraxas nodded his head. “Correct. It is instinctual, an impetus not decided by conscious control. And just as a person knows when he must eat, so does a nation know when it must feed. This is what I mean when I say each nation possesses a spectre, an instinct, a collective consciousness born out of millions of people that guides its hand.”
“But what does that imply, sir?”
“It implies that there is a limit to how much leaders can influence their nation for good or bad.”
“So this means...” a flash of thought struck Elwin’s head.
“That sometimes, leaders are unable to prevent their own nation from waging war. They too become consumed by the spectre of the nation which they lead; whereupon they are no longer the head, but the arm that raises the spear.”
“But how is this connected to... to our –”
“A millennium ago, the Empire of Jin could not hold its arm of tyranny, and invaded Mythrise. Consul Astinel – just a young man by the name of Astinel Arcana then – had no choice but to rally our peoples and wage war in return. And although we prevailed in the end, war left us a terrible wound that continues to this day,” he elaborated, his expression wistful. Surely he must have witnessed terrible things as President.
“Is there no way to resist this spectre?”
Headmaster Abraxas leaned forward.
“Elwin, when you decided to battle Ursus, when you chose to defend your friends, why did you do it?”
Elwin answered honestly. “Because it was the right thing for me to do as their friend.”
“Would you have done otherwise? Refused the call to arms?”
“No, sir.”
“And that is the manner in which fate binds us: far too many times, we must choose battle because we can see no alternative.”
Elwin nodded, his heart curious but somber.
“When you battled Ursus at the Circuleum, my heart shook in apprehension of two outcomes: one in which you fell to Ursus’s might, and perished; the other where you, out of all odds, would prevail, but Ursus would perish instead, that you would drive a lance upon him and smite him into nothingness. In such a battle of wills, in such a battle of fate, neither of you would have truly survived unscathed, having smote the other in violence.”
Elwin listened intently.
“So it was as if a miracle had come to the good earth that you, Elwin, perceived and exercised victory over Ursus without that called the act of killing. In the midst of life and death, where everyone would have channeled their primal instinct to kill the other for survival, you crafted your own path out of it, a solution where Ursus would not be harmed and still concede for Katherine.”
“I –”
“Not only did you stand when everyone else would have fallen, you chose to overcome that called fate by finessing a solution of your own creation. And Ursus had agreed to become your friend, has he not?”
“Yes, sir. He expressed his wish for us to fight together as allies should we meet again.”
“Now then, to the ultimate point: a few times in history there were heroes who were able to resist the paths ordained by fate, who were able to yoke and steer the spectres that drove civilization towards oblivion. They destroyed their enemies by making them their friends. I say to you now, Elwin Eramir: keep this wisdom with you as you continue your studies, for there may come a time when it will be useful to the world.”
Elwin widened his eye in astonishment. What was Headmaster Abraxas telling him? That he, once a nobody and still ways to go yet, could do something very few ever could?
“That is... that is too great of a praise, sir, I do not know if I can –”
“That is not a praise. That is my assessment of who you can be. You still have a long road ahead of you. But with your deeds, you have regained my trust.”
Headmaster Abraxas snapped his fingers, and a large, velvet box slid out from a bookshelf and came to rest upon the table. A thick silver ribbon was bound upon it.
“Here lies your Quan. But I stated you must earn the trust of your friends and the Academy to have it returned. Let us hear what they have to say,” he continued, as the oaken doors knocked behind Elwin.
“Enter.”
Five people entered – it was Robert and Daphne, whom he’d once injured, followed by Isaac, Mirai, and Katherine.
Headmaster Abraxas announced to them all.
“In the past, Elwin had hurt you in one way or another, despite the fact that you had the best interest for him at heart. Robert and Daphne, by way of physical injury, and Katherine, Isaac, and Mirai, by way of words. But Elwin had attempted to redeem himself through his actions and honorable conduct these past months.”
Elwin gulped.
“Do you consider Elwin one of us, worthy of our trust?”
They all looked at Elwin, and to each other.
“Without a shadow of doubt,” his friends answered.
“Then one of us again, he shall be!” The headmaster declared, as the ribbons that chained the box became wreathed in fire and the lid flew off with a reverberating echo. Elwin’s Quan, his very own, his very own that had been taken away, emerged from the bottom of the box at last through a cloud of fine mist, every angle of its sapphire-pine hue iridescent with the Sun through the window, its gilded engravings in the pattern of planetary orbits shimmering as if born anew.
With tears of reunion and a throaty voice, Elwin called his Quan to his wrist. It turned to see him, and recognized him right away, calling for Elwin in his Asha. It pounced towards him with exuberant glee, and latched onto his forearm with a heavy thunk.
Oh, oh! I missed you, so, so much, whispered Elwin, tears pooling in his eye. After all you’d told me about being alone in the ocean, in the deep, deep dark, I cast you away in that lonely box with only solitude as your companion. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry for everything.
Don’t be! cried his Quan, the murmurs of its many friends whimpering in commiseration. I missed you too.
Elwin and his Quan embraced deeply for a long, long time, in the realm of the Asha where their voices were theirs to hear, privy to no one.
Though the fates did us apart, I’ll never abandon you again. I’ll never let you go as long as I live, promised Elwin. We’ll be together, forever and always.
Thank you. I’m blessed to have you back, assured his Quan.
“MAIOR FORTIOR!” Elwin sang, and sparks of blue thundered around his being as he felt ice in his veins and fire in his blood once more. The golden disk, alive and conscious, shone with a light of its own and scattered its radiance into four directions, like a nova born in the night sky. It burned so brightly that those on the quadrangle below could see its light out the headmaster’s window.
Elwin and his Quan were together again.
And they were stronger than ever before.
“Do not forget the lessons and the dignity that you now possess. Use it well, Elwin Eramir!”