Ritrix Mildbluff.
***
“Ritrix! Wake up!”
A touch of cold against my skin jerked me awake. I turned, half-ready to give a hard smack in self-defense before I yelped in surprise. “Oh!” I chortled after a deep breath. “That’s gonna take some getting used to.”
My mirror image smiled warmly in response before waving her hand in a gesture for me to follow her out of this vast house and through this vast cave.
My bedroom alone was larger than my folks’ house back in the village. My practice room was even larger and was now adorned with many instruments, some being strange things I'd never before seen and others being recognizable at a glance. My kitchen was just as spacious too, and connected to the dining room via a bar that was the perfect height for a gnome or halfling. Tended to at all hours of the night or day by the other me. So too was the large cellar. And so too was the study and the other room that remained empty. And probably would for many days to come.
At a lovely height of a meter and change, the place just appeared all the more vast from my perspective.
Plus, it was empty.
“It seems… too much. You know?”
“Oh, it is!” She instantly beamed. And it was then that I decided to think of a name for her. But she intruded upon my thoughts by saying something outrageous. “One day, it’ll be an entire city!
“A… city?” I guffawed. Though that I already knew. Still, it was impossible to believe.
“Yeah.” She- Trixie, waved me to her side and guided my eyes upward. To the Moon high above and so far away. It was no bigger than a fist-my fist- but still pale and radiant and beautiful as it was when I first looked upon it.
“Remember what we saw?” She then asked, and I gasped in surprise at the notion of us sharing a sensation so deep. “We’ll be seeing that with our eyes one day, Ritrix. But in reverse. Up there, on a world of our creation, we won’t look down on the Material Plane. We'll look up and out in wonder of the endless lands around us.”
“It was beautiful.” I gasped as I remembered how truly awed I was. But then… a thought came. The same thought that stopped me before. “But.” I stammered. Nervous to hear the answer. “What if they don’t want to?”
“We’ll still be able to visit them.” She gave my hand a reassuring tug. But it was as cold as elemental ice. Colder even. But still, she gripped tighter. As if she knew what exactly I was thinking.
Because she did.
“They may hate us, Ritrix. Yes.” Trixie nodded with no reservations. Driving a stake through my very heart. “They are free to hate us if we choose to join him." She clenched my hand tighter. "All we can do is show them our true selves and hope that they accept us as we are.
“But.” Her words lifted my chin to her face, pointing away to the object that dominated the sky at all times of the day and night. “They can see it too, you know.” She then turned to me, smiling. “And, it moves!”
“What?”
“It makes a circle around the Bodhi Tree’s territory. Both peninsulas. Every month.” She nodded. “It’s so high up that everyone in the central territories in Nonus can see it. They see it too. Even in Maru.” She smiled.
“They see it.” I found myself smiling back. And when I looked down, the ground was beneath me. Not the grassy lawn of my ‘room.’ But the strange tiles of the ring of stone at the base of the tower. Surrounded by many others. Some stared at me incredulously. Others focused ahead to Amun, standing before us all with a generous smile on his face.
“Good morning, and welcome to PT!” He beamed, paused to flick his cigar aside, and waited for it to fall into his shadow, then began pacing. “Before we begin, there are a few ground rules I need to establish. First, is that in addition to your Doppelgangers, you and every other Legionary will work alongside an undying shadow.”
'Oh…' I gulped.
“In the future, it will be someone you’ve killed.”
“Oh.” I gasped.
“Until then, you will train with one of the 65 shadows I have on hand.”
“Oh!” I coughed. “Sixty-five. Holy shit! That’s a lot of people.”
It was unsettling, thinking of working alongside talking skeletons and zombies and whatever those immortal beings of darkness were. But I also knew that they wouldn’t attack me. Not unless Amun saw me as an enemy. But then again. If that were the case, I'd be dead before I even knew I was his enemy. I knew it wouldn't happen. Still, though, the thought remained rooted in the back of my mind. As did the experience.
The one I was paired with was a young boy. Human. In his young twenties maybe. Most of them were, and dressed like either Rogues, Barbarians or Knights turned sour. Mine was dressed like a Barbarian. Young, but big and burly all the same. With a horned bear skull fashioned on his right shoulder and a deep scar running across his chest. Both sent a soft blue-green glow over me as he stood before me, heels together and fists clasped before his belly as he nodded or bowed or maybe prayed.
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“They are incapable of speech for now.” Amun continued. “If you wish to communicate with them, you can use your Doppelganger to translate until you learn my family’s sign language, Nocts Signs.” On cue, my clone and shadow and everyone else's performed an intricate dance with their fingers that was slightly varied around the tail end. An introduction, I assumed.
“For now, however.” Amun gestured behind him to a model of what appeared to be an obstacle course. “It’s time for physical training. The goal is to get as far down the course without using magic. Only might and mana molding is allowed. And don’t try to cheat. I can see mana, you know.”
“You can what!?”
My gasp of disbelief was but one of many. It was a long-told rumor that elves- high or royal elves, could see mana. But to have it so casually confirmed was unthinkable. But like many things, I would come to learn, everything regarding the one called Amun was unthinkable, and things happened quickly in his presence.
He led us inside and the small sticks and rocks that composed the model shifted in response. With each step, they elongated and stretched into branches and stones and then expanded into logs and boulders that towered over the tallest among us. It was so absurdly large or we were so absurdly small that it was almost incomprehensible to many of our minds. I couldn’t even see the end. Only buildings and obstacles touching the very sky, it seemed. But again, Amun startled us all by taking off at a sprint. An unpowered one.
It was amazing to see him doing something unremarkable for once. All of us were awed. And so, we held fast long after he had gone, at least until our umbral counterparts began shoving us along.
Still awed, perhaps, I sprinted without bolstering my muscles. And though the course before me demanded my undivided attention, I kept a close eye on Amun. Now behind many others who were, like me, throwing their gazes over to him whenever they could afford.
We high-stepped through a field of wheel-shaped depressions. Climbed a rope that was meters high. Scaled a low wall. Crawled beneath barbed wires. Shimmied along a ledge, pulled ourselves across a length of rope, and sprinted for at least a kilometer in between each obstacle. And though he didn’t struggle at any of them, nor did Amun excel either. He went at an average, unimpressive pace until his breath grew ragged. His body grew lethargic soon after. And just before he was on the brink of collapse, he bolstered his body with mana and took off in a blur.
In an instant, our eyes were forced to focus on ourselves; or at the very least, on those around us. Many of the ones already bolstered suddenly were not as they increased their paces to keep up with the dust trail scattering ahead. Others, like me, soon grew curious as to how far we could get before we needed to use the technique and soon were seen sprinting as hard as we could muster.
Though the course was similar to many military bases I’ve seen throughout, only scaled to the size of giants, I lost myself in the newfound challenge. I pushed myself harder than any time I had before. But even in the two hours, we were allotted, I didn’t even make it halfway to the quarter mark. And ruefully, none of us were healed or recovered by that glorious light once we were done. Not even Amun. Instead, he told us to keep our mana veils on at all times and gave us a taste of the same magic he used against Winston to show us what would happen if we tried to cheat.
It was like my weight doubled. Then quadrupled and doubled again. My skin began to sag to the ground and my hair began to pull from its pores and slam into the ground like trees falling from a mountain. I was almost squished flat in seconds. Then, it faded.
“The force of gravity will increase ever so slightly with each passing week,” Amun told us with a devilishly charming grin. “By the end, you will more or less have to bolster yourselves with mana the entire time. That goes for both PT and combat training, mind you. For that.” He waved to his side, releasing a wave of darkness that splashed against the ground like water. Forming a puddle that his Doppelganger, Lana, and Zaraxus clambered out with glee.
All of them were armed. The clone with a pair of daggers and the draugr with a weird spear. Lana had a strange weapon too, a claymore made of pure darkness. And Amun, outnumbered as he was, was unarmed. But rushed them all the same.
It was the ugliest and most gruesome thing I’ve seen thus far. But it was entrancing. I found myself unable to look away from the gracefully deadly score of wits and play. They spun and sliced. Jumped and lunged at each other without pause, nicking skin and breaking flesh faster than the eye could track. Endlessly. Ceaselessly until they were knocked away or stabbed into.
Amun took such a blow. A dagger between the ribs impaled him through the lung. But he withdrew it without delay and lunged into a spinning dance of slashes and thrusts with his new weapon. In the end, Lana and the clone were defeated, but Zaraxus delivered a debilitating kick and swept his scythe-spear through Amun’s belly.
Almost as penance, Zaraxus then impaled himself with his own weapon, then clasped his fist before him, and lowered his head. His Doppelganger reformed and did the same, followed by Lana, all saluting or… praying while darkness enveloped Amun. Healed him. But just enough for him to stand and let out a death-defying gasp as he turned to us.
“This is for my Class. You will be fully healed after each round.” He staggered. “Then..." He groaned. "You fight again. Like this. Each. And every time. Now.” He wheezed heavily as he turned to face his opponents and raised his fists once more. “Prepare… to scatter.”
Before I could even look around, my vision was consumed with gentle light and when my eyes opened, I found myself in the forest. Alone and once again basking in the light of dawn before a dull impact to the mid-back brought me to my senses.
I reeled around at once, and just in time to see the same umbral man from before, coming in with an overhead swing.
I scrambled back at once, just hardly dodging out of the way but my clone jumped in behind him. Vaulting over his back to dropkick me in the nose and tumble me back onto my ass. Then they pounced on me like wild animals. Punching and kicking and even stabbing into me without remorse until a heel to my temple knocked me out cold.
I awoke in the same gentle light as before some time later. Fully healed and a bit out of my mind before I was pulled violently to my feet by my clone to continue fighting.
It was the hardest thing I ever did in my life. But oh, was it exhilarating! And tiring. Despite being healed, I could hardly move by the time it was over. Thankfully, though, my partners were more than happy to carry me to my room. They even cooked me a meal as I napped and woke me up in time to eat, freshen up, and talk with the others before our lessons.
Such an amazing day it was. The hardest day I’ve had thus far. One that was far from over. Though my days would undoubtedly get harder going forward, I couldn’t help but feel grateful that they wouldn't be spent alone. If I joined, I would never be alone again, I realized.
Not in life or death.