Chapter 2 - Recovery

Awareness was slow to return. Even once exhaustion had retreated, unconsciousness wouldn't give him up so easily. He floated on a sea of darkness. But ripples within that sea pressed in on him. They requested his attention gently at first, then more insistently. Soon the ripples became waves. He was bobbed and shaken on that tide until a wave washed over his face and, with a gasp, he jolted awake.

Op'skith was... in pain. The pain wrapped around his scales, it clung and tugged at his flesh and it burrowed down in to his bones. He listened to the pain, feeling for its cause, wondering at relief, but there were too many sources and no easy escape. It was rooted deep in muscles, tendons and joints. It was the aftermath of hard use, which he generally found to be a pleasantly satisfying sensation, but here it had gone past all reason. What he felt now was damage. And it hurt.

But under that was a less intense, but more demanding sensation: Hunger. He could tell that he was no longer tired, but instead he was drained, as if movement would be too much trouble to bother with. Even his thoughts felt sluggish, and that more than anything made him nervous. It took great effort for him to realize the thought, but he knew that this kind of hunger was dangerous. It would let him drift into a stupor and then eat him from the inside out. With effort, he concentrated on the hunger. He felt at the emptiness in his stomach, mentally sifting through the sensations from his body until it stirred. The hunger sharpened, becoming painful and needy. Now, rather than dulling his thoughts it gave him clarity and a burning need to get food without delay.

His eyes opened and he blinked through the darkness, trying to understand where he was. He was lying on a bed, not his, partially covered by a blanket. His tail was tucked awkwardly underneath his legs and the frills on his head were pressed against the headboard. Those were going to be stiff later, but he supposed that was a relatively minor concern. He could just barely make out the room he was in through the dim red illumination of a light crystal set low. It was one of the unused quarters, abandoned generations ago as the population of the kaer shrank. Odd, why wasn't he in his own rooms? They weren't that far from the Doors. The room was mostly empty. The contents had long since been reused or stored away, except for the furniture not worth the trouble. The furniture included a bench, a few shelves, the bed of course and, to his right, a side table with a tray of food on it. The bowls of roasted squash and boiled grains were the same as they always ate, but now they made his mouth water.

He immediately reached towards the tray, but his arm spasmed and seized with pain. That was more than exhaustion and overuse. That was a serious injury. He breathed rapid short breaths, trying to remain perfectly still as the pain subsided. Something tugged at his memory, and he thought back to the previous cycle. It was hazy, but the half-remembered images told him that his right arm had given way while he was moving an unreasonably heavy piece of stone. He recalled the tearing sensation with horror. Something in that arm had torn, badly, and he has just kept going. Why had he done that to himself? How had he done that to himself? The pain alone should have flattened him. He felt detached from the person who had acted that way. Those actions felt so unreal, but he could remember himself doing them. It was frightening, like watching his body being puppeteered by some other force, but it was also morbidly intriguing. His body had been pushed harder and damaged worse in his years of training, but never with that kind of unnaturally deliberate control. Thought generally fled in the face of exhaustion and pain like he had experienced then.

But those were thoughts for... some other time. For now, he needed a way to get at that food without his right arm. Hunger still strained at him, demanding attention. With great effort and deliberate attention, he pushed himself back up against the the headboard of the bed. His body protested every inch of movement painfully, but he managed it eventually. From there, he was able to awkwardly reach over with his left hand to pick up the bowls of food. With one hand and at this angle he couldn't properly use any of the utensils provided, which left him to shovel the food into his mouth with his hands. It was messy, but he didn't care at the moment. Some other time, he might have been concerned about eating too quickly, as hungry as he was, but the pain and stiffness that followed every movement limited him to a reasonable rate. At last, his hunger subsided and he was able to turn his attention elsewhere.

He wasn't sure where he was in the kaer or why. The food had been cold, so he had been left alone in here for some time and didn't expect anyone to come for him soon. He wanted to get moving again, but he was in no condition for that right now. But he would be.

He settled his mind down, past his body. He let sight, sound and even touch drift away. He let the reins of control slip away to become a part of the greater whole. He sank deep. He sank into fiber and sinew, into the great structures and complexes that made up his body. His awareness slipped around and through it, dancing along the networks that filled him to find what he sought. He decided to start with his back. With strain this extensive, it was always best to start there. He traversed a familiar pathway, dancing down his spine to a particular sinew and followed it to the small muscle there. He probed along it, feeling the strain, the tension and the death. In his use of it, parts of that muscle had died. They would need to be removed to make way for a regrowth. Op'skith wanted to feel sadness over the loss, the death he had caused here. But... the muscle told him otherwise. What it wanted was to rebuild stronger. There was no regret, no sense of failure over its losses, no fear that worse might happen in the future, there was only the purpose. Grow again better. There wasn't even any concept of what it was building for or how strong it should be. 'Should' was a foreign idea here. Perhaps it was just shallow, but it was also refreshing in its purity and simplicity. Grow back stronger. It was purpose, and that was enough. But to follow that purpose, it would need help. Op'skith gently felt along the sinew and released the tension there, letting the muscle relax and continue its slow process of regrowth. But he wasn't satisfied with 'slow'. This would require further intervention.

He slid his awareness back through his body, making his way to the center. As he approached, he felt trepidation. When he experienced his body in this way it didn't feel like 'his' body, really. For all the control he could exert, he was small here. He was subject to a greater power, the force that drove his body to move, the force that made it beat. Even as he approached, he could feel the raw vitality hit him like thunder, threatening to wash him away, but he persevered. He looked upon the great engine at the center of his body. It swelled, filling to bursting with the essence of life itself, and then hammered home with a force that would shake every corner of this world that was his body. It seemed majestic, like some great emperor at the hub of his domain. It spoke its command: "LIVE." with every blow, and the world shook, and could not help but obey its true lord. Op'skith's awareness approached reverently, as a supplicant seeking a boon. He was pulled in and driven outward again forcefully by that great command. "LIVE." And so he would.

He rode the pulse of blood outward, following branches and pathways as he needed, until he came near where he intended. Then he shifted the flow. It deviated from its course and followed a new pathway as he commanded. It flowed over the muscle he had been working on before and then onward, back to its natural channel. Very distantly, he could feel from another Op'skith, the one lying on a bed, that an unusual lump had formed on his back as blood and muscle shifted, but that was irrelevant. He seized the flow and used it to sweep away the dead portions of the muscle. Pain boiled up as it was scoured away, released from its confinement. He massaged life back into the muscle, pouring in the foundations for future growth as the muscle demanded. It didn't thank him, such things were beyond the purpose, but it moved faster now that it had the tools it needed. With that, at last, there was a little relief. With his work done here, he released the flow he had diverted and guided it back to its natural channel. That was one done... but many, many more to go. Op'skith moved on to another.

He worked his way first along his back and torso, relieving the strain from his center before working outwards down his limbs one by one. Time utterly vanished as he worked. At some point during the process there was some sensation of light and sound. A door opened, light flared, a voice spoke. Maybe it spoke to him. All those sensations seemed irrelevant as he worked. Like the feeling of wearing a shirt, the sensation was present, but so far from his awareness as to be unnoticeable. The world of light and sound was so removed from the world of vitality and sinew that he now explored. It was familiar, for he had traversed these pathways many times, but always new. This place was change and chaos. Ever and always the old was swept away and the new grew in its place. But it was also order. Ever and always the parts served their purpose within the whole. The great process carried onward, driven forward by the thundering beats of its emperor at the center of all. May he reign forever.

Op'skith carried on, channeling the flows to repair what he could. He was relieved to find that the damage to his right arm was not nearly as severe as he had feared. The muscle was still whole and, with enough time, it would return to its former strength. By the time he finally withdrew his attention from the channels and returned to his eyes and ears, some time had passed. Hours? Cycles? It was uncertain. But evidently someone had come in, for there was a fresh meal in place of the one he had consumed so awkwardly before. This was good, as his work had left him extremely hungry. But now, with much of the tension and pain relieved, he could eat like a person again. With a gesture, he brought the light quartz up to full strength to illuminate the room properly and sat up on the bed. With a piece of cloth, he tied a simple sling for his right arm. Even with all he had done, his body would need time to recover fully and that arm longer than the rest. As he tied the sling, he found to his surprise that his hands were bandaged. Evidently he had cut his hands on those rocks. The truly unusual thing was that the bandages were crusted with blood. It had been... years since he had bled freely or needed bandages at all. With his abilities, it was a simple matter for him to divert wasted flows away from open cuts. He hardly needed to think about it anymore, but evidently, that had been beyond him when these were applied.

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The meal was still awkward, with only his left hand, but it felt good to eat properly with utensils now. As he ate, it occurred to him that they had probably expected him to call for help when he woke, rather than struggle on his own. But Op'skith had never been much good at asking for help with anything he thought he could do himself, even if he needed it. With a full stomach again, he rose and stretched. His body still ached, but it was dull now. Even pleasant. A reminder of hard work rather than a protest against abuse. He made his way to the door... and found that it had been barred. From the outside. Considering why he had ended up here, he couldn't blame them for that he supposed. It also explained why he hadn't been left in his own room. Well, he could try to knock it open. Or he could shout for someone to let him out. ...But he could also wait a little longer. There was one more thing he had to do regardless. His body and mind were refreshed after food and rest, but there was another pool of strength that he had drawn on deeply in his recovery. Besides, the ritual would help to center his thoughts before he would need to decide what to do next.

Op'skith moved to the center of the small room. It was good there wasn't much left here, he needed the space. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply. He reached for that first step- and stumbled. He wanted to blame his sore muscles or his arm still in a sling, but that wasn't right. This act was always natural. Always. He resumed his stance and waited. He did not focus on anything in particular. He didn't try to listen or to see, to think or to plan. He just waited. Until it came. The beat was faint, but steady.

Beat. Beat. Beat.

In it, there was purpose. He traced the rhythm, following it down his legs and up his arms, through his tail and into his neck. It was the beat of his heart. But he was no longer within the domain of that emperor, subject to its power. Now he was the domain itself. It did not command, it offered. He listened, not because it was greater than he, but because he wished to hear. He listened, and he moved.

Beat. Beat. Beat.

He let the beat guide him into motion as he took the first form, and then the second. The motion between the forms was patient and deliberate, straining his balance with their slowness. These forms were different than those he performed when he could use both arms, but the new movements always came to him as automatically as they ever had. They had never been his creation. They had come from him, but they were far older than he was. He could feel it. As he worked his way through the forms, the beats of his heart gradually increased in tempo and his movements sped up with them. The movements flowed from one step to the next like an elegant dance. He felt himself joined as part of a great whole, one thread in a vast tapestry. And he moved.

One-two-three. Beat-beat-beat.

The dance swirled and swayed with refined precision, but his mind was far away. The movements came so naturally, without thought. It felt as ancient as time, though he had never seen any other perform it. The tempo of his heart increased, and the tempo of the dance with it. The graceful dance became less constrained, more wild and energetic. The tapestry stretched back into eternity and wove itself forward into the future. And he danced.

One-two-one-two-three-four-one. Beat-beat-beat-beat-beat-beat-beat.

The dance was wild and exuberant, much like the dances the people of the kaer actually performed in their celebrations. It felt incomplete though. He was always reacting to the movements of a partner that wasn’t there and it made the dance feel almost hollow. He had tried to perform it with partners before but it was impossible. The invisible form he danced around fit neither a troll, nor a t’skrang nor the form of any namegiver he could imagine. It made didn't make sense but it was true and certain as stone. The rhythm increased again, blood pounding in his ears, and the dance turned into a battle. He tried to glimpse the pattern of the tapestry as he wove within it, but the image danced away, always beyond his sight. So he fought.

Beat-beat-beat.

He ducked and dodged imagined blows, hands flashing out to return them. Always he danced around his invisible partner, covering their blind spots as they covered his. The frantic movement reached a fever pitch and then halted suddenly in a pose of rest. He could not see the pattern of the tapestry but he could hear it. A heartbeat, no, two heartbeats in perfect unison and the sound of rushing air.

And then it was over and he sagged at the renewed aches in his muscles. But he also felt reinvigorated, like a well of strength deep within was refilling after having run dry. The visions never made much sense. He’d asked Jata and Saij, the other two adepts in the kaer, and they had told him of similar rituals and sensations but they always seemed to be able to make more sense of them. They’d felt echoes of great works of craftsmanship or of a hundred legends told a thousand ways. Their visions seemed to point the way while his only seemed to tell him he was missing something. He sighed. They were supposed to have instruction in these things. As adepts, they were supposed to be initiated and guided in the ways of their discipline by masters who understood what they were doing. But time and isolation had done their harsh work on the kaer. Masters had found only students who could not grow to match their abilities within the confines of the kaer, or passed on without finding students at all, and after six centuries they had nothing but wild talents grasping at straws. There might be a dozen more adepts among their people, but they simply had no way to find them or initiate them.

A knock came at the door and the voice of Rull, a troll from the vanguard and one of his closer friends, came through.

“So, I guess you’re up in there?"

“Yes, was I making that much noise?”

"No, not the sound, it was the dance. My heart just started... well, I assumed you must be up and moving around." One of the odd features of Op'skith's ritual was the way it sometimes affected others, their own heartbeats matching his. He usually performed it well away from others for that reason.

"Ah, my apologies for that."

"Oh, I don't mind, it's not a bad feeling only... odd. Memorable. Anyway, are you alright? You were out for more than a cycle. I think someone was going to start trying to feed you in your sleep if you hadn't started twitching soon." Rull's words were as friendly as ever, but his tone was somewhat guarded. The fact that he carried on the conversation through the door and made no move to open it was not lost on Op'skith.

"I'm as well as I can be, Rull. Could you let me out of here?" Rull didn't reply right away. Op'skith's tone had been casual, but he found himself suddenly trying to suppress the tension he felt. Could he get out of here? Was he trapped? He had been avoiding the thought as long as he could in here, focusing on every other thing that he could, but now the question had been asked and he began to fear the answer. The walls were so close.

"Are you going to try to beat yourself to death again?" The question was spoken with a bit of dry humor, but under that was serious concern. Rull had seen Op'skith push himself before, but this had been different and he was worried. Op'skith found himself wondering how long it would take him to break down the door. He was sure that he could, which was oddly comforting, but he tried to suppress the thought regardless.

"No?" He tried to reply with the same dry humor, but after a moment of silence from Rull he continued with a more sincere tone. "No, Rull. It's not going to happen again." He tried to mean it. Sometimes speaking the words out loud helped to make them true. He could hear Rull shift a little in response, but he still seemed to be hesitating. "Please, I can't stay in here." He tried to keep himself in control, but he could feel the edge of desperation creeping into his voice. This had all been so much easier before he asked, before there was doubt that he could leave. The ceiling was pressing downward on him.

Finally, he heard the bar shift as Rull unblocked and then opened the door. Op'skith gave a sigh of relief as he stepped into the hallway. Rull looked him up and down, taking in the unchanged clothing and the makeshift sling. "You're going to leave the lifting to us for a few cycles, aren't you?" Looking down at his right arm, Op'skith had to nod. They left the room behind and made their way through the corridors towards the rear of the kaer, where Op'skith's own room was. They made some awkward small talk, dancing around the issue. The digging had continued, but there was no sign of progress besides larger piles of stone as of yet. Plenty of people had been concerned about Op'skith, there were no strangers and few secrets in the close quarters, but most took it as another in the long line of injuries Op'skith had suffered one way or another. Only a few could recognize just how unusual this episode had been. Op'tan was among them, but he rarely involved himself in Op'skith's problems anymore. So that left him with Rull, who finally abandoned the other topics and took the issue by the horns.

"Op'skith, what happened to you? I need to understand this. You take risks, you push yourself, but what would make you do that to yourself?"

Op'skith still wasn't certain himself, but he had been trying to work out an answer for some time. The thoughts from that time were jumbled and vague, but the emotions were still powerful. They threatened to bubble up at any moment. "I needed to get out Rull. I need to get out and... And what if there isn't an 'out'? What if it's just this? I don't know if I can..." He didn't finish the thought. It wasn't a pleasant one, and sometimes speaking the words out loud helped to make them true.

Rull seemed to accept this. After a moment he clapped Op'skith on the shoulder and looked down on him with earnest eyes. "The Chained Dreamer guide you, my friend. Hope in the darkness." It was an invocation of Lochost in his aspect as the slave yearning for freedom. They rarely had any call to invoke the Passion of change in the static world of the kaer. There was so little that could be changed if they wanted to survive as they had down here. But even now, in a time that should be a new beginning, Op'skith could not feel the Passion. Still, he took the blessing in the spirit it was given as they went their separate ways.

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Back in his room, he found himself restless. He had slept too much already to be tired, but he was too weak to do anything physical. He wanted to talk, but then he'd have to answer too many questions. It was painful enough with Rull. It would only be worse with others. And besides, they would all be by the Doorway. The Doorway into nothing. He tried to read, but he found the lines of The Saga of The Broken Mountain slipping from his mind as quickly as he read them, sliding off the jumble of confused thoughts swirling in his head. He tried to clear his mind, letting those thoughts drift themselves into stillness, but all too soon he felt his mind drifting its way towards that dark pit he had been running from. How much weight was pressing down on the ceiling? Was it his imagination or did the stone start to bow inward? He tried to escape the feeling, but there was nowhere to go. He opened the door to the hallway. That was... better. He tried to attend to his equipment, but he had already polished it to perfection days ago in preparation for the opening. He even tried to go back to stitchwork. He hadn't touched it in months, leaving the symbol of a wolf rampant half-finished on the cloak, but progress was hopeless with his right arm as it was.

He sat. The uselessness dug away at him. Dragging him towards that pit. He wanted to scream. He reasserted control over himself. He had promised Rull he wouldn't lose himself again. He could feel those words growing hollow. They were brittle, like a dry twig bearing a heavy load. The faint sound of metal on stone echoed down the halls and through his open door, drawing him from his thoughts. He stood up and left the room. Dread slowed his steps. Terror kept him going forward. He moved towards the noise.