Chapter 03 - Makaik
Makaik watched his master drink from the dark bottle.
This was not his destiny. It could not be. The Fifty Golden Gods of Gaia could not have fated him here to wither away under the cursed tutelage of a shamed man. He was not the sins of his master. He was not responsible for Master Fuyuhiro’s failures.
Yet they had both been punished by the Elders after that council had convened with the gods.
He rested in the night, unable to sleep. Leaned against the planked wall under the cover of a horse stable, he watched the old man. The oath he’d sworn to the Fifty Gods of Gaia, to always remain loyal, was the only reason he stayed.
The pitched barn roof they took shelter under had been built upon a gentle rolling hill. One side protected mounds of hay he’d collected for a farmer. Working the fields was difficult labor. He also helped to watch over the animals, all while his master did very little.
Pay was meager, but he had no real desire for possessions or wealth. He’d been trained to feel this way. He did the work because his master had told him to, and he was beholden to the man. Payments after long days of hard work under the sun were only collected so they could sleep and eat, and so that Fuyuhiro could drink.
The man had once been honorable, or at least he had believed the man to be. When he was a young child, Fuyuhiro seemed as though a god to him, powerful and wise. That was when he’d been purchased from parents he did not remember. That was before the monastery, before those long years of training with all the other children.
He’d learned then that Fuyuhiro didn’t care about him the way those other masters guided their novices. He was the slave of a man possessed by demons. Instead of compassion, love, patience, and faith, he’d mostly learned arts of deception and conceit. Fuyuhiro’s behavior was always shifting, and the man’s words and promises twisted, in order to represent a person he was no longer, or quite possibly never was.
Hiding from the Fifty Golden Gods of Gaia was impossible. They knew the man’s heart was black like coal, and that it burned with shame and dishonor. The Elders had deliberated once those sins were discovered. He and his master had both been stripped of their honor. Exiled, they were each branded upon their forearms with the serpentine gods of sinful dereliction.
He ran his hands across the hair on his head, having been weeks since the last cut. Regular shaving was for true monks. He pulled back the loose robes to reveal his thin yet muscular frame, and touched the scarred brandings on his arms. He was too young to be marred in such a way. The pain of hot red iron held against his arms had very nearly killed him, and he winced at the memory.
Watching the old man quench his demons, he experienced the weak thoughts of a boy unbecoming of the gods. He was not the sins of his master. He was not responsible for what the man had done. Yet he had been punished because of the man. He had no other life, and knew no other way. He roamed the country pretending to be the man’s son because he felt the burden of an oath he should have forsaken months ago.
Killing Master Fuyuhiro would break that oath, and oathbreakers disgraced the gods. He would not ascend to the Immortal Afters if he took the life of this pathetic man.
Fuyuhiro was supposed to guide him towards enlightenment. Looking upon the old drunkard across from him, he sighed. Patience was required. He’d at least learned enough at the monastery to understand patience.
The gods had a plan for him. He still believed that. The Fifty Golden Gods of Gaia did not make mistakes, but the Elders could have interpreted them incorrectly. The Elders were human after all, even if the gods channeled great power through them.
Fuyuhiro was prone to verbal lashings, and on occasion, physical ones. Training at such a young age to one day become a monk of the highest caliber was not easy. With other kids, he’d learned how to withstand long brutal days of physical challenges. Able to speak, read, and write several languages, he was of superior intelligence to other children his age, and he’d already become proficient with many first and second level fighting skills.
His master was more harsh than the others, and he had the scars to prove all his many instances of failure. Fuyuhiro was not an honorable man, though he’d pretended to be one. The Elders knew this. The Fifty Golden Gods of Gaia knew this. Even Fuyuhiro knew this about himself.
The man hadn’t changed for the better. His actions and words only grew darker after the banishment. Keeping the man from drinking himself into a thin wisp of his former glory had not been possible. Understanding that Fuyuhiro was succumbed to demons had been much easier to realize than the why of it. Not drinking that poison that so obviously killed him seemed so easy. One could simply choose not to drink it.
Fuyuhiro sat leaned against a post, one hand around a brown bottle, the other idly at his side. The man’s body had become a thin hunched-over shell, drinking his life away. This had become Fuyuhiro’s normal, and it was a horrible fate for someone of his power. He did not feel sorry for his master.
They sat there for hours in the silence of night. It was not his place to speak if Fuyuhiro had not requested such a thing. A cool breeze from the south rolled over green hills. A storm was rolling in, and rain would soon fall. Under the pitched roof of the farmer’s horse barn they would stay dry enough.
He watched dark billowy clouds in the distance, considering the sight beautiful. Lightning flashed there, highlighting the edges of those clouds.
A small walled city known locally as Danvers had prepared for the storm. He hadn’t seen anyone coming or going for most of the early night, and plenty of the candlelit windows of small homes outside the walls had already been snuffed or burned out.
It was a quiet place where they slept. Townsfolk and farmers had not immediately run them away. Fuyuhiro had made him demonstrate his labor to the farmer. The last few years of exercising and fighting had hardened his muscles. Once the farmer saw him hack down more wheat with a sickle in one day than what two or three of the average men could accomplish, the farmer had agreed to let them sleep under the pitched outside roof of the barn.
In the last few weeks, they’d also killed several coyotes and foxes that tried getting at the chickens. This had greatly pleased the farmer, and it seemed as though they’d garnered the good graces of a village for the first time since leaving the monastery.
Other creatures did move in the night. He was well aware of the skunks, rabbits, possums, and other large rodents that scurried about.
He ignored most of them, especially the ones that were beneficial to the Fifty Golden Gods of Gaia, and to the harmony of the world. So long as the creatures went about their own business and messed not with the farmer’s livelihood, they were allowed to exist.
Dark silhouettes spiked the rolling hills. At least fifty of them. Their tiny, pointed shapes were sporadic, but quick and nimble. He could not hear them, for they were distant and he was not yet that gifted. He only saw them in the brief lightning cracks that highlighted their small forms. As he watched, their shadows vanished into the many creeks and ponds surrounding Danvers.
Fuyuhiro had at other times called them thieving treasure goblins. He said they were weak, lowly creatures he could easily kill thirty of with a single spinning kick. He had not seen Fuyuhiro fight in a long time, and doubted the man still spoke any truth. The frail man sitting across from him was a monk no longer, but a drunkard at death’s door.
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He asked, “Master Fuyuhiro?"
His voice was timid, and he knew it. Simply asking for attention of the man had sometimes brought an anger spewing from the mouth.
“I know,” Fuyuhiro slurred, “goblins. Lots of them. So what?”
The man’s back had long been turned from those distant hills the creatures ran across. Fuyuhiro could not have seen them. That ability to know things, to sense things; the man had barely shared that knowledge with him. Even in a drunken state, the man had powers he wouldn’t have the strength to perform for a long time. He’d secretly felt stronger, but hadn’t told the man for fear of facing his wrath.
He’d only recently begun to feel the life energies of lesser beings. They came and went, their narrow thoughts and emotions focused solely on survival in that moment.
People were not always like that. He sometimes felt their presence but not their thoughts. They planned, built, and deceived, but they were far beyond his ability to instantly ascertain. Those higher beings felt so much loss when other people and things they loved were taken from them, just like the people of Danvers each time the goblins raided.
He and Fuyuhiro had the power to do something about the goblins. They could easily prevent the attacks. They could find where those goblins hid, and they could eliminate the threat completely.
“They looted this place before,” he said, “can we not help the people of Danvers?”
The drunk huffed out a familiar sentiment. “We cannot. We are not their guardians.”
It was exactly the answer he expected from the man. Fuyuhiro was not in the habit of helping anyone unless it benefited him in some way. That was not the way monks were supposed to behave.
He looked upon his ironed arms, the healed skin raised where that metal had burned his flesh for the man’s sins. Fuyuhiro’s way of thinking was why he had these scars on his arms. It was the drunkard’s leadership that had ruined the path he believed was right for him.
Makaik knew the truth, and he finally accepted it. The Elders would never let him return to the monastery. Other monks had been known to leave yet still remain honorable, but they’d already been masters when they left the order. He was just a boy, almost a teenager, and still had many years of training to complete under the tutelage of an expert.
“We can still do the right thing.”
“The right thing is for you to shut up, boy!” Fuyuhiro took another long drink from his dark bottle.
Of course he did not agree with his master in this. He shook his head, standing to look down upon the old man.
The drunkard was a short way from him, and did not acknowledge the fact he’d stood up. Dirty robes draped over Fuyuhiro’s shriveled, hunched over body. Where once there had been a fit form, muscular and lean, now was just thin and frail.
This was not the Master Fuyuhiro he once respected.
“You,” he hesitated, “are weak, I believe, and dishonorable. You do not reflect the teachings of-”
“Shut up!”
Makaik had been prepared for this, or at least for something like this. He still had some fear of the old man’s reprisal, but this had been a long time in the making. He’d avoided the confrontation so many times.
Now, something told him this was it. He needed to leave the old man behind, no matter the consequences. Doing this meant that becoming stronger and more powerful would be very difficult, but Fuyuhiro had taught him little in recent months anyway.
“I am leaving.”
Fuyuhiro laughed, then said confidently, “you will not leave me. You are too weak.”
This doubled his hatred of the man. It was a powerful emotion, and one that could eventually lead him astray. He’d witnessed what sinful behaviors could do, and had felt the consequences of the man’s demons.
“I am not weak.”
He expected Fuyuhiro to laugh or get angry. The drunk man instead rose unnaturally from the ground, as if pulled up by invisible ropes. Fuyuhiro’s face remained emotionless. He knew the spell to be one of Kratopo's. The old man had often channeled power from the God of Willpower in order to keep himself appearing sober and stable. With the power of unseen ropes, Fuyuhiro did not move his body like an intoxicated man.
His master said, “you are nothing.”
This frightened him, yet he stood his ground. Fuyuhiro was powerful. He’d seen the man do incredible things. He just hadn’t seen the man do anything like that recently, for alcohol had consumed him. It took a great deal of energy for Fuyuhiro to try and appear normal.
He suddenly realized a truth. If Fuyuhiro believed his novice to be nothing, it was only because Fuyuhiro was projecting his own fears. The man knew he’d failed both of them.
That gave Makaik the courage he needed to stand against the wayward man. For others this might have appeared simple, but there was a great conflict within him. Without a master he would be alone. Still, he had to say the words. He had to verbalize his feelings and distance himself from Master Fuyuhiro so that he could become someone worth something.
“You are my master no more,” he spoke, “for you are the weak one. You are nothing!”
Fuyuhiro moved only a single finger.
An invisible hand grabbed Makaik by the ankle and yanked with incredible force. He flew against the plank wall of the barn. Wide fat boards exploded as he crashed through, landing to the trodden straw and soil within.
It hurt, but not nearly as bad as he thought it would. A horse whinnied inside, near him, and stomped away from the sudden intrusion.
That had all happened in a second, and Fuyuhiro laughed in amusement, having barely flinched so much as a finger.
He stood within the stable to look back through the broken planks at the horrible man. The wall had been solid wood, milled from old hardened lumber, yet his body hadn’t broken. He felt barely a light thump from the attack, and realized he’d instinctively casted Protective Shell over his body before hitting the wall. Asclepi, the God of Healing, had answered him.
Fuyuhiro hadn’t expected that. The old man tried to ignore his skilled defense. “Will you shut up now so I can drink in peace?”
Makaik would not relent. He’d had enough. He’d already been disgraced. The man had given and taken everything from him. Fuyuhiro had used him to get whatever the man wanted. He’d become nothing more than a laborer, attached to the old man because he was trained to be a novice.
But there was no honor in serving a man possessed by addiction. There was no oath for him to break, because Fuyuhiro had already broken it long ago.
This was the end of their journey together. He would make sure of that. He would break their bonds of monk training and defy tradition, leaving the man before his training was complete.
He would strike back against Fuyuhiro for the first time. This would need to be quick, unexpected, and devious.
Makaik thought only of Rhinoktep, the God of Might. He’d never once performed a third level power, but Rhinoktep had always interested him. Before they’d left the monastery he’d not been strong enough, but he had read enough to know of the god. In the months since then, he’d gained the strength.
Did Fuyuhiro even know?
Energy flowed through him as the gods heard his memorized words. He felt their energies within him.
It was time to strike before Fuyuhiro realized.
His vision blurred. His body radiated the power of Rhinoktep, invisible to all but those worthy enough to see it.
In one half second he stood within the horse stable, looking out. He stood completely still, relayed no emotional sign of what he planned, otherwise the old man might know. In the next half second he was in front of the man, both arms stretched forward to form one powerful punch to the man’s chest.
His movement was a blur, faster than a crack of lightning. Behind him, shards of wood drifted through the air, moving simultaneously slow and imperceptibly fast, where he’d blasted through the wall on his way to the man.
Fuyuhiro realized. The man was not happy, but was far too slow to understand his pupil had finally fought back. In a drunken state, even casting the low level Protective Shell over himself had not been a consideration. The master had been too busy calling upon Kratopo's invisible ropes to prop himself up, and far too confident attempting to continue dominance over the pupil.
Makaik had never once retaliated. This was the time, and it had to work. He used a spell the man did not even know he understood.
Rhinoktep’s Justice hit Fuyuhiro square in the chest. Energy flowed through his outstretched palms. The old man was hit with a powerful blast of energy, sending him away.
Fuyuhiro’s broken body flopped across the grassy hill and rolled to a stop just as a light rain began falling.
Time returned to normal, and in the darkness he did not see the old man move. There was still life there, though Fuyuhiro’s body was near death.
Makaiks feet were still planted firmly in the ground beneath the pitched roof, arms outstretched. He stood there, watching, and waiting, almost unbelieving of the act he’d just done. He did not feel weaker, though he knew that was not something he could do many times without succumbing to some type of fatigue.
His flowing adrenaline covered any loss of strength, feeling powerful and confident in the aftermath of retaliating against the man. Slowly, he stood, thinking that he’d just done wrong by the old man.
No. He no longer cared about Fuyuhiro.
The master deserved this.
No. He had to stop calling the old man by that ridiculous title. His former master deserved this.
Fuyuhiro had been a weak man. Fuyuhiro had become nothing more than a wasted shell of a monk with no honor. The old man would die alone for those sins. Makaik would carry the scars of them, but he would forge a new future without the man’s demons.
Rhinoktep had granted the mighty power when he’d asked, and no god had seen fit to provide Fuyuhiro with a means of defending against it.
That was all the evidence Makaik needed. He would leave Fuyuhiro, and go to Danvers to fight goblins and protect people.
That was the monk way.