THE GRAND CANYON, NORTH AMERICA, 100 BCE
“Stop it August!” Cerise screamed, “You’ll kill us both!”
“You’re lying!” August roared back, clutching at his head, trying not to feel like his skull was about to explode.
“I sunk all my tensa,” Cerise panted, groaning, “into these plants… this place… my anima too! You’re… you’re drawing in a protective anima configuration. It’s… protecting!”
August gasped and finally understood. With a supreme effort, he stopped drawing on the tensa. She hadn’t cultivated the tensa in her plants, she’d sunk her whole tensa pool into them, anima included! Gagging, he felt himself vomit up everything it felt like he had ever eaten.
Cerise tottered over to him, her condition not much better than his. “I tried to tell you,” she choked, “but you wouldn’t listen. You never listen.”
She stood next to him, watching as he continued retching and dry-heaving. “You’re experiencing anima sickness. I’m sorry, August. Sort of. I think you were going to kill me, so I don’t feel too sorry for you.”
Between choking heaves, he managed to ask, “Why… why are you…” a sudden bout of nausea had him clutching his belly and clenching his teeth and continuing on, fighting his roiling stomach, “What…?” He couldn’t finish.
Cerise took a deep breath and he felt a shift within himself and the pain lessened somewhat. He watched in fascination as Cerise managed to extract her anima from within him without disrupting his anima. The gossamer strands of metaphysical selfness simply slipped in between and around his own, never brushing them. Once the last traces of her anima had left him, he no longer felt the wracking pain and stomach-churning nausea. However, the tensa remained: he had managed to pull in nearly ten megasparks, more than he had possessed in centuries. Cerise walked over to a boulder and sank to the canyon floor, leaning her back against the boulder wearily.
August tried to stand, to sit, to do anything but lie there like a ragdoll, but his muscles spasmed and shook, not responding to his commands. He could only hope that his strength would return with time. The only thing August could do was stare at the canyon walls and think. The miniature sun that Cerise had created had winked out and the profusion of flowers and plants appeared to be dying. They had shriveled and turned yellow and brown and drooped, dead where they were.
Why didn’t she finish him now while he was still weak? Maybe she was completely out of tensa now that he’d absorbed everything here. Perhaps she had some other use for him—or maybe she was just plucking up the courage. The longer they lay like that, silent in the box canyon, the less likely she’d kill him—at least, he certainly hoped that’s what it meant. She didn’t seem to be eager to resume their contest, such as it was.
“It’s been three thousand years, August,” she said finally. “Three thousand. I had hoped you were dead.” He couldn’t respond. It seemed that’s where she’d leave it because she fell silent for a long few minutes.
August heard her sigh and the sound of her standing up. She took a few light steps on the rocky ground and then she was standing above him, a long knife in her left hand. It would take far more than a mere knife to kill him, but August didn’t feel any safer. She had the look of someone contemplating murder. Her eyes were hard.
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“I can’t think of any good reason to keep you alive, August,” she said in a cold, flat voice. “Just by coming here and doing what you’ve done…” She looked around the canyon and her voice became bleak, “You’ve wasted a lot of effort.” She hefted the knife in her left hand, not seeming to be conscious of what she was doing.
August tried to speak, but he was unable to. The curious paralysis left him unable to move, though he could have unleashed any of his grafts—he was still able to access his tensa pool. Still, his grafts were not subtle ones and he couldn’t think of any advantage to flooding the entire area in lung-melting poison or relaunching his Destructive Nexus and those were some of his most subtle grafts. He didn’t feel any stronger. Was this permanent?
Cerise knelt and pressed the knife to his neck, her eyes still hard. “Your death, much as it might please me right now, is the last thing I want. It would undo even more of what I have been working for. The paralysis will fade. Eventually.” Abruptly, she stood up, slipping the knife into a sheath she wore at her belt. “You won’t see me again.” He heard her walk away, her footsteps fading. They stopped long before she should have been far enough away, but August didn’t think she was there anymore.
As Cerise had promised, the paralysis did eventually fade. Five days later. He baked in the desert heat, the sandstone rocks of the canyon getting hot enough to sizzle his skin where it touched. By night he shivered and froze. But he cycled the tensa energy through him and his body repaired itself quickly. Almost before he had even realized the superficial damage caused by the exposure.
If anything, it was a good time to relax and reflect. Cerise’s presence here had been a surprise, but perhaps he shouldn’t have been so surprised. After all, she was stuck here just as much as he was. But what was this project she had thrown herself into? No matter how he turned it in his head, he couldn’t fathom it.
Why would anyone sink their anima into other living things? There was a definite chance that their unrefined life force would latch onto your anima, corrupting your ability to recover tensa. It was extremely dangerous to do what Cerise had been doing, yet the effect certainly did seem to be interesting. The place had looked like a garden when he had first arrived. Why had Cerise taken up an interest in gardening?
No… the plants had been holding the tensa. When he’d absorbed the energy, they’d died like they depended on it to live. Was Cerise trying to turn plants into some kind of natural tensa battery? Perhaps that is why she had sunk her anima into it: it might serve as some kind of attractor, like a magnet with iron filings. If that were the case, then there might have been other sites like this, other tensa storage areas.
True, Cerise had been at this one and if he went seeking out another of her little sanctuaries, he doubted he would get away with a mere humiliation like he had here. But he had been taken by surprise. If there were other sites that Cerise had created like this in the world, then she would not be able to be at all of them at once. Besides, he had just regained 10 megasparks of tensa. It was a veritable treasure hoard of power even though his capacity for tensa made it seem like just a drop in an empty lake, it was a drop that was sorely needed. And it was more tensa energy than he had at once since he left the Land Between the Rivers all those years ago. If there were any hope of him carrying out his plan, then he would have to fill up his entire tensa pool.
It seemed hopeless. But five days of paralysis allowed him time to work through hopelessness. After all, he was immortal. He had the time.
When the paralysis finally faded, it left him with a feeling of numb pain, like his foot had fallen asleep but over his entire body. He was able to move, but he was clumsy and slow and he could not stand at all. It took several hours for the tingling numbness to fade and for him to start to feel like he was approaching normal once more.
Cerise’s canyon was no longer walled off from the rest of the canyon by illusion. The artificial sun had disappeared and darkness had fallen once again. Without a backward glance, August left the box canyon, running east. It was time to leave this place and begin his search anew.