For a while after Mohan left, Solera looked in wonder at the majestic blue tower. ‘Enlightenment’ was just a word to him, with no real meaning behind it. But there was clearly something otherworldly about this place, with the blue strings and the white mist that only he seemed to be able to see.
Indeed, it was just now at this very place that he had awoken a third vision, the one of souls adrift in a spiritual ocean. His third eye, which had only been able to look inward at his own soul, was now able to look outwards, at the souls of others. Why?
He focused again on the clouds of whirling blue strings, one of which sent several threads shooting his way. He put a hand out to swipe a passing string, and for an instant he had something, and it was gone.
Solera frowned. He swiped his hand through another string, and another, and each time he felt the same feeling. It was as if, for a moment, he was touched by a strange presence, and became one with it. But when the moment passed, everything disappeared.
He was frustrated, because he did not know what it was that he was forgetting. But from the way the blue strings bled the colorless power… it was clear. Power. These strings had power. If he could trap one inside his soul, he could extract an indefinite amount of power from it. He had to trap one!
Solera took a step forward, throwing his hand through three passing strings. The feeling intensified, but so did the feeling of forgetting. But he remembered something now. He remembered they had the answer! The answer to what? The answer to everything! He needed to feel it again! He needed it!
A knot of ten strings shot through him, and his eyes widened- but he had forgotten. With a shout, he sprinted forward towards the tower from which all the clouds emerged. A barrage of strings whizzed right past him, and he continued forward, dimly aware of the other souls moving through the colorless sea towards him. But they were unimportant. Only the strings were important.
The strings had power, and he needed power…
A jolt buzzed through him, and he bolted up, his mind clouded with confusion. The images his eyes were sending him were fuzzy, but they finally melted into three distinct perspectives. He was staring at the face of an old woman, a gray sphere which took the place of a portion of the woman’s head, and of course, his very own soul.
Gray!
Solera froze up, looking in stricken terror at the old woman Gray. She was staring strangely at him. She was going to possess him?
Her hand reached out, and Solera could faintly see gray power trickling through nearly invisible tubes which existed everywhere her body did. The power came within millimeters of touching Solera as her fingers stroked his hair.
“It’s alright, love. I’ll leave you alone now.” She stood up, leaving Solera at the edge of the wind wall.
He took a while to calm down, sort out what happened. He had seen the strings, felt something. Gone crazy. He had tried to run into the cloud- no, he actually did run into the cloud! Mohan said people had gone insane when they went too far! Had that happened to him?
Why had he done that?
Sweat beaded down Solera’s neck. He only remembered his insatiable urge to touch the strings. There was something about them, something dangerous. He couldn’t go near them, not if he wanted to stay sane.
The Gray. He had been rescued by a Gray. A monster, not in body but in soul. Solera felt even more uncomfortable thinking about this. How had he allowed this to happen? He couldn’t understand!
This Tornado Sect was unreal, surreal. He needed to escape quickly, and go home where things made sense again. Solera staggered to his feet, only to stumble back down from the dizziness. The Gray was back again, propping him up. Another Gray came over to help. Another Gray?
Solera’s heart, which had only begun to slow, immediately picked up speed again. He concentrated his third eye on his surroundings to see that at least a third of the people in this place were Gray, their souls shining gray spheres, more vibrant than the souls of any other color. They were everywhere. A teenaged boy, his eyes closed and the edges of his mouth curled upwards into a pleasant smile. A man with blonde hair, meditating on a mat near the center of the Tower. Even a baby, rocking in an automated cradle, her eyes darting around at dizzying speed.
“Love, everything fine?” The Gray holding up his right side whispered into his ear. He looked over to see a young girl, her face sickeningly beautiful. He looked away, nodding silently. She was a Gray. This girl was a Gray.
The Gray on the other side, the old woman from before, chided him.
“We know you wanted to test yourself, but that was too scary. Your soul is not pure enough right now. Never pass the first ring without us again, yes?”
Solera nodded again. He remembered now. He had been unable to comprehend the blue strings, and had abandoned caution to seek enlightenment. But his soul was too weak. Of course he couldn’t understand what he was feeling. That was so stupid, so stupid. How could he?
Solera closed his eyes. He needed to calm down. He was surrounded by enemies and strange things, and losing his mind again was the last thing he wanted to do.
After a moment, he opened them again. He turned to his left, to the old woman Gray.
“Cou-could I go back to my room, to get some rest?” He couldn’t help but stammer out the question. No matter how nice or pleasant they looked on the outside, the Grays were still Grays.
She frowned, and her soul lit up with even more light. “We already have your schedule prepared, love. You have your second tutoring session in thirty minutes.”
Solera nodded, thinking for a moment. “Is the teacher… one of us?”
The Gray sighed sympathetically, and he could feel two arms wrapping around him from his right side.
“No, love, if you really want to be left alone then we’ll cancel it.”
Solera could feel some teeth on his ear, and started to squirm. “Tha-that’s fine. Let me go early so I can, I can be left alone early.”
The company of a real human, that was what he needed right now more than anything.
The old woman nodded. “Yes, love. This is your primary partner, by the way.” She patted the head of the girl clinging onto Solera. “You will move to her room tonight.”
Solera opened his mouth, then closed it. Some more sweat appeared on his neck. How… how could he escape if he had a Gray with him at night? He couldn’t stay with this girl. Absolutely couldn’t stay with this Gray. He had to find some way out!
“The Academy takes fifteen minutes, let’s go.” The girl chirped as she disentangled herself from Solera and went to retrieve her helmet. He cursed to himself as he realized she was coming.
The old woman nodded, handing Solera his helmet and putting on a mask, and then her helmet. She was somebody important, then, if she wore one of those masks. But that wasn’t anything he didn’t already know. But more importantly, where was the Academy? Was it outside of this cave-palace? Could he use the Academy to escape?
Before he could get very far down his line of thinking, the old woman took hold of him with one hand and the girl on the other, and began walking them through the vortex. The dust, which screamed past at speeds Solera would call dangerous, began to drift by in the region surrounding them. After several minutes, they were inside the palace again, walking through tunnels.
All of a sudden, he realized his third eye’s external vision had vanished. He could no longer see the souls of the two Grays right next to him. He could no longer see anything at all! Solera concentrated, struggling to turn the external vision back on, but he couldn’t. It was like it had never existed.
Why?
“You two are primary partners. Talk more.” The old woman frowned. “You new ones never talk but only think. This is not Sky anymore. You must talk now.”
“Okay,” Solera mumbled. He took his mind off his missing external vision and began trying to memorize the layout of the palace.
“I’m just so happy! It’s finally my turn to show off!” The girl skipped along, a wide smile on her face.
“Yes, later.” The old woman nodded amiably. They turned a corner, and were outside again, this time further down the mountain, outside of the massive wind vortex.
The entire mountain city lay below them. Thousands of stone buildings, hanging vines, aqueducts, open-air pavilions… Solera looked down at the city. Just how many of them were Gray?
“Let’s go.” The old woman had finished attaching a pair of wings to her back, and she gripped the girl with one hand and Solera with the other. With the combined thrust of her flapping wings and the small tornado she generated underneath them, they quickly rose into the sky.
They flew through the air, beelining for the cavern system they called the Academy. Solera looked down below him at the tiny houses and dots which were people, and went absolutely still. If he was dropped from this height, he would become flatter than a paper.
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“There’s the Academy!” The girl pointed off to a giant grid of caves and buildings built into a vertical rock face. From a hole at the top of the cave rose a plume of steam which disappeared into the clouds above. Solera squinted, and could make out gray-robed figures moving through the caves.
“And that’s the Dome! We’re going there tomorrow!” She pointed in the opposite direction. On the other side of the mountain was an immense, hemispherical building, made completely from a black metal. It was balanced at the edge of a long escarpment which dropped all the way to nearly the very bottom of the mountain. Solera’s eyes landed on a tiny mountain path leading into a cave, and his heartbeat quickened. That place… that was the place where the Patriarch had summoned the Gray into him!
She pointed out the residential areas, various blocks of smaller buildings and caves which were adjacent to the marketplaces, but Solera stopped paying attention. The Dome… there was a rift there, a rift to the Gray. It was where they conducted their possession, where he had been possessed. The thought made his stomach churn.
When he broke away from his thoughts, they were landing atop a flat strip of rock which extended out from the cliff face.
“I’m going now,” the girl laughed as she walked away. “See you tonight.”
Solera nodded dumbly, and turned to follow the old woman through another mind-boggling set of tunnels and stairs. They walked past countless gray-robed people, many of which looked to be quite young, who all bowed to the old woman as they passed. They also shot curious glances at Solera, which he tried to ignore.
“Love, please be careful.” She spoke as they walked down a long hallway with doors on either side every few meters. “This teacher is not one of us. But he is not normal, either. He is very smart, and does strange things a lot. You must bear with him until you learn the basics of channeling. Alright?”
“Okay.” Solera drifted into thought again. Channeling… he had tried to learn something about it, back when he was trying to help the medics. But it was an extremely complicated subject, and after his ordeal, the only thing he could remember was a circulation mantra and maybe half of the mantra for power-to-fire conversion.
They stopped at a door. The old woman took off her mask before pushing the door open. Solera blinked. The room was totally empty, save for a man dozing off in a hammock which hung off the edges of the back wall.
“Professor Abkariya.” Her voice had turned icy cold, just like the Patriarch’s had when he spoke to Professor Mohan. “What are you doing?”
The man opened his eyes and looked over. He had caramel skin and a striking face, with a hooked nose and mischievous eyes, and Solera felt uncomfortable. He felt uncomfortable looking at this man. The way he moved, the way he swiveled his head, the way he looked at the old woman, everything felt wrong to Solera about it, and he couldn’t understand why.
“Elder Galina. Right.” Abkariya yawned and rolled back over. “That tutoring thing. I changed my mind. I’d rather be doing science right now.”
The hairs on Solera’s head rose, and the feeling deepened. He backed away, extremely confused, but the old woman put her arm around him.
“This is not something you can change your mind about. You were never given an option.” She snapped at the man as she gently pushed Solera forward. “He must be versed in the entirety of the curriculum by the end of January. I trust you understand how important this boy is, and what would happen if he was harmed. Good day.”
The door slammed shut behind Solera, leaving him alone with this unnerving man. Solera stayed next to the door, frantically trying to understand what was giving him this feeling. As far as he could tell, there was nothing particular off about him, but there was!
“Ahhh, come on.” The man let out a long sigh, then got out of his hammock. “Well, I’m Abkariya, and you?”
Solera figured it out. It wasn’t himself which was giving him this sensation, he didn’t think. It was Rasmurnov’s voice!
But that raised more questions than it answered. Why was Rasmurnov’s voice urging him to be cautious? Did he have past history with this man, buried in his latent memory?
No, that wasn’t it. It was Rasmurnov’s lie detecting instinct was going haywire. It couldn’t read this man at all!
Solera felt some shock. The man had been a criminal investigator, and had seen through every lie lobbed at him during the prison march. Even if he wasn’t adept enough to identify Solera as the killer, he still had immense experience in reading body language! How was it being tricked by this man?
“Hey, I asked you a question. We’re not getting anywhere with this, you know. You know?” The man patted Solera on the shoulder, eliciting a charge of static. “Oops, sorry.”
Solera’s eyes widened. He looked into his third eye, where he could see a red dot entering into an obscure channel near where his shoulder would be. The moment it came into contact with his power, it fizzed, and all the surrounding power began to turn a fiery shade of red. The red touched more brown, which also became red!
“What did you do?” Solera demanded, his voice carrying a tinge of fear. He backed up again, and then, with some hesitation, moved forward to stare directly into Abkariya’s eyes. He had to be confident. He was the one with power here. He had the Grays on his side!
“Do something? What’d I do?” Abkariya raised a finger, and began picking his nose.
“You’re converting my power.” Solera snarled. He could feel the red pouring through his channels now, despite his efforts to contain it. “You put something in me, and you’re converting my power. You… you know how many people you’re going to piss off if I get hurt, right?”
Solera didn’t like the idea of relying on the Gray, but he could feel, see the red power spreading through him. He couldn’t control it!
Abkariya blinked slowly. His finger dug into his nostril some more before he pulled it out and touched Solera’s shoulder again. The red power began to drain away, fizzing into nothing as they exited Solera’s body.
“It would’ve just made you a little sick, no need for heightened emotions.” He grumbled. “I just didn’t want to teach another idiot. It was fun for the first year, before I realized the depths of people’s stupidity. I can’t really be blamed.”
Solera opened the door, moving to step outside. “That’s fine. I don’t want to learn channeling from you anyway.”
That’s right. He needed to escape. Right now. The Tornado Sect was just too crazy.
“Uh, no. Now I want to teach you. But I also am kinda doing something else right now, but I still want to teach you. I guess I’ll just give you some simple exercises for today, yeah?”
“That’s fine.” Solera backed away, but found himself flying over Akbariya’s head and through the air into the hammock.
“What the fuck?” He shouted, struggling to rise to his feet.
“Chill, man. It was just kinetic push, nothing fancy.” Abkariya closed the door and smiled at him. “I mean, I did change up the direction a little, but that’s just another variant of kinetic push. I’ll teach you tomorrow, after we’re done with the basic basics.”
For the third time today, Solera’s back became drenched with sweat. This man was not going to let him go. And he was, very clearly, not a normal human. In fact, the Grays right now seemed more normal than him. At least Solera could predict them a little bit. This man, neither he nor Rasmurnov’s voice could read at all!
Abkariya pulled out a card from his pocket and tossed it over. Solera looked down at the card, resting on his stomach, and looked back up again.
“What, you’ve never seen money before?” Abkariya groaned. “You channel power into it and it changes color. Red is-”
“I know.” Solera snapped as he disentangled himself from the hammock. “But what is it for?”
“You’re going to learn the basics, that’s why. I want you to channel… hm… exactly five Iotas into that card, accurate to three decimal points. The card-counter is- ah, right. Well, just figure it out.” Abkariya brushed past Solera and flopped back into his hammock.
“Five Iotas?” Despite his precarious situation, Solera found himself growing even angrier. “I output several hundred Iotas a second, at least! How do I do that? How do I even know I put in five Iotas? This card isn’t going to change color with that little!”
Abkariya sniffed and rolled over. “You want to learn channeling, but you can’t even control your channels. You tell me how stupid that sounds.”
“It’s not stupid,” Solera muttered as he flipped the card over in his hand. He couldn’t escape; Abkariya wasn’t going to allow it. But neither could he possibly do the inhuman task he was asked to do. He was just wasting his time here with yet another madman when he could be saving his own life right now!
“Quit whining and figure it out.” Abkariya snapped.
His eyes red with frustration, Solera started to channel into the card.