Ark felt anger and humiliation feeding the fire in his chest. He wanted to say something, to lash out at Alistor and make him regret talking to Mino in that demeaning manner.
“You think I’m being unfair,” Alistor said, a crooked smile on his lips, looking at the two.
Beside Ark, Mino stood and worked his jaw without opening for a retort. They both kept silent rather than give Alistor what he wanted.
“Aww, c’mon you two, don’t play coy with me now.” His smile grew wider as he paced back and forth. “Let me hear some protests and arguments. Let’s really get into our feelings here.”
Silence.
“No? Good.” He came to a stop, sunglasses obscuring the look in his eyes. “Because this isn’t a place that’s meant to be fair. This is a place for results, and I threw you into the deep end of the pond to see what you could do. You both drowned out there, which means I now gotta go rescue you from yourselves.” Leaning forward, lips curling into a smile, the old instructor growled, “And I hate swimming.”
Ark kept his eyes front, and his hands behind his back, curled into fists.
Rubbing his forehead, Alistor sighed and said, “You may not care about the risk to your lives—“ Then he pointed behind him at the others, who were preparing for individual combat practice. “—and every one of those guys are as absorbed in themselves as you are, but I am the one who will have to take responsibility if you’re wiped out. Normally, I’d take kids like you and throw you into a psionics seminar for a month, and wait to see what happened after that, but that’s not gonna work for you guys, is it?”
Both remained silent. There was no point in objecting.
“I’m already testing you, Tiny, but this is another matter. If you’re unable to pose a threat to the creatures we will face in Iskar, I will not take you. That means you—“ he pointed at Mino. “—have to be more than a shield for others to hide behind, and…” Alistor let his finger slide away from Mino and onto Ark, “You need to prove your mindweaving can be an asset, not a liability.”
Straightening his back, Alistor put his arms behind him before continuing. “I don’t care how you go about it, or what price you have to pay. Find a way, or give up and go home. Understood?”
They both nodded, still keeping silent.
“Good. Tiny, I gave you a week, so I’ll give the two of you twice that. Training room five has been booked for you in that time—you will go there instead of here. You have two weeks to come up with something to convince myself and your teammates that you can earn your keep. You can report to me whenever you feel ready, and you will be tested like today. You can choose whether you’ll be on the same team, or in separate ones, but I demand results. Now, you’re dismissed for tonight.”
With those words, he turned and walked to where the others were waiting. Ark’s chest burned hotter than ever, but he kept the flame contained and controlled. He could not let this make him lose control.
“Let’s go, Ark,” Mino said, quietly.
Ark realized he had been staring wide-eyed at Alistor’s back, and shook himself. “Yeah,” he said, his voice hoarse.
They walked out of the training room in defeat, and back to their own quarters in silence. Sitting at each of their bunks, Ark felt himself deflate and collapse, unsure and uncertain. They had come so far, and were so close, but it also came back to that last tiny problem. They were weak.
“What now?” Mino said, as the first to break the silence.
“Now we find a way?” Ark said, trying to force some determination into his words, but it came out as a weak.
“How?”
Ark felt his frustration reach a boiling point. Although his head told him that Mino was genuinely looking for answers, his heart heard the accusation laden in the question. “I don’t fucking know, Mino,” Ark said, throwing up his hands, “That’s kinda part of the problem.”
“But you have a plan,” Mino insisted, leaning forward with his big brown eyes studying Ark with calm curiosity, “You always have a plan.”
“Why don’t you try thinking of one, for once?” Ark stood up and spoke with heat in his voice, trying to clamp down on it, but failing. “Try contributing, just this one time, instead of leaving it all to me!”
Mino met his angry glare with an expression that was so calm that Ark immediately regretted his words. “I’m sorry Ark,” he said, finally looking down at the ground between them, “I’m just not that smart.”
“That’s not—“ Ark screwed up his face and rubbed his hair, trying to think of the right words. “I’m sorry Mino, I was out of line. I’m just frustrated, you know?”
“I get it,” Mino said, his tone still.
Ark wanted to say something more, to reassure his friend that he really hadn’t meant what came out of his mouth, but as he was trying to come up with something, a knock on the door caught his attention.
Walking over to it, he opened it to find Doug standing in the hallway outside, waving slightly at him. “Hi… I heard…” Doug’s face was going through several shades of discomfort, before he settled on what to say. “Is this a bad time?”
“No, but why—oh,” Ark slapped his forehead, “Right, the gear. You wanna come in?”
Carefully, Doug nodded, and Ark let him inside, where Mino sat with his head lowered.
“I—eh… I can come back some other time,” Doug said, eying the giant.
“It’s okay,” Ark said with a sigh and sat down on his bed, taking off the dagger and its sheath at his belt, “We just got chewed out in training by Alistor.”
Tipping from foot to foot, Dough sheepishly said, “Yeah I… I saw you coming out of training early and figured it might be something like that. So… it was bad, huh?”
Ark explained briefly as he handed Doug the dagger, which the boy received gingerly.
Looking from it and back at Ark, Doug nodded. “That sucks. So, what are you going to do?”
Sighing, Ark shrugged. Mino was not paying attention to the conversation, so he just gave it to Dough straight. “I have no idea. We figured the training would be enough, but because neither of us can use psions, we are at too much of a disadvantage.”
“Neither of you can use psions?” Doug said, eyebrow raised.
Ark did not even care about the slip this time. They were not in a position where they could hold their cards close to the chest.
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“No, we can’t,” Ark said, pointing at himself and then Mino. “I can’t sense them, and Mino’s psions go into his size.”
“Oh…” Doug weighed the dagger in his hand, “Then how did you think you’d become riftwalkers?”
“That’s a good question,” Ark said, placing his head in his hands, “I guess we really didn’t think all that much. Just getting here took all my attention—I didn’t… I guess I just thought it would work itself out once we were here.”
“Huh…” Doug drew the dagger an inch out the sheath, studying its red edge with a look of greedy excitement. Then he blinked and sighed, pushing the dagger back and handing it to Ark.
Raising his head, Ark furrowed his brow at Doug. “What? You don’t want to look at it after all?”
“No, I do,” Doug said, shaking his head, “But I think I have to pay you for the privilege first.”
“Pay me?”
“Yeah… I can’t help you with your problem,” Doug turned and walked back to open the door as he spoke, “But I know someone who might. Do you want to meet him?”
Both Ark and Mino stood up at the same time, eying Doug with a mix of suspicion and hope.
“Who?” They both said at the same time.
----------------------------------------
It turned out to be someone they knew, but in a different setting. Doug led them through the guild, down into the lower levels where the amount of traffic visibly thinned to just them. Their footsteps echoed down a long hallway, leading to a set of double doors at the end.
In large letters above the steel framed doors, the room beyond was demarcated as the ‘ARCHIVE’. With a wave for them to follow, Doug put his hand on a nearby reader, and the doors opened with a ‘woosh’ giving them a view of the inside.
A mess would be a nice way of describing it. A mixture or rubble and debris would be another. Boxes were stacked in towers to either side of the entrance, leading into a large room with endless rows of shelves, all filled to the brim with more boxes.
As they entered, the musk of old papers and cardboard enveloped them in an instant, making Ark’s breath feel stifled and heavy. Wishing he’d had the foresight to take a last good breath of air outside, Ark spoke in a hushed tone to Doug, “Is there really someone down here? The place looks abandoned.”
“Shh, don’t let him hear that,” Doug said, putting a finger on his lips as he turned to Ark.
“Let me hear what?”
All three of them jumped, as a lanky figure appeared from out of the shadows of the box-towers, holding a bundle of papers in his arms. Once Ark had gotten his galloping heart under control, he recognized Mallis, their instructor from Basic.
“Mallis, sir,” Doug said, trying on a grin while spreading his arms, “Missed me?”
“No… No, I don’t think I did,” Mallis said, tilting his head back and forth. He seemed even older in this setting, a part of the decrepit system of boxes and papers as much as the shelves or the poor lighting in the room. “Now, what shouldn’t I hear from you?”
“How… great your archive is?” Doug said, still trying to smile, but failing.
Mallis grunted with skepticism, then eyed Ark and Mino. “I see you have brought guests. I assume this is important? Or have you gentlemen come for more material to learn from?”
“No, Sir,” Ark said, keeping his tone steady. The terrible lighting in the room cast Mallis in shadows that made him appear more menacing than the gentle old lecturer from this morning. “We’ve come to ask for your help.”
“Is that so?” With a raised eyebrow, the old man nodded deeper into the archive and said, “Let’s take a seat, then, shall we?”
He walked out in front of them and led them down one of the many rows of shelves, back to where a small desk stood surrounded by a papers and binders, scattered around as if a hurricane had spontaneously appeared in this spot, thrown everything around and then dissipated.
Waving in the direction of some nearby boxed, Mallis said, “Sit.” Then he walked around the desk, put the papers down, and found his own seat, facing them. “Now, Douglas, I expect a good reason for you coming down here and interrupting my work. Please provide one.”
Doug swallowed. “These two just got their asses handed to them in training, Mal. They need some advice, and I figured you’d be the best to give it.”
The old man threw a piece of cardboard into Doug’s face with such alacrity that Ark barely noticed before Doug gave a cry of surprise and pain. “Call me with such familiarity again, Douglas, and I will see to it that your boss have you running errands across Lowtown for the next month.”
Rubbing his nose, Doug murmured, “Yes, Sir.”
“Now, next in line for explanations, I suppose,” Mallis turned to Ark and Mino, and Ark immediately prepared himself to block, should he throw another projectile. Instead, he merely said, “Talk.”
So Ark did. He explained what had happened in training, and saw Mallis furrow his brow.
“Curious… Why didn’t he send you to train psionics? That is standard procedure for newcomers without prior training.”
“We can’t use psionics,” Ark said, hoping he would not be forced to go into details he could not provide.
Mallis did not ask for details, though, he merely blinked a few times, then leaned forward to study Ark closer. Then he leveled the same scrutiny on Mino, before leaning back down, tapping the armrest of his chair, and say, “I see.”
“You do?” Ark could not help but be curious. What had the old man figured out, if anything?
“Yes. I cannot help you?”
“What?” It was Doug who reacted the strongest. Ark did not really know if he should be surprised or disappointed.
Mallis furrowed his brow, and the distant look in his eyes told Ark he was looking something up on his netlink. “Or maybe I should say, I won’t help you.”
“Why not?” Doug leaned forward, a surprising amount of force in his voice, “You help me all the time. Why not them?”
“They’re not part of the guild, Douglas,” Mallis said, looking from him to the two interlopers, “They are provisional members at best, and I have no obligation toward them.”
“But you do have a solution,” Ark said, narrowing his eyes. He had heard what Doug had not. A smirk from the old man confirmed it.
“I may.”
“Then there must be a price for it,” Ark continued, now leaning forward.
“Perhaps…”
“Look, Grandpa, just help them out, please? For me?” Doug pleaded with the eyes of a dog and a whimper in his voice. He got another piece of cardboard in his face for his efforts.
“Familiarity will get you nowhere with me, Douglas,” Mallis said, while keeping his eyes on Ark. “You, Lad, have the eyes of someone hungry for power. What price are you willing to pay for it?”
“Anything,” Ark said, eyes intense, breath hard.
“Ark,” Mino said, speaking up for the first time with warning in his voice.
“You should listen to your friend, young man,” Mallis said, keeping his gaze locked with Ark’s. “It’s not an easy road I offer.”
“What are the terms?” Ark said, ignoring Mino, who had started to fidget beside him.
“You will come here every night and help me out,” Mallis said, waving toward the surrounding mess of boxes, “And I get to study the two of you closer. For at least a week.”
Furrowing his brow, Ark licked his lips. “What do you mean, ‘study’?”
“If you really can’t use psionics, I’d like to learn why,” Mallis said, shrugging, “Nothing invasive, I assure you. A few tests and maybe some blood samples—that is all.”
“Ark… I really don’t like this,” Mino said, prodding Ark in the side.
Grabbing his arm, Ark turned to him with wide eyes and said, “Do you want to go back out there with nothing, Mino?”
Once again, they looked into one another’s eyes, and Ark felt a profound sadness in the look Mino gave him. Finally, the big boy hung his head and said, “Fine.”
“We’re in.”
“Excellent,” Mallis said, rising back to his feet, “Come back tomorrow—I’ll have a list of work that needs doing prepared by then. For now, I have more important work to do, so please find the way out on your own.”
Ark stood back up, feeling hope straightening his spine. While he did not have the solution in hand yet, he felt certain that Mallis knew something. The way he had looked at Ark was unmistakable.
Together with Mino and Doug, he was halfway down the isle of shelves, when a realization hit, and he stopped dead in his tracks.
“What is it?” Mino turned to look at him with concern.
“Just… Go ahead without me. I have one thing I want to ask Mallis. I’ll be right back.”
Before they could object, Ark turned and stormed back to Mallis, who was standing at his desk and organizing a box. The old man looked up slowly as Ark returned, a slight scowl on his face.
“I’m sure I was very clear, Young Man. I—“
Daring to interrupt him, Ark fished something out of his pocket and held it up to Mallis as he spoke quickly. “I’m sorry, Sir. But… do you know what this is?”
Staring at the small coin in Ark’s hand—with one face a depiction of Vanguard, and the other an eye set with a small purple stone that glowed with psions—Mallis slowly and carefully said, “Now, where did you get that?”