Melar took another step and passed the edge beyond the light shining from the house. Behind him, Katie was still looking at him, yet the light didn’t reach him, and neither did her sight. The warm July embrace of darkness had engulfed him, and he was alone. Again.
He liked the night. He was grateful for the succor she offered secrets. The protection she bestowed on its children against the blinding light. For much of his life, she had been like his stepmother. Often there to offer him her warm embrace when he needed it most.
Melar could remember more than a few times when he had dashed into the darkness, escaping from the clutches of those who walked in the brightness of the day. From those who sought to take what little he had left.
Darkness and light are two ends of one of Reality’s many spectrums. They are the same idea taken to its two natural extremes. Which means they could easily morph into the other.
Just as many spoke brightly about the light and used it to symbolize the good, so could it be a blinding radiance that incinerated all in sight.
Just as many spoke softly of the darkness and used it to symbolize peace and rest, so could it be a suffocating void that consumed everything in its path.
He liked the darkness. The solace of solitude it provided had helped him walk forward unburdened during the hard times.
Yet tonight, it only made him feel lonely. Empty.
Without all the familiar parts of his home world, Melar felt disconnected from this new world. As if gravity was losing its grasp on him and soon, he would drift into the endless starry sky.
‘As if I am an alien.’ He smirked, finding no mirth in the comment.
‘It's them that are alien! Strange, meek little creatures. Easy prey!’
‘Shut up!’ Melar shouted to no one but his intrusive thoughts.
‘Ugh, I need to do something about this, it’s too taxing to keep in control, and that can be costly in this strange environment.’
His soul was too dark at the moment and the night only intensified the call to action. It beckoned him to annihilate something or someone.
Before he knew it, he was sprinting. Not just a sprint with his body either. His mind was on the task to its fullest, controlling every step and every muscle, willing himself to move faster. His soul was pushing him forward too, infusing his muscles, nerves, and senses with energy, further boosting his speed.
However, he no longer had the endurance of his carefully cultivated body of old. So, mere minutes into the nearly 100km/h dash Melar stopped and sprawled on the ground. His body was spent, his reserves of soul energy were gone, and his mind was perturbed.
He was in the middle of a field with tall grass and nothing but the stars to keep him company. Unfamiliar though they were, their beauty was still as all-encompassing as the stars from his own world.
‘At least for a while, I won’t be able to destroy. However, the destructive impulses keep pushing. I am itching to take another life, see them squirm, begging for mercy only to deny it with a smile.’ He thought darkly.
‘This disbalance has gone on for far too long. The cultivation process is too slow for rebalancing myself. I need more. And my grip is slipping, telltale signs of Will erosion.’
He stared up and allowed his mind to wander, only for the recent conversation to surface.
‘So impulsive. So, unlike me. Offering to help her become a sourcerer… An infinite number of things can go wrong. She may not even be capable of being a sourcerer. It makes sense that all sentient creatures can awaken and become some form of a sourcerer but what do I know? Humans might be an exception or have something blocking them from that path. I wouldn’t know. It's not like I have spent that much time on theory and research. I had whole libraries waiting to be read through. Now I have nothing. I have no one. Even the strangers of my previous world feel closer than that family. What with how different our knowledge of the world is…’
That fourth option was just that, an option. Melar’s calculative cool-headed self that had roamed his world for years, surviving the harshest crucible would have never been willing to take on such a responsibility and burden. The chances of things going wrong were astronomical. The benefits were too uncertain and the costs too high.
‘Stupid. That’s what that was. But now the dice has been cast. If they choose that I need to do my best or I will forever lose myself.’
‘Then there is the outburst earlier. Letting my dark impulses leak out and scare the poor family like that. Unforgivable!’
The look in their eyes still haunted him. For weeks what Melar saw in them was mostly kindness and warmth. Those kind people, even if a bit mistrustful of the weird stranger, had welcomed him with open arms, like a long-lost relative. Protected him, fed him, taught him, and even made his time enjoyable like a vacation and not a deadly trial’s conclusion.
Now, those same eyes were tarnished forever, by the pitch-black desire for destruction that hid in his core. The fear he had seen in them was so primal it hadn’t even registered with their conscious minds by the time he had left to collect himself.
‘They will betray me and throw me to those in power. And how could they not? They have never been in contact with something as vile as that part of me. Maybe Steve, during his war times but I somehow doubt it. Such evil is rare.’
Melar remained motionless for a while but soon his body was rested enough to move again.
His destination was the city of Missoula, north of the lonely house of his gracious hosts. The distance was nearly twenty miles so he chose to only jog, using nothing but his body, allowing his soul to start filling up his tiny storage.
There was another reason why he pushed his still recovering body.
Running always made his mind more nimble and clear, helping him problem-solve better. Soon most of his focus was on more important things than the tiny obstacles on his path. Even navigation was delegated to a small part of his consciousness, the rest free to ruminate.
‘I completed the repairs of my soul core and the bridge that connects it to the physical boundary, allowing me better utilization of soul energy when enhancing the body. I didn’t have access to such a great sustained boost a few weeks ago.’
Melar noted, wanting to segway into a plan for the future only for his mind to go on a tangent.
‘Soul energy…’ his mind went back to that silly suggestion. To how he might have to teach a native sourcery with all of its intricacies and possibilities. Someone who had never been in contact with that essential part of reality. With their different understanding of what was around them, heavily influenced by science and its technology. A way of manipulating the world, so different to the one sourcerer employed. This way of thinking was so new to him that he had no idea where to begin if he had to differentiate them.
‘They have so many energies. I have barely scratched the surface of their knowledge, and I already know of kinetic energy, potential energy, electrical energy, magnetic energy… Or were those two one and the same? Then there was that emotional energy Emily mentioned at dinner a while back. Still not sure what she meant but I forgot to ask…’
This thought led him back to the memory of how disastrous the second part of the conversation had gone. Anger flared within him and like searing flames spread through his body. Anger for his failure at self-control which soon turned to fear.
Fear that he would not be able to ask Katie the infinite questions he had. That he would not see her smile in turn. As if he was offering her a gift and not asking for help. The enthusiasm with which she always answered questions that to her must have seemed silly, childish even.
Fear that tomorrow he would go back and find an ambush. Fear that in his efforts to escape, they would get harmed by someone. Worst of all maybe it would be him who would unintentionally pay for their kindness with pain. Pain they already had too much in their lives.
Melar shook his head. That train of thought was making him eager to brutalize someone, himself even. So, he went back to that last semi-coherent thought and focused on it.
‘Soul energy is what the rough translation of my language’s word is, source energy if I want to be more correct in terms of meaning. Yet with their way of thinking she might get the wrong idea about either term. And unlike one easy-to-say word like I am used to, it's two. Too unwieldy for educational purposes. It should have its own word so that I can attach meaning to that word as I go along.’
Melar reasoned only for a poor joke, a poke at himself, to come to mind.
‘Let’s turn on my superpowers of naming and come up with something.’ The joke was so lame it didn’t even give a rise of a chuckle out of him. Yet part of him found the weak attempt at levity like a salve to the sharp need within.
After almost a minute of chewing on it, he finally came up with something decent.
‘Oh, I know. Soen! It’s simple and the first part ‘so’ - can stand for both soul and source. Meanwhile, the second part ‘en’ - can stand for both energy and entity. Much better at encompassing the meaning of what the source of power my people use is.’
‘I better start using it, just as I have been practicing their English language by thinking in it.’
Solving that tiny problem gave Melar enough courage to start thinking about bigger problems. What he didn’t expect was for his mind to throw the biggest problem at him immediately after. A problem he thought he had resolved.
He had thought wrong.
It took Melar only a few minutes to realize where his mistake was. Back then, during that second night since his arrival, he had convinced himself that he only had to focus on improving himself. That if he worked hard enough he would be able to go back. That still held true, but the uncertainty of its possibility was weighing on him.
Not only that but one of his core tenets, “Always improve.”, was meaningless without direction. Hence why it was always buttressed by his larger purpose.
Melar didn’t need his father’s lecturing voice to remind him of a simple truth.
‘Improvement for the sake of improvement is meaningless. Just like power for the sake of power, and knowledge for the sake of knowledge. All three are deeply necessary for any goal to be achieved but without that goal, there is no reason to chase them. It leads to misguided actions which often lead to disastrous possibilities. I have seen this play out too many times. How could have I fallen into that trap?’
As angry as he was at himself, Melar still felt grateful to have found his lapse in judgment so soon after.
Still, the task of setting himself a worthy goal that would help him push forward when things got tough, the determination of his purpose, was not a simple thing.
By the time he started seriously thinking about this too big a question, he already found himself entering the outskirts of Missoula.
Melar had been following the main road north, running on the side of it, the rare car passing him by. He had just crossed a bridge and finally found a sidewalk, a clear sign of the city proper starting. He didn’t know the exact time, but it was nearing midnight, not a soul in sight.
Still, the appearance of the buildings was a good sign. Melar kept his jogging pace, a little more of his mind on the surroundings.
Despite the massive task of coming up with a worthy goal still weighing on him, he had come here with a goal. A goal that was still good and valid despite the dark impulses that urged him.
Melar wanted to wander around the city for a night and a day. Do nothing but walk around and observe. The people and their activities, the buildings and their peculiarities. He wanted to see other people, to observe how they responded to him if they thought of him as just another human walking the streets. However, another reason was at the core of it all.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
He wanted to find individuals who predated on others. The scum of society that took advantage of those too kind and avers to violence. They used that weakness to take with complete disregard and amass for themselves. Those people were an inevitable part of his overly orderly society, and he was certain they thrived in this chaotic social structure.
‘Even their economic system is predicated on the law of the jungle. The strong eat the weak. Well, boys and girls, who so happily adhere to this law, there is a new alpha predator in town. And he is hungry!’
A vicious smile appeared on his lips and stayed there for a few minutes, as he fed the darkness within with imaginary scenarios of finding prey and its inevitable demise.
Still, a hunter never revealed itself to its prey too early. So, soon Melar schooled his face back to a carefully curated neutrality, with a splash of innocence.
A stalker like him had to either find prey or convince another predator that he was one.
Sadly, Melar was in a completely new environment with no hint as to where to go and look for trouble.
Usually, back when Melar roamed his world, he would go to a town armed with at least some information if not an outright goal in mind. However, he could not ask the kind family for such information. He hadn’t been ready to reveal that side of himself.
‘Yet I still did it. In the most moronic manner possible!’ he chided himself, another flash of anger rising, as he kept on running down an empty sidewalk, almost too well-lit by the streetlights.
He felt exposed but not as alone as he had back in those fields.
‘Funny what a bit of civilization would do to a person's feelings and thoughts.’
Like that, Melar ran for hours, taking random turns when he felt like it. Most of the time his mind was preoccupied with failing attempts at finding a meaningful pursuit. From time to time, he would put that on hold to focus on his surroundings. Whether it was to stalk a random stranger and observe him, or when he found himself in front of a random building, still bustling with people.
Melar even entered one that looked like a bar of some kind. Loud music was blasting from the speakers, while all kinds of people were drinking, dancing, and having fun. He looked around and when he found nothing, he left. With no money in his pockets and with clothing that didn’t fit him or his purposes he was standing out too much.
‘A stalker needs to blend in, be almost invisible. This white top is making that difficult. My lack of understanding of the culture even more so,’ he sourly thought but didn’t relent.
A part of him wanted to find a fight but another, the more sane one, recognized that he was searching for signs that he would later explore. Now was not a good time to feed the darkness. It would give him short-term relief but would make his recovery harder and longer.
He kept walking and running for hours, ruminating and observing. Sometimes he was observed in turn, yet no one tried to find trouble with him as he wished.
Despite his random wandering, Melar kept his main direction, north. Melar wasn’t searching for something in particular. He simply wanted to distance himself as much as possible from the little house and its residents. For they were holding his future in their hands, the result of his earlier blunder.
As he was walking, lost in more ways than one, Melar stumbled upon a building different from the rest. Missoula was a large city, in territory, since most buildings were only one or two floors, three and four being rare. Yet here stood the first building of nine floors he had seen so far.
It was a simple rectangular brick building. However, it was calling to him, its roof to be more precise.
Melar’s second favorite way to resolve a problem, after running, was staring at the world from up on high.
He looked around and after seeing no one he took off towards the building.
This time he tapped into the almost fully saturated soul core and used soen to boost his body’s capabilities.
His senses sharpened, allowing him to perceive more and better. He could hear a car in the distance, moving further away from him. He could see clearly despite the deep darkness of the night, noticing the grooves of the building and their potential for handholds.
His mind was accelerated allowing him to move his body better and calculate his next actions faster and with more accuracy. Which in turn led to smoother execution and transition between them. With the handholds visible, so numerous, and easy on such a simple structure, his mind planned the fastest route from the ground to the building’s top in moments.
His body was flushed with soen. Every action - enhanced manyfold. A simple step was a leap. From the side his sudden burst of speed looked almost like he was gliding above the sidewalk, his feet barely touching the ground yet pushing him many meters forward. Within seconds he was beside the building, but his body didn’t stop moving. However, instead of crashing into the brick façade, his mind had calculated just the right way for that final step to be made.
Melar landed from his latest ‘step’ in a half crouch and pushed. What followed was a simple vertical jump that took him nearly ten meters up. Without a drop of fear in his eyes he flew up, already focused on the next action. Melar reached out and grasped a windowsill, and then before losing momentum, he heaved with all of his enhanced strength. With a single arm pull he cleared another floor and reached for the next windowsill. Like so he climbed the last thirty meters of the building, only marginally assisting his arms with his legs.
The climb was short-lived. Barely a few seconds had passed since the start of Melar’s dash, yet he was now over the threshold and up on the roof.
The sudden burst of exertion filled him with exhilaration that lasted just as briefly. He enjoyed the memory of the feeling as he pulled back the surging soen in his body and mind, back through the bridge in his mindscape, and into his soul core. That little bit of fun had cost him nearly 2 hours of steady soen production.
Still, Melar didn’t regret it. The lack of action that night had left him on edge and even something as simple as that had appeased the monster within. It reminded him of all the times he had fought with his life on the line, soen raging within him. Reducing the need to destroy by a little, which in turn made suppressing it easier.
He walked to the other side of the roof and sat on its edge, similarly to yesterday noon. Sadly, he was in the dark and all alone. Compared to what he had enjoyed with Katie yesterday, his vantage point was tiny, like the view. Melar looked to the side where she had been back then, and a thought sparked from her missing form. A realization that ushered in a new direction for his stalled thoughts on his purpose.
‘I offered to teach her because I feel lonely! It was spontaneous, probably stupid, and quite reckless. However, I did it because I feel alone in this world devoid of ambient soen or sourcery. I am the only familiar thing, and I wanted to create something else that reminded me of home!’
His soul’s disbalance had taken a potentially destructive action for the sake of creation. An impulse for self-correction made possible by all the records of him doing so consciously in the past.
This realization led to new ideas sparkling in his mind.
‘My father once said: “If you ever do not know how to continue forward, just find the smallest step you can safely take, and take it. At first, it would change nothing but in time your circumstances would indeed change. New information will make itself available and your previous stalemate will be resolved. The path forward would become evident.”’
‘I have employed this in the past and I shall do so again. My ultimate goal stays the same. I will not let it go until I find something better to orient myself towards. I have an obstacle, me being here, that I do not know how to resolve. I will ignore its existence and instead focus on preparing myself for when a solution presents itself.’
Reaching this point Melar finally felt a bit of peace return to his mind and soul. His path forward was still largely shrouded in darkness but at least there was a light guiding him forward. And it wasn’t the weak flickering of maybe but the certainty that while working on that, something else would come his way.
Why? Because life always offers opportunities, and it is up to the person to grasp them. Melar was going to be ready to grasp whatever came his way.
With the more philosophical part resolved his focus was turned on the broad strokes of an actionable plan forward. For without it, he would not feel any relief after this initial euphoria ran its course.
‘My survival is all but assured. I have seen enough of these people’s capabilities to know that if I stay quiet and hidden almost no sudden troubles will be able to take me down. However, surviving is not enough, I want to move forward. To achieve my ultimate goal, I need to be more powerful, more capable, regardless of where I am.’
‘The biggest obstacle to that is the lack of soen. I have a few ideas to test but even if they work there is still one ingredient missing. People. The reason the emperor and the kings, and all the other powerful sourcerers exist, is because countless mundane people had supported their advancements.’
‘My society is geared towards such support, this one isn’t. I need to make it so or at least carve a small piece of it and turn it into one that would benefit me. However, such changes will be too visible to all those who have a vested interest in keeping things as they are.’
Melar’s mind was exploding with ideas. Unfolding the solution, so obvious now, to his problems. All thanks to a few seemingly random events that connected and created a prism that bent his perception in a form that was productive.
‘To resist those with power I need to become a power myself. That can happen only with other people and over time. Of course, one sourcerer can be a power unto himself but I am not there yet. So, I will draw inspiration from the noble families in my world. I will be the patriarch, and I will create sourcerers that are loyal to me. Like Katie! This way I would be better positioned to resist those currently in power when the time comes.’
‘I need to be careful though. The more sourcerers I am responsible for, the higher the soen needs would be, and the more mundane people supporting us would we need. The more people there are, the easier it would be for our movements to be spotted or leaked. Contracts of secrecy and loyalty will have to be made. I cannot allow those in power to learn of me and my capabilities. If we are found too early, we won’t be able to defend ourselves.’
As more and more ideas manifested themselves in his mind the surer Melar was in this course of action.
‘It would be hard, with many things that could go wrong but even the pursuit of this solution would be rewarding. I have fought on my own till now, but I’ve always known that I would sooner or later have to take a leadership role. I guess it will simply have to happen sooner than expected. This pursuit will sustain me until a chance at going back reveals itself.’
As the final broad stroke of his future plans was finished, peace returned to Melar. For a few minutes, he enjoyed the view and the sky that was growing paler, a sign of the encroaching sun.
Soon, however, Melar’s mind had enough of the internal stillness and moved to the next course of action. His day was planned for, he would continue familiarizing himself with the city and its inhabitants. Making plans for future hunts and activities. However, then came the evening and the discussion at the family’s home.
With the new direction he was planning, them choosing anything but for Katie to join him would be a loss. Melar truly saw potential in her. She exhibited many of the cornerstone qualities a person needed to become a sourcerer and then boldly walk the oh-so-difficult path.
Purpose that was bigger than their pleasure. Drive born out of internal need not external force. Willingness to sacrifice and suffer to make their dreams come true.
As he thought about her, a memory surfaced, that of Steve and his displeasure at the cost of both the path of sourcery and the demands of the Master-Servant bond. It was then that it dawned on him.
‘My God! I am thinking like those that I’ve despised for a decade! Focusing only on my benefits and willing to take, with force if necessary, all that I want. I’ve been thinking like a tyrant!’
‘Only my needs matter. The cost to others? Inconsequential. Why should I care if the weak suffer? It's their place to prop me, the powerful,’ Melar thought, scorn marring his face.
‘Well, at least it has been only thoughts. What little steps I took in that direction are still correctable. I will do better from now on!’
It was then that the first rays of light landed in Melar’s eyes, illuminating his golden irises. Without him realizing the night had ended and it was time for a new day.
For the first time in a long while he was happy to be into the light.
Back in his home world, it hid countless dangers, with but a few opportunities. Here, both still existed, but the disparity between them was far less.
Melar felt hopeful. Both for his future and even for the dinner he had promised to attend.
Before the streets got busy, he climbed down, this time slowly and carefully. He expanded only a bit of soen to steady his still too weak limbs. For his initial plans to succeed, he needed a lot of it, and he couldn’t waste it on frivolous things like the earlier climb.
Without realizing the dark shadow that had urged him to seek and destroy the previous night, had receded.
Having a direction, a path, to move forward on, allowed his Will to surge and resume its solid grip on that part of himself.
For now.
----------------------------------------
When Katie lost sight of Melar’s back she remained looking for a few moments longer.
Her mind was full of questions, many of which could only be answered by the strange alien boy.
She kept wondering, especially after today’s unsettling events, whether he was truly good or hiding something darker beneath that gentle surface.
If anyone asked her the previous day, she would have found it hard not to quickly respond, ‘Good!’
Now, after today she wasn't so sure. However, if he was evil then why had he acted so kindly towards them for all those weeks? All the little acts of kindness like rushing to help her up the stairs after she had banged her pinky on the table. Or washing the dishes in the morning, so quietly that no one had woken up. Things that wouldn't really make a difference to his image. Or maybe they had and that is why she was so uncertain.
Another question was, how much would she regret declining his offer? Or maybe if she didn't?
Her jittery mind, strained from the day’s emotional rollercoaster, couldn’t handle so many unanswerable questions.
Finally, she stepped back inside only to find her grandpa gone and her grandma tidying up before bed.
“Katie, dear, let's go to bed. We'll sort it all out tomorrow. Your grandpa and I are worn out, and judging by the look in your eyes, you’re not doing much better.”
“Yeah, grandma, let's. I just hope I sleep well. Somehow a nightmare-filled night seems more likely.”
After a brief goodnight, all residents of the home retreated to their rooms.
Katie had a hard time falling asleep for the last few years. Often having to resort to browsing on her phone or watching something before sleep finally claimed her.
Tonight, none of those activities caught her attention. Her mind was too perturbed by all the new information and possibilities to sit still and just observe. So, she soon found herself staring at the ceiling or twisting and turning, hoping for sleep, even if filled with horrors.
Sleep, however, eluded her, as if fate had decided against granting her even that small mercy.
Too many thoughts raced through her mind like galloping Mustangs. Questions, with no answers. Answers with no base to step on, no logic solid enough to call anything but wishful thinking. Wishful thinking, that pushed her imagination to spawn both fairytale-like futures and nightmarish stories worthy to be retold to children as cautionary tales.
The night stretched on endlessly as Katie tossed and turned, her thoughts a ceaseless whirlwind. It was as if she were suspended in a void beyond time. Alone, with nothing but the dark.
All her thinking felt pointless, without any tangible results. Sometimes it felt like she was running toward a goal that kept getting further and further, fruitless. Other times, it felt as if she was jogging on a treadmill trying to reach the exit, pointless.
Without realizing the whole night had gone by, the first rays of light, refracted countless times, finally bounced into her window.
Usually, the light of day uplifted her spirits, for the reign of nightmares was finally over. Today, however, she felt no such joy for it signaled the ceaseless march of time and the inevitable choice she would have to make, sooner than she wished or felt ready for.
With a sigh she got up, only to fall back in bed, too tired to start her usual routine.
‘I guess staying in bed after a night like that isn't too irresponsible of me.'
Katie quickly relieved herself, drew the heavy curtains shut, and sank back into the still-warm bed. She closed her eyes, hoping against hope for a few precious hours of rest. But sleep, like clarity, remained stubbornly out of reach.