They ended up sitting on the remains of a porch attached to a shabby looking house. The Unseeing had all dissolved upon the closure of the Gate but the damage done still remained. Corpses of those unturned lay in pieces in the streets. All of the death and destruction was not improving the situation.
Ral started pacing as Mikol sat on the porch in his unnaturally still manner, only his luminous blue eyes moving to track his pacing. Verne had stepped a few paces away to give the illusion of privacy, even though the Sekrelli could probably hear every word. Rask sat at the edge of the porch. The Freerunner looked exhausted and took the time to drink from a water skin.
“So?” Ral started, breaking the uncomfortable silence. “Are you going to explain yourself or do you just expect me to accept that you’re here?”
“I apologize for what I did back in the desert,” Mikol said. “It was wrong of me.”
“You left me to die.”
The Yscian winced. “No. I tried to help. But at a distance.”
“You lied to the whole tribe about the Trial,” Ral said, chest heaving. “You framed me. You had them exile me. I was there when you admitted using me along with Bette and Calking and sun-fucking knows who else.”
“Yes, but…”
“I didn’t want the fucking title,” Ral burst out. “Champion? Of a whole group of people who hated me? No, I would have given it to you, Mikol, if you had the decency to ask.”
Mikol’s eyes widened, and he cast his gaze down, expression stony and yielded nothing. The Somas revered stillness. Mikol excelled at it. Ral painfully recalled how he was ill fitted with them, how he would never ever belong.
“I wish to speak alone without prying ears,” Mikol intoned.
“Rask is my father and Verne is my brother,” Ral said. “I would tell Aris everything afterwards and Laell is her sister. There are no prying ears here. Say what you have to say.”
Both Rask and Verne stared at him but Ral ignored them. Mikol nodded. “I understand,” he said. “This is the belonging you did not find with Somas. I can see now.”
Ral clenched his jaw, forcing himself not to tell that he belonged back then too, if only Mikol had wanted him. Every place you go, you find something to tie yourself to. You invest in something. Isn’t it exhausting? Aris had told him that. Sun curse it, it was so very exhausting.
“But I did what the Wisdom told me,” Mikol finally said. “His… orders. His holy words. I had to follow.”
Ral couldn’t speak for several heartbeats. He was expecting almost every excuse under the sun but ‘the Wisdom told me to’ wasn’t among one of them.
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“He saw the spirit of the earth. A form of it. It reveals itself to him. Things happen with meaning. This is why,” Mikol looked frustrated, his standard Gaian knowledge being pushed by trying to communicate. “This is why he is Wisdom. It told him of you and of the doorways that open that form monsters.”
“The Gates?” Rask asked.
“Yes. It spoke of you with us. How you had to learn stillness and fighting. Then how you had to be at the doorway. You had to be at the Trial.”
“Someone told the Wisdom I had to be there?”
“Yes, the spirit of the earth. There you were to meet it,” Mikol cast his eyes down again. “But Calkin wanted you dead. Even after I offered him Champion, he wanted you dead.”
“So you killed him.”
Mikol, for once, looked shaken. “Yes. I… had help. The spirit helped. Everything stopped and I was able to dispose of them.”
Ral thought back to that night at the caves. He was knocked out after Calkin overwhelmed him. He also knew the ‘spirit of the earth’ was probably the Part he met that night as well, the one that was able to slow time to a stop and showed him how to close Gates.
“I blamed you for the deaths,” Mikol said. “I had to. Wisdom said you must leave. The spirit needed you to leave. The Leaders would not accept your Trial completion and if I had punishment, I could not help. So I lied. As Champion I could do something.”
His story, so far, corresponded with what Bette was telling him right before he left the Somas camp. A part of him felt that he should be happy with this shred of a chance that perhaps Mikol wasn’t the villain. But how much of it was just wishful thinking? Maybe Aris was right - maybe it was time for him to stop hanging on to the people and places left in the past.
“I don’t know if I can believe you,” he said, running a hand through his hair. “It’s too convenient.”
“The lad did travel all the way here in Gaian territory to apologize,” Rask shrugged. Ral glared at his mentor. Whose side was he on? Rask shrugged. “Just saying people don’t do very dangerous things for no reason, even Yscians. If he coveted that Champion title or whatever so badly, he would have stayed with the Somas. But right now he’s here.”
“Fine. You found me. You apologized.” Ral glared at Mikol. “You can go back now.”
“I see more doorways opening. More monsters. I wish to help,” Mikol stood. “I came here to help you.”
“Was this another thing the Wisdom told you to do?”
Mikol looked ashamed. “Yes. The spirit of the earth told him. It is my duty. It’s always been my duty.”
If Ral understood what he was saying, it sounded like the Part named Ankle had encouraged the events that took place while he was with the Somas. Maybe his presence there was only because the Part willed it. Mikol was also blaming the Part for betraying him. When Aris was ready to kill everybody from her anger of being a pawn of the Parts, Ral hadn’t really quite understood it. But now, faced with the same reality that much of what’s happened to him were machinations of a higher power, he thought maybe Aris was right. ‘Fate’ was making a joke out of their lives.
“It’s time to live your own life,” Ral said dully. “Make your own decisions. Aris and I have had enough divine intervention to last a lifetime.”
“No, Ralos, I will stay. Duty is not correct. It is my milyssk jor.” Ral felt the hair on his arm raise at the term he hadn’t heard aloud in so long. Mikol pinned him with his shining blue eyes. “You are my milyssk jor. And I will not fail you again.”