The carriage they boarded swayed as it traversed a rocky pathway. Jabari had flagged it down about a mile ago, spotting the two dracnis dragging it along, bipedal beasts with heads like spiked lizards, clawed feet, and a body as long as eight feet from crown to tail. They were one of the few truly domesticated reia beasts.

The older mages, those who’d lived since before the first crack, claimed it was a disturbing sight. Seth, however, didn’t understand. But considering they’d ridden horses and driven cars once, he couldn’t hold it against them. The idea of being pulled by bipedal beasts now when they’d only understood movement on four legs was irksome to them.

The carriage was long enough to hold eight men seated side by side, four on both sides, but was mostly dominated by food stuff. There was a stack of oranges and a stack of mangoes, a dozen crates of eggs and two sacks of what could be potatoes. There was a particularly fancy chest half open to reveal a length of stalk of some kind. Another sealed chest was tucked away behind all this and filled the carriage with the stench of something dead. If not for it, their trip would’ve been most pleasant.

Seth did not hold this against the owner of the carriage, however. He had, in his magnanimity, warned them of the stench before letting them on.

Today Jabari wore a simple shirt of rayon. It was the color of forest leaves with a touch of yellowing on the side. Its sleeves were elbow length, its neck round, and his trouser was a simple jean of faded blue. Seth had no idea how the man had gotten them nor from whence.

On his part, Seth was a stark sidekick in a simple blue T-shirt and black trousers. Jabari had been kind enough to get him a change of clothes a few times. Where they had come from was anyone’s guess. However, there was never a change of footwear. Seth paid attention nothing important as his mind basked in the mere sight of another human.

Sadly, it was short lived. It wasn’t long before they arrived at their destination.

……………………………….

The port was an overcrowded, heat riddled infestation of a market. It reminded Seth of an untamed hedge, thorns and bramble overreaching their authority, reaching out to snag and scratch at passersby.

Jabari led them through it like a man without equal. The sea of people parted before him with every step. The few who didn’t part, either because they were unable or simply unaware, he weaved around with the adeptness of a dancer.

While he was led, Seth was not protected. Left to follow with naught more than his sight of the priest as a guide, he struggled through. He pushed and shoved as best his small stature allowed. His time with the priest had shriveled him up, doing nothing to aid him in the weight category. So while he shoved and struggled, he was mostly forced by the motion of the crowd so that a distance he would normally cover in four steps was covered in eight steps and through a roundabout method.

Worsening the crowd and heat, the market boomed with the argumentative rumble of countless men and women selling their wares. While there were a few captivating announcements, some sounded like outright tripe.

A female voice spoke of an elixir harvested from the heart of a mother broach, a massive tree known to plant itself in the hearts of forests, making servants of the trees around it. Soul mages of all kinds, hunters and adventurers alike, claimed it was sentient, capable of thought and adaptation. In the lady’s opinion, it enhanced one’s abilities on the path of nature and Seth had no idea what that meant.

Tripe, he deemed it.

Off in another direction, a man sold an aphrodisiac to strengthen the weakest of men. There was a voice Seth couldn’t put a face to that claimed it sold a soul fragment gotten from a gold rank beast killed by ten silvers. Seth wondered why how it was killed was important. But of all of them the one that caught his attention long enough was a trader who offered a map showing the way to the rumored myth of the dragon in the North. Slaying the strongest soul beast rumored to man was every boy’s dream. The fame of being the first would be without equal.

Seth and Jabari soon found themselves in a quiet space, though the silence was tainted by the noise of the market. Here the docks began proper. The ground was mostly of wood, old and new, and groaned under their weight as rotting wood does. Scattered across every length of it were workers. They ran their trade carrying fish, and net, and rope, and hooks. There was a man carrying an entire anchor on his own and Seth labeled him souled. Perhaps one of the few souled with little knowledge of soul magic.

He followed behind Jabari, little feet hurrying to catch up to the older man’s strides. He frowned at this as he caught up on bare feet, feet hurting with every step. In the last two months, Jabari had begun a type of torture he did not understand, made worse by the fact that he consented to it with naught more than following.

In the fourth month, when Seth was growing accustomed to walking properly and performing the draw, Jabari introduced a madness to their trip. When he walked, he did so without consideration for Seth. His once even strides, composed and tampered, had become controlled but void of its previous consideration. He walked as if in a hurry, forcing Seth to all but chase after him.

Seth could’ve refused to follow, but instead suffered to keep the pace. Though he’d done it once, his childish obduracy forcing him to keep his own pace rather than Jabari’s. The aftermath, however, had been a lesson in danger.

Jabari, in his grand generosity, had left him.

Thus he’d been alone from noon, at the height of the sun, till night when the stars came out to play. Alone, his fractured minds had kept him company, all three in occasional arguments as they grew to slide out of his control to grasp what they called a collective individuality. Even now he had no idea what that meant.

Seth’s terrified solace had lasted another day before Jabari had returned.

In that time, Seth learnt two things. One, his minds could agree on nothing in their fractured state, proving very capable of driving him insane in their arguments. Two, even his minds grew bored of him. On the second day, his quiet mind left him feeling well and truly abandoned, though he had begged them for silence, eyes tinged red and nostrils clogged in snot earlier. They had relented worse than he’d expected. His silence was a cherished companion for a single night only.

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Then it had become its own torture the next day. There was a certain fear in being left alone in the middle of nowhere. A fear of unbidden solitude with no path forward or backward.

When Jabari had returned for him, he’d simply chided him, told him not to get lost again, and returned to his walk. Seth had struggled to keep him in sight ever since.

Standing before a particularly large ship of wood and cloth, Jabari asked as Seth came to a halt beside him, “How are your feet?”

“Sore…” Seth mumbled… Three months of what you did to me would do that.

Jabari didn’t acknowledge the response. His gaze never left the ship before them, his attention never wavered. Strangely, Seth felt he was never out of the man’s attention. It perturbed him to no end.

A flash of color moved in Seth’s periphery as they wandered the docks. It was a deep blue with an odd silver hue. It didn’t hold his attention so much as it tickled it. It was a familiar color, standing on the borders of safety in his present predicament and he was surprised he’d caught it.

The Baron’s men.

Hope bloomed in his chest as he turned his head. The man wearing the uniform was inspecting a crate of one thing or the other Seth cared nothing about. He was a tall man with a beard that fell down to his chest. His black hair, shaved on both sides, was held back in a loose wolf tail and he stood with pen and note pad in hand, back straight as a rod. Behind him there were two others, they were less domineering in their stance and shuffled lightly as if they’d been caught in a particularly wrong act.

A way of signaling them quietly crossed Seth’s mind. As a child he’d played different games. Some of them had entertained the use of signals, some the use of sounds without meaning. One fostered the communication of messages using sentences that had nothing to do with the message itself, this one he was taught by Jonathan and suspected was not a true child’s game.

But crossing his mind was as far as the thought went.

There were downsides to bringing their attention to him. For starters, the wrath of a priest was nothing to balk at. He’d never seen it in person, though, relying on nothing but rumors. Even Jabari had displayed none of it in the five months of their trip. He had been the epitome of silence and ease, displaying nothing save whatever was necessary. Seth found himself on countless occasions—even now—reminding himself that this man had taken him from a contingent of armed silvers and a powerful gold, walking away without visible scratch. The reminder came with a resigned sigh.

Should the men come to his aid, they might not be the only ones to die.

But to claim it enough to stop him was pretense the likes of which he liked to attribute to people like his brother, Derek. No. The safety of others was not what held him back. Something else did; something more selfish; something the catholic church kept for the hierarchical anarchy that was the deadly sins: Greed.

Natalie had a head start on him. It would be three years before her first soul fragment, yet she would be trained in soul magic long before. She would be deadly with spear and gun, sword and staff. She would be taught to be a deadly weapon to her peers without soul fragments long before those with authority in soul magic would become her peers. Three years was a lot of distance to cover. He could only imagine how much deadlier she would become as an official soul mage.

With the truth rampant in his mind, Seth turned away from the Baron’s men and put his eyes on the ship before him, knowing his decision had been made.

Where next, he thought.

As if privy to his thoughts, Jabari said, “This will take us to the seminary.”

If the rumors about priests were true in anyway—and Jabari did make him believe they were—Natalie would not have a head start on him. In the seminary, he would be taught what it meant to be powerful.

Do we know of any priest with a family in the rumors? a mind asked conversationally.

There was that one priest, a thought answered.

Which one? Another queried, suspicious.

The one with the blond woman, came the answer.

That was the priestess of the bleeding goddess and the blond man, came a response.

We must say we liked that story.

It was tragic.

He felt one of the minds shrug, nonchalant. It was well told.

Was it even true?

Another shrug, this one he suspected came from a different part. Do we care?

Did we care, another corrected.

Nope.

His minds tremored as one made a thoughtful sound. He didn’t know why they were arguing again or what it was truly about. He didn’t know of any rumors involving a priest and a family of any kind and was fairly certain they knew this; they were his mind, fragments though they were. Priests did not have families; neither did rumors exist where any made an attempt to contact any family.

Exactly.

Priests are humans, a mind thought. They certainly came from somewhere.

Like us, another chimed in.

And they will give you power, another stated, matter of fact, interrupting and sudden.

The response that came for this was nonchalant yet ominous: And they will take your family in return.

There was a chuckle in his mind in response to this, and an answer came, gravely sinister: They already have.

All was true enough. But rather than ponder on that, Seth was stuck keeping track of each fragment in the conversation. Who spoke and who replied. One of them certainly enjoyed making fun of him, he noted.

Perhaps he should name them.

He discarded the thought as quickly as it came. Naming them would be pointless. They all sounded the same, as thoughts bear no sound. They did not have accents or notable inclinations. Save the one that seemed to take satisfaction in making fun of him, he doubted there was any trait that set the others apart. Then again, he wasn’t certain it was only one that enjoyed making fun of him.

You’re bothered by the wrong things, they thought in unison. The echo stunned him momentarily, staggering him like vertigo. Beside him Jabari did not acknowledge this.

“What’s the right thing then?” he mumbled under his breath.

Why do you have three minds? they echoed. And why do they keep thinking of their own accord? And why doesn’t it bother you?

Those were logical things to be bothered by. But Seth felt it paled in comparison to his present predicament. Perhaps he was taking it in strides. Perhaps his worry for his mind suffered under the hierarchy of priorities. He was, after all, currently kidnapped. Thus, compartmentalizing seemed like the healthy thing to do.

All three minds chuckled. The sound came out eerie.

Do you honestly think yourself well? they echoed, each thought abounding like a ripple in a pond of water.

Seth’s lips parted softly, but before he could reply, Jabari spoke, his attention never leaving the ship.

“Right and wrong will not matter to you, Struggling One. Only what should be done.”

It took Seth a moment to realize the priest was answering the question he had mumbled under his breath. The question he had asked his minds.

When Jabari moved towards the ship, the thought of escape crossed Seth’s mind again. His minds, every fragment, smothered it like three children with a pillow over an infant’s head. It seemed he’d been wrong about one thing: they did agree on a few things.

As he followed Jabari, the priest’s opinion crawled in his mind, and he did wonder…

…How much has to happen to a man to make him that way; to take away his morality?

More importantly… his minds added, confused. Who the hell is ‘Struggling One?