“I can do this.” Lefty said with conviction.
“No. You can’t.” Responded Pedra.
“I can! I’m ready! Today’s the day I conquer the tabernacle!”
“Actually, today is preliminary exploration number six, followed by lunch, followed by more breath training.”
Uhg! My breath is trained enough!” Lefty groaned and stood up from the table. “And we already have half a map! Let’s just go for it!”
“Absolutely not.” Pedra said calmly, remaining in her seat. “We need to carefully map out the tabernacle. You can’t simply dive in there without a plan.”
“I think I can, actually.” said Lefty with a grin. He was radiating so much smugness that even Ol Blu found it annoying.
The young man and Pedra were arguing again. That seemed to be happening a lot since Lefty had learned to swim and subsequently regained his confidence. It was morning. They had been living at the camp for more than a month now, and they had just finished a breakfast of grilled fish and toast. Lefty was looming over the deepun as he spoke to her, literally talking down to the woman as he tried to get his way.
To her credit, Pedra kept her cool. Whether that was because she had supreme control of her emotions, or because she didn’t detect Lefty’s condescending tone, I can’t say for sure. But she continued to explain her point of view in a calm, collected manner… despite having already done so several times this week.
“That’s illogical thinking Lefty.” She said, “You may be fast, and you may know the outer tunnels, but once you get past them you’ll essentially be choosing paths at random. With the number of possible options, your chances of reaching the center before you run out of breath are only around… sixty four percent.”
“That’s more than half!”, said Lefty exasperated. “Like… a lot more.”
Pedra continued to stare the man down, her tone unchanged. “Sixty four percent may seem high if you’re gambling for cash, but this is a matter of life and death. If I was designing a building, and there was even a one percent chance it could fail catastrophically, I would not condone its construction.”
For a brief moment Ol Blu actually had a bit of respect for the analytical deepun. She might be reckless with her own well being, but when it came to others she took no chances. Perhaps she was not as bad as he thought…
And then she continued speaking.
“Because if it did collapse, and someone was killed or injured… that death would be blamed on me. I could lose my job. Or at least my reputation. It’s simply not worth the risk.”
Ol Blu rolled his eyes.
“Likewise, I can’t allow you to risk your life unnecessarily. The chances of me finding another athlete, of your caliber, who can effectively use the squid shoes is..” Her eyes drifted to the side for a moment, the woman calculating in her head. “Well… the chances are very low.
“You’re a rare find Mr Lefty. If you were to die in the tabernacle it might be years before I stumbled upon another candidate as excellent as you.”
(sigh) You know… Titus may have been helping Lefty for his own selfish reasons… but at least he seemed to have some genuine affection for the lad. Even when Pedra was trying to protect him, she never stopped thinking of Lefty as a tool; as an asset to further her own goals. Perhaps that’s why Ol Blu never really liked her.
Lefty meanwhile… didn’t seem to notice this attitude. Or if he did he didn’t acknowledge it. For the moment he was far too busy being full of himself. Somehow he had managed to find the complement hidden within her statement and that flattery was enough to derail his attention.
“Am I really that rare?” He asked Pedra, sitting back down at the little table.
“Very much so.” Said the deepun, “Your athleticism is above the standard deviation for a human. And your personality traits are well suited to risk taking behavior. You share many attributes with notable warriors of the distant past. I’m very fortunate to have stumbled upon someone like you.”
Lefty grinned wide. “Well… if I’m so great… then that percentage should be higher than sixty four… right?”
Ol Blu couldn’t help but grin at the boy’s tenacity, but Pedra just tilted her head in confusion. “Your… attributes… don’t make you better at navigating a maze. We need to map out the tabernacle thoroughly if we’re going to-”
Lefty groaned and stood up again, knocking his chair over in frustration.
“Fine! Fine! Let’s get back out there then.” The young man sighed and began walking towards the lake, stripping his shirt off and tossing it aside as he muttered under his breath. “The sooner we can get this done the sooner I can get the Khhel out of here.”
Ol Blu watched the two of them march out into the water with worry on his face. Lefty’s attitude had shifted rather dramatically in the past few weeks. In some ways this was a good thing. The boy was no longer made of stone. His old personality was finally reemerging after a long hibernation and he was showing emotions again. But along with the goofy, ambitious, inquisitive guy he knew… was something else… a kind of angry arrogance that Blu hadn’t seen before.
Was this a new development? Or had this always been there, simmering under the surface? Despite all they had been through, Blu had to admit that he hadn’t actually known Lefty for very long, and most of the lad’s early life was still a mystery to him. Perhaps this was how Lefty had acted back in Ash-Tab? He had abandoned it after all. It’s possible the anger he was showing Pedra was the same he had for his hometown; a rejection of the duty that he didn’t necessarily want.
It’s also possible that Lefty’s incredible luck since leaving Ash-Tab had imparted all the wrong lessons.I mean it’s not hard to believe you’re better than everyone else when you easily succeed where others failed. Especially when people like Pedra and Titus are telling you that you’re exceptional. Given everything that’s happened to him, Blu could easily see the lad developing a sense of arrogance which could be very dangerous if he ever actually achieved kingly power.
Either way… he and Lefty really needed to talk.
Though they were living together once more, the kicken felt like his companion was slowly slipping away from him. They barely had a chance to chat since leaving the dam. And despite how often he argued with Pedra, the young man was becoming more like her every day; more driven towards his own goals at the expense of everything else.
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It’s… a terrible feeling, to see someone you care about slowly turning into something unsavory. As an elder, and a friend, Ol Blu felt his own sense of duty. He needed to try and guide Lefty back onto the path of greatness… or at the very least, the path to happiness. He had promised to do that after all, back when they had their first heart-to-heart at the top of the Food Tabernacle. For a time, when they were living at the God Dam, it felt like he had succeeded. Lefty had found a place he could live happily. But real life rarely has such convenient endings… because real life doesn’t end… it just keeps going on and on and on…
But I digress.
All of that would have to wait until this was over. Lefty and Blu would have plenty of time to talk once the Drink Tabernacle was mapped, explored, and conquered. For now, the young man needed to focus on swimming… even if his abilities were already beyond astonishing.
After nearly a month of daily practice with the Squid Shoes, Lefty was quite the sight to behold. Once he built up some speed, the lad moved through the lake like a bird through the air, gliding under the water's surface at an alarmingly fast rate.
At first he could only keep this up for a minute or two, both because his legs tired out, and because he ran out of breath. But not only did Pedra design a training regiment to help improve his endurance and his lung capacity, but the lad soon discovered a way to catch his breath without coming to a stop.
I can still picture it now. He’d be weaving effortlessly through the water, leaving a trail of bubbles behind him, the glow of his head mounted pointlights visible under the surface… and then suddenly he’d shoot majestically into the air like a dolphin, arcing over the water and taking a deep breath before sliding seamlessly back into it. It was incredible, to be frank, and you could see it from afar thanks to his iconic equipment. The silver feathers strapped to his arms sparkled in the sun each time he leapt into the air, while the green tendrils of his squid shoes streamed behind him like a royal banner.
It was so amazing… that I was willing to excuse much of Lefty’s arrogance… on the grounds that he had kind of earned the right to be arrogant. True, he had only ended up in this situation through luck, coincidence, and random chance… but I couldn’t deny the work he put in. Fate had handed the young man an opportunity, and he had used it to do something exceptional. In my hundreds of years, I had never seen anything like this before… and apparently I was not the only one impressed.
As you might expect, Lefty’s feats did not go unnoticed by the nearby deepuns. As his skills improved, and he began swimming farther and farther distances, people began spotting him from the top floors of the God Dam. From up there he was just a speck, gliding through Lake Allende at incredible speeds. They couldn’t make out who or even what he was, but they could see the distinctive wake he left behind. Each kick of the squid shoes shot him forward in a curve; first one way, then the other as he alternated between his feet. From afar this resulted in a distinctive serpentine pattern that made him look… well… like a serpent.
This strange, almost supernatural phenomenon was soon given a name. The dam dwellers called it the snake of the lake. And as sightings increased and rumors spread, it wasn’t long before some curious deepuns decided to investigate.
They quickly discovered it was not actually a snake of course… but the name stuck anyway, giving Lefty the first of his many titles. And though some of the deepuns called him a snake with contempt in their voice, not appreciating the lad’s kingly ambitions… many of them were too impressed by his incredible abilities to care.
Before long, crowds began to form on the shore to watch him practice. Oh they’d bring picnics and games as well. It wasn’t all about him. But he made for an excellent background spectacle whenever the conversation reached a lull.
To the beachgoers it was like having an acrobat performing all day. Every time Lefty leapt into the air to catch his breath, there’d always be some applause or whistling. When he practiced holding his breath, the more excitable ones in the crowd would count along, their voices growing louder as the numbers grew higher, breaking out in cheers whenever he managed to beat his previous best.
You might imagine, after hearing all this, that Lefty was happy as he snaked his way through the lake and leapt into the air with ease… but you'd be wrong.
He was certainly satisfied that he was making progress… But the strangeness of being in water hadn’t diminished. Even after all this time, swimming still felt weird and gross. It didn’t matter that he was good at it now, it never stopped being work to him. Each day he woke up dreading that he would have to go out into the lake… and the only thing that kept him going was the thought that soon he would be done… and then he'd never have to swim again. That’s why he was so eager to just attempt the tabernacle and just get it over with… even when he only had a two thirds chance of surviving.
Now you might imagine, then, that Lefty was at least happy about his newfound popularity. After all, he had enjoyed the attention before. Surely he smiled at the crowds of deepuns who showed up to cheer him on, glad to have an audience for his talents…but no.. Despite leaving the God Dam without so much as a goodbye, the sight of it in the distance still stung at his heart. The ever growing crowds and their parties did nothing but remind him of the friends he had lost… and of Amor. He kept thinking he saw her, standing there among the crowds. It did little to help his stress or his exhaustion. As the days went on, his fear of running into her caused him to train even harder. Some days he’d skip lunch, or stay out in the lake past nightfall, refusing to come back to shore until all the other deepuns had cleared out and returned home.
To this day I still don’t know what happened between them. It must have been something fierce, but only he knows. And even after all we’ve been through… he’s never explained it to me. I suppose everyone has their secrets; private things they don’t tell their friends. Well for Lefty it was Amor. He really didn’t want to talk about it.
But anyway…the original plan was to spend at least four months preparing to enter the Drink Tabernacle. Two months would be used on learning to swim, and another two months would be spent scouting out the tabernacle itself; mapping its many twists and turns to determine the quickest and safest route to the center. Even with Lefty's rapid progress learning to use the squid shoes, Pedra had decided that they should still stick to their original timeline and proceed cautiously.
Ol Blu reluctantly agreed. Despite his feelings about the calculating woman, she had sound reasoning when it came to safety. It never hurts to be prepared, especially when it comes to something as deadly as a Tabernacle.
For Lefty, however, the wait was too long. He wanted to be done with this. Done with swimming, done with the horrible water, and done with the deepuns that had won his heart and then broken it.
A month and a half after they first made camp, Pedra and Blu awoke one morning… to find Lefty missing.
They asked the early morning crowds if anyone had seen him, but no one had. He must have gone out before sunrise. Hours went by… and still no sign of him. Search parties were sent out. Some traveled down the road on squirrels, thinking perhaps Lefty had grown tired of all of this and quit for The Capital. Others searched for him at the God Dam, thinking maybe he had returned to his humble life among the deepuns. Still others explored the lake itself, worried that perhaps he had drowned in the pre-dawn light. None of these searches turned up anything though. There was only one place he could be, and no one would follow him in. All they could do was wait.
It was late in the afternoon when it happened. Ol Blu and Pedra had been sitting solemnly in their camp for a while now, neither wanting to speak to the other. Suddenly a series of large bubbles broke the surface of the lake. There was a splash. A cry from one of the nearby crowds. They turned just in time to see a rippling figure shooting through the water, heading straight towards them from the direction of the Drink Tabernacle.
It was Lefty. Nothing else moved like this. But he was coming at them far faster than he ever had before, his body sending up a spray of water as he finally broke the surface and leapt into the air. This time though, it was not graceful or majestic. The boy seemed dazed. He spun like a drunk dancer, gasping for breath, his face bright red as he traveled in a low arc but made no attempt to dive back in. Instead he hit the water on his back and skipped across its surface like a flat stone; bouncing once, then twice, before sliding into a long skid that carried him through the shallows and up onto the shore. The young man rapidly lost momentum as he slid across the mud on his back, carving a line in the shore until finally he came to a stop, his legs plopping onto the ground as he collapsed in a heap.
Pedra and Ol Blu rushed over to where he landed, and found him curled up on his side, coughing and hacking as he shuddered on the shore. A rather large purple bruise was forming on the right side of his face. The eye on that side was blackened and his cheek swelling as well. His companions asked him if he was alright, asked him where he had been, looking worriedly over him for signs of further injury… but he was unable to talk, only letting out wet choking coughs in between deep gasping groans.
But as he lay there, half drowned and sputtering on the shores of Lake Allende, Lefty lifted his hand and tossed something into the mud. It was a flat metal disk with nine triangular holes in it. They found out later… that it was the second Clavis Imperium.