64. Reflections

Xol picked up his head from where he had been lounging and looked at the door. Moments later, it opened, and a woman wearing a black veil appeared in the room. Polkluk, who had been practicing a kata, paused when he recognized Lady Tonilla. He blushed at having been caught without a shirt, but bowed to her as a junior ought to bow to an elder.

“I see you have grown well in the year since I sent you away,” she commented. “Considering that it has actually been less than that.”

“To me, it has felt like a decade,” Polkluk stated evenly. “I realize that I have changed, but I remain loyal to the Raging River Sect, Lady Tonilla.”

“Your tale of Po Guah’s training methods are extraordinary. That he would find so many precious resources, that he knew exactly the words to say to trigger a breakthrough at the right time, that you’re all full of bullshit,” she commented, slipping the last line in casually.

“Yes, well, he is a genius,” Polkluk said. Then he frowned. “What?”

“You were a bright-eyed teenager when you left, and now you are a young man. You say that it has been a decade, yet the others have not aged so much. Tell me, where are the ruins which change the flow of time, and how did Po Guah find them? Why did they affect you more than the others.”

Polkluk sighed. “There are details which I’ve sworn not to tell you, Lady Tonilla.”

“You swore your loyalty to me. You—”

“I am not forswearing myself when I say that I am loyal to the Raging River Sect, to Master Little Bug, and to my fellow disciples. Not unless you ask me to violate the trust of the other two, in which case you are the one who has betrayed me, and not the other way around, Lady Tonilla,” he said. “I have told you what I can about Little Bug’s training. What we all agreed to tell. It’s the truth, but it’s less than the entire truth. That is private. I ask that you respect my privacy. I swear that no secret I keep harms the Ragin River Sect or any of its alliances, nor am I withholding any intelligence upon which you could act.”

“There’s more to the story,” Tonilla persisted.

“Yes. But much of it is private.”

She towered over him, despite being shorter than him now that he had grown into the man he was. But he did not back down, and finally, she did. “There is something you have to offer me, however. I can see it in your eyes. Something which you intended to bribe me with if I decided to continue to press to far,” she said.

“Yes,” Polkluk admitted. He went over to his pack and pulled out a box. “Here. You can have it. Each disciple was given one safe for Xol, who has no thumbs so he can’t exactly carry it.”

She opened the box, and they were both sucked inside.

They stood at a small house made of stone. “This is where I rebuilt my foundation,” he informed her. “I spent five years training here. Outside, three days passed.”

She looked around in wonder. “If we stay in here, will time continue to pass the same as outside, or—”

“That is a magic of Little Bug, not the box, however, so for now the river of time passes the same in here as it does out there,” Polkluk stated. “But yes, that’s why some of us are much older than when we left.”

Tonilla nodded. “So that’s how he raised you all to silver in less time than he promised.”

“Ma’am?”

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

“He cheated.”

“Well, yes,” Polkluk admitted. “But we all figured that out early enough in the training. We stayed anyway because it was worth it.”

“I won’t ask you to divulge secrets,” Tonilla began, “But would you tell me more about your time with him?”

Polkluk nodded. “Let’s start with the beginning. Let me tell you how it felt to realize that I was the weakest of the ten of us, and how he turned me into the strongest.”

“You’re the first disciple?”

“No. I am the strongest version of myself that I can be at this point in time,” Polkluk clarified. “But that’s true of all of us. We’re equals, ma’am. And we intend to keep it that way for as long as possible.”

And so, beneath the stars inside the spatial artifact, Polkluk began to talk of happier times.

~~~~~~~

Thaseus walked through the halls of his childhood home, the servants wincing and fleeing out of his path. He sighed. He hadn’t even noticed the way that they’d looked at him before he’d left; they’d been so far beneath his notice that he’d--

He shook his head. There would be time for regret when he was old and near death. He had stepped off of that path and onto a new one. He walked into the parlor, where the family was muttering in hushed tones. They hadn’t been informed with everyone else when the disciples had returned, and had only moments to discuss Thaseus’s reappearance before this moment of confrontation.

He walked straight past them to the table where a platter of fruit sat. He broke open a pomegranate and began to eat the juicy seeds within.

“No,” he said. “I am not the pawn I was. Whatever methods you were planning to use to manage me when I returned will not work.”

The others were silent for a moment. His sister stepped forward. “Brother. It is good to see you. Won’t you come to your room? We still have your servants, they survived the fire. They were moved to new responsibilities, but now that you’re back—”

“I don’t care. Leave them in their new capacity, or pay them a generous severance and give them their freedom,” he said. “Treat them fairly but do not count on my sentimentality for my old nurse to influence me.”

His sister went quiet. “A year is not so long of a time. I didn’t believe it when it was said that you were predestined to return at silver rank, but it is true, isn’t it? I can sense that you’re—”

“Flattery won’t work either,” he said. “I know better than you what it takes to accomplish what I have. And I didn’t do it for recognition.”

“Then why?” she asked innocently.

“Why else?” he asked. “I wished to know how it felt to be strong. I thought I knew that once, before the tournament. But what we had before was the illusion of strength. We were neither the immovable object nor the unstoppable force. We were children strutting around before a mirror, showing off our pathetic muscles and trying to impress each other with our childish strength. But the mirror has shattered, and we cut our feet on the glass.”

His sister looked at their parents, uncertain what to say.

“Well then, my son,” his mother said eventually. “What path will you lead us down with this strength of yours that you have found in the wilderness?”

“It is very simple,” he said. “We will take all of our remaining forces. And we will join the Many Peaks Alliance with nothing held back.”

“You wish to surrender our autonomy to Tonilla and an outsider?” his father questioned.

“I wish to prove that we are more than cheaters and frauds,” Thaseus said. “Once we have earned glory in the war between life and the twisted mockery of life that is sweeping down from the north, then we can talk about picking up the pieces of our shattered lives. We are bound by blood, and only the bonds we choose to be greater than that are greater than that. When the dust settles, what remains of our clan will return to Mer’cah with our sins forgiven for our service,” he predicted.

His father was quiet. “I am no longer in a position to make this decision for the family. The patriarch must be consulted.”

“That will be easy enough,” Thaseus said, pulling a ring out of his pocket. He had pried it from his uncle’s hand an hour before after beating the man in a duel. He slipped the ring onto his finger and stared at it. “He stands before you now.”

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