Chapter 54: Akaseeya

The bright airy hallway of the temple, with its vaulted ceiling, stretched on for well over a hundred feet, and lining its length on both sides were pedestals upon which stood sculptures of all manner of beasts. Some Miro had recognized, like the Kooda, an armored bear with a shell that resembled that of a turtle. Others, he’d never even heard of. He was examining one such creature – mostly a tangle of tentacles – to see if it had eyes, when he heard a kindly and somewhat raspy voice from the other end of the hallway.

“Miro Kaldoun.” He looked up to find an older woman leaning with her shoulder against one of the pedestals. “Son of Nelith Vielo and Jalvyn Kaldoun. You’ve come a long way from home to see me.”

She walked towards him, wearing a sleeveless dress the colour of summer peach that reached all the way down to the floor, too light, it seemed to Miro, for the coldness of the temple, though he acknowledged that he himself was still drenched in frigid seawater. Her tawny face was framed by a head of silvery grey hair that reached past her shoulders, and a not-quite-fully-formed smile tugged at the corners of her mouth.

“I’m glad you figured a way to find me … eventually,” the smile grew a little wider then and it seemed to Miro that it wasn’t intended to mock him.

“I feel like there could have been an easier way,” he said, raising his arms slightly and then flopping them soggily against his sides.

“I tend to find that easy things are seldom worth it,” the woman answered.

There was truth in that, but it still felt like blasting empty walls with his powers and then almost drowning was somewhat excessive.

“How was I able to find this place in the end?” Miro asked. “Was it because I used fire and lightning at the same time and proved that I was a true magus?”

She laughed, an easy sound that rang the length of the hallway. “Goodness no, Miro. It’s because you managed to make a joke in the direst of situations, proving that you were in fact a true Miro.”

As he tried to puzzle that one out, Miro’s teeth started to chatter.

“You’re cold,” she observed with a slight head tilt. “Not surprising for someone who hails from … hmm, a land so insignificant it doesn’t even have its own name – one of the blank spaces on the map of the Kingdom of Sirilia.”

“Yeah well that’s me …” Miro paused to shudder, “An insignificant blank space from an insignificant blank space.”

She laughed again. “Here, take this before you self-deprecate yourself to death.” She reached over to one of the statues – a bipedal wolf-like creature with a stubby snout and two fangs – and grabbed the stone at the back of its neck, only to pull off an actual knee-length fur coat which she handed to Miro.

He blinked, looking at the intact statue and then the garment, before taking it from her.

“You’re welcome,” she said, not unkindly.

“Oh sorry, thank you … umm?”

She raised a hand and put up one finger in acknowledgement of his point. “Right, it looks like you’re not the only one who forgot their manners today. My name is Akaseeya, and please welcome to what’s been my home for … longer than I care to count.”

“Thank you,” Miro said, now wrapped up in the coat, “It’s very … confusing.”

Akaseeya looked up at the ceiling for a moment, “That it can be. Here.” She walked past him towards the little window in the wall and closed it. “The temple’s got a mind of its own.”

Akaseeya’s closing of the door through which he entered did cure some of Miro’s disorientation. Even when he wasn’t looking at it, with the sounds of the waves crashing against the cliffs coming from the hole in the wall, it had unsettled his stomach to know the sea was not where it ought to be.

“Now, let’s not waste any more time,” Akaseeya gestured with one arm to the opposite end of the hallway, and put her other hand lightly on the small of Miro’s back. “You’ve come here seeking my help and I will do my best to provide it.”

“Huh,” Miro said muttered in slight surprise.

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“What is it?”

“Nothing really. I just thought you’d speak in more riddles and gobbledygook and send me around in circles before getting to the point.”

“Well, I’m not quite done with you yet. But generally, I’m a busy woman and life’s too short to waste it on such frivolous nonsense. The mages, on the other hand, can talk your ear off while saying absolutely nothing of value.”

Akaseeya didn’t so much walk next to him but glided, her footsteps not making a single sound.

“Not to say that we don’t have a little time to talk.”

She left a pause long enough that he asked, “About what?”

“Oh, how about we start with your unhealthy fixation on seeing yourself as an insignificant blank space?”

He dodged her gaze then, keeping his eyes on the windows. Hima had accused him of being melodramatic on more than one occasion and having his words reflected back to him in this way made it seem more obvious.

“Most of us are, Miro,” Akaseeya continued, “There’s no shame in that – specks too small for the human eye to see, becoming visible only when combined with the multitude of others. You know that, and you value those closest to you, the proximity of whom gives you volume.”

“I’d like to think so.”

“Which is why you’ve come here; for your friend.”

“Yes, Hima.”

“She’s a very special young woman, and not just to you.”

Before she could elaborate, they’d reached the door at the other end of the hallway and Akaseeya opened it, motioning Miro inside, then stepping in after him and tutting.

“See what I mean – a mind of its own. This is not where we were supposed to end up.”

As if in a different building entirely, Miro found himself in a room that was taller than it was wide, and was filled top-to-bottom with dark wooden bookshelves. Rickety staircases led from level to level, which seemed to be stacked on top of each other with no pattern, the whole room lacking windows but lit by multiple oil lamps affixed to the walls.

“It’s incredible,” he murmured as he craned his neck, thinking that if Hima were here she’d say something about it not being surprising that he and his two points of Intellect would be impressed by a bunch of books; he yearned to hear her say it – so much that it hurt inside.

“Yes, I’d like to think so,” Akaseeya said, looking up with him, the kind of look on her face that was befitting a proud parent. “Most of these do not exist outside these walls. Or rather, cannot exist. They are manifestations of the knowledge that had been destroyed around the time of the Great Soldering.” She sighed as she ran her hand along dusty shelves while they climbed some steps. “I guess the temple thought that you needed to see them first.”

“Can’t say that I disagree,” Miro said, still awestruck by the dusty weight of it all.

“Now, here. This should be where I’ve been looking for,” Akaseeya said, pushing a door open and letting Miro step in first. This space felt small compared to the previous two, though it was still nearly the size of his and Bondook’s home. It was a cube-shaped hall, with tiles of the lightest blue about the width of a palm covering the whole space except for the back wall, which looked like a vertical pool with overlapping shards of broken mirror on its surface, constantly shifting and drifting over one another. It reflected off the tiled surfaces like ripples of sunshine off water making the whole room seem illuminated by a light that was both everywhere and nowhere all at once.

“What is this?” he asked catching glimpses of his own face appear and disappear among the moving shards.

“It’s an entrance,” Akaseeya said from behind him.

“An entrance where?”

“Into yourself.”

He turned around to face her and found that the door they had used to enter was now indistinguishable from the rest of the wall.

“Within ourselves,” Akaseeya said, some of the lightness gone from her expression, “There is a constant state of fracture and reflection. Every part that forms us exists as much on its own as it does in a whole, and our minds spend our whole lives twisting each individual thought and decision to see whether it belongs and where it fits. All our possible selves, whether past, present or future, exist momentarily and then blink out. The danger is that sometimes you can forget which is the real one amongst all these versions, the pieces snag, and a blockage forms. It is not so dissimilar from that debuff you have, the one you think is preventing you from saving Hima’s life.”

“So you can take it away?” Miro asked, his mouth dry.

“You can. I can only point you in the right direction. Here,” she took his hands in hers, his wrists between her thumbs and index fingers. They were unbelievably warm. “Ah, Mother’s Blood. That is truly a tricky one.”

“Tricky to remove?”

“No, tricky for you to decide that you want it removed.”

“Why would I ever want to –”

“Shh. I’m not the one with the answers.” Akaseeya pressed a single finger to his chest. “They’re in here. All you need to do is go find them.”

She let go of his other hand and he took a few steps closer to the wall of mirrors. Up close, he heard its constant rustling, a faint tinkling somewhere in the background, and watched the partial reflections of his face, each distorted in its own way, drift in front of him.

He looked over his shoulder and was comforted to find that Akaseeya was still standing there, watching him like a bird mother proudly watching her chick take off after she kicked it out of the nest for immediate motivation.

“Wouldn’t it just be easier if you came with us and rescued Hima yourself?” Miro asked with a faint glimmer of hope.

Again Akaseeya gave him a reassuring smile. “I could tell you Miro that you’re the only person in this great big world who’s right for this task, but the truth is much more mundane. Simply, I cannot leave the temple. We survive because we sustain each other, and I can’t leave its four walls unless I wish for it to crumble.”

“Right,” Miro nodded hesitantly, “Standard stuff.”

“May I suggest walking through it backwards?” she said, “It’s less disorienting than facing it all at once.”

He took her advice and took a few timid steps backwards, stopping right on the threshold of the vertical pool.

“I will be seeing you soon, Miro Kaldoun,” Akaseeya said just before he closed his eyes and took one more step backwards.