“A friend once gave an apt aphorism for the different ways people attempt to deal with trauma, comparing it to the way glass bottles break. Some crumple, destroyed. Some get jagged edges, turned into weapons. The Institute is an entire system designed to turn people into the latter. And while I’m sure you can imagine the numerous problems with a system designed to break people and then make them into weapons, there’s a flaw in the aphorism not even taken into account… sometimes the glass just doesn’t break. What I want to know, Headmaster, is what happens when the type of person who doesn’t break under that kind of pressure is given the training required to fight Nightmares on a regular basis”
-Councilmember Atriana, known for her controversial reforms of the Institute shortly after the Third Defense.
Sucked was a gentle word for what had just happened. As the platform raised up, I stood as quickly as I was capable. I wanted away from this place as soon as possible, and felt no shame in saying so. I knew how I was going to deal with all of… that, and I needed space to do it. Until then though, I would employ the timeless classic that had gotten me through until now, which was the technique of “Don’t Think About It” and let my distractible nature take me away for a little bit.
The fact that the platform was making no noise as it raised, and was taking far longer to go up than I remembered it going down made little sense. The spatial shenanigans were messing with my sense of where things should be, and it made me curious about how it all worked. Looking beneath me only gave me the sense of a roiling mass of black mist beneath me, and up was just the small pit I’d been dropped through. At the rate I was going I’d have about 15 seconds before I was back on the jade stage above. I took the time to memorize the sound coming from the mist beneath me. It was discordant, nothing recognizable as music, but it was distinct and something I wanted to avoid for the rest of my life.
By the time I had reached the blessed sunlight, I had it memorized in the back of my mind, certain in my ability to recognize it if I heard it again. Because fuck going near anything like that again. Polar was still standing there, but I was much less inclined to interact with him than I had been shortly before, and walked away from him as soon as I feasibly could. Time to go check on Amora and Emi, see if they had experienced anything like that.
I was honest enough with myself to know that I wanted to know what they both had seen as much as I wanted to share what I had experienced, because I’m a nosy bastard like that, but I wouldn’t force the issue. Especially considering what I was about to do to myself.
Speaking of which, I finally had some time to myself after a random helpful professor guided me to where my group would be staying. I’m sure the architecture was very interesting, meaningful and all that, but honestly I was too caught up in my own thoughts to notice anything beyond it was the normal white brick of the city. The only distinguishing feature was a weird mixture of colors where the brick fused together. Some mix of a bunch of different stuff I didn’t have the time to analyze. I needed to find my room fast, I kept jumping at every sound and shadow, and I really didn’t want to keep up like that.
So as I walked in I noticed Amora and Emi sitting near each other in the common space. Deciding to quickly walk past them to a room with “West” written on a plaque above it and quickly walked into it. Ignoring the layout, I sat cross legged on the bed and began meditating like Dr. Stevens had taught me. I could tell that I had a choice in front of me, and was relatively certain of how I was going to handle it but felt it worth considering first.
I could spend the weeks or months of time, and energy, and therapy required to make up for all the progress towards being better. I had probably just lost, or I could just…. not. I knew which one would be easier, and I couldn’t think of a good reason for why I should keep whatever had just happened in my head. Maybe it’d come out later, but I’d be better able to handle it better later anyways. I’d be more established, hopefully less single.
Maybe hate myself a little less. Love myself a little. Who knows? Miracles happen.
Anyways, I began the process I had discovered a month or two ago when it had been necessary for my survival in those ruins and held the memories of the Panic Room in my mind, slightly out of focus. While listening to the sound of the memory, the panic and fear and confusion wasn’t any more pleasant a few minutes later, it was necessary for the next step. Once I had the sound down in all its unique nastiness, I began to compress it mentally, until the “song”, if one could call it such, was merely a note hidden in the morass of other songs and music in my head. After a few repetitions, the emotional connotations of the memories were just like anything else unpleasant from before the ruins, a tiny note of discord hidden deep beneath all the other happy sounds in my head.
And there are happy sounds in there, thank you very much. I might have been super depressed for a few years, but that doesn’t mean that there weren’t bright spots. Like the look on my mom’s face that one time I cleaned up a bunch of the house while she was out, or when my sister introduced me to a bunch of her favorite bands. When my dad had first shown me how to fence, or the first time I had actually hit him in practice(I remain convinced I earned it despite his claims that he was going easy on me). Or the time Emi pranked some asshole from the school by dropping a bucket of fake spiders she had made on him.
As I thought of that specific memory, a couple of the boxes in my head started leaking more sound than I liked, so I spent a little longer compressing them and then headed out back into the common space.
----------------------------------------
“So you drowned a bunch? That must have sucked friend, I’m sorry” I said, trying to both sound as reassuring as possible and also avoid laughing a little at how Emi looked like a dog who had a particularly fun day in the mud. She was soaked, and trying to dry off with some of the towels we had been provided. It didn't occur to me at the time how inappropriately blasé I was being about the whole scenario.
“Must be miserable being so wet while the rest of us sit here, warm and dry” I told her, as I got up to grab another towel, trying to be obvious about my attempt to insert some levity into the room.
After all five of us had gotten back, we had sat in somewhat silence, excepting the occasional sob or the sound of someone shuffling. Nobody wanted to be alone, but nobody wanted to talk either. It was an uncomfortable cold war, the real life equivalent of the hedgehog dilemma I guess. Either way I couldn’t really handle how boring the room was, and this was my attempt to signal to her that we could probably use a break from the oppressive blanket of silence.
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.
Either she got my signal, or I didn’t hide the smirk on my face quite as well as I wanted to, because she glanced at me for a second confused before getting a wicked grin on her face. I didn’t like the implications of that, but before I could process them she had somewhat dove at me and wrapped up my feeble attempt at getting away with her weirdly long arms. We both ended up on the floor, with me pushing her off me way too late to avoid getting just about as soaked as she was.
I laughed, shoving her a little as I got up
“You dick, the towels here aren’t even good!” I told her, playing up the melodrama by grabbing a towel and trying to dry my hair out with it. “However will my lustrous locks be dry like I need them to be for all the ladies?”
She laughed as well, then rolled her eyes.
“Lustrous locks? You’ve got like 7 hairs total. 10 at most.” The fact that Stephen was rocking longer hair than Amora at the moment did not help me in countering this assault on my shorter hair, the only one even close to my hair length was Aminci, and hers was at least twice as long. So there was nobody in the short hair camp with me, sadly, but I had the perfect witty response ready.
“I’ll have you know it’s actually 12 total, if you include the cowlicks” I said, twirling the weird one in the front of my hair that looks kinda like a wave if I didn’t tamp it down. Or at least I fancy that it does.
“Ah yes. Clearly 12 is a much more respectable number. I apologize for even suggesting you were going bald.” She replied, clearly not impressed that the largest number I could think of at the moment was 12.
I gasped, purposefully overdramatic.
“Going bald! Bald! I can’t believe you would insult my house like this. I shall have to challenge you to a formal duel if you insist on spreading such lies.” I looked around, my eyes locking onto Stephen, sitting on the couch to my left.
“Quick, Stephen, give me my dueling sword. I have to defend the honor of my hair” I announced to him, gesturing with my hands for a sword.
“Sorry, forgot it at home. You’ll have to do it some other time.” He very nonchalantly announced this terrible dereliction of his duties to me, causing me to glance back at Emi and Amora.
“It is so hard to get good help these days. I guess defending the honor of my house will have to wait for another day. Don’t rest easy though, I will remember this insult.”
I realized, as I was saying such to them, that Amora’s spear was in Emi’s hands and my concern became slightly more real. I could sense that those two getting along as well as it seemed they were already could eventually spell trouble for me.
“I have no idea what you mean. My help was perfectly ready, as am I. Don’t you remember how I put you on your ass earlier?” She taunted me, accurately. “I’m ready for a duel right now.” she added, just rubbing salt in the wound.
I glared at Amora, offended. “You just gave her your weapon, that doesn’t count. Clearly the rules say she must bear her own weapon.” I said, having no idea if that was actually in the Institute’s rules for duels between students but wanting to extend the bit.
Amora gave me her most innocent look. “I don’t know what you mean. Clearly you must be mistaken, that’s not my spear” she lied, blatantly and poorly, to my face.
“Aminci, help me out here, that’s Amora’s spear, right?” I said, asking the final member of our group for her assistance.
She did not grant it.
Aminci rolled her eyes at me as she responded “Don’t know what you mean. You barely knew our names a while ago, no way you know who uses what weapon” she huffed disappointedly, in a way that did not imply confidence.
“Surrounded on all sides by liars and thieves. I guess I’ll just have to use my real sword then” I said, manifesting it into my right hand and pointing it against the ground. The thing looks awesome as fuck, if I do say so myself. It has the curved bell guard of an epee, which contrasted strangely with the fact that the rest of it was decidedly not an epee. The rest of it was decidedly bastard sword, and I appreciated the versatility that came from the grip and reach of such a weapon design. As much as any weapon design applies to Awakened. I guess the guard comes from my attachment to learning to fence from my dad and the fact that weapons for Awakened don't really need to make sense. Design gets kinda bizzare when the people using them are superhumanly strong and fast, alongside other more esoteric and terrifying abilities.
On seeing this, Emi tossed the spear back to Amora, and said “Oh, you’re actually challenging me? You haven’t won a sword fight against me since we were like 16.” And manifested her own sword. It’s all broadsword, with more weight and reach than my own, but much less fast, at least prototypically. I knew from experience that in fact she could swing it as fast as I could a smaller sword, and from the one time that I fucked around and found out that the gem-like pommel was, in fact, sharp as hell.
The other three in the room had also gotten up, but were now giggling like little kids, and I glanced at them, curious.
Looking back to Emi, I asked her “What’s up with them?” and she responded with a shrug. Then she gestured towards the door.
“Shall we? I’m curious to see what you can do, now that you’re Awakened” she said, with that grin and vocal pitch that she always got right before she beat the shit out of me in a spar. Not that I hadn’t been asking for it, sparring with an Awakened while I wasn’t one. I was curious too, and a bit excited to see if the odds were more even, like they had been before that fateful day she Awakened.
This only intensified the giggling from the other three, and I looked back at them. “Are you three going to come watch, or no?” I asked, uncertain if I wanted an audience.
“Depends. Is your sword really big enough to stand up to hers?” Aminci got out, giggling the whole time, and sending all the rest of them back into a pile of snickers and laughter.
I held my hand over my heart, laughing. “Of course it is. I can’t believe you all would shame it with innuendo.” I replied, opening the door for all of us to walk out to the dueling grounds I presumed would be on campus. As I opened the door, caught up in the moment, I turned back to them and announced
“And, I’ll have you all know, my dick is of perfectly acceptable size, and deserves none of your shaming”.
I had to stick up for myself, you know?
Of course, this was the perfect moment for me to turn around and realize that there was a rather attractive professor and a different group of students she was guiding to their group area.
Because of course there was.