“…Despite my achievements, absolute control still lies within the realm of the gods. At least… for now”
– excerpt from an address given by the God-Emperor Pathain of Obara, at the Silent Synod.
----------------------------------------
Apparently, I was out for “… only about eighteen hours this time” the sergeant was explaining as she sat on a cot next to mine, eating some kind of pink fruit noisily.
“You’re lucky to even be alive right now” she continued. “Lieutenant Maximillian himself had to come over and assist the healers in their work. The captain didn’t go easy on you, huh?”
I was in the old tent again. Fortunately, no drooling old hags appeared to be in close proximity at the moment. I wasn’t sure if I could handle even more strangeness. The sergeant and I were alone in the tent, although I could see the shadowed silhouettes of two soldiers outside. Were they there to guard me…or keep me in?
“Hey! Hey!” The sergeant yelled, waving her half-eaten fruit inches from my face. “Are you even listening to me?”
I looked up at her- slowly, so as to magnify the effect and said. “Has anyone ever told you how annoying you are Shikha?”
I was expecting her to get angry, maybe yell at me for not using her proper title. Instead, she favoured me with an attractive smile, dropped her fruit on the table next to my head and singed off my eyebrows with two white-hot beams of fire.
It happened fast. Blindingly fast, in fact. Fast enough that my earth shield burst from the bottom of the tent seconds after it had already happened. It was extremely disconcerting to realize that the smiling pretty girl sitting in front of me could have baked my brains out well before my previously indomitable shield could have protected me.
Well, my duel with the captain had already shown that my shield’s defenses could be bypassed, but still…
“What? Nothing to say?” she said with a smirk that slowly morphed into a frown when I still didn’t respond. The two fingers she’d used to zap me- the pinkies, on her left and right hands- were still smoking.
‘Oh, come on! I don’t even get this reaction from my suitors,” she pouted.
That finally got a response from me.
“You have suitors?” I asked, disbelieving.
“Of course, I do” she replied, cocking her head. “I’m an unwed daughter from one of the great houses”
I was about to ask exactly what the “five great houses” were when the tent flap opened and my saviour from the duel walked in.
The Lieutenant was a short, slender man with pale skin and dull grey eyes. He was wearing a uniform like the ones I’d seen on the other soldiers but coloured black and with the addition of two silver stars on his left breast. His facial features were just a bit too severe and stern to be called handsome but he was definitely striking and he carried an aura of danger wrapped around him like a cloak. It felt as if an especially venomous adder had just walked in. I couldn’t suppress a shiver as his gaze swept over my face- lingering for a moment on the spots my eyebrows would have been in if the good sergeant sitting by me hadn’t burnt them off.
The Lieutenant raised his eyebrows as he glanced at Shikha, then gestured towards the tent-flap and a woman clad in white robes bustled in.
“Shikha, you have to stop letting people get to you.” He said with a sigh. “I thought you had grown past burning off people’s eyebrows. The captain did warn you that he would demote you next time you lost your temper, didn’t he?”
“You’re one to talk!” she shot back. “I’m not the one that was dangling my superior officer in the air yesterday.”
Maximillian turned away, ignoring her, but I could see the faintest hint of a smile on his face as he bent down over me and gestured the woman in the white robe forward. She placed her palm on my brow then started a low steady chant. Each individual word was clipped and harsh, but slowly her hand started to glow with a soft vermillion light. At that point, Maximillian moved his left hand above hers and formed a bubble like I’d seen in the dueling arena. Unlike those, however, this bubble perfectly encapsulated my head and wasn’t translucent but was instead strewn through with streaks of violently pulsing maroon light.
“Ruin” he whispered softly as my eyebrows began to grow again. I could feel them sprouting from my forehead in the same manner that blades of grass peek out from the earth in early spring. It took just a few moments but my eyebrows were soon back to the state they had been before the sergeant had seen fit to erase them.
Maximillian traced along my newly regrown eyebrows and apparently satisfied, nodded to the white-clad healer to leave. She did so, with a curtsy to both Maximillian and Penelope. Maximillian waited a few moments until we could no longer hear her footsteps as she walked away, then pulled out a stool from next to the wall and sat down next to the sergeant, who had resumed eating her fruit -even more noisily this time. Once he had made 6himself comfortable, he cleared his throat and fixed me with a cold stare. It felt like I was being sized up by a hungry snake... albeit one that was short, skinny and in a slightly oversized uniform.
“Who exactly are you?” the lieutenant asked, leaning forward and steepling his fingers.
“ Your captain already asked me that… before he decided to publicly humiliate me. The answer to that question is still the same”. I sat up in my cot and met his eyes before I spoke again.
“ I. Don’t. Know.” I said, clearly enunciating each word. “ My earliest memory is waking up and finding myself deep in this filthy swamp. Anything before that is a confusing, formless haze. Hell, I can’t even remember my own name”
Lieutenant Maximillian exchanged a look with Shikha at that, before turning to face me again. His glare wasn’t any less intense, but his eyes held something that they hadn’t before.
Sympathy.
“Well, that complicates things a bit” he began, displaying a prodigious talent for understatement. “I must confess that I don’t know what we should do with you in that case. We cannot just let you go, not now”
“And why can’t you just let me go?” I asked, curious. “Not that I really want to be back out there, mind” I finished, gesturing vaguely out of the tent.
Maximillian exchanged another look with Shikha and gracelessly changed the topic.
“ I saw a bit of your duel with the captain” he started. “ How much do you know about what you can do?”
“Not a lot, if I’m being honest,” I said, sitting up slowly. “ I mean I know more than I did when I first got up, but I get the feeling that I’m barely scratching the surface of what I can do”.
“Explain”
“You’ve seen my earth wall right?” I asked. Maximillian nodded. “ I don’t really have any control over it, but it seems to act independently to protect me from harm”
“ Such unconscious defenses are rare but not unheard of. Unfortunately, this might be one reason why the Captain does not believe you are harmless”
“ I don’t understand”
“You will, eventually. Don’t worry about it. I'll do my best to explain later”. He waved at me to continue.” Please, go on.”
I was more than a little suspicious of how helpful and reasonable he was being. I worried that there would be a price attached to this, but this was a priceless opportunity to at least begin to understand an aspect of myself. I would have done almost anything for the tiniest drop of clarity.
“ Yeah, so I eventually discovered that I could push my will out against the wall and make it move. Then I extended that into pushing my will out and seizing control of one of the Captain’s own rocks. I paused, reflecting. “ It doesn’t seem to work on anything else”
“ You aren’t supposed to be able to do that…” the lieutenant mused, his expression thoughtful. “ I was a long way from the duelling circle, so I didn’t quite see what happened. I thought you had insulted the Captain to make him lose control like that”
I knew it
I knew I had done something to elicit that sort of response from the Captain. The shift in his behaviour was too drastic, too fast. But what did he mean by saying I shouldn’t be able to do that? It hadn’t felt any different from me extending my will against my wall.
“ What do you mean?” I asked. “ Why shouldn’t I be able to do that?
Maximillian rose and left the tent without a word, gesturing at me to follow. I braced myself and made to stand, expecting a rush of pain. To my surprise, there wasn’t even any tenderness. My skin was unbroken and healthy! It looked even better than before the duel. Sergeant Shikha watched me marvel at the healing job for a few more moments before she broke the silence with a sigh.
I hadn’t even realized she was still there.
“ Do you remember what I told you about him?” she said, scowling.
“Who?” I asked, stupidly.
“The lieutenant, dumbass” she sighed, looking at me as one does a particularly stubborn stain on their favourite pair of shoes.
“ Oh...” I racked my brain. “I think I remember you telling me what he was dangerous, right before I passed out”
“Yes”. She stood up and tossed the remnants of her fruit in a wooden basket on the other side of the tent. “ He seems to have taken an interest in you. You should be careful”
“Why?” I asked as I opened the tent flap. The lieutenant waiting for us in the distance.
“I keep forgetting that you don’t remember or know anything.” She said, her tone coloured with pity.
Shikha pulled me back before I could step out the tent. We were now face-to-face and I got perhaps my first chance to really look at her since I had met her. Her amber eyes - trending towards light red near the pupils - bore into mine. Her skin was sepia-toned and a stray lock of hair nested invitingly in the space between her eyes. She was actually really pretty.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
Too bad about her personality though.
“Hey stop ogling me and listen”. Her frown turned into a slight smirk as she realized she had been dead on.
Oops
“ I wasn’t ogling you,” I said, rolling my eyes.
What can I say? It felt like shameless lies were my forte.
“Sure,” she said with a smile, then her expression got more serious. “ This is serious, Zed. You should listen”
“ I’m listening,” I said, a bit surprised by her tone.
Wait, did she just call me ‘Zed’?
“Everything is tense right now. We’re all on high alert. Maximillian does nothing without a deeper reason. Nothing.”
“ Why do you think he helped heal me then? Also, why did you call me Zed?”
“ I don’t know. I think he’s curious about what you can do. He might think you’ll be useful to him in some way” she stopped and idly toyed with a lock of hair. “What? We had to call you something. Do you remember your name?”
“No, I still don’t” I replied.
“Do you have something better in mind?”
“No”
“ Then shut up,” she said with a grin. “We should go, he isn’t impatient like the Captain, but we still shouldn’t keep him waiting”
We left the tent.
Maximillian was still standing where I had seen him last, idly staring at the clouds. Somehow he reminded me of a curious little kid. I was about eighty percent sure that wasn’t just because of his height,
“Zed,” Shikha said at my side. “ I like the Lieutenant, but he only sees people as tools and toys. There has only ever been one toy of his that he didn’t manage to break.”
“Who is that?” I asked. She was trying to scare me off him, but it wasn’t working. With every sentence, I was getting more and more interested in him instead.
“His sister.”
Maximilian frowned at us as we walked up. He was in the middle of the walkway, right outside the medical tents. The other soldiers and healers gave him a wide berth.
“You took your time,” he said.
“ Sorry Lieutenant, I was just telling him to return to the medical tents after you’re done. We haven’t quite decided where he’ll be staying yet”
“Oh don’t worry about that Sergeant,” Maximillian smiled. “ I’ll take him”.
“Wha-What? Um I mean, you’re going to have to clear it with the Captain. Are you sure?” she stammered.
“I am. He’ll be safe with me. The captain should leave him alone as long as he’s with me. Right?” he asked.
“Yeah, I guess,” she turned to leave. “ I'll get going now, I have some other duties to deal with. I’ll see you later Zed, Lieutenant” she nodded to him and left.
Lieutenant Maximilian and I watched the sergeant walk away until she took a left onto the main road and disappeared from sight. Maximilian had a light smile playing around his lips.
“ She gave you the whole speech about how you should stay away from me right? The one about me being “dangerous” right?” he asked with a smile.
For once, I did not have anything to say. I just stood there gaping, in the manner of a dumber than average fish.
“Don’t worry,” his tone was reassuring. “I’ve heard it all before. I’m sure she also said the same thing about the lady Uro?”
I nodded.
Maximillian sighed.
“ People always fear what understand. That has always been the case. The Matchless are no different.”
“Matchless?” I said. I was sure I had heard that title before.
“I'll get to that. Come on, let’s move. I’d like to spend all day talking with you, but I do have other things to do”
Maximillian and I walked away from the medical tents, through the camp and once again I marvelled at how organized everything was. Everyone was moving about in a brisk, lively manner and that spoke volumes about the person in charge. The captain might be a jackass, but he knew what he was doing,.
“I’m not one for lengthy lectures” Maximillian began. “I’d rather show and do than cram and memorize. So, I’ll give you a general rundown of everything I think you want to know - and show you some examples - as needed”.
I nodded my assent and he continued.
“ In this world, almost everyone is born with an affinity to an aspect of creation. The common four aspects are the elements of Fire, Water, Earth, and Air. Of course, the world isn’t quite as neat as some would like it to be, so some people have affinities to odder things. I've personally met people with affinities to ice and steam and the Temple of Lucian close by is full of Light affinity priests”
That sounded really interesting. I wasn't sure if this was something I had known before and had now forgotten, or if it was something that was entirely new to me. I was leaning towards the latter, however. The excitement I was feeling felt genuine and fresh. It didn’t feel like a product of my memory loss.
Wait, that didn’t explain his bubbles or the portals
Maximillian had been watching me closely, and he knew what I was thinking about.
“ Yes, that doesn’t really explain my abilities, or Lady Uro’s,” he flashed a sad smile. “The Lady and I are Matchless. We are unique.”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“You wouldn’t” he frowned. “ We Matchless break the mold. Our abilities can be terrifyingly strong or pathetically weak and so far, no matchless has been shown to possess the same exact abilities”
“That sounds amazing,” I said. I was drawn to the idea of being unique. Of being the only one in the world that could do what I did.
“ Is it really? Maximillian asked. “What if I told you that until five years ago we weren’t even considered human? We were thought of as a higher form of beast.
“What?” I was shocked. “ That doesn’t even make any sense”
“It makes all the sense in the world if you believe the priests when they preach about where our abilities came from”
“What do they say?” I asked. Putting the discrimination aside, this world was getting more interesting with every sentence he spoke.
“ The priests say that our powers were granted to us by the gods, who wrote them into the natural order. They say once, there were no affinities or aspects. We were little better than apes, but the gods took pity on us and granted us our abilities so we could be something more. There is some evidence for that being true, unfortunately. Once in a while, a god does take human form and walk among us. So we know they exist.”
“I still don’t see how that means that Matchless are not human,” I said.
“ No one knows where the abilities of the Matchless come from. The gods disavowed any hand in it speaking through their priests and eventually, people twisted that to mean we weren’t blessed by the gods. To the religious, not being blessed by the gods is little better than being a demon-worshipping heathen. Thus, the priests branded us higher beasts and the people followed”
As he spoke the scowl on his face deepened. I got the feeling that I was getting to see just a little bit of the real person under his usual mask. His bitterness and anger seemed to be tangible things, saturating the air around us.
“ Well,” he said as we came to a stop. “ We’re going to find out exactly what your affinities are”.
Our walk had carried us behind the Captain’s needlessly large tent and beyond the duelling circle. We were in a clearing of sorts and in the middle of that clearing was a cauldron.
The cauldron was filled with a strange milky-white liquid and was emitting a soft glow that was visible even then, at midday. It was nestled between two lit braziers filled with burning coals, ringed by a small depression containing water and surrounded by an odd script that seemed to be etched into the earth. The coals gave up a bluish-white, pleasant smelling smoke. The clearing seemed to be in a permanent haze. The mild gust of wind that blew across the camp never managing to dissipate the smoke.
“What is that?” I asked, gesturing at the fluid inside the cauldron.
“We call it the Tears of Asa. Supposedly the goddess Asa was sad about something and cried for seven days and seven nights, creating a large river of this stuff than ran through the world. I never really bothered to actually learn the theology behind it.” Maximillian gestured over to two soldiers that were stationed in the area, then continued.” It reacts peculiarly when it comes in contact with someone blessed with an affinity. Watch”
The first of the two soldiers took off a gauntlet and reached into the cauldron. At first, nothing happened, but in an instant, the surface became a roaring inferno. It didn’t appear to be causing him any harm, however.
“ From what we can tell, it’s all just an illusion. A very strong one. Illusions usually fall apart as soon as one is made aware of them. This one doesn’t” Maximillian signaled the soldier to step back, as soon as his hand left the cauldron, the flames stopped, along with the heat and noise.
“ The effect has nothing to do with actual strength. For example, if Sergeant Shikha’s hand was in the cauldron, you’d see nothing more than a tiny flame licking across the surface. Yet, she is far more powerful than he is.” He finished, gesturing at the soldier. I felt somewhat bad for him.
Maximillian strode over and stuck his own hand in and… nothing happened.
“As you can see, the Tears don’t react to me at all.” he waved me over. “ It’s your turn, put your hand in.”
I was more than a bit apprehensive, but I did as I was told and stuck my right hand in, past my wrist. Honestly, it was rather disgusting. The Tears were cold and slimy and an odd tingling sensation spread out from my left breast as soon as my skin came in contact with the liquid.
In a few moments, a huge, intricate mountain range spread out across the surface of the Tears, with one peak towering above the rest. It was packed with an extreme amount of detail. There were streams and lake valleys. even minuscule plants and animals could be seen. skittering across the hills and valleys.
“Hmm,” Maximillian said. He looked mildly upset for some reason. “That’s interesting. You should take your hand out now.”
I did so, expecting the illusion to collapse back into itself as it had done earlier.
It didn’t.
Maximillian raised an eyebrow at that but made no further comment on it.
“Seems your affinity is to earth. That’s not surprising given your duel with the captain, but it’s always best to make sure. You asked earlier, about your duel with the Captain. Why you taking control of one of his rocks was such a big deal?”
“Yeah, it wasn’t any harder than what I did with my own wall. I don’t understand why he got so upset”
“Watch this” Maximilian said. “Davos, make a fireball.
One of the soldiers stretched out his hand and formed a spherical ball of fire that sat in the middle of his palm.
“Now Sil, try to move it from his palm to yours”
The other soldier took stretched out his palm, his fingertips nearly touching those of the other soldier. I could see the strain on his face as he tried to will the fire in Davos’s palm across to his. A tiny tongue of flame flickered across for an instant, but that was all that happened. Sil gave up as Davos extinguished the flame, and they both returned to their posts.
“ As you can see, influencing another person’s flame is so difficult as to be functionally impossible. This applies to all the elements. We aren’t entirely sure why - that’s a matter best left to the scholars and theoreticians - but it is a truth that we all know and accept” He fixed me with a look. “The real question is; Why can you do it?”
Maximillian nodded to the soldiers and strode off, gesturing at me to follow. I was secretly delighted at being able to do something that no one else could, but I couldn’t help but wonder what this meant for me. They surely weren’t going to let me go now.
“You don’t need to answer that,” Maximillian said, as we walked through the camp. “I know you don’t know.”
He stopped and met my eyes. Expression halfway between excitement and sympathy.
“I know what it’s like to have no idea what the next step in. I understand what it is to be alone. I can’t guarantee that I’ll never put you in danger or that I can get you all the answers you need. But I give you my word that I’ll try”
Maximillian stretched out his hand for a handshake. I looked at him. He was short and domineering, I had been warned to stay away from him and I was certain that there was far more to him that I had already seen. I knew taking his hand would lead me down a path I could never turn back from. I also knew that I didn’t know enough about this world to throw my lot in with him. But fuck it! So far - with the possible exception of Sergeant Shikha - he had been the only one willing to believe me about my memory loss. He was the only one that hadn’t mocked me or beaten me to a pulp.
So I grasped his hand.
“Excellent,” he said “ Come looking for me in the evening. You’re under my protection now. I’ll fill you in about the situation over the next few days”
And with that, he walked away. Leaving me alone and with absolutely no idea how to get back to the medical tents.
Brilliant.
----------------------------------------
The illusion on the surface of the cauldron shimmered and shattered into beautiful little motes of light as a miniature dust devil blew across the illusory peaks and valleys. A small vortex manifested itself in the milky-white liquid and the tiny whirlpool on the surface lasted for a second or two before dissipating.
The Tears of Asa no longer gleamed with light but instead became dull and lifeless. As though all its magic had been drained away.