*
When I came back to my then-present self, I was standing up, totally healed from Sumixam’s bite, only vestiges of black smoke coming from where there should be a gaping wound, and all of my hair had turned completely white. The light of the burning grass allowed me to see Sunburned, Cloudless, and even the beast staring at me from ahead, eyes wide in surprise.
“Oh, yeah… the beast”, I whispered to myself. And, raising my right hand, instinctively, I shot a blast of explosive energy against Sumixam:
“BOOM!”, flames momentarily engulfed the size of the Tyrant King, evaporating one of its tiny arms completely, the sudden impact taking it off balance.
The shock wave also hurt my companions, who stood close to the creature, sending Sunburned and Cloudless meters away, clouds of smoke coming from both of them. Still, it didn’t mater, for…
“…I have a beast to kill.”
Slowly walking towards the creature, right palm open, I continued to shoot blasts against Sumixam, and after every magic projectile, the technique came to me more naturally, the explosions became more powerful; the fire hotter, the impact harder.
“RAAAAGH!”, counterattacking even though half of its body was already burning, the beast swept its long tail, which ended in a wide fan of feathers, on a semi-circle, throwing a wave of dirt and grass over me.
Silently, I brushed away the curtain of earth with a movement of my hand and a conjured explosion. Only to reveal the stone-horned beast right before me, ready to stomp my person under its heavy paw.
“VUSH!”, Sumixam brought down its foot on top of me. And I stopped it above my head, putting a shinny semi-transparent magical blue shield between us with my left hand. Then, pointing a single index finger towards the head of the gaping creature above, I concentrated all of that explosive energy into a single dot, and shot it:
“BUUZ!”, there was a flash of orange light; a thin shining trail that came from the top of my index finger, passed through the head of Sumixam, and reached even a few meters beyond.
Before the first drop of blood from the dead creature fell down, the bright orange dot I shot expanded, releasing all of the energy contained inside:
“BOOOOM!”, a rapidly growing sphere of fire engulfed, burned, and shredded the entirety of the massive body of the rock-horned red beast, and still continued to expand; while I protected myself with the blue shield, the explosion dug up a deep crater all around me, and raised a huge cloud of evaporated rain.
As I released the shield, finally certain that the threat had been dealt with, as there was not a single fraction of its body bigger than fist-sized carbonized clumps of meat, I searched for Sunburned and Cloudless. The Coyote girl was the first one I encountered, as I saw her staring back at me, gaping, eyes wide. She seemed to have broken her ankle, as it was sickly red and swollen, and her hands had been partially burned from when she was hurled away by my first attack. Whatever, they were not wounds that would permanently impede her in any way.
I jumped closer to Cloudless, but when I shortened the distance between us in an instant, she seemed startled.
“I killed it”, I told, staring right at the coyote-girl. And, screaming, she turned away from me, and crawled away with her hands. Following the direction she was moving to, I found Sunburned, also staring at me, distressed, face and arms covered in scratches, and lightly burned.
Then, slowly, my hair re-gained its natural brown color, with the exception of a single white lock of hair.
Not so subtle, was the invincible tiredness that hit me out of nowhere: I passed out.
As the coyote-girl shrunk away, scared when I offered her my shoulder, I knew: another fail.
So what that Cloudless broke her ankle because of a bad shot of mine? I saved her life, and it wasn’t permanent damage she suffered! Sure, it was a butchered, failed “saving” that even a blind, deaf, quadriplegic old demented grandma could do better, but still…
Well, actually, she may have been right in hating me even more then.
Sighing, the old man pointed:
“It’s fine, you don’t need to do that”, he slowly brushed me away. Looking divided, he added, forcing a smile to his granddaughter: “what good would be a grandpa, if he could not carry his darling for just a little more? If I give my best, we may get these deliveries right on time!”, getting up from the log in which he stopped to rest, and lending his granddaughter a shoulder, he concluded: “There, darling. Everything’s fine now, grandpa will take you to the city.”
As I carried all of the surviving baggage of those two, I reflected on what happened just the other day: then, I understood that even before breaking that first chain link I had above-average physical abilities, and possibly even magical potential, but once that tattoo vanished, my power had increased a hundredfold. I felt a sudden surge of power, and magical knowledge, and… memories.
I knew that, before breaking that link, I was simply incapable of killing even an animal, much less hurting a sapient being. And yet, at the present moment… I couldn’t even tell why? Even if I had power before breaking the first link of the chain, and knew how to use it, I doubt I’d have killed the beast, but probably only try to scare it.
And these thoughts bothered me.
Did that mean that, if I broke another link somehow, I’d get even more apathetic? Could the memories, the personality contained within the chain links, even be considered mine when we differ so much? Would I start to be able to inflict wounds that would never heal in people? Would I start to use my powers to my own advantage? Would I start to kill people?
…Would I die myself, substituted by another being, if I broke enough links?
“See? We’ll make it in time!”, Sunburned commemorated, as we started to see the end of the grass plain ending by a large lake, and a very large hill of some kind? No, that was- “The School! The Bear Mountain!”
I still couldn’t see the city that was supposed to surround it from my position, but The School was impressive enough by itself, for it was, actually, the enormous carcass of a gigantic bear; just old bones and leather stretched over it, some kind of grisly tent as tall as a mountain. The vertebrae that pierced through the leather had been carved, each individual bone, in a different tower, magical symbols had been painted in blue all around the empty eye sockets, fire burned in the nose hole as a beacon, and the teeth had been fashioned into gates.
“What is that?”, I had to ask.
“There! I knew you’d be surprised, haha!”, the old man laughed. “Right, darling?”, his granddaughter didn’t answer, but kept her eyes fixed on the ground. Sighing, he continued: “I’m not really a storyteller, so I can’t tell you in details, or in a pretty or very accurate way, but basically, that bear is old… From when my great great grandpa was still just a boy like you. From when the Gods commonly walked among men, and guided us. Gods were not the only things that emerged from the Primordial Waters, however, and a terrible dragon fought and killed this bear…”, the old man scratched his nose, as I waited for the end of the story. “And that’s it, now it's very magical or something?”
“…Or something?”, I was disappointed with the anticlimactic explanation.
“Told you, not a storyteller”, Sunburned shrugged. Seemingly noticing that a myriad of roofs started to become visible to us, he stopped in his tracks, and I also. The old man turned pained, then serious, and said: “That’s it.”
“What?”
“We have to go to the back entrance of The School, the hinder left leg works as a deposit. The city, however, only encircles the face of The School.”
“Oh”, I got it. “We’re parting ways” I tried to stay calm, to look calm, but my first-ever dream came crashing down. And it hurt. “Thank you for taking me here”, I nodded smiling. I had to be thankful that those two decided to take me there in the first place, even after I hurt them.
“There, always kind”, the old man seemed divided, like before. “…Have you remembered anything from your past already?”, was he concerned with me?
“Yes, a little bit”, I lied, for I only remembered that I fell from the sky.
“Then, what’s your name?”
“Uh…”
“…I knew it”, Sunburned took off his large hat, and scratched his balding head. “You know, you remember me of my deceased son. And I don’t talk only about your appearance, since you’re coincidentally also a coyote-person, but your personality too. When I saw that crayfish wound in your hand, old sweet memories flooded my mind… Maybe this was the reason that I told you so much about us?”, he sighed, truly tired, and for the first time since we met, I could see him as the fragile elderly he claimed to be; his thin skin, curved spine, falling teeth, quickly fading strength. Then, suddenly re-inflating his chest and turning back to his adventurer self, Sunburned told me seriously: “We owe you our lives. And a simple ‘thank you’ isn’t enough to pay you back. Still, I will not put my family at unnecessary risk anymore. I can’t take you with us any longer. And so, as I believe that we’ve been united by fate, by the gods, the spirits of the world, or however higher power, I, as the eldest member my clan, offer you the name ‘Skyblue’, and my clan name, ‘Coyote’. You may need it to enter The School.”
“Enter The School?”
“I can’t think why your path would take you all this way, if not to find something in there. Whatever it may be. And you will probably need a name to get in there. I’d tell you more about how to become an apprentice in The School, but I don’t know the details either. Still, you have a few days before the Selection Festival, which is when the Apprentices get accepted or rejected.”
Happiness and recognition, and embarrassment and guilty fought for dominance over me at that moment, but before I started to cry my eyes out, I laid down the packages I was carrying for them on the ground, and walked away, forcing an excited smile, and covering the old man in thanks:
“Thank you, Sunburned… Cloudless. I’m sorry for all the trouble.”
I turned away, and silently took a deep breath, readying myself to part ways with those two. Forever.
Then, I slapped my own cheeks:
“Plat! Plat!”
And so, I set m eyes on my next objective: the famous school of magic, Bear Mountain. And, once again, I could already envision the adventures I’d have there! I was hopeful!
*
As I stared at the back of Skyblue, I remembered when I first saw… it.
As if the sky itself was falling, the wide blue upwards bent, formed a droplet, and ejected a tiny piece of itself. It happened too quickly, and I knew that if I didn’t run after such a droplet, whatever it was, I’d lose it in between the labyrinthine canyon. And so I did it, leaving my granddaughter behind to set up camp, I followed my curiosity.
What I found in the tiny crater that the droplet dug was quite literally indescribable.
Its “color” and “shape” were simply out of this world, something that hurt my eyes and brain simply by looking at it, a nameless mirage. And, as the shining died down, what was left behind was but a mass of ever-changing elements, a pile of earth in one moment, a ball of fire in another. Until it seemed to notice my presence.
The mass stopped all of its changes as a boulder, and a single hole opened in its middle, leading to a dark, dark space, and a giant sphere of fire inside of it, bathing me in its burning hot light; its “eye”, I knew.
I was forced to close my eyes because of the light, and when I opened them again, there it was: a boy the age of my granddaughter, wearing clothes almost identical to mine, and looking eerily similar to my deceased son, but with a bizarre tattoo marking his body.
“Did I do the right thing?”, I asked myself.
I couldn’t bring myself to simply leave the boy behind, and not only because he looked similar to my deceased son. But the apprehension I felt whenever my granddaughter bickered with him was finally confirmed when it destroyed, completely and utterly, the foul beast that haunted me for so long. It fought with such cold eyes, emotionless even as its attacks broke my granddaughter’s ankle, and burned the two of us in the process, that I couldn’t tell if Skyblue killed Sumixam to protect us, or simply because he found the beast to be an annoyance? Was the gentleness Skyblue showed during our travel a simple act? Was it a devil in disguise? Or…
Doubts and guilt divided me, but thinking about Sumixan, and the boy who looked so much like my lost child, I remembered when I brought my children to that lake. When one of my sons tried to pet a crayfish, and got pinched by it. When Sumixam showed up right after this and gobbled the poor child.
“What?”, Cloudless asked as she tested an improvised cane, bringing me back to reality.
“No, nothing”, I shook my head.
And, looking at her, I was sure of my decision: I had taken the boy to safety, and named him, I showed kindness enough, and didn’t need to put Cloudless at risk anymore, to make her walk alongside something that could lose its patience and blow her up at any moment.
Bearing the weight of the entire cargo for the last few steps of the road, I finally turned my back to the one I named, and we definitively parted ways.
“There, let’s deliver these things already”, I wanted to think about something else. “Then? Still want to be a deliveryman?”, I asked as we passed by a small stream of water, clear enough to see the tiny fish swimming inside.
Cloudless approached the body of water, crouched beside a heavy rock, grabbed it with the strong deliverymen arm she had free, and… frowning, dropped it back into the ground. Instead, she reached for some cornbread crumbles in her backpack, and fed the fish.
“…Yeah. Yeah, I still want to be a deliveryman”, blushing intensively, she admitted, tightening her hand into a fist.
I patted my darling’s head. And wished Skyblue, Of The Coyote Clan, the best of luck.
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