Looming Shadow: Journey to Chaos book 2 (35 page)

“Which do you believe?”

“All of the above.”

“Good answer.”

The scenario coalesced
into a silhouette of Asuna glowing with the power of chaos. “This is the source
of all life and power. The wise treat it with respect and reverence and are
rewarded with her blessing; the foolish regard it as a tool and instrument of
pleasure and receive only her scorn.”

 The silhouette
transformed into a pillar of light and reshaped into a globe. It had three
continents blanketed with trees and grass, five oceans, two polar icecaps,
thick cloud covering that sparked with lightning, an exploding volcano, and it
was all split into light and dark hemispheres.

“How many elements do
you see?”

“Ten.”

Dengel slapped him on
the head. “Fool! There are ten
Elemental Mana Gates
but there is only
one
element!” The globe dissolved into colorless light that Grey Dengel held in his
hands. “MANA is the one true element; all else is merely manifestation.” He
stretched the globe into a sheet and it shifted through all ten phases and back
again. He shoved it into Eric's hands and asked, “Do you understand?”

Eric repeated the feat
and absorbed the sphere into his chest. “I have the energy that creates the
world and I am the spirit that manipulates it. I am a
god
.”

“Now you are learning.”

Lectures, arguments,
counter-arguments, demonstrations, and philosophy mixed with practicality and
the anatomy of the soul. The two of them stood like guardian angels over a
field of life and watched it progress for a year and more until a golden-brown
tidal wave washed over it.

“What do you see?”

“The beginning and the
end, the first mother and the ultimate undertaker, love that is both empowering
and feebling, renewing and destroying mixed into the same act and purpose.
There is only one description that does not contradict it because it
encompasses everything: Source of All Power.”

“How do you act?”

Eric dropped out of the
sky and into the golden-brown waves of creation and destruction. They did not
create him because he was already created, nor did they destroy him because he
was already destroyed; he was the waves and the waves were him. Both of them
changed by elevating themselves beyond their current state.

“Who are you?”

“Present.”

Then he woke up. His
body was hungry, sore, and cold, but his mind never felt more alert. His
crystal flashed golden-brown and the color concentrated at the tip. He
levitated to his feet and walked over to Dengel's desk where a scroll lay open
across it.

“Huh. I can read this.
Sweet.”

Read he did. When finished,
he put it away and started another one and when finished with that one, he
started a third. Each of them returned to its proper place in its proper time.
Out of curiosity, he sampled the containers, and Grey Dengel would reappear to
explain its intended effect.

“'There was a time...'”
he read aloud. “'...when tricksters were more active and Lady Chaos was more
direct in her gifts. This led to overexposure to mana, rampant monsters, deaths
that wouldn't have occurred and pollution of local timelines. Worst of all, the
people depended on divine intervention to the detriment of their own power.
They believed they couldn't achieve greatness on their own and their own merit
decayed. Thus led to the Period of...” A scream jolted him from his studies. He
dashed out the door and barely dodged a broad sword swinging from a statue.
Cursing himself, he recast Air Disk and returned from whence he came.

Just as he knew all of
Dengel's traps, he knew how many ways they could kill someone. If his teammates
triggered one...The horrific images and guilt forced him to move faster. He
avoided the traps without thinking like he'd done it a thousand times. When he
arrived in the entrance, he saw his fear confirmed, but not in the way he
expected. Tiza hung from the ceiling, upside-down, by a rope around her ankles.
She tried to turn around, but spun until she was dizzy, so she simply craned
her neck back. Her shoulder-length hair falling over her eyes, she said,

“Not a word, Dimwit.”

“Alright....” He
stepped forward and past her. “I'll just leave you hangin' then.”

“Abyss take it,
Dimwit!” Tiza swung like a worm on a hook. “Get me down from here!”

First, Eric cast Air
Disk on her so she wouldn't get into any more trouble. Then he carefully pulled
her feet loose. The fighter landed all fours on the floating disc of wind and
stood up.

“Let me guess. You
wanted to experiment with Third Eye.”

Tiza whacked him.
“Moron! I'm not that stupid! I was going to check up on you.”

“Check up on me?” Eric
rubbed his forehead. “Why? I wasn't gone long.”

Tiza looked him over
and gasped. “Dimwit... It's been nine days.”

“Nine days? Really?”
Eric took his pointer finger and pushed it through his belly button until it
touched his spine. “So that's why my stomach's concave.”

Tiza shoved a half-full
bag of trail mix into his hands. “Eat this!”

“Sure. Thanks.”

He emptied the bag's
contents into his mouth, chewed, and swallowed. Tiza dragged him by the hand
out of the tower and into the courtyard.

Team Four's campsite
was set up in a bare patch away from the ruined buildings. In the center was a
fire surrounded by stones and branching off were two tents, two latrines dug
out of the ground, and a yurt. Haburt was off examining one of the buildings
while the others sat around the fire. At Tiza's shout, they all stood up and
the other half of Team Four rushed to hug Eric. Seeing his emaciated state,
they held back. Nolien took a calming breath and examined the state of Eric's
health. His face grew paler by the second and, finally, he said, “Eric, your
body passed the brink of starvation four days ago. How are you still alive?”

Eric assumed a thinking
pose. “I don't know.” He promptly collapsed and stopped breathing.

“Eric/Dimwit!”

His head rolled back
and his eyes opened. “Kidding!”

All three of them
whacked him. “Not funny!”

Basilard sat him down
at the campfire and gave him a bowl of stew.

“Eat and tell us what
happened to you.”

Nonchalantly, Eric did
so. He told Haburt about the size, condition, and contents of Dengel's study,
and Haburt listened intently. Then Eric talked about the “weirdo spiritual
hallucination thing” and effortlessly generated a two-foot mana blade at the
end of his staff. Before anyone could stop him, he jumped five feet straight up
and made a two-foot hole in the solid rock beneath his feet.

“Neat, huh?”

Nolien pushed down on
him with both hands on both shoulders.

“Sit, stay, eat.”

“Okay.”

Tiza regarded him as a
bomb that might or might not be a dud. “You seem... mellow.”

“Oh yeah.” Eric slurped
up bunch of noodles. “Me and the Hermit Dengel Leftover Thingie worked out a
lot of issues after he vaporized the Shadow Dengel Imaginary Friend Thingie
that was following me around.”

Then he started
levitating and Nolien pushed him back down.

Haburt sweat-dropped.
“Trickster’s Choice indeed. He’s gone mad.”

“Don't worry,” Basilard
said. “He's just loopy from...the thing that happened to him.”

“Loopy Whoopie Doopie
Doo!”

“Until then, I will
continue my true research.”

Haburt put his dishes
away and strolled back to one of the house ruins near the wall. Eric snapped
and a mana bolt exploded at his feet. He spun on one foot and pin-wheeled to
regain his balance. Eric laughed and chugged his soup. Then he spat it into
Tiza's face.

“Dimwit...” she said,
shaking with rage. “When your ribs stop showing, I'm going to rip two of them
out and shove them in your eyes.”

“Okay,” he said
brightly. “I deserve that. Soupa Duupa Koopa!”

He waved his hand with
each word and a small gust of wind lifted the soup off Tiza and then poured it
down Eric's throat like a waterfall.

“Daylra, is it possible
that Eric is still inside and this being before us is actually The Trickster?”

Basilard touched
BloodDrinker's hilt and muttered something. The blade shined in its sheath.
“I'm sure it's the real deal. Once his new power settles, he'll go back to
normal.”

“Normal!” Eric chirped.
“The pigs are courting ship. What have you guys been up to?”

Basilard gestured to
one of the ruined houses where Haburt was excitedly working. He examined a
piece of pottery, documented its location, and made verbal notes to himself on
his scry. If it weren't for his size, grey hair, and gender, he'd look like
Tiza in a brawl.

“Professor Haburt was
delighted by your delay. It gave him an excuse to study the outside of the
castle and tower. After all, studying the common man was his personal
motivation for coming here. As for your teammates...” He smiled wickedly. “Tell
him, Nolien.”

“Stamina Training,” the
healer said dryly. “We climbed down the mountain, ran around the mountain, then
climbed back up the mountain, and then back down the mountain. The only breaks
were meditation exercises to restore mana at a greater pace than regular
living.”

“I liked it!” Tiza
chimed. “I was too tired to worry about Dimwit.” She elbowed him. “Do you know
how hard it is to meditate when one of your two best friends is missing in
action?!”

“The other one's Raki,
right? You couldn't possibly refer to Nolien because your soul shines too
bright around him for mere friendship.”

Tiza blushed and Nolien
fumbled for a denial. Eric raised his hands and touched both of their chests. A
flash of grey light traveled over them both and Eric's eyes whited out.

“I can see it! The soul
connection is red and strong and
mpphh
!”

Tiza shoved a biscuit
into his mouth. By the time he swallowed it, he'd forgotten what he was saying,
so instead he asked, “What did you do, Daylra?”

“Security,” Basilard
replied. “I was making sure this place was safe by checking for runes we missed
on the way up and for signs of the Crimson Killer. If he has a base of
operations in this country, then it's most likely the neighboring mountain.”

“Smoke 'em out like a
fox in a den and cut him up into cubes to make bladi-flavored ice tea.”

“Eric...because you're
not in the right mind, I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that second part.
Anyway, Mount Heios is enveloped in a Fog Cloud. Without evidence that he's
there, it's too dangerous to investigate, even for someone like me.”

Zettai jumped to her
feet, and ran towards the tower, only to be choked by Basilard grabbing the
collar of her shirt.

“I wanna go in there!”

Basilard pulled her
back to the campfire. “Calm down. You’ll die if you do that.”

“He that is born to
hang has no fear of drowning,” Eric recited. “The complexion of this lass is
perfect gallows, so she should go.”

Eric cupped her cheeks
with both hands. Zettai's heart raced. She was flattered by his attention and
scared by his prediction of her death. He brought their faces close together. Zettai
closed her eyes, and Eric head-butted her.

“Ow...”

“Hmm... the mind-meld
failed...Really? I need to kiss her?” Zettai blushed and hoped. “That's silly.
It's a superstition of your time.” Her hopes fell. “Don't get dogmatic with me,
old man!”

“How long is this going
to last?” Nolien asked.

“The Trickster said one
hour to one day,” Basilard replied.

It wasn't an hour.

Sias approached the
fireplace to collect on her payment as a guide – a date. Basilard tried to
deflect it by saying he had to watch Eric and Zettai but she glowered and
flipped her long, pink hair. His resistance crumbled instantly. In the end,
they decided that Zettai could talk with and/or listen to Eric while he carried
on a two-person lecture. That way, they could babysit each other.

Sias enfolded her arms
around one of Basilard’s and walked off with him in one direction. Tiza grabbed
Nolien's arm in one hand and yanked him in the other. Haburt shuffled in his
current building, giggling like Mia with gossip.

“She's a good study,” Eric
said to thin air. For once, there was no Dengel of any kind around. “I taught
her a good deal on the way here and she soaked it up like a sponge.” Zettai
basked in the praise as visions of herself as a powerful mage danced in her
head. “She would listen to you monologue all day, all night, in the bathroom...”
She perked up and scowled. “Did I say something wrong?”

Still scowling, she
said, “Are you asking me or Dengel?”

“...Uhh...what's the
right answer? What do you mean you don't know?” Zettai brought out a book and
chopped him on the head with the spine. “You're reading my book! Yes, I know
you're the author, but I own this copy. Did you understand it?”

“I had to ask Basilard
to define some words, but I understood most of it.”

“If you had the mana to
fuel the spells, you'd make a mighty mage.”

Zettai smiled and her
heart lifted.

“Too bad there's
nothing here except the prohibitively dangerous lair and the unspeakable
dangerously mountain.”

Zettai's face fell.
“Yeah...” Then it shifted sideways. “Too bad, indeed.”

Dusty stone and old
cobwebs; locked doors and mystic runes. This was the home of a mage arrogant
enough to build himself a castle. To historians, it was a precious window to
the past. To mages, it was a holy site. To Ceiha, it was taboo. To Tiza, it was
a container for adventure and loot. While Eric was gone, she discovered an
additional area of the tower. Now she prowled them with sword in one hand and
healer in the other.

“Are you going to tell
me why we're doing this?”

Tiza answered without
looking back.