Luke Everhart
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Chapter 91 - Making The Change
🕑 Added 2024-11-26 00:52:28 +0000 UTCNar watched Cen take Mul into the Pressure, and turned back to Jul.
The rogue stood before him. She stared nervously at the floor and she fidgeted with her hands.
He repressed a sigh. Part of him wanted to just gloss over it, and pretend that nothing had happened. But that didn’t feel quite right. Jul deserved better, even if he didn't share the full truth with her. Besides, knowing her, she probably already had an idea of what went on inside him anyways.
“Jul. Look, I’m sorry if I scared you. I swear that I will never hurt you.”
She grimaced at him. “You swear by your dad?”
“What? Yes, of course!”
A smile shone in her face and she closed the distance to pat him on the arm.
“I’m joking. I know you. I was never scared of you, silly,” she said, and shook her head. “Just worried. Sad.”
“Sad?”
“I know, you know?” she asked him. “I am angry too, sometimes, about my life from before. Mul is angry too. A lot. His family was also not nice to him. Rel is mostly scared. Cen is too, sometimes, and guilty also. For her brother. For what she did before. For you,” she looked to her left, where the others gathered, focused on Cen and Mul. “Gad worries. A lot. Mostly for us though. She thinks she’s not good enough for us… Tuk is sad sometimes, and a bit guilty too. And speaking of guilt, Viy is lost in it. It holds her tight and refuses to let go. I don’t know if she will ever be freed of it…”
Nar could only stare at her. Was this some sort of attribute that she had not told them about? Or an attribute yet to manifest? Regardless, he felt his mouth go dry at her words.
“And me?” Nar asked, in a hushed tone. “What do I feel?”
She raised one of her hands to his face, and laid it gently over his cheek. It was warm, and a bit sweaty, and he felt endless care emanating from it.
“There’s a little boy, screaming,” she whispered. “He’s screaming and screaming. Something happened to him that destroyed him, and he was never whole again. And more and more things just kept happening to him, so he never stopped screaming.”
She leaped forward and hugged him tightly.
“Don’t go where I can’t follow,” she said against his chest. “The little boy is right to scream, but he has to let go. If he doesn’t, bad things will happen.”
“I’m trying,” Nar whispered, his throat tightening. “I’ve come a long way, haven’t I?”
“You have. And there are a lot of good things in the Nexus waiting for the little boy. He should focus on those instead.”
He chuckled. “Are you one of those things?”
She pulled back from him and glared.
“Of course! We all are!”
Nar raised his hands. “Okay! Okay! I’m sorry.”
“You better be!”
Nar shook his head.
“Anyways. What is this? I always knew that you… That you know, you know? Is it a skill? An attribute? Is there another secret you’re keeping from us?” he asked her.
“Hmmm.”
She frowned and thought hard for a moment.
“There is something, but I don’t know what it is. It’s been there from the start, when we became Climbers outside our cubeplant. But I still don’t know what it is.”
Jul looked up at him and smiled. “If you focus on those good things instead of the bad ones, I promise I’ll tell you what it is when I find out.”
“You do?” he asked, his eyebrows rising.
“Yes, but only if you behave.”
“Only if I behave?”
Jul held her stomach and laughed.
The sound was beautiful and he couldn’t help but feel uplifted by it.
Oh, how far she had come!
Crystal. I would do anything to make this girl happy. Maybe… Maybe she really is family.
Jul pulled out three of her daggers and held onto her free hand. Confidently. Happy. Without a hint of fear or hesitation.
“Come on. Kur is getting impatient,” she said.
“Alright. You ready?” he asked, taking her hand.
Instead of replying, she dragged him into the Pressure.
She yelped and her grip over his hand weakened.
Nar gripped it tightly and shouted in her ear.
“Remember where your aura comes from,” he said. “Remember the little hole where it comes from!”
They had, of course, explained it all in detail to the others, but they had still decided that it was best for Nar and Cen to help everyone through the class change.
He watched her tense expression. Her eyelids blinked and shivered, and he saw her eyes moving underneath them.
“Ah! I feel it!” she said.
“Good! Go inside! Don’t be afraid!”
“Okay!
Of course, there was no hole.
Now, if he focused on his aura, he immediately sensed the ball of light blazing within him. He could even see it if he closed his eyes. It was inside him, and yet, he had a feeling that wasn’t the whole story.
Thinking about it, he wondered how he had ever managed to rip it to chunks and purify them, without ever finding that ball of light, or even venturing into that supposed hole.
I still don’t understand anything. How did I even do it? It doesn’t make any sense. Nothing about this makes any sense.
He felt Jul shaking and pulled her into a hug.
“It’s hurting!” she screamed. “It hurts!”
She must be going through the razor-sharp bits of purified aura.
“Hold on! It will be over soon. Reach down. Go deeper! What do you feel?”
“It just hurts! I don’t… I can’t… Oh…”
She stopped trembling in his arms and went dead still.
“Jul?”
“I see her.”
Her? Nar thought, frowning.
“She’s beautiful. But she looks so lonely. And she’s hurt… Crystal, I’m hurting her!”
“Hold on to her,” Nar said. “All of her.”
“She’s so small. I can hold her with both hands… She feels so warm. She feels happier… She wants me!”
Conflicting feelings warred within him.
There is no other choice. The path leads through the Pressure.
“Then accept her,” he said, his voice hollow. “Pull all of her into you. All of it.”
Jul began convulsing.
She went down and Nar held on to her.
Through the layer of aura that covered his skin, he felt a growing heat scalding his arms.
With a thought, and sudden insight, he pulled more aura to himself to counter the touch of Jul’s newly awakened aura.
Her daggers clattered on the floor as she lost the use of her hands.
“Ah…” she managed.
Nar pressed her head against his chest to make sure she didn’t hurt herself, and with the other, he held her tight.
Eventually, she went limp in his arms.
A quick glance at her status told him that she had made the change. Like him and Cen, and now Mul, Jul too, now had the gray bar underneath her stamina.
“Are you okay?” he asked her.
Jul, patting hard, nodded against his chest.
“I don’t care about magic anymore, even if it’s real. Even if it turns out to be better,” she said. “My aura was all alone, just like me. But not anymore. From now on, we'll be together.”
Nar pressed his lips to keep from asking her if she was sure.
He knew how she felt.
He understood it. More than he wanted to admit.
At this stage, perhaps it was only the memory of his dad that kept him from doing the same. The unknown. The lack of certainty.
Crystal, why was so much still being kept from them at that stage of their Climb?
Why not just tell them full truth?
“I can’t believe I hurt her for so long,” Jul whispered, dragging him back from his thoughts.
Like before, between him and Cen, her voice was now perfectly clear under that orange weight.
“You didn’t know,” Nar said.
Jul shook his head, and a sob escaped her lips.
“This is why the little boy keeps screaming. The Nexus needs to start being nice to him, or I’ll also start hating it.”
Nar smiled and patted her head.
“The little boy will be fine. He just needs to stop feeling sorry for himself.”
Jul grabbed his face with a tight grip and stared into his eyes.
“The little boy has done nothing wrong!” she said. “But… He has to be strong and let it go. That’s all. You hear me?”
Nar nodded, surprised.
Jul gasped and let go of him. “Sorry. I just… Don’t blame yourself, ok? You’ve done nothing wrong…”
Nar, still feeling the sting of her strong grip on his cheeks, nodded slowly.
“Good. I’ll be angry if you ever forget. Now help me up. It’s Rel’s turn next.”
*********
He couldn’t tell what it was, but something felt different. Off, even.
“Rel? Are you okay?” he asked.
She had gone still almost a full minute ago, and he could see the aura bar on her status. But other than panting, she wasn’t moving or saying anything. And her aura seemed different.
The patterns and lights and shadows and everything looked the same to him, but it was somehow darker. And it wasn’t quite gray like his or the others. It was a different color, but so subtle that he could only tell that it wasn’t the same.
“Rel?” he called again.
She gripped his arm and pulled herself into a seated position.
“I’m okay,” she said.
“Is something wrong?”
“Yes.”
Nar blanched.
“Oh… Oh! Uh…”
“Stop!” she told him, before he could go full panic mode. “It’s nothing you can fix. It’s nothing anyone can fix.”
She held onto his arm and leaned her head on his shoulder.
“Do you… Sense anything from me?” she asked.
Nar blinked for a couple of seconds then reached for his senses. “No? Should I?”
“Good. That’s… That’s good. But you see it, don’t you? The color.”
“I… Yes? I mean, a little bit. It's different, I think. Is it… Is it not working?”
She straightened up and pulled herself to her feet. Nar scrambled to help her, and once up, she let go of him and stepped back.
“It’s working fine. Auramancer Archer,” she said, looking down at herself. “It’s doing… It’s…It’s exactly as it should be.”
“Then?”
“What? Oh, no. I’m sorry. Don’t worry about it. It’s fine. It’s all fine.”
She walked back to the corridor and Nar followed after her, still stunned as to what had happened.
He saw Cen and Gad walking into the Pressure and realized that he had taken too long. He was supposed to have helped Jul, Rel and Gad make the transition, but Rel’s change had taken too long, and Cen must have finished with Tuk and moved on to Gad.
That left only Viy, and Gad had insisted that she and Cen help her through. So that meant he was done.
When they reached the others, they found them sitting or lying down. They had their eyes closed and were breathing long and slowly.
Kur opened an eye at their approach. “Do the [Meditation] skill. I want us gone as soon as possible. Especially you Nar, you have a lot more to recover than all of us.”
They nodded their acquiescence and separated to sit down at their own spots.
Nar tried to glimpse Rel from the corner of his eyes, but her expression betrayed nothing.
Well. If there’s something, I’m sure we’ll deal with it at some point…
He closed his eyes and focused.
There wasn’t much to the [Meditation] skill. The little bit of its description that was available to him only said to do deep breathing and to empty his mind. From what the others were doing, that looked like that was it.
He slowed the rhythm of his breaths, but that was the easy part.
It was much harder to silence his chaotic mind, and stray thoughts kept lashing out at him, out of control.
His dad. The past. The party. Aura and aether. Cannibals. Climbers. Guardians. The Crystal.
His thoughts and feelings. The things he wanted to do. The outside.
He tried to focus completely on his breathing. Tried to follow the air down through his nose and into his lungs, then back out again. He had no idea of what he was doing, but it felt natural somehow. Purposeful.
Without him noticing, his mind slowly emptied, and he stopped wrestling with his thoughts. A tingling spread through his body, and he resisted the urge to itch his fingertips. It was not unpleasant, so he ignored it, and kept breathing.
In. Out. And again.
In his chest, his aura seemed… Happy. That was the best way he could put it.
An eternity later, he felt a soft ringing in his mind, and knew he was done.
He opened his eyes and the orange glow looked brighter and sharper than before.
“Finished?” Kur asked.
He was sitting next to him, and was the only one still left in their sleeping area.
“Aren’t you rushing?” Nar asked him. “We’re stronger now. We can fight them if they come again.”
“It’s not that,” Kur said, shaking his head. “But yes, I am rushing us. I feel like we have to go. Like we stayed here for way too long. Longer than we should have?”
Nar frowned at him. “Did you awaken a new attribute? Like [Instinct]?”
Kur snorted. “What? No! Of course not!”
“Then?”
The party leader shook his head. “I don’t know. It’s just something. And I can’t shake it off.”
Nar stretched his neck, and then scratched his head.
A lot of somethings going around…
“Alright. If you say so, then let’s go.”
It was finally time to go into that orange room, where no path waited to guide them.
