Chapter 56: Just the Things One Does

For a few moments, Miro just lay on the tiles looking up at the ceiling, trying to remember which way was up. Then he heard a click behind him and tilting his head further back he found that the door in the wall behind him had reappeared and was open a crack. Miro picked himself up from the floor and peered out of the room. Gone was the mesmerizing library he’d walked through earlier – the door now opened straight into the grand hallway, where Akaseeya stood waiting.

“So, what did you decide, Miro Kaldoun?” the older woman asked, her arms crossed, a faint smile on her face.

On the wall beside her hung a faded tapestry decorated with a design of several concentric crimson circles with a point at the centre. Miro was certain it had not been there earlier, but one quickly learned not to question anything inside the temple. Instead, he let his power flow to both his hands, a flame igniting them, and he let it sit there smoldering as he leveled his breath. And then, one after the other, he sent two fireballs flying into the dead centre of the tapestry, setting it aflame, and making it quickly disappear in a puff of dust and smoke.

There was no angry crackling message floating before his eyes – only a rush that coursed through him from his chest out to his fingertips, and when he pulled up his stat sheet, the last line displayed something entirely new. Not “Mother’s Blood”. Not even “Unavailable”. But a nice clean “None”.

He raised his right hand again, turning it before his eyes after he’d lit it aflame, seeing in it once more the key to a new freedom instead of an anchor. The flame shimmered in the tears rising in his eyes and before he could stop himself he took a few paces forward and threw himself into Akaseeya, who returned his embrace with a gentle pat on the back.

“Shhh,” she whispered into his ear until he pulled back abruptly and said, looking down at the floor, “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done that.”

Akaseeya shook her head with a laugh, “That’s alright, Miro, I don’t think I bite.” Miro felt some of the flush leave his face as he wiped away tears. “But it does look like you need to be much more careful from now on.”

He had never felt his mother’s protective bubble before, but now that it was gone he could see Akaseeya was right – there was a feeling of nakedness about him.

“I know, but I’ve got friends that can take care of me.”

“Yes, I think you do.”

“And one of them needs me right now.”

“That she does,” Akaseeya said, “Do you think you’re ready?”

He flexed the fingers of his left hand, opening and closing them, bringing heat to the fingertips but containing the flame that would previously shoot out of his hand uncontrollably.

“Yes, not ‘think’, but ‘know’.”

“Good, then I won’t be the one to keep you any longer. I think your very patient friend back on the shore may be starting to wonder if you’re still alive.”

“I wouldn’t blame him for assuming,” Miro said, and as he took steps towards the small square trapdoor in the wall on the other side of the hall, his thoughts turned for the first time to his trip back, and he wondered how he was expected to make it through the journey alive when the sheer force of his mother’s will could no longer keep him from drowning.

Pushing those doubts out of his mind, he looked past his immediate challenges, and instead wondered how he would even put this experience into words if he did make it. “I was wondering something though. What do I call someone like you?”

“Whatever do you mean?”

“You know, like, if I were to tell this story, I would say ‘I travelled far to seek help from a’ …”

“Akaseeya,” she finished helpfully and made him laugh.

“Yeah, I know, I mean everyone’s got a label: healer, doctor, mage, magus. What can we call you?”

Akaseeya breathed out heavily and looked out the window onto the Shattered Sea.

“Truth is, there’s doesn’t need to be a label for everything, Miro. Are you called a ‘breather’ for breathing? Or a ‘sleeper’ for sleeping? Those are just things you do. And I am just what I am and for that reason I don’t need to be anything other than ‘Akaseeya’. If you want to try to understand the world through the illusion of neatly categorized boxes, then you can turn to the mages for that.”

They were almost at the exit when Akaseeya stopped, turning to Miro, her expression suddenly serious, and small hard lines forming around her mouth. Her eyes in that moment were the colour of the overcast sky, and as agitated as the Shattered Sea. “I want you to promise that you will be careful around the mages when you make it to the Akademiya. They’ve been dabbling in magic in ways they should not have, as if the balance upset by the Great Soldering wasn’t enough for them, and I think it’s directly responsible for those streams of darkness now descending from the Deep Scar Mountains.”

Miro was so fixated on the sound of “when you make it to the Akademiya” that he almost forgot to ask any kind of follow up. “What are they doing?”

“I’m not sure,” Akaseeya said. “They’re clever enough to cloud it from my vision but would be fool enough to brag about it to you. I’d travel to Arkensk myself to find out more, but as I’ve said, I can’t leave.”

“Alright, I’ll be careful.”

“I know you like talking, Miro,” she said, though the expression on her face didn’t indicate that this was meant as a criticism, “But listening is far more likely to serve you well, and not listening to what you’re told, but rather, what you’re not told.”

“Thank you.” Miro nodded and pulled on a big brass ring to open the trap door in the wall. He found himself looking not into the raging surface of the Shattered Sea but into darkness broken by a bright moon, which he realized was supposed to be overhead, but at the moment sat directly in front of him. He glanced back at Akaseeya, who appeared to also be surprised, with her eyebrows slightly raised in puzzlement.

“It seems the temple has one last thing to show you before it lets you go.”

“Are you coming?” he asked, suddenly realizing how safe he had felt with Akaseeya and wanting to hold onto that feeling for just a while longer.

“No, go on. I think this one’s just for you.”

He looked at the door again. A gentle warm breeze was blowing in and it smelled of the ocean.

“Thank you, Akaseeya, for everything,” he said, and found his throat getting tight.

“Think nothing of it, Miro. Seek me out when you need me again.” At the sight of Akaseeya’s smile, Miro felt the hot burning wetness return to his eyes, and before it amounted to anything, he pulled himself through the door. As he went through the passage, gravity flipped on him once more, and he climbed out from a hole in the ground, which disappeared under the sand the moment he exited.