Chapter 6

We walked for days, through the iron forest. Eventually the metal began to bleed out of the arbor and turned to normal wood. We travelled over mountains, crossed over plains and even over a river. A river! Nobody in their right mind would do something like that but Jeck told me to stop being such a baby. I told him like hell I was going near one of those things. Everyone knew trying to swim in one of those things was a death sentence. He just looked at me confused.

“Swim?”

That was how I found myself, desperately digging my claws into his scalp, balancing precariously on top of his head trying to stay as far away from the death liquid as possible. Jeck simply walked across the surface of the water the same way he did the face of the cliff back at the quarry. I noticed, on the odd occasion that I glanced down, that he never sent any ripples through flowing river. It reminded me of our first spar, I couldn’t sense his vibrations through my tail either. It piqued my curiosity and I made a mental note to ask about that later. I also noticed that being this tall was super weird. How did anyone live like this? So off balanced.

Which brings us to now. We were coming to the bottom of another mountain and came to a couple of ‘Weeping willow’ trees that bent over a small glade, The leaves curved over our heads and gave us some much needed protection from the sun. Well, I needed protection. Jeck didn’t seem too bothered by it, never seemed bothered by anything really.

Jeck, I was beginning to learn, was a fairly simple guy. He liked fighting and food.

Jeck turned to me. “Alright. We’re gonna stop here for the day and get up early in the morning. That should get us there by noon. For now I need to teach you more about how fighting works on the Plains. Before I do, any questions?”

Any questions? I did have a few now that he brought it up.

“How come I can’t sense you? I can’t feel your vibrations on the ground when you walk.” It was kind of unnerving actually. I’d relied on my seismic sense to confirm where people were in relation to me so often that having someone stand there, but not being able to sense them felt unnatural, and I’ve been trying to ignore it the whole walk here.

“Ah, that’s a good question. It brings me neatly into my next topic, Aspects.”

Aspects? I’ve heard him mention that before in the mines and he nodded when I told him.

“Right, when I went blind. You learned about conceptual attacks, well Aspects are a sort of off-shoot of that. You can borrow Aspects of other concepts too, hence the name. These can be just about anything you can think of. Try and guess mine.”

I put a claw to my chin and thought about it. He couldn’t be sensed through the earth and made no vibrations. He didn’t make a sound whenever he was hopping around during our spars. No ripples when he walked on water…hmmm.

“Is your aspect ‘Muted’?”

“Nope, what makes you think that?”

I shrugged. “Well, your effect on your surroundings is a lot less than what I’d expect from someone your size and weight.”

Jeck looked horribly offended for some reason and looked at his gut. I couldn’t fathom why and continued on.

“You’re far quieter than you have any right to be and you almost blend in with the environment when I’m not looking directly at you.”

Jeck frowned. “I’ll ignore that jab at my weight.”

What jab?

“Any way, I like your reasoning, that kind of deduction from limited information becomes invaluable when we start fighting other people.”

“Why do you assume we’re going to be fighting people?”

Jeck sighed and looked vaguely annoyed.

“Let me tell you something important, just because people can think like you and I can, doesn’t mean that they’re smart. A lot of people are just as confrontational as that mammoth. Especially out here on the Plains.”

Why would they be so aggressive? They were supposed to smarter than animals. Fighting is just a waste of resources when you could just trade for what you need.

“Couldn’t they just stop and talk about the issue?”

Jeck shook his head and laughed bitterly.

“You’d think so. You’d really fucking think so. Anyway, getting back on topic. I actually have three Aspects. They are [Stealth], which is the one you were close to guessing. The other one is [Grab], which is more of a utility power. I’m keeping the third one a secret for now.”

Stealth? Yeah, I could see how that one fit with the clues I’d picked up on. Grab? I struggled to think of a use for grab. Why would he need grab as an Aspect? Couldn’t he just use his hands? Did it let him grab things from far away? Ugh, It’s nice having to really test my brain but all this thinking is going to give me a headache.

“What do they do? How did you get them? Can I get one?”

Jeck laughed at my enthusiasm. “Easy there bro, one at a time.”

Conjuring up another stump for us to sit on, (Note to self, figure out how to do that.) he crossed his arms.

“Last question first, Yes, you could probably get one.”

I opened my mouth to ask another question but he raised his voice.

“BUT, Aspects have some variance in how they’re acquired. So let me finish.”

I promptly shut my mouth at his admonishment. I could barely sit still. This was all so fascinating!

He continued. “Some Aspects are tied exclusively to a single species, and even then, it’s only to a single member of that species. My [Stealth] Aspect is tied to my species. I’m a Wraith by the way.” He added at my inquisitive glance.

Woah, so out of all his species he was chosen?

“What makes you so different than other Wraiths? Why did you get picked?”

He snorted. What was so funny?

“I was chosen because there are no other Wraiths. Not that they died or anything, I’m just something of an oddity.”

“Oh, wait- I thought you were Human?”

“That’s actually what makes me an oddity. I used to be a Human, then I got infused with the DNA of a species called the Ghosts.”

“So you’re like a half-breed.”

“Sort of but not really. I can tell that I’m different but I don’t know how. That’s partly why I’m looking for some sort of civilization, so I can figure out what exactly I am.”

He looked up at the setting sun. Making the hand-sign I had come to associate with his elemental control, he grew a bunch of sticks in between us and set them on fire with his fire breath. A look was thrown my way.

“Stop asking so many questions or we’ll never finish tonight. Some Aspects can be used by multiple different people simultaneously, usually the more specific ones. Like [Grab] for instance, I know that multiple other people have this Aspect too.”

Another look cut off my instinctive question. I’m sorry but if you don’t start explaining things I’m going to explode.

“I know this because [Grab] told me. To elaborate, another method of gaining an Aspect is to commune with the concept directly and ask. They’ll usually either say yes or no, or tell you to piss off if you interrupt their dinner- don’t ask, and if they don’t tell you to get lost then you can ask them a few questions. As for what [Grab] does, it lets me pick up things that I normally wouldn’t be able to, as long as I can physically lift it. Like this mountain for example.”

I stared at him but I couldn’t tell whether he was joking or not. The willows branches brushed together in the wind, the sky turning dark and the stars emerging had slipped my notice.

“The last method of obtaining an Aspect.” Jecks voice took on a noticeably harder edge. “Is to rip it from the previous wielders corpse.”

I didn’t know what to say. Neither did Jeck apparently as he leaned back and gazed up through the leafy canopy above them. Well, I actually did know what I wanted to say, I just wasn’t sure if I should say it. He wouldn’t kill me just for asking the obvious right? No way, he wouldn’t do that after spending so much time teaching me.

Swallowing thickly, I asked. “Have you? Killed anyone for their Aspect, I mean?”

Jeck slowly turned his purple eyes towards me. “I didn’t mean to.” He sounded upset and a little bit defensive. “I wasn’t in my right mind. I didn’t know where I was, or even who I was. I lashed out at everything around me and some innocent people happened to be in my way. I never wanted to hurt them.”

I rescind my earlier statement. Jeck is a lot more complex than I thought.

He shook his head. “Get some sleep. We’ve a long day ahead of us. Night.”

I rolled over and sprawled out on the floor, letting the warmth of the fire wash over my face. It helped ward off the chill of the night. As usual, Jeck stood up and silently walked off into the night. He’d be back by morning. I didn’t know exactly where he went but I suspected it had something to do with the fire. I had once woken up in the middle of the night and found him staring hatefully at it. A long drawn-out yawn pulled itself from my lips. No sense speculating on matters that didn’t concern me. I stretched my arms one last time and fell asleep.

I dreamed of a museum of memories and its quirky custodian.