Legacy of the M'Zee Chapter 31

*** AUTHOR'S NOTE ***

Sorry about the late post! I got distracted by making the paperback version of Monster Island, then went out to a brewery to write. I did finish chapter 34 though, and it's looking like chapter 35 or 36 will be the end of this book! 

How many of y'all would be interested in a signed copy of Monster Island? I haven't ordered any author copies yet, and would like to gauge interest. Thanks!

*** AUTHOR'S NOTE ***

I walked into a blank room with only one door. “Again, you have sacrificed your time and potential for rewards to assist your comrades,” Spirit said, appearing beside me. “Will you do it again?”

“I’m losing rewards?” I asked.

“Your time here is limited,” Spirit said. “Any moment not advancing is a waste. Will you continue to assist others, or walk forward in selfishness? You will be moved to assist another if you wait here for two minutes, as before. Good luck.” They vanished.

“Light, I’m losing rewards? Is it worth it?” I asked, not expecting an answer. Obviously, nothing was forthcoming from Spirit. Finally, I said, “I have more meridians and higher Affinities than everyone else. I can keep up if they get more rewards. They cannot keep up if I get more winnings than them. I will help my friends get stronger, because only together will we be enough to save the world.” With my declaration, I stood and gathered, pulling a tiny bit more Aether into my center.

That ended up futile, as between one blink and the next I went from mostly empty to entirely full of Aether, and then I was in a five meter by five meter chamber. The room had nothing in it but a door that was covered in Inscriptions. There were two Aether input channels into the Inscription, separated by three meters so I couldn’t reach both.

With a bang of displaced air, Vaya was suddenly right beside me. “Vaya!” I shouted, pulling her into a hug. I felt that she’d advanced to Complete Condensation too, her aura leaking through our touch.

“Mmhm,” she sighed, leaning into me. “This has been both great and terrible.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “At least you’ve grown from it.”

An hourglass appeared as I pulled back to look at her, sand dropping from the top to the bottom. A quick estimate told me we had an hour. “Uh, looks like we have a time limit.”

Vaya noticed the door just as quickly as I did, and deduced the challenge immediately. “You take the left. I will take the right.”

I nodded and hurried over to it. The Inscription had hundreds of runes forming a massive set of spirals, all winding in and out of each other towards the center. A circle was drawn in the middle of the door with a single rune in it, the rune for open. I put my hand to the input channel and sent a flood of Aether into it. The first spiral lit up, wrapping around the door to pass next to the line of Aether that Vaya was inputting. When they neared each other, her line was obliterated by my Aether.

“Whoa!” she exclaimed, then she laughed. “Of course you would just throw a bucket of Aether at the problem.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked.

“Well,” she said with a wry grin, “you are so used to having a massive Aether pool, that you always use as much Aether as you can. It makes your techniques that much harder to block or dodge, but it does make very fine Aether work harder for you.”

“Huh, I never noticed that,” I frowned. “Guess that’s another thing to work on. I could have solved that puzzle easier.” I facepalmed. “I did get better at fine Aether manipulation.” I told her about the puzzle that brought Sia into my challenge and how I had to learn to move multiple Aether Elements in unison.

“That sounds fun,” she said. “I got to learn a new technique for growing strong Aether herbs. The (Name) Technique will let me enhance an herb from level one to four over the course of a few weeks instead of months like the (Name) Technique I learned at Azyl. Also had a few different challenges that resulted in tempering me to Fire, Lightning, Metal, and Earth. In fact, I am probably tempered to a higher degree than you are with Lightning.” She grinned at me and generated a tiny Lightning bolt over her left hand.

“That’s awesome,” I said. “We’ll have to spar sometime after this is over and see what the difference is.”

She just shook her head, then zapped me with the bolt. It tingled, but I could feel the strength of her Lightning Affinity. “Your Affinity increased. You should be Excellent, if not Outstanding in it.”

“Just Excellent, I think,” she said. “I am not you.”

I heard a bit of jealousy in that last sentence. “Well, I’ll try my best to bring you to that level,” I said definitively.

She just grinned and rolled her eyes. “Let us try this again,” she gestured at the Inscribed door. “We don’t want to run out of time.”

“I’ll get you using contractions all the time soon enough,” I laughed, turning back to the wall. “Slowly this time, okay?”

“Of course,” she nodded.

I sent a stream of Aether, keeping it at about the point I would have been able to send at the Smoke Gathering level. It felt like a trickle, barely anything at this point in my gathering career, but it still made the first spiral light up. My Aether flowed next to Vaya’s, then started to get overwhelmed. I pushed more out, matching her flow.

The two streams of Aether moved along the spirals to the second layer, then diverged. Mine bled out, dissipating before the full spiral was completed. I tried to push more through, but Vaya didn’t react fast enough to the increase and her spiral was dried out.

Another surge of Aether came from Vaya, matching and exceeding mine own, and the extra I’d sent to fill up the second spiral was diverted into hers. We went back and forth for a few minutes, losing and gaining position in each area before Vaya reached out and grabbed my hand. “We need to communicate better,” she said. “It looks like we cannot just sent a steady amount of Aether, but have to pulse it at the same time as each other. Feel my Aether, like when we were gathering together at the history lesson.”

“That is an excellent idea,” I said, falling into my center and then casting my viewpoint into her hand. I found a point where I could focus on her Aether. “You guide, I’ll follow.”

She nodded, an action I both saw and felt through our connection. She sent a thin streamer of Aether into the Inscription, and I matched it exactly. Ten seconds later, she increased it threefold, then dropped it back to the original value after only a few seconds. I sensed and followed her, my Aether matching hers to my best ability. Each pulse sent the Aether farther into the Iscription, until the seventh spiral required us to split and match individual Elements. This was harder than the puzzle had been, as we had to manage all eight Elements at once.

We failed there for a few minutes, our timer running down past the halfway point. Vaya grew frustrated and sent just Wood Aether through the correct spiral, and discovered that doing so locked it open. She laughed aloud, and I turned to her and grinned. “Much easier this way,” I said.

She nodded, and I split off Lightning, locking open the spiral for it. We moved through the Elements, filling more of the Inscription with Aether, before we ran into another roadblock. The Aether streams crossed, then formed a pooling area that stopped all progress.

We tried a few different things, pulsing Aether to create off timed surges and lulls, but then the Aether wouldn’t even make it to the crossing. I tried to hold back my Aether and then have Vaya do so, create little openings, but they inevitably ran out of steam fairly soon after the crossing. Finally, I had an epiphany, “Send some of your Aether through me,” I told her. “An dI’ll send some through you. That should let our Aether’s communicate and merge without conflict. I hope, anyway.”

“Okay,” she grinned. I felt a jolt as a small tendril of Vaya’s Aether entered my meridians through the hand she was holding. I reciprocated, sending some to her as well, and gently guided the tendril of Aether into the stream I was sending out into the Inscription. When our Aether met again, they flowed smoothly through each other’s.

Vaya laughed out loud, squeezing my hand tight and sending more Aether both into the wall and my hand. Over the next few minutes, we got better at coordinating how much Aether we were sending into each other, as we found a dozen different intersections that requried more or less Aether from the other person, with the section being opened as soon as we got the right amount. The first intersection had developed a work around, where the Aether from each of us went around rather than through, and each further intersection mimicked that once we met the right criteria.

With only a few minutes left on the clock, we’d gotten to the point of anticipating each other, surges of Aether flowing through us to create the right conditions for advancing through the puzzle, until finally, the circle surrounding the open rune was flooded with Aether, and the door dissolved.

“We did it!” Vaya exclaimed, pulling me into a hug. I wrapped my arms around her waist and lifted her up, twirling her a few times. Her hands found the sides of my face, and she pulled me into a deep kiss.

“Ready to go on?” I asked, out of breath after our kiss.

“Only with you,” she said.

“Probably not,” I frowned, pulling her into another hug. “So far I’ve worked with Sia, Jamila, and Jon. Sia and I had to work together, him flying us to a destination while I used our joint Aether to fight off other Beasts. Jamila healed me, after the Tower broke almost all of my bones and meridians. Jon had to guard me while I was unable to do anything but channel Aether into a pillar of diamond.” I paused then shrugged. “I expect that I’ll have to work with Ming, Xiao, or Lea next, though it could be Aleks, Lilianna, Milenna, or Hanna.”

“Spirit!” She yelled, almost growling. “I want to support my friends and compatriots too.”

“You are not the first,” Spirit said, appearing in front of us. “Step through, and you will be able to do so, while receiving your reward for this challenge. Aiden, step through the doorway if you wish to continue on alone, knowing that you have given many others the option of assistance, or wait. If you wait, you will be sent to assist yet another of your colleagues, and will receive no reward for this challenge.”

“Not getting any rewards is annoying,” I said, “but I’d rather help my friends than get awards of my own.”

“Then go,” Spirit said, waving their hand.

I tried to stop the change, wanting to spend a bit more time with Vaya, but the room I was in vanished. I found myself in the dark, no light impacting my eyes so I could not see. Even my Aether Sight, so ubiquitous after my injury, failed me. I could see nothing, hear nothing, and even feel nothing. I was stuck in a void.

“Your challenge,” I heard Spirit say, though I could tell they weren’t speaking to me, “is to guide Aiden through the course inn front of him. He will be able to hear you when you speak to him, though he cannot hear our discussion now. Aiden is close to earning the Legacy of the M’Zee, bringing vast wealth and knowledge to your people, but he is your only competition for strongest of your generation.”

“He is close?” Aleks asked, sounding resigned rather than surprised.

“Yes. With the Legacy, he will advance faster than you could match. Your father rules Craesti because he is the strongest in your kingdom, so none of the others dare compete with him. If Aiden grows faster than you, will he compete for the throne? Will your nation survive if you are not the strongest? If you doubt, guide Aiden into a chasm, knowing that will disqualify him from the Legacy. You still have a good chance of earning it, though he is ahead of you.”

I felt the pause in my soul, and realized that I could understand either decision. “No,’ Aleks said. “Aiden seeks to save the world, and I trust him. He would not destabilize Craesti. He cares for me, and I trust him. I trust him.” She repeated the last line. “So, where do I have to guide him?”

“There,” Spirit said. “Reach the glowing circle, and he will be teleported to the next challenge”

“Okay,” Aleks said determinedly, “Aiden, can you hear me?”

“I can, Aleks,” I said.

“Good,” I could hear her smile through her voice. “You need to take six steps forward.”

I moved, stepping slowly and carefully. I still couldn't see or feel anything, but I trusted Aleks. “Uh, one more step,” I heard her say. “You took a bit shorter steps than I expected. Good, now turn left. A bit more, there. Five more steps forward.”

I tried to increase my stride, only to have her shout, “STOP!” before I could put my foot down again. I shifted my foot a bit closer to my body, my proprioception not blocked by whatever was blocking my sense of touch. “Good, there,” she said. I put my foot down, and brought my left to match my right. “Okay, turn right half a corner. No, too far. Good, there. Uh, three steps forward.”

I moved, step by step, then stopped. “Two more steps, then I need you to get down on your hands and knees,” she directed me.

I shook my head ruefully, trying not to roll my eyes. “Okay.” I dropped to all fours.

“Crawl forward three meters, then stand up.”

I did my best to estimate how far I scooted, but apparently didn’t make it the full three meters before I started to rise. My head whacked something, making me wince a bit, but I was too tough for a simple head bonk to really do much to me anymore. “Ooh, sorry,” Aleks said and I could hear the wince in her voice. “A bit farther, more, now. Turn right three eighths of a circle and take five steps.”

“Are you sure you wish for him to succeed?” Spirit asked suddenly. “Will you risk Craesti on one man’s goodwill. Someone who is not from your Kingdom, not really. His vision is on the world, not just one people group. What if he had to sacrifice Craesti to save the Topraki, the Ashkhas, and the Volk? What of the other parts of the world?”

“No, I believe that Darkness had a plan when he brought Aiden here, and I trust that Aiden will do the right thing by us,” Aleks said firmly, though her voice wavered a bit at the beginning.

“And if he must align with (Name), overthrowing your father, in order to do so, will he hesitate or seek the greater good?” Spirit asked.

“I am not listening to you anymore,” Aleks declared. “Aiden, turn right, then take four steps. Now, left, five steps.”

I could hear Spirit whisper something, but this time I didn’t get it projected to my ears clearly enough to make out. “Right three eights of a circle again,” Aleks said, though the strength of her tone was gone until the last word. “Now take four steps.”

I started to walk, following her directions, and then she shouted, “No, stop. Now turn one eighth to your left and take two steps.” I was in the middle of a step, but was able to bring my leading leg back. Five more sets of directions, and then the darkness surrounding me vanished.

I appeared next to her, and saw the tears covering her face. “Hey,” I pulled her into a hug. “It’s okay.”

“I almost made you fall,” she wailed into my chest.

“But you didn’t,” I said. “Spirit was trying to discourage you and test your faith in me. Thank you for justifying my faith in you.”

“You could hear them?” she asked, suddenly very tense.

“Yes, everything but the last thing he whispered to you,” I told her honestly. “And I wouldn’t have blamed you if you did let me fail. Being the heir to a kingdom will mean putting your people over your own desires.”

“I trust you,” she said, hugging me tighter.

“Congratulations on your success,” Spirit said, appearing beside us. “Step through the door for your rewards.”

“Go on,” I told her. “I’ll see you once this is over.”

Aleks nodded, then walked through the door, giving me one last look over her shoulder as she did so.

“Your time assisting others is over,” Spirit said. Another door appeared in the wall. “Walk through, and meet your next challenge.”

I nodded, then stepped into the blackness.