Meek

Chapter 13: Pools & Paths

Eli entered the second chamber with a club in each hand and third tied to his braided sinew bandolier. Cutting the clister apart with the edges of broken rocks had taken forever, and the sinew he'd extracted was actually more flesh than sinew. Still, he'd rather drape himself in strips of lizardskin than face one of these things unarmed.

And raw lizard hadn't tasted too bad, either.

The second chamber didn't have a ledge The second chamber was barely a chamber.

Eli stepped over a low stone fence, clearly meant to confine the clisters to their own area, and found himself in a wide, smooth-walled tunnel. No places to hide. No stone pillars. Not much of anything, except for four pools of water, each about three yards in diameter, in nearly-regular intervals along the floor.

"Huh," he said.

He sent the spark plunging into the first one. He'd never tried that before, but the spark entered the water without a ripple and showed him murky depths. He scanned carefully with his eyes at the same time, in case the clister appeared above-ground. The double-vision didn't disorient him much anymore.

The spark couldn't pick out many details underwater, but he didn't sense anything dangerous. He moved to the next pool--and that time, spotted a shape in the water. A big shape. Clister-sized.

With a jolt of fear, he withdrew the spark, backpedaled and braced for the creature to erupt at him ...

Nothing happened.

The spark plunged inside again, and that time he made out the details. The decaying skin, the bones: a clister corpse, rotting in the water.

"My favorite kind of clister," he said, his voice dull in the tunnel.

He started for the third pool and with a gout of water, a clister burst from the depths. Bigger than the first one, and Eli didn't have anywhere to hide.

But he wasn't the same, either. He'd already beaten one of these things. He was armed now, and he knew how they fought.

Sure enough, this one went for his legs, to take him down and feast. So when that horrible vertical mouth spread wide, he thrust one of his clubs inside and slammed the beast's face with the other.

That didn't stop it from crashing into him. Three hundred pounds of lizard knocked him backward but he was ready for that, too.

He moved with the impact while the needle teeth chewed at the club. He struck again, barely missing the eye, and the clister's tail flicked out of nowhere, swiping toward his head.

Too fast for his eyes to track ... but the spark noticed.

The spark warned him and he spun and hunched and took the blow on the shoulder.

A bone snapped so he pulled his third club free with his left hand as he staggered, his eyes wet with the pain. His injured arm dangled while the clister shook its head, dislodging the club in its throat then driving Eli backward until the spark told him he needed to move.

He darted to the side and the clister lunged past him. Its front legs splashed into the pool. It thrashed in surprise, its rear claws scrambling for a grip in the stone floor.

Eli had expected it to plunge fully into the water. He'd planned to flee while it was splashing around. Heal up and start again. But instead, the clister remained half-in and half-out of the pool, struggling for purchase, making the perfect target.

Eli slammed it twice with all his anger and pain and fear. He heard a spinal crunch a moment before the creature finally slid into the pool.

Then he ran to the stone fence, his arm flopping uselessly at his side. He leaped over desperately--and the clister hadn't even followed. Huh. That was a surprise. A good one, though. His shoulder was as badly broken as when Fleck had crushed him.

Except this time, it only took half as long to heal.

"Troll blood getting stronger," he said, just to hear the sound of his voice.

He prowled back into the tunnel ... and found the clister slumped between the second and third pools. Alive but sluggish from that final blow to its back.

Darting forward fearfully to jab with his club didn't cause much of a reaction. So he braced himself and beat the thing to death without any further trouble.

Then he checked the fourth pool, just in case.

His spark didn't spot any dangers so he dangled his feet into the icy water. When nothing ate them, he lowered himself fully into the pool and scrubbed away the dirt and blood. He washed his hair and beard--which had grown halfway down his chest at some point in the last month or ... or however long it had been since the summons to the Keep.

Since he'd been a junior clerk and not ... whatever he'd become.

An accused traitor.

A torture victim.

A prisoner and outcast.

A half-troll. Well, he wasn't even halfway as strong or tough as a troll, but he healed half as well. He spoke their language and sensed the world more like them, with a heightened sense of smell and even a little dark-vision.

And he was also a half-mage. Well, not half. More like a hundredth of a mage, though he didn't know much about them--and he knew nothing about his own personal, impossible, spark. What he'd read, though, agreed with the Marquis's torturer: when mages 'flared' into their power, hundreds of sparks drifted around them. Sparks that faded unless a mage of the Palm guided the new mage onto their own path within a few days.

His spark remained, though. Maybe because of his troll-blood, his link to one spark healed. Thank the Dreamer. If it hadn't, that first clister would've carved him to ribbons. But he'd never heard of magic like this. Apparently he was lingering in the temporary first stage that mages passed through; he didn't walk a Path, he didn't even crawl. He merely gazed with infant eyes upon the Path.

Still it had been enough to save his life despite never setting foot on a proper path. And he'd never become a true mage, not this long after he'd Flared.

From what Eli had read, there were at least five paths.

The Path of the Arrow, in which a mage first learned to launch a projectile in a straight line, with as much speed and power as a crossbow bolt. A mage-propelled rock, coin, or marble could dent platemail and break bone. A step farther along that path, and the projectile could shatter a boulder. Farther still? Extremely adept mages of the Arrow propelled multiple projectiles at the same time, and heavier ones.

The Path of Shield granted protection. While first stepping onto this path, mages learned to create small, static shields of magic. Then larger ones, more akin to walls. Then the mage learned to make the shields stronger ... and mobile. Which changed everything.

Plus, mages who mastered two paths combined the powers of both. A mage of the Shield and Arrow gained the ability to apply mobility to projectiles, and to create them from magical shield-stuff. With enough training, a mage like that learned to fire missiles on convoluted paths through a battlefield, veering sideways, looping around, piercing multiple enemies before the strain became too much.

The rarer Path of the Rose allowed mages to create illusions. At first, merely visual images of a single object. But soon, Rose mages learned to project entire setting--and to include other senses. Sound, scent ... some even said thought.

Combining the Rose with the Arrow granted the illusions range; combining with the Shield granted them heft.

Mages who walked Path of the Palm embarked on a less-spectacular journey. They drew upon inner energy to perform feats requiring great stamina or attention. Staying awake for days or weeks, memorizing hundreds of scrolls ... or training in any number of skills. Though they were primary known--and valued--for healing, and for guiding newly-Flared mages onto a path.

Finally, the Path of Stillness was the rarest, and least useful, calling. As far as Eli knew, Stillness helped mages recover from the soul-draining effort using magic. Other than that, though, it offered no real utility. No use. No power or ability, just an inward stillness. A peaceful heart that ... didn't do anything.

Mages who learned two Paths--twofold mages--were uncommon, but not very uncommon. Threefold mages, however, were extremely rare. And fourfold mages were, as far as Eli knew, unheard of.

Of course, so were non-mages with a spark that refused to fade.

When Eli climbed in the pool, he shivered before the numbness spread across his goose-pimpled skin. He returned to the first chamber for another club, but ended up bringing a whole armload to the second chamber--the tunnel--just in case.

The barrier between the tunnel of pools and the third--and final--chamber wasn't a low fence. It was a half-wall that rose a few feet above Eli's head. Which didn't bode well for whatever was on the other side.

So while he used his eyes to find handholds as he climbed, he sent the spark scouting the other side.

He detected a circular space. There were no pools, and only a single pillar, as wide around as a pony cart. And the chamber was empty, except for the clister.

The huge clister, twice the size of the first two.

"What the halo?" he muttered.

The clister heard him and roared so loudly that dust fell from the ceiling.

"What're you, too damn big to hiss?"

He rested on top of the wall for a few minutes, thinking things through. Then he reached down on the clister's side--for an eyeblink, before teeth snapped shut an inch from his wrist.

Whoa. That thing could move.

After shuffling sideways on the top of the wall, he did the same thing again. The clister lunged even higher, so high that Eli felt its cool breath on his fingers.

He spent twenty minutes baiting the creature, which grew increasingly enraged. Then he braced himself. He lowered his left hand into the danger zone as bait--and when the clister attacked, he smashed the stone club in his right hand into its snout.

The clister topped backward and Eli vaulted beside it and struck two more times before it recovered. He knew how they moved now. More than that, he know how he moved.

Though he also knew that those three hits would've stunned either of the first two clisters, while this one simply fought back.

Eli dodged a claw, then barely blocked a bite with his club.

The clister ripped the club from his grip and lashed with its tail.

Time to run. Eli spun, avoiding the blow, and feinted. The lizard's teeth snapped shut a handspan from his right ear. He kicked at the clister, feeling the cool scales beneath his bare foot, then used the foothold to launch himself backward onto the stone wall.

He scrambled upward ... not quite fast enough.

The clister's tail broke his ankle, but only a little--he was back in the fight two hours later.

And ten minutes after that, with his eyes adjusting better and better to the dark.

And six hours later, after his mangled forearm healed. Yet this time, he wasn't the only one who healed. The big clister healed too. Not as fast as he did, but close.

Which meant he couldn't afford to take his time. He baited the creature again and again and again, wearing the clister down until it stopped snapping at him on the wall.

Instead, it scraped loudly across the chamber, making a show of retreating into its den ... then slunk behind the central pillar to ambush him.

Ha. Clever beast.

Except Eli could see around corners now. And he was tiring of jabbing-and-retreating at this thing.

So he dropped into the clister's chamber, watched the big lizard prepare to ambush him, then doubled around and struck first.

And that time, he stood his ground. That time, he screamed and dared the creature to fight, he vowed he'd never retreat. He traded blows with the wounded lizard until they were both slick with blood and gasping with agony--then he retreated.

So much for his vow.

He healed, he fought. He healed and fought. The battles ground together like granite into dust. His body recalled dimly-remembered combat forms and stances, then forgot them as the clister and the spark taught him new lessons.

As his club broke the clister's teeth and the clister's claw sliced his abdomen, his doubled-vision snapped together better than ever. Unified. Merged. His mind understood both perspectives as a whole. Seamlessly. And as he lay gasping on the wall, stuffing his intestines into his stomach, he almost laughed. His senses felt like stepping from a smoky, overheated room into the crisp cold nighttime air.

He didn't break a single bone the next two times he fought the clister--then he killed it.

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