Children of Zero, Chapter 10

Chapter 10

“For Senkaku”

The weaves of reality blurred around me. Everything blanked out. Everything around me began to fade. I could tell: a message was coming. The transition between the real world and that of the ‘message’ had never got any less uncomfortable.

As the transition faded, I found myself walking down a hallway. I felt like taking a deep breath of relief. It was a benign start, compared to most I had had the misfortune of receiving.

The first thing I saw was a familiar walkway, long, dull and poorly lit. The stagnant smell of the Institute wafted into my nostrils. I could recognize the place with my eyes closed.

Apprehension gripped me. Did Sarion do to me what he said he was not going to? Was he actually sending me back? What was exactly going on?

And then I realized something about my body felt very, very wrong.

I was in control no longer. My arms moved, my legs strode, my eyes glanced to and fro, my body swayed back and forth to the rhythm of my steps… I couldn’t even hold my breath any more. All the muscles on my face were unresponsive. I would have scream, but my lungs and throat refused to cooperate. I was trapped in my own body.

Or was I?

‘My’ body was much, much larger than it normally was. I felt far heavier, far less slender and far more thick-muscled. Previously I had to stand on tiptoes to reach the top edge of the signs along the corridor with the tip of my middle finger. Now my eyes was just slightly lower than the same edge.

Then there was the matter of the disturbingly large… mass of something now taking up residence between my legs.

Thoughts failed me.

I let my new body carry me around while trying not to think too hard about… well, everything.

And then whatever remained of my crushed consciousness registered a change. The sound of an automatic door sliding open was punctuated by a sudden, air-conditioner-induced temperature drop.

I – or rather, the body – was standing inside the foyer of one of the Institute’s office blocks. Curiosity relieved my panic, but only enough to let me devour the scenery within. Any and every office block had been off-limits to us. I might have cared what lay behind their tinted glass automatic doors once upon a time. Now that interest was piqued again.

It looked exactly like I imagined. Generic Office Building #8295 in a manga set in the modern time. An unoccupied receptionist’s table squarely in the middle. One set of salons to the left. One water dispenser at the right wall. Everything was bleached in fluorescent white light. Spotless. Sterile. Unnerving.

I did not have to wait for long. The automatic door on the opposite side of the room slid open. In came two Institute scientists in stereotypical white labcoats flanked by four security personnel carrying assault rifles. Type-89 “Buddy” 5.56mm assault rifles, to be exact. I didn’t understand why I suddenly knew what they were called – I just did. In any case, I was in the company of several heavily armed soldiers. I felt a sudden urge to squat down and cover my face screaming bloody murder.

Of course, the controller of my body would have none of it. My body briskly walked forward, until I was within an arm’s reach from the scientists. And by extension, well within instant perforation radius if the security personnel decided I was a threat.

The body allowed me a glance at the two scientistx. I felt like shivering hard. One of the scientist was unmistakeably familiar. His receding grey hair and wrinkled forehead and hands betrayed his age. His lab coat ill suited him – everyone was used to seeing him in a business suit, standing on a dais and deliver whatever speech the day called for.

Professor Shiraishi Tetsuya. Director of the Institute for the last three years. The only member of the staff whose face everyone was guaranteed to know. Yet few would imagine the man looking like he did now. He was nervous: sweating and shaking, and his voice was trembling. The articulate speech-giver we knew was gone.

He extended his hand towards me.

“Dr. Kokonoe.” He hesitated. “Sir.”

My lips and tongue began to move in response. A deep, commanding voice echoed from the depth of my throat. Very masculine. Very monotonous.

“I came as soon as I was informed,” ‘I’ said. “Cut to the chase. What is the current situation?”

A shiver would run down my spine if I had one of my own. The voice was not particularly old: the man whose body I was sharing must not have been older than thirty. And yet he was speaking to the much older man like a junior. Either he was incredibly impudent, or incredibly powerful. Socially speaking.

“Like the report said – four girls have gone missing after Ms. Hasegawa, sir,” Professor Shiraishi said. “Including Dr. Aizawa’s daughter.” He stared at the ground, clasping his hands before rising again. “In any case, between last night’s security breach and this morning… we’ve caught at least five more trying to leave, and-”

“Indeed?” ‘I’ interrupted. “Have you dealt with them properly?”

“We tried our best, but,” he glanced at his colleague, then at the security guards, then back at me. “… not without casualties.”

“You could have handled this better,” ‘I’ said, my head swaying from side to side.

“We know, sir.” the Director lowered his voice. “Unfortunately, as I said… we don’t know what happened. It was too sudden… too fast… nobody saw it coming.”

“Then it is your responsibility to find out, wasn’t it, Professor?” ‘I’ said. “To say nothing about not letting security breaches happen in the first place.”

“With all due respect, sir, we are trying,” the Director said, trying his best to sound neither angry nor frightened. His bushy brows furrowed. “We’ve found no real traces or evidence save for the… cards.”

My hand reached for my chin.

“I’ve read the reports about the cards, but like you said, ‘with all due respect’,” ‘I’ said, “The theories you’ve got honestly don’t hold much water. Teleportation and possible occult metaphysics?” My voice turned into a menacing growl. “This country pays you a fortune to keep the place under complete control, and this is how you repay her?”

“But that is everything we’ve come up with!” the Director protested. “There is no other way to-”

“If I didn’t know you personally, Professor Shiraishi,” I said disdainfully. “I would have taken you for a foreign spy sabotaging Japanese national defense.”

“B-but sir! There’s an explanation out there somewhere, and I’ll get it!”

“No. No you cannot,” ‘I’ said.

I stepped backward, probably for emphasis, and cleared my voice.

“Professor Shiraishi,” ‘I’ said. “You are hereby dismissed for gross negligence and misuse of authority as Director of the Institute. You have six hours to gather your belongings and report to the Security Erasure office. Along with the rest of your family.”

I produced from my person an official-looking sheet of paper.

“Direct order from the Prime Minister,” ‘I’ raised my voice. “I’m sorry, Professor. You have to go.”

The old director lifted his hands towards the sheet, his gesture and expression looked as if it was a hundred-pound load he was carrying, not a piece of paper. His bloodshot eyes swept across the page, until he finally reached a particular line.

“You… you are to replace me?”

“That is the decision, yes,” ‘I’ said, the person behind it making a point to sound as remorseless as humanly possible.

Suddenly the old man’s expression changed. Long the old man gazed into my eyes. A pang of guilt welled in me: there he was, a man at the end of his journey, looking at me as though I was a child in the family. A child in the family who had made a decision so outrageous, so repugnant he could not fathom.

“Is that… that the choice you’ve made?”

Fear evaporated from the now-ex-Director’s face. In its place, sorrow and disgust. His face grimaced, his eyes twitched, his nostrils flared. He shook his head, making no effort to hide his disappointment.

“You misunderstand. It’s never been my choice.” ‘I’ shook my head. “Japan made the decision for me. For the greater good.”

Suddenly I felt a spike of emotion like nothing I had ever felt before. Doubt. Fear. Regret. Uncertainty. Hatred, too. I did not understand how they came to be. I just had a vague hunch – the other person was not at his most stable.

He was just masterful at hiding it. ‘My’ voice barely changed.

I placed a hand on the scientist’s shoulder.

“Nothing personal, sensei.” ‘I’ said. “I will remember you even when nobody else does.”

I took a deep breath.

“Now please hand over the key.” ‘I’ said. “You know the procedure from day one.”

I heard a rustle. Next thing I knew, a gold-lined keycard was lying face-down in my palm. Meanwhile, the professor was seized by the arms by two of the armed guards.

“Escort the ex-Director out and make sure he goes without incidents,” I said. “Try not to hurt him or his family. Or their belongings for that matter.”

There was something oddly serene as Professor Shiraishi straightened up his jacket and began walking towards the door. Not knowing what happened between the two men before, I had no way to guess what they were thinking. I did, however, feel ‘my’ hands sweating intensely.

“For Senkaku, Kokono…” Professor Shiraishi said, “Yoshi. Take care.”

“For Senkaku, sensei,” ‘I’ said, not even turning back to glimpse at the professor. “And yes. I will.”

No sooner had the door closed behind me than I turned towards one of the remaining security guards.

“Captain Hijikata,” ‘I’ said. “If by any stroke of luck the missing girls are still inside the facility, you’re authorized to use lethal force.”

“Sir,” said the guardsman with a salute.

As the guardsman turned around towards the doorway, a horrifying thought chimed through my head.

“If we can’t have them, neither can China or North Korea. Or the United States.”

And then everything blurred.

***

“You have seen enough.” He looked at me. “Haven’t you?”

I could swear I saw on Sarion’s lips a vaguely smug smile that – in any other circumstance – would make even the calmest person to want to punch his teeth out. But given all that I had seen, I was not so sure. Waking up from a message as such always unsteadied my senses.

“I…” I hesitated. “…have.”

“What about you?” He cast a glance at Yukari.

There was no answer but for the jerky grasp on my forearm, tugging and pulling.

I could hardly keep myself standing straight. My head hurt. My eyelids felt heavier than they had ever been – as if I had just gone for days without sleep. What little clarity of mind I had remaining only made me realize beyond a shadow of doubt what had happened to us.

Sarion had won. Resoundingly. Whatever he was planning – be it ‘good’ or ‘evil’ or anything in between – we were dancing to his tune.

“You know it from the start,” I said, too tired to sound angry. “You know we don’t have a choice.”

“Believe me, I… didn’t,” Sarion said. “But then I wised up. I learn something new everyday, as well as how to use them for the cause.”

“You aren’t here to gloat, are you?” I exclaimed. “Look – we’re… weak. Insignificant. Harmless. You won. We lost. We’d die miserably without you. Our bodies are yours. Whatever you want.” I exhaled as hard as I could. “How else do you expect us to degrade ourselves?”

“All I want is for you to listen to reason,” Sarion said. “Ask yourself this: What do you gain by opposing me?”

“Excuse me?” I stared at Sarion.

“What do you gain from opposing me?” Sarion said, stressing the word ‘gain’. “Materially, I’m the one who will provide you with whatever you need in this strange world. Ideologically, we have no quarrels. You have no greater calling other than that your friends and family be safe – and that lies within my interest.”

He briefly paused and examined my face.

“And morally… if you are so blinded by anger that you think the person trying to save innocent people from brutal death is worse than anything else in this world, especially the lot here who basically exist just for the thrills of battle and slaughter,” he shook his head, “I would need to have a talk with Ryotaro again; because he obviously had not been bringing you up right.”

That was actually a very, very good argument. I stared at the ground, trying to gather my wit for a counterattack.

“Aside from… I don’t know, you being the cause for us being in this mess in the first place?”

“The Institute was just going to plunge you into another kind of mess altogether if I did not intervene,” Sarion said. “You’ve seen it for yourself. They aren’t saints. They have anything but your best interest at heart.”

“Neither have you,” I said. “Why should I trust you any more than them?”

“Because you are not strong enough to survive on your own,” he said. “Why should an orphan ‘trust’ the priest at his orphanage? Why should the people ‘trust’ their lords and kings? Why should you ‘trust’ your father at all, aside from the belief in familial love and the fact that you are left to the mercy of the cruel world without him as you stand?”

“How do I know you aren’t tricking us?”

“Because I would have nothing to gain,” Sarion said. “We are in two entirely different leagues. Simply put, you pose so little harm to me there is no reason I need to do you harm at all.”

“But we are not supposed to be fighting!” I shouted. “You want us to help you!”

“My point exactly,” he said. “Your best option has always been working with me.”

Much as I hated admitting, his argument made sense. I weighted my choices and options again and again, my gaze alternating between Sarion, Yayoi and Yukari. From the look on his face, Sarion did not seem to mind. He was smiling in an oddly comforting way – as if reassuring me I had all the time in the world. His cordiality only hammered in how helpless we were.

I took another deep breath. I had to do something about this. Anything.

“Very well,” I said. “I’ll do what you want… but on three conditions.”

Sarion looked at me, his eyebrows slightly perked.

“You aren’t in a real position to negotiate,” Sarion said. “But for goodwill’s sake, I’ll hear it out. What do you want?”

“First, I want my father to be safe,” I said. “It’s… within your capability, right? You can save him, can’t you?”

“I can, but I don’t need to,” Sarion said. “The man whose mind you just viewed is now in charge of the facility, and he knows your father is the only person alive knowing the intricacies of the project. Ryotaro is simply too valuable to get rid of, with or without my intervention.”

“And you are sure about this because…?”

“Because I have spent more years working with these people than you have alive,” Sarion said. “I can read them like a book – and that is before the perks of being a deity come into play.” He nodded at me. “Suffice to say, Ryotaro is an old friend and I want to keep him safe as much as you do. Trust me on that.”

He waved his hand. “Your second wish?”

I bit my lips.

“I want you to let go of Yayoi-nee,” I said. “She is nobody’s puppet… she doesn’t deserve this!”

Hardly had I finished my sentence when I felt a strong hand clasping on my shoulder.

“But I am nobody’s puppet.”

With a start, I wheeled myself around. Yayoi was gazing at me. Our eyes met: she looked livelier than I had ever seen.

“You don’t believe me, do you?” she said. “This is the real me.”

“Really? Really?” I exclaimed. “Are you trying to tell me the ‘real’ Yayoi is willing to string her family around for whatever… reason? That the ‘real’ Yayoi has no qualms about slaughtering people? That the ‘real’ Yayoi is filled with so much… so much hate?”

I stared at her, and she stared back. It was just like those staring contests I forced her into when I was a little girl that I had never won.

This time around, I won. She shook her head, blinked and turned away.

“I see,” Yayoi said. “Whatever I say means nothing to you, does it? It’s unfortunate.”

“No… no it doesn’t.” I shook my head violently. “It doesn’t! What happened to your old self? What happened?”

“I have no further comment,” Yayoi said. “Believe me or not, that’s the truth, right there, in front of you.”

I turned around and glared at Sarion. Words failed me.

“To put it more eloquently,” he said, his face hardly changed, “For the last twenty years she has lead a double life. Her real emotions, real thoughts and real person had to be hidden – otherwise she would be discarded or worse. You know the necessity of that more than anyone, I thought?”

I rolled my eyes at first, but then the implication began to sink in. My eyes turned to the floor.

“Now the shackles are off, and she’s being exactly who she is meant to be,” Sarion went on. “And you are complaining about her being different from the one you know… as if it weren’t her desire to be back to what she is? That the poor girl needs to be back to her old guise that she herself hates?” He shook his head. “Surely I can’t be the only one having a problem with that.”

A huff escaped my throat. “And I am to believe you because?”

“Because only madmen disregard obvious evidences,” he said. “And you, so far as I’m concerned, aren’t mad.”

I felt like someone had crushed my throat so I couldn’t breathe. I was shaking. I was trying to look for someone… something for me to focus my hate on. I even stared at Sarion’s face, trying to take my focus off how much I wanted to snap his neck like a twig.

I couldn’t. I simply couldn’t.

He… no, they had a point. I was not so blinded by rage I didn’t see that.

“But… but she can change, right?” I cried. “I… I can change her back to who she used to be!”

“That’s a fool’s errand,” Yayoi said, her voice entirely monotonous. “But you can try, if it makes you feel better about yourself.”

I had hardly recovered when Sarion’s ghastly form hovered towards me and… extended his hand towards me?

“But I will give you my word of honor as a deity, endowed with worshippers devoted and numerous,” he said, gazing solemnly at me, “that I shall not try to influence her by any supernatural means at my disposal.”

“You mean… from this point onward,” I said, shaking my head. The defiant part of me just had to have the last laugh.

“But of course.” Sarion laughed. “In fact, I’ll do one better: I shall not do the same on any of you either. After all, I want those who follow me to do so because they believe what I believe, not because of cheap mind tricks. Deceptions, illusions and love potions are for crooks, knaves and charlatans, not lords and kings.” He paused, as if letting the implication sink in. “Do we have a deal?”

I did not reach out for his hand as he expected. I simply nodded.

“Yes,” I said, keeping my head down. “I agree.”

“Splendid,” he said, withdrawing his hand again, looking not at all offended. “Now, how about that last condition?”

I slowly lift my face towards Sarion. My hands clenched into a fist.

“Kaori,” I said. “Where is she?”

Sarion’s face soured. “Excuse me?”

“Hasegawa Kaori,” I repeated. “You know where she is, don’t you?”

My question was met initially with silence. Horror gripped my heart.

“Why aren’t you saying anything?” I cried. “Don’t you tell me you’ve forgotten her!”

“No I haven’t forgotten. Yes I know where she is,” Sarion finally said. “But…”

His voice trailed off. He was hesitating. A deity, hesitating. Something had gone dreadfully wrong.

“But?”

My quivering voice finally drew an answer.

“To be completely honest… she is outside of my jurisdiction now,” Sarion said.

“Outside?” I exclaimed. “You’re a god, for the sake of… yourself! How can anything fall outside of your ‘jurisdiction’?”

“You don’t understand,” Sarion said. “I am hardly omnipotent. Close, but not quite. There are places – even in this world – that I cannot reach.”

My mind naturally jumped to the most obvious conclusion.

“No… are you telling me she’s…”

“Dead? No, not quite,” Sarion said. “The flame of her life burns still – and probably won’t extinguish in a long time if she plays her cards right. If.”

I narrowed my eyes.

“If?”

“She’s in the company of elves now,” Sarion said. “Over the Elasailas I have little power. For most beings in this world, being with elves is either the best or worst possible circumstance. I know not which is true for her.”

It was not the first time I’d heard of those ‘elves’ from him, and most certainly not the last.

“If they’re as dangerous as you say, sir,” I exclaimed, “we have to save her!”

Even in my agitation part of me was telling me what I said might have been a tad silly. Apparently it was so objectionable, I felt a strong tug on my arm well before I closed my mouth.

“Um… excuse me, nee-chan?”

I should have guessed Yukari would object me doing anything for Kaori, period. I just couldn’t do anything different.

“She’s one of us,” I said. “You may hate her, but… she was with us. In our room. We slept together, ate together, survived together… even if it was only a week. She’s family.” My eyes went tingly. “We have to stick together… right? Right?”

“But… we don’t even know where she is!” Yukari cried. “Is it even worth the effort?”

“Yukari!” I yelled.

At once she let go of my arm. She grabbed my shoulder and forcefully turned me around to face her.

“I know what you’re thinking, nee-chan,” she said. “You’re probably thinking I want her to… disappear, don’t you? That I like this, don’t you?”

As a matter of fact, that was what I thought until I looked into her eyes: teary and wide open, her long lashes trembling with every word she spoke, as did her ponytail.

“I wish I did, but I don’t,” she said. “I don’t! I’ve known her longer than any of you…”

Her hands weighed heavily on my shoulders as the words sink in.

“I don’t want her to be happy… I don’t want her to be happier than I am… I don’t want her to be happy at all… but…” She grabbed my shoulder again, her tearful eyes piercing mine. “I… I don’t want her to die!”

What better could I could I do then if not hold her tight?

“H-had circumstances been different… I… we… we could have been… friends… right?”

I patted Yukari on the back and opened my mouth for the only thing I thought would help.

“I’m sure you would have been,” I said. “I’m sure.”

It was only when Sarion made an emphatic cough that I realized we were not in our room, but in a middle of a discussion with a god. I let go of Yukari and turned around. Sarion was still waiting on us, a scowl imprinted on his face.

“Anyway,” he said, his voice just barely raising, “Her prospects are not that bleak. She’s been around elves for a day now. If they wanted her dead, she would have been a lifeless carcass rotting on the forest floor with a dozen arrows in her by now. That she is obviously alive implies she’s gained some semblance of acceptance by whomever she is with.”

“You don’t say… sir.”

I stared at Sarion. The assessment would have made sense to a calm, rational person, except I was the opposite of calm right now. As expected, he brushed my annoyance aside.

“Besides… your friend is right. She’s too far away now.” he said, “You can’t possibly catch her, not even with the finest mounts in the Emperor’s stable. And even if you could, she would be impossible to track down.”

“Can’t you do anything about her?” I exclaimed. “Like… anything?”

“A lesser deity is not omnipotent. I’m no exception,” Sarion said, “But if it’s my word you want, then I can promise to devote what resource I can spare to keep her alive, no more and no less. After all…” He paused. “-the sooner you understand you cannot save everyone, the better.”

My face sagged. “I see.”

I wished I could say something more meaningful, or at least more emotive. Expressive. I did not know anything halfway more helpful to say that did not involve me shouting, screaming or digging myself deeper.

“Anyway,” Sarion said, “that’s the last of your conditions, I hope?”

I did not know if I should feel defeated or not at this point. There was nothing else – nothing else that made sense – that I could have asked. Pushing a god too far was stupid, and reneging on what I’d said in a place where I knew nothing in the first place was irrational.

“Yes.”

My angry self was on the brink of lashing out randomly: one day and a trip across worlds later, we’d gained absolutely nothing and lost basically everything. My rational self tugged at the former’s rein. If anything, it said, at least I am relatively safe now. And free, too, which would be good had I had any idea how to use said freedom to begin with.

It’s a start. A bad start, but a start none the less.

***

Rant of the Day: Is writing competitive?

A while ago, back when I was an uni student with too much time on hand (in hindsight, I never actually had that much to go around – between forum roleplaying, gaming, writing and generally hanging around online doing nothing of particular note, I didn’t actually have any real ‘free’ time in the original meaning of the word) I once – very briefly – followed a writer-to-be by the name Swankivy. The whole episode was tied into my borderline unhealthy obsession with sporkings of Twilight, Eragon and the Maradonia Saga, so when it died down and my fickle interest turned somewhere else, I no longer frequented her site.

But I loved everything I saw/heard: from the works being presented to the personality of the writer/artist behind them. Even today I hold her in immense respect. Suffice to say, the day I am confident I’m a third as good as her in my trade I can quit my day job and try to earn my living as a full-time writer. Fat chance of that happening, of course. I don’t even have a background in English and/or creative writing…

In any case, earlier today I ran into something she mentioned in the now-dying Anti-Shurtugal community (Such is the fate of most anti-site: it lasts only so long as the work it rails against unless it changes somehow). She said, and I quote:

“What’s interesting about authors is that unlike most arts, writing involves creating products that are complementary, not competitive, with the products of other authors . . . so we’re more like allies than rivals. If you like her book, you might like my book too, and we can share our audience. If you buy his book, that doesn’t mean you therefore have your book needs filled and will not be able to buy my book. It’s a weird situation.”

Except… it isn’t true. Or at least, not as true as she thinks.

A few words of disclaimer (Including the Big S herself if she finds my terrible, amateur site by way of referral): My goal in discussing this topic is entirely to state my opinion, since it is something I feel very strongly about. Everyone is free to disagree – in fact, if you disagree and tell me why, you will have made my day.

With that taken care of, let’s get started.

Like in any typical Coward essay, I’ll begin by defining “competition”. “Compete”, as defined by Wiktionary, means “to seek or strive for the same thing, position, or reward for which another is striving”. In other words, any time many people are trying simultaneously for something that only a few of them can get, that’s competition. For something to become a competition, two things are essential: First, there are more people trying to get the prize than there are those who can actually get it. Second, the game is zero-sum or close to: which is to say, if one person wins, others have to lose. It’s basic English, but the definition is essential.

What is the “prize” that writers are looking for? If I asked random people what’s so awesome about having something published, answers would vary: the fame, the money, the fact that you’ve left a legacy of worth, or even freaking Hollywood. The true prize of writing, however, is twofold: the joy of creating something, and the euphoria seeing that something being cherished by people other than your close friends and family. To some, the first is more important than the second; to others it’s the other way around.

To me, at least, they are linked: My joy of creating is severely diminished if there’s nobody around to read what I have written (and I do get this a lot), and at the same time being credited for things I have not had joy in creating disgusts me. I am not sure how many kindred spirits I have in the writing community in this regard.

The problem here is, out of those two joys, only one is directly in my control: creating. Being read and enjoyed is entirely out of my grasp.

The distance from my laptop to the eyes of the people I want to read my work is long enough. To say nothing about traditional publishing (because I don’t have that talent) or self-publishing (because my facial skin ain’t that thick, and I also don’t have that much money to spare), even getting a single chapter of mine to someone who isn’t my beta reader is a long, arduous and exhausting process.

Why, you ask?

Because people don’t have infinite time and resources to devote to reading.

It may not appear so at first sight, but the world has a finite number of people at any given time. The number of people interested in a certain topic (and, by extension, sufficiently educated) is even more finite and fewer. The number of people with that interest and the money to spend, even more so. With the interest, the money, the time and the inclination to spend said resources on your work… suffice to say I’ve found one outside my family.

One.

And I’ve been writing for fourteen years.

I have no greater goal than elevate this number to about a dozen. Knowing how much I suck, this is extremely unlikely.

If Fanfiction.net and Fictionpress is any indication, I am certainly not the only one. The number of people who are theoretically available to read the works of this sorry collective of dredges at the bottom of the pool is pitifully finite.

That’s why if someone reads, say, Shinji and Warhammer 40K in three days (and I am sure if you take it slow it might take up to five to ten times as much time), that’s three days they’re not spending reading Thousand Shinji or a few dozen other REALLY GOOD Evangelion fanfics, much less a complete newbie’s one-chapter-to-be-continued fanfic.If someone reads Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality in a week, that’s one week the other few hundred thousand fanfics are missing out an audience.

And that’s just fanfic: when we come down to published works with a real entry cost, the competition becomes even more pronounced. Now the $10 that goes into a certain book has to compete with the prospective reader’s lunch, rent, central heating, mortgage, insurance, stationery… and a million other little things. Persuading someone to give up the juicy Big Mac, the extra Kilowatt-hour of electricity, that really nice pen and notebook… and a million other little thing in favor of your book is no mean feat. Especially when a thousand others are doing practically the same thing.

Share an audience? As I mentioned, you’re basically competing for the reader’s time. True, if someone likes a person’s work that is very similar to you – even your friend – she might like yours too… or she might decide she’s seen enough of that sort of fiction and skip straight to the next genre. Both possibilities are there, and that’s not even counting the “they’re too busy, so you’ll have to wait” excuse, which is happening very, very often.

True, if someone buys another guy’s book, their book need isn’t yet satisfied… some of the time. In other times, it might be all the resources they can devote to reading in any given month – even year, if that person isn’t a reader. When they finally muster their resources again, it’s not very likely to be your turn when there are like a few thousand people looking forward to the same thing. Again, both possibilities are there.

That’s not even taking into consideration the fact that a person’s taste is subjective, and a million things can happen independently of your writing that makes someone hate your book before they’d even turn a page. That’s half the reason why my main characters being Japanese is a huge risk I’m undertaking. That’s half the reason I censor myself once every so often on controversial topics. That’s half the reason why I call myself the Coward.

Now, here’s the most infuriating thing: Even the harshest of competition feels good if you are competing on completely fair term, hence the best people win. Writing is anything but fair – not because there’s some lack of transparency (although Eragon’s existence alone proves that lack of transparency is not nonexistent) but because of those little things called subjectivity and fortune. It might be the same Coward sitting here before you, with barely four readers a day, but if, say, tomorrow a big name author completely coincidentally catches wind of my blog and gives it a thumb-up before their legions of fans, I can expect upward of a few thousand extra views per day from that point on if I can keep churning out material. If that coincidence does not happen, The Coward will remain The Coward whose musing fails to entertain even his own family.

I can go on for days.

This is, perhaps, the reason why writers are expected to be patient. Patience to learn about the world before they even start writing. Patience to carve out a piece of work from literally nothing but their mind, their experience and a writing implement of choice. Most importantly, patience to not falter in the face of competition.

But competition is there. It’s a fact. Other writers know it. Publishers know it. The audience know it. Even I know it. It’s something I have to live with as part and parcel of my (nonexistent) career.

Once again, this essay is not aimed to attack anyone – much less Swankivy of all people. As I mentioned, anyone who do not agree, feel free to let me know. I always welcome discussion…

… that is, if my site actually has readers. I still don’t know about that.

Rant of the Day: In Which the Coward Complains About the Lack Of Good Female Characters

Let’s be honest: The title is a tad misleading.

I will begin this by repeating an Aesop of sort I have been told by many elders since I was a kid: “A cat taught a tiger everything there was to know about hunting. It did not, however, taught the tiger to climb. Eventually, when the tiger turned on the cat, it could not do any harm – for the cat still had something up her sleeve that the tiger had not.” In other words, in a competitive environment – and any writer aspiring or no can tell you how competitive THAT market actually is – it is unwise to reveal your trump card before you’re ready to cash it in. I find that line of thinking rather agreeable.

However, today I am making an exception because I’m too angry not to.

It is two thousand and fifteen Anno Domini. Two. Thousand. And. Freaking. Fifteen. And there are still very many readers, even educated ones – in the developed world no less – convinced that the female character have little purpose but for titilation. That it’s impossible to write female characters that are notable without making them masculine i.e. Men With Tits.

Part of my reason for writing what I write is to debunk that. Funny that I should take this upon myself, you can say, for I am a guy. And to a stereotypical guy, you can say, more scantily clad girls on magazine covers is better, just as more male power fantasy is better.

That may be so to many guys, yes, but not THIS guy. This guy is an unashamed Key Visual Arts fan, which was and still is responsible to some of the finest, most complex, most driven, most maternal AND most hug-worthy female characters in known fiction. This guy is also a sucker for anything psychologically deep and philosophically meaningful. And this guy was born in a family where, quite frankly, the womenfolks are quid pro quo better than the men. (And instead of working to change that, this guy is writing all these lengthy articles up here on the interwebz. The irony is as thick as crude oil.)

This was the question I asked myself when I first started writing: How many female character concepts – as a man – can I think of that (i) women in general can identify with, (ii) makes sense, (iii) is complex, and (iv) is distinct from one another? Better still, is it possible for me to turn unattractive character stereotypes – like an overweight, agnes-ridden girl – into one of these without falling into (too much) melodrama?

<Cyborg Raiden Voice> Actually, why don’t I give you a demonstration?

We’ve got a female character, and for the sake of the audience let’s assume she’s teenage. Let’s say her name’s Anne. Let’s say she’s grossly overweight. Let’s say there is literally nothing about her look that is attractive. Let’s say everyone hates her. Let’s say the setting is a typical urban fantasy romance, and as is expected in a typical story of the genre, she exists solely to act as the female character’s foil – to let the audience see how much the lead female is superior. Let’s say this is a book you WANT to write and intend to make a small fortune out of because Twilight.

Here’s your task: You are to turn this “model” into at least THREE characters concepts, each distinct from the other, each having their own way to appeal to a male reader on levels other than look – because she’s very disadvantaged there. For fairness’ sake, let’s take what some people grumble as “Men with tits”, because anyone can take any character and make them clean-cut an Imperial Star Destroyer (With Darth Whatever sitting in the bridge) and call it a day.

You have twenty minutes, and let’s say I’m making like Raiden and am holding a hi-frequency Muramasa to your throat. What will you do?

Now, now, don’t panic, don’t panic. Let’s tackle this step by step.

The first thing I want you to do for the sake of the exercise is forget stereotypes exist. Positive AND negative. Forget the eat-happy, junk-food-happy girl with no self control whatsover. Forget also the bullied-and-bulimic girl with family issues to whom eating is the only way out. Forget even the nerdy, bespectacled girl who only got fat because she’s busy reading Awesome Stuff (TM). The only thing to think about is logic. Causes and effects. How A leads to B leads to C, and how D and E and F influence them in the background. That, and the research you do and the rules of the world we’ve got. Nothing else matters.

Next, I want you to ask yourself if being fat is the only defining feature Anne has. Since you’re sitting here and I’m like eighteen minutes away from slitting your throat and ripping your spine off, you’d better say no. Which is good – but what would you say? What does she even have that someone else does not already have?

Here you’ll probably find multiple threads to grasp. Family, for example. Or Motivation/Dreams. Or Quirks. Or Ability (because the above restriction’s still in place, no clean-cutting-an-Imperial-Star-Destroyer badassery). For the sake of the demonstration, let’s say I split Anne into four personas:

– Anne A., whose defining characteristic comes from her interaction with her family. Let’s say she loves her parents, her little brother Bill and her big sister Charlotte and will punt a titan if it would threaten them.

– Anne B, whose defining characteristic comes from her dreams and motivation thereof. Let’s say vampires exist in this world you create, and she really, really wants to grab a piece of undead (or not-undead) intestines if and when the occasion arises.

– Anne C, whose defining characteristic comes from her ability. Let’s pick a fairly mundane one: say her share of ability is to act really well.

Congratulations, now you’ve got three… cardboard cutouts that are barely more interesting than the fat girl stereotypes themselves? So, not so fast bucko – we still have a LOT of work to do!

Now you’ll have to figure out how these Defining Characteristics (TM) interact with Anne’s (i) being fat and (ii) being a girl. Remember again: No stereotyping, just logic. Ask yourself a series of whats, whys and hows appropriate to the chara- uh, cardboard cutouts you’ve got.

– Anne A. Questions asked: What does the rest of her family think about her – and her being fat? Why does she love her family as much as she does – especially if your answer to question 1 is negative? How does she show her love to her family if there’s no titan to punt – does she put their interest above hers, for instance, or does she always know what to say and what to do to make her loved ones happy, or what? Does her being fat or being a girl have a negative or positive impact on her way of thinking regarding her family? Do they cherish her? Protect her? Treat her with the respect life outside does not? Or conversely?

– Anne B. Questions asked: What the hell does a vampire’s innards has to do with anything? How did she come into this knowledge? How devoted to this task is she – does she spend every waking hour thinking of ways to fleece her werewolf-loving friend who is the main character for all the vampire bits she’s worth, or is it just a passing thought she entertains far more than all her other thoughts? Is her demotion to this morbid undertaking related to her being fat and being a girl in any way, shape or form? As a coping mechanism? As a way to prove her superiority? Or just because she’s bored?

– Anne C. Questions asked: Is she in any sort of clubs, societies or other gatherings for like-minded people? Or is there any more mundane application of her flair, like making up excuses, concocting wildly improbable hypotheses on just about anything, or just pure and simple lying to people with a straight face? Is her being rather unappealing to look at being any kind of hindrance to what she is doing? If not, why not? Conversely, does drama pummel her with any stereotypes of what girls are supposed to be and how she’s anything but the stereotypical ideal girl? If yes, how does she cope with it?

Depending on how you answer these questions – and maybe ask some more – you’ve got a fledgling character template. But no, no, no, the work’s not done! Keep your refurbishing cardboard cutout with you for a bit, the ride’s yet to end!

Next, consider how Anne’s going to interact with other people in the setting, taking into consideration everything you’ve established through the last segments. This is the part where things start to spiral out of control because of combinatorial explosion, but here are some guidelines:

– For Anne A, how does her family play into her interaction with people at school – hardly any, or is she able to basically shrug off every single non-violent bully attempt because of her faith that there’s always someone at her back and deals with everything else with Bill and Charlotte to back her up, or anywhere in between? If there’s a clear vampire-werewolf or vampire-hunter or even vampire-reskinned-Jedi conflict, does her family play a part in it and how much is she dragged along with them? Is there any other conflict of interest between her love for the family and her friendship with the main character?

– For Anne B, how many people know of her effort? If not many, does she make a conscious attempt to keep her Vampire Procurement Operation (VPO) a secret? If many, how do they react to her – as a scary freak, or as a lovable freak, or maybe even not a freak at all depending on the setting? If the vampires are the Good Guys (TM), how do they treat her literally wanting a piece of them? If they’re the Bad Guys (TM), how high does she star on their hit list? And does she give them the time of day? If not, does she have a good reason NOT to?

– For Anne C, how do people treat this apparently really well-spoken and articulate girl  who’s also (i) fat and (ii) apparently knows how to act and lie? Positively or not, how does she react to their attitude to her? Does she believe she deserves something more than she already has and does whatever she needs to in order to get it? Does she use her flair for good or ill, and does that end well and badly for other people? How does she use it in conjunction with the primary conflict in the setting (For instance, taking the stereotypical vampire urban romance fantasy, she’s prime informant/agent material for whichever side you think fit.)

Why, the cardboard cutout’s now got some life in it! Who knows, it might be alive soon! But nope, work’s not done yet!

The next step is the longest and most involving part and may actually last throughout the life cycle of your hypothetical urban romance fantasy. Put your character on a test run. As you formulate the story with this character in mind, iron out the details and fill in the blanks for the parts of her backstory that the previous steps have not covered. But for the sake of the twenty-minutes-or-your-throat-will-be-cut exercise, let’s cover one thing – just one thing:

Can you retell the urban romance fantasy with Anne as the viewpoint character rather than the lucky Bella Swan clone?

Go ahead, try it. See how difficult (or not) it is. Make your adjustment accordingly. As soon as you can say a conclusive “Yes” – which is to say you’ve got enough of her in mind you can totally see yourself making your Anne into a protagonist with appropriate screentime devoted to her – I’m lifting the HF Muramasa off your neck.

And there you have it. Your very own Fat Girl (TM) who is actually something other than a stereotype and – depending on how much effort you put into the process – quite likeable! For even greater complexity, merge the three Annes together as they’re always meant to be.

And we have people who say that they can’t think of female characters who aren’t Smurfettes for titilation.

*Deep breath*

All you’ve ever got to do, aspiring writer, is to THINK about it.

(Do excuse my incoherence if any. The Coward works badly under stress and/or duress – which is exactly what’s happening in real life.)

Children of Zero, Chapter 09

Chapter 9

Cruel God-Emperor Thesis

Yayoi’s voice was unmistakable. Yet as I turned around, what I saw was the opposite of what I expected. It was another Yayoi – another side of her at least – of whose existence I was never informed of.

There she stood, wearing the bloodied vest lined with metal scales like the grunts the girl had just slaughtered. A short bow was slung over her shoulder and a quiver of arrows strapped behind her back. The Institute uniform cloth shoes had been discarded in favor of a pair of furry hide boots, blood-stained and a little too large for her. She took measured steps towards us, holding a large parcel in her left hand.

“Yayoi-neechan?” I looked at her from top to toe apprehensively. “Is that… you?”

I’d known her long enough to see through her new makeover. Underneath the scaled vestment on her body and the iron cap on her head, little of her had changed. Her expression was ambiguous: neither frowning or smiling, showing neither clear joy nor displeasure. One thing I was certain: the uncertainty and meekness I saw of her every time we met in her secret place before was gone. She walked right pass us, as though we weren’t there, carrying herself with a kind of confidence I thought she never had.

“Tachibana,” she said, looking at the new girl. “Is it done?”

“Done.”

The new girl cast aside her blade on the ground with a clang. Then she turned towards the three dead bodies on the ground.

“Twenty three,” she said, pointing at the first bodies as she counted. “Twenty four. Twenty five.”

Her voice was soft and light as a breeze, but chillingly devoid of emotions. As if she was a store owner counting inanimate items in the inventory.

She looked back at Yayoi.

“Twenty five,” she said. She was narrowing her eyes as she nodded exactly once. Was she just reporting the fact or issuing a challenge? Or maybe both? I couldn’t tell.

“Twenty five,” Yayoi said with a nod. Then she brought to the front the object she was carrying. She unraveled the package.

Yukari screamed. I would have, too, had I not been too busy suppressing my urge to retch and vomit.

Yayoi was carrying in her hand a bloody severed head, still dripping with blood. She walked towards the other girl, still ignoring the two of us.

I did not know what was scarier: the fact that our Yayoi was casually holding a severed head or the features of the disembodied head itself: gaunt, beardy, shaggy, eyes still wide open, mouth bearing a row of bloodied and uneven teeth. The fierce expression all but confirmed he went down fighting. The helmet the deceased wore did him little good, pinned to his skull by a broken arrow piercing through the back of the head.

“Twenty six,” she said, throwing the head on the ground. It hit the floor with a disgusting plop.

The new girl raised her eyebrows. She stared long into the eyes of the dead, her jaws clenched as did her fist, as if it was a mortal enemy she was facing rather than a gruesome but harmless head. I clutched my chest: the hate I saw was choking me.

“Impressive,” she finally said. “As expected of one of the First.”

“Don’t mention it,” Yayoi said. “We have a job, First or no.”

“Um… Yayoi-neechan… wh-what… who-whose head is it?”

I, for one, welcomed Yukari’s impolite interruption. It must have taken her all her courage to even open her mouth: her nail was digging into my upper arm. Her violent shaking felt like she was trying to rip the flesh off my bone.

“An enemy,” the new girl said, her voice flat and detached from all kind of humanly emotions.

“Enemy? What enemy?” Yukari exclaimed.

Yayoi turned around. She blinked at Yukari exactly once, acknowledging her.

“As in someone who is – was – trying to kill you or hinder your cause. Or both,” she said. “All you need to know is we’re better off he is without his head.”

“Did you… did you….” Yukari’s said, her voice choked, “kill him?”

“Not honorably,” Yayoi said, rubbing the arrow shaft with the tip of her boot for emphasis. “But yes. That was me.”

“Um…”

“Speechless,” Yayoi nodded. “I thought as much. This isn’t the life you were born into.”

The atmosphere condensed once more. Yukari looked like she was going to scream any moment now. I would, too: the only thing keeping me from turning into a panicking husk of a girl was my desperate search for something – anything – to dispel the tension.

I finally settled on the most obvious. My stiff neck creaked towards the new girl.

“Um… I… I don’t think we’ve been, err… introduced?” I asked.

“Tachibana Kotomi,” Yayoi said before the girl could answer. Her intonation hardly changed. “Control Group C. Block 17.” She nodded matter-of-factly. “Quite possibly the last of us.”

Something rang out in my brain.

“Ko-to-mi?”

I could swear I had heard that name before – a lot. Exactly where, however, escaped my mind. I shook my head and clutched my temple and racked my brain.

Suddenly my head began to spin. Everything darkened. My mind blanked out. Dread welled in my mind as I tried to focus on the name. It was starting to hurt – physically. As if my own subconsciousness was trying to keep me uninformed.

“I see. You don’t remember.”

Yayoi’s voice resounded in my head. I let out a gasp and let go of the topic. The darkness faded. The pain vanished.

“She doesn’t,” Kotomi said, shaking her head. Her voice lowered as she spoke. Were her hands trembling, or was it just my eyes playing tricks on me?

“It is for the better,” Yayoi said. “You’ll have to live with it.”

I rubbed my eyes. Kotomi was biting her lips so that no sound escaped them. But she was crying: I could vaguely see tears flowing down her cheeks.

“I’m sorry.” I bowed at Kotomi. Awkwardness seized me; I didn’t know what else to say.

“Don’t be,” Kotomi said, shaking her head. Her voice was a little choked and distorted. “I know. It’s inevitable, right? Right?”

My jaw unfroze just enough to say what I thought helped the most at the moment.

“But, but… if you wouldn’t mind telling me again where we’d met,” I said, “I might remember-”

The next thing Yayoi said surprised me as much as it frightened me.

“Don’t,” she said, waving her hand at Kotomi. “I shouldn’t need to remind you why.”

Kotomi let out a pained, forced laugh.

“I understand,” she said. Then she turned towards me, shaking her head. “You don’t need to know. I’m… sorry.”

We spent the next moments looking at one another. I’ve calmed down enough to consider asking the obvious: where we were, what was going on. Better still, what we were supposed to do next. But I held my tongue, not knowing how best to phrase it. Yayoi seemed to have her own plans, but she looked as unwilling to divulge now as when we were preparing for our ‘journey’.

In fact, now I was beginning to feel she was stringing us along – no information given – for a goal unspoken of. I clenched my teeth, feeling more angry and frustrated than I typically was able to be. I briefly considered throwing the towel right then, right there. I managed to suppress the irrational feeling before I said anything I would regret. I chose, instead, to stay quiet and see what would transpire.

Yukari would have none of that.

“Isn’t it time, nee-chan?”

Yayoi glared at her.

“For what?” she asked, her voice barely raised.

“An answer, of course! Where on Earth have we gotten ourselves into? What is going on here? Who are these people and… and why are we even supposed to be fighting?” Yukari said. “You promised me an answer when we’re done. You promised!”

“I am not authorized to answer those questions.”

I found myself glaring back at Yayoi. I was beginning to seriously wonder who the person in front of me was, and what she had done to the Yayoi I knew and loved.

“Not authorized?” Yukari exclaimed. “You were authorized to take us here! Why don’t you take responsibility for a change?”

Her voice, loud and shrill and without heed for proper respect for her elders, resounded across the empty gallery. She sounded like she was on the brink of breaking into tears.

“I’m sorry,” Yayoi said. “I’ve got my orders.”

“Then I’m… I’m leaving!” Yukari cried. Immediately she turned around and begin running towards the opposite end of the gallery.

Before any of us could react, a bolt of light struck the ground in front of us. The room shook and trembled, as if hit by an earthquake.

A voice boomed from the point where the lightning struck the floor.

“Don’t.”

The voice carried itself across the hall, causing about as much impact on the landscape as the light that gave rise to it did. Yukari’s face turned white as a sheet. She stopped dead in her track, less from compliance and more from fear.

The next thing we heard was a crack of thunder, followed by a blinding flash. When our eyes opened again, before us towered a ghastly figure: tall, large, majestic and wearing a crown encrusted with grey gemstones. He stood there, blinking and ethereal, his body flickering with every gust of wind bowing across the room, as if he’d be dissipated like a handful of dust should it blow but a bit more violently.

Suffice to say, Sarion Greybow looked far less imposing than our previous meetings. Or at least he was supposed to be: his underwhelming physical presence did little to lessen the power of his voice or the air of a king about him. As I soon found out.

“Report,” he said as he looked at Yayoi’s general direction.

The next thing I saw was Yayoi and Kotomi simultaneously dropping to their knee before Sarion’s figure as if he had been their supreme master all along.

“Adani,” Yayoi said, keeping her head low in Sarion’s mere presence. “Forgive me… for not knowing you are here.”

“You are excused,” Sarion said. He turned around, surveying the battlefield. “The vermins have been dealt with, I presume?”

“Yes, adani,” Yayoi answered. “Fifty-one of them, as you told us.”

She stood up, picked up the severed, shaggy head she tossed on the ground just now, and presented it before the figure.

“Their leader now lies defeated and slain, adani,” she said. “Imperial justice has been dealt to them as they deserved.”

Sarion paused for a moment, examining the head. When he was done, he let out a dry chuckle and nodded at the two girls prostrating before him.

“Well done,” he said. “Well done indeed. I was right – you do not disappoint.”

“That is my duty,” Yayoi said.

A cold chill swept up my spine. If previously I was just angry that Yayoi was hiding something from us all along, now I was angry and afraid. Yukari and I, we both saw how easily Yayoi and Kotomi wiped out grown men decked out in iron. And now here they were, bowing and answering to this man we saw in our dream. What kind of power did he wield? And what would he do to us?

Yukari seemed to be thinking the same thing. She was backing away from the man and inching towards me. As if I would be able to protect her – I liked to think I could just as much as I knew I couldn’t.

And then Sarion’s gaze turned to the two of us as we cowered from him.

“Now… I believe you were itching for an answer, weren’t you?” he said, his voice amused and vaguely threatening. Of course, anything even slightly threatening about him was magnified by the way he carried himself: larger-than-life and infinitely overwhelming next to two teenage girls who didn’t even know what they were getting into.

“I… I… uh… err… I… I said nothing!” Yukari stammered. “I… I didn’t mean to… uh… ask! I… yeah, I am serious! I-”

“So you seem,” Sarion said with a nod as he cast his glance at me. “And you, Ryotaro’s daughter. What about you?”

I took a deep breath and clenched my fist. I did not know how I do it then, but something in me suppressed the fear I was supposed to be feeling. I held Yukari’s hand tight, rubbing her back with my other hand. My effort to calm her had little effect.

“You are taking a disgusting pleasure frightening girls young enough to be your granddaughters, aren’t you?” I growled. “Why are you even a king again?”

“Aizawa!” Yayoi exclaimed. “Show proper respect!”

I ignored her. Nobody could hurt the closest I had to a family and get away with it. Not even a ghost. My efforts, predictably, had next to zero effect on the figure I was facing. I just had to do it anyway.

“The proper word, for your information, is Emperor,” Sarion said.

Apparently my outburst had zero impact on his ability to articulate himself.

“If I wanted to frighten the two of you for whatever reason – and I can assure you I have none of the sort – you would have been in… what do you people call it? A mental hospital ward? Before you know what hit you,” he said. “No, it is a sincere question.”

He turned away from us for a brief moment, throwing a glance at Yayoi.

“I had to keep silent and have my daughter do the same until I have the time to properly explain myself,” he said. “There was little opportunity for explanation or clarification while you were on the run, were there?”

The mere thought of the Yayoi I knew turning into a puppet on this man – no, anyone’s – string made me want to explode.

“What… what have you done to her?”

“I did nothing,” he said. “She is doing exactly what she’s meant to do: achieve a greater destiny than what your Institute has in store for her. Under my guidance, of course.” He gestured at Yayoi. “Am I right?”

“Yes, Adani,” Yayoi answered, like a machine.

I pointed at his face. I had never been angrier before. I even briefly considered springing at him and trying to tear his jaw off.

“Release her,” I shouted. “Now!”

“Release her? I don’t think I would, even if I could,” he said. “You see, she has a destiny so great, the world itself pales in comparison. It is my job to guide her towards it. And I hope you will cooperate. Help her achieve that destiny.”

“Cooperate? She is my family as much as Yukari is,” I growled. “Keep your filthy hands off her and then maybe we can talk!”

“You are wrong.”

I gasped. My feet were rooted in their places as I turned towards Yayoi. Did she just say what I thought she said?

“Y-Yayoi-neechan… are… are you talking to me?”

“Yes I am,” she said. “You are wrong.”

She walked towards me, taking measured steps as if to prolong the eye contact.

“N-nee-chan… you aren’t being yourself!” I screamed.

“Yes I am,” she said. “This is what I really am. This is my person. I was born… no, brought into the world to fulfill one purpose. To carry out Father’s bidding.”

“Whether you want it or not?” I asked, trying to suppress the urge to explode in a spectacular tantrum not seen since I was five.

“That is not for you to judge,” she said. “My apologies, Aizawa. I’m doing this willingly. And that’s all you need to know.”

My eyebrows twitched. I was making the weirdest expression just then.

“I can assure you,” Sarion said, “I have no ill intention towards any of you. Including her.”

There was something oddly calming in the way Sarion spoke: it was not the content of his speech, but rather the very manner of it. It was almost subliminal.

I clutched my forehead. What was this person? Yukari would have been equally confused, had she not been trying to hide behind me. My anger subsided a little, but it was far from gone.

“Then prove it,” I said, and almost immediately regretted it. I wasn’t in a position to order anything… but I simply couldn’t help it. “You said you’re going to give us answers, right? Then by all means tell us… LORD Greybow!”

The sarcasm was too thick to miss. Sarion didn’t seem to mind.

“The short answer is you missed your own welcoming banquet,” he said. “The long answer… where do I begin?”

“You’ve got to be joking,” I exclaimed. “This… this… slaughter, a party?”

“Why, to introduce you to Ela-natar, of course!” Sarion said. “The ‘World of the Elves’ as we call it is a violent place, as you’ve already found out. I could give you a tome several thousand pages thick detailing the hundreds of wars large and small this place has seen throughout history. Or I could toss you into the fray and let you see it for yourself. You can testify yourself that the second is far more… educational than the first.”

Disgust began to well up in my mind once more.

“You… you doomed all these people to their deaths only to show us a glorified war documentary?”

“Me? Doomed? Hardly,” Sarion said. “You’re supposed to be an attentive girl, like your father. Intelligent, too, like your mother. Surely you did not miss the pile of rotting bodies on the way here and notice they weren’t the same as the ones your friends killed?”

“What do you mean?”

“Let me bring to your attention the Sharai tribals,” he said, pointing at the three recently killed warriors lying on the floor. “Excellent horsemen. Fearless warriors. In possession of an unshakable conviction. Last but not least, the epitome of everything that is wrong with this world.”

I bit my lips and stared at him.

“As it happened, two weeks ago this fort was full of refugees, running away from war and devastation to the only place they knew they’d perhaps remain safe for some time. Two weeks later there’s nothing left behind but piles after piles of rotting headless carcasses – men, women and children alike – purposefully left behind to frighten whoever would retake it,” Sarion said. “I should not need to tell you what happened in between.”

He narrowed his eyes at the three dead warriors.

“If anything, killing them is a reward for their brutality, what with their belief in eternal glory to those who die in battle. Still,” he turned around to face me, “the point is made. Nobody harms the people of the Empire – my people – and gets away with it. The next time another army tries to take this place, they’ll find a warning they won’t soon forget.”

I must have looked quite silly then – and that was because I couldn’t remember if I had ever been more confused before. I saw a fire in the man’s eyes when he spoke about vengeance for his people. There was something oddly convincing about it: I doubt it was possible to have that kind of resolute look when he was lying. Either he was a masterful liar or…

… or he was not all that different from me. I couldn’t tell.

“But we could have died,” I said. “Just like… just like all those ‘refugees’ you claim.”

Sarion laughed so loudly I thought he must have been trying to ridicule me. I couldn’t tell.

“That’s a silly notion,” he said. “Sure, you aren’t as well-read as you could have been – for which I blame your father having no idea how to raise children properly – but you should have known there have been no battle in which the side backed by a god lost to the one not having such a generous support. Fictional or otherwise.”

I widened my eyes at the ghastly figure.

“You mean… you are that ‘god’? And you’ve been there all along?”

“Yes and no and yes,” he said, “I’m not strictly speaking a god, but I can do most of that which a god can. Up to and including manipulating slices of reality to aid those I love and ruin those I hate. You’ve seen it yourself.”

My brain went numb, flooded and overwhelmed. If Yukari’s faltering grasp on my hand was of any indication, she was feeling quite the same.

“If… if you’re so great,” she said, “why would you even need me? Or Yuki-nee? Why not… just leave us be and do what you want with your powers?”

“But that is not what you told me when we first met, wasn’t it?” Sarion said. “There you were, lost and alone. A sad soul wrecked by her own guilt and uncertainty, wanting to simultaneously atone for her sins and avoid repercussion, not even knowing whether she should blame herself or the world for all that had happened to her. You told me you’d pay any price for a chance to redo everything. Wipe the slate clean. Begin anew.” He stared at Yukari. “Was it you, my lady, or was it some kind of shape-shifting thought-demon who resides in your head?”

I had no way to confirm whether that was what Yukari said. There was too much about her she had not told me. What I did realize, was her hanging her head, keeping her gaze on the ground. Silenced.

And then Sarion looked back at me.

“Besides… I do have tasks for the two of you,” he said. “Tasks on which I hope you will cooperate.”

“You hope?” I said. “As in, we have a choice?”

“You do,” Sarion said. “If my hundreds of years of experience are of any indication, the willing subordinate always beat the unwilling.”

I took a deep breath, gathered all my courage and looked him in the eyes.

“What if we say no?”

His answer was far less violent than I thought it would be.

“Then the world is free for you to walk,” he said. “I have no reason to stop you striking out on your own. Test your mettle against the wilderness, the banditry, the slavers and the lowest of human lows. To say nothing about the actual war itself.” He paused. “Perhaps you might even make it.”

The premise was so preposterous yet his voice and gesture so serious I was not sure whether he was sarcastic or sincere.

“After all, you aren’t without resourcefulness. Maybe at some point you’ll even find yourself at the head of an army of your own. Forge a kingdom to stand the test of time, even. The odds are stacked against you, yes, but not entirely without hope.”

“Did you just seriously said an… an army?” I exclaimed, every muscle on my face twitching. The silliness – no, stupidity of it was nigh unbearable. “I… I don’t… I don’t even know how to-”

“But it’s happened before in Ela-natar,” Sarion said. “Jorgand the Northlander united half of the Rhaetic tribes six hundred years ago at the ripe age of sixteen, for instance. Duke Winniow became a general and a key player in the Flornolan Civil War last century as naught but a boy four years younger than you are. And of course we have Queen Sarkavi. If she were still alive she’d gladly let you know how at twenty she held more power than most of the North put together, through might and guile rather than a pretty face and the men she bedded.”

He placed his hand on my shoulder. Being less than material, part of his large palm sunk through my shoulder.

“This is Ela-natar. Wealth and power is easy to earn with a clear mind and a strong sword arm.” he swept his gaze between Yukari and I. “You have the potential for both, with or without my help.” He smiled. “But of course, I would rather you use that potential to help my daughter.”

He gazed at Yayoi, prompting us to do the same.

“And I would welcome it,” she said, stepping to the fore. “Aizawa… we can do this together. Just like we always have.”

“Have we?” I parroted, my mind too flooded to think clearly. Yayoi was family, but she had always managed to keep to herself so much I had a hard time convincing myself we did anything remarkable together outside of ‘surviving’.

I brushed the thought away as soon as it reared its ugly head. No, I told myself, in our situation ‘surviving’ was as much a deed as any flamboyant kill-monster-defeat-dark-lord-save-the-world montage.

Even then, the idea of fighting a war – a brutal one possibly beyond the scope of anything they had going in my manga bookshelf – was not the most enticing thing for good old me.

I barely managed to suppress my overwhelming emotions to have a moment of clarity.

“You cannot force us to like your idea,” I said, “or to, I don’t know, have what it takes to do what you want us to.”

I took a deep breath. “Wouldn’t our being around actually hurt your chances rather than help it? We’d mess up your plans. I’m not….” my eyes twitched as I struggled for the best word. “… the special person you need.”

“You’ll be surprised,” he said. “Warfare does strange things to a person’s feelings and priorities.”

“But why keep someone who can throw a spanner in the works any time while you could have let us go home?” I said. “Aren’t you a god of some kind? You can do that easily, can’t you?”

For a second I thought I’d outwitted him. Sarion began nodding, his left hand moving to the vicinity of his chin.

How wrong I was.

“I can,” he finally said, “but believe me. You’d be in an even worse situation if I did so. Both of you.”

He waved his hand at Yukari, then at me.

“See for yourself.”

***

Children of Zero, Chapter 08

Chapter 8

“You (Don’t) Remember”

Suddenly, the world around me collapsed. Shattered, like glass. The quietness vanished. The chilling anticipation evaporated. My eyes and ears tingled, like a veil was lifted from the former and a plug pulled from the latter, abruptly more receptive and absorbent of whatever was actually going on.

I didn’t know what happened. What I did know was we were in trouble.

For starters, I heard the sound of fighting that was not there just a blink before. Wood splintering. Steel meeting steel. People screaming and shouting in strange tongues. Even the dull thuds of things falling on the ground. The pandemonium seemed far enough away to convince me I wasn’t immediately in danger of dying horribly. Yet the fact that I could hear them was anything but good news.

“Nee-chan,” I felt Yukari’s hand tugging at my wrist. “W-what is going on?”

I wished I knew.

“I don’t know,” I said, trying my best to lower my voice. “But we’ll need to hide, now!”

“B-but where?” I could feel her wrist trembling. “We are… we are supposed to go that way!”

She pointed at the direction of the sounds of battle.

“Wait, what?” I stared at her. “You were coming from there!”

“Y-yes, but,” she said, shaking my arm, “everything was nice and quiet when I left-”

It made no sense at all. Not that we had the time to try figuring it out. Perhaps it was just me and my sleep deprivation playing tricks on me again, but I could swear to all the gods on this green earth the fighting was moving towards us. Intentionally or otherwise.

I pulled Yukari along, springing into the closest open door to us just a dozen feet away.

We slammed the door behind us and leaned against it. The sound of fighting was locked behind us. I held my torch with one hand and clutched my chest with the other, trying to control my breath.

The torch’s flame revealed a small stone chamber containing little more than a few weapon and armor racks. The layers of dust made my throat itch: the room must have been abandoned for a while now. The only spear I saw was so bent it could have passed for a yumi bow. The two iron breastplates around were so dented and rusty all over I couldn’t help but think they didn’t save their last wearers.

Certainly not the best place to be. But it was safe. That was all I could think.

We squatted down where we stood, breathing heavily in relief. The feeling was fleeting, however: the moment my breathing calmed, my mind wandered to the next most pressing matter.

“Yayoi-nee!” I exclaimed. “She’s still stuck that way!”

I stared at Yukari’s face. She was as white as a sheet; her lips barely moved but no words left them. Next thing I knew, she was throwing her arms over my shoulder and holding me tightly like her life depended on it. I heard sobs choked in her throat.

My nerve was barely holding, too. My hands were trembling like a malaria patient. I felt like hitting something, but couldn’t muster the strength. I just had a sliver of self-control left in me, enough to tell myself we needed to do something. Something other than hanging around waiting for whatever.

I took a deep breath and got down to thinking.

“If nee-chan is out there… she’ll need us,” I said, matter-of-factly. “Just as much as we need her.”

“B-but…”

Another blood-curdling scream pierced the old wooden door interrupted any answer I might have thought up then. This one sounded perilously close to our hiding place – so much that only my plastering my hand over Yukari’s mouth stopped her from screaming out. As for me, there was no one to cover mine. Gritting my teeth would have to make do.

“We won’t be safe here forever,” I said.

I placed my hand on Yukari’s shoulder, staring at the wall in front of me rather than at her.

Then my eyes again set upon the iron breastplates on the rack. A brief flash of crazy coursed through my brain.

I passed Yukari my torch.

Then I stood up and walked towards the rack, transfixed at the objects before me. My eyes narrowed: I felt as if I’d seen the sort of armor before. The night had been full of deja vu so far, but this had to take the cake. The closer I came to the suits, the more familiar they got. By the time I laid both hands on one of them, it might as well have been one of the uniforms in my wardrobe.

“Nee-chan?” Yukari said. I could feel her gaze boring into my back even before I turned around.

“We could use these,” I said, “They might not save us from all the dangers out there, but we’d be safer with them than without.”

I flinched. That definitely wasn’t the kind of logic I subscribed to. It was as if someone else was speaking through my mouth. What was going on?

Regardless of whether it was my own thoughts and words or not, the argument made sense. The cold iron was a few millimeters thick. I couldn’t imagine any simple creepy serial killer’s knife cutting through it.

“T-that looks heavy,” Yukari said.

“Not that heavy,” I said, lifting the breastplate off the rack. In my arms it felt no heavier than a stack of manga for some reasons. I imagined it would be even lighter on me when I’d put it on.

“And… how do we even, uh, wear it?” Yukari stared at the suit, then back at me, then at the suit again. “It’s not a sweater – and I don’t see any buttons…”

Very good question.

“Look for the straps.”

A shiver ran down my spine. I could swear a voice was whispering into my ears – and definitely not Yukari’s.

“Look for the straps and the hinges opposite to them.”

The disembodied voice repeated, louder, clearer and more slowly. Whoever- whatever – it was, they must have badly wanted me to just put it on.

I scanned the suit in my hands. Indeed, there were several weathered leather straps on the left side and a few hinges on the right, just what I would see in a metal box. I unfastened the straps, and with barely a nudge the suit opened into two halves. I raised my eyebrows: so that was how they were supposed to be put on.

For all I knew, one person could hardly don this alone.

“Let’s see how this works,” I said. “Yukari?”

Yukari stared at me as if I was going to stab her to death with a rusty knife. Then again, my lips were probably curved in a keen smile entirely out of place.

“Lift your arms,” I spoke. As if possessed: my own voice sounded far deeper than it normally was – for some reasons.

Yukari looked like she was going to run away from me or break down screaming as I walked towards her with my suit in hand. She didn’t. Either her feet were rooted in their places, or her faith in me was greater than the horror I was inspiring in her.

“Hold still.”

She did as she was told. As best as she could, anyway, for she was trembling throughout the experience.

When I was done, in front of me stood a Yukari inside a piece of armor far too large for her, barely hanging on to her shoulder. She was practically swimming in the breastplate hanging far below her waist.

“Does it hurt?” I asked. “Is it too heavy?”

“No, but…” she said, bending her neck and examining her new choice of clothing with a grimace on her face, “I look ridiculous, don’t I?”

If not for the sound of fighting still outside, I would have laughed. It wasn’t exactly the kind of fashion Yukari had had in her life as an average middle school student.

But right now she would have to live with it. If not for protection, then for the illusion of being protected.

“You’ll be safer this way,” I said, knocking twice on the iron surface to prove my point. “See?”

“I hope,” Yukari sighed. “but isn’t this going to make us, uh… slower? And noisier?”

She tried walking and almost immediately disproved her first argument. Her first couple of steps proceeded smoothly. Then she tried jogging, then jumping up and down. There was no real hindrance except for her aforementioned ridiculous look. Even the ‘noisy’ part was not really true: rather than being a clunky, clattering tin can, the suit made hardly any sound unless Yukari was really pushing it.

“That’s odd,” she said, looking at herself and taking a few more steps. “I thought I would be unable to move.”

So had I. In fact, the idea went so smoothly it was almost suspicious.

“Now help me,” I said. “And then we’ll see what we can do.”

***

The door creaked open.

We slunk out as quietly as we could. Now the hallway closest to us had quieted, but the echo of steel meeting steel in the distance continued. The fighting had apparently moved away while we were busy hiding and putting on our new armor.

My hands grasped the bent spear tightly as if it had been an oversized charm of good luck. I tried to ignore the implication that if the situation was half as bad as what I imagined it to be, the weapon might as well have been a twig.

“What do we do now?” Yukari asked, her eyes darting along the corridor. Finding nothing, of course, but from her shaking voice one might suspect otherwise.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. A few contingency plans raced through my head, ranging from running back into the storeroom or back to the room I first found myself in to finding the nearest window, see how far above the ground we were and jump off if we could survive the fall. But then I settled on the least obvious and most insane idea of them all.

“To where the fighting is,” I said.

Yukari stared at me, barely stopping her jaw dropping on the ground.

“Uh… what?” she exclaimed. “Aren’t we trying to not get killed, nee-chan?”

“But we need to find Yayoi-nee,” I said.

I tossed a glance at the general direction of the distant fighting. “You said the hall is that way, right? What are the odds Yayoi-nee is not caught in it?”

“She… better isn’t,” Yukari said. “Otherwise…”

“I’m not so sure about that.” I shook my head. “She once knocked over an Institute security guard twice as large as she was, back when I was a child.”

Yukari said nothing. She stared at the ground, shaking her head.

“That’s the only clue we have,” I added. “It’s better than running around randomly.”

Yukari bit her lips.

“Fine,” she finally said.

Then she grabbed my hand tightly. “D-don’t let go!” she cried.

I smiled and nodded. That went without saying.

And then we set off, following the sound.

The further we walked, the bleaker the situation looked. Hardly had we made the first turn when we ran into three dead bodies. One was impaled by his own spear whose broken stub he still held. Another had an arrow sticking from his eye and another through his throat. The third lost his head and both hands.

One turn of the hallway later we found another with a dagger through his heart. Leaned on a wall was another who missed half his skull. Yet another lay face down in his pool of blood, the metal plates sewn to his clothing obviously failing to do much good.

“They weren’t there before. They weren’t there before. They… weren’t there… before…”

Yukari’s whispering murmurs echoed along the bloodied corridor as we tracked the sounds.

Then we reached the end of the hallway, finding ourselves in front of two sets of doors. We were greeted there by a a trio of bodies pierced through their heads, backs and shoulders by more than a few arrows.

“They… weren’t… there… before…”

I patted Yukari in the back. The armor got in the way, but her shaking lessened. She got the message.

Taking a deep breath, I took a look around. The larger set of door definitely opened into the main hall – it was so large and even had some kind of coats of arms etched on it. However, the fighting now seemed to be from behind the smaller set.

“W-what now?” Yukari murmured. “Should we…”

“The small one,” I said, my hands gripping the spear tightly.

Yukari jolted. “But…”

“If that’s Yayoi-nee behind that door,” I said, “we’ll have to help her, right? If it isn’t… if we’re careful we can just walk back the way we came in while whoever still fighting are still busy.”

“If we’re careful,” Yukari said, sounding entirely unconvinced.

“I am,” I replied. “Most of the time.”

It wasn’t exactly the complete truth – and Yukari knew it. When she finally nodded, I got the feeling it was because I wasn’t going to change my mind and she didn’t want to be left alone while a crazed killer may or may not be running around, rather than because she trusted my self-assessment.

The door opened into a long gallery, decorated with dead bodies decomposing. I felt sick just from the stench alone: there must be dozens of them separated into two piles: one had nothing but heads, the other nothing but headless torsos. The dead bodies there were unarmed and unarmored, and a quick glance – because I could stomach no more – at the pile of heads revealed those of very old people and children too.

And then there were some of the much newer bodies, armed and armored, strewn around the base of the skull pyramid. Something was chasing them into the long hall.

Yukari looked so white one would think she was going to faint. Or vomit, because both her hands were covering her mouth and nose.

She was probably thinking the same thing I was. What kind of horrible atrocity took place here?

“Walk past it,” I said, my eyes teary.

“But-”

“I said walk past it.” My yell was muffled into a growl. “Close your eyes and go, now!”

My voice gained a sudden burst of authority I didn’t know I had as I shoved the girl in the back.

Thankfully we didn’t have to worry about the pile of heads and headless bodies for long. There, at the end of the hallway, we found what we sought. Or rather, what we should have been running away from in the first place.

The first thing we noticed a figure wearing the ever-familiar Institute uniform, facing away from us. I almost called out for the girl – until I realized she wasn’t Yayoi. Close, but not quite: a little taller, a little larger, a little fitter. Her hair was a bit longer, too, leaving to flow freely in the indoors draft. Her uniform was torn and ragged and splattered with blood.

Then the moonlight shone through a hole in the wall above us. In its light we saw three men far larger and taller than the girl was, wearing the same sort of metal-reinforced jackets as the fresh corpses we encountered. I couldn’t make out their faces, but they were trying to back away from her… until their backs touched the wall. The curved scimitars they wielded did not seem to empower them one bit.

Holding a blade like the three men’s slanted to her side in a combat-ready stance, the girl walked towards them one step at a time. Like a vengeful juggernaught: slow, steady and absolutely unstoppable.

The three men looked at one another and murmured in a foreign tongue, their tone vaguely desperate. Then their expressions steeled. They held their weapons high and locked eyes with the girl.

She stopped and glared back at them. Even lowered her weapon a little.

The atmosphere was so thick I could cut it with a knife.

“Sharai Shehad! Sharai Barhadi!”

Then the three men charged at her in unison.

The girl casually dodged the first blow and parried the second. The third took a solid kick in the chest before he could deliver his attack, propelled backwards and hit the wall with a thud.

A flurry of attacks fell on her before he stood up. Every single blow parried. Up, down, left, right, even diagonal cuts… it didn’t matter. The girl stepped around so gracefully she might have been dancing around the men.

“It’s over,” I murmured to myself. Her opponents could not keep up her steps. Even when the third man rejoined, little changed. She moved. She sprung. She leaped. She waltzed a wide berth around the three. It was as if the three fighters were being surrounded rather than the girl.

“Delete.”

She caught the first man in a failed strike. She jabbed her blade through his neck. With her other hand she grabbed his blade as it fell from his limping hand.

“Delete.”

She kicked the dying body – blade still stuck in the neck – at the remaining two. One jumped away on time. The other was struck. He had barely recovered when his more nimble friend was tackled by the girl. A blade protruded from his back when she was done with him.

The survivor charged at her, slashing her at the back of her head while she was turned away.

I heard a clang.

She caught his blade with her left hand, not even bothering to turn around. I could not believe my eyes: it was covered in a faint, blush glow. Like a neon light covered in cloth.

She crushed the blade with her bare hand. The broken shards fell on the ground. Clattered, then stopped.

“Delete.”

She spun around. She rushed the now-unarmed the survivor. Her blade flashed blue: it sliced across the man’s neck as she dashed past him.

The hilt left the victim’s hand.

Then his head slid from his neck and rolled on the ground. His headless body slumped down with a thud.

The whole deal took a little more than a minute. My mind went numb. My hands fell limp. I stood like a statue. Such was the display I just saw, my emotions blanked out.

And then she turned around towards us.

Only then did the horror set in. Yukari and I was finding ourselves locking eyes with a girl who had just effortlessly beaten three trained warriors in their own games.

Yukari let out a gasp. I thought my heart stopped right then. My jaws locked: I couldn’t cry out for help, even if there had been someone around.

But then I realized the girl didn’t move. Her eyes were veiled behind the curtain of her hime haircut, but I was sure she was studying both Yukari and I. She took her time – enough for me to register her features. She was pale and thin lips slender nose and a thin long scar along her left cheek.

“You…”

She said, her eyes glaring at me from under her hair. Her voice, however, was anything but threatening – so soft I could barely make out the syllables.

“Aizawa. Aizawa Yuki,” she said. “It’s you. Isn’t it?”

I stared back at her. Astonishment overrode my fright.

“T-that’s me,” I said. “Do I… know you?”

The girl said nothing: I could barely see her eyes widened, as if trying to comprehend what she had just heard. But then the gesture faded: she kept her head a little down, veiling most of her face in the shadow of her hair.

“You… don’t remember,” she said. “I see. Of course you don’t.”

I grabbed Yukari’s quivering hand. She was trying to back away. I found myself following. We inched backwards, our eyes glued on the killed before us.

“What do you want with me?” I cried, my voice hoarse.

She glanced at her weapon. Then at me. Then at her weapon again.

Then she tossed it aside. The blade clattered on the ground. The noise echoed along the gallery a few times before it came to a stop next to one of the dead bodies.

“That’s fine,” she said. “It’s not your fault. Doesn’t matter.”

She stepped towards us. Slowly. Calmly. Without any sign of malice whatsoever. Or so I felt.

I stared at her. My backpedaling stopped.

Yukari tugged at my hand. So fixed on the girl in front, I didn’t see what Yukari’s expression was like. Judging from how hard she was clutching my hand and how jittery her own hand was, she was panicking.

“N-nee-chan?”

Whatever the girl before us was going to do to us, we never found out. A voice from behind us interrupted everything we were doing – including her.

“Tachibana.”

A very, very familiar voice I couldn’t be gladder to hear.

***

On Sporking (And Related Writerly Insecurities)

(Coward’s Note: I really, really should be working on chapter 8 of The Children of Zero like right now. Being a procrastinating slacker of massive proportion, I’m wasting my time writing essays instead. Fun, fun, fun.)

Sporking, to the uninitiated, is the art of providing snarky analysis of poorly written books on a page-by-page basis. The rationale is that bad books are unentertaining at best and downright nauseating for all kinds of reasons at worst, such that the only entertainment to ever be had with them is to tear them a new one in a sarcastic, British-humor manner. A typical snark highlights everything that is wrong with the book, from superficial technicalities like bad grammar, awkward sentence structures and terrible word choices to more fundamental issues such as poor/nonsensical characterization or poisonous messages (intentional or otherwise), cracking jokes all the way along at the expense of the book (and frequently the author)..

Needless to say, a good snark, like those provided by Kawnliee/Rorschach (whose liver capacity knows no bound) is always infinitely more interesting and funny than the original, as well as provides a lot of insights on how not to write.

Now, I love me a good spork – a while back I was even addicted to them. Good sporks are nothing short of immensely entertaining and educational. Look no further than the sporks of the Inheritance Cycle for examples of both: jokes are cracked left and right, the characters are examined on the basis of what the text shows rather than what it tells about them, and most importantly, every single poorly-thought aspect of Eragon the character, his company and the setting is mercilessly beaten down. Obviously this doubles as a “Don’t do it like Christiopher Paolini” if you also call yourself a writer, published or no.

However, as has been often pointed out by defenders of the series being sporked (of course, you don’t see many defenders of lesser known, self-published terrible books other than the author themselves and/or their sockpuppets) doing sporks has its own dark side.

By sporking on a book, any book, the sporker is implicitly putting themselves on a position above the author of said book to pass judgement upon the work (and in extreme cases, the author also). Setting aside the question of whether the sporker has the authorization to make this call or no – because it’s easily countered by the argument that anyone and everyone with a pair of eyes and sufficient understanding on the English language can read and tell bad literature from good without needing to themselves be a published author, editor or paid literary critic – there is an immense moral hazard. The sporker is essentially trampling on the worlds and characters of another writer, piss on them, set them on fire and roll them down the hill into a spiky pit of spiky spikes.

Being a writer, I can tell you right now my worlds are precious to me in a manner not unlike my child (if I should ever have one). There is no better way to shatter me than take everything I’ve created, smash them to bits and show it to the world to laugh at, behind my back. Which is more or less exactly what sporkers do. If they are not careful what they’re doing, it ceases being funny and rolls right into the territory of cyberbullying.

Fortunately, many good sporkers know this and have set a few broad guidelines to alleviate these problems. The first rule is only spork those books which are undefensibly bad. The second is to take it easy on amateur writers (in fact, I’ve yet to see a spork of a fanfic as viciously done as that of, for instance, the Maradonia Saga). The third is to focus on the book, not the author unless the author’s real-life conduct is tie into the book in any way (such as the main character being a self-insert or acting as a mouthpiece for the author’s beliefs). The fourth is to act professional if/when the authors themselves come knocking.

So far, from what I have observed on ImpishIdea, (whatever is left of) the Anti Shurtugal community and Rorschach’s personal site, they have been adhering to these ground rules rather admirably. The only enemies they’d ever made are bad writers themselves – and even then they’d got a few sporked authors who then actually took their criticisms to heart. It’s rather heartwarming when you think about it.

These are the facts. Now here comes the opinion.

As a writer, nothing makes you more paranoid than knowing the sporking community exists.

A good writer is always paranoid to the point he makes Stalin look sane in comparison. Is my character good enough? Does the setting make sense? Am I mistakenly inserting any message or implication that offends people? What about plot holes? Faulty characterization? Poorly written dialogue? Action scenes that belong in a low-budget B-movie? Grammatical errors that slip past the radar?

The list of question goes on and on and on. It skirts the borderline of healthiness: on one hand, a writer needs to think himself imperfect and constantly asking himself questions to be able to improve. On the other, any kind of over-the-top obsession is plain bad for one’s mental health.

If you’re a writer without a large enough critique base like me – I have exactly ONE reader who is willing to point out what I might have done wrong in a constructive manner and few ways to gain more, and if she fails to detect anything wrong, that is that – the paranoia gets to the point where it seems like a genuine mental illness. I have at least two extra layers of anxiety to overcome because of my rather peculiar background and upbringing to top it with (of which I am not exactly comfortable with admitting).  “Uncomfortable” is an understatement. The last thing I will ever need is someone pointing out exactly why I failed in terms of questionable constructiveness and show it to the world behind my back.

In fact, if that happens one day I’m very probably going to burn down all that I’ve written, delete my hard drive, erase every bit of work I’ve done from my brain and have an epic breakdown that necessitates a visit to the psychiatrist. And then my life will never be the same again. The feeling is analogous to living in a dystopian society (much as I dislike dystopian literature for reasons I may or may not elaborate on in a future article) where anyone can rat you out to be executed at any time and where any and every attempt to be a ‘valued citizen’ may or may not work.

For now, I am safe. What I am showing to the world on this site is barely the tip of the iceberg of what I’ve done, partly because of the “first electronic rights” thing most publishers demand, and partly because I am the Coward. But then, my goal is for my work to gain more exposure. If I want to have that, at some point I’ll have to go out there and promote my works. If I do that, the chances that someone will get mightily pissed off at my work to make fun of it in typical sporker manner will rise exponentially. Self-promotion, for obvious reasons, tends to draw people’s ire like nothing else.

To steal a sentence from Aragorn Elessar, a day may come when my courage will hold, a day of bravery and confidence when I forsake my shell of insecurity and actually step out there. But it is not this day. This day I cower in my shelter, fearful of what might come.

Because, like my name suggests, I’m defined by my fears. And sporking, despite my love for it and admiration for those who dedicate their free time to it, is part of these fears.

Children of Zero, Chapter 07

Chapter 7

House of Remains

Several lifetimes later – what my subconscious estimation told me at least.

Many, many, many things had flashed across my eyes in the endless white. If I had the time to take a closer look at each and every one of them as they deserved, I would have needed hundreds of years.

I saw fields. I saw rivers. I saw forests and mountains and oceans stretching towards the horizon. I saw people stout and stocky encased in several layers of leather and fur tilling the ground covered in snow. I saw horses and stallions in the hundreds grazing across an endless prairie. I saw fortresses and castles, towers and gatehouses, walls and drawbridges rising tall looking over vast cities built of stone, bricks and mortar. I saw bustling ports and busy markets, merchants and teamsters dragging baskets-filled carts from one place to another, and scores after scores of well-dressed folks counting their money. I saw a huge white spire rising from behind a misty wood, gleaming under the sun as if coated in reflective paint.

Then I saw the oddly familiar shape of a youthful-looking woman whose white hair reached as far down as her waist.

What a marvelous beauty she was! I could hardly find any word to describe her face without making it sound like I was either jealous of her or desiring her in a homoerotic and creepily stalkerish way. She was clad in a golden – or at least gilded – form-fitting armor ornately carved and etched. A green cape was draped over her shoulder; a golden leaf coat of arms emblazoned smack in the middle. Her liveries were spotless.

There, on a tall cliff she stood, holding the reins of her horse – a tall, long-maned creature far more elegant than a horse had any right to be – and gazed upon the beauty of the great white spire. Time stood still as she watched. For the longest time I stood there, next to but unbeknownst to her like a ghost, seeing whatever she was and feeling good about it.

All of a sudden, the young woman let go of the reins, stepped forward and…

… jumped off the ledge?

Then I heard a scream, a crunch and a splatter. The last were much louder than they logically should be.

My eyes snapped open. I catapulted myself upright.

The smell of blood and rotting flesh wafted into my nostrils.

I found myself sitting, legs stretched, on a cold, uneven stone floor. A cold draft washed over my face. My skirt and stockings were doing a very poor job of covering my legs from the floor, and my shirt likewise with the wind.

My left hand clutched my head, my right blindly reaching behind me for leverage. My palm settled upon the wall just a bit behind me.

Immediately everything from my right shoulder down froze.

I was touching a kind of goey, sticky liquid.

The next thing I knew, my ears heard a scream coming from my own throat. My heart virtually imploded. I did not know what happened after that safe for my leaping as far away from the place as I could.

Before my eyes was a sight I had observed a thousand times in my messages. All the experience suddenly didn’t seem all that helpful. My hand was covered in blood from a… person impaled from back to front with a fork and a broken wooden shaft sticking out from his mangled head. Flies were buzzing around his gaping wounds.

I was sleeping next to a dead body all along.

I cupped my lips with my clean hand, trying to contain the primal urge to retch and vomit as I struggled to stand up.

I regained my calm long enough to take a quick glance around the room. There was only one body in this six-feet-by-twenty chamber – strangely devoid of everything else. I was not sure if it was a good thing or not.

I couldn’t keep my wits about to notice anything else. The first thoughts to come streaming into my mind was running away. I could not think of any situation in which coming around next to a dead body spelled anything other than mortal danger.

But to where? Good question.

My bloodied hand clutched my chest. The cold, icky, moist feel was extremely uncomfortable, to say nothing of the stench. I leaned against the room and took another look around.

A door at each end of the room, one of which was shattered leaving nothing behind but a bit of wood suspended on the hinges. A single burning torch suspended on the wall opposite to me casting a faint light on everything. A few air holes near the ceiling. It looked like a room in a stereotypical European stone castle back in its time.

I spent the next moment debating whether I should leave the room. On one hand, staying in a room with a dead body with my hand soaked in blood was not the smartest thing I could do. On the other – I glanced at the corridor just outside the broken door – the outside was pitch black. I’d read enough slasher horror to know walking into the darkness in a totally unfamiliar environment was a pretty good way to die horribly.

I took a deep breath.

Then it struck me that Yayoi and Yukari were nowhere to be found. Yet.

I tried to gather my wits only to find them slipping like a wet fish. I knew nothing about this place, how we got here, or even the mechanism behind our transport. The odds that Yayoi and Yukari were waiting for me in the next room was as high as their having been flung into a spike pit or stuck in the landscape eleventy thousand miles away. In which case my chance for survival would be close to nil.

Maybe not immediately. I reached behind my back. My rucksack was still around. And intact. Bad coming to worse I’d survive for a week or two.

But I couldn’t stay here.

I walked towards the opposite wall and tried removing the torch. It came off effortlessly. Part of me thought torching the unfortunate man’s remains would be a humane thing to do. My common sense just whacked me upside the head for even thinking.

I clenched both fists. Time to move on.

It seemed like a patently bad idea to walk out of the broken door however I looked at it. I opted for the other, my heart still beating like a professional drummer on all kinds of steroids known to man.

***

It didn’t take me too long to realize getting lost in this maze of a building was a distinct possibility.

The place did not have long, winding, confusing corridors: it was made of long, winding, confusing corridors. Without any real clue how far I was from the ground, I could only take stairs at random.

There were few torches on the wall, half of which had gone out. Apart from that, there was no one – nothing around worth noting. There were the occasional doors, most of which were tightly locked and those that weren’t opened into small, black chambers – the sight of which did an excellent job dissuading me to brave the darkness.

The other thing I found was the bodies. I stumbled upon bloodied corpses once every dozen yards or so, killed by various weapons and mangled in all kinds of ways imaginable. The horror the bodies themselves struck me with lessened the more I found; in its place the fear for my very life. I had no way to know if whatever had killed those people were still around. My only assurance was the absolute silence all around me but for the occasional breeze.

My nerves were kept stretched like the strings on a guitar. If I heard anything louder than a person’s breath, I would freak out.

And then…

… I heard breathing.

I let out a tiny gasp: my heart raced, cold sweat ran down my back.

Someone was out there. My instincts kicked in. I would be hurt, it said. I had better do something, it said.

I knelt down, keeping a low profile as I set aside the torch. I zipped open the backpack. I pulled out the taser. I flicked the power button and trembled.

Electricity crackled.

My breaths grew ever more irregular. So did the breaths from the other side of the wall. I knew the other person was there. They knew I was there.

What they and I did not know was where the other was.

My eyes darted around. I was in a straight corridor with few hiding places in sight. There was a spiraling flight of stair behind me from which I had just walked. There were three doors on my right side. There was also a door tightly barred at the end of the hallway. There was a trail of blood into one of them that appeared to have been there far longer than the dead bodies themselves: dried and turned disgustingly brown.

I mentally argued which of the three doors I should open, or indeed should I open any. Staying put and hitting whoever would show up in the head as hard as I could seemed infinitely wiser and safer. Unless they were one of those crazy horror film monsters who simply refused to die even if one was to throw everything and the kitchen sink at them. In which case I’d be done for no matter what I did.

So I decided to wait for their first move.

It took them what felt like a century, but finally I heard a quiet shuffle towards the leftmost door – the one with the bloodstain. I found myself tiptoeing towards the other side of the door, raising the taser above my head.

Creak.

Creak.

Creak.

I bit my lips. I closed my eyes shut. I swung the weapon at whatever was there.

Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.

Crack.

“KYAAAH!”

I gasped. I staggered back a couple steps. I stared at the scene before me.

My club-arm was quivering as it reeled back from the shock. My taser was broken in half, but not before doing the same to another of its kind. The two business ends of the two weapons were rolling on the floor before my eyes.

I felt like passing out. I couldn’t think. My brain was telling me just one thing: run away. My feet, however, were rooted on the floor. Again I gasped. My vision went blur.

When I came round…

“Yuki-neechan?”

… she was standing in front of me. I had never failed to rejoice – in varying degrees – when I saw Sakuraba Yukari, but this occasion had to take the crown. I had barely made out her familiar figure and her blonde locks when I launched myself at her and gave her a hug that looked almost as if I wanted to crush all her bones. It took a soft groan and a gasp to let me know I was probably overdoing it.

I let go of Yukari, at which point she let out a deep breath, a grimace still painted on her face.

Her eyes were teary, just like mine. She looked shaken – her face was white from the scare, but all in all she looked far calmer than I thought she was capable of given our predicament.

“I’m sorry,” I said. The sincerity of my words was doubtful: I was absolutely beaming. I’d forgotten being able to look so cheerful for a long, long time now. Yukari stared at me as though I was not myself but some kind of identity-stealing creature or some sort. Then she slapped me upside my head audibly but painlessly.

Then she laughed. I found myself laughing along too… until I realized our location wasn’t the best for a noisy reunion. I raised my finger to my lips and hushed.

“Where have you been?” I asked, almost immediately finding it inappropriate. For all I knew we might have very well spent no more than an hour away from each other. On the other end of the spectrum, my ‘several lifetimes’ estimation could be right.

“That’s my line!”

Yukari scowled. “It isn’t nice of you breaking away like that, nee-chan!”

There was a mock seriousness in her voice.

“Breaking away?”

The realization hit me on the head with all the subtlety of a giant maul belonging to a fictional doom lord of doomy doom.

“You’re with Yayoi-neechan, right?” I asked.

“I was,” she nodded, “until she told me to go look for you while she went out taking care of something.”

“That… wasn’t very smart,” I shook my head as a chill ran down my spine as I tried to shake off the thoughts of us actually being in a horror manga right now.

“Did she tell you where she went?”

“No,” Yukari shook her head. “But it’s just like her, isn’t it?”

I sighed. “It is.”

I slumped on the ground. My head spun for a while – the adrenaline and the moment’s emotions had faded and so had my strength. Reality before my eyes was not much brighter than it was half an hour before. We were still stuck in a building larger than I was comfortable with, surrounded by bodies and possibly about to run into someone who wanted us dead. Or worse.

And the only person among us who seemed to have an inkling of what is going on is not with us.

Very inspiring circumstances, in other words.

“What should we do now?” I said, trying to hide my fatigue and uncertainty. And shame, too. I was the senpai. I should have come up with something.

“Yayoi-neechan told me to get you to the main hall,” Yukari said. “Said she’ll be back in a bit…”

My eyes flared up and I sprang back up on my feet. Having a destination of sort suddenly made everything sound so much better. Of course, it might just be the mere mention of Yayoi that reinvigorated me so. She knew what she was doing and I did not.

“Let’s go then,” I said. “You do remember the way, don’t you?”

Yukari looked at me with a blink, then nodded. Then she turned towards the doorway. Of the many thoughts probably spawning in her head just then, I was sure of one. I trailed after her, laying my hand on her shoulder.

“You regret it, don’t you?” I asked. “Of going to this… place with us in the first place?”

She looked at me, her eyelids twitching. She was trying to look for the right word to say, no doubt. Made me feel all the worse – I had pressed her into tagging along, now that I thought about it.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have-”

“No need to be, nee-chan,” she said. “I would have gone anyway when they started breaking down the door. My odds of living peacefully wouldn’t be,” she smiled and patted me in the cheek, “so high once they found out what we were up to, right?”

“This isn’t much better,” I said, pressing my nails into my palm.

“I don’t think so. Ours weren’t happy lives,” she said. “I can’t be sure, nee-chan, but beginning again doesn’t seem so bad, does it?”

‘Begin again’. Yes, it was possibly the most positive thing I could think about in this predicament.

“Possibly,” I said.

Neither of us said anything for the next minute or so as Yukari led me out of the hallway and into the next. Our eyes wandered from each other’s, surveying the ceiling and floor and the markings on the walls.

It was much better lit and less claustrophobic than the section I had been through, and more breezy.

Unfortunately not much less macabre.

The walls were stained with blood and the floor littered with discarded weapons from a less civilized age: swords, shields, axes, even some arrows and a bow or two. Here and there we saw… bits… that both Yukari and I decided it was better to look away from.

“What do you think happened here, nee-chan?” Yukari asked.

Good question. And by ‘good question’ I meant ‘she should have asked someone else’.

“A fight,” I said. “Or a serial killer on the loose.”

I should not have said that. I could hear Yukari’s heart beating faster and more loudly at the mere mention of the word ‘serial killer’.

“We’re going to be okay, right, nee-chan? Right?”

I did not know what came over me, but Yukari’s question strengthened my resolve. I clenched my fists and took a deep breath.

“I’m not sure about me,” I said, “but you will be.”

I stroked her on the shoulder and pulled her closer to me.

“Don’t worry,” I said, “I’ll be here for you.”

Yukari just nodded and clung tightly to me. That’s right: someone needed to be in charge and make sure Yukari was alright. If Yayoi wasn’t around, I just had to do it.

And then we stumbled upon yet another body.

It was the most brutal thing I had ever seen outside of my dreams. The victim lay in a pool of blood, his neck almost severed, the head hanging on by merit of a single strip of flesh and skin. He was far from helpless at his time of death, if the round shield and curved blade in his hands and the metal plates sewn into his coat were of any indication. Yet the horrified look on his face suggested he didn’t know what hit him.

My skin was crawling.

Then my right arm felt a tight grasp. Yukari was grabbing me just above the elbow. I looked at her: her face was white with horror.

“T-this body…” she stammered, her fingernails digging into my arm, “this body… wasn’t here when I passed through this way!”

I gasped at the realization.

We aren’t alone.

***

Children of Zero, Chapter 06

Chapter 6

Taking Leave

I clutched my chest as I slowly inched along the corridor, stopping every second step to look behind my shoulder. The whole place should not have been so dark. Or desolated. Or perhaps, it had always been like that at this time, only I was never around to look before. I couldn’t tell.

When I was standing outside the storeroom’s closed door, I was just about to snap. I rubbed my chest, took a hasty deep breath and turned the knob.

Absolute silence.

I locked the door behind me, trying to make as little noise as possible as I tiptoed between the boxes and crates. The loudest sound I could hear was my own heartbeat.

“Yayoi-neechan?” I called out. “Yukari?”

Hardly had I finished my sentence when a cold hand from the shadow grabbed mine. Another quickly covered my mouth before I could scream. Before I knew what was happening, I was pulled into the darkness.

I had no recollection whatsoever of what happened in the moments that followed.

I came around with watery eyes, a biting pain in my chest and gasping for air like a girl almost drowned. A pungent stench was left in my nostrils, and my throat was parched.

My roommates were sitting next to me, their faces barely illuminated by the moonlight outside the window. Yukari was looking at me with such joy and relief in her eyes as if I was dead and now lived again. Yayoi, on the other hand, I guessed what her face looked like before I even looked.

“Nee-chan!” Yukari cried – very softly – and threw her arms around my shoulders.

When she let go of me, my lips uttered possibly the most ridiculous thing I’d said in ages.

“Uh… where am I?”

I couldn’t believe my own tongue. Then again, my brain was half-fried now. Everything was swirling before my eyes while my ears rang like a bell.

“Aizawa. Apologies.”

I pushed myself upright just as Yayoi drew her face towards me. My forehead almost slammed on her chin as a result. As per normal, she didn’t seem to care too much about the awkwardness.

“T-that’s alright,” I said.

I struggled to my feet – much easier said than done when my head was still ringing like a bell.

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

Canned food. Sleeping bags – three in total, neatly folded. Gas lighters. Half of our wardrobe – also neatly folded. A first aid box’s worth of medical supplies. Last but not least, a couple of security guard’s tasers. When I woke up, Yayoi and Yukari must have been in the middle of stuffing as many of the supplies into the three backpacks each the size of a small shoe locker as they could.

“Here, this is yours,” Yayoi said, handing me a particular manga volume. I glanced at it and almost let out a gasp too loud for this bunch of conspirator’s own good.

I tore open the cover and flipped to a certain folded page. The card I was thinking so hard to hide earlier in the day dropped on the ground with a dull thud.

Yayoi had picked it up and handed it to me before my brain even registered the drop.

“You’ll be needing it soon,” she said.

If her monotonous voice had only been weird before, now it was downright scary. It did not help that she was looking at me, her eyes having ‘I know what you’re hiding’ written all over it.

“H-how did you-”

“He told me,” she answered curtly.

“What about all of these-”

“He told me.”

“And the packs-”

“He told me.”

I gave up. I turned towards Yukari, only to receive a ‘Don’t bother asking her’ look as she tried zipping her bag. It looked like it was going to burst at the seams.

“I… uh…” I scratched my head. “Look, I deserve an explanation, don’t I?”

“You do,” Yayoi said. “We just don’t have the time.”

She glanced at me, then at the bag least full, then at the pile of remaining supply.

“Leave behind as little as possible,” she said. “We will need everything we can bring.”

“Hold on,” I said, trying to suppress the growing urge to shout. “Hold on a second. We’re leaving… when? And to where?”

“As soon as we’re packed,” Yayoi answered. “And…”

She paused for what seemed like an hour.

“… home.”

My lips froze for the longest time. I might have guessed it would come to this, but facing the truth was much harder than just thinking it and convince myself the worst-case scenario was not going to happen.

“Home? What home?” I cried. “Isn’t this Institute our home? That’s the way it is… that’s the way it will always be… right? Right?”

“No.” came the answer. “No it isn’t. More than this… I’m sorry. I don’t know.”

There was a lull in Yayoi’s voice that told me she was less exasperated with my question and more distressed at having to think any more about the issue than she already had.

“Just… listen to me. Please.”

I hung my head low. Yayoi rarely said “please”; in fact, she never asked anyone for any help or favor at all. I could only guess she was in a sort of distress far beyond anything I had seen before – and I considered myself having seen many things men were not meant to see.

That being the case, I thought, I simply could not defy her. That would be far crueler than I was capable of.

I did as I was told.

It did not take long to shove everything I needed into my pack. A taser, enough food for a week or two, some cold medicine, bandages, gauzes and antiseptics, my most durable-looking clothes and some other necessities. As I packed, I shuddered at the thought of having to use anything inside that wasn’t food. What on Earth were we walking into?

Before I knew it, I was already standing in a circle with my two roommates, cards in hand, traveling packs slung behind our backs. Yes, cards. Plural.

“You didn’t tell me you had one of… these.” I shook my head at Yukari.

“Neither did you, nee-chan,” she said with a giggle.

I held her hand tight.

“I’m sorry,” I said, looking at her in the eyes. “This is the first and last time we hide something from one another. Promise?”

For a brief moment Yukari stared at me with a particularly befuddled expression. But then it vanished – she popped a smile and squeezed my hand too.

“Pinky swear,” she said.

All the while, Yayoi’s face showed no emotions whatsoever. No regret, no remorse, no anxiety. She held her card tight, as if nothing else in the world but that thin purple piece mattered any more.

Then she muttered a sentence in a language I had not heard before.

Glowing glyphs began to appear on the ground in a circular pattern. A sigil of some kind – not unlike what one might expect to find in a stereotypical magical girl anime. Except there was something about it that was far more unnerving and sinister than anything I’d read. For starters, the whole circle was deep purple. There was no fancy pattern within the circle itself: just the curvy scripts of a strange language lining the border – which may or may not be the one I heard.

Then there was the realization that we were embarking on a very, very long journey for real, the likes of which we had never even began to ponder.

Yukari’s fingers twitched in my grasp. I held on to her hand while my own shivered too.

“We are… not going to return, are we?” I asked, my tongue seemingly twisting inside my mouth.

“I’m not foreclosing that option,” Yayoi said. “But it would be-”

She paused, scanning my face and Yukari’s long enough there was no way she’d miss the hesitation we were making no effort to hide.

“-better if we all assume we aren’t.”

“Um… nee-chan,” Yukari said. “Could I- could I ask it it’s too late to call off this thing?”

Her voice was shaky at best: the moment’s thrill and adrenaline had worn out, and the real Yukari, fearful and nervous of what might come, was coming back.

Yayoi threw a glance at Yukari. A soft, mellow, nondescript look she was so fond of, but this time it gave me chills.

“It isn’t,” Yayoi said. “It is too late to return to the life we used to live though. It has been ‘too late’ ever since we received the cards.”

“It’s… that man’s fault, isn’t it?” Yukari said, her fingers grew more fidgety still as her voice trembled.

I was not sure what her dominant emotion was – fear or anger. Neither were good attitudes to have before a long journey. Then again, she was speaking for me however I dreaded to admit it. I was afraid, too. And furious. Just like a sleeping animal rudely awakened by thunder across the clear sky.

“I cannot blame him,” Yayoi said. “After all, being what we are… we’ll have to go home some time, sooner or later.”

She took a deep breath.

“Our lives have never been ours in the first place.”

I heard Yukari mutter something like a curse under her breath.

“You can stay, Sakuraba,” Yayoi said, looking at us in the eyes. “So can you, Aizawa, though I’d rather you don’t. I, however…”

She inched towards the edge of the sigil. A purple glow engulfed her feet the moment she crossed the glyphs.

“I have to go,” she said. “With or without you two.”

“Wait, nee-chan, wait!” I cried, releasing Yukari’s hand and grabbing Yayoi’s. “We are family, remember? We aren’t going anywhere without one another, right? That’s what you taught me, right?”

I toss a pleading glance at Yukari.

“I’m going,” I said. “I’m definitely going. Wherever you go, I’m there!”

There was the weirdest look on Yukari’s face at that time. She was doing – I thought – exactly what I normally did: assessing everything in as rational and logical a manner as possible. The thought that I was not acting like my normal self only crossed my mind then.

“I… I really want to tag along, I really do,” Yukari said. “But-”

Her voice trailed off as she tugged at my sleeve, as if drawing her courage from the very fabrics of my garments.

“But I want to know more before I do,” she said. “If it… the place we’re going really is home, why have I never heard about it? Why hasn’t anyone told me anything until now? What is it like? What kind of people live there? Is it dangerous? Is it beautiful? And…”

I found myself staring at Yayoi too. The rational Aizawa Yuki wanted answers, too, before a decision so life-changing was to be made.

Yayoi simply shook her head.

“I can’t give an answer I don’t have,” she said.

And then suddenly she locked eyes with Yukari.

“But I know one thing: The Elasailas – or whatever is left of them – live there,” she said. “And that is all that matters.”

Elasailas.

The word was as foreign to my ear as a multisyllabic Latin scientific noun, and I was quite sure the first time I had ever heard of it was last night in my dream. Yet it sounded so… familiar. It just did. I couldn’t fathom how.

Yukari’s reaction was not very different from my own. She narrowed her eyes, but her grip on my sleeve never loosened.

“You feel it too, don’t you?” Yayoi said, turning towards me. “Ela-natar aeri caethor-kainen. That’s home calling out for its wayward children.”

Her shaking hands clasped the card.

“I can’t… not answer the call.”

I heard a small gasp from Yukari’s parted lips – then silence. She said no more, but she let go of my sleeve and hung her head low.

She got the message.

“What will await us… there?” she said, still staring at the ground. She paused a little, swallowing a lump in her throat, then spoke again. “Will we… die?”

“All that I know is,” Yayoi said, “we have a war to fight. Survival is not guaranteed, but…”

She placed a hand on Yukari’s shoulder an looked closely at her eyes. At that very moment I thought she was smiling. It passed by so quickly I thought it might have been an illusion. Probably – the Yayoi I knew never showed her emotions, much less smiled.

“I am bound by an oath to keep you both alive should you follow me,” she said. “That means you too, Sakuraba.”

The grimace on Yukari’s face betrayed her feeling. All the talks of doom and gloom and potential death and destruction obviously did not sit well with her.

She probably would have protested too… had we not hear a multitude of steel-toed footsteps from the floor below. Hasty, hurried, angry footsteps. It took but a blink to understand something had gone wrong.

Dreadfully wrong.

“Lord Greybow’s spell has worn off,” Yayoi said, her voice tensing. “We have one chance to leave. Choose quickly.”

She closed her eyes and stepped into the circle.

“I’m in,” I said, striding into the circle, grabbing Yayoi’s free hand.

Meanwhile, Yukari’s eyes were darting nervously between the two of us and the door. Nervously biting her lips. Outside, the stomping drew closer and closer…

Finally something in her snapped.

“W-wait for me!” she cried. “D-don’t leave me behind, Yuki-nee!”

She leaped into the circle, her hand over Yayoi’s and mine.

Everything began to swirl and blur.

Throughout my years at the Institute, I never expected my last sight of it would be several empty cartons in the middle of a barely lit room while some men were battering down the door. But there it was, and there we were. I was sure I heard gasps and screams fading from my ears as my senses shut down.

My last thoughts in this world was of my father – part of me felt terribly guilty having left without a goodbye. But then I realized if I had, he wouldn’t have let me go. Nor would I be so willing to leave.

Neither mattered any more.

Then everything blanked out.

***

Children of Zero, Chapter 04

Chapter 4

The Card

Awkward. That was today’s morning in a single word.

I avoided going to the dining hall until I was sure everyone else was already there. I tried to keep my head down as I walked along the corridors. I turned a blind eye to everything and everyone coming my way, almost crashing into people several times while I paced along with my eyes on the floor. I probably looked like a fool for half the morning.

I spent the whole time absent-mindedly waiting for that purple card burning a hole in my pocket to cool down.

It never did.

I felt as angry at myself as I was confused and befuddled. A single piece of plastic (at least, I thought it was plastic. I might never know) should not wrecked me so. No matter how important it is.

That I kept telling myself so did not make it so, however.

I found myself back at my room as soon as the morning drug was administered. My head was spinning – a common side effect of my specific mix. Images and sounds from the dream flashed and echoed in my mind as I laid my head on my pillow and tried to sleep.

I held up the card and stared at it for a long, long while, until its shape and features were etched in my mind. Purple. As thick as a memory stick for a camera. Decorated with flowery patterns along the edges, the likes of which I couldn’t see myself replicating any time soon.

Between last night and now I also found out the card was virtually unbreakable. With my bare hands, that was – I wouldn’t know if dropping a container truck on it would work. Then again if I had a container truck at my beck and call I’d have better things to do with it than trying to break this thing.

And then there was the thing the figure in my dream said it could do.

Freedom.

I briefly considered the offer, mentally shooting it down as soon as I thought of it. No. That wasn’t what I wanted. Not what I needed. Freedom was pointless if I could not guarantee my survival. However much pity a lover of nature held for an animal bred in captivity, she would be delusional to think the animal would survive outside the cage just because its great-great-something-great grandparents could.

“Not going to use it,” I told myself. I had been patting myself on the back since last night about that, too.

The billion-yen question, however, was “What should I do with this card-thing?”

The most logical thing to do was to throw it away. The garbage can was at the corner of the room and was emptied once every other day.

But then I started thinking. That man might have a point. My life in this place might not go on smoothly for ever. If my knowledge of common magical girl manga tropes were of any indication (and quite fittingly too: however I viewed it me and mine looked like we would fit straight into an immensely dark and exploitative series made with depressed 40-year-olds as the target audience) whatever special powers we had might not survive adulthood.

What would happen to us then?

Better (or worse) still, what if they suddenly came up with another use for our powers that would involve us dying horribly, or worse?

It wasn’t impossible. I had thought of such an end before. But it was not until last night that the sense of threat felt so… real.

Should everything go further downhill, would the card save me? I wouldn’t know. I wouldn’t trust a stranger I saw in my dreams, at least not at once. But if that day somehow came to pass, having a last-ditch resort in my possession would be better than not having it.

I fidgeted the card in my pocket.

What if others found out?

It was a much tougher question to tackle. Answering it required me to know a few other things. For starters, if someone did catch me with this thing, would they know it was literally a get-out-of-jail-free card? If they didn’t, all I might lose would be the card itself. But if they did…

I shuddered. My getting off the Institute was about the last thing they wanted. My drug-addled imagination floated around some possible consequences thereof, ranging from the mildly annoying to the stuff of nightmare.

I took a deep breath. Next question. How likely were they to know?

I pinched my chin. Sarion did mention he knew my parents. Odds were, they were aware of what he was up to as well. And that was me being conservative.

A secret it was, then.

I tapped on my forehead as I lay down. The next thing I needed was a safe hiding place, of which our room was not exactly short on so long as I got a little creative. Wardrobe. Bathroom. Under the bed. In a crack under the window. Between the pages of my manga. I could have even kept it on my person if it wasn’t so warm and likely to be picked up by a heat sensor should I waltz into range of one.

I glanced at a particular manga whose plastic cover I hadn’t yet unraveled. My birthday present this year from my father. I glanced at the cover depicting a cutesy girl roughly two third my age dressed in all pink, wielding a heart-tipped staff and wearing winged boots and winged hairclips. That was the flagship magical girl series of the five ladies of DRAMP, last time I checked.

It was quite nice of my father buying me presents after all those years. Unfortunately – I shook my head – it was rather obvious my father being his good old self was unaware his daughter had grown up during the time he left her to her own device. Sugary-sweet, hyper-idealistic stories of pink and love and friendship and all that jazz weren’t going to appeal to me any more than a rubber teat would a ten-year-old.

In other words, the perfect hiding place for stuff I didn’t want people to know I had.

I sat up straight, picked up the volume, opened the plastic wrap, turned to a random page and folded it diagonally. I slipped the card into the fold, closed the volume, stuffed it back into the wrapping, resealed the package and tossed it back into the pile.

Nobody was going to find it now.

***

I didn’t find the free afternoon as enjoyable as I normally did. It could be the drugs talking. Or maybe the secret I was trying to keep. Or that I had been spending the whole day in an even more antisocial mood than I normally was.

I looked around the room.

Yukari’s smile had faded since early in the morning and never returned for the rest of the afternoon. Yayoi didn’t leave the room ever since she came back after lunch. And Kaori… just disappeared. It was as though they had switched bodies with one another leaving me along locked out of the loop and none the wiser as to what had transpired.

I stood up and walked towards the middle of the room where I could steal a glance at both beds. Yukari was reading some of my light novels. She had never been much of a reader. On a second glance, whatever she was doing was less like reading and more like flicking the pages just for the sake of. On the opposite bed, Yayoi looked like she was sleeping – eyes closed, hands clasped on her chest. But once every so often she’d twist and turn as if bothered by a bad dream, a bad heatburn, mosquito bites, or a combination thereof.

I knew I just had to investigate.

“Yukari,” I said, walking towards her bed and keeping my voice down.

Her reaction destroyed any semblance of considerateness I was trying to cultivate.

“Aaaaah!”

Her book – my book – flew from her startled hand and hit the ground with a solid thud.

“Keep quiet!” I hushed.

My harsh tone faded the moment I looked at her face. Her over-the-top reaction wasn’t even a joke or a prank she was so fond of pulling. Her face froze. Her eyes looked like they were popping from the sockets. Her face was dominated by a deep grimace. She was genuinely frightened.

I pulled her close to me in a tight embrace, patting her on the back.

“Are you alright?” I asked. “I’m sorry for being so… abrupt.”

“I… I am fine,” she said, her voice much, much less vigorous than normal.

“Is another message bothering you?” I said. “Like I said so many times… if you feel uncomfortable about anything, tell me. It gets better with company, doesn’t it?”

I had been telling her that since day one. ‘Tell me’ – that was our magic word. It had never lost its usefulness.

Until now.

For the longest time Yukari stared at me with an increasingly skeptical look. And then she asked a question that probably had never crossed her mind before.

“Nee-chan… If something,” she paused, her hands squeezing on mine, “something really, really unexpected happens… can I still trust you?”

I stared back at her. Her eyes were watery now, overflowing into a thin stream down her cheeks. I could feel her hands trembling in my grip. Logic dictated I should say something reassuring.

“Of course you can!” I said. “It’s like I’ve told you – family is there to support one another, right? We don’t hide things from one another, do we-”

My voice trailed off just as I realized my own hypocrisy. I would have withdraw both hands, cover my mouth and made my best ‘I screwed up’ face if it were any other time.

I couldn’t afford to. Not this time.

I took a deep breath and tried a more reasonable approach.

“Why’d you ask?” I said. “Did you see something that scared you?”

“N-no,” Yukari said, still holding on to my hands. “It’s just… just a gut feeling. That is all.”

“You aren’t a ‘gut feeling’ girl,” I said confidently, because it was true from my experience. “I… well, I can’t force you to tell me what you don’t want, but…”

I released her hands, moving mine towards her face and clasped around her cheeks.

“I’m always here,” I said. “ Whatever happens. That’s not going to change… ever.”

I did not know for how long I was holding Yukari. Best estimation was ‘until she stopped looking like she was about to cry’.

When I looked up, Yayoi was already gone. Reminded me how I wished I could blend into the shadow half as well.

***

I tapped my finger on the table nervously. My impatience drew a few eyes from across the scantly-decorated dining hall.

Kaori did not show up for dinner.

The thought that I would blame a newcomer for missing dinner had never crossed my mind. I guessed Institute-made food was much worse than an acquired taste. Had it not been for certain culinary manga at my disposal I would have grown up thinking mashed potatoes and ramen smelling faintly like bleach were all that there is to know about the finer arts of cooking.

No, it was the act of not showing up that worried me. We had not known her that long, but she was extremely punctual and obedient – never showed up late any time for any reason, and never failed to observe an instruction. Her upbringing might have had something to do with it. There was a saying floating around going along the lines of “the Hasegawa clan is what happens when the heavens take the best of Germanic efficiency and Japanese attention to detail, mix them together and pour the result into human-shaped molds.”

And then I realized the last time I saw her was early in the morning when we woke up. Something was very, very wrong.

That Yukari looked like she did not mind her absence at all only made me more anxious.

“Just let her be, nee-chan,” she told me. “Why, the princess shall be back… when she’s hungry enough. I know her type.”

And then she went back to gobbling on her ration as though she had been an adoring fan of Institute food.

“Do you?”

I might have sounded far more sullen than the situation called for.

“More than enough for several lifetimes.”

No, Yukari, this was not normal behavior. I would be a fool to think it was. But I would be an even bigger fool to tell her that. The last time I tried correcting her on something she felt very strongly about, Yukari was mad at me for weeks – even though at the end of the day I could find no reasonable argument whatsoever supporting her point. I would have to live with it. No matter how one looked at us, we were family – we didn’t get to choose our own.

There was also the rotating camera above the fifteen-meter-by-twenty, the bugs embedded on the chair and table, and several dozen ‘specimens’ our age randomly seated all over the place. Of the other girls in the place I had little good to say, although it was probably not their fault. Our eyes and theirs rarely met, and if that happened both side would immediately disengage. It was an unspoken rule in the place: we’d hang around our own, and everyone else fell into an ubiquitous ‘them’ that implied hostility. The rule had been in place for so long, I could not remember when it began.

My best guess was, ‘before I was born’.

For the rest of our dinner, Yukari’s face was weird: there was the usual grimace of the Yukari who hated the cooking, but accompanied by the gleam in the eyes of the Yukari who was delighting in not having to suffer possibly the only thing she disliked more than the food itself.

Both vanished the moment we stepped out of the dining hall. By the time we got back, her antsiness had returned in force.

She paced around the room, biting her nails. She walked from the bathroom to my bed, then to the window, then to the wardrobe, then back again. It was obvious she had not fully recovered from… whatever she saw in the afternoon.

Finally, I lost my patience.

“You could let me know about your message,” I said.

By which I meant ‘let me have a look at it’. She got it too – her response was shaking her head like her life depended on it.

“It’s-it’s nothing,” she said.

“No it’s not,” I said, raising my voice a little. I stood up from my bed, walked towards her, placed both hands on her shoulders and looked at her in the eyes.

“You aren’t good at hiding what you feel,” I said. “Yukari, I want to help you.”

Yukari shook her head. I rolled my eyes in disbelief: she was backing away from me, as if I was the threat rather than the one trying to defuse it. I tried reaching for her.

Bad idea, Yuki. Bad, bad idea.

“P-please let me be, nee-chan,” Yukari stammered. “D-don’t touch me!”

Panic aside, she looked like she would readily swat my hand away as though it were a gnat if I would but inch my finger a little closer to her.

I narrowed my eyes and withdrew my hand, thinking how else I could break the stranglehold.

And then the door swung open.

Yayoi was standing at the doorway. Stone-faced, as per usual, but her hand was clutching the doorknob so hard she might have ripped it from the doorboard had she been just a little stronger.

“Aizawa. Sakuraba.”

Her voice was soft and seemingly serene, yet subtly higher-pitched than it normally was. She was afraid, and both of us knew it.

“Hasegawa is… gone.”

Next thing I knew, there were many footsteps hurrying along the corridor towards our room. Steel-toed footsteps.

Now it was my turn to be frightened.

***

Children of Zero, Chapter 03

Chapter 3

Sarion Greybow

Contrary to logical belief, our ‘messages’ didn’t usually come in our dreams. They could strike anywhere and any time. It seemed to me the whole reason we were kept here was we’d be a danger to ourselves and others if we weren’t locked up. Just like prisoners – except we hardly did anything wrong ourselves.

When a message accompanied a dream, however, it tended to be exceptionally vivid, not unlike what they called ‘lucid dreams’.

Tonight was one such occasion.

I opened my eyes in the dream world to find myself standing in front of a… something.

It looked like a temple at first sight. Even the layout of the place resembled a traditional Japanese Shinto shrine, with the exception of the design of the arc and the decorations mounted on it. There was a ‘yard’ and a long, straight stairway leading directly to the upper floor. There were torches and candles strategically placed along the stairway so as to create a real sense of solemness. There was also the sweet smell of incense – similar to, yet not entirely the same as that I saw the family of the staff burn on certain occasions.

On the other hand, there were arrays of weapon racks scattered in a semi-circle on the yard stocked with nothing but bows and arrows. The bows were ornately carved with wavy patterns and shapes from one end of the stave to the other and strung with striped yellow and deep crimson bowstrings. The arrows, too, were placed in golden quivers with trees and the sun and the moon and the stars emblazoned on them. Part of me wanted to pick one up, but then I remembered what happened the last time I tried interacting with the environment in a dream. The consequence was not something I would soon forget.

I looked at the stairway. It was built not of stone but a kind or organic, woody material that wasn’t quite like wood. It looked far whiter and – as I ran a finger over the surface – smoother than run-of-the-mill furniture.

Then I heard a voice from the top floor. No, less a real voice and more like an airy whisper, yet it echoed within my ears. It was so clear, so vivid… and yet I understood not a word. I had never heard that language before, and found my tongue twisting if I tried mimicking the sound pattern the voice made. Yet I was sure – there was no rational reason behind it but for a gut feeling – I was being called.

It was times like those that my preference for rational thoughts were thrown out of the window. Driven by curiosity, I began ascending the stairway.

It did not take me very long to regret my decision. The first dozen steps up the stairway was nothing out of the ordinary. But then everything began to warp and contort. Faint silhouettes appeared, gathering in tight ‘balls’ that circled around me. At first sight they were vaguely human-shaped, with arms and eyes and noses; but no mouths. The further I ascended the more they mingled and coalesced with each other. By the time I was nearing the top, all I could see was gleaming balls of cloud-like limbs and heads and torsos.

Their look was one thing, the sound that they make another. Imagine a suffocating baby trying to cry its last. Then imagine a top-notch violinist performing before a world-class audience. Then imagine both paying at the same time as a harrowing wind blew across the face. I wished I could describe it in a more succinct manner.

I bit my lips. “They aren’t real,” I thought to myself repeatedly. It was much harder to disbelieve whatever I was seeing now than it normally was. Something felt almost wrong about ignoring the illusion – felt like I was holding a purse full of money walking by a blind lame beggar in rags and pretending she did not exist. I couldn’t pinpoint as to how. It made no sense whatsoever from a rational perspective.

Whatever they were, the amalgamations of ghastly limbs and heads seemed harmless to me. As I stretched my hand at the nearest of them, the entire ball would shirk away, only to come back to where it was the moment my arm pulled back. They were watching me, for what I could not tell.

I put my left foot on the last step. The upper temple appeared before my eyes, cloaked in a curtain of mist. I could vaguely make out an alien architecture that looked like a small brick-and-mortar tower fused with an oak tree so that the left half of the tower was replaced by the tree, and the tree’s right by the tower. As I approached, I could make out a kind of waxy, sappy adhesive paste having apparently been used to weld the two together.

More balls of limbs and torsos were waiting for me at the top, where they were truly numerous. They floated atop the tree, circled around the tower’s base, hovering above the mossy brick floor, passing through solid surfaces and generally going about life – if there indeed had been life in this place. They mostly ignored me as I walked past save for those who were already ‘attending’ me. Those who acknowledged my presence might or might not have made a vague attempt to communicate. All I could see was their… bodies flailing towards the thick steel door at the base of the tower.

I walked towards the door, spurred partly by curiosity and partly because it was the most logical thing to do. I hesitated at the doorstep when the large dark-grey slab swung open without my input. I was willing the moment I set foot behind, the door would slam shut and I’d be trapped there.

In the end, my curiosity won the game. I inched my shaking feet towards the doorway, took several deep breaths, then tiptoed across, nervous at the prospect of waking up things I was not meant to disturb.

I held my breath as the heavy door creaked behind me.

To my relief (and partial bewilderment) the door moved no further. I clutched my chest and gasped for air – the false alarm certainly didn’t cut my heart any slack.

Then I looked up.

I found myself standing in a huge hall that looked far larger than the tower could have logically accommodate. “The size of a football stadium” was possibly an exaggeration; yet it could not have been smaller than three tennis courts put side-by side. The ceiling was removed far above me, propped up by two rows of columns far more elaborately carved than would be appropriate in such a place. No light shone upon the hall save for a glimmering flicker from the floor originating from what looked like luminescent fungi creeping up on fine ceramic tiling.

Again I held my breath. Obviously someone of great wealth and taste used to live here. Used to.

As I walked further into the hall, my eyes caught a glimpse of a throne at the opposite end that only confirmed my belief. Veiled in mist and fog, the throne nonetheless managed to conjure that feeling of awe from whoever would behold it. One would need to pile three Yuki’s one on top of the other to reach its highest point, for starters. Everyone in my dorm could sit one next to each other on that throne and still leaving room for more. The lion and tiger engravings on the sides managed to be minimalistic and majestic at the same time: proof that when an artist had got a large enough rock to work with it didn’t need a lot of talent to make a frightening relief.

I approached the throne. Something – aside from curiosity, which by now had all but taken over my rational thoughts – was drawing me to it in such a way I could not resist. Literally: My feet kept moving even though I was sure I had tried to stop. It was not before I was within several yards of the throne could I halt my steps.

I swallowed nervously. There was something wrong about the throne, and it was not just the size. I should have backed away, but I didn’t. What a mistake it was.

“This is…”

My dream – in and of itself a ‘message’ – was broadcasting another at me. A message within a message.

Images. Flashing. Rapidly. Before. My. Eyes.

Broken skull. Demon face. Severed arm. Broken blade. Shattered shield. Walls collapsed. Houses burnt. Deformed body. Cancer cells. Toothy jaw. Rotting bull. They flashed. They shuffled. They danced before my eyes. They repeated themselves in no particular order.

Then came a scream from nowhere echoing directly into my ears. Carefully measured so that it would not break my ear drums, but just barely.

Chills ran all over my body. My heart went on overdrive. My knees felt weak. My hands fell limp. My eyes watered. I had never been so frightened before. I could maintain just enough self control to back as far away from the throne as I could.

Jumping away from the throne, I almost tripped and fell. If not for the pillar within an arm’s reach to clutch to, I might as well have.

And then I heard another string of laughter.

“Greetings and salutations.”

“KYAAAA!”

This time I fell for real, sprawling on the ground. It wasn’t even a belligerent or creepy sort of laughter, to think of it: more like something you would hear from a friendly neighborhood old man who passed his time reading newspaper and playing shogi. It didn’t matter: My mind was so strained then, even a cat’s mew would have melted it down.

I was not sure what happened then. My mind was so inundated and my senses so dulled, I might as well have fallen into a coma for the next half a minute.

When I came round, I was standing before the throne, again at the uncomfortable distance I found myself in moments before. Unlike the last time, no scary subliminal message bombarded my brain this once.

The throne was also occupied now, but I did not notice that until several seconds had passed.

It was the first time I’d seen a man in my dreams who was relatively human. Not demons in the shape of men. Not humanoid creatures who would sprout fangs and claws and scary appendages where they did not belong. Not toothy jaws and scaly faces bursting from the chest and limbs of demure-looking little children. Not fleshy giants who ate people for breakfast, lunch and dinner as… as that particular manga that scared me so much yet I couldn’t rip my eyes from.

The first thing about him that caught my attention was his clothing. His garment and my uniform might as well have been cut from the same bolt of cloth. The color scheme was the same: grey for primary color, dark blue and yellow lining. Obviously his was not a sailor uniform with plaid skirt and square collar, but some sort of long trimmed ceremonial robe reaching his feet.

“My apologies. As you can see my humble abode is not what it used to be.”

His voice drew my attention to his face. Everything I was going to say, every question I was going to ask… faded away. There were some people, as I’d read, who presented themselves in such a manner lesser people would have no choice but keep their mouths shut. The man before me was such a person. Square jaw, sharp brow, high nose, pronounced cheekbones, tanned complexion, beard and mustache untrimmed but far from shaggy… his face might as well have been twice as large as mine. His body was proportionately large, too: his arms were thick and his bare hands could easily break every bone in my body if he so wished. On his head he wore a large gold crown encrusted with grey gemstones, while his hands were clad in a pair of equally luxurious gemmed iron gauntlets.

Except that was probably far from his thought. There he was, sitting on his throne, presenting to me a kind and compassionate face: a smile on his lips and his eyes never avoiding mine.

I didn’t understand why, but his presence calmed me. My brain immediately resumed working. No matter how I looked at the man before me, the whole business was hardly normal. I didn’t – I could even say I was not supposed to – meet or speak with anyone during a message… because messages weren’t supposed to exist.

But here he was, trying to talk to me. It looked obvious I was not going to proceed with this dream without talking to him.

“I…” I cleared my voice. “I would be glad to know, uh… who am I having the pleasure to speak to this day?”

Polite. Always begin things politely. My father said my mother was like that in her days and it had served her well. I had no way to find out now, but so far that approach had served me well enough. Most of the times.

It worked, in the sense that the man looked pleased.

“Ah, right. Where are my manners?” He said, standing up from his seat. He towered over me: From top to toe he might as well have been twice as tall as myself.

“The name is Sarion Greybow,” he said with a bow. “I used to be an extraordinarily important figure in a land far, far away. Now all I have,” he thumbed at himself – his garment and jewelries, “is but some crumbs of the perks I used to enjoy.”

“… My pleasure, sir,” I answered with an even deeper bow.

Then I kept silent. I tried to tear my eyes off his gaze, but couldn’t. I couldn’t decide whether he was trying to kill me or not – I was no stranger to being brutally murdered in a dream and it never got easier.

“No need to be too formal,” he said. “Your parents and I go a long way back.”

I widened my eyes at him.

“Were they?” I asked, trying my very best (with limited success) to sound as disinterested as I could. Telling myself I needed not and should not involve myself with this… person. Whoever or whatever he was.

“It is a long story you might not be interested in hearing in full,” he said. “I do, however, come with an offer that might.”

My self-defense mechanism kicked in: Anyone and everyone who uttered the word ‘offer’ should be treated with as much suspicion as a scary man with tattoos all over carrying a butcher knife walking into a kindergarten. I tried not to show it, but the way he eyed me suggested he knew exactly how I was feeling.

“You don’t look terribly convinced,” he said.

“No, sir,” I said. “I am just… confused. That is all.”

It was his turn to widen his eyes. Which was good. I needed the initiative in this conversation.

“Confused?” he said.

“I… I don’t usually get spoken to in my dreams, sir,” I said. “All those I’ve had have been… messages. Vague. Surreal. Occasionally scary. But no one has ever spoken to me before.”

“But of course,” he said. “Perhaps a little chat is in order.”

He sat back down on his throne, crossing his legs, his hands planted on the lion-headed armrests.

“I suppose I could offer some explanations,” he said, “so as to demonstrate my goodwill. Ask away.”

The precious initiative I thought I had gained was lost again. It was… unexpected, to say the least, People in a position of power in my life rarely let me ask questions. What was he, that he would let me do just about the thing everyone in the Institute so dreaded?

He wasn’t real. That had to be the reason.

“Anything?” I asked.

“Anything,” he nodded.

Which meant, I thought as I twiddled my thumb, I could actually get away with asking anything. Perhaps my initiative was not entirely lost.

“It’s a nice… chair, sir,” I began, pointing at his throne. “Where did you get it?”

Contrary to my expectation, he did not seem flustered at all.

“Depends on how much you are willing to believe me,” he said. “The unabridged truth is, it was carved from a living mountain by Elasailas – High Elven – master craftsmen who wished to pay me tribute and respect, upon my coronation as Emperor. That was five hundred years ago last Thursday by your calendar.”

Ha-ha. Very funny. I would have laughed out loud, but then I managed to stop myself. That would be most impolite and therefore unwise, not to mention probably extremely dangerous.

“I… see,” I said. I was not very successful feigning awe, however. He saw right through it

“And I see you don’t believe me,” he said. “Not entirely surprising. But then…”

He steepled his fingers as he looked at me.

“You did have a bit of an unpleasant experience next to it, didn’t you?” he said. “A hallucination, perhaps – a frightening one, even. Am I correct?”

Momentarily I did not know what to say. He was right – I didn’t think I would ever forget that last message I got just now. However, I was being too readable then. It was no rocket science deducing I was frightened.

“Flashing objects, dead people, deformed animals, shattered household items…” he continued. “Followed by terrible screams. Am I correct?”

My first thought was ‘he was reading my mind’. A hellishly creepy notion, to be sure. Either way, I couldn’t help blurting out a question.

“H-how did you know, sir?” I asked; and I was probably looking far more awkward and flustered than I should have been.

“Because this is my throne and I know how it works. The spirit world has not been kind to it,” he answered. “Think of the Living Mountain as a giant sponge, but for souls and spirits rather than water. It is alive, too, and as any living thing it has self-defense mechanism. If I am not sitting here to control it, it would execute that mechanism by broadcasting the most frightening images and sounds the souls trapped in the stone’s fabrics had seen, at anyone and everyone getting close to it. You were just at the wrong place at the wrong time.”

I was not sure if I completely understood the explanation. Either way, his explanation succeeded in but one thing – making me even more uncomfortable.

“But… but this is a dream, isn’t it?” I said quickly, dropping even my polite manner of speech. “Surely… surely all of this is just an illusion, is it?”

“Or is it?” he said with a grin. “I know what you are, daughter of Ryotaro Aizawa, and what purpose you are supposed to serve. With that knowledge I can assure you to your eyes some ‘illusions’ are more real than you would like to think.”

I could not remember any time my self-control failed as hard as it did this time.

“My purpose?” I asked back. “I… have a purpose? Tell me! What is it?”

“The time’s not right,” he answered, flailing his right arm. “This ‘Institute’ of yours has planned for you a future that may or may not be to your taste, that is all I can say at this point in time.”

“Are you with them… sir?” I asked, trying to regain my composure.

“Yes, and no,” he said. “In some aspects, our interests overlap. In some others, they don’t.”

Then suddenly he stood up. So abrupt was his move, I was backing away from him before I even realized what I was doing. When I did realize, it dawned to me how much I was overreacting: All that he did was just standing up over his throne.

Somehow he didn’t mind me. Somehow.

“Yuki Aizawa, the Institute has designs for you that you cannot influence or impact on in any way except for… shall I say childish and impotent disobedience?” he said, his voice loud and clear. “Surely you wouldn’t want this to happen, would you?”

“N-no, of course not,” I said.

Almost at once I felt like punching myself in the face. It was established that I could not lie, but I was blurting out too much truth for my rational self to be comfortable with.

“If I told you it does not have to be like this, would you believe me?” the man continued. “If I told you there is a way you can make your own future, would you believe me? If I told you all of this can be painlessly avoided, would you believe me?”

“No.”

The words left my lips as naturally as a baby’s first cry for her mother.

“No I would not.”

Sarion Greybow looked surprised, but not mad. Instead, he looked mildly amused.

“Why not?”

At once I felt something gripping my mind, like hypnosis. I didn’t know what was happening, except that I could not hide or lie this time. My lips moved and uttered words I was thinking but was never willing to share.

“Because… changes,” I said. “I hate them. I hate waking up one day finding myself on a strange bed. I hate not being without people I’ve grown close throughout my life. I hate having to go to bed and wake up at an hour I was not comfortable with. I… I just don’t like changes. Any kind of changes.”

I felt chilled to the bones. What was I even saying?

“I see,” Sarion Greybow said. “And I sympathize.”

He sat back down on his chair.

“I could force you to do what I want you to – and it would be far more beneficial to you than what the Institute has in store for you,” he said. “But that would make me no better than them.”

He took a deep breath, then locked eyes with me again.

“So I’ll do something else.”

He produced from the folds of his robe a little purple card. He leaned towards me and handed it to me.

“Here, have this.”

The card felt warm to my touch, as if it was just recently ripped from an electric heater. I looked at it to find a few rows of words in a language I was not familiar with. Strangely, even though I could not read the language, I was sure what it was saying. It made no sense whatsoever, but I found myself reading the words out loud.

“‘This is to certify that Aizawa Yuki, the holder of this card, is entitled to one single trip through the Passage of the Divine’.” I looked at the man’s face, narrowing my eyes. “What is it supposed to mean?”

“Your ticket to freedom,” Sarion Greybow said. “It allows you to leave this world you aren’t so fond of. Go to another place. Another time. Another dimension. Forget about everything you have undergone in this wretched place, and build everything anew. Just hold the ticket and call my name four times, and the wings of freedom shall take you away to somewhere new.”

I found my entire body shivering.

“But… but I didn’t say I want to leave the Institute!”

“You didn’t,” Sarion said. “And I am not making you. This ticket is yours, and you can do whatever you want with it. Use it. Throw it away. Trade it off for something you like – such as those children’s picture books you are so fond of. Keep it in a secure place nobody would ever find it. It’s up to you. Your choice. Your life. Your chance to become something greater than what you presently are.”

I clutched the ticket in my hands for a long, long while.

“Why are you doing this to… I mean, for me?” I finally asked. “What have I ever done to… I mean, for you?”

“That is for you to find out,” Sarion simply said. “Of course, if you choose not to go… what I am and what I want you to do is no longer relevant. In which case all I can do is bid you good luck.”

As Sarion finished his speech, I felt something strange in the air. The fabrics of the realizty before my eyes were breaking out: everything before my eyes was strating to distort and break apart. Slowly the bits and pieces of that broken reality were sucked into a spiralling vortex in the background as if being flushed down a gigantic twister. Even the man before me and his magnificent throne dissipated too.

Before long, the only things I could hear was the last words he had for me.

“I believe you will make the right choice, Yuki Aizawa.”

And then I woke up, drenched in sweat.

Outside, the sky was dark still.

Everyone was still in deep slumber.

My left hand was holding a shiny purple card warm to the touch that had not been there when I fell asleep.

***