As if to spite him, a huge mass appeared beneath the water, rising quickly below Nkem’s feet. Zawne screamed, “Look out!” but it happened too fast. The shark exploded out of the water and caught Nkem in its mouth. There was a quick image of Nkem’s body being crunched by the shark’s serrated teeth. Then the beast was back underwater, swimming away with its meal. Nkem was gone, only an inky trail of blood in the water to suggest he had ever been there at all.
There was a welcoming party waiting for Zawne and Stingl as they trudged out of the water and collapsed on the pebbly beach, exhausted. They sat on the rocks and panted while the waves broke against them.
Thun came over with a horde of P2 drones hovering over his head. “Well, well, I’ll be damned. I didn’t think you had the guts, Prince Zawne, yet here you are, the first two men to reach Lodden. You must feel so relieved.”
“Huh.” Zawne huffed. “I didn’t think I had it in me. But now I know I can be supreme as a human being. I just had to look at life’s challenges differently. I embraced my pain.” Zawne glanced at Stingl. “And I embraced my teammates. Aside from them, I just remembered Lordin. I kept thinking of our first date, at Lithern Shrine, when we sang together and played the piano. I let her strength and love, my pain and guilt for her passing, and my teammates’ support get me to the end. I would never have made it here without them. But there is one challenge I’m still working on.”
“What’s that?”
Zawne was weeping. Thun waited patiently, but the prince didn’t speak. He just gazed out at the water, where his friend had just lost his life.
“Well, Prince Zawne,” Thun said glumly. “It seems you have learned the lesson of teamwork. You understand now the bitter truth of death, its inescapability. Judging by your wounds, I’d say you looked death in the face and overcame. You’ve defeated your mind’s interpretations of sloth, pain, fear, and infirmity. You’ve learned that it’s within your power to disable a foe’s supremacy while still preserving its life. Well done, valiant comrade! I welcome you to your training in Lodden. This will be your home for the next year and a half. The physical and mental tasks we’ve prepared for you are designed to solidify your learnings and to safeguard Geniverd, starting with the principles of Decens-Lenitas.”
I shook free of Zawne’s memories with a deep sense of understanding. I had known the Aska trials were tough, but I had never imagined that the hardships Zawne and Raad had been forced to endure were so brutal. The deaths seemed pointless to me. I couldn’t understand why anyone would subject themselves to such torture, though I supposed in Zawne’s case, he would have been dead or at least hollow without his Aska training. The loss of Lordin had torn his soul asunder, and the great revelation of his training had mended it.
I took a second to marvel at Zawne’s intense devotion to Lordin. Her memory had literally turned him superhuman, had him wrestling leopards and trudging through the searing heat of the desert for months on end. It made me doubt my own worth. Could I ever have inspired Zawne in such a way? Asking myself the question gave me the answer.
I loved Zawne and Zawne loved me, but he would always love Lordin more. She had been his first, his truest. If Zawne felt for Lordin what I had always, in the deepest chambers of my heart, felt for Roki, we would always be loved, yet loved in the back seat. Zawne and I were afterglows of other loves, ghosts of a feeling that could never be recreated.
Chapter 18
I had become introspective and hadn’t noticed Roki staring at me. “Well,” he asked, “did you figure it out? Did you get a clue?”
I snapped out of my daydream and looked down at Zawne, the poor man asleep on his couch, all alone in the world with his warrior’s heart fractured into pieces. “Yes,” I told Roki. “The clue is love, indefinable and incorruptible love.”
Roki blinked at me. “The cure is in love? I don’t understand, Kaelyn.”
I smiled, still gazing at Zawne. I was happy Roki couldn’t hear my thoughts. Zawne was such a good man. He deserved the best, and if I truly loved him, I would leave him alone. I couldn’t put another hole in his heart with my confused feelings. I couldn’t be with him and Roki. I had to choose.
“The cure is at Lithern Shrine,” I said. “It was the location of Zawne and Lordin’s first date. I think it is the only place of love that Lordin has ever known. If she stored the cure to save humanity anywhere, it’s going to be at Lithern Shrine.”
I chuckled to myself. “It’s funny, you know. For all Lordin’s evil, she still loves Zawne. I can’t help but think that whatever immoral path she is on now, she’s still attached to her human feelings for him. I’m sure she’s fumbling for purchase, trying to rise as a powerful Min while maintaining her relationship with Zawne. I can’t help but wonder what she would have been like without Emell’s corruption.”
“We can wonder later,” Roki said, taking me gently by the arm. “Right now we have a world to save. Let’s get our butts to Lithern Shrine!”
Sure enough, Roki and I found the cure inside the piano’s casing. It was a green substance in a small vial, wrapped neatly in cloth and tucked inside the guts of the piano.
“Got it,” I said, holding up the vial.
Roki smiled. “Great. Now we just need to reproduce it
