“How? How can it know how to stop your control of the Power? What did it do?”
Sho reached into a small storage pocket tucked behind a gap in his armor, producing his hand and showing what appeared to Aryu to be an empty palm.
Aryu’s confusion at the gesture was obvious. “Look closer,” asked Sho, indicating the center of his hand.
Once closer, Aryu could see what appeared to be a small, perfectly straight hair, barely noticeable in such a large hand. “What is it? They didn’t do this with a hair did they?”
“No,” Sho said, “not a hair. it's ridged and the end is feathered. It seems to be a small dart.”
Aryu quickly began looking himself over, trying to find an errant hair-sized projectile. “Don’t worry, Aryu. I don’t think you were an intended target. I doubt they did anything to you.”
Aryu looked himself over anyway, convinced he was more to them than just a collectible. Eventually he stopped, finding nothing. Not even in the leathery folds of his wings. They hadn’t thought him powerful enough to require such a tactic.
Crystal began screaming even louder now as Nixon could be seen with her hand in his, bowing in a praying motion as she looked skyward with complete ambivalence to what Nixon was doing. The scene was unsettling. “What’s wrong with your mother? I’ve never seen anyone so…so…”
“Terrified?” he finished.
“Well, I’m not even sure that’s what it is. It seems to be even deeper than that.”
Sho agreed, “Very good, Aryu. You’re right, of course. It is deeper than fear and terror. Much deeper.”
“From losing her grasp on the Power? You don’t seem as bad as she does but you’re in the same boat, and Nixon looks fine.”
“Well, first off, I don’t think our large friend over there is affected by this cunning little attack. His abilities stem from somewhere beyond mine and those of my mother. Also, although I appreciate the confidence you seem to have in my willingness to accept what has befallen us, I assure you I am horrified beyond reckoning. I have not been without command of the Power in ages, and the feeling is very disorientating. I also fear what will happen to this place and the life I help maintain here. If we can’t find a way to reverse what has been done, the thought of what could happen here absolutely crushes me.”
He looked at Aryu very seriously. “She is in much more pain than I could ever imagine. She has been a student and Embracer of the Power since she was very young, and has grown her abilities to go beyond simply conjuring havens and projectiles of energy. My mother, despite my undying love for her, was foolish enough to begin experiencing the Echoes of the Omnis, and it is the loss of that all-encompassing warmth of the Everything that has put her into this state, accompanied by the memory of the Est Vacuus.”
“Omnis? Est what?”
Sho looked at the ground in his look of removed non-interest and smirked. “No, no of course you don’t know. Forgive me, Aryu. I forget myself. The situation has me not thinking clearly. I can’t begin to tell you the full story about what I’m speaking of; someone with no grasp of the Power could never understand the whole story. Suffice to say there is a…presence, a level beyond what you know as the Power, and it has unfathomable levels of glory within it, but also there is a level of emptiness beyond even death that accompanies this ‘everything’ that must be experienced at the same time. It is the loss of the feeling of one and the memory of the feeling of the other that has done this to her. It may take some time to bring her out of the state she’s in right now.”
Aryu didn’t understand, but he supposed that was natural. Sho was speaking of things a young man from a small southern village could never grasp and likely shouldn’t try. "Do you think we have time?” Aryu asked as Crystal let loose another barrage of agony. “The Herald said an army is on the way.”
Sho’s unwillingness to answer said all that was needed, and once again Aryu was wrapped in the crushing terror of the army and what it was like to be in their path. He reached back and pulled the Shi Kaze from its sheath and allowed the distant, soothing comfort of its power to fill him with what little easing pleasantness it could. If he was going to die here, days from his homeland and his friend, it was not going to be on his knees begging to be released. The great and powerful sword in his hands reminded him of this, and it was doing an admirable job doing so.
Sho looked at the sword in Aryu’s hands. “Just having that on our side picks my spirits up. Both my mother and I have held the title of Ryuujin at different times. Both of us turned the sword over to someone else, not wanting to be responsible for its power or destructiveness. Not all who come into its possession can wield it properly. For both of us, it was best to just let it go.”
Aryu had a difficult time thinking about letting it go so easily. Even now it was doing wonders for him just by sitting in his hand.
Shortly thereafter, the yelling stopped, and Sho and Aryu looked to see what was going on. They saw Nixon kneeling over an unconscious Crystal, her breathing rapid and her eyes fluttering behind their lids. Nixon addressed them as they approached.
“I’ve done wha’ I can fer
