Chapter 14
Ryan:
We had collected our packs in the dining room, and Cor had waved us off to bed. An hour later, lying in the top bunk, I gave a quick glance into the bed below. Was Jason asleep? It was too dark to see, and if he was in dreamland, I didn’t want to wake him. Why wasn’t I asleep? I would need my rest... but my mind wouldn’t stop working. Here we are, four kids against an alien world, ready to go out to risk our lives against some evil emperor… and we’re all excited. Are we supposed to be?
Well, we shouldn’t be scared.
I thought about being the leader. “Fearless” Erin had said. No way. I was scared. I don’t know anything about this land we’re going into. I’ve got powers that I don’t even begin to understand and I’m supposed to lead these other three kids, and somehow not get us captured or killed.
And then a little paper airplane floated in through the window and hovered over my bunk. I snatched it out of the air and read, “Ryan, if you’re still awake, meet me on the roof. —Sensei.”
I smiled, relieved. No more pretending to sleep. I quietly made my way out of the dormitory and up the winding stairs to the roof. The sentries were gone, everyone either resting or occupied with preparations to leave. There was only a single shadowy figure toward the edge of the battlements.
“Sensei?” I raised my voice in the calm night air. As I came closer, I saw he was sitting on the raised stones, cross-legged, with his knees hanging over the edge, playing with the wind. I saw it, felt it, the rhythmic motions in the sky. After a moment, he let the breeze go its own way, following it with a sigh. I was surprised at what I read from it, frustration, resignation, regretful acceptance.
“Ryan, I always knew you’d be the leader,” he said, back toward me.
I came up and joined him, sitting down on the square battlement at his left. I shrugged and yawned. “I suppose that someone has to be.”
He gave a little laugh. “You’ll be a good leader, don’t worry.”
I stretched my arms, and realized how tired I was. I decided to be direct, “What is it you wanted me here for?”
He exhaled slowly, heavily. “I have a... most difficult challenge for you.”
It was the first time I had heard Sensei struggle to find his words. I stopped stretching and turned more to face my teacher. “How could this be crazier than anything else you taught us?” I forced a smile.
Not looking at me, he raised a stray pebble in the wind and hurled it toward the dark forest. “This is different. There really is no easy way of saying it.”
He paused, evidently judging my reaction, but, still, he wouldn’t meet my eyes. I followed his gaze toward the moon and stars spread through the night sky across the valley, and I wondered if he wasn’t more delirious after today’s developments than I was.
“Everything matters, Ryan. You believe this too?” he asked.
“Yes,” I answered. It was a simple response, easy enough.
He gave a little smile and nodded. “Everything matters, Ryan, and this is… something, at least. Look out there, at the forest down there, those mountains in the distance, that air, that moon. All of it is just as real as it seems, and less real than it might be.”
He paused and crossed his arms. “It is all a bit too much, is it not? Think back to when you first met Devidis. Jason first called his talent ‘magic.’ All four of you were drawn to Devidis in various strange ways, and he tricked you, trapped you, for reasons unclear. And then you awakened in a place where his name has an even more powerful, more sinister meaning.”
He turned toward me. “A place,” he continued, uncrossing his arms and leaning toward me, “where you have... unlikely powers... talents, we call them, for they are like the useful, coordinated manipulations of muscles, words, tools, numbers, and other such things. Yet what the Elementals have shown and seen is a different kind of talent, supernatural. You knew, from the beginning, that it was unreal. Magic. Tricks. Illusions.”
He paused again, studying me intently. “I imagine that you’ve changed your mind somewhat.”
I blinked, and said, slowly, “Yes. I’ve learned a great deal.”
“Truly learned, or simply accepted a different perspective? I suggest that you consider your words carefully,” he said, waggling a stern finger. “I believe that this world is not subjective, but at the same time, I believe it’s all in someone’s mind.”
“God,” I said with a nod. “I am familiar with how that philosophical argument works.”
A sad smile crossed Sensei’s face. “Then who is God?”
He let the question rest, and I wondered where he was going with this.
There was a whoosh. I turned back to see my teacher; he was floating in the air at a distance from the roof, part of the night sky. “Some people in the wider world, I hear, may believe that Devidis is a god. I don’t believe that, but I do believe something stranger. I believe that this world literally IS Devidis’ mind. I believe that the land we know is a manifestation of the events and actions of the thoughts of the man called Devidis.”
His arms spread, then dropped slowly to his sides as he floated in the gentle geyser of air billowing below him. “Get off of that roof and join me. I want to make sure you are paying attention and that you at least have the chance to hear me in the full embrace of this world’s unreality.”
Thoroughly bewildered, I pushed away from the Sun Tower and pulled the air up beneath me. Floating a good distance from the roof, I hoped that there was no more surprise in store for me, other than the mental exercise.
“I believe,” Sensei continued from his stance in the sky, “that the only place where Devidis could even come close to being a god, the only place where a power like his would exist and submit to him, the only place where he could be the emperor of the known world... is in his mind.
“Think back to our early training sessions,” he continued. “I told you to forget the question ‘How?’ when you first learned your talent, and to accept your affinity for the air like you accept control of your arm, your hand, and your fingers,” Sensei said as I floated level with him. “Now I want you to remember those questions, and question your talent like you might question the way you control your arm, your hand, and your fingers.”
I obediently looked at my hand and wiggled my fingers as I floated in the air against the backdrop of the dark forest. I looked down at wind below, supporting me as I stood up. The physics were wrong, I had told myself. And yet, there I was. Looking at my teacher, I said, “Yes, Sensei. How is this possible?”
“I believe,” Sensei continued, hovering around me in a slow, teasing circle, “that the only supernatural power that Devidis ever truly had is the power to draw people inside the illusive reality of his mind.” He stopped our revolutions. “The black gem you touched in Devidis’ hand is real, I think, but showing visions of possibilities to those who choose to look into it is, I believe, its only real power.”
“‘Choose’? ‘Vision?’” I repeated, bobbing in the air, struggling to control my hover while devoting most of my attention to Sensei’s words. “You asked me to select my words carefully, so please understand my confusion,” I spread my arms in helplessness. “Devidis forced us to touch his black crystal. How then did we choose to be here? If it worked that way, then wouldn’t I be gone just as soon as I chose to leave?”
A gust of wind surprised me, tripping me end over end in the air, then bound me fast, with my feet dangling up toward the star-speckled void. I reached out into the air and forced it apart, flipping right-side-up and glaring at my teacher, the aggressor.
Sensei held up a hand, urging me to wait. “I warn you not to patronize me. I am sad to tell you that I have watched some try the truly foolproof method of escaping Devidis’ vision. All that I have seen and heard lead me to believe that death, the foolproof escape method, looks the same to us all.”
“Basically,” he continued, “you have not chosen to leave. Choose not to use your talent right now,
and the hard impact on the lawn will be your selected route of departure from this world of illusion.
“It is not as simple as wanting to be somewhere else. Choice is limited, and not an idle fancy of the mind. Reality and our perception of it are mostly forced upon us, just as I demonstrated, flipping you through the air.”
“How can you be so sure of all this?” I asked.
Sensei shook his head sadly. “The short answer is that I’m not sure of it. Sometimes I think that I’m crazy. I know you ask your question to try to discover some proof, one way or another, and I have none for you, only a disjointed memory of Devidis and the first Elementals.”
“The first Elementals? Who-what happened with them?” I asked.
He continued shaking his head. “I am an old man now. The vision is too... unstable for me to relate it properly. The persistent presence of Devidis, my wind talent, and the green pyramid, both here beneath the Sun Tower and deep in my memories, lead me to believe I’m not entirely crazy, just confused. I have a vague image of my life as a youth in Japan, but my first truly reliable memory is from when I came to my senses in the forest. I saw the man I instantly recognized as Devidis throw down the green gem—the talisman that we now know as the Stone Key—which sank this forest into a valley with the power of its gravity field. Together with a stone talent, one of Ganic’s predecessors, we harnessed the power of the tiny emerald pyramid to build the Sun Tower, to keep it strong and stable, and I told our community what I believed about the Elementals, though I kept my confused memory of the Stone Emerald, one of four Elemental gems, largely a secret.”
Sensei swept his hand over the darkened trees beneath his floating feet. “And I grew old in the Forbidden Forest. When things and people emerge in this jungle, as you four did, it is as if they, too, are from a dream, or a nightmare... as if Devidis is remembering them, as I believe he remembered me, if only vaguely. I suspect that Devidis himself sunk what we now call the Stone Key into the ground as an attempt to lock away his memories. His men watch this prison closely, reporting on what emerges. Perhaps there are things that even a man as seemingly powerful as Emperor Devidis wishes were forgotten, forbidden from crossing beyond the confines of this jungle.”
He hovered in close to me, his gaze piercing, as if trying to search my soul. “Those forgotten things may include a promise from my distorted vision of the past, a promise that I believe may bind the emperor… ‘As long as Devidis remains spreading his evil, there will always be Elementals.’” Sensei seemed to be quoting the line.
“...including a Stone Elemental,” he continued, “a stone talent powerful enough to remove what I thought could be the Stone Emerald, and by removing it, he might take away the gravity field.”
He held up a finger as he bobbed ever so slightly in the wind. “That is the story I’ve thus far only hinted at. The community of the Sun Tower knew that I believed there might come one day four Elementals, talents of exceptional power in the four disciplines who might possess the power to somehow break the hold of the gravity field set in stone by Devidis himself. Though they also knew I didn’t fully trust the belief myself, in this small family my faith evolved into something of a legend. And the legend of the Elementals has done its part to sustain me and the Sun Tower community, for generations. It was why we forged the Great Weapons that you four will carry, and left them unused, until now. Now that my faith has been vindicated, now that the legend lives, you have learned more than the others know.”
I tried to sort through all of the information, but it was a bit too much. “Well,” I admitted, half-joking, “the idea that me and three other teens are the stuff of legends would make more sense if it were all an elaborate trick.”
“If nothing else,” Sensei said, “it might be doing some good if the idea keeps you humble. You and the others, and I, are too powerful to have our egos go unchecked.”
“So, if you are right,” I said, “you must know what we Elementals should do. How should we fight against the emperor... of illusion?”
Sensei smiled, spreading his arms with a slight whoosh of wind. “I would have you use your powers as Elementals to ultimately save the world, to stop Devidis.”
After a short pause, I said, “And by ‘save the world,’ you mean ‘save Devidis’ mind’?”
He nodded solemnly, turning slightly in the air toward the distant canyon wall. “Ideally, I would have you help me take on Devidis, to save not only all of us, but him as well... save the man from himself and his illusions. I believe that, in defeat, these illusions may be breached.”
My eyes widened. I hovered closer to the old man. “Breach the illusion... Do you think there’s a chance, then, that we could go back to our real homes, back to Japan, the United States, the world of the past?”
Sensei sighed into the wind. “The removal of the gravity field makes this a time of great hope, and though nothing is impossible, I would not rest your hope near any of Devidis’ twisted power, his twisted promises.”
I touched down back on the edge of the tower. “Exactly. I don’t know about you, but I am here because Devidis tricked me into touching the black crystal as he blasted the whole world. He’s the last person I’m interested in saving, and—“
Sensei settled himself down once more on a battlement, hanging his knees off the edge, a meditative pose. “Do not doubt my resolve. I expect that great violence will be necessary to breach Devidis’ veritable fortress of illusions, but if this world is in Devidis’ mind, as I suspect, then the wrong kind of attack or approach could prove fatal for all.”
He gave me a piercing look as I sat at the battlement beside him. “I tell you this,” he said, “not so that you reach my same conclusion, but so that you might have more information about your enemy and his mind-bending talent. Defeating the ambassador of evil will not be as simple as using enough power during the right opportunity with the right intention. Should the empire survive the emperor’s death, for example, the leaderless aftermath could easily prove as bad as the current state of affairs.
“When the time comes, I believe that the truth of the matter will make itself clear, with the help of the Elemental gems. In truth, I hope it is I who will be able to fight Devidis… Still, it is better for the most trustworthy to have the most information, even if it prove untrue, just in case I do not survive to see the day that Devidis is defeated.”
A yawn snuck out of my mouth.
Sensei smiled as he looked back out over the forest. “You have concerned yourself with this issue enough for now. Go get some sleep. If this conversation has been important, you will remember the important parts when the time is right. If it is not important… well, if anyone must face this issue, it is myself… and Devidis. If you can collect even one of the lost Elemental gems, we may have enough power to make that confrontation happen,” his expression darkened toward sarcasm, “though I would not hold out hope for victory unless somehow all four could be gathered.”
“You’re not very optimistic about our chances,” I said quietly, “even though, for all we know, the Stone Key is the Stone Emerald... transformed?”
Sensei bowed momentarily to give a cynical chuckle. “The Stone Key is a good example of Devidis’ will to conquer and deceive: if my memories hold true, it is not half as powerful as the Stone Emerald. If anything, I’m afraid I’m a little too realistic about Devidis’ power, twisting the world to his personal ends. I hesitated to tell you all this because I know how he’s twisted me.”
I nodded solemnly, then paused, wondering if I should have tried to defend my Sensei’s dignity from his perhaps overactive humility. But the moment had passed.
“Well,” Sensei continued. “As good as this day has been, it is difficult to be too optimistic in this pre-dawn darkness. We should quit while we’re ahead. Until a more optimistic hour... goodnight, Ryan, leader of the Elementals.”
I forced a polite smile and managed a “Goodnight.”
Tired, my head drooped. I watched my footing, u
nnecessarily, all the way to the stairs. As I touched the first step, though, I turned back and called out impulsively, “But, what about the four of us as we leave?”
I found myself walking back toward him. “Why won’t you come?” There was a hint of desperation in my voice. It was suddenly all too much. “You could lead us four... better than me, that’s for sure.”
“I believe in you,” Sensei said with a smile. “I must stay here with the many more who wish to stay, and wait for you, draw attention away from you in the meantime. Perhaps, as I have indicated tonight, I have thought things through too much in my old age. You, though, must go out and learn while you are young. You do not learn with others making decisions for you, but whenever you need help, I have faith that you will find it. Those with a heart for justice and truth will seek you, and they will find you. The rebellion are not few in number, and you have three other brilliant minds to help you. You are not alone.”
I sighed and nodded submissively, pausing before I said, “That’s true, but I won’t have you. You always wisely told me to focus on asking the right questions. In case I never see you again, I have to ask you the question that was keeping me up tonight.”
Sensei nodded gravely. “So ask.”
“How can I lead people into something I don’t know about myself?” I chose my wording carefully.
The old man drew in a long breath.
“I have been asking myself that question... for decades now,” Sensei said with a smile. “Lead carefully. Lead boldly. Lead as well as you are able.”
He spread his arms and showed me his empty palms. “I have no real answer.”
His off-kilter grin somehow made its way to my face, too. When I turned and finally continued down the steps, I was, somehow, feeling better. He had confided in me, not just man-to-man, but leader-to-leader.