Chương 28: Merge

I called up my status. [Status] Name: Howl Aridis Tier: 2, Level 1 Strength: 104 Agility: 98 Stamina: 102 Mana Pool: 612 [Active Skills: 4/8] Mana Manipulation: Level 22 (41%) Fighting Sense: Level 18 (12%) Focus: Level 8 (58%) Still Mind: Level 3 (89%) [Passive Skills: 1/8] Mana Sense: Level 24 (7%) [Special Skills: 1/?] Spirit Sight: Level 1 (0%) Whoa… the numbers had moved.

I now had one more slot on both my passive and active skills, while all of the stats came up at once, and Strength climbed past a hundred for the first time in my life. The pool was over six hundred now. I had spent the last year watching my reserves crawl from three-fifty to four-hundred by ten and twenty points at a time, and a single morning had carried them to six-twelve without me noticing the climb. The Tier 1 me would have needed a month of hard quests to cover half that ground.

Beneath the status, the prompt was still waiting. [Skill Merge Available] [Focus] + [Still Mind] →??? The conditions are met. The skill produced by the merge will replace the two source skills, raise the rank category above either of them, and free one active skill slot. This operation is irreversible. Proceed? I had never seen that before. Not once.

The System had given me skills, raised their ranks, increased proficiency, in a couple of cases let me choose between two options at once, but it had never offered to fuse two skills into a third. I had not known that was a thing the System could do. Then again, I had also never had two skills that worked together the way [Focus] and [Still Mind] had.

"So?" Master Saoren was still on the wall, watching.

"Sorry. Sorry. Yes." I accepted the prompt. [Skill Acquired] Greater Focus — Level 1 (0%) — Rank S I looked at the text for a long moment. …Rank S?

"Finally!" I wanted to test it on the spot.

"What are we doing today, Master Saoren? Forms? Sparring? I want to see how it feels during the water pull, I think it might finally let me hold the shape for the full sequence, and there's also an earth pull I've been thinking about, I know I failed it before, but now that the reserves are where they are and the skill is where it is, I think if we went at it again this afternoon I could—""Nothing, child."

"... What?"

"Today is your last day here. You leave this evening or you will not reach the academy on time." I sat down on the flagstones without meaning to. Now that I thought about it, how long was here for? Had it already been seven days? I had been on the mountain for seven days… Oh. The ride to Sartheon was a day and a half at the pace the Greymanes held, which meant if I did not leave by sundown I would present myself at the academy gates after the summons expired.

"... I'm not ready."

"You are as ready as you need to be for the next part. What comes next is not a thing I can teach you. The academy is not a place I can follow you into, and the lessons there are not mine to give. I have given you the fundamentals. You have done the work. There is nothing I can put in front of you this afternoon that would be worth the hours you need for the road."

"I… I could come back later? Before I leave for Sartheon, I could ask my father for a delay, I could tell the council the training—""You could not, child. And you will not." … I did not know how to put it. The last five days had been the worst days I had put my body through in my life. I had said fuck more times in those five days than I had said it in the previous sixteen years combined, and I was reasonably sure Saoren had heard me do it on at least four separate occasions without commenting.

I had almost thrown up after the second set of duck walks on day three and I had thought, on day four, somewhere between the eighth pull-up and the ninth, that I was about to actually die. … And yet, I did not know the last time I had felt this at peace. The keepers had fed me simple food, asked me simple questions and listened to the answers like they mattered.

I had eaten dinner with them every night of the week, and Mireth had told me three stories on three separate nights about previous keepers who had tended this garden before her, while I listened to all three of them the way I used to listen to Nana. And Saoren, for all that he was short with me, called me child or told me to stop talking about things and start training, had sat on that wall and watched, and the watching had felt, more than anything else I could name, like Nana's presence.

He was harsher than Nana had ever been. He did not bring me books or laugh at my jokes and he did not once pet my head the way Nana used to pet it when I had done well in a theory lesson. Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation. But he was there. He stayed on the wall when I did the sets and he corrected me when I needed correcting and he did not leave, not once, and the staying had done something to me I had not had a word for until this moment.

For a long second, I considered staying. Just staying. On the mountain. Giving up the academy, the summons, the four years of structured instruction ahead of me, and sitting on these flagstones for the rest of my life while getting stronger. Nobody had ever pushed me the way I had been pushed this week, and I had liked it. I was stronger for it. I could be so much stronger still, if I just—"Stop making such a face, we will see each other again, child."

"... Huh?" Saoren tilted his head a fraction.

"I am an elder spirit. My attention is required elsewhere in the spirit world, and I cannot always be there when you come looking. I am not a dog to be called to the door. But if you wish to train, and you wish to train with me, the bell remains where it has always been. Ring it once. Only once. I do not want to hear it twice, and if I hear it twice I will not come, and we will not have this arrangement again." He cleared his throat, as if embarrassed by the digression.

It was almost funny, I didn't know he could get embarrassed.

"If you ring it once," he continued, "I will make my way here, and if you have prepared for my coming the way you have prepared this week, perhaps we will even sign a contract then, if I deem you ready and worthy of one." I did not say anything for a moment.

"... Have you lost your ability to speak, child?"

"No! No, I— I was— sorry, Master Saoren, I just— we didn't sign one, did we? The contract. The reason I came up the mountain in the first place. We never—""No. We did not."

"But I— the scroll is still in my robe, I could—""Consider this training a gift. A contract with a spirit of my standing is not a thing a boy at your level can aspire to carry. You will not hold the weight of it yet. Come back when you can. When you come back, if you have become what this week suggests you can become, we will have the conversation properly, and not on the morning you must leave."

"Oh." Saoren looked at me for a long second, and then, in a voice a shade softer than the one he had been using all week:"... You did well here, in case it is not obvious to you." I felt proud at hearing this, and was about to voice my thoughts when I heard footsteps coming up the path outside the garden, stopping at the outer gate.

"Young Lord? May I enter?" It was Mireth. I turned to look at the tree, and Master Saoren was no longer there, which meant I had permission to let her come in.

"You may enter, Mireth." The outer gate opened and she stepped through, her hands folded in front of her.

"Young Lord. There are guards at the outer gates of the shrine. They have come to escort you back to the estate. Your carriage is waiting at the foot of the mountain."

"... Thank you, Mireth. I'll come down in a moment." She inclined her head and turned to lead me back the way she had come. I watched her go for two or three steps, and then I turned back to the tree. Saoren had not returned. The wind off the upper slope was moving through the canopy and the bell on its post by the basin was catching the wind in small clean notes, rung and rung again by nobody at all.

The suren blossoms above me held their pink against the cold morning, exactly the way they had held it the first time I had walked into this garden. … This was goodbye, then. I offered a small bow to the tree, where I suspected he might be at.

"Thank you. For everything." Mireth's footsteps paused on the path.

"Young Lord? Is everything all right?"

"Yes. Nothing. It's nothing." I straightened, and I followed her out of the garden, and I did not look back.

I found the other two keepers waiting in the first courtyard with their hands folded in front of them, and I thanked them both separately, by name. The thin keeper with the white hair bowed deeper than protocol asked for and the older woman, the one who had cooked the fish with Mireth on the first night, held my hand between both of hers for a second before she let it go, and she did not say anything. Mireth walked me to the gates.

"Come back, Young Lord. When you can. The suren will remember you."

"I will. Thank you, Mireth. For everything." She bowed, and so did I. The gates then opened, and the guards who had climbed the stairs again in the hour before dawn took their positions around me, and we started down.

The carriage was waiting at the foot of the mountain, and Gowyn was beside it. I climbed in, he climbed in after me, the door shut, the driver clicked his tongue, and the Greymanes pulled, then the road home unrolled under the wheels but this time, I did not watch through the window. I… felt quite sad, and also a bit resentful toward Gowyn for telling on me to the elders and drugging me without my consent on the way back home.

So I just closed my eyes and did not open them again until we reached the gates of the estate. Said gates opened and the carriage rolled through, and the attendants were waiting at my wing. I was bathed. My hair was washed, combed and tied. Something was pressed against my wrists that I did not smell, then formal robes came off the hooks and went onto my shoulders. I raised my arms when they needed me to raise my arms, and turned when they needed me to turn. The estate was the same boring and indifferent estate.

The corridors were the same corridors. The servants paused in the same doorways and bowed as I passed, and I walked through them with my eyes forward and my face still. Soon enough, I was left in my chambers, alone. The door closed as I sat on the edge of my bed and tried to find something in me that felt like the person who had reached Tier 2 on a flagstone this morning. Then I remembered the family. The meeting was today.

Somewhere in the afternoon, or the early evening, or whenever the council had decided, my wish was going to be honoured, and I was going to walk into a room and see, for the first time in my life, my mother's face without a courtyard between us, and my father's voice when it was not making announcements to a chamber full of elders, and my siblings without the three of them running down a corridor with bare feet slapping the stone. The thought pulled something up in me I had been walking past for the last hour.

I stood up and crossed to the mirror on the far wall, looking at myself in it. I tried a small smile but it seemed fake and unnatural when done consciously, so I dropped it.

"Hello. I am Howl. I am... I am your older brother." It came out small and wooden in the empty room, so I tried it again.

"Hello, Rowan. I am Howl. It is good to finally meet you." That was worse. Finally was a word that seemed too… I don't know, desperate. I dropped it.

"Rowan. Calla. Dorin. I am your brother. My name is Howl." I tried it without the names, then with just the names and no sentence. I tried it with nice to meet you on the end then took it off and put on I am happy to see you instead, and I thought about taking happy off too. My parents were the harder part.

"Mother. Father." I said it to the mirror and my face did not move, and the word mother had a shape in my mouth I did not know what to do with. I had used the word before. I had read it a thousand times in Nana's books. But I had not ever said it to a person.

"... Mother. I am honoured to finally—" I stopped. Finally again.

"Mother. I—" I stopped. I sat back down on the edge of the bed and put my hands flat on my knees and breathed. In for four. Hold for two. Out for six. The breath did not calm me the way it had calmed me on the mountain. My hands were damp against the fabric. My stomach had been a small tight knot since the carriage had pulled through the gates, and the knot was climbing. I tried again, from the bed this time, quieter.

"Mother. My name is Howl." That was stupid, she'd know my name.

"Father. I am glad to see you." …Hmm, better.

"Rowan. You dropped a ball in my corridor the other day and I would like to give it back to you properly now that I—" I laughed and put my face in my hands. Then came the knock at the door.

"Young Lord. The Council has sent for you." I stood up and noticed my hands were slightly shaking. I pressed them flat against the front of the formal robe and took one long breath, then I crossed the room, and opened the door.