Chương 96: Chapter 29: The Profane Letter

The next day, at noon, she headed to the Central Auditorium. The venue was packed, dominated by the green and brown tunics of the devotees of the church of Aelthra. The importance the clergy placed on this lecture was evident. Selena slipped into a chair in a back corner, from where she could observe without being the center of attention, waiting with a mixture of apprehension and morbid curiosity.

The lecture began with a gray-haired man with a severe face, whose voice resonated with the authority of one repeating an unquestionable dogma. He spoke of how the Path of the Voice had been born of a heretic who renounced the sacred dogma of the flow, but that, even now, five hundred and seventy years later, in this rebirth of thought, they could study some of its philosophies.

Then he proclaimed with firmness: —For the Flow does not deny advancement, but understands and guides it, always steering it away from heresy against Aelthra. Selena held back a sigh. She already knew that speech: appropriating disruptive ideas, domesticating them, and using them to reinforce one's own power. Resuming the guiding thread, the speaker declared, with a grandiloquent voice and paper in hand: —I think, therefore I am.

One of the new and most recent quotes from the propaganda of the Inner Voice echoed within the Eternal Sap. As you already know, it is not profane at all, since it is a form of the Flow of Aelthra. She grants thought to rational man so that his existence may have a beginning and an end in the eternal cycle of life. Selena froze. Her breath caught. Those are my words!! Her thoughts cried out in exaltation, yet her mouth remained shut.

The seed of Cartesian doubt that she had given to Corren in the cave, one of the answers that provided a foundation for philosophy and answered a doubt for a path that sorely needed them. Now, the church had stolen them, hollowed them of their skeptical essence, and turned them into a hymn to their own divinity.

The man continued reading, dissecting other phrases that sounded terribly familiar, twisting them to fit his narrative: —But all thought gives way to action, and all action is in itself a thought, even if it is one as ancient and heavy as instinct. He made an almost dramatic pause and then exclaimed, adding his own thought: —Behold! The Flow of Life is reaffirmed. Instinct as the ultimate realization of man, guided by a higher consciousness that grants us free will.

The man's gaze swept across the faces of the audience; Selena could only shake her head. Then he continued reading from the paper. —It is not only morality that binds us when acting but thought and how it has defined us in values, attitudes, and ways of seeing the world. Instinct is the current; thought, the channel that directs it. He looked up from the paper and added with an emphatic voice: —Just as the church has preached since the dawn of time!

The channel, the Flow, is eternal, and because of it, we can heal, love, think, and exist as beings beyond what any animal is. A thunderous applause erupted in the auditorium, a chorus of blind approval. But in Selena's mind, there was only a buzzing of indignation and deep bitterness. My words. The answers I gave to Corren. They are being used to whitewash the very church he questioned. The irony was so cruel it burned her soul.

Even the seed of enlightenment she had planted, the first flash of pure rationality in this world of faith and ignorance, had been uprooted, pruned, and replanted to strengthen the very roots it meant to challenge. She rose from her seat with a sharp movement, without saying a word. The taste in her mouth was bitter, like ash. She had heard enough. She left the auditorium, leaving behind the roar of applause, and headed directly to one of the greenest and quietest gardens on campus.

Perhaps there, amidst indifferent nature free of dogmas, her words, spoken in the privacy of a cave to a man searching for the truth, could rest in peace, far from the distorting claws of power and institutionalized faith. She waited for minutes, motionless, only the gentle rise and fall of her chest betraying that she was not just another statue in the garden.

Her gaze, empty and out of focus, lost itself in the green and bluish leaves of the tree before her, trying to cleanse her mind of the distorted echo of her own words. Until the sun, on its slow journey, settled on a point in the sky that cast a more direct, warm, and comforting heat for an autumn day. She dropped onto her back upon the grass, watching the clouds slide by like cotton ships on a pale blue sea. A sudden shadow covered her, interrupting the sun in her eyes.

Half-opening her eyelids, she saw the silhouette of a panting man, burdened with a bulging satchel full of envelopes and parchments. He was a messenger; his dusty clothes and hurried expression gave him away. —The distinguished Lady Selena of Solendra, correct? —he asked, catching his breath. Selena nodded slowly, propping herself up on her elbows. —That will be eight bronze crowns, please —the man announced, extending his hand with a confidence bordering on arrogance. The price was laughably abusive.

For eight bronze crowns, a poor family could have lived, modestly but without hunger, for a few full weeks. Selena did not flinch, but her eyes, which a moment before had been empty, took on a frigid edge. —Tell me who the sender is first —she commanded, her voice serene but laden with an authority that admitted no argument. The messenger blinked, surprised by the question. He rummaged through his satchel, pulled out the envelope, and read the scribbled signature in the corner. —It's just an… underlined K.

A lash of electricity shot down Selena's spine. Kaela. She leapt to her feet, her weariness and melancholy evaporating instantly. —I will give you a silver crown if… —she said. The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. She quickly pulled the coin from her purse; the gleam of the bright silver reflected the sun. She resumed her words once the young man had taken the bait, staring at the coin.

—To anyone who asks questions about this letter or its sender, you give a well-crafted excuse. She leaned slightly toward him, and her voice dropped to a whisper of steel. —But mark this clearly. By my title of Duchess Heiress, if you fail, if anyone else learns of this, I will personally see to it that you are punished in a way that will make you wish you had been born a beggar. The man grew pale.

He took the silver crown with visibly trembling fingers, placed the envelope into Selena's outstretched hand, and practically ran away, never looking back. Selena, with her heart hammering in her chest, looked into the distance toward Fjora and Samira, her silent shadows. She could not open the letter there. She needed absolute privacy. Her mind flew to the only place where she could be safe: the depths of the library.

The lower floors, past the fifteenth, were a sanctuary of silence and secrecy, accessible only to those with deep royal connections or exceptional academic permissions. She, fortunately or unfortunately, had both. Without wasting a second, she headed there. She descended the endless spiral of stairs, passing the familiar levels, until reaching the twentieth floor. It was a place even more silent, if possible, where the air smelled of damp stone and a cold that seemed accumulated over millennia.

She found a small corner lit by one of the rare bluish gas lamps and sat on a stone bench attached to the wall. With hands trembling from anxiety for an answer, she broke the seal of the envelope. She unfolded the parchment, and the handwriting, clumsy but careful, unfolded before her eyes.

"Selena, After what happened at the shelter, I have constantly wondered if you are just a duchess who played with our dreams and hopes, or if you are that loving and fearful girl whom I used to embrace beneath the shadows of the trees and the banks of the creeks. The blood of Nyssa still wakes me at night, and I look at my hands with horror as it does. Everyone believes it was you. They believe you played at being one of us because the blood of the innocent pleases you.

No one would dare to say otherwise with the reputation of the Crimson Duchess. But I decided to believe in you. In the person you are now. I do not understand nobility, but I do hate them. And I do not understand how horrible it must be. Corren explained that, about three days later, when he returned to the cave, that perhaps you were just the decoy of your uncle and his political intrigues. That is also why I made this decision. You are not only a prisoner, but you are the most hated noble due to false sayings.

As you can see, I already know how to write enough to send you a letter. The Path found your whereabouts; they delivered the letter for me. I must say that I am now a part of them. They are not heresy, but as you said, they are the thought that frees us. We have been handing out pamphlets with some of your answers… but I miss you every time I read the words you wrote in the philosophical treatises Corren shows me. With nothing more to say, a friend who loves you with her tanner's soul bids you farewell.

— K" Selena let the parchment rest upon her lap. A tear, hot and salty, escaped the corner of her eye and traced a damp path down her cheek. It was not from sadness, but from relief so deep it ached. Kaela was alive. Kaela believed in her. Kaela had found refuge, a purpose, in the Path of the Voice, and from there, from the shadows of heresy, she reached out her hand across the distance and the hatred.

The letter was a lifeline thrown into the stormy sea of her existence, a reminder that somewhere, beneath a shared sky, someone remembered her not as the Crimson Duchess, but as Selena. The girl who descaled fish and stroked anurhys. For that girl, for that friend who loved her with a tanner's soul, it was worth continuing to fight, even in the darkest depths. With renewed spirits, fueled by the warmth of Kaela's words still pulsing in her chest, Selena contemplated the letter she held between her fingers.

It was a tangible bond, fragile and precious, with the only corner of this world that felt like home. A wave of emotion, of pure and overwhelming gratitude, flooded her. Without thinking, driven by an instinct that welled up from the deepest part of her renewed being, she uttered a word toward the parchment. There was no sound. Only a mold of intention, a silent verb formed by the will and the understanding of the power she was now beginning to feel as her own.

Suddenly, the edge of the parchment began to glow with a faint green radiance, the same intense green in her eyes. Then, the flame emerged, not as a ravenous and destructive fire, but as a pure and controlled manifestation of heat, of light. It was a living flame, crackling with a serene energy, consuming the paper but without harming her fingers.

Selena watched, her eyes wide with astonishment and fascination, as Kaela's letter transformed into a small mound of fine ash that vanished into the air between her hands. It had not been water this time. It had been fire. A fire that had flowed from her with a terrifying naturalness, as if it had always been there, latent, waiting to be understood and called upon. She had felt the heat not as a threat, but as an extension of her own life; the crackling of the flame was one more heartbeat in her chest.

The color, that deep emerald green, was a reflection of her essence. She had replicated, she had imposed a part of herself, her will to protect, to purify that sacred bond, upon the reality of Erabergh. Just as Eliud had described in his book: a voluntary transgression, a molding of the world. The book does have secrets of the echo, she thought, with a feverish lucidity. Even if they seem like irrelevant confessions, understanding the concept, the philosophy behind the power… is already a door to the void.

Theory and practice united in her mind with a click audible only to her. Upon going up to the eighteenth floor, the temptation to open Eliud's book again was almost physical. But her mind, though euphoric, was saturated. Kaela, her borrowed and distorted philosophy, the echo that now seemed to respond to her deepest emotions… It was too much for a single day. Only rest, a total shutdown, could relieve the glorious and terrifying weight of so much knowledge.

She left the library, ate something mechanically, and headed to her room. There, looking at her two silent companions, she decided to break the routine. —You will accompany me —she announced with a cheerful voice— Bring clothes for bathing. The university thermal baths, a vaporous natural stone enclosure scented with herbs, were a balm. She paid the admission for the three of them; it was fifteen bronze crowns in total. The hot water dissolved the tension in her muscles.

While they relaxed, Selena couldn't help but admire Fjora's body, which moved with a feline grace and displayed, without shame but without arrogance either, her perfectly toned muscles, carved by years of brutal training. It was a work of martial arts of which the warrior, Selena noticed, was genuinely proud; it showed in her chin. Meanwhile, Samira, with her dark and soft hair between Selena's fingers, initiated a conversation in Sahric. Her voice, in the language of the desert, was melodious.

—Jatuní min, to le zimanúanda jeníyit ke —she commented, with a genuine smile rarely seen on her face— her chend mahe destit pê kîrdúwe. Selena translated it mentally, thus switching to the other language: —My lady, you are a genius at languages. You speak fluently and you have only had a few months of practice. Continuing to braid her hair with the skill she was learning, she replied in the same language, her tone humble. —It is because I have the best one to practice with.

—It was not an empty compliment; it was the truth. Samira said nothing, but her chest swelled slightly, a reaction of contained pride that did not go unnoticed by Selena. For the first time, she saw a glimpse of something more than the captive scholar or the resigned slave. She saw a woman who valued the recognition of her knowledge. When the three returned to their room, the night was full and silent. Weariness, now sweet and heavy, enveloped them. Without much difficulty, they fell into a deep sleep.

Selena dropped in her nightgown beneath the blankets, and this time, sleep did not carry her to dark corridors, nor to cryptic scenes, nor to echoes of ancestral battles. She submerged into an abyss of nothingness, a black and welcoming void for which, on that night, she was deeply grateful. There was no Halom. It was, simply, rest. And at that moment, it was the most valuable gift she could receive.