23. Sek’su

23

SEK'SU

T he shaft of Burshtin's lochaber slams alongside my head and I stumble to one side, stars dancing in my eyes.

"Sek, are you all right?" he asks, dropping the weapon and rushing to my side.

I stumble but manage to remain upright. He really hit hard. I should have blocked it but I did not even see it coming. I have been too distracted.

"I will be fine," I say, pushing his hands away. "Go. Again."

"No," he says, shaking his head. "What is happening? You are not present. Your body is here but your mind is elsewhere."

"I will be fine," I say trying to not growl. "Go. Again."

He narrows his eyes and then shakes his head.

"We are done for the day."

"I said go," I demand, walking over and grabbing my lochaber which I had dropped after he landed the blow. "Now."

"No."

I swing, forcing him to duck under the whistling blade.

"I said go," I say, storming forward. "Now go."

I catch his lochaber with my foot and kick it up into the air. He grabs it agilely but doesn't raise it to a defensive position.

"No. You are too distracted. One of us will be hurt. You or me I do not know but this is not the time for training."

I growl as the bijass surges. It clouds reason, casting the world into the simplicity of red and white. Everything is either a threat or nothing, something to ignore, when the bijass takes control. We train hard so that we remain in control, not giving ourselves over to it and here I am acting like a youngling with no skills in avoiding it.

I know he is right, but I want to make him wrong. I want to prove to him because only by pushing my body to its limits do I have any hope of keeping my thoughts away from where I do not want to go.

Wren… You can blame me for it, but I… I can't. I'm sorry.

Her final words echo in my head. She says she is sorry, but I am not even sure what it is she is sorry for. All I know is that she left and it was clear as the suns over the planet that she is not intending to come back.

I do not know what I did wrong. I do not understand. I should go to her, confront her, and make her explain this to me.

But I don't and I won't. It is not my place to make her wrong. Clearly, I am the one who is wrong, though I do not understand what I did that was so terrible as to drive her away. I thought she was the one. My treasure. The one Tajss intended for me. Was I wrong about that too?

I glower at Burshtin who remains standing and watching. Stoic and silent, as is his way. I close my eyes, clench and unclench my fists, and focus on my breath coming in and out of my lungs. When I open them I nod and turn away.

Head hanging low I walk off of the dirt of the arena. I do not look back, but it feels as if the eyes of all the others training are on me. As if they see my shame which must be written across my body as clear as any sign.

I have no duties during this time except to train and unable to do that, there is nothing. I wander through the corridors of the compound, lost in my thoughts. I don't know how long I wander before I realize that Burshtin is and has been following me.

I come to a stop and slowly turn to face him. He doesn't smile or give me any particular look of anything but quiet patience. He does not speak and I am not sure what to say either. Annoyance rises, but it is faint and weak. I do not have the energy to engage in it.

Shrugging, I turn and resume my wandering, now aware of his footsteps echoing mine. I make my way to the checkpoint and head out into the tunnels. I think, for a moment, that Burshtin will stop me, knowing how dangerous it is out here but he doesn't.

There is no purpose to my travel because there is no purpose to my life. I have never felt such an emptiness in all my life. Before Wren I was happy, or I thought I was. I did not know what I was missing.

The moment I saw her, though, was an awakening. An understanding that can not be unknown once discovered. A truth.

I was but half a male. Less than what I could be. What I should be. I am only whole when I am with her. I am only dimly aware of my surroundings. Stupid to be out past the boundaries of the compound without all my attention on the world around me but I do not feel smart any longer.

I come up short when the floor ends. I am staring into a wide chasm. A small rock that was knocked loose as I stopped bounces down into the darkness and I never hear it hit. I stare at the black chasm which looks like what I feel inside made manifest in the world.

Rather than turn and leave, I sit and dangle my legs over the edge. Burshtin, still silent, takes a seat at my side. We stare, together, down into the black. I keep expecting him to speak. To ask me what is going on or to say something, but he never does.

Soon enough I mostly forget he is even there. I am lost in my thoughts which are not much more than a spinning cycle that seems to have no end. She left me. I am wrong. I do not know how or why. No matter how many times they circle, it always ends up the same. Confusion and no answers.

"What am I supposed to do now?" I whisper to the black chasm.

"What do you want to do?" Burshtin asks.

His voice startles me and I growl. He grunts at my response then falls silent, waiting for me to respond. I think about his question. As I would expect from him, it is blunt and to the point. Burshtin can often be of few words, but when he speaks he makes his point, usually as succinctly as possible.

What do I want to do?

There is only one answer to give. The one that my thoughts continue to circle back to every single time, without fail. I want to win her back. I want what is mine. My treasure.

Mine.

"I want her," I say softly. "My treasure."

"Are you certain she is the one?"

The words are on the tip of my tongue, but I stop myself from saying them before I give his question due consideration. I have been acting as if this is all a given, but clearly it is not. If it was she would not have run away, now would she?

I think about the Urr'ki, Dilacs. How he claimed that their, what was it… dragstuh? Something akin to that was more than the Zmaj concept of treasure. I scoffed at the time but when I talked with him I had not lost my love.

This longing, deep in my heart, deeper still. So deep it can only be in my soul, this emptiness that mirrors the blackness before us, what else could it be but knowing that she is the one? The dragon rumbles displeasure at my doubts and I growl too.

"I am certain," I answer at last.

"Good."

"Good? But what is good? What difference does it make if I am certain but she is not? If she runs away from me? Says we cannot be together for reasons I do not understand?"

He picks up a rock and tosses it into the chasm. It bounces off the far wall echoing as it ricochets off one side and then the other, going ever deeper. His tail makes a raspy sound as it twitches on the stone floor and he shrugs.

"Tajss provides," he says finally.

I stare while anger surges and the urge to hit him is strong, but I will not act on it. He is trying to help, no matter if his words only serve to make the hurt worse, he is the only one here with me. He is at least trying.

"It seems that we were wrong to believe that," I mutter, balling my hands into fists as my jaw tightens until my teeth are grinding with suppressed rage.

"No."

I turn my head slowly towards him as my eyes widen with disbelief. I wait for him to explain, say more, something to clarify his disagreement, but he only stares into the abyss, not even deigning to look in my direction.

"No?" I ask through gritted teeth.

"No," he says and shrugs which makes his wings rustle.

"Is there more to that?"

He finally turns and looks at me. There is no anger in his eyes, though I know it burns in mine. He shrugs again then shakes his head.

"We are not wrong," he says.

"And how do you come to this conclusion? She is gone! She left me, and told me we could not be together. In all that has happened where do you find this wisdom?"

He places his hand on my shoulder, gentle and reassuring, but it only fuels my rage. My muscles thrum with unspent energy, ready to attack. The bijass is surging right below my conscious thought. It's red fog calling and offering to make everything simple.

"Because Tajss provides?—"

"You said as much it does not?—"

He holds up his hand and I am cut off midsentence.

"But no one ever said that it would be easy," he finishes.

I stare at him for a long time because the words bounce off my thoughts refusing to penetrate the anger. I blink, trying to understand, despite the emotions that are like a sandstorm in my head.

"Not easy…"

"The path is fraught with peril and danger. If it was not, what would be the point? Tajss is not all-knowing. It creates and we are but it's creations. If she is your treasure, she was created to be the other half of you. That does not mean that it will happen."

"You make no sense."

"No?" he shrugs and returns to staring into the blackness.

We sit in silence as I try to parse his words. No matter how I look at them they do not make sense and certainly do nothing to make me feel better.

"When you made your lochaber," he says after a bit. "How many parts did you craft?"

"All of them, of course. That is how a locahber is made."

"Humor me, Sek. How many parts?"

This is an unwelcome distraction, especially because I do not know where he is trying to go with this. Giving up on understanding his point I try to remember all the parts that go into crafting a lochaber. It has been a very long time since I did it. The crafting of your lochaber is part of the ritual of a warrior when a youngling becomes grown, a sign of moving into adulthood.

"I do not recall exactly, but twelve seems about right."

"Close enough. And did those parts fit together?"

"Of course they did, it is here," I say, pointing over my shoulder at the blade.

"Did they come together without any effort? Or did you work to make it happen? Expend effort? Time?"

His pretense is silly and anger rushes in, but then I suddenly realize that he has a point and at last it makes sense.

"You mean I have to work at it…"

"Yes."

"You could have said that."

"I tried. You did not want to hear it."

"It is too simple."

"Work is not simple. This is not a simple situation. I do not know how to fix it, my friend, but I do know that if Tajss intended it, as you say, then the potential is there. It is up to you to navigate the path that will result in completion. Much as it was up to you to form your lochaber."

I sit in silence while I contemplate his point. It makes sense, now. The only question left for the moment is, what am I going to do to fix it?

"When did you become wise?" I ask. He shrugs nonchalantly. "Tell me. We have known each other all our lives. What is this secret you hold?"

He frowns then shrugs again.

"Have you heard the one named Bashir?"

"Not really. Is he one of the surface dwellers?"

"He is," Burshtin says. "He is also a mystic."

"You are sure? There has not been a mystic in a very long time."

"No, there has not."

"But… you mean it?"

"I know that he is very wise and seems to know things. Is he real? How am I to know? It is not like I have found my treasure. The dragon does not awaken for a mystic. I can say that his words make sense. Such as the ones I shared with you."

"Oh."

"This is not the point. The question remains, what are you going to do?"

I frown, unsure how to answer. This is going to take some thought, that much is for sure.

"I must win," I say at last.

"Yes," he agrees, putting his arm around my shoulders.

Certainty floods through my thoughts and body. I do not know how, but I do know that doing nothing is the exact wrong thing.