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Space.
So that’s what the colossal godsworn was talking about. It’s the space that moves. The space between things.
“I see it!” I gasp, excited. “I see the space.” Then I frown. “Why can I see it now but not before?” I’ve been in the combat state a thousand times prior to this and never seen what I just saw.
Myter smirks. “You’re in the pathways,” they say, gesturing grandly. “Everything here is purified to its simplest, deepest essence. Observe.” They pull a glasslike piece of bark from the tree beside them and extend it to me. It shimmers with all the lights of the rainbow, but, as with everything else in the pathways, there’s that strange, faded feeling to it.
“Outside, this would be a thousand things.”
“Like real wood, for instance,” Belcalis snorts.
Myter throws them a glance. “Not just wood but the mites that live on it, the smaller organisms that live on them, and so on. Here, it is simply bark—well, crystalline bark but bark nonetheless—as re-created by Lord Bala. This is the nature of the pathways. It is the essence of things purified, distilled, and re-created in Bala’s image.”
They raise their hand again and their body begins glowing once more. I watch through the combat state as energy seems to abruptly coalesce inside their stomach. Where it came from, I’m not certain—I didn’t see them drawing it from anywhere else inside their body. Before I can ask them about it, they gesture again. Just like that, the energy explodes, forcing the bark into the air in front of me. It’s a scramble to grasp it quickly before it falls, but I manage, and then the bark is in my hand, a thing of strange lightness. So light as to be nonexistent.
As I turn it over again, marveling at this fact, Myter nods at me. “It lacks matter.”
I frown. “Matter?” Another word I’m unfamiliar with.
“Matter is, roughly speaking, substance. Space is a where, but matter is a what. The piece of bark before you has only the slightest amount of matter. Which is why I can move it so easily. But you can move it too. Just as I moved it to the space in front of you, you can move it to the space in front of me. That is what it means to create a pathway. Just a little push of energy, just as I demonstrated.”
I nod, keeping the image of the gesture Myter used to move the bark in my mind as I gather energy deep inside me. Then I breathe out a small, slow breath. “Space is a where…,” I remind myself as I reach out and pinch a tiny bit of the stillness between air currents. Then I try to imagine squeezing it enough that it narrows the space between myself and Myter. “Just a pinch,” I say to myself, breathing energy into the movement. “Just a pinch….”
And then I contract the air.
An outraged gasp is my only warning before Myter suddenly comes barreling straight toward me.
“I said move the bark, not me!” they snap, irritated, when they stop just in front of me.
I can barely hear them.
Welts are rising all across my body, a response to the power I just used. There’s so much pain now, it’s as if my skin is on fire, as if the very blood is boiling in my veins. Gold drips down my nose. I try to wipe it, but my hands are suddenly heavy, so very heavy.
“I thought you said you could stop the pain,” I say, stunned.
Then I slump to the ground, unconscious.
* * *
“Is she quite serious?” Myter’s voice is disdainful as their enormous booted toe nudges into my side.
I tense, readying myself for pain to explode, but the only thing I feel is a mild discomfort.
“Yer the one who promised her you could make it so she wouldn’t injure herself.” Britta’s voice is loud in my ear as I blink groggily, trying to force my eyes open.
It’s a failing effort. My body feels heavy as a woolen cloak soaked with water. But that’s all I feel. Where’s the pain? Where’s all the bleeding? And where are the welts on my skin?
I stretch, searching for sores, for any remnants of the injuries I just incurred, but there’s nothing there, nothing but that boot, nudging me awake.
“I said I knew how to do it, didn’t mean I’d teach her immediately.”
“So you just wanted to be pointlessly cruel,” Keita says, his hand pushing the boot away. “Good to know.”
“No, I wanted to teach her the difference so she knows. Up, Deka.” When Myter nudges me with their boot again, I hear the scrape of a sword being unsheathed.
“Godsworn or no, you do that one more time and you will lose that leg, understood?” Keita’s voice is cold with conviction.
Myter humphs. “Understood, if you’ll tell Deka to stop pretending to sleep.”
