Chapter 8: Journeying east

Thinking about how he could force them into teaching him about manipulations, Kira came to two main conclusions. Firstly, he would have to find out how long he had before they arrived in Krinestadt so that he could plan accordingly and secondly, they definitely wouldn't teach him by choice. What this meant was that he would have to find a way to begin by teaching himself, without killing himself, as he had heard those unskilled with manipulations were liable to doing so. If he could get to a high enough level with his manipulations on his own, he would hopefully be able to convince Thea and Sadis to give him direction or risk having him kill himself even whilst they journeyed with him.

To act on his first conclusion, he hurried to catch up with Thea and asked, "How long until we arrive in Krinestadt?"

"About twenty to thirty days," she responded.

This was great news for him because that would give him plenty of time to at least try and get something out of them, and it also showed that they were willing to at least share some basic information with him. However, it did come as a bit of a surprise as Krinestadt's western territories were well under two hundred nodes away. He decided to continue on, "Why will it take so long? Surely it shouldn't take over a week?"

"We're not going straight there." said Thea, rolling her eyes slightly like it should be obvious, "We're going to go and deal with some bandits first."

"Aren't a lot of the bandit groups supported by Krinestadt?"

"Not these ones," replied Sadis, jumping into the conversation to try and avoid Thea dispensing too much information yet again, "They're raiding in Kalsin, a subsidiary state to Krinestadt."

Naturally, Kira had heard of Kalsin when studying in Arkadia, but they had seemed relatively insignificant to him as the state was hardly more significant than an earldom. This was probably reason enough in itself as to why they were struggling against the organized raids that had become far too common in western Anadora. To try and continue their talk whilst steering it to be about manipulations, he asked Sadis directly, "Back in Arkadia, when you threw Ulric around, that wasn't a normal manipulation, was it? Was that related to your ability?"

From his conversations with other manipulators, Kira had learnt a few basic things about them. It seemed that all manipulators did roughly the same thing at a low level, but as they became more advanced, they could create specialist abilities that were specific to them. However, he supposed that he had been expecting too much from Sadis because he didn't reply except to chastise him for making assumptions without knowledge. "It was an ability then?" he went on, trying to force him into saying something more.

"Weren't you calling yourself a manipulator just before now? Shouldn't you be able to recognize if I used one?" Sadis said rhetorically, thus confirming Kira's suspicion.

Then feeling slightly more confident, he asked Thea, "And when you got behind me, that was an ability too, right?"

But she just smiled and laughed at him. Sensing that they had given away all they were like to at that moment, Kira went back to his secondary conclusion that he would have to start trying to teach himself to be a manipulator. Since he had already made a manipulation, he reasoned that it shouldn't be too hard to attempt to replicate how he had been able to interact with his own aura. To do this, he tried to look back inside himself, as he had done back in Neuverie, but for some reason, what he was looking for seemed absent as though him consciously looking for it had scared it off. Now all that remained within him was empty darkness that he couldn't find the end to.

After trying and failing to identify his own aura again, he decided upon a different approach. He started to think about what had caused him to find his own aura, specifically the dream he had had the night before. The problem with this was that he couldn't understand it as the swirling colours had made no sense to him and his memory of it seemed vague as he could not determine if he had been the person within the dream or if he had been an observer. Frustrated with a lack of anything happening, he was forced to give up and threw himself into another day of trudging along behind the two manipulators as they strode off ahead, chewing up the terrain as though the steep rocky rises were non-existent.

The only respite he got from their relentless pace was when they were forced to cross a road because, whilst they were still quite near to Neuverie, they didn't want to be spotted, meaning that they had to crouch in the undergrowth and wait for whatever traffic there was to pass. This was made particularly arduous by the fact that, whilst most of the time no people were passing by, occasionally they would have to wait for what seemed like hours for caravans to pass whilst being drawn by slow-plodding mules.

One particularly excruciating time, one of the mules apparently decided that it had had enough of walking and stopped in the middle of the road. It then only started moving again after a mixture of physical abuse and food-based incentives was administered.

The slightly concerning part of the day was noticing how easy it was for people to obscure themselves in the thick bushes lining the road that made the ideal conditions for an ambush. To get more information out of Thea, when they were crouched at the side of yet another dirt track that may have only been used by animals because Sadis thought he had heard something, Kira tried asking her about his dream.

Interestingly, it seemed that neither she nor Sadis had heard of anyone discovering their own aura in this way and mentioning the topic of aura discovery seemed to cause Sadis to go on a short monologue. Still, at least someone was talking now, thought Kira.

"Most manipulators become so through a complex initiation process we use here," began Sadis, "However, the mortality rate of this is what constricts the number of active manipulators because, even when specifically chosen, candidates have a high likelihood of death during it – somewhere around sixty percent if I recall correctly."

He continued, "The only other normal way for people to become manipulators is if they are put into stressful situations and discover their aura on their own. However, this method is extremely unlikely to happen by chance. Therefore the royal Krinestadt manipulators can control practically all manipulators in Krinestadt as any existing ones are part of the organization and most new ones are created within it as well…."

He went on for some time after that, but the rest didn't seem as important because it mainly covered occasional historical oddities of how people had become manipulators, but none had ever mentioned dreams. This meant that whilst he listened attentively, not much else stuck out to him except that this might be why they were so eager to take him back to Krinestadt as he had now become a historical oddity himself through the way that he had become a manipulator.

The following two days came and went but, try as he might, Kira had been unsuccessful in getting any information from Thea and Sadis. Along with his continued unsuccessful efforts to rediscover his aura and the rains heralding the impending approach of the autumn, this left him in a much more dampened physical state and mood. Soon, it would become apparent that this glum state of mind would come to help him immensely in progressing as a manipulator.

On the fourth day of their journey, as they approached a track leading north towards Kalsin, Kira thought that he heard the creaking wheel of a cart. The group then found themselves again squatting in the foliage. After some time, Kira dismissed the sound as a figment of his imagination, but Sadis decided to wait. This went some way towards further irritating him because he was fairly certain that they no longer needed to hide from the roads, given the limitations of Arkadia's reach. This meant that he was left squatting, gradually feeling the complaints from his knees mounting and becoming very aware of the droplets of moisture snaking down his back having dripped from leaves above him.

It was in this state that he had practically stopped thinking because all of these various annoyances together stopped him from being able to daydream effectively. Over time this led to a memory resurfacing of some scholar in Illyria who had talked about the practise of meditation. With nothing else to try and hoping to briefly escape his misery, he closed his eyes and tried to think of nothing.

For someone with such an active mind as Kira, this was no easy task. Every time he thought that he was about to achieve some semblance of serenity, he was brought back to reality, whether by a bird's squawk or an ache from his knees; he felt that he couldn't achieve such a peaceful state for long. However, in doing this exercise, he had at least encouraged himself to stop thinking and perhaps this was enough because, with his eyes closed and little to do, he could hardly stop himself from looking further within his mind. Here he found little but emptiness and so was left with the question, what am I?

This was when something came back to him, aura was him, and he was aura. Every person seemed to be vessels for this aura, and he had seen that it was in them all when he had briefly become aware of it the morning after his birthday. His pulse quickening with this realization, he looked within himself yet again trying to visualize the aura that made him up without physically trying to grasp it with his mind because it seemed that it was his mind. He then happened upon a second simple memory; perhaps aura could be described as a person's soul. This made sense with knowing that someone would die if their aura was removed because at that point, all that would be left would be an empty vessel!

Having made these breakthroughs, he was able to see the perceived emptiness within himself differently and so, without properly thinking, he became aware of his own aura. He recognised its presence and felt its movement within him as a dance of colour, much like within his previous dream. However, where there had been many colours in the dream, here there was only one - light blue. Unsure what this meant, he thought about it for a while, and a possible reason dawned upon him.

What he had seen in the dream was not the aura of one person; instead, it had been the aura of multitudes, or perhaps it had been entirely detached auras floating through the universe. Either way, this meant that it was his unique aura that had taken this particular colour upon itself.

Receiving a sharp prodding from Thea, he was brought back to full awareness of his surroundings, and they walked off together across the road with Kira's knees protesting every step. Soon enough, the complaints from his legs stopped and he resolved to question Thea to try and confirm his theory.

"Hey umm, Thea, I heard that aura was individual to a person and that it almost appears to occupy what looks to be a different colour for everyone," said Kira talking to Thea's back.

"Who told you that?" she asked, glancing back at Sadis.

"Just some scholar." Kira shrugged it off.

"Then they must have been knowledgeable indeed." Sadis mused, but neither of them said anymore.

Following this acknowledgement, Kira tried to remake the connection that he had felt with his aura. It took some time, but it was a lot easier than before, and he gradually gained a heightened awareness of it. In order to experiment with it, he then began attempting to replicate the projection of aura that he had achieved, seemingly by instinct, back in Neuverie.

However, just when he thought that it might be about to work, he remembered that there were two other manipulators with him and that it might be best to keep his progress hidden for at least a bit longer. Instead, when he was confident that they were not paying him much attention, he began trying to warp his aura, without reaching out to it, into a more concentrated ball in the palm of his right hand that he held out before him.

To his surprise, his aura moved around him with little effort, much like he was re-learning to control a limb, and gathered in his palm so that he could see it before the surroundings. The orb that he created was not as smooth he desired it, and instead, he was only able to concentrate the aura all around his hand and he felt that a lot of practise would be needed to become fluid in the action. A moment later, he noticed that Thea was looking back at him and he hurriedly stopped.

Fortunately, she only asked him, "What are you doing with your hand like that?"

Feeling relieved, he mumbled a reply, "Oh, I got, er, a fly landed on it," feeling the onset of a wave of exhaustion after the test.

Accepting this as a valid excuse, she looked back ahead with no apparent alarm, so it appeared that he had gotten away with it despite his recklessness. Actually, he thought, her looking around like that had been helpful because it showed that others couldn't see his aura in the same way that he could. Thinking further about this, he wondered if there would be a way to view other people's auras, but he quickly had to put this line of thought aside as he became more aware of how exhausted he had suddenly become.

The physical and mental exhaustion that he experienced from such a small manipulation was quite alarming. For the rest of the day, he could barely keep on his feet whilst desperately trying not to fall behind Sadis and Thea. This then led him to consider if their great endurance came with their training as manipulators.

The next day it became apparent that they were further east in Anadora than Kira had ever been before. This was evidenced by the trees themselves changing from the oak and birch common in the west; to tall pine trees more common in the east and the north. These trees went straight up into the sky and only had branches beginning about two-thirds of the way up their great and ancient height. This, coupled with a lessening density of bushes and other low plants on the ground, meant there was little point trying to hide beside the roads. As they were now a good distance from Arkadia, with Sadis' approval, they gave up on the idea entirely and followed a dirt track heading towards Kalsin regardless of other travellers.

Having to devote less attention to the careful placement of his feet, Kira was left to focus more on developing his own skill with manipulations. However, this was certainly not an easy process and, when they entered Kalsin's territory, by crossing a small brook, he was not noticeably further along than he had been before. The only encouraging factor was that it was continually getting easier for him to discover his aura and then start to move it, even if the manipulations themselves remained challenging.

As well as the difference in the type of trees lining the road, he also began to note the differences in flowers. Whilst Arkadia had been filled with bluebells, this land was filled with an equivalent yellow flower that may have been related somehow. This difference was not significant, but it did contribute to making the land look as though it were foreign and something different from what he had experienced either surrounding Neuverie or in Illyria. Such a thought did make him wonder if he had made the right choice in following the manipulators after all, but it wasn't as if he had a family waiting for him back home anyway.

This worrying was put aside when they crested a rise in the road and viewed their destination Kalsin, Sadis explained, as they walked down the hill, was actually also the name of the capital of Kalsin that they were now heading towards. The micro-nation had apparently originated as a city-state after the fall of the original Arkadia.

Looking down upon the city, it seemed difficult to understand how they could be having difficulties with barbarian attacks. The whole settlement was surrounded by a twelve-foot high stone wall atop an earthen bank with a ditch carved out in front of it. Whilst the fortifications were clearly not Marxan, as they did not reach quite the same scale, they would still be formidable to even a professional army. Looking to the manipulators for answers, Thea only shrugged back at him whilst saying, "It's not Kalsin that they go after; they prefer the surrounding farms."

Stopping in the road, Sadis turned back to the group to say, "Kira, what are we going to call you in the city?"

"What?" asked Kira and Thea pretty much simultaneously, before Kira pointed out, "You're aware that Kira is quite the common name in western Anadora? Right?"

"Yes, but we are two manipulators, who are coming from Arkadia, with a boy called Kira and we don't want anyone getting the wrong ideas."

"So you do want people getting the correct idea?" retorted Kira playfully.

"It'll be fine!" declared Thea, before Sadis could manage a reply, and she marched off ahead, leaving the others with little choice but to follow her.