Chapter 33: The last dream and its consequences

His dream was dark.

That was all there was to it, a barren landscape filled with faded browns and greys and bereft of any real colour. Through thin wisps of smog, down by what might have been a river, strange creatures could be seen which each balanced atop a triad of spindle-thin legs. They picked their way through the quagmire of waste as they slurped up any remaining scraps of nutrients, making little sound as they did so. Such repugnance was caused by the sight that Kira had to look away. Up the banking, peeking through the ethereal mists, stood the stumps of terrified buildings - alone like jagged mountains in the sky. These mountains huddled in concentrated ranges whilst lupine monsters loped and howled amidst them.

These animals, if you could bring yourself to name them such, as they held no sense of a soul, appeared to Kira like wolves. However, where white fur may have been, mud covered their flanks as they made scarce the few remaining vultures brave enough to stand in their path. Their maws were fixed in a permanent scowl whilst they bloodied themselves on the carcass of a dead tripod. If this wasn't enough already to strike terror into the heart of hearts of anyone, they stood as tall as any man.

But, no men could be seen.

This had once been their city, their place of dwelling, but now, who knew who owned it? Down one of the ravines, between the ranges, stood what must have been a once sacred site, with a concrete cross engraved above it. Zealous men, holy men, must have once inhabited these walls, but now, yet more of these wolf-beasts ventured without trepidation into it. Beasts without a sense of the serene, beasts without a sense of care and beasts without a sense of family; all these and more filled it's halls. And all were without a person to drive them away, for this was a world inhabited only by ghosts.

In the corner of one of the dilapidated halls stood a statue, part of its head was missing, but the figure was still distinct. It was a statue of a man, a nailed God on a cross. Once this God may have cared, but now his temple was lying in ruin. A colossal wreck and precipitation could be seen running down from his one remaining eye, just waiting to be lapped up by the animals below.

Suddenly, there came the sound of footsteps, and the smaller creatures fled from Kira's view. Transfixed by the slow thumping noise of heavy feet approaching, he could do nothing but watch as a figure detached itself from the darkness.

It was a tall figure, with wide shoulders, that wore a great black cloak which fell to the floor and dragged along behind it as it solemnly approached. The figure's face could not be seen on account of a white and black mask that it wore. The white and black of the mask appeared to be moving and interlocking, and Kira found that he could not part his vision from it. Then, something else that was strange struck him: the mask had no holes for eyes, but the figure was still confident in the way it walked, not bothering to grope out forwards into the darkness. The figure stopped moving and looked right through Kira, who then stepped out of the way and saw that a second figure, similarly cloaked and masked, had arrived behind him. The first figure nodded to the second as a form of greeting.

"You ready to go?" asked the second figure with a surprisingly mundane voice.

"Yes, it's high time we moved on to other worlds and other times," returned the other this time in a voice much more fitting of their appearance. "I assume that we're ready to begin?"

In response, the other figure merely turned towards the centre of the room, which was momentarily engulfed in a bright flash. Once Kira could see clearly again, all that was left was a spherical object floating maybe a foot off from the ground. Without a moment's hesitation, the two figures walked through the orb and vanished.

Northwest, that was the thought that filled his mind in the morning, and he could think of little else.

Now he was certain that he had a direction in which to travel once he left Ostermark and whilst he did not know what waited for him there, he thought it a good direction to go anyway as the land there was not under Krinestadt's control. This would mean that he would be able to use his ability, whatever it may turn out to be, to help people free from the scrutiny of Krinestadt's guild of manipulators until he was strong enough to stand against them.

He also knew that northwest there was a large marshland that protected an island filled with monsters and beasts crossing the sea from another world through a gate that existed somewhere there. This meant that the northern marshes attracted many adventurers, seeking to earn their fortunes by bringing back artefacts, and would be the perfect place to train. Whether this was reasonable or not, he repeated it to himself in order to convince himself that going north-west was his only option now that he had been motivated to do so.

The other thing that struck him that morning was that Aura had disappeared. Normally she was liable to sleeping in, particularly after a late night, but it seemed that she had left early, maybe trying to avoid him after their night together. When thinking back to it, he did not regret what had happened, which became an exciting consideration in itself.

Another few days then passed, being spent doing the usual myriad of tasks given to him by the rest of the scribes, delivering a scroll to Eric or copying out transcripts of what had been said at various meetings, but his mind was always elsewhere. He was far too busy preparing to leave Ostermark, now that he had a direction to go in, to bother with conversations with his fellow slaves. He thought that if he could get away from the city then, without the influence of the tracking mark that had been placed on him, escape would have been simple. This did make him wonder if coming to Ostermark had ever been a good idea, but it was too late to lament this now, and he assumed that he would just have to go for it and improvise something later down the line.

Perhaps Cat would help, he wondered, as the boy had been a manipulator for far longer than him, which made Cat almost essential to find when leaving. The only other real question that remained was whether or not to take Aura with him or even tell her that he was going. As she was not a manipulator, he was not confident in her ability to keep up with him and Cat once outside of the city. However, this decision was later made for him.

On one particular day, a week of hardly talking with Aura later (she was still keeping her distance), he sat alone eating his lunch in the dining hall with the rest of the scribes being called off to document some important event that he had managed to miss. Just as he was finishing up and preparing himself to head back to the office, Aura approached him and sat down on the bench beside him, excitedly brimming with some news. "Lady Meera thinks that the first prince of Arkadia is still alive!" she told him by way of greeting.

Hearing this, he almost spat out his last mouthful of food and, desperate to not do so, he then managed to choke on what remained. Still, he gathered himself quickly and tried replying in the least suspicious way that he could manage, "Even if that were true," he began, "Arkadia is gone now, and their lands have been inherited by the earl of Alsport, so it's not like this changes anything."

"Perhaps not," she replied, "But, it shows that he was able to beat off the manipulators that Krinestadt sent after him, so maybe he'd be strong enough to do something." Kira did not feel strong enough as she continued, "And I know it's true because a manipulator reported it to her."

Again Kira struggled to contain himself. Could Sadis or Thea be here and preparing to oust him for running off from them? If that were the case, then he might even have to leave immediately, which was not an enticing prospect as the days were still short and cold. The obvious way out of this was for him to ask Aura exactly which manipulator had said this, but that might come over as a bit suspicious. So he held off, wondering instead if this was what Fyodor had meant by the legacy of Arkadia. If it would be his destiny to continuously be associated with Arkadia, no matter how far he ran from it, he did not know what to do, but that was not worth thinking much about.

His worries were then lessened slightly by Aura mentioning, "I think that it was the same manipulator who ran off with you that one time…" which simultaneously caused him to silently curse Fyodor as the one trying to force him to leave the city.

"Well, that's definitely interesting if nothing else," he said, acting as innocent as possible, and the two parted ways to head back to their workplaces. However, he sensed that Aura may have been slightly disappointed at his apparent lack of interest. She seemed to only have valued Arkadia higher than Krinestadt because of the lack of slavery there, so he thought that asking her if she wanted to leave with him probably would be a nice thing to do, even if she might slow him down a bit.

Although Aura had heard it first, she had clearly told her friends about this rumour, and they had then gone and told everyone else. This meant that, by early the next day, the whole palace was alight with it and buzzed with a sort of excitement whilst Kira was eternally teased for his name strangely coinciding with the escaped prince's, an association which he would have rather avoided. But things were happening quickly now, and he was certain of being watched.

His appearance perfectly matched the description of the prince's and he had arrived at the exact time when the prince was meant to have disappeared and from the direction of Arkadia. James was now spending more time with Kira in the office, sending others to do his tasks instead of himself and taking Kira with him to do tasks when others would have been more qualified. Thinking in a paranoid manner, this was a little bit concerning for Kira. He was forced by it to stop all manipulation practising under the impression that someone noticing him doing that would report it to the authorities, which would practically confirm his identity.

At that point, it wouldn't even matter if he was the prince or not. He would fit the identity well enough to be prosecuted anyway to put the public at rest as they had heard the news from drunken palace guards who could never be trusted to keep their mouths shut.

On his day off that week, he thought that someone was following him then too, but he pretended to not notice them and instead tried using a more winding route to shake them off. However, even when he passed through a labyrinthine shortcut, shown to him by Cat, the man kept up with him stepping over the beggars lying on the floor and pushing past the occasional street thief who got in their way. Kira was fairly certain that he saw the boy at least twice during that time, appearing each time as a different child and once even interacting with the person following after Kira attempting to slow them so that they lost him.

Eventually, they both lost interest in losing the man, and Kira bought himself a small lunch and went to eat it in the park before heading back to the palace. He had deliberately been spending as little as possible and had been hiding what was left under his bed for when the day to leave came.

As it happened, he wouldn't have to wait for long. It was a single week later, on another of the days when he was meant to have a day off in the town, and it was early in the morning. He was sitting on his bed, with the sun rising up behind him, and Aura was still sleeping across from him. It felt like it was going to be a very pleasant day, and he thought that the danger of being caught had passed because the news had by now left the palace. People there had moved on to other things, only now using the lost prince of Arkadia as a curse term, much like how people usually blamed bad happenings on demons. Feeling relaxed then became his downfall.

When returning from his breakfast, he decided to wait for Aura, who had gone down later, to ask if he could walk around the city with her. He was reasonably confident of being alone in his room, with the door closed, and, even with the many feet trooping past the door, he assumed that they would not enter. This gave him the perfect opportunity to do some proper manipulations practise, and so he did. Firstly warping his light blue aura into a perfect orb attached to the palm of his hand, he then broke the orb down and moved it around himself like a slithering snake feeling satisfied at how easy such actions were becoming.

Suddenly, there was a terrible bang, and the door flew open.

Standing in the open doorway were two boys around Kira's age, and neither of them was dressed in a palace slave uniform. Instead, the lead one, a confident brown-haired teen, looked down at Kira and began apologizing for the intrusion in a manner that betrayed the fact that he may have just been up for the whole night and out drinking, "I thought… I thought… actually it doesn't mat…" he slurred.

But then his eyebrows furrowed together as he stared down at Kira, evidently noticing something about him. Having never seen these people before and realizing that he still had his aura concentrated around his hand, Kira let it disperse and tried to act as naturally as possible. However, he now realized that the boy had been watching his aura move as now their expression changed again, and it looked like they were going to try and say something.

It was just his luck to have one of the only manipulator trainees in Krinestadt accidentally walk in on him, thought Kira, unsure how to respond. He had to act quickly as the two stepped back away from the door and looked like they might have just got it through their liquidated heads that it was not normal for a slave to be a manipulator.

To seize the initiative over them, whilst hoping that there was no one else in the corridor, Kira ran towards them and forced his aura onto them, trying to overpower them with it. Fortunately, the two were in such a state that knocking them out took hardly any effort at all, so, grabbing them by the arms, he dragged them back into his room and closed the door behind them.