Pseudosphere, Month Twenty-Eight
Para was finally at the brink. She was finally at the threshold of the goal which had fuelled her every thought, her every movement since she had first stepped into smoky emptiness of the fifth room. Dark, navy blue smoke swirled around her body like threatening storm clouds. Her building energy created small tornados in the debris around her—she only had half an hour, and she wanted this to be the half hour that changed everything.
In the center of Room Five was a giant translucent sphere, the size of a small moon. The girls had immediately recognized the material upon entry; it was the fjuyen substance that had been used to hold Amara captive in the past. Pax had caused all the bones in her arm to splinter when she had tried to break the substance, mistaking it for glass. She could not look at the mineral without remembering that excruciating pain, and feeling the need to learn how to master this new element. It had beaten her before with its mere existence; she would not allow this to happen again.
She knew that the test of the room was to crack open the fjuyen globe—and the only way she believed she could do so was with sheer power. Since Pax had accessed Silver Form, she had been completely focused on going further. She felt the time pressure of their stay in the Pseudosphere coming to an end, and she wanted to make the best of it while she still could. After carefully planning out the various methods they could use to solve the puzzle, the girls had accepted that only Para would be able to handle a task of this magnitude.
And now, after focusing on nothing else for months, Para was prepared to go past Silver Form. If she could only access more power, she knew she would be able to destroy the orb that mocked her so relentlessly. Any moment now, I will manage it. I know that I can do this—I will be the first woman to pass all the tests of the vector zone.
She heard a sound like a laugh echoing from inside her mind. A melodious female voice entered her skull, mockingly. What are you playing at, Para? You’re just a little insect.
“I am not an insect!” she hissed, clenching her fists until her nails dug into her palms. She recognized Suja’s ridicule, realizing that the memories were haunting her. Blood ran down her fingers, dripping onto the smoky floor. Every muscle in her body strained until it was taut. Tears of blood streamed down her face from the pressure of building energy in the tender skin of her eye sockets.
You should have joined with me when you had a chance. I could have given you real power. Oh, sweetheart. On your own, you are just a pathetic female deva. It’s laughable.
“You’re right. I was pathetic. But I won’t be anymore—I won’t be pathetic for a millisecond longer!” Para screamed at the top of her lungs, feeling the cyclones of energy rip her indigo hair around wildly. “You were far stronger the last time we met, Suja—but I have changed. I am still changing. I am no longer an ordinary, worthless little girl!”
The navy blue smoke curled around Para’s legs like a cat, rubbing against her silvery body languidly. As she increased her concentration, sucking energy from the world around her, gales and blizzards began to twist forth from the emptiness, feeding her power. Para felt like she was at the center of a hurricane, sweeping all the elements into her command, twisting them with the power of her mind so she could hold them in her hand, and use them to break her fjuyen adversary.
Lightning crackled in the whirlwind around her as she used her mind to magnetically draw forth all the energy from Room Five. When the tempest began to calm, she knew that she had tapped everything available, and needed to focus on the energy inside of her. Her whole body hummed and shook as she stepped forward, placing both hands against the globe. “I’m going to destroy you,” she whispered to the dense, hard element. It must be breakable—and if it was breakable, she would find a way to destroy it. Even if it was impossible, she would find a way. “Do you hear me?” she shouted at the inanimate, but indestructible substance. “I’m going to destroy you!”
Para’s intense level of concentration caused severe pain in her head. It felt like an avalanche of ice spikes in the brain—she doubled over, clutching her head as she continued to push past the pain. “None of you ever thought that I had any value. You pushed the boys—you taught everything to the boys, but you left me useless. You tried to keep me dormant—you tried to repress me. I won’t be considered laughable by our enemies. I won’t be the weakest link!” Para’s mind was in such chaos that although she was yelling at the unconquerable fjuyen sphere, she was also yelling at her family. “I am capable! I am valuable! I will be indispensible.”
She fell to her knees, shaking with the intensity of the rapidly mushrooming power. As she thought of the powerful men in her family, she knew that every single person had been through the agony that she was now experiencing, and far greater. Every one of those men had pushed himself to his own limits—no one had been given anything. When it came to personal strength, everyone was on his own. Alone. To make an unstoppable team, each man must first do his best by his lonesome—not working together. Sometimes they needed to work against each other, against their own selves. They had all been in the Pseudosphere—they had all suffered here, together but alone.
Completely forgetting that she was comprised of two women, Para felt the loneliness of being in an ocean of midnight darkness that stretched to eternity. She had to prove herself to herself first and foremost. She could be an asset to her friends and family at home—she would leave that room being an asset if it was the last thing she did. She closed her eyes, seeing their faces and thinking of how much she loved them all. The petty issues with Thornton and Asher disappeared as she saw them only through the eyes of pure love. It was simply overwhelming how much she loved them; the love of two kindred spirits combined and amplified.
“Mom, Grandpa, I can't bring you back. But I won’t lose anyone else. And I will destroy this fucking ball.” She struggled to stand, and let out a defiant yell: “Eat me, Suja!” With that final thought she felt herself flooded, completely taken over by the power. She lost consciousness of herself as the ancestral deva potential became realized in every atom of every throbbing, yearning cell of her body. She felt the change as though it had happened a thousand times before in dreams, she felt the bulge in her muscles as her heart rate increased to what must be at least six hundred beats per minute. She clutched her chest, feeling the power and pain in her heart as it struggled to keep up with the demands of this transformation. She then threw her arms back, thrusting her chest outward and gasped for air as her mind swam with the dizzying power.
After the lightning and billows of terrible black energy quit gushing around her, there was an incredible calm. She felt the golden energy surrounding her, tranquil and sure. Para’s body trembled with the humming prana, and her already extremely long indigo hair, now lay pooled up on the ground, spiraling several times around like a snake coils up before striking. She had achieved it—the change was sure. She had achieved Golden Form.
“I did it,” she whispered, staring at the clear fjuyen substance before her. “I did it! Now you’re going down! I feel it!” She screamed excitedly, releasing a huge laugh and levitating up into the atmosphere. She fisted the air exuberantly and threw her head back in ecstasy. “I feel it! I am hot! I am untouchable! I am powerf—”
Her arrogant rant was interrupted as her body split in two.
“—ful, ” finished Pax and Amara in unison as they both fell out of the sky and hit the ground with thuds. Amara was still in Ruby Form, with a hue of red surrounding her body, while Pax was surrounded by the silver glow. Pax lay limply for a moment, as her whole body burned. She hyperventilated, concentrating on making the air rush around her skin to cool her down. She felt as though she’d been electrocuted with voltage far more intense than lightning.
“Ow,” she muttered, trying to discard the pain as nothing. She said the word to soothe herself and downplay her shame. If Para had tried to crack the sphere instead of wasting her few seconds of ultimate power boasting, they could have completed the trial by now. For a moment, Pax hated Para for her foolishness.
Distracted from her thoughts by a strange sound, she looked over to see Amara curled up into a ball, wailing, sobbing, and scratching her skin everywhere, leaving red welts in the wake of her nails. The girl screamed as she convulsed on the floor. Pax’s eyes widened; she was in much better shape than Amara. Although her head ached and her body ached, it seemed she could handle the pain and the energy output much more than her friend.
“Pax!” bellowed Amara as her body shook in violent spasms, completely out of control. Tears streamed down her face as she trembled and Pax rushed over to her, pinning her down to the ground firmly. The girl was convulsing so violently that Pax had to use both of her arms and even her knees to put her friend in a full body lock. “Calm down, Amara. Calm down!” Pax spoke evenly, even though her own breathing and heart rate were anything but even. “Let the power go. Release the power. Send it back where it came from.”
“It came from you!” Amara cried.
“We took it from the atmosphere. Just let it drain away. Come on, you can get rid of it—just breathe it out and sweat it out.”
“This much energy isn’t meant to be in my body. Sakra, Pax, what have you done to me? I’m going to explode! I can’t handle this!”
Pax felt a wave of guilt but she shook her head. “I couldn't have done that without you. You're stronger than you think, Mara.”
“The anger! The rage! The memories!” Amara shrieked as she shuddered. “It’s all you! I saw and felt it all… I saw your grandpa get killed—I saw your mom’s body. How can you revisit the worst experiences of your life so easily and just use them as fuel…”
“I don’t know what else to do with them,” Pax answered, biting her lip.
“I never wanted to see those things. And I saw my dad fighting! He was being brutalized by the Asura… Did that really happen? Yes, that couldn't be your imagination. Oh, Daddy... No! No! I can’t...” Amara scratched her nails along her forehead and over her eyes and Pax fought to restrain her hands. Pax felt vast remorse at the pain she had caused her friend.
“Shhhh, Amara. It’s OK. Release the power. Relax!”
She completely forgot about her own pain, using every grain of her remaining strength to stop Amara from quaking in violent seizures and scratching out her own eyes. Amara tried to focus and do as Pax said, and her body finally began to calm down. As Amara’s energy drained, the redness of fire seeped out of her complexion; her eyes returned to their natural pale blue, and her hair returned to its natural silky-soft blonde.
“Good, see? You’re okay. It’s over.” Pax smiled and released her friend from the restraining hold. “You’re very strong, Amara. Very!”
“I’m not,” she sobbed. “Sakra knows I’m not strong. What am I doing here? I can’t do this.”
“We’re in Room Five, and we nearly just beat it! How can you say you’re not strong after what we just did? If we had just been able to hold on for a few seconds longer, we could have destroyed that globe!”
“I just feed off your strength when we’re joined, Pax. On my own I’m nothing. I’ve never fought in a real battle before, you know that.” Amara closed her eyes and silently cried, and Pax pulled her friend into a sitting position and hugged her. “I just can’t deal with this.”
“You have no idea how much you’ve improved in such a short time! I am so proud of you. You’re doing great. I’m learning from you too, Amara. You’re teaching me how to be a better fighter.”
“How could I teach you?” Amara asked incredulously, burying her face in her friend’s shoulder, leaning on her for strength. “I’m terrible at this. Please, Pax. Let’s never do this again!”
Pax stiffened then. She swallowed and spoke slowly. “We need to. I need you to do this with me—how will we get out of here otherwise?”
“We’ll find another way,” Amara whispered, “but I’m never going to do that again. I don’t want to join bodies anymore—it’s too painful, physically and emotionally.”
“Listen to me,” said Pax through her clenched jaw. “We have to keep going forward—it’s the only way. The boys can handle this. We have the same deva blood, the same deva bodies.”
“I don’t care. I don’t want to get more powerful. These tests? They’re all stupid and irrelevant,” Amara said angrily. “Tell me, what skills could we possibly gain from learning to blow up a gigantic ball made from a substance harder than diamond? I don’t know about you, but in my everyday life that’s not exactly a pressing concern.”
“We wouldn’t have been given this task unless it was important,” Pax argued. “We’ve attacked it with everything we have in us. Day after day, Para just unleashes on that thing. Nothing happens. We need to keep trying.”
“We don’t need to do shit. Here’s what matters to me: lipstick. Red or neutral tones? Jeans—flare or skinny leg? Skirts—knee-length or mini? Earrings—dangling or hoops? These are the kinds of decisions I want to make on a daily basis. I don’t want to have to worry about whether my body is going to explode!”
Pax blinked. “We need to do this, Mara.”
“No.”
“Then how will we get out of here?” Pax asked angrily. “Help me to do this, and I won’t ever ask anything of you again. We can go our separate ways after we leave the vector zone and never talk again.”
“I don’t want that, Pax. I just… I need to learn to use Golden Form as much as I need a bellybutton piercing. I kind of want one because they look cool, but it’s unnecessary. Stop being greedy and just be satisfied with what we’ve achieved already. Enough is enough.”
Pax ripped herself away from Amara and stood up furiously. “I need to learn Golden Form as much as I need to breathe. Now that I’ve tasted it, I will break my neck to get there again and to master the power with or without you. Then, once I’m there, I’ll try to achieve more! This is who I am, and this is what I live for. What else is there for me to live for now, Mara? Tell me that.”
“Pax,” said Amara, her face falling into her hands flaccidly. “Forgive me. Please forgive me, but I can’t do that again.”
Pax stared at the girl on the floor with contempt and disappointment. “You’re right. You shouldn’t have come here. You’re useless to me; you’re nothing.” She regretted the words as soon as they left her mouth, but they had been spoken. She turned and walked away. Only when she started walking did she realize how much energy she’d lost, and how weak she was. Amara was in worse shape, and she was just leaving her there. Her friend wouldn’t be able to move—possibly for days. There was a pained expression on Pax’s face which Amara couldn’t see. Pax knew how much her words had hurt the blonde woman. She could feel it. And she hadn’t meant those words at all.
Even if Amara had chosen never to practice her powers, Pax would still have loved her and considered her a dear friend. Amara was clever; almost as brilliant as her mother. She was creative and curious, with an amazing sense of humor. She might not be strong, but she was worthy in hundreds of other important ways. Training wasn’t everything—there were human pursuits in which Amara excelled. As much as she told herself this, she knew that she didn’t believe it. They had entered the Pseudosphere for a reason, and Amara was giving up.
Pax would need to destroy the fjuyen crystal on her own, and she didn’t know how. Her anger and impatience had finally reached their limit. She had never practiced with anyone weaker than she; she was used to Vincent pushing her mental and physical thresholds. Her father, Raymond, was a font of knowledge and passion for exercising his power. Thornton and Asher just had fun one-upping each other, but even that was better than this. For the first time, Pax was required to push herself, and drag Amara along with her. Worst of all, she had lost Para. This made her angry at herself; she should never have invested herself so heavily in Para—for she felt like half of her own body had surrendered.
She mentally renounced Amara. She would achieve Golden Form herself, even if it took a lifetime in Room Five. It was surely impossible to achieve it on her own, but Pax would try anyway. If she managed the feat, it wouldn’t be the first time she conquered impossibility.