Daniel awoke again in the small room. He was uninjured, and the whip had left no marks on him, much like the first time they had used it on him.
“This is getting to be a bad habit,” he remarked to himself. I need to learn how to make those shields, he thought.
With an endless day in front of him and no one to talk to, he began to practice. His first efforts were amorphous, sometimes covering him and at other times missing parts of his body. One thing he noticed quickly was the fact that physical objects were easier for him to create a shield around than an empty space, even if the object also included an empty space.
Trying to create a spherical shield in the air in front of him was more difficult than creating a rectangular shield that followed the boundaries of his bedframe. He wasn’t sure why, but it was.
By the second day he was able to create fairly reliable shapes in the middle of his room, but they weren’t particularly strong. He experimented by making cubes and pyramids, arranging them like buildings on the dirt floor of his room. It got progressively more difficult the more separate objects he tried to maintain at once and more so if they were of differing shapes and sizes.
It’s a matter of imagination, he realized. I have to train my mind to visualize these things. The better I get at that, the better my control will be.
He tried creating a small city, raising small cubes of different heights and widths on the floor. Unfortunately he didn’t get very far, and somewhere around the fifth or sixth building, his construction fell apart. Frustrated he drew the outlines of the buildings on the dirt floor using his finger.
“I want a big one here, a smaller one here, a pyramid there, a dome here,” he talked to himself as he drew, thinking about what he wanted to create. He stopped with a collection of fourteen outlines on the ground. “But I can’t seem to get past six…”
On impulse he tried to create them all at once and he was surprised when they sprang easily into existence, just as he had imagined them. The shapes were well formed, and he could tell they were more solid than his previous efforts.
What the hell?
He released them and tried again. It was just as easy the second time. Curious he let them go and erased the lines he had drawn in the dirt and then he tried again, this time the shapes flickered and wobbled before collapsing. He couldn’t maintain them all. He drew a new set of lines, making a total of twenty shapes this time. They appeared easily when he put forth the energy.
“Somehow the lines make visualizing it easier,” he observed. “Which probably explains why putting a shield around the bedframe was easier too.” The shape of the well-known object had served to reinforce his mental image.
He practiced for the rest of the day, making shields that encased his body and others that formed more unusual shapes in the air. Even without creating lines in the dirt it was getting easier as his mind got more used to the task.
By the fourth day, he was creating objects and attacking them at the same time. He would visualize a floating sphere and then try to recreate the focused lance of power that the girl had used against him. Once he got used to doing the two very dissimilar tasks at the same time it was easy, and he could pop the sphere every time.
“How do I know if it’s strong enough to protect me, though,” he said to himself. “If I can break it, so could someone else, making it worse than useless if it creates a false sense of security.”
He tried channeling as much of his energy into the sphere as possible. When he did that he couldn’t break it with his energy pulse, but that didn’t make him feel much better. It all comes down to strength and focus.
He tried drawing a circle on the ground, using it to make a hemisphere. Afterward it took several attempts to break it, until he was forced to concentrate a large portion of his power on it. The circle doesn’t just make it easier to visualize, it lends strength to the structure.
A week passed while he continued to expand his skill and control. Without any real idea what was possible and what wasn’t, all he could look to for inspiration was what he had seen done by others. His extreme isolation, while making him lonely in ways he had never dreamed of before, also drove him to explore his new abilities. There was quite literally nothing else for him to do.
Daniel also tried to imitate the invisibility that the girl had used when he fought her, but he failed miserably. He did learn from the experience, though. He tried creating a transparent shield around himself, but that did nothing at all to keep him unseen. Next he tried making it a solid color, and while that worked, it was also nothing like being invisible. He did learn that he could camouflage himself to a certain degree, if he matched the colors and patterns around him, but it was a pale imitation of what he had seen, or rather not seen.
The teleportation that the warden had used was also beyond his ability. No matter what he imagined or thought about, his body firmly refused to relocate itself.
He was interrupted in his thoughts as his door opened again, showing him not one but two wardens standing outside. Daniel flinched inwardly as he remembered the pain of his last encounter with one of them, and he resolved to avoid letting his temper get the best of him again.
Standing, he exited his small room without bothering to ask any questions and let them lead him wherever they would. That turned out to be back in the direction of the circular arena, where he had killed the girl. This time they took him into the larger building that stood beside it, leading him up several flights of wooden stairs. Well, they looked like stairs, but as with the rest of the building, they were merely protrusions of the same root that comprised the entire building.
They stopped outside a door in one of the hallways, and Daniel could sense Thillmarius inside, waiting for him. One of the wardens touched the door, and it moved aside to allow Daniel into the room. His escorts remained outside.
The interior of the room was undecorated, but it held a number of chair-like protuberances that one could relax into. Thillmarius gestured toward one, so Daniel sat.
“They tell me that you attacked one of the wardens last week after you were named,” said the black-skinned forest god.
Daniel nodded, “That is true, sir.” There wasn’t much point in denying it.
“Could you tell me why?” The forest god seemed genuinely curious.
“I was fearful of the punishment they planned for me, so I thought to escape the man that was walking with me,” said Daniel.
“What would you have done if you managed to kill or incapacitate him?” asked Thillmarius.
“Run for the valley,” Daniel told him honestly.
“But that would mean your death,” said the god. Seeing the confusion on Daniel’s face, he came to a conclusion, “You didn’t know, did you?”
“Know what, sir?”
“You speak so well that I forget you are completely ignorant in everything else, wildling. The necklace you wear, it will kill you if you go beyond Ellentrea or the Illeniel Grove. Our baratti learn this from a very early age.”
Thillmarius’ words raised as many questions as they answered. “May I ask you some questions, sir? The more you speak, the more aware I am of how little I know,” said Daniel as courteously as possible.
The forest god raised one eyebrow, “Why not ask the other baratti?”
“I don’t know what baratt means exactly,” replied Daniel, “though I’ve come to suspect it means ‘human’, and none of them will talk to me.”
Thillmarius studied him carefully, new interest in his eyes. “I’ve never encountered one of your breed who seemed so full of questions, nor one so well spoken. Very well, I will entertain your inquiries for a while. To begin, ‘baratt’ is singular, and ‘baratti’ is plural, but the word does not mean human. I don’t think there is a word in Barion that matches it exactly, but the closest I can think of is the phrase, ‘not of the people’, or perhaps simply, ‘not people’.”
Daniel frowned, “But I am a person. I’m human.”
“You are human, but humans are not ‘people’,” said Thillmarius. “Perhaps it would help if you understood more of my race. We call ourselves the ‘She’Har’, which is the opposite of ‘baratti’. Our name, in your tongue, would be ‘the People’. Do you understand now?”
“So you call yourselves, ‘people’ and everyone else is ‘baratti’,” said Daniel, rephrasing the words.
“Oh, I have it!” said Thillmarius suddenly. “I remembered the word I was searching for. A better translation of baratt into your language might be the word ‘animal’.”
Daniel wasn’t too pleased with that choice, but he decided to let it pass. He had no desire to be punished again. “Among my kind, we call the She’Har ‘forest gods’, and we consider ourselves people.”
Thillmarius laughed, “How ignorant! No, the She’Har are not gods. We gave up such ignorant superstitions long ago, though I suppose the Kionthara might seem like gods to you.”
“Kionthara?”
“It means ‘gate-guardian’,” clarified Thillmarius. “They live in another dimension, one we passed through before coming to this planet.”
“Planet?” said Daniel, struggling with yet another unfamiliar term.
“I thought you would know that one, it’s a human term,” said the She’Har. “Perhaps it has fallen into disuse. From the stories and the memories of the Prathion Grove, it would seem that your kind once knew much more about the world than they do today.”
“The She’Har came here from another world?” said Daniel hesitantly.
Thillmarius nodded, “Yes, over seven thousand years ago we found refuge here. This world was teeming with humans then. They had choked out most of the other large animals, and they covered huge areas of land with their cities and roads.”
“What happened to them?”
“We started small, but once the first groves were raised, we began clearing the land for our use. The humans tried to prevent this, so we were forced to kill most of them. Once we destroyed their cities and their machines stopped working, it got much easier, but in the beginning they were formidable opponents. Comparing the ones we keep today to the ones in my memories, it seems hard to believe that you are the same species.”
With every sentence Daniel was introduced to new and even more world shattering ideas. Humans had been here before the forest gods; that was a pretty big one. The forest gods weren’t gods at all, but an invading race from somewhere—else. There had once been a war between mankind and the She’Har, and humanity had almost been powerful enough to win.
“What did you mean by machines?” asked Daniel, unfamiliar with the way that Thillmarius had used the word. To Daniel a ‘machine’ was little more than a wagon or cart, or something more complex, such as a loom.
Thillmarius smiled, “They were absolutely overrun with them, big and small. Every dwelling was full of them. They had machines that carried them places, over land and sea, even by air. Some of their machines could even talk, and their war machines were fearsome indeed.”
Daniel struggled to imagine such a society and failed. He gave up trying and moved to a different question, “If they were so powerful, how did you defeat them?”
The She’Har smiled, “Despite their seeming cleverness they were a dead race, they were unable to sense or manipulate aythar. Their machines, while complex and powerful, were no match for She’Har spellweaving.”
“Aythar?”
“The energy we use,” said Thillmarius. Lifting one hand he created a globe of swirling light.
“But everyone here seems to use it,” noted Daniel with some confusion.
“These humans are the result of some of our entertainments,” explained Thillmarius. “The wardens patrol the wildling settlements to make sure that none of our genetic alterations get loose into the wild population.” Thillmarius raised his golden eyebrows, showcasing his brilliant red irises.
“You think I’m the result of one of your…,” Daniel hesitated to use the word, “…baratti interbreeding with the people of Colne?”
“It has happened many times in the past,” said the She’Har. “Normally we simply kill any wildlings who are found to be able to touch aythar. You are lucky to be here.” Leaning forward Thillmarius sent a tendril of power out to touch the necklace around Daniel’s neck.
He was paralyzed. The ‘chair’ beneath him rose, stretching outward to become a wooden slab. In the span of less than a half a minute he had gone from sitting to lying down—and he was utterly unable to move. His eyes rolled in their sockets as he sought desperately to find some means of escape.
“Don’t panic, baratt. I don’t intend to hurt you, but after your victory, I’ve taken more of an interest in you. If you are to win fights, we need to know which grove your talent came from. You haven’t exhibited any specific gift yet, but once we know what it should be we can see about exploiting it more properly.” As the She’Har spoke, vine-like tendrils appeared from the base of the ‘table’ that Daniel lay upon. One wrapped around his arm before it drove a sharp thorn-shaped tip through the inside of his elbow. Another snaked its way upward, entering his mouth, slipping past his tongue, and down his throat.
The power of the necklace prevented him from gagging reflexively. Fighting down his panic, Daniel tried to calm his mind and almost succeeded, until he felt another tendril run up his leg. He screamed mentally, but despite the terrible fear that consumed his mind, his body refused to respond.
“It’s just taking samples, baratt.”
To Daniel it felt as though he was trapped there for hours. He could feel the movement of the vine that had gone down his throat as it snaked its way to his stomach and beyond. Surely at some point it must have met its mate, coming from the other direction. Nausea swept over him, but his stomach was unable to respond. The necklace controlled even the muscles in his gut, keeping them still and quiet. After an eternity they withdrew, leaving wet trails across his skin as they left his body. Something smelled bad, and he suspected it was the result of the lower tendril. A drop of blood welled from his arm, but he didn’t bleed any more than that.
Thillmarius restored movement to his arms and legs, and Daniel rolled off of the wooden slab to huddle near the door. He still felt nauseous, but his stomach remained quiet.
“The wardens are waiting beyond the door. They’ll take you back to your room. Your stomach will start working again in a few minutes, so make sure you’re outside before then,” said the She’Har waving him away dismissively.
The door opened on its own, and Daniel wasted no time leaving. He leapt to his feet and scurried, dignity was a thing for other men. The wardens laughed when they saw the fear and disgust on his face.
True to Thillmarius’ prediction, Daniel’s stomach began heaving not long after they exited the building. Bending over, he vomited on the ground while the wardens waited.
“You have one minute to finish that and get moving,” said one of them. “Then we start with the whips.”
Daniel was still fighting with the heaving of his belly when they drew out the magical red whips, but he straightened and began walking anyway. Satisfied, they resumed their trip back to his room while he gagged. Along the way he began throwing up once more, but he kept walking even as he doubled over.
The wardens seemed disappointed, as if they had hoped for another opportunity to punish him.