CHAPTER 17

The Punishment

Dreams should be treated with more scrutiny and the waking day with less inspection. It is too often that one is oblivious to his true nature but wastes his life worrying on insignificant details.

Passage Four, Fifty-Third Precept of the Combat Codes

This is the fifth time you have broken your nasal cavity since you were admitted to the Lyceum,” Xenalia said.

Cego watched Xenalia’s little spectral hover over his face and was quiet. He felt the heat of the Observer on his skin and letting the familiar sterile smell of the medward waft over him. The cleric applied an ointment to the bridge of his nose.

“Your body’s natural healing mechanisms, in combination with this nanobiotic ointment, should repair the bone structure again within a day or two,” Xenalia said. “By then, your breathing patterns should return to normal, so there is nothing to worry about.”

Cego looked out the medward window across from the cot he sat up in. Icicles hung from the frames and slowly dripped three floors down as the winter frost thawed in the sun. He imagined the little streams the melting snows had created on the grounds outside, flowing down the slight grade into the Citadel’s surrounding moat.

Cego remembered when Murray had first led him across the entry bridge and he’d set eyes on the Lyceum’s ancient sister buildings, the rounded architecture of the Harmony and the jagged edges of the Valkyrie.

This was his home. The Lyceum was where he’d met his friends, his family, grown with them through both hardship and joy. It was where he’d learned the words of his ancestors and honed his combat craft every day.

Despite everything, even though this place stood for a broken system where he was nothing but a pawn, the Lyceum still was the only real home he’d ever known. A place outside the island in Cego’s mind. It gave him comfort to think of the long, quiet stairways and great academic domes.

Cego met Xenalia’s incoming stare.

“You have been quiet today,” the cleric said. “Most often, you have more words. You tell me of your classes, of your friends, of the Grievar world, which I am unfamiliar with.”

“I’m just thinking,” Cego said.

“I do not think you Grievar are supposed to do too much of that.” Xenalia’s lip curled up into a slight smile, a habit she’d picked up recently when she attempted a joke.

Cego chuckled. “Yes, sometimes, I believe thinking doesn’t do anything but complicate everything. But… things are changing so fast. Sometimes, I feel like I can’t keep up.”

Xenalia nodded as she wound a fresh bandage around Cego’s arm. “I have heard of this change as well. Most often, I do not concern myself with politics or news of the world outside of these medward halls, and yet the voices speaking are too loud to not hear this time.”

Cego’s stomach lurched, thinking of Xenalia and her clerics in this medward. If his brother’s army forced their way into Ezo and began to sack cities, most of the Daimyo would have fled already.

“Xenalia, you need to leave,” Cego said abruptly.

“I still have to give you an abysyth shot for the internal damage you took during your match,” Xenalia said. “It is okay if I am a little late for my class with the neophytes today.”

“That’s not what I mean.” Cego’s breath caught in his chest, thinking about his friend being hurt and what his brother would do to her. “My brother Silas, he’s coming. He’s coming with his armies and they are not going to leave any Daimyo alive.”

Xenalia stopped her work for a moment and stared at Cego. “You are worried about me?”

“Yes!” Cego nearly yelled. “Xenalia, if Silas comes through these gates undeterred, he’ll ask an oath of loyalty from every Grievar. Those who give it will be taken into the Flux, and those who don’t will be executed on the spot. I’ve seen it… with Murray.”

“And so what if I give my oath as well?” Xenalia asked. “I have no problem pledging loyalty to whoever controls the resources, as long as I can keep practicing my craft to heal those who need it.”

Cego shook his head. “Silas will not take your oath, Xenalia. You are a Daimyo. He will… All the clerics here would be killed.”

Xenalia didn’t appear to be in the least bit fearful. “If that is the case, then so be it. If there is nothing that can be done, I accept my fate.”

“I don’t accept it,” Cego growled. “I don’t accept you giving your life to my brother’s cause, nor do I accept the deaths of those Grievar who don’t swear allegiance to him.”

“But…” Xenalia paused. “Will this new world that your brother is creating not be a better one for you? A world where Grievar are truly free, not bound by service to the Daimyo as they have been for so many centuries?”

Cego knew the answer. Now that he knew he was home. He needed to protect it, protect those he loved.

“No, it is not a better world,” Cego said. “Because Silas thinks he is giving Grievar their freedom by destroying the Daimyo. But he is replacing their old chains with new ones that he’s built. He isn’t giving them any real choice.”

“Maybe so,” said Xenalia. “But do we have any choice in anything? Did you know that the thoughts that populate your brain, that determine how you act and what you plan, are not controlled by you? They simply come to life, like little sparks lit by lightning in a forest.”

“I don’t care about that, Xenalia,” Cego replied. “All I care about are the people here in these Citadel walls, my friends. And that’s you. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

Xenalia’s spectral floated away from Cego, and he felt her eyes on him. The cleric got very close, pressed her cold hand to Cego’s face, and gently brushed it across his forehead.

“Okay, Cego,” she said. “I accept your care. As long as you do not go breaking yourself again.”

Cego nodded. “I’ll try, as always. But I can’t promise anything, so you’d better be here to patch me up.”

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Though Cego didn’t need the spectral to lead him to the catacombs any longer, it still did, as if it were goading him to keep training in the onyx.

As usual, he found Kōri Shimo sitting in the dusty room, cross-legged within the onyx Circle. Cego was still amazed that the boy was able to stay in the ring for so long—one afternoon, Cego had counted a full five minutes that the boy occupied that terrible world, having his limbs ripped apart and his head bashed in by the Guardian.

Shimo abruptly opened his eyes, refocusing on the dimly lit room he now occupied. He stood and stepped out of the onyx, not sweating and short of breath like Cego was after a session, still, even after more than a month training in the blacklight.

“How do you do it?” Cego asked. “How do you spend so much time in there… without it affecting you?”

Cego still was not accustomed to the Guardian destroying his body, bludgeoning him like a piece of meat. It never got easier. The pain still racked his body and the claustrophobia overtook him until Kōri Shimo pulled his lifeless body from the ring.

“I’ve been training in the onyx for over two years now,” Kōri Shimo replied. “I’ve developed far more resistance to its effects than you have.”

“So, you’re saying when you first started training here, you were having problems like me?”

Kōri Shimo raised his eyebrows. “I saw your match against the Level Sixer. No, I never had problems like you.”

Shimo certainly had a way in comforting him. Cego snorted. “It wasn’t so bad. And… I could have had him. I felt myself losing control, though. You must know what I mean.”

For some reason, he could talk to this boy truthfully, without the layers of lies he’d built up with his friends. Kōri Shimo was born of the same world he was. He could understand.

“Perhaps,” Shimo said. “When I first began training in the onyx, I felt my energy in the physical world sapped. It’s why I didn’t take top score every year; Solara Halberd beat me to it.”

Cego smiled. “Sol still talks about when she outscored you that year. And she talks about when you bested her on the Pilgrimage… constantly. She’s out for your blood this year; you know that, right?”

“Yes, I know,” Shimo said stoically. “I could see it in her eyes during our fight. She’s got a fire in her unlike any I’ve seen before. I’ll be ready when she comes for me again, though.”

“You better be.” Cego stopped, taking a deep breath as he steadied himself to step into the onyx again.

He turned back to Kōri Shimo, whose eyes now were closed as he sat cross-legged against the cobwebbed wall. It was the same position Cego had first spotted the boy in years earlier, right before the entrance Trials to the Lyceum.

“Why are you helping me?” Cego asked.

Kōri Shimo opened his eyes. “Because you are the only other like me.”

Cego shivered, thinking about how the onyx might affect him long-term. Would he become some unfeeling creature like Kōri Shimo?

“We’re not as alike as you think,” Cego said. “Even though we were both born of the Cradle.”

“Perhaps,” Shimo replied. “But perhaps you feel the darkness as I do. Perhaps you sense the energy surge to your skin, make you feel like you were born for a single purpose. To fight and to win.”

Kōri Shimo described exactly how Cego had felt so many times in the Circle. And that made him sick. This was the boy who had nearly killed several other students, who didn’t care about anything but fighting and winning.

“You think me cold for believing this,” Kōri Shimo said. “You think me like your brother Silas—a power-hungry Grievar who wants to become strong enough to shape the world to his will. But I’m different.”

“How are you any different from Silas?” Cego asked.

“I seek perfection in combat because I know that is why I was created,” Shimo said. “I fully accept the circumstances of my birth within the Cradle, as an experiment to see how far a child’s mind and body can become weapons of violence. I accept who I am, with no other illusions of power or grandeur but to perfect my craft. I don’t savor hurting or killing others, but if it is a part of this path I’m on, then I must do so without hesitation.”

“But what about everything else out there?” Cego asked. “What about enjoying your life? Being with your friends and protecting those you love?”

Something close to a smile curled on Shimo’s lips at the mention of love. “Is this why you fight, Cego?”

“Yes,” Cego said with conviction. “It’s why I’m in the onyx every day.”

“Perhaps we are different, then,” Shimo said. “But to take on Silas, to harness the power you’ve been given, you need to embrace the darkness. The toothless wolf cannot deliver the fatal bite.”

Cego shook his head, though he knew Shimo was right. He breathed deeply and stepped back into the onyx.