2.2 Nescience (3)

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The koi moved without sound. There were six of them, gliding under the green-glass surface of the pond like slick gods, each trailing gold silk from their tails, each mouth opening and closing in doors Jesse couldn’t walk through. The edge of the pond was lined in smooth stones and chipped with glasswork mosaics, smudged by old footsteps. 

No one besides Jesse wore shoes here. 

Jesse crouched beside the water, one boot scuffed, the other cracked near the sole. He didn’t remember when the crack first appeared. Like everything else, there were always cracks.

The koi swam in circles, one following the other. Orange after white. White after red. One of them was missing a fin, and it still moved with all that grace of the rest. Jesse watched it with hollow but rigorous attention. His fingers trailed down into the pond and started drawing lines, instinctually. How could something missing such a large part of itself still saunter around so beautifully? He carved the ripple of the green sun above them, how it stained everything in this part of the world the color of bruised limes and spoiled ink. He drew his mother’s face, and failed. And with the power of shifting tides, he washed it all away.

There were books in his lap. Etoria’s History. Volume II, translated by hand in Nfierre’s sweeping, root-like script. The margins were filled with her own thoughts:

“The act of wearing shoes was seen as an employment of the higher governments. After all, the Emperor during this time would wear emerald and jade shoes, and owned a vast selection of shoes. This sort of exaggerated show of class was met with a response. Fragile shoes were thrown and cracked in front of the pavillion. Leather and foam shoes were burned in the revolution. Bare feet meant the ground belonged to you again, and couldn't be sold away. That sort of ownership was a sign of citizen rights.”

He hadn’t understood any of it. The politics, the architecture, the currency system. The language was the same as what he spoke, but the thick dialect and confusing mix of words he'd never heard of, it made it necessary for a translation.

A few feet away, Nfierre had sat nearby in the shade of a bone-white tree, her knees tucked under her in a way that made Jesse feel ten years younger just looking at her. She watched him with that soft alien look, eyes where she had seen worlds burned to ash and was still surprised the birds made music before it happened. That sort of 'watcher' look.

“You know,” Nfierre said, brushing a leaf from her skirt, “I don't think emptiness makes a room less beautiful."

Jesse enjoyed her philosophy talk. Androktisiai didn't have these sorts of conversations, and Nfierre enjoyed them most readily. This line was brought up from an earlier complaint of Jesse's, and how empty the foyer of the cabin felt.

"But, isn't it possession of things that shows a life well-lived?" Jesse asked in return.

"Life doesn't need signs to show that it's lived. Look at our theologies, and that's blatantly apparent. You couldn't tell from your eyes that a God has lived so long. You couldn't look at the world and energy around you and simply understand the experiences they've lived through, and how many times they've been reformed again and again."

"So, things exist over and over again? Is that true?"

Nfierre smiled. "Yes. It's a core tenet of my lifestyle. Good things do not fade. They exist and melt and reform into beautiful molds. The same goes for its opposite. Most bad things do not die. They eat themselves and are reborn an uglier, recycled version of their past iterations.”

Jesse tilted his head. “What does that mean?”

“It means everything you lose will come back to you eventually, in some way. But all things come back, wearing a different skin.” Nfierre turned the page of her journal. “It’s my belief. . . unfounded, but it's what I believe. Everything you touch touches others with that same sort of love and hate.”

The koi broke the surface. Jesse watched the ripple cross his reflection. His hair had gotten longer. His face had gone thin. He thought of punishment, not suicide. There was a difference. One asked for release. The other demanded you stay and suffer the length of the answer. This was a change in Jesse's mindset and lifestyle. 

And still, Jesse drew. He etched on the water with a twig, wrote stories on stone, tried to paint with mud on bark. Nothing looked right. It never captured what he wanted, those primal urges to create art. The figures never looked like anything he wanted, nothing visceral and sensotheistic enough. His hands ached. His chest throbbed with a betrayal he couldn’t name.

Androktasai had offered to teach him how to cook, or fight, or even garden.
“Something simple,” she’d said, flipping her cigarette. But Jesse didn’t want simple. He wanted meaning, and to understand complex things, and every time he failed to make something that captured it, he felt like he had killed his purpose in life again. He felt that he had failed his mother with his birth. There was no reason for her to die if he made nothing out of himself.

He slapped the water. The koi scattered.

"You don’t have to hate simplicity to prove you’re capable of understanding complicated things," Nfierre said suddenly.

Jesse froze.

“I’m not-” he started.

“You are,” she said, smiling in that gentle, tilted way. “But you don’t have to be. We understand works of art in circles, forever.” 

He looked at the water, then down at his sketch. He was surrounded by beauty. The pond shimmered. The koi returned. The birds overhead sang in a dialect even the wind paused to listen to.

But Jesse couldn’t feel it.

"I can understand simple things. I can see beauty in them, but I just can't. . . explain it, I guess."

He traced the outline of his boots. Scuffed. Dirty. Still on. Still teetering at the edge. And somewhere across the pond, through the trees, through the world before Etoria, there was a memory he was not yet smart enough to make art of. A piece of himself he didn’t feel like sacrificing. Maybe the true art was the feeling of foreboding emptiness and unwelcome nature upon leaving.

"Do you want to know something simple about me?" Nfierre asked. 

Jesse nodded.

Nfierre looked up into the cloudy white sky, gazing at the distant moon beneath the rays of sun. 

"When I was a kid, I was read storybooks about this mythological figure. . . and I wanted to be just like her."

This was amusing to Jesse, to imagine a young Nfierre dancing about over a fictional character.

Nfierre: "I'd dress up like her. . . quote her, live my life like her. A fake person made an imprint on me the likes of which I can't imagine."

Jesse let her continue.

"And yet. . . I'm a complex person. I'm my own complicated mess of wires and electricity. I'm a massively puzzling thing, and I can be simplified down to what I base myself on."

A rustle passed through the trees, gentle at first. Not warning, but punctuation. The koi blinked beneath the surface, sinking back into their golden silence.

Jesse thought for a moment, on what kind of person he'd based himself on. He hopes it would be a good person, someone artful, and kind.

A clatter alerted him out of thought, and Androktasai stepped into the clearing with her axe resting behind her neck, both hands draped lazily over the handle. Her coat shifted with her, every thread in place. Her boots didn’t track a speck of dust. She whistled as she walked, the way a mother might on her way to a garden.

In her left hand, she dragged a boy.

He stumbled with every step, boots scuffing the path. His voice cracked as he pleaded again, louder this time, pulling against her grip. “Lady, please- please just let me go! I’m just a scout, I didn’t even want to come here, I swear!”

His coat flared with each jolt of movement, dark green, heavy with silver trim and buttoned high at the throat. The cape that trailed behind him bore the symbol of the crescent wing, hemmed in pale thread and marked with suits of Clubs, one over the left shoulder, one stitched into the breast.

He had short, uneven brown hair pressed flat beneath a peaked cap, one dark eye visible beneath the brim. The other was hidden behind his fringe. He waved around like a painting that had been smudged. His gloves shook as he frantically threw his arms around. Androktasai stopped a few feet from the pond and released him. The boy collapsed forward, catching himself on both knees. She tapped her axe once against her shoulder, then leaned it against a tree with ceremony.

“Jesse,” she said. “Up.”

He blinked. “What?”

“Up.”

She pointed at the boy, then at Jesse.

“You want to be an artist. It's high time you paint with somethin' 'at bites back.”

Jesse stood slowly, his heart turning over in his ribs. Nfierre frowned at his side. 

The boy scrambled back, eyes wide. He held out a gloved hand. “No, wait- wait, I don’t want to fight, I don’t- I’m just here to report back to Wittica, that’s all, I don’t even know why she brought me-”

“She brought you,” I said, the words coming out dull, “so I could fight you? Are you like, an enemy creature?”

“No killing,” Androktasai said, adjusting her collar. “No lasting damage. You’re not here to hurt him really. I just need a sense of your thought process. You should know how this world works. You've been living too far away from the modern trenches for too long.”

Androk folded her arms. Nfierre at the pondside leaned with interest against a rock.

The boy whimpered. “I- I don’t even have a strong Artform. I- I wasn’t supposed to engage-”

Something stirred near Jesse’s chest. A tremor, small and golden, coiling along the edge of vision. He ignored it. His pulse felt too loud. He really wanted to make Androktasiai proud, but he wasn’t. . . entirely up to this idea. He stepped forward.

Androktasai gave a soft whistle. “Hold it now. Let the boy show you his Art.”

Jesse tensed. He didn’t really understand what she meant.

He tilted his head like a dog, opening his mouth in confusion.

The boy’s body convulsed once, like a gasp without sound. The Art emerged along his arms- not grand, not monstrous. A small set of copper wires, semi-hollow, and at his fingertips, little figures emerged, shaped like metronomes with legs. The figures' limbs twitched at regular intervals, rhythmically. 

The boy whispered, almost apologetically, “Oh, uh, his name’s Regulate.”

Androktasai clicked her tongue. “And what does Regulate do?”

The boy tilted his head to the side, shyly. “It. . . he reduces difference. Dampens voltage. If someone comes at me too fast, it makes them slower. If they hit too hard, it cancels the force. Only works in a ten-foot radius though. He doesn’t stop people who are too strong.”

Jesse flexed his fingers. The golden flicker returned. Not outside. Inside. Beneath the ribs. Behind the breath. What the hell is an artform? He wondered.

“Start,” said Androktasai. "Hand to hand."

The boy flinched again. “Wait-”

Jesse stepped forward.

The boy scrambled upright, fumbling beneath his coat with a gasp. A short blade clattered free into his hand, slim and curving with the crescent pulled from heat, gold-inlaid along the guard. His fingers trembled around it. The blade shook like it wanted to return to its sheath and pretend this never happened.

He pointed it forward anyway, arm shaking wildly.

“Please,” he said, breathing hard. “Just. . . just let me go home. Don’t make this worse- don't be a hero.”

Androktasai sighed softly, as if the moment bored her.

She stepped forward once, enough for the grass to shift. Then she brought her axe sideways, resting it flat across her open palm, letting the silver edge catch the weight of the green sun. Her gloved finger slid along its length, slow and clean, as though it were covered in oil. From the place her finger passed, a white orb bloomed: round, weightless, and humming.

She flicked it into the air with two fingers.

The boy’s blade vanished mid-word. One second, it gleamed. The next, it was gone, erased with no sound. The weight in his hand collapsed into nothing. He yelped, nearly falling forward, staring at his fingers like they had failed him.

Androktasai smiled faintly.

She rotated the axe in one hand, turning it vertically, the handle elongating as if pulled from behind the world. The blade narrowed. The metal shifted into wood. The weapon had become a spear. Something sandy moved through it.

Then she slid her hand back the other way.

A black orb peeled from the shaft this time. Dark and matte.

She snapped her fingers.

The orb split into two. One floated to Jesse. One to the boy.

When they touched skin, they bloomed into wooden swords, long, padded, and imperfect. Jesse felt his settle into his grip. The boy caught his with both hands, eyes wide and helpless.

Androktasai stepped back and sat against the bone-white tree, folding one leg over the other, dragging on a new cigarette like it was just another morning.

“If you wanted weapons, just ask. BUT! I said no killing. These are for practice,” she said, flicking ash without looking at either of them, “And enough conversation. Start talking with ya hands, ya pansies.” 

The wooden sword in Jesse’s hand was warm.

That was the first thing he noticed. It shouldn’t have been. It had just been summoned from a black orb made of rule-bending nonsense, but it felt warm, like it had already known his grip for years and had just been used. The boy across from him held his sword in a sort of prayer, arcing his arms wildly. Not ready to strike, but desperate to survive.

“Name?” Jesse asked.

The boy blinked.

“I’m not gonna kill you,” Jesse said. “Just want to know who I’m hitting.”

“. . . Rathael,” the boy said. “I’m a Green Club. Division 2. I- I really don’t want to do this.”

Jesse nodded once, calm but cold. “Then don’t. Take a hit and stay down-”

He lunged forward.

Androktasiai put a hand up. “No faking. Fight, please.”

Rathael stepped back fast, drawing his arm up. His second body- Regulate, he called it- activated the moment Jesse crossed ten feet.

There was no visual cue. No aura. No scream of pressure. Just a noticeable slack in Jesse’s momentum. He swung, but the weight of the sword dragged just behind his thought. The arc was slower than it should’ve been, like trying to throw a punch underwater.

Rathael sidestepped. Very easily.

Jesse’s strike cut the air, hitting nothing but the ghost of speed.

“I told you,” Rathael stammered, holding up his hands, “It balances voltage. My Art dampens kinetic force if you’re coming in too hot. You need to match pace. You can’t rush me.”

“Uh. . . thanks. Then I won’t rush you?” Jesse said, and threw a handful of dirt.

Rathael yelped and blocked with his cape, which shimmered slightly, reinforced, Jesse noted. The moment of cover gave Jesse space to backstep, breathe, reassess.

Rathael lifted his head up.

“You didn’t tell me your artform though–”

Jesse looked down at him.

“Dude, I don’t even know what that is.”

Jesse thought to himself. This guy’s not offensive. His whole strategy’s balance. I go too hard, I lose speed. But what if I don’t attack? Jesse lowered his stance, sword hanging at his side. He just waited, and stood there.

Rathael flinched.

“You’re trying to trick me,” he said. “Don’t. Please don’t.”

“I’m not,” Jesse replied. “I’m letting you come to me.”

Rathael hesitated. “Dude. Come on,” he said, stepping just slightly forward.

Jesse lunged, not at full speed, just short of it. The sword connected with Rathael’s arm, lightly, padded. He cried out, more from panic than pain, and backpedaled, tripping onto one knee.

His Art– pulsed behind him– clicking twice.

Inside Jesse’s chest, something pulled tight.

He felt a line, golden and coiled, humming from the pit of his stomach to the tip of the sword. He saw the koi. He saw the cracked boot. He saw the woman in his drawing, the branches like chains around the tree. And then, he saw the same sword strike again, without him swinging.

Or- similarly, something weird.

Rathael gasped, clutching his side, the sword stuck to him, chained almost. He tried pulling it away, but could not detach it from himself.

Androktisiai’s axe was deslung from her back, and then–

“WOAH! WOAH WOAH WOAH!” Jesse yelled. “Don’t kill him!”

Androk laughed. “I’m not, I’m not. I don’t do that. I’m just releasing the chain.”

Except, for some reason, she couldn’t. The axe came down, and the sword stayed there.

She tilted her head in confusion.

Jesse looked. . . just as confused.

The sword fell on its own, after about twelve seconds.

Rathael crumpled beside it, arms wrapped around himself, one gloved hand trembling over the place where the strike had lingered.

“Aaaaagh-! I. . .” he started. “I yield. You’re too strong- too strong- I’ve been bested.”

Jesse stood still, breathing hard. He wasn’t winded. His arms didn’t ache. But something beneath his ribs felt cracked open, like a process has occurred, but he remained unchanged.

Androktasai stepped forward, brushing ash from her coat. The wind caught her coat like a banner. “Okay, fine.” she said. “Jesse, take the boy home.”

Jesse didn’t answer. His eyes were on Rathael. On the boy who had been weaponized. And for a moment, Jesse felt something dangerously close to empathy.

Androktasai tapped Jesse on the shoulder, turning him toward the trail. “Walk him to the edge. If he’s a scout, he knows the way back. I’m bored of him.”

Rathael looked up, startled. “You’re letting me leave?”

Androktasai shrugged. “I don’t remember who this Wittica fellow is, but I don’t really care. You’re a messenger. Message delivered.”

“I. . .” He stood shakily, clutching the hilt of the discarded wooden sword as if it were a lifeline. “Thank you.”

She gave him a two-fingered salute, already turning back toward the pond. “You’re free to do as you wish. But, don't come back. Or I'll slaughter you and feed you to the pigs.”

Rathael hesitated.

Jesse stepped forward, offering a hand.

“Come on,” he said, voice softer than he expected. “I’ll take you to the end of the trail.”

Rathael stared at the hand for a long moment, then took it.

The trail down from the koi pond twisted through silver woods and silver springs, the ground smoothed by centuries of ash-laced snow. The trees here grew in columns, tall and pale, their bark spiraled and faceless. The wind spoke in a hush.

Above them, the green sun had vanished, swallowed behind the ridge. In its place hung a crooked black moon, veined through with deep rust-red like dried blood in water. Its light didn’t illuminate. It outlined, casting edges onto things that shouldn’t really have edges, artistically.

The sky had gone orange near the horizon, a bruised, watercolor orange that was already bleeding into purple. Jesse walked in front. Rathael trailed beside him, hugging his arms close beneath his green-and-silver coat, his hat dipped low.

They didn’t speak for a while.

Snow creaked under their boots.

Eventually, Jesse asked, “You said you’re a Green Club. What does that mean?”

Rathael glanced at him, cautiously. “. . . Etoria? The CHC?”

Jesse shook his head. “I don’t know what that means. I just learned about Etoria.”

“. . . Green Club’s a minor rank. There’s a lot of us though. I think there’s 1326 Green Clubs in total. We’re scouts. Reporters. Observers. Servants.”

“And. . . Wittica sent you.”

“Yeah. Not personally. But, yeah. He commands the western sector of Etoria. Our finances and stuff are all- I don’t actually know what you know. The forest people I thought, were like savages. Natives and stuff... I'm just here to see how many of you there are, and how we can renovate this place.”

“Wittica,” Jesse said slowly, tasting the name.

“. . . Yeah. Wittica.”

“That’s. . . an old name.”

“Yeah,” Rathael said. “Yeah. . . it is.”

Jesse sighed “Am I like, supposed to know who that is?”

“King Wittica. . . or well, he’s not a king, but that's what he likes being called. He’s one of the Four Purple Diamonds. He’s also called Tyrannus Rex, or the Tyrant King.”

“What’s he like?”

Rathael paused. “He’s. . . a tyrant.”

Jesse looked over his shoulder. “Okay. Cool. What does that mean?”

“Uh. . . I mean. Like, he doesn’t kill for fun,” Rathael said. “But, like he's a bad dude. Kinda. I don't know. He believes in that sort of 'other’s suffering clarifies his own purpose' thing.”

Jesse seemed to be getting a vague understanding of this Wittica person.

"So, why do you work for him?"

Rathael shrugged, pulling his coat tighter. “Man's gotta eat."

Jesse nodded. Eating must be expensive in Purple Diamond land.

Rathael continued on. "I’m not high enough to question him. . . but uh, yeah. I don't like him much, man, I'm just a scout. I attend his seminars sometimes, but I don't think that's a crime.”

Jesse nodded slowly. He was slowly getting an even better idea of the kind of ruler King Wittica was. He reminded Jesse of a storybook character, like some sort of wicked king, who gave seminars and powerpoints.

“What’s an Artform?”

Rathael exhaled. “I don’t. . . really know.”

They walked a few steps more before he continued.

“My family calls them Artforms- but that’s because we’re an old family. our mom also did, so like. . . I guess forest people call them that too. Most people call them Harbors now, because they’re genetic."

“So, like, what are they?”

“Huh. Well, originally, people would go to Godking Alltitus and make a contract with some sort of island or God, and that contract would give them a power of alignment. Or, you could pray to the Moonlight Goddess- or something.”

Again, those names popped up. The statue in Androktisasi’s basement, and the statue in her living room, that Moonlight Goddess.

“Alignment to what?”

Rathael’s breath fogged. “To whatever’s like. . . real in you. Apparently, it’s an association with a God, or a person, or something. Though, nowadays, most people have genetic artforms, or harbors. If your parent had an artform, you usually get an artform.”

Jesse frowned. “So, like- my parent had one?”

Rathael looked at him for a long moment. Then he nodded. “Yeah. That's. . . nevermind. I dunno why I thought that lady was your mom. One of your birth parents had to have one. Or both. I don’t know. The natives and savages don’t really have any though, from what I remember. They’re not allowed in Death’s Gate, or Etoria.”

Jesse felt a little upset at the term ‘natives and savages,’ especially since Rathael had a similar look to himself, albeit a little lighter, and more caramel than he was. 

They walked a little further, and the forest opened into a wide clearing, a place where the path split into three trails. The snow here was deeper, untouched. One of the branches led back toward a broken road, half-buried in stone. Etoria, somewhere beyond.

“This is as far as I go,” Rathael said, stopping.

Jesse nodded. “You’ll make it? Mister Wittica won’t kill you?”

Rathael gave him a weird look, but didn't say anything rude. 

“I’ll be fine. I’ll just say I saw nothing.”

He hesitated again, staring intently. After realizing how deep in thought he was, his cheeks flared. He pulled the cloak up, hiding most of his face.

“But,” Rathael said. “Uh. . . thanks. For, not like, killing me. I kinda have a family.”

Jesse scratched the back of his head, uncomfortable. “Thanks for not making me. . . dude.”

They stood in silence a moment longer.

“Okay. See ya.”

“See ya.”

Then Rathael turned and vanished into the trees, green coat vanishing into the deepening violet light. Jesse stayed where he was, staring at the sky. The red-black moon loomed higher now.

He couldn’t remember the last time he saw stars like these.

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