Shadows

Beren gasped as his eyes fluttered open. It felt like it was just a moment before that he’d—

Wait.

He had opened his eyes, right?

Everything looked the same. That was the simplest way for him to describe it. Whether his eyes were open or closed, looking one way or the other, they always saw the same thing: blackness. Darker and thicker than any he’d seen before. A degree of nothingness that could not be conceived of without experiencing it for oneself.

A true void.

He reached out his hands. They were there, and visible. His feet, too. His torso. He was intact, and his clothes were in good condition.

Where am I? he thought. He clawed his hands around, feeling for some resistance, but they met with none at all—somehow even less than swinging one’s hand through air. He kicked his legs; the same phenomenon.

He was simply suspended in this void. And there was nothing he could do, and nowhere he could go.

Am I dead?

He pawed at his right arm, finding the familiar roughness of his scar there. He found, too, the perfectly glossy and smooth stone embedded firmly therein, as though it always was.

“What are you…?” he asked aloud, placing two forefingers on it and running them along its surface.

Something flickered in the dark at his side.

Beren whirled around—or felt like he did—staring at the location of the flash. But it was gone.

He passed his hand over the orb again.

Another flash.

He placed his fingers onto it now, leaving them in place.

The light remained.

Beren didn’t dare remove his hand. Even as short as his time here felt so far, he dreaded experiencing it any more than was necessary. The light provided some respite from the dark, and though he didn’t understand it, it was welcome nevertheless.

The light brightened more and more the longer he held his finger over the orb. Is that my magic? Beren realized, startled.

No, that explanation didn’t make much sense. He still had no mana. The little Provenant Water he drank was ineffectual, not affording him any mana. And, if Loxi was to be believed, that was at least its main source, if not the only one.

But then, what was it?

The light continued to grow. But Beren realized it wasn’t just growing in intensity; it was growing in size and shape. Tendrils of bright light oddly reminiscent of Syl’s magic reached out from it, caressing the infinite darkness around him. Petals grew from the light as though from a bud, materializing from the ball of energy.

And with each passing moment, more and more power washed over him.

It had taken him far too long to realize. This was just like the flower that stole them from their lives on Earth. The one that brought them to this new world.

The Eternal Blossom, Akhabria. The information streamed into his mind.

The rest of the world around it crystallized from the nothingness. He found himself in a great ravine, surrounded by fifty foot high walls of marbled stone. But he was not truly there, he somehow knew. This was all an illusion.

At the same time, the cool air on his skin, the trickling stream of water flinging droplets up and onto his legs, the bugs flitting across his vision now and again—they contradicted the nature he knew of it. It felt real.

The air around him began to swirl, starting at his feet. His eyes turned down to it, but the motion pushed his head back up.

Before him, a few feet from the blossom, stood a swordsman with his back turned. He was draped in white robes, flowing in the wind to tatters at their end. Leather boots protruded from below, clearly well-worn considering the stains and splotches all over them. A wide-brimmed hat of taut hide and cloth adorned his head, and his shaggy hair, brown streaked with gray, poked from beneath it to reach his shoulders. His skin was tan where it was exposed on his arms, and Beren saw crossing scars thatching his arm.

His left hand rested on a curved sword, much resembling a katana. The primary difference was the ornate, curved crossguard, embellished with a pair of gems intersecting with the blade on either flat edge. They shimmered in the light of the day and the flower’s petals, and within their amber crystal, Beren caught glimpse of something enclosed—though, he couldn’t make out what.

He… spoke to someone, Beren realized. Someone obscured by the swordsman’s larger frame. His jaw moved, though no sound emanated from him. It was as though he wasn’t intended to hear the conversation, and so not a sound of it registered in his mind.

Beren suddenly realized something else had entered his view while his eyes had lingered on the swordsman. Behind the flower, a portal appeared in thin air: a window through which he could see Earth. And through it, he recognized a familiar setting: his home. And… a figure that sat perpendicular to the gateway.

His mother.

She was… crying. Beren felt tears welling up in his eyes, too.

Beren noticed the swordsman had turned his eyes to the sky, his face now shrouded by his hat. He wiped his eyes, and then traced the man’s gaze.

A great hand had materialized from the air above it all. It hung there, waving idly with fingers outstretched. On its palm was an ink inscription, but he didn’t recognize it.

No, he realized. Not ink. A burn. A brand.

Behind it, something caught his eye. A swirl in the dark; a circular hole, yet blacker than the blackness around it. A shrouded face above an invisible body, from which the floating hand must have stemmed.

A click: the swordsman had pushed his blade from its sheath with his thumb.

The hand heard the challenge made by the movement of the blade. It dropped toward the Blossom beneath it, falling faster toward the earth with each moment.

A breeze rushed over Beren.

The swordsman was gone, along with the person he’d spoken with.

Beren turned his eyes to the flower, and to his mother in the portal behind it.

She was… looking at him.

The hand crashed down—

———

Beren jolted awake, his eyes snapping open. He breathed heavily, and he felt sweat dripping down his face. Or… were those tears? “What happened?” he asked quietly.

Syl knelt over him, her own eyes shining. Toma sat next to him, looking out at the forest. A strange green light emanated from Loxi, wavering and shimmering in a luminous cloud. Some of it wafted over to him periodically, caressing the wounds on his side and back.

Syl straightened up, walking and plopping onto a rock a few feet from Beren. “You got hit pretty hard. I’m—” She sniffled slightly and wiped her nose. “I’m glad you’re okay.”

“I’m not a baby,” Beren muttered. But his heart clutched in his chest at her worry.

“I knew you’d be fine, though,” Toma said with a nod. “But, yeah, sorry. I probably could’ve saved you, but I ran out of mana right after landing.”

“Because I drank your Provenant Water?”

Toma shrugged. “I guess.”

Beren stretched his arms upward. He felt, though could not see, the gashes running along the length of his back. Not very deep, but they stung with pain against the grass beneath him all the more for their shallowness.

Syl gestured to Rufus, who was unconscious on the ground a few feet away. “He just… fell over basically right after turning off his magic.” She paused, looking around. “We won. But I guess you saw that, huh?” Beren followed her gaze, propping himself up on his elbows. The two canine corpses lay next to each other, dead.

“They will return to mana soon enough,” Loxi said, still concentrating on… whatever it was that it was doing.

Mana, huh, Beren thought. He looked down at the scar on his arm, and at the orb embedded in it. It was lifeless. He touched it. Cold. No points of light shone from around him. No magic.

“I saw something. While I was knocked out.” Beren sat up with some effort, though his wounds felt better than he anticipated. “Like… a vision.”

Toma nodded. “I’ve had a couple myself.”

“I saw Mom.”

Toma fell silent.

“Was she okay?” Syl asked.

Beren nodded. “Yeah. And I think I saw a flower like the one that brought us here. It felt… similar.”

“...Interesting,” Toma muttered. “Was that all you saw?”

Beren’s heart skipped, but he couldn’t understand why. He paused, then nodded.

“I see…” Toma said, staring at him with blank eyes, mind whirring.

Rufus groaned, sitting up.

Loxi opened its eyes. “Oh, excellent! Finally awake.” The green light died down.

“Is that your magic?” Beren asked quietly, standing up and dusting himself off. Though his back ached and the skin was taut and stiff, the pain of movement was far less intense now than he might have anticipated.

“No. It’s common healing. I instruct your mana how to heal your body using my own to communicate.”

“But… I have no mana.”

Toma’s brow furrowed. “Then why’d I give you my bottle? I could’ve used the extra mana. Syl and I are both out.”

“I didn’t ask you to,” Beren muttered.

Toma just shrugged.

“Every living being has mana channels within them. Yours flow with the same standard mana that all other beings require to exist.” Loxi hopped toward him and then onto his shoulder. “There are four types of Provenant Water, and each person requires one of them, depending on the class of their magic. Perhaps you are incompatible with Toma’s.”

“Great.” Beren sighed.

“Well, otherworlders,” Loxi continued, ignoring Beren’s sarcastic remark, “I thank you very much for your help. You may now return to your world.”

Toma raised his eyebrows. “Really? How?”

Loxi shrugged. “You tell me.”

“What?” Beren asked. “You’re the one who should know what’s going on.”

“I’ve no idea about how to cross the boundary, and I don’t know why you expect me to. You’re the ones that have done it, after all; not I.”

“Did you summon us here?” Toma asked.

“By the Sages, no.”

“Then… who did?” He looked at the rest of them, and then out into the forest. “We were brought here with an objective. You guys remember it?”

“Rescue the ‘eight flowers in everlasting bloom,’” Beren replied.

“The Eternal Blossoms, I assume? Your directive was to ‘rescue’ them? How interesting… I assumed all this time that your instructions were to rescue me.”

“...Why would that be our objective?” Toma smirked, looking down a bit mockingly at the fox perched on Beren’s shoulder.

“I never claimed to understand the minutia of selecting tasks for otherworlders.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Grace interjected. “What the fox doesn’t know is irrelevant. We need to figure out how to get home.”

“I agree,” added Beren. “This place is too dangerous. And… we gotta get home to Mom, Toma. She’s all alone right now.”

“You cannot,” Loxi said.

Toma stepped toward Loxi and Beren. “What are you talking about? You just said we could.”

“Well, I’d assumed your objective was complete. But if the Blossoms are in danger, then… well, you certainly haven’t protected them—er, rescued them—by being here.”

Rufus groaned on the ground next to Beren’s foot again. “What happened? Why am I laying down?”

They all ignored him.

“Then to get home, we have to ‘rescue’ those Blossoms somehow?” Toma asked no one in particular, turning away from Loxi.

“What do you know about the Eternal Blossoms, Loxi?” Beren craned his neck to see his uninvited passenger.

“Hmm,” it mused, pondering the question. “Well, only as much as most people in this world: few have seen them, and fewer have lived to tell of it.”

“Great,” Syl muttered, tossing a rock from her perch out into the lake of waving grass.

Rufus groaned on the ground. “Someone… what’s going on…?”

“Well, we should table this discussion for now,” Loxi said. “There is a human settlement not far from here—perhaps an hour’s walk. A trail runs along the edge of this clearing. We can take it there.”

“What’ll we do once we get there?” Toma asked. “Is one of the Eternal Blossoms there?”

“Sages, no. They are all extremely hard to access. I will explain when we find lodging and some treatment for your friend. I will tend his wounds as best I can on the way.”

And, after a brief time gathering themselves, the six of them set off for the nearby town.