Chapter 43:
In the Service of Gods
Brightness pierced my eyes. I winced and blinked, taking in my surroundings. Directly above me, the sky was a pristine blue, the clouds perfectly white. There was no sun, no moon, nothing else in the sky but clouds. Tall, white walls boxed me in with a white staircase in front of me and rooms to the sides. A few walls had windows made up of multiple rectangles put together to make one larger window. The clouds on the other side of the windows looked like paintings. Shapes sat here and there in the rooms, devoid of colour, so unformed that I couldn’t tell what they were supposed to be. It was like I was in an unfinished dollhouse.
I was standing on water, except it held my weight like a thick pane of glass. I wasn’t wearing shoes and the soles of my feet felt wet. My cat pajamas gazed up at me with their myriad eyes, the twirling cat forms seeming almost alive.
“Hello?” I said. My voice echoed until dying out.
Come upstairs.
The voice was in my head, somewhere in the house, and outside the house all at the same time. I flinched, then made my way up the stairs. Ignoring the voice didn’t occur to me.
On the second floor, the ground was the same pure white as the walls. It was neither hot nor cold, soft nor hard. From here, I could see the tops of the house walls. Beyond them, on every side, was sky. Endless, uninterrupted sky. Up here, the layout had changed to take on a bit more shape. There was a long white table that stretched far enough to accommodate at least fifty people on each side. There was only one chair at the far head of the table and someone was sitting in it.
I blinked and I was there, standing next to the person. I had no recollection of walking over, I was simply there.
“Thank you for coming,” the person said. His voice reverberated through me like a struck bell. I could see that he was a man with silver hair that touched his shoulders. His face had that same quality as Tsu Den Ro’s where I knew that it was a face and yet couldn’t describe it in any way. The moment I glanced away, it was like his face slipped from my mind as if I’d never seen it.
“I don’t think I had a choice,” I said slowly. My mouth was slow to form words as if I were drunk.
The man nodded at me. “Correct, you didn’t. All the same, I find it good manners to be grateful.” He gestured to a seat that had appeared behind me. “Please, have a seat.”
I sat.
“You have met my sister Tsu Den Ro. She has a flair for the dramatic, I’ll give her that. While I think you got our message loud and clear, I feel that her approach didn’t have the desired effect. Thus, I am trying something else.” He took a sip from a teacup that hadn’t been there a moment ago. “I have many given names, but I prefer something more casual so I will introduce myself by an informal name. You may call me Akira.”
“Hello, Akira,” I said in a singsong way, like he was being introduced to a class of one and the teacher had encouraged me to greet him back after this introduction. This was not odd to me.
He smiled and it chilled me. “You’ve travelled far and succeeded in getting to the foot of Mount Ezara, though not without a little help from us. I must say, we’re all a bit irritated with a certain aspect of your journey.”
Anxiety rose within me. What had I been doing wrong? I didn’t want Akira to be mad at me. That would be terrible.
He must have seen my reaction. “Oh, it’s nothing you’ve done. Rather, the lack of communication between the right parties and yourself hasn’t been happening. You’ve been given enough to get the general picture, but so many details are missing. We have tried to contact you before this, before Tsu Den Ro spoke to you in fact, to little success. Now, you certainly don’t need to know everything. No mortal could possibly know everything.” He laughed at this and I laughed too. The moment he stopped laughing, it was no longer funny and so I stopped along with him.
“The timeline is also a problem,” he continued. “You were called in too late. The seeker should have brought you here much earlier, which he failed to do. There is much he failed to do. Now you must climb Mount Ezara in a time where that would be all but impossible. So, we have changed the next leg of your journey.”
He waved his hand at the table and a scale model of Mount Ezara appeared. He tapped the model and the mountain split in half with spiderly lines criss-crossing through the centre of it. “Mount Ezara is, in fact, filled with tunnels. Tunnels which you’ve had the pleasure of visiting before. This was where you first emerged into Wosurei.”
The cave. The tunnels. Duncan. I nodded stiffly.
“How is that possible? Through our magic, of course.” He spoke as if he was giving a lecture on the subject and I was a rapt pupil. In a way, I was because I was required to be. “Our magic has allowed some of the tunnels of Mount Ezara to be accessible from certain points across the world. Anyone can access them, provided they have been given our permission in the form of a token.”
The mountain token, that’s what I’d been carrying with me this whole time. The revelation was satisfying, like placing a tricky puzzle piece in the right spot.
“Not all tunnels are connected, however,” Akira said, sadness leaking into his tone in a way that was both artificial and entirely sincere. “The tunnels you’ve visited are completely cut off from the rest of the mountain. It’s for that reason that you couldn’t simply climb the mountain from there, skipping the travel requirement. There are two ways for you to get to the peak of Mount Ezara. From the outside and from the inside. The outside has become too dangerous for you, the likelihood of survival too low even with our help. So you must traverse the inside. The token will allow you to do that.”
A question bubbled up from a corner of my mind. “Why not have me do that to begin with? Why not have all the seers do it that way?”
“Because there are rules,” he said. His lips pulled back on the last word so much it looked like he was barring his teeth. “And don’t be fooled, this path is not much easier. It’s just that the probability of you dying due to extreme weather conditions is lower. To spend time in the tunnels of Mount Ezara is to deteriorate. It’s not designed for mortals and you will find it can take much from you. Do not underestimate this challenge.”
Dizziness seized me, growing steadily worse. Bile crept up my throat and I fought the urge to vomit. “Yes, I understand.”
The dizziness disappeared. Akira smiled again and it was just as chilling as the first time. “Excellent. I’m glad you understand. You’ve come so far, we would hate to see you stumble now. The entrance to the tunnels will be revealed to you. You can even bring those friends of yours. Getting to the peak without them would make things harder than they need to be.”
“T-they shouldn’t have to suffer,” I said. I wanted them with me and wanted them as far away as possible.
In an instant, the world changed. Akira was larger than the house itself, staring down at me. His one eye took up the whole ceiling. “Life is suffering. Do you wish to save Wosurei, or not?”
I wasn’t sure how to respond. I opened my mouth and nothing came out. Then, I was gone.
A gasp ripped from my throat as our room in the Rising Wind came back into focus. I was flat on my back, looking up into the worried faces of Mizuki and Vris.
“My lady, are you alright?” Vris asked.
I let out a weak laugh. “I hardly know.”
I slowly rose to sit up. I was laying on one of the beds. It didn’t appear that much time had passed since I met with Akira. The sun was in the same position, slanting through the room’s one window to cast rays onto the floor.
“It’s not over,” I felt compelled to say. “We have to keep going. All of us.”
Vris looked worried. “All of us?”
I nodded. “The gods have willed it.”
“Then we don’t have much choice in the matter,” Mizuki said flatly.
She was wrong. There’s always a choice. At times, there wasn’t much of a choice but we all chose nonetheless. We would climb this damned mountain, and I would make the gods regret it if it was the last thing I did.
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