WW Chapter 91: Ascension on the Outside (Patreon)

Yesterday's chapter. Sorry for delay, but should be on schedule for chapters tomorrow and Friday.

The fact that Ezra gained a few hours to focus on meditation didn’t change anything straight away. Of course that was the case, nobody had expected him to suddenly go from having no idea how close he was to reaching the limits to suddenly having reached the peak. At least, nobody reasonable did. There was a small unreasonable part of Ezra that had hoped that today he’d finally find how far he could go, but of course that wasn’t the case.

Time, as always, passed both fast and slow as he meditated. He couldn’t tell if it was minutes or hours, but when the elusive aura of light gave way to the even more ephemeral aura drawn from shadow, Ezra knew it was time to get to dinner.

As he walked through the halls, he could see that he was later than usual, his teachers always opting to dismiss him directly when their time with him came to an end. Instead, he’d lost himself in his practice and would be in the latter half of people going to eat. Walking into the mess hall, he could see that his friends were waiting for him, a spot open for him already. He waved a greeting across the room as he got into the line. Fortunately, having known what the rest of his day was going to look like, Ezra had taken the several minutes necessary to strip off his armor, so he wasn’t clinging and clinking as he went. A few times, when somebody saw who was behind them, they just stepped to the side for him, telling him “Go ahead” and stepping back when he didn’t immediately do so. When he arrived at the table, Telemachus didn’t wait to start his teasing.

“Big bad Ezra comes and makes all the poor little rank-and-file soldiers get out of his way so he can get his food first. Big bully.”

“They can stay where they were, I’m gonna force you to the back of the line now,” Ezra grumbled. “Plus, I think I’m going to take some tax from you. That’s my role now, since you wanna talk big.”

Even before Ezra could start to reach for his friend’s food, Telemachus was pulling back, swatting away any attempts to seize food. “I apologize, sir. Please, leave me my bread! How can I survive to the morning without it? Would you deprive a poor man of his food?”

The teasing show ended shortly after that, and Ezra welcomed the opportunity to eat. Then, by the time he was finished, it was time for the event they were all waiting for.

“It doesn’t really matter what kind of aura is all around when you ascend, but are you just going to the training hall? Or is there somewhere else you were all planning on going?” Ezra asked as he came back from putting his tray away.

“We’d planned on just doing it in the training hall,” Dirk shrugged. “It’s where Telemachus did it, there’s no reason why we should be any different.”

“That’s true,” Ezra shrugged. “It’s not a problem if you decide to ascend around everyone else. If you’d like, though, it shouldn’t be a problem either if we go to where I was training until now. It’s one of the smaller sparring arenas, where there’s sand everywhere and the moonlight should be shining down.”

Luna tilted her head to the side, staring at him, and Ezra couldn’t help but laugh a little as Dirk said, “You said that it doesn’t matter where!”

“It really doesn’t,” Ezra shrugged. “I decided to ascend while sitting in a tent on the march, surrounded by boxes of supplies and not much else. The reason why I said anything is just that I just think that it’s probably a little better to have something approaching privacy, if you want it.”

It wasn’t long before the proposed relocation had been presented to the appropriate members of leadership, and once that was done, the six trainees were where Ezra had been not long before. Then, Dirk started to look genuinely nervous as Luna took a deep breath, whispered a prayer to the Watcher as well as the Stone, and sat cross-legged on the ground.

“I can see you chose the spot with the only sliver of moonlight,” Ezra smiled.

“It’s summer and night has only barely fallen, there is precious little to find,” Luna said, not opening her eyes. Ezra stopped trying to tease her as Dirk sat similarly nearby. He didn’t care about where he was sitting, though Ezra did notice that he pushed both hands’ fingers deep into the sand.

A silence settled over the room, and Ezra, stretching his own awareness, could feel faint pulsations of aura from both Initiates. He’d only ever watched Telemachus ascending before, and he wasn’t sure how much of what had happened with his friend was unique to Telemachus specifically and what had been typical of anybody in his position. After all, his own ascension was mostly lost in the blur of his near death experience.

Nobody had told Ezra anything about ascending to any of the other tiers of Knighthood, so maybe they would have a greater impact on the world around them. For somebody to become an Adept, the change was entirely internal, and as Ezra himself had learned, you didn’t want anything external affecting you while you did it. The attempt to ascend was more a change of the aura inside while breaking the inner world’s existing limits, and anybody who wasn’t at least an Initiate would have no way to see what somebody was doing.

Even as he was, Ezra could only feel the slightest changes as he stretched his awareness towards his friends. For now, all that could be seen were nearly invisible shifts to their aura, but not much else. Of course, as they both started stretching and tearing their inner worlds with excess aura, both made involuntary sounds of pain. Ezra grimaced in sympathy, the memory of his own suffering returning.

Minutes passed as both tried to change their innermost selves, and there was nothing Ezra could do to help. Honestly, so far as he could tell, both Luna and Dirk were better prepared to ascend than he had been. He’d filled his inner world as much as he could, compressing the aura tight, but, because Jormun had planned on Ezra’s first attempt failing, he hadn’t prepared the young man. Here, the dozens of teachers around had given pointers on how to move the aura through the cracks overfilling their inner worlds created while also making sure to stay focused.

After nearly half an hour, Dirk was the first to start to change, his presence shifting from feeling like a regular person to pulsing with power. Again, the aura was only tangible through that sense unique to someone who’d begun the path of Knighthood, but his inner world pushed against its constraints as sweat started to bead on his forehead. His eyebrows narrowed as he grunted, but then, the ground he sat on seemed to undulate. Sand crawled up his hands to his wrists, and then Dirk’s eyes flew open as the ground everyone stood on trembled. He laughed out loud as he surged to his feet, both fists held up.

“Fucking finally!” His face, under his beard, split into a wide grin.

Just as soon as he started to celebrate, Dirk glanced at Luna, realized that she was still lost in her own meditation, and closed his mouth so hard, his teeth made a loud clicking noise. Regardless of his self-imposed silence, his obvious excitement wasn’t dimmed at all, and he quickly gave her a bit of space as he started, obviously experimenting with his changed inner world. He only had maybe two minutes to experiment before his reserves ran dry, and then Dirk stood with a grunt and walked towards his waiting friends.

He stood there silently, everybody willing to wait for Luna’s own attempt to finish. After another five or so minutes, maybe ten minutes since Dirk had finished his own ascension, Luna stilled. Her own aura had gone unsteady for a few moments there and seemed to burst out as an Adept, but then it stilled. Ezra felt a sympathetic look cross his face. She blinked twice and then looked around as she failed.

“I’m sorry,” Ezra said, stepping forward. “At least it doesn’t seem like it was too painful, right?”

“For what?” Luna asked as she remained sitting. “I succeeded, even though I didn’t get the same affinity I thought I would.”

“Really? I didn’t see anything, and though I could feel you were doing something, it didn’t feel like you succeeded.”

“I’m not really sure what the affinity is,” she said, her gaze falling down to look at herself. “It’s not… It’s shiny. Kind of like steel, but it doesn’t feel like it would make anything harder. It’s almost like glass.”

“Show us!” Rose demanded, hopping forward. “If it’s shiny, is it like a mirror?”

Luna’s eyebrows relaxed at that question. “Yes, exactly! It’s a lot like a mirror. I’m not sure what exactly that means, especially in terms of fighting, but it’s reflective.”

She cupped her hands in front of herself, and aura that looked like liquid metal filled her hands. It glimmered in the light of the torches spread across the room, shining in a way that Ezra’d never seen before. It was, like Leah said, like a mirror, if it’d melted like ice.

After seeing it, the conversations shifted from Luna trying to explain what her affinity could be to general advice from both of the newly ascended Adepts. Ezra and Telemachus didn’t have anything to ask, and now that Rose and Miriam were the only two who hadn’t ascended, both were obviously feeling the squeeze.

Ezra gave his sincerest congratulations to both as he started to leave them to their conversation, as he needed to get to the manor. They each accepted his goodbyes, though Telemachus did stop him before he got far. He guided Ezra into the hall back inside, where he started speaking just above a whisper.

“If we all become Adepts, especially if you end up ascending to Pseudo-Knight, we can become our own squad. Strike out, leave here. Then, we can be wandering squires that can take care of the problems that the nobles refuse to. 

“Slow down,” Ezra said, shaking his head. “I need some more information than this. Are you trying to just up and leave?”

“Ezra,” Telemachus took a breath, “I’ve been thinking about it. You're going to become a Knight. You don’t need help from the Duke and everyone around here. If you lead us, we can be so much more than just trainees who have to go sit in the corner and do whatever we’re told. We’ll be your squires, and we can wander around and actually help people. We wouldn’t have to be under anyone’s thumb.”

It wasn’t the first time that Telemachus had talked about what he might want to do outside of training, but it was the first time he gave such a direct invitation to Ezra. And, it wasn’t a bad offer.

“I know you don’t like the nobles, but the Duke isn’t a bad man,” Ezra shrugged. “And it’s a good assignment I’ve got, a good job. I’ve never talked with anyone about how to become a Knight, and I don’t really know what to do.”

“You can ask Dominick, you’re constantly with him anyways,” Telemachus reasoned. “And that’s just an excuse, you know it.”

“Not entirely,” Ezra shook his head, his eyes flicking towards Jormun. “But you’re right, I could figure it out.” 

“So. The Duke doesn’t need you more than the tens of thousands of people who have nobody to defend them just within a few days’ travel of here,” Telemachus shook his head. “Think of all the thugs and bosses who pushed you and your friends and family around where you’re from. You think you couldn’t sweep through, kill all of the bastards that are turning people into slaves, and then move along? You can do that, going so fast, and take care of an entire city in a day. That’s so much more good than whatever you’re doing walking around the Duke’s fancy house all day.”

“Yes, I could take care of that,” Ezra replied, starting to get heated. “That’s something I’ve thought about before. It’s something I wanted to do before I left my home. But what happens when I leave? Somebody else is just going to step in. Do I kill everybody who could possibly become a gang member? Do I kill everyone who ever has been one? Do I cut the hands off of anybody who I don’t like?”

“I get your point,” Telemachus shook his head, “but you don’t have to be perfect. If you do this, at least you would be doing something. Right now? All of us are just prisoners to the Duke. Yes, he’s helping us out, but that doesn’t make him our owner.”

“Enough,” Ezra raised a hand, cutting off any further argument. “Honestly, I agree that we need to be off doing more than we are. I don’t know if making our own squad of squires and wandering off to try to fix whatever wrongs we can find is the right choice, but I do think that we need to do more.”

Telemachus pursed his lips, frustrated, but he nodded. Then, he reached out and clapped his hand on Ezra’s shoulder. “You’re a good man. Whatever you say, I’ll follow you along, as long as you don’t start getting all uppity.”

“I’m already as full of myself as I can stand, handsome and strong as I am,” Ezra laughed as he finally turned and made his way out of the training pit. Even as he walked through the garrison towards the underground passage, he couldn’t help but consider Telemachus’s suggestion. The possibility seemed noble, but there was still a pit in his stomach at the thought.

He worried at the thought all night.