Chapter 23. Saoren

Seriously, never in my life had I felt mana like this.

It reminded me of a story I had read once, about a hero caught in the eye of a cyclone. The hero in the book had stood at the centre of it with all his power and all his weapons and all his training, and the wind around him had not cared about any of those things, because it was bigger than him in a way no fight had ever been before, and he had felt, for the first time in his life, like an ant.

That was what this was. I felt like an ant. Every part of me was telling me to run, and the parts that could not run were telling me to throw myself off the branch and end the conversation before whatever was on the other end of it could finish noticing me. I had felt a fraction of this once, sparring with Bellos in the training hall, but even that was nothing compared to this.

The wind on the upper slope picked up and the suren branches around me started to move. I was sweating. My hands were still on the branch but I could not feel them. I could not move my eyes. The only thing in the world that I was looking at was the small blue creature on the branch above mine, and the creature was looking back, and the longer it looked the worse the pressure got.

Something in me snapped.

My right hand came up before I had decided to bring it up, mana already gathering, the largest concentrated bolt I could shape from the position I was in, every reserve I could reach in the half-second I had to reach them, all of it, no shape, no plan, nothing but the instinct of a thing in a corner.

I threw it, and I was sure, I could swear it, that bolt left my palm. Yet it did not arrive.

Somewhere between my hand and the branch above me the entire structure of the spell unmade itself, the mana scattering outward in a soft soundless wash, and something hit me in the chest from the direction the bolt had gone, and I was no longer in the tree.

I fell.

“Whoa!”

I fell through the inner branches of the suren, the pink flowers brushing past my face on either side, the moonlight flashing white through the gaps between them, and I had time to register that the ground was about to be the next thing I touched, and then the falling stopped.

…I did not land, exactly, I was simply not falling anymore. The air around me had taken hold of me about three feet above the flagstones, and I was suspended there, on my back, looking up through the canopy at the moon, with the wind gone and the pressure gone and my heart trying to climb out through my ribs.

The blue creature came down through the branches and stopped in the air above me, looking at me for a long moment.

“There is a thing you should understand, child, before this conversation goes any further. Spirits are not seen by humans unless we choose to be seen. That is not a custom. That is the rule of the world we live in, and it has been the rule for longer than your line has had a name. Being seen by a human who has not been invited to see is, for one of us, a thing very close to what it is for one of you to be looked at unclothed by a stranger who has walked into your room without knocking.”

He let that sit.

“You would not enjoy that, would you?”

“…No?”

I felt myself sink slowly, the air letting me down with the same care it had caught me with, until my back touched the flagstones and I was lying flat in the moonlight under the suren. The spirit came down a beat after, and his small bare feet touched the stones a few paces from my head, and the pressure that had been on me since the moment I had seen him in the branch was simply… gone.

I could not quite believe it had ever been there. The wind was back to being a wind, the garden was back to being a garden, and my hands felt like hands again.

I lay on the flagstones for another second and then sat up.

He was looking up at me with the upper set of arms folded across his chest and the lower set hanging at his sides.

“You must be Howl. You have grown much.”

“…You know me?”

“Of course. I was there when you were born. I was there for a few years after, also. I left some time ago.”

I did not have anything to say to that, so I said nothing.

“So, child.”

He tilted his head slightly.

“Why have you spent the entire day calling me? You woke me from my rest, you understand. I was very far from this place, and very comfortable, and the bell was the bell, and so I came.”

“I— I’m so sorry, Master Saoren. I really didn’t mean to. I wasn’t even sure you would answer. The keeper, Mireth, she told me not to hold too much hope on it, and I— I rang it anyway, and I waited, and nothing happened, and I climbed the tree because I— I’m sorry. I really am.”

He watched me for a long moment without saying anything. The dark eyes were very still. The upper arms stayed folded.

Then, quietly:

“Who gave you the gift of sight?”

“Oh, uh, It was a spirit. In the Sartheon practical exam grounds. He lived in a rock and told me his name was Morren, of the Outcrop. H-he’s my friend.”

I felt like I was getting Morren on trouble…

“I had walked past his outcrop during the exam and we ended up talking for a long while, and at the end of it he said he wanted to give me a gift, and he… he spat on my face, and that was the gift. He called it a spirit’s blessing. The System told me afterward that I had received a Special skill called Spirit Sight, at level one. I-It is what I just used to see you.”

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I realized, just then, that I talked about the system, and mentally beat myself for it.

Saoren did not move while I spoke. When I finished, the upper arms unfolded slightly and refolded the other way.

“That individual. Morren, was it?”

“Yes.”

“Did he not warn you about etiquette?”

“…No. He didn’t.”

“He should have. That was irresponsible of him.”

Surprisingly, his voice was not angry, just mildly annoyed.

“Not all of us would have reacted as I have. Most of us would not have struck you out of your tree, no, but a great many would have done worse than strike you out of a tree, and a small number would have done much worse than that. The gift of sight is not a thing to use the way you used it tonight, child. With it, you can already feel us before you fully see us. There is a moment, before the seeing resolves into the looking, in which you are aware of us without being intrusive. In that moment, you ask. You ask in your head, aloud, or however you are comfortable asking, but you ask. May I see you. Then you wait. If the answer is yes, you may look. If the answer is no, or if there is no answer, you turn your eyes elsewhere and you go on with your day, and you do not look back.”

“…Yes, Master Saoren.”

“Say it back to me.”

“I will ask before I use it. I will wait for an answer. If the answer is no, or if there is no answer, I will not look.”

“Good. Do not make me say it a second time.”

“I won’t.”

He uncrossed the upper arms entirely this time and brought one of the small blue hands up to rub the side of his face.

“Now. This other thing. The System. The skill. You said the words as if they meant something to you. I would like to understand what you meant.”

“It is— I am not sure how else to say it. It is… strange.”

“Do try.”

“…It has been with me since I was very small. I do not remember a time before it. It puts text in front of my eyes that no one else can see, in a pale gold colour. It gives me quests, with objectives and rewards. When I complete a quest, it gives me the rewards. Sometimes the rewards are stat increases. Strength, agility, mana pool. Sometimes the rewards are skills. The skills have levels and proficiency, and they level up as I use them. Some of the skills are more rare than others. Spirit Sight is a Special skill, which is the rarest kind I have ever been given. It is also the only one I have ever been given that came from a spirit and not from the System itself.”

He listened in complete silence.

“It also gives me a status I can call up whenever I want. It shows my level, my tier, my stats, all of my skills. I am Tier One, Level Twenty-Three. There is more, but that is the main shape of it.”