Web of Chaos - Chapter 30: True Clarity

Akari curled up beside Kalden in their hotel room, listening to his steady breathing as he slept. The healers in Pine Hollow had done good work, but Master-level techniques left their mark. He could walk if he had to, but he still couldn’t train or fight if it came to that.

Zukan watched the parking lot below while Arturo hunched over his laptop at the small wooden desk. The blue glow of the screen cast shadows across his face as he cycled through police frequencies. He’d been listening all day, searching for any sign they’d been tracked. So far, everything seemed clear. Whatever Moonfire wanted, he must be keeping it to himself.

Still . . . the silence felt wrong. Like the calm before a storm. If the police weren’t coming for them, then who was?

Akari snuggled closer to Kalden and forced herself to relax. Her muscles ached from the battle, and her channels still felt raw from overuse. Artisans could go for days without sleep if they had to, but sleep always helped. Things were crazy right now, and you never knew when—

Someone knocked on the door, followed by a cheerful, feminine voice. “Housekeeping!”

Talek, that better be Glim. 

Kalden shifted in the bed beside her, instantly alert despite his injuries. Akari reached over and grabbed her glasses from the nightstand. Spacetime mana gathered in her in free hand as she prepared an escape portal.

Zukan padded over to the door on silent feet and stared through the peephole. He reached over with a clawed hand and disabled Arturo’s sound suppressor.

“What’s in the mirror?” the dragonborn rumbled in his gravelly voice.

“A friend who can’t leave,” Elend’s voice replied from outside the door.

The knot in Akari’s stomach loosened as Zukan undid the rest of the wards. The door swung open to reveal Elend and Irina, still wearing their battle-stained armor. Mud and sand caked their boots, and Elend had a fresh cut across his left cheek. Glim hovered over his shoulder in the form of a bright blue Missile.

The trio hurried inside the room, and Zukan closed the door behind them, enabling the wards once again.

Elend’s shoulders sagged with relief as he surveyed the room, taking in each of their faces. “We came as soon as we got your message.”

“How’d you get away from the battle?” Kalden asked as he sat up.

“Grandmaster Sterling made us a portal.” Irina sat on the bed behind Kalden, examining his wounds. Her Second Brain formed around her in the form of golden rings, spinning as she processed the damage.

“Aye.” Elend gave a slow nod. “We’re deserters now, if you want to get technical”

“I didn’t know that was an option,” Kalden said. 

“It was always an option,” he replied. “It’s just bloody inconvenient.” 

“What about your soul oaths?”

“So far, we’ve only sworn to protect Espiria, not to obey its prime minister. And as long as  Moonfire controls Storm’s Eye, he’s the biggest threat to this land.”

“Shit.” Akari plopped down on the other bed. “Did we mess things up?”

“That depends, lass. We can still move forward with the plan, but sooner is better.” He fixed them both with a look that seemed to pierce their souls. “How close are you to advancing? Your mana levels look good, but I can’t speak for the rest of you.”

“I have my techniques,” Kalden said. “I just need my revelation.”

“Same,” Akari said. “Plus one more technique. I’ve got my space and time Cloaks, but I still need to combine them into one. Assuming I have to to that before I advance?”

“It would be ideal if you did,” Irina said. “Both Cloaks will become a single technique, and each technique is permanently etched on your soul. The earlier you do that, the stronger it will be later on.”

“Yeah.” Akari slumped her shoulders. “That’s what I thought.” Then again, she was still no closer to finding her revelation after all these months, so what difference did it make?

“I can’t help with the revelations,” Elend said. “But we can fix your Cloak problem.”

“Really?” Akari perked up at that. “How?”

“Simple.” Elend strode over to the room’s window and peeked out the curtains. “We find a nice mountaintop, and we don’t come down until you’ve mastered the technique.” 

She blinked at him, at a loss for words. A training montage on top of a mountain? That sounded way too awesome to be real. 

Irina cleared her throat from the other side of the room. “That sounds like the best course of action. Akari learns best under pressure, and Kalden still needs time to recover. I’ll stay here and help with his revelation while you two train.”

“I still haven’t slept since the attack,” Akari admitted. She wanted Elend’s help, but she also didn’t want to waste his time. Not to mention her own.

“Even better,” Elend said with a cheerful voice.

“But what if I can’t learn it today?” she asked.

“It might take a few days.” Elend shrugged. “Do you have some other pressing appointment?”

“But . . . what about all those lectures you guys gave me last year? You said I was addicted to training. You said I’d burn myself out if I pushed too hard.”

Elend laughed. “What’s the point of rest, lass? Why do we protect our minds, bodies, and souls so fiercely?”

“I dunno . . . to recharge?” 

“Aye, but what’s the point of recharging? What’s it all for?”

Akari closed her mouth. Several obvious answers sprang to mind, but she could tell when Elend was building up to something

“We rest,” he said, “to prepare for moments like this. So that when the time comes, we can move worlds.”

~~~

Elend’s fist closed in with the speed of a Grandmaster, too fast for her eyes to track. Space warped around Akari’s body, and she appeared three inches to her left. She barely had time to process that before another fist struck at her shoulder.

Her body flickered away, but Elend was quicker. He’d predicted the exact warping of her Cloak technique, and his bare foot slammed into her stomach like a sledgehammer. Air exploded from her lungs as she flew backward. The impact would have shattered a normal person’s ribs, but her Artisan body held together. Barely.

Stone ruins surrounded them on the mountaintop—broken pillars and crumbling walls, carved with images of ancient mana spirits. Snow filled the gaps between the stones, and the wind howled through the crumbling archways.

But Akari didn’t feel the sting of the wind, and she didn’t mind the icy stone beneath her bare feet. Not after four hours of endless training. She’d stripped down to her shorts and combat bra, and Elend was completely shirtless with a thin layer of sweat glistening on his bare skin. 

Akari curled into a ball, her abs screaming in protest as she flipped backward through the air. Her feet found the broken stone, but her knees almost buckled from the impact. Elend closed the distance before she could catch her breath, and she switched to her time Cloak in desperation.

Normally, this technique revealed a single ghostly image of her opponent, letting her see the future a second before it happened. But of course, Elend didn’t play by the usual rules. Instead of one ghostly image, she saw ten. Each one struck from a different angle, overwhelming her senses. Some aimed at her face or torso, while others tried to kick at her legs or grab her arms.

Elend saw her reaction’s through his aspect, and this changed his own reaction, which changed Akari’s in turn. In other words, she no longer saw one clear future. Just many possible futures.

Still, ten possible futures were better than none. Akari leapt into the fray, weaving through the chaos of his attacks. Her body moved on instinct now, muscle memory taking over where her thoughts failed. But every dodge came a fraction too late, every counter a heartbeat too slow.

Four hours of training, and she still hadn’t landed a single hit against Elend. 

The phantoms closed around her, and she switched to her space Cloak. Her body flickered away, and she switched back to time mana. 

“Good,” Elend said. “You’re getting faster, but you’re still thinking too hard.”

“I’m not thinking!” Akari shot back as she dodged two more phantoms. “You’re going too fast for that!”

“You’re trying to control the transition between Cloaks,” Elend said as he threw another punch. “You’re trying to time it exactly right—as if that will lead to a breakthrough.”

“Isn’t that the whole point?” Neither Cloak was strong enough to dodge Elend’s strikes. She needed both of them together—a single technique. But cycling two Cloaks at once was like dancing to two different songs. The melodies clashed in her channels, creating discord rather than harmony. The best she could do was switch rapidly between them and hope her soul took the hint.

“No.” Elend kicked at her legs with enough force to shatter concrete. Akari flipped away, her palms scraping against rough stone when she landed. “You’re on the right track, but you can’t control this. The techniques should switch themselves. When it finally happens, you should surprise yourself as much as me.”

“How do I surprise myself?” 

“I told you, lass. Stop thinking so much. Don’t move the mana. Feel it.”

“That doesn’t make any sense!” Akari shouted. 

The phantoms surrounded her again. She tried to switch back to her time Cloak, but exhaustion made her slow. Elend swept out her legs with a move she saw coming but couldn’t stop, and her back slammed into the stone floor. Stars exploded across her vision. Every bone in her body rang like a struck bell.

“Aye,” Elend said as he loomed over her. “That’s mastery for you.”

~~~

“So,” Akari said later that night. “What was your revelation?” 

They sat around a campfire at the center of the stone ruins. The flames crackled and popped, sending sparks into the night sky. They were still technically training right now, but she couldn’t rely on liquid mana forever. She would permanently burn out her channels if she pushed too hard. Or, more likely, she would just pass out from the pain.

Elend raised an eyebrow. “That’s a rather personal question, lass.”

She frowned, pulling her knees to her chest. “Really?”

“Aye, it’s impolite for a few reasons. Revelations get to the heart of who a person truly is. And if you know your enemy, you can use that knowledge against him. It’s a leftover tradition from a bygone age. A time when mana artists plotted, schemed, and hoarded knowledge to stay ahead.” A wry grin crossed his face. “Unlike today, of course.”

Akari chuckled under her breath. That explained why no one ever posted about their revelations online. When she finally found hers, she was going to start a website and make it public. Maybe her teammates would join her, and that would inspire other people to do the same.

If she ever found hers. Some people searched for decades and never found the right words, even when they mastered their techniques and reached the mana threshold. 

“The words can also sound awkward out of context.” Elend conjured a stick of pure mana and poked at the fire. “After all, it’s not the words themselves that matter. It’s the feeling behind them. You know it’s possible to speak the exact words, but still fail?”

“Yeah.” Akari groaned. “You mentioned that before.” At first, she’d gone through every phase and idea she could imagine, hoping to game the system and stumble on the right one. But what was the point if the words didn’t matter?

They sat there in silence for a long while, watching the fire dance and cackle between them.

“When I was a boy,” Elend said, “I lied to get what I wanted. I got my aspect at a young age, and I used that to stay ahead of my peers. At the same time, I shook my fist and raged at all the injustice in the world. People struggled to advance through the higher realms, and once they finally did, they acted as if they’d struck gold. They hoarded the lessons they’d learned. They were afraid to let the masses follow them, lest they lose the thing that made them special.”

“So you were a hypocrite?” Akari asked.

“Aye.” A bitter laugh escaped his lips “My mother always told me, ‘if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.’ It’s so obvious in hindsight, isn’t it? My hypocrisy was the exact thing that held me back. Some part of me knew I didn’t deserve to be a Master if I kept following that path. So I trained to be part of the solution. I wanted to spread the truth.”

“Okay. So how’d you learn that?”

“Ah.” Elend tapped the side of his head. “That’s a better question than the first. After all, how can you break down the barriers with shots in the dark? How can you choose an antidote if you don’t know your poison?” 

The fire flickered in the mountain wind, and he stared off into the distance, seemingly deep in thought. “It was Irina. Like I told you before, my younger self always tried to put on a mask. But Irina never tried to be anything but herself. Was she popular? No. But she also didn’t care. It was like the whole world was playing a pointless game, but Irina stepped back and asked whether that game was even worth playing.”

Elend glanced back across the fire, meeting her eyes. “When I looked at her, I saw a glimpse of the man I wanted to be. Without her, I might still be an Artisan right now.”

Akari frowned as a fresh wave of frustration bubbled up inside her. “So it’s all just luck?”

Elend shook his head. “If I hadn’t advanced, I’d have no one to blame but myself. I chose to lie and play games. I clung to those choices like a raft in a storm, terrified I would drown if I let go. But seeing the truth was like taming the storm itself.” 

It all sounded like sugar and peaches when you heard someone else’s story. Unfortunately, that didn’t bring Akari any closer to her own revelation.

Elend must have sensed her thoughts, because he leaned forward. “If revelations were simple, they wouldn’t hold us back in the first place. I suppose it all came down to a simple question for me. Did I struggle to survive in that storm, or did I face it in earnest?” He fixed her with a hard, knowing look. “What’s your storm, lass?” 

Akari shuddered as another gust of wind crossed their campsite. She thought of the day she’d betrayed Last Haven to her enemy. She thought of her life in the Archipelago, and how hard she’d fought to become a mana artist. And she hadn’t done that to lead a revolution like in the movies. Even now, that wasn’t the mission that drove her. She and Kalden always talked about saving their home, but it wasn’t her revelation.

“We all think of our lives in terms of stories,” Elend said. “But those dramatic moments don’t define us as much as we think. Look deeper—before you betrayed Last Haven?” 

“Before that . . .” Akari closed her eyes, digging through her older memories. “There was Emberlyn’s mom. Bullies at school. I wanted to be the strongest mana artist around. That way no one could hurt me.”

Elend shook his head. “You’re not afraid of pain, lass. People like that don’t charge into battle like you do. You’re afraid of being helpless. Incompetent.”

“Exactly,” she said. “And power is the opposite of that. I just want more power, but I don’t know why. What if I just want it for its own sake? What makes me different from the Mystics who rule this world?”

He hummed in consideration. “Aye, that’s a tough one, isn’t it?”

Akari waited for more, but nothing came. “That’s it?” she asked. “No advice?”

He shrugged, looking almost amused “If I could solve this problem for you, I would have done it already. Anyway”—he pushed himself to his feet, looking far too excited—“Enough lazing about. We have work to do.”

~~~

Akari stumbled across the stone ruins, her legs shaking with each step. The world tilted sideways, threatening to spill her onto the frozen ground. She had to grab a broken pillar to keep from falling, and even that simple action sent lightning through her channels.

Forty-eight hours. Was that all? 

No . . . It was worse than that. She hadn’t slept once since the attack on the Solidor’s safe house, and that was at least three days ago. Her stomach cramped with hunger, and her throat felt like sandpaper and broken glass. As for her channels . . . Broken glass was like silk by comparison.

She’d lost count of how many times she’d fallen. How many times Elend had picked her back up, just to knock her down again. Her skin was more bruise than flesh at this point.

She hadn’t taken her bag up here; Elend claimed she wouldn’t need it. Still, she’d drawn on her soulbond with Kalden, using his battle mana to keep her alert. Now, even that felt impossible. The battle mana was still there, but controlling it was like trying to control the wind.

“Again,” Elend said. His voice seemed to echo from far away, even though he stood just a few paces in front of her.

“I can’t.” The words came out as a sob. She tried to raise her hands into a fighting stance, but they felt like lead weights. Her fingers wouldn’t even close or open anymore. 

“You’re close,” Elend said. “This is what breakthroughs feel like.”

Her vision blurred, and she saw two Elends standing there. No . . . that was her time Cloak activating on its own. Or maybe it was from her soulbond with Kalden. She tried to stop cycling, but her mana wouldn’t obey. This must be how people burned out their channels. Push too hard, and you lose control.

In that moment, she couldn’t make herself care. If she burned out, she could finally sleep again. She could taste something besides liquid mana or blood on her tongue, and feel something solid in her stomach. 

But that sort of thinking didn’t make Masters or Mystics. She knew that on some deeper level, but did it matter? She already had two perfectly good Cloak techniques. Would any of this be worth it? Would it even work?

Elend moved forward. One ghost, then two, then a dozen. They surrounded her like a pack of raptors and she couldn’t tell which one was real anymore.

“Let go,” Elend’s voice cut through the chaos. “Stop trying to control it.”

Let go? Hadn’t she done that days ago? She couldn’t even control her own body anymore. The stone floor rushed up to meet her, but she never hit it. Space warped again, and she appeared three feet to the left. Then time slowed, and she saw herself falling in slow motion—past, present, and future all blurring together.

The phantoms closed in. Elend’s fist moved toward her face as if he were underwater. She tried to dodge, but her body moved in multiple directions at once. She was here, there, everywhere and nowhere. The discord in her channels reached a crescendo, and her mind struggled to keep up.

This was it. This was how she died. Not in some glorious battle to save her home, but here—stumbling around on this stupid mountain with her so-called teacher who wanted to kill her in the worst way possible.

Why had she ever wanted a training montage? Real battles were so much better. At least in a real battle, someone would stab you within a few hours. And then you got to stop fighting and go to sleep.

Sleep. She’d rather sleep than get this new technique. She’d rather sleep than advance. What the hell was she doing here? Why was she still moving?

Her space Cloak fired again, trying to pull her away from Elend’s next attack. Her time Cloak showed her the future—her own body crumpling to the stone.

Then something snapped.

Elend’s fist passed through empty air. Not because Akari had dodged, but because she’d never been there in the first place. She existed in the spaces between moments, in the gaps between locations. His ghostly images multiplied, but now she saw the truth—they weren’t just possible futures. They were possible positions in spacetime.

She moved without thinking, her body flickering through a dozen locations in the span of a heartbeat. But it wasn’t random anymore. Each position flowed naturally into the next, guided by glimpses of the future. She saw where Elend would strike and simply wasn’t there when it happened. She moved where she needed to be, two steps ahead of reality itself.

The exhaustion was still there, crushing and absolute. But now it felt dull and distant, as if it belonged to someone else. Her new Cloak carried her forward, moving her body when her muscles couldn't. It felt like when Kalden took control, but Kalden wasn’t here right now. This was all her.

Then, for the first time in forty-eight hours, her fist connected with Elend’s jaw.

Unfortunately, Elend was still a Grandmaster;  hitting him was like hitting a mountain that could hit back. Pain lanced through her hand, but it was a dull ache compared to the agony in her channels. 

Elend staggered back, more from surprise than force. A wide grin spreading across his face. “There it is!” He laughed and clapped his hands together. “And I didn’t even go easy on you, lass. You did that all on your own.”

The words barely registered, and Akari's legs buckled beneath her. She collapsed onto the cold stone, her breath coming in ragged, desperate gasps. The new Cloak technique flickered and died, leaving her channels bare and burning. 

But she’d done it. Talek. She’d actually done it. She’d combined two Cloaks into one. She’d landed a real hit on a Grandmaster, and she was still just an Artisan. 

A smile crossed her face, cracking her dry lips. A rush of euphoria chased away her pain, flooding her system better than any drug. How had she ever thought about giving up? Even a whole year of training was worth a single second of this feeling. This moment of true clarity when the impossible became possible.

Elend’s grin was the last thing she saw before the darkness claimed her.