Just a Bystander

Chapter 36: Force

I don't think I've ever fainted in my life before enrolling in the Academy. And now it's twice in as many weeks.

That was the first hazy thought that drifted across my mind when I cracked my eyes open and saw the familiar ceiling of the dorm room. At least this time, whatever had happened wasn't serious enough to warrant a trip to the infirmary. 

The orb. I jolted upright, staring around wildly. Relief flooded me when I realised I could still feel it. The phantom arm felt faint but it was there, linking me to the orb in my bag, which had been left under my bed. With some effort, I floated it out and took it in my hands.

Unnatural-changed-defiant. That was my initial impression of my father's orbs when I had first 'seen' them with my arcanic senses, and the Demiurge had characterised my orb the same way. But my orb didn't feel like that to me. It was... it was essential-precious-stable.

The door opened and I hastily stowed the orb under the bedcovers. It was Ambrose, somehow managing to appear both concerned and cautious at the same time. "How are you?"

I glanced down at my watch. The encounter with the Demiurge was only an hour ago. "I'm alright, I think. What happened?"

"The Demiurge carried you here," Ambrose said, scrutinising my face.

"Did everyone else see?" I asked, running a hand through my hair in frustration as I thought about all the difficult questions that I might have to answer when I hadn't even had the time to think about what I had seen in the Spire.

"No. Funny thing happened; Kevan and Lynus were trying to catch the new arcanic bolts, not just deflect them. One of the bolts crashed into the groceries Devon left on the counter, so now he's dragged the rest of them to help him restock. I was just done cleaning up."

It seemed the Prophecy wanted to keep the Demiurge's interactions with me under wraps, and so it moved everyone out of the dorms before he brought me back. It occurred to me that if Ambrose was here the Prophecy might want me alone with him, but something about this moment felt different. Strange. New. I tilted my head this way and that, trying to cling on to that impression. It vaguely formed in my mind as a kind of... a flavour-vein-echo... and I realised I had felt it earlier in the arcana in the Spire's dodecahedron chamber.

Perhaps Ambrose wasn't supposed to be here after all, if the Prophecy had had its way. It would have wanted him far away from me. It felt like something else had manoeuvred him, against the Prophecy's will, into my path. 

"You didn't expect to be here, did you? In this moment, in this situation?" I asked slowly, not quite sure if I was making sense. It was hard to put this feeling into words.

A look of uncertainty crossed his face, though he did seem to understand, and he hesitated before answering. "...No. It's weird. I normally have this... sensation of certainty... about what to do, or not to do. A feeling of rightness. It's been around ever since I learned about being the Chosen One. But it's been going on and off this past week. And right now it's gone. Just... gone."

I understood his nervousness around me a little better now. "You think it's got something to do with me."

He shrugged helplessly. "It does seem to happen more often when I'm around you."

Was I supposed to tell him about what I had seen? Heck, was I supposed to ensorcell him right now? But what did it want me to ensorcell him with? And to what end? I hadn't even figured out if I was supposed be listening to that voice from the woven-shackled-stream. And if the Demiurge led me there, what was his role in all this? He had provided me plenty to think about, but just because I was willing to listen to him, did that mean I was supposed to just go along with whatever he said or did?

But I realised that 'supposed to' wasn't a concept that applied to me anymore. I shook my head, marvelling at this sense of possibility.

What did I want to do? And what did I want to do?

I manipulated the phantom arm, and the orb drifted out from under the covers to float between Ambrose and me. He looked at it curiously. 

"Isn't that one of your father's orbs? What does it do?"

"They... this one leaves me free of the major Prophecy's influence," I said simply. 

He froze in stunned disbelief, his eyes wide and confused. But then they darted here and there as he rapidly considered something and seemed to come to some sort of resolution. "I think it's time I told you what the Prophecy was."

"No," I said, forestalling him with a raised hand. "It turns out that the more you know about a Prophecy, the tighter it holds on to you. And I'm not risking that now, even with this orb."

"But Caden..." Ambrose looked conflicted. "It's still happening."

"What is?" I felt my heartbeat quicken.

"The... the way things are going, I think you're still bound. You're still doing... something... that seems to be leading towards its fulfilment."

"Oh yeah?" I asked, trying to sound calm, although I started breaking out in a cold sweat. It was possible... but perhaps the Prophecy was working through Ambrose to cause me to doubt the efficacy of the orb. "What do you want, Ambrose?"

He seemed surprised by the question. "What do you mean?"

"I mean what do you want? Why do you want to tell me what the Prophecy is? Do you want to stop whatever is going to happen?"

"I..." A look of panic crossed his face and he sat down on his bed. He ran a hand through his hair agitatedly. "I... I don't know!"

I brought the orb around until it hovered above my upheld palm. My father had mentioned that his five orbs worked as an array, extending the effect over an area... but even this single orb seemed to be disrupting the prophetic links around Ambrose, at least enough to rob him of his 'prophetic certainty'. Why would the Prophecy have ever allowed the creation of the orb if that were the case? Maybe it was the influence of the woven-shackled-stream instead that was currently causing this disruption? Or maybe it was the woven-shackled-stream that intervened and allowed the orb to be created? There were so many unknowns. I didn't have all the information. 

'You'll never have all the information,' I remembered Ambrose saying to me in our first week. 'But I think you'll do a lot anyway.'

"Apparently you need my help to fulfil a part of the Prophecy," I began. "And somehow it doesn't end well for me."

He looked up, nodding mutely. 

"Let's say, in theory, that I don't mind. But in exchange... I want something from you, as the Chosen One. Can you make it happen?"

He briefly considered that but shook his head. "Caden... maybe if I tell you what it is, and if your orb works... maybe you can walk away from it."

"And why would you want that? Answer me, Ambrose. Are you trying to stop the Prophecy? Even though you're the Chosen One?"

"I didn't ask for it!" He got to his feet, his voice slightly raised. "Maybe this is a fate I don't want, at least, not like this! Maybe I want to get to the destination, but I don't like the path!"

"What's not to like?" I pressed. "You once said it was nice to have your path laid out for you."

"That... that was before I was finally given a choice. You... that orb... something's changed. It's like..." He paced back and forth, his arms folded tight across his chest. "It's like a window's been opened, and I'm looking out at a bigger world. It feels like I'm trapped, kept inside a box, and that I didn't know it all along. But now, sometimes, I know, and I don't want to be in this box."

I hadn't ever seen him like this before. It was like he was a completely different person the veneer of calm and reserved self-possession was gone, and underneath was a patchwork of confusion and uncertainty. Was this how all Chosen Ones were changed by Prophecies? Was this just a small sample of what would happen if one of them ever lost their prophetic links? It was enough to give me pause as I wondered what damage might be done to his sense of self if we tampered with the Prophecy. Would it be... right? 

But I hardened my heart and tried to look at it pragmatically. Our goals did align. Ambrose still wanted to fulfil the Prophecy, just on his own terms. And as for me, I didn't want to stop it either I just wanted my family to come through it alive and whole. It occurred to me that the Prophecy was using my family as leverage to get me to walk to my own doom, but perhaps with my father's orb in the interim, and with the Demiurge's help in the long-term, I might be able to thwart that part of it without disrupting its ultimate goal.

"So you just want the Prophecy to take a different route. Maybe I can help you with that. But I don't want to hear the Prophecy. Not yet, anyway," I said. Not until I figured out what the Demiurge wanted me to learn so that I wouldn't be dependent on what he called the unnatural-changed-defiant orb. It was best to be careful.

"Then you need to kn"

"No," I said again, more insistent this time. "Listen. I've learned that all prophecies work through prophetic links. There's actually a glyph that represents them. And everyone is literally bound by it." I thought about the Demiurge, and how he had temporarily purged me of prophetic links. That, coupled with his cryptic hint to me in the Spire, suggested that perhaps I hadn't made an entirely accurate statement. "Well... almost everyone. I was, too, until my father made this orb for me. And now I'm free. I can feel the difference. So maybe from your point of view, I'm still doing things that lead to the Prophecy's fulfilment. But that's not the full picture any more. You're still bound by the prophetic links, but I'm not. And that makes a difference."

"Doesn't it make more sense for you to know what the Prophecy is, then?" he asked exasperatedly. "So you can... can 'see' where you're 'going'?"

"I do want to know, but I'm not sure if now is the time. I need to think, to prepare, to plan out how to safely know more things, and also safely tell you things even though you're... mostly under the Prophecy's sway," I said, trying to inject some patience into my tone. "I only have this one orb, Ambrose. If I somehow accidentally overload its capabilities or something... I don't think I'll get another shot at this."

He sank into his bed again, thinking hard as he fidgeted with a pillow. 

"Anyway," I said, steeling myself and getting to my feet, "it's not your choice to make. If I don't want to listen, you can't make me."

He stiffened, then slowly looked up at me. "What if you're making a mistake? What if by not listening, you're throwing away the freedom of choice that you have, and playing right into the Prophecy's hands?"

But I had already made up my mind. It wasn't his fault, but there was no way I could trust him yet, not until I had thought things through a little more. "I'll listen when I decide the time is right, and not a moment before."

Arcana suddenly washed off him in concentrated, intense pulses that I hadn't felt before in all our Double Thau sessions. I tasted the ensorcellment in the air, but it still held no power over me. My attunement to the orb was so acute now that I could sense its annulling effect on the ensorcellment and almost get a vague, shadowy impression of exactly how it was working. 

"Seriously?" I grimaced, reining in the impulse to ensorcel him right back.  

I felt a twitch in the weave of the arcana and realised that he was beginning to shape the new arcanic bolts we had learned to use. His eyes snapped to the orb hovering over my palm.

"Seriously?" I demanded, blood pounding in my ears. The shielding sequences were familiar enough to me that it only took me a moment to raise a honeycombed layer between us, dividing the small room in half. I was just in time it immediately cracked in two places as Ambrose's invisible bolts crashed against them.

"Don't do this, Ambrose," I warned, quickly patching the protective matrix. He was still sitting on his bed, his eyes fixed on the orb. In lieu of a reply, two more craters appeared in my shield, sending bigger cracks skittering across the surface and threatening to bring the whole thing down.

Touch-speak-bend, I hissed into the arcana. But I was immediately alarmed as I felt a great power stirring to answer me, so dense that it caused Ambrose to falter even though I hadn't even unleashed the ensorcellment yet, hadn't had the time to even think about what I wanted to ensorcel him with. 

'Yes. YES,' the arcana itself hissed back, shocking me. I tasted it in the air now, the flavour-vein-echo of the woven-shackled-stream. This was definitely not the friend-in-the-arcana. And it felt too eager, too hungry. 

"NO!" I cried out desperately, echoing that call with my auric-ambient-flare. The dense knot of arcana that had materialised twisted and writhed, and I saw streaks of it arcing through the air with my naked eyes as it strained against my control, sending little tendrils snaking out towards Ambrose, who had fallen backwards and was pressing himself against the far wall, his eyes wide.

'Chosen-Blinded-Jailer-Chosen-Blinded-Jailer-Chosen-Blinded-Jailer!' it babbled, filling the space with its cloying weight. 

"Get out!" I screamed at Ambrose, grappling with a strange new sensation of somehow being able to drag at the arcana with my auric-ambient-flare even as I struggled to hold back the thing that was reaching for him. 

He fell sideways off the bed and skirted the edge of the room, scrambling for the door. I found myself actually being dragged along a little as the thing lunged for him. 

Anger kindled within me. I hadn't come so far in my attempt to defy Prophecy just to be strung along now. And if I couldn't rely on the friend-in-the-arcana to weave an ensorcellment for me, then I'd just have to do it myself, and see if it worked on this thing. 

Ensorcellment was touching-speaking-bending. I already had a hold on it with my arcanic sense. And I could speak to it through my auric-ambient-flare. What did it mean to bend?

To bend it to my will? No. That would be force. Bending was gentler. Bending was guidance. Bending was a yielding of the self to invite a yielding of the other. And perhaps that was why it involved emotion so much, even when the friend-in-the-arcana was the one doing it on my behalf.

I knew what emotional core to use. Guilt and regret over a rash choice or an ill-spoken word. That was familiar to me. I called that up now from the brimming store of my own experiences moments when I had disappointed my mother; the lull in communication after fights with my sister; the latest gut-punch of tying my father into the major Prophecy...

Stop-listen-yield, I breathed to the eager, angry knot of arcana that was still reaching for the Chosen-Blinded-Jailer.

It froze. The air stilled. But then, even though it was not a physical, visible thing, I swore I could feel it turning, and the full weight of its alien scrutiny fell upon me. 

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