Olimpia

I drifted in a void, with no feelings or emotions clamoring for my attention. My only disturbance was a rare thought slowly drifting through my mind, and I was content. I did not know how long I had been in the darkness or when it would end, but I did not care. I did not know how, but I knew this was not a fight, and struggling to escape could only harm me.

Then, without warning, consciousness shattered the bliss of simply existing. I could feel a rigid and slightly cold floor beneath me and the weight of a blanket lying on my body. Not bothering to open my eyes, I sucked in a long breath through my nose. I was greeted by the smell of smoldering wood hanging in the air, which was trying and failing to hide the sharp tang of early morning.

In no rush, I spent a few minutes enjoying the air before opening my eyes. There wasn't much light in the predawn, but there was enough for me to make out the gray surface of an uneven rock roof overhead.

I traced the edges and grooves of the stone with my eyes, appreciating the feeling of cold on the other side of my blanket and the needles pricking the tip of my nose. There were few things better than waking up in the morning and knowing that a new day of potential awaited you while you lay in your warm bed.

On the flip side, few things were worse than climbing out of your burrow into the darkness and piercing cold when duty called. I once read a text where a scholar tried to frame every morning as a reminder to enjoy the small pleasures in life while using the comfort as a small trial to strengthen your willpower.

But I always just thought of it as a fancy way of saying what my father told me when I didn't want to wake up as a youth, "Get up and stop bitching when work needs to be done." More often than not, I find that simpler is better when it comes to such advice. It resonates with more people.

Not that I ever passed up on even a minor opportunity to hone myself. Outside of recovering after a mission or being held up in a medico ward, I rarely allowed myself the time to relax.

In my Irrational pursuit to overcome my perceived failings, I used everything I could to improve myself. How long had it been since the last time I relaxed and enjoyed the morning? I thought to myself. How long has it been since I enjoyed anything? The trip here had its moments…

Knowing I would not fall asleep again, I lifted my head and looked around. I was lying at the back of a small cave — really a deep overhang — with the embers of a fire a few feet from me. Positioned around the wood ash, I saw the lumps of bodies lying under their bedrolls, snoring away as if they could fight back the morning if they were loud enough.

Within my arm's reach, Franklin was lying uncovered on his side, a small bowl, rag, and water skin at his side lying between us. As he slept, his left leg kicked at the ground, dragging his claws over the stone in a stuttering rasp as he dug five small furrows into it.

Licking my lips, I found my mouth parched, but not the bone dry like I would expect it to be after days without water. Franklin must have been sitting up taking care of me. Wonder how long I've been asleep? It must have been a while for him to be concerned enough to hover over me.

Flexing my limbs, I expected them to be heavy with weakness and to feel a mindless hunger gnawing at my guts, forcing me to seek out food, but I felt fine. Surprisingly so.

I was a bit thirsty, though…

Sitting up, I grabbed the water skin near Franklin and threw the blanket covering me to the side, finding myself clothed in only my tunic. Quickly glancing around me, I moved to slip into my britches and boots placed within arm's reach. Getting up without any trouble, I hesitantly started to walk through the sleeping forms arranged around the embers of a campfire, my steps growing more confident when a wave of weakness never crashed down on me.

Coming to a stop at the mouth of the deep overhang, I glanced to the right as I noticed some motion.

A man was leaning against a large stone, cradling a spear in his crossed arms, looking into the surrounding forest. Though his shoulders were hunched forward as if in sleep, his head was moving side to side slowly. I didn't know his name, but from the gray light of dawn touching the horizon, I was able to recognize him as one of the legionaries in Optio Lun's squad.

When I stepped up next to him, he turned to glance at me, saying, "Should have another hour for my wat— Who are— What? You're awake!?" He perked up and looked around as if searching for someone to confirm what he was seeing.

"Yeah, I am," I said, giving him a half smile before turning away and looking at the forest, "Woke up a few minutes ago."

"Ahh~, you sure you should be up and walking around?" Uncertainty filled his voice, "Don't mean nothing by it, but more blood came out of your head than I have seen spilled by men who had their limbs chopped off. I'm not sure you should be walking around."

"Maybe not," I said, amused but indifferent. "But I feel fine. So I'm gonna climb up this hill and watch the sunrise from its peak. I haven't done that… since I was with my father." Having said so, I started walking around the rock outcropping, looking for an easier part of the hill to climb.

“Umm… Sir? I don't think…" Called the watchman, but I paid him no attention. He might have reached out to stop me, but he never moved from his position. Not to come after me or wake up the others as indecision gripped him.

I didn't care what he did. I was going to climb the hill. His concern was warranted if I really did bleed as much as he said, but I felt fine.

So good, in fact, that I would describe myself as bursting with energy.

If my strength was all a self-delusion, and exhaustion would soon come crashing down on my shoulders, I would find out at some point as I climbed the hill. Not that I cared that much. Someone should eventually come to get me if I collapsed and passed out. I doubted Franklin would let me die now after what he had done to keep me alive.

Though I might wake up tied up so I wouldn't wander off again… Ahh, fuck it, this was worth the risk.

Kind of self-centered of me to make others worry, but I just couldn't believe weakness would come crashing down on me. And I have to get higher.

And I was right; that moment of exhaustion never came.

I walked along the hillside until I found a nice spot filled with tall grass to climb, then marched up. As I zigzagged my way up the slope, I let my hands brush the tops of the grass, collecting dew and enjoying its crisp scent wafting up in the damp air.

Reaching the ridge line half an hour later, I walked along it until I almost walked onto the boughs of an old ash tree springing from a sudden depression on the hilltop. A steep slope dropped for twenty or so feet before it leveled out for a few dozen yards and rose again. Within the hollow, the tree had taken root.

Its branches were weighed down with leaves and draped over both sides of the hill. And the trunk was wide enough that four men might not be able to wrap their arms around the rolling, lumpy bark. It was like a dozen smaller trees had grown together over the better part of a century.

Walking around the old majestic tree and taking it in, I spotted a part of its roots that looked like a bench. Taking its appearance as an invitation, I accepted and took a seat facing south.

Running my hands over its warn bark, it appeared that I wasn't the first to rest under the leaves of this tree. Looking up and turned east to the source of the golden rays lighting up the sky, I saw a rosy pink bleeding over the horizon, touching and dying the edges of the clouds hanging in the sky.

It was a beautiful morning, but my eyes could not focus on the sunrise. I even found myself becoming mildly annoyed at it. It was distracting me from what was really important. And that was looking to the southwest.

Straight into the grassy side of a slightly taller foothill blocking my sight from the farms covering the southern part of the Cradle. It was a hillside that I could mistake for a thousand others, and it wasn't what was distracting me either. That belongs to something far to the southwest, beyond the sight of any man.

But I knew it was there. And I knew it was calling to me.

I know I said I was coming up here to look at the sunrise, but that wasn't really the reason. And neither was it for a chance to relax and enjoy a view. My reason was simple and sounded utterly insane.

I had to get closer.

It wasn't much distance, hardly any at all, really, but the little amount of ground I covered moving south made me feel… lighter. As if there wasn't so much of a weight pressing down on me.

Or maybe it was that I was a step closer to the fire, and I felt ever so slightly warmer.

I've been feeling this for a while now. It was like an itching on the back of my neck. Sure, the more I paid attention to the feeling pulling me to the southwest, the more it irritated me, but the slightest distraction could pull my mind away and make me forget for days at a time.

Now, my mind was filled with a second sun. A beacon calling for action and help.

I remembered her words and all the emotions infused into them like they had just happened, and I could feel an urgency pushing me to act. While leading up to the end of the Earth Pulse, my memories were fracturing and becoming disjointed flashes of agony; the last part was clear as day.

The World Tree only said a few words, but there was so much infused into them. A weight and depth to them that was unlike anything I had ever experienced.

And now, just by the fact I heard and remember them, I had a duty. A duty to my "people" to take up the "mantle" soon…

The thing was, what is "soon" to a thousands-of-years-old tree? And what was the mantle?

The duty had been weighing on my mind for a while now, basically from when I remembered the Dawn Tree's call for help in the medico ward. But the branch of the World Tree's words were… a desperate hope.

There was no expectation in the words that I would ever be able to fulfill her request. I was one of countless candidates with potential who came across a Dawn Tree in their wanderings. But it was a potential that she had long given up on being fulfilled, as no one had been able to bridge the gap, let alone remember her words.

Things have changed now because of what had been done to me. What exactly the change was or why it happened, I didn't know. But the change was significant enough to be far more important than I could imagine.

There was a danger poised above this world. A threat large enough that the World Tree — a mythical entity said to be capable of bridging the void between worlds and bringing those tipping over the cliff of death back to life — was filled with fear and resigned ineptitude.

Something was coming that she could not stop, and all but the most fleeting of hopes had vanished. And then here I came, sparking that flickering hope into a roaring flame.

More than the need I felt to go to the World Tree purely based on her desires, her words had placed the knowledge that it was an absolute necessity in my mind. I felt that I was the only one who could prevent a cataclysm from befalling the world. And should I refuse or shirk my duty, countless people will die.

As I sat on the root bench, my eyes continually drawn to the southwest, I tried to tell myself I was deluded. That there was no way someone as insignificant as me could be called to such a task.

I tried to convince myself I was misunderstanding the World Tree's intentions, but I couldn't even take the first step in entertaining that thought. We communicated in the most intimate way possible.

More intimate than sex or speaking your innermost thoughts and beliefs to another. She touched my soul, and there would be no way for me to misinterpret her words. It was as inconceivable to me as the sun rising in the east one morning.

"I would think you would be eager to finish our deal," thrummed Kanieta as she plopped down next to me. She slowly crossed her legs and arched her back in a stretch, her tails flipping up before curling around her body and lightly falling onto her lap. The tips of the tail danced above my legs, occasionally landing a teasing bop against my thighs, "rather than sit up here and stare off into space."

"I have a lot to think about," I replied without taking my eyes off the horizon. "And it’s… important."

"More important than the task you risked your life for?" There was curiosity in her voice and an unasked question hanging in the silence between us, not that there was much space.

I paused momentarily, then decided there was no point in trying to keep this a secret. And it could even help me if I spoke my thoughts aloud. "Did they explain to you what an Earth Pulse is?" I asked.

"Long-range pulse that tells you everything on the ground," Kanieta answered succinctly.

"Yeah,'' I sighed, not bothering to go into how much was left out of that statement. "Usually, an undirected pulse travels a couple hundred yards. Most can focus it in one direction and get results multiple times that."

I paused, my mind returning to the instant after casting the Earth Pulse. Shaking off the line of thought, I continued talking, "An Earth Pulse can travel hundreds of miles. The hard part isn't sending out the pulse but retaining the information you need without being overwhelmed…"

Looking down at my hands, I slowly rubbed them together as I looked at the grime under my nails. "My Earth Pulse… traveled further within the first few seconds than I have ever experienced. And then it kept on going. Almost like it was being pulled. By the time it stopped, my mind and soul were moments from being broken, and I was in the presence of the World Tree. She called me to pick up the mantle and come to her… And since then, I have felt a pull to the southwest."

A look of surprise came over Kanieta's face, and as she opened her mouth to speak, an excited gravelly boom flowed over the hilltop, "You hear The Call!"