Dreams of the Quill

by Flak

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There comes a point where one can no longer ignore the happenings around him. This is, of course, a roundabout way for me to say that I realized Suigeki had been right. He had said he hoped that one day I would realize what I must, and I think I have. I don’t know what did it, whether it was the science department’s overnight destruction or Suigeki turning up on my doorstep, covered in blood, not seeking help, but looking to apologize.

There was something seriously wrong.

So I decided to seek him out, to learn from him what I must do. It wasn’t hard to find him, in fact, he was looking for me at the time too. We ran into eachother outside the ruins of the science department, behind them, to be exact. He seemed surprised to see me there.

“Kaze, what a coincidence.” However, he did not hurry along. Whether in this place or another, it was clear that he was looking for me.

“Not at all. Sui… I’d… I have something I need to ask of you.”

“Ask away.”

“Sui, could you please teach me how to help?” I averted my eyes in shame, after my previous rejection of Suigeki’s dilemma it must seem funny to him that I come to him asking this. What I did not expect was what happened- without laughing, without any comments, without any odd looks, he simply nodded his head and pointed towards the stand of trees on the east side of campus. He disappeared into the air, and I ran towards that grove.

* * *

Like a rain of minute daggers, the needle-shaped droplets poured down upon the muddy earth. Around my body, they were deflected by the circling gusts of wind I had summoned to me, but everywhere else, the forest was being decimated. The deadly deluge disappeared into thin air even as it made impact with the tree trunks and soil, but its marks remained- gashes, craters, and pock marks. The air itself was heavy with condensation, a sure sign that my quarry had passed through seconds before. I was on his tail, one could say, perhaps even gaining on him.

But it was no good; I couldn’t keep up this speed for long. Not only would fatigue kick in and slow me down, but soon my barriers would dissolve and I would become a pincushion. With all the water in the air, it lay heavily over the forest, and there was no movement in it. No wind. I was close to powerless in this environment, and I realized that maybe this is what Suigeki wanted.

Maybe he’d brought me here to beat me senseless, to punish me for being insensitive as to my duties.

Or maybe he wanted me dead.

The breeze flying around my feet, pushing me to move at least five times faster than I would otherwise, went out like a dying candle’s light, and I stumbled forward before falling flat on my face. The barriers would go next. I would die. I would die because I’d stupidly asked Suigeki for help. Damn, for it to end like this…

“Indeed,” Suigeki’s voice rang out through the trees, “you did not ever let me teach you how to use your powers in the least.”

The metal rain ended instantly, just as the wind circling my body became still. Suigeki was standing on a tree branch overhead, looking down at me.

“You are protected by what wind you can subconsciously gather to you, and it speeds your movements in addition to its natural response to your call. You may even be aware of this, but you have no idea how to control it. Am I right?”

I stood and nodded.

“The basic step is seeking out your element in your surroundings. For me, this is easy, for there is always water around. For instance, I can do this…” The air around me became horrendously dry, and a small orb of concentrated blue appeared hovering over Suigeki’s outstretched hand. “…or this.” And the orb shattered, spreading out into the surroundings, making everything moist.

“How do I do that?”

“It is harder for you, Kaze, because there is not always wind. Often, air will sit still. I do believe that there is some movement in this forest, but you are a better judge of that than I. Try imagining all the wind coming together at one point- say, in front of you. See, in your mind, your clothes billowing out in the fierce eddies. Feel it. Smell the scents the breeze carries. And now, make it so.”

I tried. I imagined wind stirring up around me, how it would affect my sleeves and coat, how it would blow my bangs back, how I could smell the freshly cut grass from the campus lawns, how I could feel the strength of the gusts. I imagined all this, and I made it so.

It was so sudden, it was so wonderful. It was euphoric. The wind swept me up and engulfed me. It was something that does words shame, something that were I describing in my own writing, I would most likely despair and abandon the pen a second time. For a brief moment, a whirlwind caught me.

“That was fast,” my teacher remarked. “For your element to gather to you so quickly. But before I can praise you, let us see if you have any control over it. Try to move this… whirlwind, we’ll call it… a few feet to your right.”

I was so caught up in what I’d done, though, that I lost control when I tried to detach myself and listen to the instruction. The whirlwind dispersed violently, rummaging the foliage of the trees, sweeping debris from the ground around me into the air. I stepped back in shock at the force of what I’d conjured, worried that I’d done something wrong. The rich sound of Suigeki’s laughter reassured me that nothing was wrong.

“Don’t worry, Kaze, you did wonderfully for your first time. Now, let’s see… you should practice this a bit. Call out for me when you want something; I’m going to meld into the earth’s moisture for a bit. Even I must do ‘training.’” And with that, he was gone. I repeated my procedure from earlier, and summoned the whirlwind to me. I began to train in the ways of an Elementalist.

* * *

Days had passed, relatively quiet days. Classes had been going well, but that’s about the only part of my normal life I’d paid attention to, for fear of making Kurosakura history. Using the rest of my time, I’d been going to that forest and training. I gained the ability to conjure any air movement within a mile to me, and to place it where I wished, after about two weeks. Some days, though, the air was still, and nothing would happen.

One day, I ran into Suigeki while walking through the forest with a small ball of pure wind in my hand. He seemed impressed, but didn’t waste time to start explaining more fundamentals to me.

“Kaze, I’m sure you’ve noticed that on days with no wind you have been unable to gather your element. Now, do you remember those dreams you had, those years ago? About me fighting?”

“Yes,” I replied, remembering full well the terror of fleeing from gun-wielding soldiers. I remembered how I, as Suigeki, had used the water within me to provide shielding, how I had sent the water through my skin and pierced it in an attempt to prevent more serious wounds. “I- I mean, you- had used your own water…”

“Correct. An Elementalist must be able to use every bit of their element, including whatever’s inside of them. For me, this is water. I am able to manipulate my own water streams, able to divert their flows, so that this fluid bursts out of my body and becomes my weapon, or my shield, or my magic. Do you understand?”

“I think so…”

“Good. Now, let’s Dispel all the wind in the area.”

“What?” I didn’t quite understand what he meant, but I thought I had an idea.

“Dispel. I don’t have much experience with this because for me to Dispel would cause local droughts, and it would hurt people. Now, tell me what you think Dispel means.” Suigeki looked at me with a curious glint in his golden eyes.

“Is Dispelling to completely erase an element from an area?”

“Not exactly; to Dispel is to move all of an element away from the area. See, each Elementalist has three ‘Spheres’ or areas. First there’s the Sphere of Control, which is the area in which you can gather your element to you. Then there’s the Sphere of Influence, which is the area in which you can manipulate your element. Finally, there’s the Sphere of Self, which extends to the tips of everyone’s bodies and is an air bubble of sorts in the other Spheres, unaffected by procedures that affect the areas of Control or Influence. So if I were to Dispel my Sphere of Control, my inner systems would be unaffected, and I would not instantly die of water loss.”

“What about other people?”

“Everyone has a Sphere of Self, Kaze. But a human isn’t enough to support oneself, which is why if I Dispelled, people would die of thirst, because there would be no external manifestations of that element.”

“But if I Dispel wind…”

“No one will be affected negatively, if you do it right. The thing with Dispelling is that you’re moving all the element in your Sphere of Control to your Sphere of Influence. A person’s Sphere of Influence is much larger than their area of control, so an Elementalist can technically move their own element out of reach.”

“Once the wind’s in the Sphere of Influence, or beyond it, I will have no way to gather it to me, then?”

“Correct, until, of course, the wind’s natural pattern returns it in our direction. There isn’t much wind here, so I don’t think you need to worry about starting a tornado by Dispelling. Go ahead, try. You know how big your Sphere of Control is; will your element to be outside that.”

After weeks of practicing affecting the movement of wind, it was easy to move it all a mile north, outside my Sphere of Control. Every leaf on every tree stood still; birds began flapping their wings to fly. There was no wind near me, not a breeze, not a single bit of movement.

“Now, Dispelling in and of itself is not too useful a technique to know. I taught you it because I wanted to-”

“Teach me how to use my own wind. I gathered, because you started by asking me about inner elements.”

“Yes, yes. Now-”

“But that’s ridiculous! Humans don’t have wind in them!”

“Kaze, do you believe that the ‘water’ substance inside our bodies is identical to the water you find in the sky or the ground? You have movement in you, systems that propel cells forward, cycles that push things forwards and backwards. These forces can make air move, too, if exploited properly.”

“But can’t I just… do this?” I asked, swiping at the air with one hand. A small motion in the air appeared, and I instantly turned it into a visible spiral over the hand that I’d swung with.

“Is that efficient?”

“You melted snow with your normal physical abilities, turning it into water you could use. Why can’t I create wind with my normal physical abilities?”

“I repeat: is that efficient? If you’re facing some namless evil, will swinging at the air give you a miniatur tornado? No. You must learn to use your inner element.”

“But… how does that work?”

“Try to gather your element again. Except, this time, instead of imagining it gathering to you, imagine it blasting out of within you.” Suigeki did not look pleased, but I could only tell so much from those bottomless eyes. I had no choice but to obey, as I myself had asked to learn the ways of the Elementalists. I imagined the wind bursting out of my, swirling around me, rife with drops of blood, my blood. I saw it, saw the wind blast out of the palm of my hand, my skin ruptured and blood flowing freely. I winced, and it didn’t happen. The air was still, I was undamaged.

“What’s wrong, Kaze? Do it!”

“I’m… afraid,” I replied quietly, ashamed of the fact that I could not hurt myself.

“Don’t be, and do it!”

“Why should I have to do this?”

“How will you help anyone if you can’t use your element?”

“I can!”

“If you can’t do this then you can’t!”

“I don’t want to be hurt!”

“You’ll be hurt worse if you don’t learn this!!” Suigeki’s voice rose in volume, grew angry. “Damn it Kaze, no one wants to hurt! That’s why we take pain, why we damage our bodies, to help people!”

“If it weren’t for us, people wouldn’t be in danger, anyway!”

“Idiot! People will always be in danger!”

“Then why don’t all people have this power?!” I shouted back. “Why is it just us? Why us… why me…”

“Because- no. That… that I don’t know. But it’s the way it is, so we have to be strong for everyone.”

“I-”

“DO IT!”

With no reply, no vocal capitulation, I bowed my head and tried to gather the element from within my Sphere of Self. As I’d imagined, the blood spurted from my right hand as an incredibly strong blast of wind issued from my palm and into the ground, creating a crater.

“Ooo, excellent,” Suigeki remarked, calm immediately. I clutched my right hand with my left, tried squeezing around the wound to ease the pain. It hurt, it throbbed.

“Why do we endure this? Why don’t we just end this cycle?”

“I figured you’d ask that at some point. The thing is, Kaze, it is true that if we both disappeared, the troubles caused by our presences would disappear as well. Other evils would remain, though. Evils that we can help humanity defeat. Did I not tell you that the first Elementalist was the tide-turner in most deciding fourteenth-century wars? In fact it was the Elementalist of Fire, Bimaro, my old master, that, from hiding, contributed to the Alliance victories in World War Two? ‘Fire bombs,’ military authorities will say, to cover for their lack of knowledge. No Alliance planes ever flew over Dresden. No, that was the work of an Elementalist.”

“So Elementalists spend their days slaughtering humans. How is that ‘defeating evils’?” I shook my head. “How can this be called good?”

“There’s no point in my defending Bimaro, but I do know that he stopped humans from slaughtering eachother. And I do know that he had no choice. He’d lived for over two hundred years at that point, still searching for the next Elementalist.”

“This ‘next’ business… what is it, anyway?”

“The true reason this can never end, Kaze. I could not be killed by the guns of those men, because I had not found you. I can not be killed now, except for by you. The circle is composed of students killing their teachers. You must kill me, and the next Elementalist must kill you. That is the way the cycle has always worked, and that is why at this moment it is impossible for both of us to die.”

“So… until each Elementalist finds his successor…”

“Until then, each Elementalist must make sacrifices.”

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Chapter Select Introduction Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five [Finish]

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