But begin with a scream. The sound came as a harsh equal to the hissing moans that the roaches make for speech, and it was distant enough that it blent with the wind in the leaves of the forest, and the faint laughs of its guardian ambrosia beetles.
I ignored it, and puffed air through my spiracles. “Why doesn’t the shrine have any walls?” a younger Tlakida asked no one, cursing some fool builder. I drew my cloak tighter around my thorax, hoping to damp the noise. Of course it still leaked in, through the tattered, unwashed thing. The cloak hardly could cover my unfurled abdomen. I loved to wear it, though, even when it drew sneers.
After all, I had accepted it years ago, at this very shrine, as a gift from the lost ranger of Udgrov.
Back then, an even younger Tlakida had thought it meant her fit to inherit, proof she could be Udgrov’s next vesperbane ranger. (And it was, just not as she’d conceived it.)
(You’ll forgive me if the prose has wandered a bit here; it’s to make a point. I wasn’t in a shrine in the middle of the wild Udgrov woods for no reason, and nor for the same did I curse that loathsome roach-moan.)
I sat there resting upon my metathorax, abdomen unfurled flat behind me and hindlegs crossed in front. After adjusting my cloak, I drew my midlegs together, dactyls interlocking, and rested them in my lap. I had snapped open my spiked raptorial arms at the roach’s moan, so I shut and relaxed them, brought them neutral before my thorax.
Behind me, my spiracles flared and sucked in air, abdomen rising and falling in a breath-rhythm. My antennae swept side to side, keen for an approaching roach’s reek, but none was there and I made them curl up and rest atop my head.
(It’s foreign to me now. Years of trained vigilance in the academy, years of practiced paranoia in the war, and yet there was indeed a time when curling up my antennae alone in the wild wouldn’t see me struck dead.)
Breathe, Tlaki. Relax all your muscles — well, except those you’re using to breathe. Is that a crumb on your maxilla? No, relax. Feel that damn wind on your chitin.
Wind. Why didn’t the forest shrine have anywalls? There were six pillars enclosing the hexagonal affair, but open air between them. The wind walked in like an unwelcome friend-of-a-friend and knocked ripples onto the strange little pool — it smelled like acid and honey, and I never dipped more than a tarsi into it. Daily the melted corpses of tiny vermin would accrue at the edges like a ring of filth at the baths. None but I were here to clean it, and the repetitive act of doing so granted me more clarity of mind than hours of sitting on my abs while the wind molested me.
Breathe, Tlaki. Unlatch yourself from all your thoughts and worries. Allow your awareness to expand beyond your mind.
That last one was the only point on which I’d had any luck — not there was any tell. To me, it seemed a simple matter to step outside your mind, connect with your body, and immerse yourself in your surroundings. It felt like light radiating out from the crackling flames of my mind — keeping it smoldering dark and contained was the real trick. I tilted my head and let my eyes’ foveae sweep over the alter. Six platonic statues sat like guards before a blade in rotting leather and they were the symbols of the six spirits of life.
Oxygen. Carbon. Hydrogen. Nitrogen. Calcium. Phosphorous.
Each had a symbol and a sign, a true name and its invocation. It ranked among the few scraps of real vesperbane lore the mentors entrusted us. But what did it mean? What did knowledge of the six spirits let you do?
An Tlakida younger still, having flawlessly formed the six signs, asked a mentor in a bouncy pitch, “So, what combination lets me cast fireball?”
Can you guess what they said?
Breathe, Tlaki. Relax. Unlatch your thoughts and worries. Allow your awareness to expand.
I’d heard it constantly for months, more annoying than the gusting wind or that screaming roach.
But no matter. Even if I had to wrought and reinvent all of magic on my own, I would become the next vesperbane ranger of Udgrov.
Pulling my dingy cloak’s hood over my eyes, I summoned images in mind of the six spirits and upon them I focused.
Prevesperbane training was a lot of things, but it was mostly meditation. They never told me what it was good for, besides blowing away time and forging frustration. And here I was, evening free to burn as I wish, and I was doing more of it.
(All to the lovely applause that was the wind and the roach.)
We learned so many things I’d rather practice — they taught us combat stances and strikes, had us run and leap and climb, and memorize histories and expositions and logics. Even those droning words came easier to me than meditation.
There was nothing I wouldn’t rather practice — yet here I must have had a sense that this was something in which I was deficient, and the collective mentor wouldn’t repeat it to exhaustion if it wasn’t important.
“But what is it for?” The younger Tlakida asked this everyday, to silence. Was this how magic was awakened? Did this grant you the renown intellect of vesperbanes? Could you somehow defeat a monster with relaxed muscles and unlatched thoughts and no worries at all?
(The wind had finally shut up, but now the roach was louder.)
If I knew what this all was for, then I’d know when I finally won at meditation and could move on to something else. Instead, I was left fighting in the dark.
But not in the quiet. The stupid roach was noising it up again, with more stabs of harsh sound. I swung a midleg up to jerk away my hood — covering the eyes helped meditation — and at once I saw black eyes level with mine, and staring.
Just beyond the threshold of the shrine there swayed a giant roach.PriorNext
Snuggly Serials 