40 | Wake Up
Coughing, Eli chokes up water and blinks. No words from the Order greet him to offer an explanation, and he is left falling in the dark, Klia now gone from his grasp. Water still rains down from above, and Eli doesn’t understand what even happened until his eyelids are dragging shut again, his mind fuzzy, wishing to sleep.
“Klia?” He calls weakly, but hears no response before everything is dark once more.
* * *
“Fa, I need you to look at something.”
Eli is entirely too sweaty for this. In the summer sun, being past one’s physical prime and sparring with kids too full of energy for their own good isn’t exactly Eli’s brightest move. But he’s rather enjoying himself, and the students are learning.
At his son’s voice, he turns to squint into the shade of the hallways leading into the lower levels of the palace. Abner is avoiding the harsh sunlight and has too many papers in his hand, tucked under his arm, and sticking out the pockets of his thin tunic. Looking at the two of them together, Eli doesn’t suppose the kids would know they are related—the old warrior and the young scientist. Eli grins at his son and heads for the relief of the shade.
“Give your Fa a hug,” he says, spreading his arms upon approach. Sweat drips down his neck and arms, his shirt drenched a while back, and the fabric is dirty in several places where he fell once, and got smacked with a sparing sword by one of the other Warriors here during a demonstration. Abner glares at him, suddenly clutching his papers closer, protecting them from Eli’s advance.
“Don’t even be thinking about it,” his son warns, then starts backing off when Eli doesn’t immediately stop. “Not funny, Fa.”
“Oh, what do you mean? Have some love for your old man—”
“You can get your sweaty beard away from me.” Abner’s lips twitch, but he retreats around the edge of the training yard, pointing his quill-tipped pen at Eli. “I remember how to fight, old man.”
Eli laughs too-loud and lowers his arms. “Alright, I won’t dirty your papers. What is it?”
Abner squints as if expecting a sneak attack, then brings all his parchments back to Eli, uncurling them from his chest. Eli clasps his hands behind his back, leaning over. He has never ruined any of his son’s writings, and he never shall.
“Do you see this?” Abner asks, spreading several papers along the nearest stone bench. Eli squints at them. He is not all that familiar with the details of what his son is doing at the moment—he moves from topic to topic so quickly—but the diagrams are more familiar, some of the same kinds he has been obsessed with throughout the years. Plants, some recognizable, some figments of his son’s imagination. Animals with increased magical properties, often mixed with Abner’s propensities for growing things.
“I see it,” he says. “I’m afraid I’m too dense for this type of thing, you’re going to have to explain.”
Abner rolls his eyes, the obsessive glint of excitement Eli knows so well broken momentarily by amusement. “You’re not dense, you just enjoy hitting things with other things.”
Eli chuckles. “Let me see your Order again so I can get a good look at the Warrior class you inherited from me?”
He gets another eye-roll, but Abner taps on one of the plant diagrams. “I think I can replicate this.”
Eli looks at him, waiting for more.
Abner swirls his hands in thought while shouts and scuffles echo from the training yard. Eli is not the only teacher out here, but he’s being watched by some of the other high-ranked Warriors. Some of them, he knows, some are newer, from the outer realm of the kingdom, and therefore less known to the court. They unsettle him with their stares, but they have been starting for days since the new round of students came in. Eli is high-ranked and well used to the fact this is not pleasing to everyone. He ignores them.
“I think I can put this into use in real life. My magic, mixed with some of the plants I’ve been growing.”
“What for?” Eli knows what for in the general sense, but is curious if this is of particular use, or just the beginnings of an experiment.
“I’m not sure yet.” Abner massages his temples and Eli wonders, not for the first time, if the kid—a man, now, he knows—is getting enough sleep. “Ideally, I would love to start with medicine. Anything that can improve upon salves and staving off infection. If I can mix those types of things with the work the Mages are doing with healing, hopefully, I can increase the effects of one or the other. Both, perhaps.”
Eli knows he is dumbing down his language for Eli to follow along. He is not a dull man, but he has never had the abilities of Mages or Healers, or those in the Sciences. It isn’t as if he can help his son in these calculations and experiments he is doing—he can be an ear to listen and under a few circumstances, help him talk things out as long as his son doesn’t veer too far into the details.
“This won’t hurt you, will it?” Eli asks. “You make me nervous when you speak of combining your magic into things, instead of using your magic.”
Abner waves his hand at him. “Yes, Fa, I am aware. I am not planning on growing plants out of my eyeballs, relax yourself.”
Eli knocks him lightly upside the head, and his son goes back to grinning, still with that faraway look in his eyes.
“Whatever the details, I very much hope you can manage it,” Eli says, figuring his son is sharing his sketches out of excitement. If he had a question, he would’ve asked by now.
“So do I…” Abner’s voice is far away as well, and he rocks from side to side. Eli smiles a little into his beard. He knows what it is like to be on the verge of unlocking something. Just because he is not a man who finds passion in bending over papers and dissection the workings of life and their Order does not mean he has not felt the same fire for his own fighting.
He gives his son a light rub between the shoulders, being careful not to ruin his clothes. “Have you shown your mother?”
“No!” Abner says, as if remembering where he is, gathering the papers back to him. “I was going to ask you where she is.”
“Down at the harbor I believe, she’s found they’re bringing in a new batch of dye for her threads—”
* * *
Water presses on him, dragging the air out of his lungs. Whatever memories this strange place is wringing out of him, feeding off of him, Eli wants nothing to do with it. He needs to wake up. Wake up and find Klia. Wake up—
* * *
Eli slices down the massive creature. He is not accustomed to wolves of such a size in this area of the kingdom, but the men in the hills have been growing them, using them in battle. And they are quite effective. These hills have been overrun with a small gang of men who’s been pillaging the local villages and have, on a few occasions, hurt some of the women who got in the way. Several local men have already died.
Usually, a case of small-time bandits would not be worthy of sending high-ranked Warrior classes into the barren patches of the kingdom, but these have proven a particularly sticky batch to get rid of.
Eli glances sideways at Byrk, one of his sworn Warriors a few years younger. The man wields a battle axe better than Eli would ever dream of and waves a hand to let Eli know he’s still uninjured. Among all the scrub brush and strangely swampy land of this place where the bandits have chosen to hide out, it is difficult to hear or see the advance of the too-large wolves. But his hearing is sharp, and he catches the squelch of their paws in the damp soil.
Its blood-red jaw is visible through the undergrowth, and Eli’s broadsword takes easy care of it. Something gives way beneath his boot, and he goes to one knee in time for the next one to pounce. He digs his blade into its belly, making quick work of it, but not before pain claws down his shoulder, and the moment of familiar panic takes hold.
He vaults unsteadily back to his feet, touching hot blood on his shoulder and blinking against the exhaustion of hours of hunting these monsters. He has felled so many he cannot believe these people managed to breed them all. Too much for any one man, high-ranked or not. His sword lies heavy in his hand, and he grips its familiar leather hilt. With a clearer head, he waves off Byrk coming to check on him. Not for the first time today, he reminds himself that soon he will be home, with Lyra and Abner. The boy has just begun to walk, and Eli wants to teach him more words.
“Eli!” Byrk calls, “Snap out of it! Wake up!”
He is drowning, and he needs to wake up.
* * *
Eli digs his fingers into his sore arm. He is drowning, and he needs to wake up.
