The Academy grounds, located atop a man made mountain cultivated by those born capable of controlling the world around them, spread out before him as Kano took his rest at the top floor of the main tower. From this perch you could see everything below and around including the city, the student dormitory to the north, the forests to the west. All things dwelled here in harmony.
At the midnight hour only Kano, founder and Headmaster of the Academy, was out of sync. A purpose or sense of direction influenced a person’s ability to make difficult choices or decisions. So it always was that with the school grounds quiet his soul grew restless and forlorn.
Gazing out across the vast distances, Kano reached out to the flowing rivers and streams dotting the grounds and pulled. To control an element was a matter of will. The strength of your soul determined your connection to the element you were born to shape, and his soul was formidable. Thousands of string-thin strands of water danced through the skies at his command as they raced to his outstretched hands held to the sky. Making water dance in the air was easy. The skill of a shaper was determined by the results.
“You left this world too soon, my love..” The typical jovial tone accompanying his words turned somber. The waters twirling in the sky twisted at the invisible hand of his will until they had taken the shape of a large rose. From the tip of the stem to the immaculate petals blooming atop its head, the flower was perfectly formed.
Focusing on his own energies the water rose began to freeze, the temperature around it dropping drastically until it was a solid piece of ice. “My sky flower. We will meet again, when I am gone,” Kano shifted his robes to glance at his blackening fingertips, “I doubt it will be much longer.” Balling his hand to a fist the rose shattered into countless shards of harmless flakes to be carried off on the wind.
Far below the towering spires of the Academy, tucked away in a corner of the school’s grounds where people seldom trod, was a small and inconspicuous shed. The sheet metal on the shed’s roof creaked as Jordan sat up, a glass of whiskey held idly in one hand.
“Shit,” he said softly, staring at the monumental construct of water before it abruptly dissipated. Jordan downed the rest of his glass, and then slipped off the roof. Landing with a shade less grace than usual, he gathered up his drinking duffel, stowed his glass inside and set off in the direction of the Academy’s main building.
A short five minute walk brought him to the front entrance of the main building. Jordan chewed his lip, and considered whether or not he was up to doing things quick and hard, or slow and easy. The decision, it seemed, was an obvious one. He called on the power of his second soul and countless grains of sand were pulled to his feet by his mastery of the element of earth. Jordan’s gut churned with excitement as he shot up through the air on a growing pillar of sand. A grueling minute passed, after which Jordan stepped onto the window sill at the top level of the Academy’s main building. Before Jordan had a chance to faint from the effort of using his power, he pushed in on the glass and entered.
An unceremonious yanking of his duffel through the window, and Jordan had successfully arrived at the top floor with booze intact. Giving a mock salute to the Headmaster, Jordan tromped over to the table and dumped the duffel on top. The Academy’s gym teacher produced two glasses and his best whiskey, and placed the lot on the table as well.
“What’s the occasion?” Jordan asked, as he poured them both a few fingers of the good stuff.
How rare, to have a visitor at this hour. Kano thought, glancing at Manilow.
“My apologies. I assumed the Academy empty at this time of night, so I came up to think. A friend once told me that clear skies can clear a clouded mind too.” The words were from a young girl named Hisui, a promising wind shaper with a talent for theatrics, bursts of anger, and a keen sense of insight. Despite Kano’s advanced age the girl had read his emotions clear as day and never failed to speak up. Her passing had been difficult to overcome. “I suspect she was right to some degree but what of yourself? To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?”
From the sound of tinkling glass on the table behind him, it seemed a fair guess to assume the gym teacher had come for a midnight drink. A part of Kano hoped for more than just idle chatter.
Jordan grinned and walked over to Kano’s side of the room, appreciating the view that the windows afforded them. He proffered Kano his whiskey, and took a sip of his own. “My company’s all the pleasure you could ever ask for,” he joked, smacking his lips. “That’s the good Tennessee whiskey, and I figured the Headmaster deserved a taste.”
Jordan’s eyes flitted from landmark to landmark, and a vision came to his mind unbidden of small shapes obscured by darkness charging through the forest, vaulting fences, and taking up positions with cover. He closed his eyes and breathed out long and slow. “I don’t want to drink alone tonight.”
The Headmaster took the cup of potent liquor and smiled despite himself. He had changed from a human of flesh and blood to a far more complex being comprised of his natural element. Kano had, for lack of a better word, stopped being human entirely. A mass of living water given thought. Under the circumstances however...
“Thank you for the drink, Jordan. It’s been a long time since I shared a meal of any kind with another person.” Taking the offered cup, he eyed the liquid tentatively. There was an interesting connection between himself and the Tennessee whiskey similar to the streams and rivers in that he could shape the alcohol as he pleased, idly making it dance just above the rim of his cup the same way snake charmers did but without the aid of melody. “Ah. Sorry. Shouldn’t play with my food.”
Up to his lips went the cup as he downed a single ‘swallow’. There was neither taste nor smell to the beverage as it mingled with his form underneath the obscuring hood and robes. To spare the man’s feelings Kano let out a contented sigh and raised the cup high with a laugh. “A long time indeed! I like that this drink makes me feel dizzy and quenches my thirst all at once. Thank you very much.”
Trying his best to be polite, Kano settled himself into the chair opposite of Jordan. Though again it was more to simulate his physical form rather than any real exhaustion. He never hungered, never grew weary or needed rest, not even needing air. “I trust you are comfortable here after so many years?” Kano politely asked between sips. With his duties to the school it was sometimes difficult to communicate on a more personal level, something he felt the other teachers needed from him but had yet to provide.
For his part, Jordan watched closely as the Headmaster sampled the whiskey. As they sat together, Jordan swirled his own whiskey, and chewed at his lip. “As comfortable as comfortable gets, I suppose. Funny thing about comfort,” Jordan said, “It gets to be too much sometimes. After all the places I’ve been, things I’ve had to endure. I can honestly say that some nights, I’ll sleep on the floor, or just a cot. Go for a run early in the morning until I can’t run anymore. I guess in some ways, I’m trying to prove something. That I’m still human?”
Jordan finished his glass of whiskey, and got out of his chair and decided to simplify things, dragging the duffel over. He topped off another couple fingers for them both and put his glass on the floor. “One thing that never leaves you, as a soldier, is the fact that you’ve done things and might need to do things in the future that make you into a monster. Things you can’t ever take back.” Jordan squatted down in front of the hearth that both of their chairs faced and started rearranging logs, placing kindling, and scooping out ashes. “No hotheads to give us a hand, eh Kano?” Jordan took out his own lighter and got their fire going.
Groaning as he sat back down, and picked up his glass, Jordan looked across at Kano. He let a silence draw out long and thick between them, whilst he sipped at his drink and the fire grew into its own, long thick tongues of flame licking the wood. Finally Jordan discarded the silence for the useless blanket that it was, and spoke his mind. “What I’m saying Kano, is that if I feel that way, in all of my completely human self, on some of my best days, then I can’t possibly imagine how it feels to be in your position. I’m under no illusion as to your condition, especially since the last time I had to…” Jordan rubbed at his face and turned to look into the flames, licking his lips. “I saw that rose of yours a while ago. I’ve been wondering what it meant all the way over here. Care to tell me?”
Kano let the question hang in the air for a few moments as he swirled his cup idly, trying to decide if it was wise to speak his mind or not. Few were privileged with the Headmaster’s origins or the manner of how he had been changed. Some things were better left in the past to rot and fade from memory for the good of everyone involved. Unless you trusted someone enough to burden them.
“My wife.” Kano stated simply, taking another sip from the whiskey in his cup still barely half full. “She was born to the winds, a natural genius where our standards are concerned. When still I possessed flesh she might well have been the most skilled shaper. Burdened with potential to change the world.”
Kano’s glass sat on the table as he clutched both hands tightly, the memories coming unbidden as they always had. Unable to express his memories with a story, the Headmaster reached for the book kept at his hip. A keepsake filled with the memories accumulated from hundreds of years of life jotted down in painstaking detail. Everything from the day he proposed to her, to the Academy’s exams given a few short days ago.
It was by no means a complete account, many other such books had been scrawled into and replaced as the pages became used up. Every single volume started with the first memories of his life before the change, a refresher of sorts. The rest was always personal memories. This particular volume was bound in black leather with a studded sapphire at its center. The lock on the side came off without a sound as he placed it upon the table and slid it towards Jordan.
“Her name was Cira. I called her my sky flower. Had a habit of scooping up leaves and flower petals when the winds kicked up around her. Always made a great mess of things, the kind that makes you smile and grab a broom.” There were no pictures of her but instead a hand-drawn illustration of a slender woman in a flowing white dress. Her face captured the enthusiasm and warmth of youth, with thick blond locks of hair waving all around her.
“I know your pain on the subject of war. War is why she is gone. War is why we dwell on this mountain in relative peace. War is why we fear the darkness even now.” The fireplace burned close by but the warmth was lost to him. There was not even a remote feeling of temperature change no matter how close he stood to it. Small pieces of him missed the sensation.
“Funny,” Jordan said, his voice not tinged with any amusement. “We both fell in love with wind-users. Of course, she seemed to fall out of love with me, or maybe we both did. From the way that flower looked, I don’t suppose I could say the same for you and Cira?”
“I don’t believe you and Catherine have fallen out of love. You long for her the same way I did for Cira, once. Though there is a part of me that believes it has been so long that I’m confusing love for respect. Admiration. Maybe a little envy.” Kano chuckled despite the rather serious situation. A boy by the name of Urufu Kasai, a diligent young fire shaper with great talent, had once said that the sound of whistling winds through the treetops was like a wind shaper dancing to the rhythm of their calling. It had been ‘irresistible’. Kano found it hard to disagree.
“You both have muddied pasts. Would you trust dirty water being safe to drink, or bloodied hands safe to hold?” A strained metaphor perhaps, but the meaning was intact.
Jordan laughed as well. “I don’t suppose you could tell her what you just told me? Because last I checked, I was somewhere between pond-scum and used bathwater. And all that aside, I’ve tried to be the person she wants me to be but I fail every time. Would I trust her? With my life. Would I trust myself?” Jordan couldn’t say, and so he dug around for a different bottle and came up with a decent vintage of white wine. He popped the cork with a bit of difficulty, and pulled out two more glasses for them both.
“She’s a beautiful woman, that Cira of yours…” A lascivious smile crept up on his face and he winked conspiratorially at Kano, spilling a few drops of the wine when he did. “Was she as remarkable a woman in bed as she appears to be on the page?” A vague sense in the back of Jordan’s head told him broaching this topic was in poor taste. Alas, the whiskey had loosened Jordan’s lips irreparably.
If Kano could blush he would have. The topic of intimacy had not been a subject of interest in his life for centuries. Of course he remembered those times but to be asked so shamelessly about them was too much. Steam wafted out from his sleeves as his emotions controlled his form, bringing him to a rapid boil.
“You’d be wiser to keep that kind of questioning off the tip of your tongue, if you want to keep it where it is. Her charm goes far beyond the intimate!” Standing up in his outrage Kano balled a fist in Manilow’s direction. After a tense few seconds his brief bout of anger dissipated as Kano slouched back into his seat.
“But yes, she was. There was nothing in Cira’s life that wasn’t taken head-on with the full extent of her abilities. As passionate in private as she was in public, that one. Was Miss Hargreaves similar? I-In passion, I mean!” Kano stammered, realizing that his line of questioning was both concerning Jordan’s ex, and a teacher under his employ.
Jordan let loose a strong and throaty laugh, his entire body shaking as he fell back in his chair. He failed to avoid spilling wine on himself. “A more passionate and vivacious woman I’ve never met in all my life. She could blow down a mountain with just sheer willpower. Hell, she almost did,” he added, pointing to himself. “But sometimes, she’d have ideas and I’d disagree. And we’d fight. And fight. And fight. It got to be too much. She pushed me away. I’ve been fighting battles all my life and this was no different. I wouldn’t give up. I didn’t want her to leave, but once she got the idea in her head she wouldn’t let it lie.”
Jordan swigged his wine, which was different than the whiskey, lighter and easier to down liberally. He felt it slosh down his throat and groaned. “It’s been something like two or three years since I last held her in my arms. I miss her, God, do I ever miss her. And yet I’m all but certain I’ve done nothing except push her further away.” The fire was blazing now, and Jordan staggered to his feet, and tossed another log at the hearth, missing it completely. He snorted, turned round and sat down heavily.
“Kano, can I tell you a secret?” Jordan asked, and without waiting for an answer spoke. “I’m a lightweight.” Kano gave what passed for a snort.
“You, a lightweight? Couldn’t tell. Naturally I just assumed you started on the bottle the instant you got out of work.”
Jordan gestured lazily to the duffel, and straightened himself in his chair. “I only drink when I’m in the company of people I trust absolutely. Because with a couple drinks in me, I’m pretty hopeless. Kind of like when you picked me up all those years ago. Do you remember how that happened?”
“It wasn’t truly me that found you. Everyone who shapes the forces of nature has a distinct feeling to their soul, and yours happened to be the loudest. The most in tune with yourself and your abilities. What I found was a shaper in need of an escape from his past and suffering from wounds emotional and physical.”
Kano often left the Academy grounds before a school year started, delivering invitations to students struggling with home life or outside areas where parcels could not be easily received. Many others did the same thing which made the process far easier.
As a Primal, the living embodiment of Water’s will, Kano was one of six others who felt the budding second soul in a normal human. After that it was a process of reaching out to others like himself to find these children and bring them in. Many such children were treated cruelly for having powers. “You had just been given leave from the military and were lost out in the world by yourself. Civilian life didn’t suit you so we offered you a place to call home.”
Kano stood up and walked over to the fumbled log, placing it in the fire without a care for the heat or his hands before returning to his seat heavily. Jordan’s comment about trust had struck him harder than expected. Despite his position of respect in the school it was all too clear that many were not trusting to the ‘monster of the Academy’. “I remember offering you a bed and a room, along with a position that made the best use of your physical prowess, but you chose to sleep in the shed.”
“You and I both know why I sleep in that shed. It’s not
just because I feel it’s where I belong. There are definite security reasons…” Jordan replied. He sipped at his wine and in contemplating the facts he had to be honest with himself. It probably wasn’t necessary for him to sleep there. Lord knew he had bolstered that building with more protective redundancy than he knew what to do with. In actual fact, it went back to what Jordan had said before about trying to feel human. He didn’t deserve a warm bed and soft blankets. Those things were for better people. They were for people who hadn’t done the things he’d done.
“I still don’t know how you trust me with children, knowing what I did in my past. I don’t think I ever even told you about this one time,” Jordan said faintly, remembering. “The job was a simple one. We were a six-man unit, sent to infiltrate an enemy compound, obtain critical intelligence, and exfiltrate without alerting anybody. This being a covert operation, we could not expect outside help and were armed to the teeth. We successfully breached the perimeter. We approached the building, a warehouse, that housed the intelligence. We prepared ourselves for anything, and then charged inside the building.
“We weren’t prepared for the kids. I don’t know how these sick fucks knew we were coming, or if it was just their way of safeguarding their intelligence, whatever the hell it was. These children, all gagged and tied up, rigged with explosives, the trip wires everywhere and, and, and it all happened too fast. We’d burst in, and they had trip wires everywhere. Everywhere Kano! I, I tried to use my powers, I tried to save everybody. But, but, the bombs-” Jordan’s cheeks were streaked with tears, and he felt his entire being shaking. His breathing was short, and he felt a terrible hole where his heart should be. “Strapped to their bodies…” Jordan set down the wine glass and put his head in his hands, his fingers dripping wet.
Kano, at a rare loss for words, idly lifted his cup of whiskey from the table and silently poured half of what remained in Jordan’s empty glass. He placed it at the edge of the table nearest to the shaken man. For Jordan to have lived through military hell and still tremble at the thought of such innocence lost was as clear a sign of his humanity as Kano could comprehend. For his own part there was no feeling at all. Hard decisions had paved the way to where they both sat now sharing a casual drink, on a quiet night.
The silence carried on as Kano idly swirled his drink, trying to decipher his own thoughts on the matter. Life and death had been a constant for him and near as he could tell, the status granted him as a Primal was something akin to eternal life. Thousands of names were etched in his heart as promising students that could one day have been called to don the mantle of a Primal, should the current ones fade by circumstances unforeseen or otherwise. A new generation would take their place in an unbroken cycle.
“You tried to save their lives. Tried. I am sorry for the burden on your heart, Jordan, truly it is a guilt you can not be easily freed from but this is the great cycle. Those with hostile ideals always use the lives of innocents as their coin to spend. It is your ideals that make them a weapon against you.” Kano gripped his leg with a free hand and brought the cup to his ‘lips’, tossing the drink back in one gulp and slamming the cup down to shatter in a wave of rime-coated shards.
“Every life you saved in your military days serves as a reminder of your soul. But what of here on the grounds, Jordan?” Kano rose to his full height, coming around the table to stand tall in front of Jordan. The glass shards in his hand fell from his grip with soft splashes of dripping water and a tinkling of glass on the hard wooden floor. The Headmaster paid them no mind as he stared unceasingly at his companion.
“Every child that comes here is not the happy child of a loving family. They are hated, discriminated against, and beaten for the very power you and I wield. What of their lives then? We teach them to use their gifts and how to fight for the very reason you sit here crying into the wind. To avoid the atrocities of monsters disguised in human forms, to save them when we cannot come to their aid.”
The memories of his own war were bubbling to the surface at the sight of Manilow’s distress. Countless years ago the elements had waged war on humanity and would have won without great loss, if not for the pact. Devout worshippers of the natural order had reached out to the Spirit of Nature, a vast and incomprehensible being that was the embodiment of all elements. These representatives for humanity vowed to bring peace and prosperity to the land, to spread the wisdom of the elements and to not go astray as those before them had. This gambit paid off, and six exceptional humans were chosen to serve as liaisons between the elemental and the humans.
“Do you know this mountain’s history, Jordan?” The war had been a brief one. Led by the Primal of Darkness, other like-minded individuals had banded together and struck out against the non-gifted with hatred in their hearts believing they did not deserve to inhabit the world. Kano and the other Primals had struck an alliance and fought back to save the ungrateful humans that still shunned them, and fought the overwhelming strength of a unified force with their own smaller armies. In the end it had been five unified Primals working in unison, backed by hundreds of followers, that had banished the corrupted ideals of the last Primal.
To avoid another being chosen to wield that being’s power, and inherit their will, Kano had taken in the second soul of the Darkness’ Primal and became a living prison. It had been a desperate last-minute plan. “One day, that history of violence and prejudice will return. It will divide us further than ever from each other and repeat the mistakes of the past, pushing our young to side with a hostile ideal that sees them as fodder. Every student you teach is another that will not be caught up in the inevitable unprepared and afraid, crying into the burning winds of our home while the monsters of our past tear it down around them.”
Jordan took a deep breath, and sat back up. He grabbed the whiskey and drained the glass, and then he frowned. The stuff tasted awfully watered down, but he hadn’t put any ice in their glasses. The gym teacher shook his head, set the glass back on the table, and regarded Kano. A man whose entire body was cast in a shell of living water. A man who held all of the darkness in the world, and who could have seen just as many terrible things as Jordan, if not more. And why had Jordan come to him tonight? Because the Headmaster had constructed a titanic rose of ice in the night sky, before shattering it into a thousand thousand flakes of snow.
Kano was flush with power, and he practically thrummed with it as he moved about the room, standing over Jordan. Even now Jordan had to curb his instinctive reflex to treat this being as the most dangerous threat he had ever encountered. Through his muddied and alcohol-addled mind, Jordan could still feel a shiver trail down his spine at the thought of the potential Kano possessed. The power itself was not what frightened Jordan specifically, though it was certainly something to treat with extreme caution. However, power with no conduit was inert, harmless, and nothing to fear when carefully handled.
The conduit, Kano, did not seem human. That was what scared Jordan. He’d seen all kinds of men wield power in equal measure. There were many ways a person could react to such a burden. Jordan had seen men become tyrants, heroes, wretches, and cowards when they wielded power. Jordan himself had always been very tight-fisted with the stuff, clenching his responsibilities so tightly to himself that he ceased to feel his hands. It was part of why he felt his losses so absolutely, and also why he was loathe to allow others to put their lives in his hands.
“Kano, are you human?” Jordan asked, rocking up onto his feet and staggering over to the dying fire. It guttered and spat flames, the embers glowing angrily. Jordan leaned on the mantelpiece and felt the warmth wash over him. “I’m an asshole. I crack jokes constantly, and give the kids a hard time, and am ruthless with them when we train. I’m serious and joking by turns with Catherine, with my job, and with myself. I just can’t figure out if I can handle being relied upon. Depended upon. So I make an ass of myself. To deaden the memories of my failures, and to make certain that nobody ever looks to me first when a problem arises. It’s…” Jordan grit his teeth, and hung closer to the flames, letting the mantel take most of his weight.
“It’s cowardly. But I suppose, in the end, it’s confusing and frustrating and hard to understand, and it’s human. I’m a soldier, a teacher, a joker, a man, and an eleme-” Jordan’s hands slipped and he fell face-first into the hearth, into the hissing flames and ashen embers.
The response was immediate. A flick of the Headmaster’s hand sent a thick bubble of water into the hearth moments before Jordan hit the flames, Kano’s concern for the wellbeing of others being ever-present. Previously burning logs hissed and smoked as the waters doused the warmth left in them without fail, while Manilow was pulled out by his legs to lay in the newly formed puddle upon the floor.
“I think you know the answer to your question already,” Kano said. “But what bothers me most is your unwillingness to admit who you really are despite showing every opportunity. You say that when others are faced with problems you do not wish to be seen as dependable, then why reinforce that shed? Why be so rigorous in your training exercises on and off the field? Why would I ask you, not another primal whom shares the wordless bond of Nature itself, to cleave the blight from my slowly corroding impure form?” The answer was so simple it almost pained Kano to have to explain it. Even a drunk so deep in the bottle they saw black would know the answer clear as the sun on a clear summer day. “I trust you to always do what is right. For everyone. Not what is best for you.”
Self sacrifice, a willingness to put yourself in any harm’s way for the sake of the defenseless no matter the risk. Courage to work harder than any but act like he had not a care in the world. Jordan’s act was a sham and a bad one at that from where Kano was standing. He grabbed Manilow’s shoulder and heaved the gym teacher onto his back, offering his free hand down. “Do you trust that I want what’s right? That I want what is best?”
“I’d put my trust in that against my life, Kano.” Jordan spluttered. “The real problem is that I’m worried that in the process of trying to do what is right and what is best, you’ll lose sight of the very thing. Especially considering your…” Jordan didn’t finish the sentence, instead deciding to grab Kano’s hand and pull himself to his feet. When he did so however, he did not let go, rather Jordan twisted Kano’s hand up out of the Headmaster’s sleeve and drew back the fabric. He bowed his head low and inspected the corruption therein.
Jordan’s glare shot up to blaze in Kano’s face, and he jabbed his finger at the Headmaster’s hand. “This, is all that self-sacrifice has given you. This is all that saddling the burdens of the world on your own shoulders has gotten you. I think you refuse to tell the other Primals of your monthly amputations because you’re ashamed of it, or otherwise affected by it. The most human parts of you that remain Kano, are your fear, your doubt, and your sadness. I see it in you every day.” Jordan pulled himself up close to the Headmaster, so that their faces were mere inches apart, and he could see the truly strange and unnerving face that lay beneath that hood. Jordan smiled fiercely in an expression of defiance.
“I think you need to stop letting the darkness inside you rule your life, and instead recognize it for what it is; it’s a part of you that you can’t escape, and need to face. I don’t know why the previous Primal did the things that they did, I wasn’t around back then, but
every time I hack your arm off at the shoulder, Kano, I see the effects that you are having on your own power. I don’t see a man struggling with his burdens, I see a man drowning in his own darkness.” Jordan said, biting off the last part particularly intensely. Some part of everything he’d just said had been brewing inside him, waiting to be said, ever since the first moment he’d met Kano.
Snapping his hand away with a grimace hidden under his hood, the robes fell over blackened icy fingertips to conceal Kano’s shame once more. As always the conversation ended up here. “Why shouldn’t I fear?” Kano all but screamed the words, recoiling the appendage behind his back. “You know what I did, what I took in, what I harbor as a living prison cell for an influence hell-bent on oblivion and its own glory. You know what will happen when my long life finally succumbs to the menace festering inside me.”
It was the reason Kano chose the strong and courageous over the studious and timid. They lacked the spine to make a hard decision and finish what needed to be done. For the Headmaster, doing what needed to be done meant the end for himself. In his body was a collective will strong enough to flood and freeze everything he saw fit, to command oceans to rise. If the corruption won it would shift the fight in favor of the enemy in a truly disastrous way.
Dusting off the front of his robe and taking a more orderly stance, Kano kept a measure of calm and tried to look as much like the unshakable avatar of the school as he had always portrayed himself to be. A thin coating of frost stretching from his feet showed his true colors.
“I rule me, and my decisions, Jordan. There will come a time when you know the amputation will not be enough, and the safety of every human life will be in jeopardy. There are no oceans here, no lakes, no bodies of water large enough for me to cause irreparable damage.” His voice trembled for a moment as his fists clenched at either side. “The Primals chose to steal the essence of another and imprison it in one we trusted. I cannot pretend that won’t be the solution again. Not with two spirits on the line.”
While Kano had integrated with his people and fostered the Academy, the others hid themselves away. They were content to try and pull strings in the background, manipulate events and observe the outcomes. The others were old, jaded, and stubborn. While there was a tremendous respect between them all... It was not trust. Power in itself was a corruption and they had witnessed Kano’s rise in strength. What if they coveted strength over their oaths?
Kano’s shoulders slumped visibly, remembering the feeling of exhaustion through memory more than anything. If there was ever a better opportunity to explain why he had gone through the pain of it all it was now. “When the corruption overwhelms me, you must kill the host. Are you prepared to take one more life for what is right?”
Jordan’s ears were ringing, the words he was hearing the Headmaster speak echoed hollowly. His breathing came fast and short, and a wave of nausea threw him further off-balance. He shoved past Kano and threw open a window, the contents of his stomach emptying painfully and messily. Clinging to the sill, Jordan shook and breathed out slowly. His limbs felt weak. His entire body and soul didn’t feel strong enough to deal with this problem. Even in that ill-fated military operation, sheer raw instinct had propelled his body, had kept the shame of total paralysis from overtaking him. Jordan spat out of the window, the sour taste making him grimace. “That’s what I get for drinking too much I suppose.” He said softly, wanting to think about anything other than what he knew he needed to confront. Hadn’t he grown as a man? It had been years since that terrible day, and all the other days that came before and after, and he had to move forward. He wasn’t going to roll over and cower in the dirt.
“Listen to me Kano. If you’re asking me to kill you, you’ve got another thing coming. There is no way I’m letting you bravely sacrifice yourself just to make me look bad! I’m going to find a way to fix this, even if it means beating the shadows out of you and taking them on myself!” Jordan said, his voice steely. He drew in a deep breath and felt himself straighten up. He stood tall, still heads shorter than Kano, but toweringly high in feeling. “I’ve known you longer than anybody else in my entire life! Friends, comrades, family… I’ve left them all behind for your sake, for the sake of this Academy! So if you’re going to tell me, you stubborn, idiotic, fucking water-man, that I can’t save you and everybody else, you’ve got another coming!” Jordan finished in a scream, his finger pointed at Kano, shaking violently. This time however, it wasn’t due to nausea. It was pure determination.
Jordan lowered his hand slowly, and closed the distance between the two, a smile slowly spreading across his face. He leaned on the high backing of his chair and looked sidelong at Kano. The darkness in the room was broken up by scattered moonbeams and starlight. “Kano, of course I’m prepared to take one more life. I’ve been prepared to take countless lives for other people’s ideals ever since I completed basic training what feels like a lifetime ago. The thing that’s been eating me up inside, that I’m finally finding myself able to say aloud, is that I should’ve considered whether doing what was right necessitated the death of anybody in the first place. Don’t think I’m naive, as that is the last thing I could ever be, given my history. People die. But to kill, Kano, to purge and to sweep away, and to rip and to tear and to damn another person. Ending hundreds, if not thousands of other people. It deadens you, wilts the place inside of you that lets you see the good in others.
“I’m no pacifist, but I swear to you Kano, on the blood of those children, and all the other souls whose deaths are stained on my hands, I swear that as long as I can see the man inside you, that soft blend of true light, and true dark, I will protect you. I won’t kill somebody who can still be saved.” Jordan felt fresh tears on his cheeks, and didn’t brush them away. “I can’t kill somebody I know possesses a noble heart, no matter how convinced they are of their own wretchedness.”
Kano’s first reaction was the smile beneath his face-obscuring hood. The darkness was just as much a part of him now as the water flowing across the mountainside was. Over his uncounted years of service to the school and its subsequent generations of blossoming ideas and deeds, Kano had learned much about willpower. The will of anything could crumble or falter without a foundation to stand on. Kano’s will was buttressed by the foundation that was protecting the future, at any cost.
“I’ve buried more friends than you will ever meet even if life sees fit to grant you another 70 years. My end is not an outcome wished for in these quiet moments before you wandered up here, it is the last resort to preserve all life. Yourself included. In spirit,” Kano’s finger touched the center of his chest, ripples flowing across his robes like a breeze on a still pond. “I am human. In body, there is no difference between myself and the beings we give form to every day.” Finding the words had always been difficult when times got serious for the wizened leader of the Academy despite a dozen lifetimes spent building up his own skills as a teacher. So in the moment when all he had to do was explain the why, words seemed so foreign.
“I’m no more willing to die than anybody else. It is selfish of me, it’s true, but those are simply the facts. Save me if you must but there might not be time enough before fate forces us to make a decision again that will impact every living thing. Another will take my place as the Speaker of Water, another will take the place for the Dark, and you will be there to guide them away from every mistake made in the past.” Pieces of his “skin” peeled back and sloshed off his exposed arm while Kano spoke, the shell of a human body crumbling as it took a far simpler form. Molding shapes from the flowing waters was the core of his lesson plan on all new students aspiring to learn control. In time they could become complex, animated, capable of imitating real life like a mirror. A reflection on the surface of a lake brought to life. His mastery of the basics coupled with the experience of his long life had created a body so painstakingly similar to that of a normal human it even imitated bones and muscle, even the real feeling of flesh. Kano let it all slide away until all that was left of his hand was a slender tube of pristine flowing water that reflected the low light of the moon.
“I’ve left my mark on this world, molded minds to tolerance where once there was hate, and gave people like you a home. A purpose. Even if you do not feel safe when your head hits a pillow at night, you know there will always be reason for the morning sun to stir you from slumber. Every man, woman, child, even the animals of our forests, wake to the sensation of peace in the trust of our home. So when I ask you to make the choice when the worst happens and the blight finally overtakes my body, for my own sense of peace, I need to know.” Every word he spoke grew louder as Kano advanced, body swelling till it consumed everything and all Jordan could see was the eerie sight of the Headmaster’s eyes mere inches from his own.
“Will you jeopardize the safety of even more people to let the monster I will become run free, or will you take one more life to ensure the future has hope?” Kano shouted, steam billowing from the sleeves of his robes. Kano’s featureless body bubbled violently, unable to control the roiling emotions forced up from the pit of his soul where nothing but fear reigned. A thick snake-like appendage tipped with black ice flicked out to point at the dormitories a short distance away. “Promise me, damn you. Promise that my trust in you was not founded on sand to be swept out from under the feet of their futures.” Kano did not speak his last thought aloud, afraid to let the despair in his soul taint his voice further than it already had.
Promise I can rest without worry. Jordan looked back into those eyes, and he felt himself dwarfed by the magnitude of being that was Kano. He could see the tell-tale indications of a much vaster and much less human comprehension than he could ever hope to grasp. He swallowed nervously, and then manned himself. Kano had finally given him the reassurance he had been searching for, but it had come with a heavy blow. Had there ever been anything like a relationship on equal terms for the two of them? How could Jordan ever have hoped to truly reach a common understanding with a being who was concerned with safeguarding existence itself? A being who had known so many souls, that they might all very well be interchangeable in his mind, tools needed to continually maintain the function and well-being of the world?
In the back of his mind, a small voice whispered,
He chose you. Put his trust in you. He’s asking you to look after things when he’s gone. Jordan was still beset with doubt, and his mind was tired, emotionally wrung out. He felt as though he had been running, and running, and was only now collapsing from exhaustion. “I-, I promise, Kano. I…” Jordan couldn’t make himself say it. It made him sick to even think about it. Finally, he managed to force it out. “I’ll do what needs to be done, no matter what...” His head was spinning. Everything about this felt wrong. The world seemed destined, to make a killer out of him. Jordan felt faint. Jordan was falling-
Tendrils of crystal blue water shot out from every available space in his flowing robes to wrap tightly about the falling man’s body, easily arresting his descent. Odds were with how Jordan’s luck had gone after all these years that Kano naturally assumed the drunken man would have cracked his skull open at the edge of the table they had just been sharing a drink at. With the same gentle touch of a parent, Kano slid his friend’s sleeping form down to the floor with as much caution as possible before releasing the grasp of his many newly-sprouted limbs, each flowing back under his robes.
“If only things could be different. To have you as a Speaker, instead of that old fool Sei. Things might have turned out far better.” Kano’s form shrank minutely as a trickle of water washed across the floor to pool under the unconscious gym teacher, contentedly snoring away without a care. Greater amounts continued to swell under Jordan until it had formed a mattress of water similar in consistency to gel padding but still warm to the touch. “Can’t have you catching a cold up here, Manilow.”
The reconstruction of his more detailed form was not bothersome, merely tedious. By the time the morning sun rose to greet the grounds Kano would look like he had in true life again, rather than the miserable mass of bound water he truly was. Their argument and the consequences of the ultimate choice would need to be resolved. Repeated over and over until it was time to decide what fated path awaited the future. Flowing back to his seat, despite having no form, he sat down in quiet contemplation. Enjoying the sound of the wind and imagining the smell of roses.
The End?
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Noctis