Page 49 of Light Locked #1
Path of a Poet
R YSON FELT ALIVE for the first time in years.
He stood in still torn versions of his clothes, but his body embraced new vitality as he positioned himself against a nearby oak.
The light of the afternoon floated through the trees that shuddered in a passing breeze.
The forest was otherwise silent. Prince had kept him asleep for several days, stabilizing him before waking him up to the news that Clea had continued the journey to Loda with his weapon in tow.
He felt everything with heightened sensitivity, some figment of his previous power returned.
It hit him how much he’d missed his sense of smell, the clarity of his eyesight, the acuteness of his thinking.
Everything in the world had sharper edges, and he could trace it all expertly with his senses.
He was truly awake again, or closer to it at least.
Prince continued persistently behind him. “It’s a curious thing, the connection both of you formed. The sheer recklessness of it all reminds me of young love.”
“According to you, I tried to kill her,” Ryson whispered firmly before he looked over his shoulder.
He waited now at a crossroads. One direction would take him to Loda, the other would take him back to Virday.
He’d stopped walking at this impasse, unable to push himself in one direction or the other.
Prince seemed content to sit and watch him think .
Prince’s mask tilted innocently, his shadowy hands crossed over one knee. “You shouldn’t focus so much on who tried to kill whom. And if anything, you proposed delaying death. Don’t be so dramatic, Ryson. Venennization isn’t death.”
“It’s eternal craving and torment,” Ryson replied coolly, brows raised as he challenged Prince to argue with him.
“Well, yes, but not death,” Prince reasoned somewhat sheepishly.
“I don’t like that I offered her that life.
” Ryson looked back toward Loda. It had taken five days to restore him, but he knew he could still catch up with Clea.
In his current state, he’d be able to track her seamlessly.
It alarmed him how much he wanted to. “I don’t know why but I have the vaguest sense that something has been set in motion. It’s almost as if—”
“As if what?” Prince chided back, calling Ryson’s attention back to him again. “The fact that you proposed the life of a Venennin just means you saw potential in her. You loved few things, but cultivating the potential in others was one of them.”
“That’s what worries me,” Ryson replied. “Potential for what? Energy is given momentum by belief. I thought her raw belief in light was simply the product of her ignorance, but even Meridian could not have obliterated a room full of Venennin at that age.”
“Veilin draw their power not from ignorance, but innocence. Meridian lost her innocence at the end, becoming more cynical and withdrawn as is the inner death of a Veilin.” Prince set one ankle upon his knee as he wagged his foot up and down.
“Clea holds fast to her innocence. She does not approach the world with sharp judgments, but mystery, thus there is always hope. Though, maybe it was not just innocence that fueled Clea’s power.
Strong positive feelings amplify ansra just as strong negative ones amplify cien. ”
Ryson stared at Prince critically, facing him to prepare for some version of an argument.
As if sensing this, Prince added, “You cursed your heart. With your power diminished, your heart has been freed. I just want you to be happy.”
“Didn’t you try to kill me multiple times?” Ryson replied.
“I think you found it endearing. Who else would try?” Prince’s mask tilted up to the clear sky.
There wasn’t a cloud to be spotted, and he seemed to admire it.
“Seeing you get so lost in your humanity has compelled me to think about life as a human.” He paused.
“They always search for love. I believe it to be the beating heart of ansra. It’s truly transformative. ”
Ryson raised an eyebrow, leaning back against the tree somewhat impatiently. “You’re the only one I know who can kill a hundred men and preach to me about the importance of love.”
“I can’t deny that, like you, I am two persons, one good and evil, constantly in battle. Quite often evil, but I do like to be good on beautiful days like today,” Prince replied. “You haven’t realized, have you? You’ve changed.” Prince waved him off with a polite tilt of his wrist.
“What are you suggesting?” Ryson asked .
“She has borrowed from your strength and made it her own. You have borrowed from her spirit and made it your own. You give her tools to fight, and she gives you the will to.”
Ryson mulled over the proposition for a moment, trying to understand what other motives Prince might have.
“I need to defeat Alina. I helped create her.”
There was a long pause.
“And you think your and Alina’s death erase your legacy?” Prince eased toward his next thought somewhat suspiciously. “I am the first general.”
“I awoke with her at the front of my mind, Prince. I can’t explain it,” Ryson shot back flatly.
“And you hardly thought of me?” There was no hiding Prince’s dismay, and Ryson hadn’t expected the question. He didn’t know how to articulate why Prince hadn’t seemed like a threat.
“Admittedly, I thought you might have died,” Ryson confessed as he scratched the back of his head, seeing no way around the truth. He didn't want to admit it, but he'd barely remembered Prince.
“Me? Dead?” Price sounded aghast and fascinated all at once.
“You’ve always had a bit of a fragile disposition.”
“I was the first general. Alina was second.” Prince promptly reminded him again.
“Yes, I know.” Ryson replied, keeping his eyes focused ahead for a moment before sneaking a glance back at Prince. He half expected there to be more of an expression beyond the blank mask.
“Alina is weaker,” Ryson said, “with her real body hidden out in the Wraithlands, there was still a chance I could kill her in her current form.”
There was another long pause. Prince didn’t move.
“My body is sealed somewhere too by...Veilin,” Prince reminded Ryson emptily. “I call to it with my soul every morning. I can sense it responding, but it never comes. It's locked somewhere. Do you not remember? Maybe in the Wraithlands…with Alina’s body.”
Of course it was.
“Yes, but unlike Alina, you’re,” Ryson gestured to Prince, “You’re.
..thriving. I couldn’t possibly think of fighting you in the state I’m in now.
Alina has no control over her impulses, constantly having to feed off of other people.
She’s a monster with no...taste,” Ryson paused, and then in the ensuing silence added, “unlike you.”
There was another long pause. They continued to stare at each other, until at last Prince spoke up in an uplifted tone.
“I will defeat Alina in your stead! There are none who can escape the dead,” Prince chanted in triumph.
“You know the path that you must take, for there is nothing here at stake.” He finished a second line, and soon he adapted a tune to his words.
“Pursue love with valor, even though at the thought you cower.”
Ryson exhaled .
Prince only continued happily as he raised his voice.
“My fearless leader whose path is cleft won’t admit he’s scared to death.
Because uncertainty leaves him shaken, in fact, he’d rather be mistaken than be lost in hesitation.
Yet what he hates most is that he’s been predicted, by a young Veilin he once thought was wicked, and now he quakes in fear, because what all seek is near, and though duty calls him to his past, he knows that his life won’t longer last.”
“Real poets would laugh at you,” Ryson said, looking over his shoulder. But his comment only seemed to spur Prince on.
Prince stood, gesturing to the sky with his hands. “And he curses words that ring so true, because his illusions they’ll subdue, and they’ll show him that he has a chance, to join a rather enchanting dance, and then death, death, romance, and death!”
“I think you lost focus there at the end,” Ryson muttered.
“I will finish your journey for you. Don’t return to Virday.” Prince bowed theatrically.
“No,” Ryson said with a sternness that made the word seem like a command. “Stay out of this.” The familiarity that struck him when he issued the order made him cringe.
“What is it they say about old habits and dying hard?” Prince poked. “Dying habits are hardly dead if they’re old and full of death?”
“Your fixation with death completely butchered the saying,” Ryson shot back, coiling his arms tighter against his chest. The bandages shifted loose, his clothes patched together and damaged from the events in the castle.
“I think I made it better.”
Ryson would have to be the one to go to Virday.
His journey with Clea was over.
Against his better judgment, that didn’t stop him from imagining tracking her down. Just for a moment, he imagined finding her.
It was a mistake to even picture it.
There wasn’t a scenario in which the forest wouldn’t make a beast of him, because now he’d awakened the same hunger in her that he sought to satisfy in himself. He’d witnessed it.
Part of him tried to imagine her running in horror, commanding that he stay away.
Those scenarios had once been realistic deterrents, but now sensations that had once seemed too outlandish to imagine, were spurred on by the reality of the castle.
Despite herself, she had not left him behind or denied him.
He never would have imagined that she would yield to him with such relish.
The sensations of it all were gravely worsened by the days he’d had to repeat the memories over and over in his mind, testing if they were actually real.
Images came unbidden into his mind, vivid pictures of him taking her mouth in his, of wrapping himself in the warmth of her body.