In Abscondito: I

*Ship in a Bottle*

They had reached a hut, built of limestone with a thatch roof. Despite it's size, upon entry it looked as if it had been home to a number of people. The walls were covered with artifacts and worn images, the wooden floors creaked with the draft from the open door behind them. 

"Ziya, close the door," said Amrin, to wich Aziya obeyed. 

"Now we wait," Amrin whispered that more to herself than anybody else. 

Wait for what? Aziya wanted to ask but refrained.

Instead, she chose to get comfortable. She sat in a corner, with crisscrossed legs and the book given to her by the headmaster sat on her lap. 

"What's that?" asked Amrin, dusting off her pants.

Aziya didn't answer, she just held up the book. "In Abscondito...Within the unseen," said Amrin, "Where did you get that?" she asked. 

"Hargreaves." Aziya said, trying to find the page where she had left off. 

The five  ranks, Rank Terra....Rank Ueloris and....

Rank Animo; Mind manipulation, these beings had the ability to enter a subjects mind, see their memories, in rare cases their future. They can also read minds and manipulation the vision of people, they could make you see what they wanted you to see, driving their subjects to insanity.

This must be what Hargreaves is, he doesn't seem that powerful, his gives off a more gentle aura.

There was also Rank Orbis; These beings manipulate matter, they have the ability to not only see things down to the very atom but to change it, they could time travel, manipulate occurrences, change fate. Their limitations however, they can never be sure of the outcome, so doing this on a wider scale could bring about mass destruction, hence certain laws have been passed to prohibit them from exercising their ability. 

Aziya got curious as to what rank she belonged to, but she didn't belong to any of these. There was one final one, she turned the page to find it blank, instead it went on to speak of the different training for each rank. 

Aren't there five?

Aziya shut the book and turned to her mother, who was sleeping comfortably in the opposite corner of the room.

Her curiosity and her inability to understand why the book hadn't mentioned the fifth rank, started to weigh in on her. She felt stuck, soon the walls of this once seemingly large space became a lot smaller.

Her efforts to calm herself only resulted in her panicking more, she tuck her head between her knees and dug her nails into the flesh of her calves. 

"One....two....three," she gasps, "one...two...three...fo-" She tried desperately to calm herself, using the methods taught to her by  her mother.

Not long after tears began to run down her cheeks, for reasons she didn't understand. Aziya rarely expressed the conventional human emotions, hence she is ignorant to the 'why' behind it.  

She sat in the corner, eyes blurred with streams of perplexing sadness and burdening confusion.

She then decided to curl up in a fetal position, laying her head on the cold wooden floors.

Drifting into a deep sleep while her tear stained cheeks became dryer. 

- Amrin's POV- 

Jolting up out of her sleep, she rubbed her eyes, still disoriented about her surroundings, her eyes landed on her daughter's sleeping figure and suddenly everything came back. Her eyes rested on the only window inside the hut, It was night. 

 With the growing silence of the night, that unsettling feeling made its way into the pit of her stomach, her eyes fell to the scratches that littered her body then back to her daughter. Playing with the tattered hem of her shirt as tears threaten to fall from her eyes. 

"I'll protect you, even if I die doing so,"  she whispered. 

She knew Aziya had questions, and she owed her an explanation for all this but she didn't know where to even begin. 

She sighs, rubbing her hands over face. 

"Hargreaves, where the hell are you?" she let out, her voice laced with impatience.