I Am Seer - Book 3

Chapter 9: The Eighth

**Fair warning: this chapter is not great in my expert opinion, so keep that in mind ;)

Struggling to catch my breath at first, I tried my best to get used to the sensation of moving without my feet touching solid ground while also keeping up a front of confidence for my companions. In the back of my mind, I wondered how long it would take the Wind to get us to the Eighth, but other thoughts soon overwhelmed me.

"Kotaro is behind you." My brain repeated the words as if nothing else mattered, and half of me desperately longed to go back and explain everything. Perhaps, he could offer a solution or do something to shift our future from its damning trajectory. The swarm of thoughts only built up my resolution more, though.

There hadn't been anything necessarily wrong with the way I had relied on him to help me figure everything out so far. The problem would arise if I had little or no strength of my own. I needed to know how to stand on my own two feet, and despite how difficult this was for both of us, I couldn't see any other way of garnering that strength than being separated from him.

Fast as we seemed to be going at first, time passed slower than I would have liked. Bohai's face was gray and tight, and I could feel him staring tensely at him. I couldn't bear to look at him. As bad as I was at hiding my emotions, he would immediately know that I had no idea what was going to happen to us, and he was worried enough about what lay ahead that I couldn't allow him to know the utterly unstructured nature of our path.

The tension mounted palpably in the air around me until my hurricane of thoughts threatened to draw me into the mouth of insanity. Before I leapt off the edge, however, a low rumbling noise like a bout of thunder interrupted me. Frowning, I shifted me gaze away from the ground toward the direction of the noise. Martimus was slumped slightly, his chin touching his chest, and his eyes closed. He was asleep.

Somehow, looking at his peacefully resting figure, a sense of peace touched my heart. Without words, Martimus was communicating that he trusted me no matter what happened, and if he felt that way, then maybe this was the right choice. Maybe I wasn't such a fool after all.

A hint of clarity dawned on the horizon of my insanity. Once we reached the Eighth, I would be one step closer to becoming the person I needed to be, and that thought alone gave me the courage I needed to see Bohai's fearful doubts through to the end. I had to do this. Raising my head, I watched as we passed the heights of Krimoa as if they had not cowed great warriors and kings in the past. A sense of courage tingled in my veins, preparing me to see this thing all the way to whatever end awaited me.

Slow as time moved at first, once I allowed myself to share Martimus' sense of peace, I was able to get through the next few hours with less torment than I'd expected. Watching the rocks and trees zoom pass beneath me and the clouds float in their endless sea above helped the time pass, and before I knew it, our pace slowed a little. Ahead of us, there was a ledge sticking out of a sheer rockface which stretched up beyond the clouds, and confusion ricocheted through me as the Wind set us down.

"This is your first visit, Little Seer." The Wind tickled my ear. "It is only courtesy that you enter through the front door."

"Is that demon trying to tell you that this is the Eighth?" Bohai's voice was thick with disbelief and suspicion.

In truth, I could see nothing more than a scraggly, rocky surface which bore no marked difference to the rest of the mountainside behind us. The foreboding cliff face in front of us gave no sign that it was anything more than met the eye. I was no expert when it came to rock climbing, but scaling the imperious rocks looked utterly impossible to me.

Martimus sniffed behind me, obviously still trying to collect himself after such a lengthy nap, but he wasn't the one I was worried about. Bohai's skepticism was clear as he turned away from the cliff to look at me. I had no answer for all the questions brewing within him, so I turned half away.