The Scholar's Tale (Original Fantasy)

Book IV, Epilogue

Ryzhan

I was not made for this.

All of Ib's preparations aside - and any grudge against the giant seemed so petty, now -, I had not been truly prepared to attempt so much as saying hello on the scale of all existence, much less preventing its collapse.

This was the sort of disaster than, in adventure novels, would be averted by some rediscovered scion of an astoundingly powerful bloodline, who had been reared by mentors as skillful as they were mighty.

I was barely starting to get there as far as power went, thanks to Aina's shaping of my body, but I wasn't the right man for this, damn it all.

We have all seen children trying to put wooden cubes through round holes while playing, then crying in frustration or dismay after breaking the edges or the toy.

I could not help but think I was going to make Ib cry, out of disappointment, because I did not feel like I was the right shape for this.

At some point, with eyes that were flesh once more, I blinked, or began to.

I felt like I was trying to force mountain ranges off my eyelids, and my world was nothing but a field of greyness dotted with shapeless things, as I supposed the nearly blind might have seen.

'...hear me, Ryzhan? Can you hear me?' Aina's voice could've come from anywhere: that is, I could barely tell where my own body was, much less who or what was around me, and where.

I sighed, throat feeling as dry as if I'd sustained myself on naught but dust and sunlight for days, like those sages who wasted away trying to look enlightened rather than suicidal. 'And I am glad to,' I said. 'I'd say I'm at Vhaarn's side, if it didn't feel like Fhaalqi was smearing my insides across the Pit, with them still inside me.'

The snap of Aina's fingers next to my ears was like a thunderclap. I didn't jump out of my skin, but then, it had always been clingy.

'Ach!' I turned a bleary glare on her (I thought). 'I'm not hallucinating, woman. What was that for?'

Appendages grabbed my shoulders and turned me around, thoroughly dashing my hopes of being able to spot people without sight. While the motion lasted, I felt like I was being manhandled by something far taller and broader than me (or Ib's usual form, or even the steamer as it usually appeared), which was moving me with only the tips of its feelers, like some island-spanning thinking plants might touch dust motes.

But Aina was back in her normal shape by the time my sight returned, though I managed to catch, on the edge of my vision, her shadow thinning and contracting. That must've been how those monsters people only wished were imaginary hid under children's beds. I'd tried to hunt some once or twice, but most of their ilk couldn't be targeted if you were focusing your full senses on them; you, essentially, had to be thinking about something else while flailing about and hope you'd hit them. Unless you were dealing with one of those impervious to power bereft of intent, but those were usually much more of a handful than the skulkers, being built to slaughter rather than frighten.

'Focus, Ryzhan,' she replied. Her eyes were sunken in a pale face that seemed to be melting like wax, and I raised a hand as her brow began to deform and shiver, blackness deeper than any darkness showing in the gaps between the flesh. When her eyes disappeared under the warped skin, she reached behind her and pulled up a hood that had not been there, the shadows hiding almost everything above her nose.

Almost.

The writhing blackness stood out in the mundane gloom like ink on snow, and Aina absently held a hand to her forehead as if to wipe away sweat. I heard her claws snap into being as she gathered herself.