Redemptor Secret Origin

Chapter 16 - Bonus Round (or Death)

Wham. Rene knocked the top of his leaned-back head into something very hard. He turned his neck and saw an enormous stone pillar, floating there like a log, bobbing in the black sand.

"By the sylvas," Rene whispered.

"What is that?" Nariah called over.

"An obelisk." Not Rene, not anyone in Tetrapolis had seen an obelisk for many, many orbits—not since the Conquering Winds when Gorchen took over Treinte and enslaved all its peaceful people to build foul Tetrapolis in its place. Rene thought all the obelisks had been destroyed, blown away. But here one was.

"Dad-dy, don't just look at it, can you grab on?"

Rene climbed onto the obelisk with his upper body. As he lay onto it, though, it spun beneath him, and he slipped off and back into the black sand.

"Dad-dy, you've almost won. Just grab on," Nariah called.

"Sorry! I will!" Rene called back. This was tough, actually.

An obelisk, you see, is a very large, very thick column of stone. In the particular case of Treinte, thirteen obelisks had stood lining the eastern beach. First World's shinseon of Treinte had chiseled, by hand, sylva stories, told in series of square pictures, and the story-bands, like ribbons, wrapped all the way around each obelisk, from bottom to top.

Happy tears kissed the edges of Rene's tired eyes as Rene remembered being a very little boy and holding his mother's hand and gazing at the lowest bands of stories, and leading her around the obelisk as he looked at the pictures, square by square. Her hand felt so good: strong, and safe. The older a Treinte child grew, and therefore the taller, the higher up the obelisk he or she could read, and when he or she was a grownup, the last rite of childhood and into adulthood was to climb one's way up each of the thirteen obelisks—not falling off—and finish reading all the stories, and then he or she would know the entire Treinte culture and ancestral history, all the sylva stories.

Heaving for breath, Rene lay with his stomach over the obelisk, his legs getting a break from kicking. The obelisk drifted slowly along in the black sand.

Rene turned his head and could see the squares. The ancient art was very, very faded now, from all these orbits having been fallen and abandoned in the sun and sand of the Western Wilds, but he could still make it out. "Ah, big old Somnos," he smiled to himself. He was able to steer the floating obelisk back to Nariah where she perched, patiently waiting on the cactus branch. She was applauding her little hands, smiling so big, cheering. "Victory! Good job, Daddy! You beat the bonus round and won Quick-Kick-Keep-Up, too!"

"I sure did," he swallowed hard, trying to absorb the shock of what happened and reassure Nariah at the same time. "Thank you for all your help and encouragement. Now, go ahead and jump on, too." Nariah hopped off the branch and onto the obelisk, and sat right by where her father was holding onto it. She leaned over and gave him a big kiss on his forehead and hugged him around his neck. Rene smiled, so thankful.

Yes, they had won, they had made it. Together they could do anything. That was what he needed her to feel, to know, especially now that they were out of Tetrapolis, out here in the Wilds. That was what he, too, needed to believe, even when his whole body was aching.