Tristan's Tale Pt. 03

The close placement of the mens and womens dorms suggested a very interesting future to say the least. "Is everything gender segregated?" I asked.

He scoffed. "Of course not. Quite the opposite, really, but you are kept very busy for the first few days, and consequently away from women, just to let you adjust before letting you loose. Jet will tell you all about it," he said, then paused, reconsidering. "Actually, I have no idea what he'll tell you. I have a hard time picturing him explain the sexual component of the Art."

I laughed, not able to imagine that either - the man had seemed so proper, and serious. "Well, if he doesn't tell me, I'll have to ask him."

"Hah! Let me know how that goes," he replied, smiling. "Alright, first, I'll take you to where you're going to be eating your meals." he said, leading me down the hall. I kept my eyes on the painting, now a depiction of a wide river curling through jungle reminiscent of that which I'd been left in. The movement of the paint left the river water running, the leaves rustling.

"It's just down here," he said, pointing down a flight of stairs directly next to us, on the right side of the hall.

"Can we go down? I'd love to take a look."

He shook his head. "Unfortunately not. Well, you could go down the stairs, but the doors at the end of the stairs wouldn't be open. The meal system is a little complicated, just remember, you'll be sitting closest to the door, alright? And you'll probably have to wait a while for food to come."

Easy enough. "Alright."

"Cool. So, let's see, what have we done...you figured out the training room all on your own, you got clothes, we just did meals...damn, I wish I knew the most efficient way to go about this," he said, scratching his head, "though I suppose we'll have enough time. Alright, let's show you where your classes will be once you're done with your initial training."

He led me through the door at the end of the hall into a large, open octagon-shaped room which reminded me a lot of the top floor of Dante's: large, plush sofas and armchairs everywhere, tables both big and small and all cut from a deep brown wood, a huge, empty fireplace on the far end, and, oddly enough, a stack of small newspapers in a pile adjacent to the door we just opened.

"Hey, new issue! Nice." Emmit grabbed one of the newspapers, and read the headline out loud: "Annual Moleh Tournament Sign-Ups Available! No way, that's fantastic!" He said, beginning to read the rest of the article.

"What's the Moleh Tournament? Some sort of fighting competition?" I asked.

"Oh, no," responded Emmit, folding the newspaper under his arm. "Much more than that. Once a year everybody gets together, and they compete in every aspect of the Art you could imagine. I won't be signing up, I haven't got a chance in hell at anything, but it'll be a blast to watch."

"Well, wouldn't you need your necklace off to compete anyways? You can't use the Art on others, right?" I asked, perplexed.

"Oh, no, they have contests for all ranks. The Set have too much pride not to sign up, the Odieh are more or less indifferent, but they are required to sign up, and the rank 3s never do. The competitions for Zeros fall into three categories: Clay shaping, weaponry, and athletics, which is more or less ignored." He scanned the newspaper on the top of the stack briefly. "Hey, looks like sign ups are open for three weeks, so if you work hard at something, you could toss your name in, if you wanted."

I laughed. No way. "I don't know the least thing about Clay shaping, and unless you haven't noticed, I'm not in the best physical shape." It was true - I wasn't fat by any means, but I was a fair cry from being in shape. I got winded easily, and wasn't strong in any sense of the word. Not to mention I didn't even know the first thing about weaponry.

He rolled his eyes. "Tristan! You're kidding me, right? Not only did you get your own Clay from the wall, you colored the whole thing! That's nuts!" he exclaimed, then added, "Or, I suppose you don't understand how crazy that is, huh?"

I laughed, and shook my head. "Not in the slightest."

"Well, you'll find out soon enough. Sufficed to say that you've got a real knack for handling Clay."

"I dunno, I wasn't able to manipulate my own Clay at all."

"Tristan," he said like I was the dumbest person in the room, which by all accounts I could have been, considering it was just me and him there, "most people don't even get color out of their Clay until a few weeks in. Most people don't even get a hit on the initial connection for days."

"Well, maybe I got lucky, I don't know," I replied, uncomfortable. I had a hard time dealing with praise, but it did feel good to be told I was good at something, even though I didn't have much of a standard to compare myself to.

"Alright, alright," he said, "I can see you can't take a compliment. I'll let it drop, but, seriously Tristan, hone your skills at working with Clay, and think about signing up for the tournament. The winner in each category gets a small trophy, presented by none other than the butterfly woman herself. Though, I suppose you've met her already. Still, it's a nice thing to do, and it'll get you some recognition around here."

"I'll think about it," I replied.

"Cool, that's all I'm saying. Anyways," he said, shifting his attention to the room we were in, "this is the lounge. It'll be packed at night. You'll spend a lot of your free time here if you're just relaxing. I recommend getting to know some people, I played the outcast for awhile, but that was a really lonely business. Life got better once I started socializing."

"Thanks for the tip." I nodded toward the fireplace. "That thing ever get going?"

"Yeah, it's on at nights. You'll have plenty of time here to enjoy the atmosphere. So, you see all these doors?" he asked, pointing to the doors on the wall. There were four in total: one opposite ours, and two facing each other on the walls perpendicular to ours. Over each of the doors perpendicular to us hung a tapestry.

"See that one?" said Emmit, pointing to the door on the left. It was hard to discern the exact pattern of the fabric but it was brightly colored, yellows and oranges and hints of pink, a sunset made cloth.

"Yup. Where does that lead?" I asked.

"Into the courtyard - did you see it out the windows?"

"Yeah, with the trees, mostly grass, a fountain in the middle?"

"That's the one. A nice place for relaxing when it's sunny outside. It's also the only way to leave Moleh, through the courtyard. Now, the other door," he said, jerking his thumb toward across the room, "That's an emergency exit, it'll take you out into the world beyond Caer'Aton. Don't use this unless you really, really have to."

"How will I know if I have to or not?"

He shrugged. "There will probably be lots of burning, and screaming, and people running every which way."

I arched an eyebrow. "Does this happen often?"

"Not in my lifetime," he said cheerfully, "but there has been war before, and there may again."

"Let me guess," I said, "talk to Jet about it."

"Yup! Hey, you're catching on," he said with a grin. "Now, let's go check out the classrooms."

We crossed the hall - it was a cozy space, if a little chilly. I could see why the fireplace was a nice addition.

"So, I wanted to ask you, before, you said you could feel me moving the Clay wall? What exactly did you mean by that?" I asked as we walked.

"Well," he said, musing, "I don't know where to start..."

He contemplated the question for a moment, and then clapped his hands excitedly.

"Got it! Okay, so for one, everybody's relationship to the Art is different, yeah? No two people are equally powerful, or skilled in the same way. It's a subtle thing. I'm what people call an Empath, which is just a fancy label they slap on people who are sensitive to the transference of certain kinds of energy unique to the Art. In a nutshell," he said, scratching his head, "my spidey senses go off when someone near me uses the Art. Similar to how you can notice a breeze on your skin, I notice a breeze in my mind, in a very pointed way. You, my friend, used a lot of energy when you took that small bit of Clay from the wall, probably because you had to muscle it, and weren't very efficient. If you could target that power..." he said, letting out a big breath, "forget about it, you know?"

"Wow, that's amazing!" I said. None of this made much sense to me, I was sort of taking him at his word, but nonetheless it was really, really nice to get solid information about life here, and about the changes that had happened to me. "You know, maybe I'm a bit of an Empath," I said, "I was able to hear this girl's thoughts, back home. I'd just, erm, manipulated her, or, practiced the Art on her? I don't know how to phrase it. Regardless, I could read her thoughts for a little while after. Is that like an Empath?" I asked, curious as to my place within the spectrum.

He pondered for a moment. "You know," he said finally, "I don't actually know. Everything's kind of fuzzy when you're back in our world, things aren't as defined as they are here." He shrugged. "Sorry. But, hey, I have a question of my own: what was your first trip like? You actually met the, erm, you met Shae?"

"Oh, yeah. That was just at the end, though."

And so I told him the story. From coming home to find my door unlocked, and then my door vanished, to making toast in the kitchen in an attempt to refuse reality - what's that? No, there is no jungle outside my house, thank you very much... Then the white path, the dreaminess of it, the ease with which each footfall came, the synchronization of motion and ground. The chess game with the little boy...

"Actually," I said, interrupting my recount of the story, "do you know who Jasper is?"

"No, I don't, sorry. Though, I didn't know who Shae was either but I did know the butterfly woman - who is Jasper?" he asked.

"The little boy I just mentioned, who played chess with me. Well, he's not really a little boy, he's the two-faced man, and-"

Emmit's mouth dropped. "You...you played chess with the two-faced man?"

"Yeah. Well, sort of. It wasn't chess per se, but we did use chess pieces and a chess board. What of it?"

"Tristan..." he said, shaking his head in wonder, "the amount of things you have done the significance of which you barely understand, my friend, is maddening. This Jasper, the two-faced man, he is the other Sansho, along with Rinzai."

"Oh, wow," I said, "cool. What do you know of him?" From the look on his face I felt that maybe I wasn't fully grasping the significance of what I'd done.

"Very little," he said, "not much is known of him, or his origins. The chronology is a little weird, but it's said that he arrived after Rinzai. He didn't go through the ranks or anything, just showed up one day, a little boy to all appearances. This was many, many years ago."

"Nobody took him seriously at first - who's this new Sansho who hasn't even proved himself? That sort of attitude. And get this, he doesn't even practice the Art. So he gets picked on. There was a grace period, of course, you don't immediately try to manipulate the new Sansho. Soon enough, however, the other students started practicing the Art on him. Or, trying to. When people tried, however, they all failed. Nobody could get a read on him, ever."

"To put the nail in the coffin, he signed up for the tournament, the only time a Sansho's ever done it. He signed up in every single category, for all ranks. There was some protest, of course, but the butterfly woman allowed it. She probably encouraged it, but that's just speculation."

"In the end, everybody withdrew from the tournament before it even started. He won every category by default, even the things he couldn't have won in. Shaping Clay, without a command of the Art?" Emmit scoffed. "Not possible. But, neither was a little boy becoming Sansho. People spooked. The entire tournament took one minute, the time it took for him to meet with Shae on stage and be declared winner."

"Not only winner, though. She appointed him as the cook for all of Caer'Aton Moleh, and to this day, all the food you eat is prepared by him. A fine cook, truly, but it is suspected the true reason he is kept around is to serve as the defender of Moleh. Sometimes, you'll see him walking around, but he never speaks to anybody. He likes to hang out with the stone giants, for anyone else such a thing would be foolish, but for him, they must just be his friends."

"Frankly, it's unbelievable to me that you met both the butterfly woman and the two-faced man on your first trip. That's simply not how that sort of thing goes for most people," said Emmit, eying me warily. "I don't know what's going on with you, Tristan, but I'd be careful about spreading this information. In a place such as this, secrets are your biggest weakness, and best kept to yourself." He stopped walking, and took me by the shoulder, gazing into my eyes with no hint of amusement.

"I swear to you that I will never tell a soul."

There are some people who follow a code, and adhere to their principles. They have integrity, a tangible weight to their words. When Emmit said the word "swear", he revealed a depth there which surprised me. When regular people give their word it is often done knowing that it can be broken. Emmit, however, had too strong a word to break, or rather, going against it would constitute such a dramatic shift in his being that it didn't seem possible.

This was the impression I got when he swore my history to secrecy, though I didn't understand why he'd make such a big deal out of something that seemed so minor to me. I decided to trust him, though, his apparent integrity left me no choice, and it seemed a good enough idea to play my cards close to my chest, at least until I got a feel for this place.

"I believe you. Thank you, Emmit - though, I'm not sure why it's such a big deal if people knew."

He shrugged. "It's for your own good. If you come in sporting stories of having played games with the greatest, then you will be viewed a particular way, yeah? It is of my opinion that this way is not favorable. Ultimately, however, it is your decision," he said solemnly.

"I am jealous of your experience - it is nothing like mine," he added as we passed through a door and into another hallway.

"What was your first trip like?" I asked, glad to shift the topic of conversation off of me.

"Well, I wish I could say. I don't remember most of it. Some vague colors, deep hues of purple and blue, and fear, too. Much fear. As if I was swimming in fog without a body, trying to locate a drop of water. Except, I was inside the drop of water. It was confusing, but when I returned, I accidentally was able to change my cat's disposition toward me. We became very close, Salinger and I."

"Your cat? Really?"

He shrugged. "Not everybody returns home able to manipulate women and read minds," he said without reproach, "remember that well. We are all different, and yet there is always much to learn. I have grown much since coming here, and have become adept at molding Clay."

"What's your color?" I asked.

"Dark blue. Like a sapphire suspended deep in the sea, reflecting the ocean around it." I hadn't realized, but Emmit was a bit of a poet.

"That's beautiful, Emmit."

He shrugged. "They are merely words."

Far off, I heard the sound of a bell. Emmit perked up, and pointed toward me, and motioned toward my ear to listen. I couldn't pinpoint exactly where the sound was coming from - it was as if directionless, only it was very far away. It rang four more times, a low, even tone, and I listened closely to the sound of the last note, observing it fade into obscurity, and then silence.

"Five o'clock. You've got an hour, that should be plenty of time," said Emmit.

"Great. So, what, is the bell system automatic? If class is at seven, wouldn't this wake people up?"

"It's not automatic, no. A blind man named Dante, who has a keen sense of time, rings it. And, yes, it does wake you up if you are a light sleeper." Dante? Hadn't Jasper mentioned Jed being here? There must be some connection. I made a note to seek out the man when I had the chance.

"Let me guess," I said, putting aside thoughts of Dante, "another test, figure out a way to not get woken up by the bell?"

"No, you just put in earplugs. There should be some in the chest I got for you," he said, grinning, "but that's a productive way to think about it. Everything is a test, really. Say you're getting woken up by the bell. Well, control your mind with the Art: don't be disturbed by the bell while you sleep. It's as simple as that, though earplugs are a much easier solution."

We passed through a hallway that looked very similar to the one we'd first entered into, covered by what appeared to be the same mural that stretched over the mens dorms.

"These are the women's dorms - we're just passing through to get to the classrooms. It's nearly identical to ours, and everyone's still asleep, so don't get too many ideas."

We walked further, passing what I assumed was their eating commons, until the flooring changed to a dark brown colored wood.

"Here we are," said Emmit as we came to a massive set of wondrous double doors made of the same wood as had made the wind chimes, and the hut. Rivulets of color streamed along with the grain, casting a soft light. The surface wood, by contrast, was a deep brown the shade of wet dirt.

"Classrooms are in here. Once you're finished with your initiation in the training room adjacent to where you sleep, you start on a schedule comprised mostly of class, which is located here. Once you make progress in your classes, you then shift toward more applicative uses of your time: sparring, working with Clay, exercising. Things like that."

"So," I said, mulling it over, "you're telling me that I get abducted into a whole other world-thing which I don't understand, I'm given powers beyond my wildest dreams, I'm thrust into a reality I barely can wrap my mind around...and I have to go to school." I was sure there was a God, and that he was a sarcastic motherfucker.

He laughed, and patted me on the back. "Welcome to Caer'Aton, my friend! Were there a better way to instruct you in the Art, I am sure it would be employed. In the end, however, you and I are ignorant, and require much instruction to be of any use to Shae. Classes are an efficient way of going about training a large group - they don't exactly have the manpower for everyone to have a personal trainer. Though," he said, "I would hasten to add that the classes you are imagining behind these walls are not identical to your classes. The entire education process is handled a little differently here. You'll see."

"Looking forward to it," I replied. The doors were massive, stretching to the very top of the ceiling and at least two arm spans wide. Probably to accommodate a large volume of students - just standing before them left me awed, feeling very small and extremely curious about the knowledge I could glean inside.

"How do you feel about getting some fresh air?" asked Emmit.

That sounded lovely. I was itching to get a sense for what the outdoors was like here - I was never really one for being trapped inside walls. "Lead the way!"

"Alright - there are many ways to get outside, but the closest one to here is back in the lounge. You'll eventually get a feel for this place, I promise. It has a way of working itself into your brain."

"I certainly hope so," I replied. I was getting fairly disoriented, despite having gone mostly in a straight line. The building itself had a slight curve to it, one that was only noticeable from one end of a hallway looking down to the other, but our path had been straight. "We haven't gone that far, but I can see how I'd get lost if I had to go all over the place. We haven't even gone up or down any floors!"