Chapter Twenty: Doubts
Avis muttered under his breath as he tipped his last armful of firewood into the pile next to the cottage's door. Whoever would have thought that such a small living space would engender so many chores? The floor had to be swept, the rugs had to be beaten, the beds made, the meals cooked, the firewood gathered, the chimney cleaned—the list just went on. The pale-skinned boy suspected that Jerrod had probably used magic to assist him with the chores, but now that the old Cleric had him for an apprentice…why not try to make his life hell?
Father Jerrod, standing at the shore of his islet near to his cottage, watched as his new apprentice dropped the wood into the pile, a wry grin spreading onto his face. He had never had an apprentice before—he had never considered himself a teacher—so he had never realized how fun it could be. The boy had limitless magical potential—Jerrod could sense that outright—but housework always came first.
The Cleric quickly wiped away the smile before the boy could see it and returned his attention to the water in front of him. He held out his hands and, concentrating his magical energies, bent the surface. A thin snake of water slid up into the air, following the contours of Jerrod's hand movements. Jerrod solidified the rope of water into a denser sphere and started running through basic exercises with it. He would shape it into a cube, then into a many-pointed star before twisting and manipulating it into ever more complex shapes—at one point, he even tied combination knots with it.
As Jerrod stretched the water back out into its original rope-like shape, he became aware of Avis watching him from behind. "I don't seem to recall telling you to stop at four batches of firewood," the Cleric remarked. He pulled the rope of water around himself until the two ends joined, resulting in a ring of water, about three meters in diameter, held around shoulder height.
"But I-" Avis started to protest, but Jerrod quelled him with a stern expression.
"No buts," the Cleric shook his head. "Get that last batch of firewood, and you'll be done."
Avis let out a disgruntled sigh and strode off, heading back over the earthen bridge linking the island to the shore of the lake. That natural bridge had been created by Jerrod so that Avis could cross the lake. Jerrod personally preferred creating a path of ice, but Avis did not know anything about Water magic yet, so he had to make do with an artificial bridge.
When Avis returned, having gathered one last bundle of firewood for the stove in Jerrod's cottage, he ambled over to the southern shore of the islet, where Jerrod was still running through his exercises with water.
"I've finished getting the firewood," the boy announced, hoping to get to do something interesting for a change. "Can we start?"
"What's your rush?" Jerrod queried, breaking the circle of water and condensing it into three smaller-sized spheres, which he started to juggle. "To be a mage requires patience and temperance; two qualities you would do well to learn, boy. Have you been practicing with your blade?"
Avis nodded. For the past two weeks, Jerrod had been brutally training him in swordsmanship and self-defense by sparring with short swords. Their edges had been temporarily blunted to avoid killing someone during a training bout, but they were still capable of injuring. At the end of every sparring match, Jerrod would use Water to heal Avis's wounds, which were usually many. At first, Avis had barely known one end of the sword from the other…but after two weeks of nonstop fighting with it, he was beginning to pick it up reasonably well.
"I suppose I'm about to be the judge of that," Jerrod smiled mirthlessly. He combined the three juggling balls of water in to a larger sphere, and then allowed it to flow onto his hand, where it conformed to the shape like a glove. He shed the excess water and let the remainder concentrate around his fingers. The Cleric then froze the water into points and cast them into the nearest tree. The finger-shaped ice spikes thudded into the tree, embedding themselves into the bark. Had they hit a human, they would have been just as deadly as throwing knives.
Avis watched his master's use of Water with a large degree of interest. He had never imagined that Water could be effectively weaponized, but he had just learned something new. "When do I learn how to do that?"
"That depends on your skill with your blade and body, without which you are nothing," Jerrod answered cryptically before suddenly lashing out with his hand and striking Avis in the back of his neck.
The boy cried out at the sudden, unexpected pain, falling to his knees and clutching at the spot where he had been hit. "What did you do that for?" he cried out.
Jerrod didn't answer that question. Instead, he thrust his face right into the boy's and snapped, "What the hell was that, Avis? Huh? It definitely wasn't being prepared to defend yourself at all times like I told you! Zamorak's minions are out hunting for you, boy, and they're not going to announce themselves to you before they attack. You have to be ready-" The Cleric struck at Avis once more, but this time the boy ducked the blow and rolled off to the side, springing back up to his feet.
Jerrod stepped forward. "-for anything-" The Cleric aimed a powerful kick towards Avis's stomach, but again the boy evaded.
"-at anytime!" Jerrod feinted left with an uppercut strike, waiting for Avis to make his move. Just as he expected, the boy ducked and moved to sidestep the Cleric's blow. Jerrod, sensing his next move, lashed out again, this time striking the air to the right of Avis's head. His fist reached the target just as Avis stepped into it. The boy was thrown back several feet by the force of the blow.
In a millisecond, Jerrod was kneeling over the boy, a fist raised right over his face. "And now," the Cleric said matter-of-factly, fire erupting from his knuckles, "you're dead."
Jerrod extinguished the flames and extended a hand, helping Avis back up to his feet. "Better that time," the Cleric observed. "You were on your guard."
"Lot of good it did me…" Avis grumbled, rubbing the sore spot on his jaw where Jerrod's fist had crashed into his face.
"Mm," Jerrod hummed in response before saying, "You know what your problem is?"
"Enlighten me," Avis rolled his eyes.
"Your problem is habit. You've lived on the streets of Ullek you're entire life, but I doubt you were a lawful citizen. As a thief, your mantra, your way of life has always revolved around being fast and evasive. You don't fight your enemies head-on; you duck and dodge, and then you escape, leaving them in the dust," Jerrod observed, accurately describing Avis's life on the streets.
Avis started to protest. "I wouldn't have stood a chance if I had-"
Jerrod held up his hand, tinkering with the air in Avis's throat and rendering him mute. The boy's mouth kept moving for a second before he realized that there was no sound coming out. "I am not passing judgment upon your former life—far from it," the Cleric explained, releasing his grip on Avis's voice. "I am merely bringing to light that the way you lived your life in Ullek is affecting the way you defend yourself. You are predictable in that, when facing an enemy, you will always try to evade his attacks."
The Cleric paused for a moment and produced his Badb pipe, placing it in his mouth and igniting it with a short burst of flame from his index finger. He took a small puff from the pipe, exhaling a smoke ring into the air. "What you were doing against me; that will not do the job against Zamorak's minions. If you're supposed to bring this damned war to an end, then you're definitely going to be fighting a good deal of Zamorak's filth…maybe even Zamorak himself…" the Cleric's voice trailed off as another thought occurred to him. "You can invoke Air magic, can't you?"
Avis nodded. "I've been able to since I was four."
"Four?" Jerrod echoed. "Pretty damn young for a mage… and that reminds me; when I found you, Farrah mentioned something about you getting shot in the chest with an arrow. When we eat dinner, I expect a good story."
The rest of the day seemed to stretch on into eternity for Avis. He lost count of the sheer number of times Jerrod tossed him back his sword and ordered him to attack. He sparred with Jerrod on the beach on the western shore of the islet. He seemed to make no progress; every time he attacked the Cleric, he would get disarmed within five seconds, then knocked flat within another three.
Finally, after several hours of humiliation at the hands of the Cleric, the boy was ready to toss his shortsword into the lake in frustration. "You're too good!" Avis was moaning. "How am I supposed to beat you when-"
"I keep kicking your ass into next week every time because I know what you're going to do before you know what you're going to do," Jerrod retorted, interrupting the boy before he could finish his complaint. "And that's because you're thinking about what you want to do before you actually do it."
Avis made a face. "Huh?" was all he could say.
Jerrod took a different approach to the subject. "Look at it this way," he said. "Say you have two swordsmen facing off with each other. One fights of his own volition, but the other swordsman must take commands from another person. Now, regardless of their skill level, which man will win the fight?"
"The one who fights on his own," Avis immediately answered.
"Exactly," Jerrod nodded. "And that is because the other man must first react to his given commands before executing the attack. This is the same situation with you, boy; you're thinking too much. Your sword is a part of you—it is an extension of your arm and, by default, your will. When you fight with it enough, it will become exactly that. Right now, you're thinking about what you should do too much. You see me swing at your neck, and you think block before actually doing it. You need to stop thinking, and just…do."
"How do you do it?" Avis sighed, still trying to make heads and tails of Jerrod's mini-lesson.
"Repetition," the Cleric replied. "I trained with a blade so much that, eventually, it just became second nature to me. You will be doing the same thing; your swordsmanship will be addressed whilst I am introducing you to the other elements."
"Why, though? I'm supposed to be a mage, not a swordsman."
Jerrod let out a bark of laughter. "You should hear yourself, boy; you sound like everyone who knew me back on Entrana. Tell me; what happens when a swordsman manages to get close up to an enemy archer? I'll answer it for you: the swordsman kills the archer because the archer doesn't know how to fight in a melee battle. I am teaching you how to use a sword so that if at some point in your life your magic should fail you, Saradomin forbid, you will always have another way to defend yourself. Granted, you will be using magic much more often than a blade, but mastering both methods of fighting will put you at a huge advantage. You are too valuable to be left potentially vulnerable in such a way."
"Wouldn't want Saradomin to lose his little prize fighter, eh?" Avis muttered.
Jerrod laughed again, a cynical, sarcastic burst of emotion. "Avis, the sooner you accept the fact that we're all ultimately just pawns in the Gods' little game, the better. And be happy you're on Saradomin's side. Sure, Saradominists certainly have their flaws, but had Zamorak gotten you into his clutches…had you been captured by the Dark One, you would not be learning the elements like this. Instead, he would break your mind. Your identity, your free will; pfft-" Jerrod clapped his hands and spread them into the air, "Gone."
The Cleric paused to swallow another mouthful of his fillet. "Well, that, or he would have just killed you," he quickly added. "So I know sometimes you're thinking you've got a raw deal here—you lost your home, you lost your friends, you're being forced into a War, etc. But whenever you're feeling like that, whenever you find yourself getting mad at Saradomin, or even at me for what we are doing to you…just remember that the alternative is complete and utter hell. Now," the Cleric flicked Avis's sword back up to the boy, who promptly caught it out of the air with one hand. "Try again."
"So, I'm not supposed to think about what I'm doing with this thing?" Avis clarified as he twirled the blade around his wrist.
"That 'thing,' as you so eloquently put it, is you," Jerrod reminded the boy. "And after you train with it long enough, you won't have to think."
"So until then, I'm stuck with getting beaten up every time?"
Jerrod's smile would have made a wolf cringe. "Yep," the Cleric nodded. He wasn't even finished talking when he attacked once again, opening with a swift thrust towards the chest.
An hour and several bruises later, Avis and Jerrod retired to the cottage. The sun had already set in the west, but it wasn't dark yet. The light of the retired sun still lingered in the sky, trying in vain to keep the world illuminated a little while longer before night set in.
Jerrod fried up two fillets of Centralian Ilespa fish. He had retrieved them from one of his three fish traps, which he set up liberally in lakes throughout the swamp, including the lake which his island was in. Every two days, he would check each of the three traps and take the spoils back to his islet for food.
The Cleric was a seasoned cook. He had spent ten years in this swamp; cooking had been one of the first things he had mastered in an effort to make his life less miserable. As the fillets started to brown, he rummaged through his cabinet and sprinkled a diverse array of spices and seasonings onto the fish.
"Ever eat fish before, boy?" Jerrod asked over the table as Avis took his first bite.
Avis nodded. "Yeah, but only once or twice, and it was a while ago. And…well, it wasn't anything like this…"
Jerrod grunted, appreciative of the praise of his cooking. "Well, I'll believe you there. The key is in the seasoning, boy. When you cook up fish and eat it plain, it tastes like absolutely nothing. But add in seasonings, soak it in lemon juice, maybe throw in a few secret spices…" the Cleric gave a moan of pleasure, as if just talking about his fish made his mouth water. "We can't have this every night, though," he sighed. "If we take too much fish from the lakes in this swamp, the whole ecosystem gets screwed up. That won't happen, not on my watch."
"The what?" Avis cocked his head, never having heard that term before.
"The ecosystem," Jerrod repeated. "Nature is all about balance, boy. You have predators and prey. Those predators will also be prey for a larger animal, and the prey will also be predators to a smaller animal, and so on. That's called the food chain. The point is, if you take away one element of this system, the whole balance collapses. If you take away prey, the predator starves. If you take away a predator, the prey overpopulates the environment and destroys it anyway."
"I think I understand…"
"It's not essential for your training, but it is handy knowledge to possess," Jerrod admitted, digging into his own Ilespa fillet. "So," the Cleric mumbled in between bites. "I believe you have a story to tell me, if I'm not mistaken. How does a ten-year-old boy get an arrow in his chest, hm?"
"Well, it's kind of a long story," Avis warned the older man. "It was…two or three weeks ago, I think, when the Qarat arrested me. They left me in a cell for a few days, then they conscripted me into a penal battalion…"
Avis went on to describe the bloodbath that the penal battalion had walked into when it had faced the death knights south of Ullek. Jerrod winced when Avis recounted the one-sided battle—he knew how nasty death knights could be. The Cleric frowned when Avis described how he lost consciousness and then woke up to find all the death knights destroyed, seemingly by his own hand, but Jerrod didn't interrupt.
Avis then told Jerrod about how he had manipulated the air around him to create an artificial jet of sorts, one that was able to keep him aloft while propelling him forward at great speed. "I broke through the Qarat's defenses and I started doing this wind jet trick... It wasn't that I already knew how to do it; I was just sort of…inspired, you know? So I manage to gain enough altitude to clear the walls of Ullek, and I go right over…but one of the archers manning the wall got me right in the chest as I went past. I managed to land and get to the slum where Farrah's shop was, but I lost consciousness before I got there. Next thing I know…I'm waking up in that bed over there."
Jerrod whistled softly, eating another bite of fish. "Quite a story," the Cleric remarked. "Quite a story… You used Air magic to fly, you said?"
"Yeah," Avis nodded. The boy looked up and noticed the look Jerrod was giving him. "What; that's not normal?"
"Uh…no," the Cleric shook his head slowly. "That's not even remotely normal. No one's ever been able to achieve flight before, with any type of magic."
Avis raised an eyebrow. "Has anyone ever tried, before?"
Jerrod opened his mouth to answer, but quickly closed it again. To tell the truth, the Cleric didn't know the answer to Avis's question. He had never personally tried to use magic to fly, and he had never seen or heard of anyone else try to do the same thing…
"Okay, you got me there," the Cleric conceded. Just as Jerrod was about to return to his meal, he suddenly remembered what he was going to ask Avis from before. "My one fault with your story… When you were sent into battle with that penal battalion, you said that you defeated the entire group of death knights."
"Not defeated," Avis corrected, shaking his head. "Destroyed."
"Yes, yes," Jerrod nodded, waving his hand. "Mind telling me how the hell you managed that? Actually, scratch that. I want to see for myself."
"How will you do that? I can't exactly show you…"
"Through a mind infusion," Jerrod replied. Before Avis could speak, the Cleric held up a hand and silenced him. "I'll explain how it works to you some other time. All you need to do is focus on that moment…and then relax and let me in. Can you do that?"
"Um…I think so…"
Jerrod wolfed down the last of his fish and wiped his mouth on his hand, pushing his chair back and standing up. He walked around the table and approached Avis, who looked at him like he had a second head.
Avis let Jerrod put a hand on his forehead. For a moment he just sat there, but he quickly remembered what the Cleric had instructed him to do. He closed his eyes and visualized one of the last things he remembered from that bloodbath with the penal battalion. He had been standing alone, surrounded by the bodies of slain criminals…the sand had been soaked red with blood, crows were slowly descending from the sky, and the death knights were closing in…
Suddenly, Jerrod found himself in the middle of the carnage. It was as if he were watching Avis from the perspective of an observer. He winced as he watched the boy try—and fail—to attack the death knight that had just killed Nasser, the tattooed criminal who Avis had shared a cell with.
The death knight picked up a dazed Avis by the neck, giving its trademark hiss. Jerrod watched Avis killed the death knight by punching it through the visor slits with super-concentrated wind. "Not bad…" the Cleric murmured, impressed. He then continued to observe Avis as the death knights all converged on him. There were well over a dozen of the monsters, all swinging at Avis with their dark blades at the same time. The boy dodged the swords for a few seconds before something extraordinary happened.
Jerrod's eyes widened in shock as he watched what happened next. Avis had mentioned when he had woken up that all he remembered before losing consciousness was a bright flash of searing white light. Now, Jerrod was about to find out what really happened.
Almost as if a critical point had been reached and passed, Avis hunkered down into a crouching stance. Jerrod noticed that the boy's eyes had started to glow white. They were glowing so bright that all Jerrod could see were two orbs of light—no pupil, no iris; just white light.
Because what Jerrod was seeing was Avis's memories, it appeared to Jerrod as Avis had experienced it. For Avis, time seemed to have slowed down at this point, so when Jerrod watched the unfolding battle from afar, it looked like it was going in slow motion. As the death knights closed in on the boy, motes of white energy began to wink into existence around him. More and more spots of white appeared, swirling around Avis like a swarm of bright white fireflies. The individual points of pulsing white energy bled into each other, solidifying into a vortex. The whirlwind of white light spun around Avis faster and faster until he was just a dark silhouette in the center.
Jerrod saw Avis clench his fists and rise to his feet. The boy let out a near-animalistic scream—a piercing noise that sounded…well, inhuman. Jerrod also noticed something odd about Avis's head; it looked almost like his head would turn into a flaming skull, then flash back to normal. The boy lashed out with his fist at the nearest death knight.
A blade of white energy lanced out from the vortex and seared right through the center of the death knight's breastplate. The monster gave a pained, hissing roar and crumpled to the sand, lying motionless.
That first kill must have been just a test of sorts, because after that death knight fell, all hell broke loose. Avis went crazy, lashing out with his fists, knees, elbows, and feet. The vortex of white energy broke into something resembling a lightning storm. Bolts of the white energy would lance into the nearest death knights, quickly killing them, and then they would shoot out and take down the more distant death knights.
The monsters tried attacking all of Avis's sides at once, but none of them could get close. Avis blocked every attack with his seemingly-unstoppable white energy. Bolts of the pure white energy mimicked Avis's motions, cleaving the dark blades into pieces and ripping through the death knights' armor like an Ainuido katana through tall grass. Death knights were falling left and right, unable to even lay a finger on the boy.
Avis was like a force of nature—no, Jerrod shook his head. The boy wasn't like a force of nature…he was a force of nature. He seemed like many things right then, but he did not seem like a boy anymore. It was as if the imminent danger to his life, mixed with fear and adrenaline, had awakened something within Avis…something buried deep inside him, something that rarely ever showed itself. But what could that something be?
Jerrod already knew the answer. That something was Avis. It was not Avis the orphan thief, who had spent his entire life scratching out a living on the streets of Ullek. It was the real Avis, the true Avis. It was the person who would bring the War to an end.
This entire fight lasted only for a few moments. Within five seconds, the entire force of death knights had been wiped out. The violent storm of white energy calmed down, forming into the shape of Avis's body. It shrank in size until it enveloped Avis like a second skin. It then shimmered and vanished, disappearing into the boy's chest. The light in Avis's eyes went out and the boy collapsed, falling unconscious into the sand.
Jerrod's eyes flew open and he gasped, holding onto the back of Avis's chair to keep from falling over. Mind infusions were always tiring for him, which is why he rarely performed them.
The whole ordeal had only taken ten seconds, maximum. From Avis's perspective, Jerrod had simply stood still and silent for eight or ten seconds, and then he had suddenly faltered, gasping for breath as if he had been holding it for two minutes. The pale-skinned boy got out of the chair and grabbed Jerrod's arm, supporting the older man. "Are you alright?"
"Son of a bitch…" the Cleric murmured quietly, not even noticing that he had just used blatant profanity, looking curiously at the boy. "You really are the boy from the Prophecy…" Jerrod had never doubted what Saradomin had shown him—that Avis was the one who would bring the God Wars to an end—but he had never truly believed it one hundred-percent. The concept that this orphan boy from the streets of some desert city could fulfill such an important role in this world was…well, Jerrod just couldn't truly believe it all the way.
What he had just seen in Avis's memories changed that. He knew that Avis was unquestionably the boy from the Prophecy. The Anima Mundi blazed in him like a sun.
"When you took out those death knights…" Jerrod paused, circling back around to his seat and sinking into it. He shook his head for a moment, then continued to speak: "Have you any idea what you did to those knights?"
Avis shook his head no, sitting back down as well. "I told you; I don't remember anything past the white flash."
"Incorrect," Jerrod replied. "You don't consciously remember a thing…but your subconscious does. That must be how I was still able to see what you did, through your memory…"
"Okay, then," Avis cleared his throat, returning the majority of his attention to the remains of the Ilespa fillet in front of him. "How did I take those suckers down? All I remember is white light…and that doesn't sound like any of your elements."
"No…" Jerrod shook his head again. "It sounds exactly like one of my elements. It sounds like the Fifth Element."
"What, now? I thought there were only four elements…"
Jerrod ignored Avis's comment. He stared across the table at the boy, deep in thought. So many things were out of place. Nothing was normal about this kid.
He was in a divine Prophecy on the Stone of Jas, he could use magic without the assistance of runestones, he achieved feats with his powers that most other mages never even thought of…and now Jerrod had just seen a memory of him destroying an entire group of death knights with the Fifth Element, which no mage in all of Gielinor had ever mastered. A large group of expert mages was usually able to invoke the Fifth Element, but Avis had done it all by himself…
These capabilities…the best way Jerrod could describe them at first was impossible. But, that was an incorrect assessment, as the boy was actively doing all of those impossible things. Jerrod looked at his apprentice now and realized that 'impossible' had been a correct evaluation…impossible for humans. Farrah had told him that he had had suspicions that Avis was not Human. Jerrod had dismissed the old Menaphite at first, but now…
Avis's abilities were not impossible, but inhuman. Jerrod's gaze was unreadable as he scrutinized the pale-skinned boy. He had made up his mind about whether or not Avis was a Human the moment he saw him destroy those death knights with the Fifth Element. Only one question ran through Jerrod's mind at the moment.
What the hell are you?