Chapter Twelve: Old Memories
The tendril of water snaked up from the surface of the pond and into the air, hanging awkwardly like a snake draped over a branch. It wasn't stationary, though—the water was constantly flowing, the tendril constantly moving. After a few seconds, it started to disintegrate, drops of water falling away.
"Steady…" Jerrod advised, crouching down next to his pupil. "What have I told you about Water?"
"It is not my servant," Avis replied.
"So stop treating it like one," the Cleric finished. "You can move it just fine…but you need to start feeling the push and the pull of it. Water is constantly moving—trying to hold it stationary will always end-"
"-will always end in failure," Avis finished in unison with his mentor. "I know."
"Well, you definitely heard me, but you obviously didn't listen," Jerrod retorted. "Stop asserting yourself over the Water and bring yourself down to its level."
Avis closed his eyes for a couple seconds, then opened them again and immediately went to work with the tendril of water, compressing it into a solid sphere—the first shape he had learned with Water.
"Churn the center and the outside in opposite directions," Jerrod said.
Avis took a deep breath and started manipulating the Water as requested, making smooth gestures with his hands. Gradually, the ball of water mimicked Avis's gestures and the surface began to churn to the left. Jerrod peered closely at the sphere and saw that, as he had requested, the core of the sphere was rotating in the opposite direction.
"Nicely done," Jerrod nodded approvingly. "Usually takes novitiates months to perform a move as simple as that. But enough with these spheres; give me a ring."
The boy concentrated once more, his gaze never leaving the ball of water. The ball itself started to flatten and stretch out until a hole appeared in the very center. Avis had to keep it spinning so that it kept its shape and cohesion.
The Cleric proceeded to have the boy stretch, twist, and bend the Water into dozens of different shapes and patterns. He had the boy stretch it out and stream it over his head, between his legs, or around his waist.
Next, Avis and Jerrod streamed a large glob of water around each other in a figure eight while Jerrod quizzed Avis on his swordsmanship. This went on for a short while, before Jerrod called a break for lunch.
"Another morning put to good use," Jerrod declared, actually sounding satisfied for once. "You are making good progress."
"Good enough to take the afternoon off?" Avis asked hopefully. He was rewarded with a fit of deep laughter on Jerrod's end. The boy's shoulders drooped a little bit, but he honestly wasn't surprised. It had been worth a try, but Avis had never actually considered the possibility that Jerrod would agree.
"You're progressing many times faster than a normal novitiate, but that doesn't mean squat when you consider our timetable," Jerrod replied. "You know that I will not rush your training for the sake of saving time—shoddy training will kill you faster than any nightmare Zamorak could ever conjure up. But I will not slow your training, either. A world rests on our shoulders, boy."
After a fast meal of nuts, biscuits, and honey, Jerrod and Avis were back at it. Jerrod dueled Avis twice using just Wind. They then dueled using just Water. After that, they fought with both elements, combining the properties of the two in order to better suit their needs.
Avis was victorious in one of the Wind duels, but he lost every other time. He wasn't crushed, though…some of his mock-fights with Jerrod were pretty close calls. The Cleric noticed this as well. The boy had managed to score a few hits on him, forcing the Cleric to treat Avis as a serious foe, rather than a limited apprentice.
After they finished, they took a quick rest. It was only a quick one, though. By the time the mid-afternoon started bleeding into late afternoon, Jerrod drilled Avis with the blade.
"It's soon going to have to be your responsibility to continue practicing with Wind and Water," the Cleric said to his pupil as he polished his gladius, finished with the sparring bout. "When we begin to train with Earth and Fire, I will not be able to devote enough time to the other elements as I would like."
Avis gave a single nod, not wanting to think that far ahead.
"In the meantime, though…it's time you learned another use for Water," the Cleric gestured for the boy to come over to him, which he did. The Cleric then grasped Avis's arm and drew the edge of his gladius across it in a sharp line.
Avis instantly tried to recoil, but Jerrod held him fast. "What was that for?" he shouted, trying again to pull back his arm, which was starting to drip with blood, but Jerrod still didn't let go.
"There is life energy present in your body, boy," Jerrod explained, standing up and leading Avis to the bank of the creek. "But you know this, already. I've already taught you about the Anima Mundi. What you don't know, however, is that your life energy isn't simply bottled up inside of you; it flows through you—much like the blood in your veins."
As he spoke, the Cleric began streaming a small amount of water up from the creek's surface with his free hand, calling it forth with gentle, graceful gestures. "When your body is wounded, the flow of the Anima Mundi is disrupted. Gradually, the energy paths restore themselves, which allows the wounds to heal. However, if you use Water as a catalyst…" the Cleric cupped the Water around Avis's injured arm. It began to glow brightly, as if someone were holding a flame under it. "…you can reconnect the broken pathways manually. That glow is your life energy in one of its purest forms, flowing through this water. And once have finished, voilà," the Cleric let go of Avis's arm, allowing the luminescent water to splash back down to the ground, its glow vanishing as it left his arm.
When it fell away, Avis saw that the laceration on his arm was completely healed. There wasn't even a blemish on the skin where the gladius had sliced. Avis knew that Jerrod was able to heal with Water—he had once broken the boy's jaw during a sparring session, and had used Water to reset it. This, however, was the first time he had actually explained what exactly he was doing as he implemented healing.
"Do you want me to try?" Avis asked.
"Not today, no," Jerrod shook his head. "But when you practice entering the Ondr, I want you to start trying to feel the energy paths within yourself. If you ever want to become halfway decent at healing, you must familiarize yourself with your own body."
Avis gave another sigh. This would be simply one more thing he had to start practicing. He already had Wind and Water to worry about, as well as his swordsmanship and meditation…now he could add healing to the list. And he still had another two elements to go…
The Cleric, after cleaning the blade of his gladius, sheathed it and decided it was time to start making up dinner. While Avis prepared a fire, Jerrod stalked off into the woods to find a meal.
The boy stared at the pile of kindling and tinder. Not for the first time, he wished he was able to invoke Fire; that would save him the trouble of having to use a tinderbox. He closed his eyes and took several deep breaths, holding his hands over the firewood and concentrating on producing heat, a flame, a spark; anything.
What he got was a big handful of nothing. It was no use trying to invoke Fire; Avis simply did not know how. The power of Fire was still locked away in his subconscious…down in the animalistic, Mahjarrat part of his mind. He would have to be Awakened at the Fire Temple…and Jerrod had said that it was located in the far north of the Menaphite Desert, which was a good distance away. And even before that, he would be mastering Water while beginning to train with Earth, as the Earth Temple was much closer.
Avis gave a small sigh and took out the tinderbox, lighting the fire the old-fashioned way.
Jerrod returned half an hour later, bearing a brace of three dead rabbits. He sat down by the fire, untying the rabbits and laying them flat on one of his pot lids. He then proceeded to skin them and prepare them for stewing.
"How did you kill them?" Avis asked, glancing uncertainly at the rabbits. He saw blood leaking down from the rabbits' heads, but also knew that Jerrod had no bows or slings to hunt with.
"Pebbles," Jerrod replied, tossing the entrails of the first rabbit into a nearby rock before getting to work on the second.
"Pebbles?" Avis's eyebrows rose a fraction.
"Pebbles," the Cleric repeated himself. He finished prepping the second rabbit and noticed Avis still looking at him funny. He gave a quiet sigh and stood up, stomping the ground with his left foot. At the Cleric's behest, a single pebble rose into the air. Jerrod then flicked his wrist, and the pebble rocketed forward and punched a good way into the trunk of a nearby oak.
Avis could easily see how a pebble, moving at such a speed, could kill those rabbits. It occurred to him later that something like that pebble could even kill a man…it would be the ultimate silent weapon. If a mage ever wanted to carry out an assassination or even a common murder…all it would take was a pebble.
"Kind of frightening how easy magic can make things, isn't it?" Jerrod asked as he returned his attention to the final rabbit, somehow sensing what his pupil was thinking.
"Don't masters usually discourage using magic like that?" the boy asked.
"Uh…yeah," Jerrod nodded, stopping himself from shrugging reflexively. When he was younger, he had always hated it when the stuffy, uptight masters had tried preaching for him to not use magic to make challenging tasks become easy.
Well, they were never placed in charge of training a Mahjarrat child by Saradomin Himself to prevent Zamorak from deep-frying the entire world, so they were welcome to blow it out their asses.
"I'll admit, using magic to make every single challenge moot is not the right thing to do," Jerrod conceded. "Normally, I wouldn't go out and hunt with magic—there's a certain pride in hunting the traditional way—but, considering the circumstances… You're supposed to end this damned war, but you can't exactly do that if you starve to death out here. So if I want to use magic to keep us from starving out in this forest, then damn it all, I'm going to do it."
"Okay, okay…" Avis held up his hands in surrender. "Just asking…"
Jerrod streamed some water from the nearby creek into his pot. He then stomped his foot onto the ground once more. He held his hands low, clenched them into fists, then brought them back up, as if he were lifting a heavy weight.
Avis nearly yelped in surprise when two small, thin columns of rock suddenly burst out of the ground on opposite sides of the fire, rising two or so feet into the air before stopping. Though he really shouldn't have been startled, he didn't see Jerrod invoke Earth very often, so it had come as a surprise.
The Cleric found a thick bough of wood and placed it over his two columns of rock. He then hung the pot of water over the flames and sat back, waiting for it to simmer. As the sun sank below the western horizon and the crickets began their session of evening chirping, Avis decided to break the silence that had fallen over the camp.
"Where did you grow up?"
The question was so sudden and out of the blue, for a split-second Jerrod wondered if he had simply imagined it. Then the Cleric glanced over at the Avis, and dispelled that ridiculous notion. "And why, pray tell, do you want to know that?"
Avis shrugged. "Curious."
"I see I haven't quite stamped that out of you, yet…" when the Cleric glanced back over at Avis, the boy was still looking at him, expecting an answer. Jerrod knew that he didn't have to answer. He could just as easily have continued to dodge and evade the answer, or he could even outright ignore the boy.
However, he found himself in a somewhat conversational mood, at the moment. What would it heard to indulge the boy a little?
"I was born in Harrow's Stead, a border town in the north Far Reaches—the westernmost region of Centralia…" he noticed the boy frowning as he spoke and rolled his eyes even as he finished that last sentence. "What is the problem, now? Am I not telling this story to your expectations?"
"No, no," Avis shook his head quickly. "It's just that…well…I can't really picture you as a kid."
Jerrod arched a tentative eyebrow at that. "And why is that? Do you think I came out of the womb like this?"
"Well…no," the boy sighed, knowing he wouldn't win this round of verbal jousting.
"I was one good-looking child, thank you very much," the Cleric huffed as he cut up the rabbit meat and dumped it into the pot of water, stirring it gently by manipulating the water with slow, circular hand motions. He had already dropped in some of the bones of the rabbits to boost the flavor of the water, which was quickly becoming broth.
"You ever go back and visit your home?" Avis asked next. He really didn't know why he was suddenly asking so much about the Cleric's home…maybe because his own home had been burned down and destroyed by Zamorak's armies, and he just wanted to see someone else reminisce about home…he didn't know.
"That would be difficult," Jerrod said as he cut up one of the carrots he had bought in the market at Aeriose and kept preserved in a block of ice, sliding the sliced vegetable into the stew and sprinkling in some seasoning.
"Why?"
"Probably because it doesn't exist anymore," the Cleric replied. "Harrow's Stead was burned down when I was little by a Mahjarrat named Hazeel. Only a dozen of us survived, and I just so happened to be one of them."
For once, Avis found himself without anything to say. He started to apologize, but Jerrod waved him off. "Don't apologize, boy; you didn't know," the Cleric said to the ten-year-old—or was he eleven, now? Jerrod resolved to ask when he got a chance. "If anything, you are one of the few who can truly sympathize…you had to watch Ullek burn. You have lost your home, too."
Avis's expression darkened, becoming more forlorn as memories of his home flashed through his mind. His brutal training under Jerrod had occupied not only his time, but also all of his thoughts. The loss of Ullek had traumatized him deeply, but he had simply had no time to dwell on it. Now that the Cleric had suddenly reminded him of those events…
"How do you do it?" the boy asked his teacher. "How do you ignore those feelings? Every time…every time I even think about home, I…I…" Avis's broke off, closing his eyes and rubbing the curve of his nose wearily. His eyes had begun to tear up, but he refused to break down and look weak in front of his mentor.
"It happened over fifty years ago, Avinius," the Cleric reminded his pupil, surprising the boy by using his real, full name. "Pain gets duller over time. Still…the loss of home and family is a loss like no other…"
"But how were you able to get through it all? All I want to do is kill the damned-"
"Oi!" Jerrod aimed a cuff at Avis's ears, but the boy ducked just in time. "No bloody swearing out of you, boy! One foul mouth here is enough."
Avis refused to be deterred. "You're still not answering my question."
Jerrod's expression remained neutral. "You're young, boy. Some things in my life are…well, you're better off not hearing about some of them."
"I'm not a whelp, anymore!" Avis insisted, his voice growing higher and firmer with frustration. "I am a Mahjarrat. The Gods say that I will bring about the end of the wars; do you really think my future is gonna be a happy one? Why, only a few days ago, I killed those men who attacked us…I have blood on my hands, now. Whatever you did, master…it can't be any worse than anything that's happened to me. How'd you cope with losing your home?"
"Vengeance," the Cleric sighed, finally. "I took vengeance on Hazeel; the one who killed my family. It is not always the right thing to do…and it was not what I was taught by the monks who raised me…but that is what I did nonetheless. And it felt good."
"You killed a Mahjarrat?" Avis exclaimed.
Jerrod was silent for a minute or so. Before he could speak, the stew started to bubble loudly. Normally it would have taken much longer for it to cook, but Jerrod had been making the fire burn hotter than normal. He took out two wooden bowls and started spooning the stew into each one.
"Perhaps I'll tell you that story later," the Cleric mused, not finding himself in the mood to go sifting through those dark, bloody memories at the moment. "Not tonight, though. This rabbit stew has put me in too good of a mood."
Avis didn't press the Cleric. He had been with Jerrod long enough to know that the Cleric wouldn't talk about his past again until he found himself in the mood. Tonight, that mood had just ended.
"Cheer up, boy," Jerrod mimed a friendly punch to Avis's shoulder. A ball of super-compressed wind struck the boy's shoulder as he did this, simulating an actual punch, which Jerrod was too lazy to get up and deliver himself. "You know that Zamorak had Ullek destroyed because he knew you were there. Well, he failed…so keep training hard and fulfill that thrice-damned prophecy by ending this war. If you end this conflict, as is foretold, you will ensure that Ullek and her citizens did not die in vain."
"Did anyone ever wonder what would happen if I…you know…fail?" the boy asked. "This whole thing is the result of a prophecy that we have no way of proving; it isn't written in stone…"
"Well, yeah, it kind of is…" Jerrod chuckled. "It was found inscribed on the Stone of Jas, which is the energy source of all Magicks. Maybe you're right after all, and the whole thing is just a load of bollocks…you, however, still have the power to prove yourself wrong. I am confident that, one way or another, you will find yourself in a position to end the war…but for now, just shut up and eat your rabbit stew."