Seeing Father come sit next to where Kudako was still kneeling... just the image of the two of them side by side... was like an impossibility that had come true.
Because something about you called to me.
Lord Zemi’s words to AsaHi echoed and reechoed in SoYa’s mind. He pondered them. Scoured them for their true meaning. Try as he might, he just couldn’t figure out why a single statement could make him feel so downright uncomfortable.
That and the fact that Lord Zemi had let AsaHi scold him in such a manner.
He was struggling. His whole concept of Zemi Dreigiau had been set by the School in Nefol long ago. Lord Zemi had turned out to be nothing at all like what he had been taught.
SoYa had reasoned… trying to convince himself that it was a good thing. Lord Zemi seemed openly friendly and curious towards the Earthians. He had even admitted to taking on Earthian form simply because he was interested in being among them. Though intimidating on first sight, the Dreigiau also tended to have an easy-going way of handling people which made him quick to warm up to.
As if one could actually like an Arweinydd.
I mean, it’s not like you can be friends with something like Zemi Dreigiau. He’s supposed to be… I dunno… served, respected and honored. As affable as he wants to come off, Earthians weren’t meant to be on close friend-like terms with Arweinydd.
SoYa ran his fingers through his curly hair watching as the rest of the group file under the wide arc of Dof-Ystafell. That was the name of this strange garden-like place. He had overheard the term when his father and Lord Zemi had spoken about it at length.
Master Kudako.
The Apprentice’s eyes fell upon the blue-haired man. The Dragon Servant of Lord Zemi.
KudakoRe was a name that had gone down into legend as the most dangerous man that had ever walked the Inner Realms. Yet, after giving his allegiance to Zemi Dreigiau, something had altered within him. Not only had his appearance changed to reflect his new essence, but his whole nature had shifted from the inside out.
SoYa didn’t know a whole lot about him. Though Kudako had known him since SoYa was a child, and he always been distantly kind… Kudako had rarely spoken openly or at length to the Apprentice. Not too many people knew exactly who the blue-haired man was in his previous life. Nor did they know that now he was a real, live Dragon. A Dragon in Earthian form.
Well… mostly.
I haven’t seen Kudako since… Father disappeared.
It was all very strange. SoYa still had not approached his father on everything that had come to pass. On why he was still alive. Of what he was doing there. Of why he had left the School and never returned. Why he allowed them to believe he had died.
Seeing Father come sit next to where Kudako was still kneeling… just the image of the two of them side by side… was like an impossibility that had come true. And as much as SoYa wanted to be happy about it — after all, why shouldn’t he be happy to know his father was alive — his confusion and discomfort wiped all efforts of joy from his heart.
Especially after the darkened image of TsuYa had been burned into his mind.
We don’t have much time…
To his utter surprise, his words were echoed by Lord Zemi’s husky voice.
“We don’t have much time,” the Dreigiau nodded firmly. “So let’s get on with this, yes-no?”
Aunt SaRa walked forward and sat placidly on the other side of Kudako, nudging him in the side. “Come on… you’re going to hurt your back doing all that kneeling.”
Kudako grunted softly.
“You’re not as young as you used to be,” she prodded cheerfully.
The Dragon scowled slowly, “And it shows?”
“Just a little.”
Of course, it didn’t really. He was a Dragon. And Dragons never aged in appearance. But the wide smirk on Aunt SaRa’s face was enough to keep SoYa from saying so. It was obvious that she was quite happy at seeing Kudako again…
SoYa tried to hide the thoughtful expression that rose on his face as Kudako placidly lowered himself to a cross-legged sitting style.
AsaHi had been inching her way up the steps one at a time throughout the whole exchange. It seemed from the way she spoke to Lord Zemi that the two of them had spent a significant amount of time together. And from what SoYa could decipher, she had no idea who the Dreigiau was during that time.
That would be enough to blow her top for sure.
She seemed a bit more relaxed now that she had made her say at the Arweinydd. Finally reaching the top of the steps, she watched the three who were already sitting there.
“Well?” the Dreigiau peered at her with a good natured grin. “Are you going to join us?”
AsaHi wrung her hands behind her back, looking uncertain. “I… don’t know. There’s not a lot I can do to be of help.”
“You’d be surprised,” he answered curtly.
The girl sucked on her bottom lip in thought. Her eyes traced over the expression on the Arweinydd’s face for a long time before she continued her approach. Without a further word, she sat down next to Father, folding her hands in her lap attentively.
Then the Dreigiau turned to SoYa.
The Apprentice felt a shiver ripple through his whole body.
“What about you? Are you going to join us, too?”
SoYa swallowed, trying to put forth a brave face. “That’s… what I came here for, My Lord.”
“Good. Glad to hear it,” Lord Zemi waved a hand slowly out to the group before him. “Why not take a seat, eh?”
Getting to his feet, the Apprentice complied. His head was still woozy from the impossibility of the situation. It felt as if at any moment he should wake up from the strange, intangible dream that he was living in.
But he didn’t.
Instead, he sat down next to Aunt SaRa and peered up at the Arweinydd with a quiet look.
“There now. We’re all together. Who would have thunk it?” Lord Zemi grinned quickly.
Silence passed over them. Thoughts, questions and curiosities whirled over their faces as they sat waiting what was to come next. But the Arweinydd remained silent, leaning back with a pensive gaze at the birds that were winging lazily overhead. Finally, after some time, his gravelly voice rose around them in a slow, measured cadence. And it stared unlike anything SoYa would have expected.
“Once upon a time, there was an accident.”
The Apprentice peered up. Along with everyone else. Their eyes fixed upon the Arweinydd in curiosity.
Seeing that he had their attention, Lord Zemi continued, “Not just any accident, mind you. It was a Mistake. Mistake with a capital ‘M’.”
Father scrunched up his nose, “Hrm.”
“Yeah. It was that bad.”
SoYa wrinkled his brow. He had loosely heard about the origins of the Arweinydd having been tied into some sort of disastrous mistake. But it was the first time that anyone had spoken about it beyond flighty speculation.
“Newsflash here. I’m only gonna say this once, so listen up,” the Dreigiau’s eyes alighted upon each of them in turn. The weight of his words fell heavy upon their mind. “This current existence is made up of Seven Universes. Can’t count them all on one hand, but you can count them on two. Seven. Complete. Whole. Perfect. So it was. Until the Mistake. That was when one of the Seven died.”
“The death of a whole Universe? What… what sort of Mistake could have caused that?” Naturally, AsaHi was the first to speak up.
“That isn’t exactly something I can answer, I’m afraid. I was there but not there to know it. I can only speculate,” he tilted his head slowly in thought. “It was pride, perhaps? Ignorance even? Yeah… Those That Came Before could be ignorant, just like Earthians. Even moreso, I think.”
Kudako’s mouth became a thin, firm line.
“Moreso because they should have known better. Because they existed,” the Arweinydd’s voice began to rumble, growing in agitation. His hands lifted before them, gesturing widely at the immensity of the concept. “They produced. They destroyed. They swayed to the flow of Chaos and Creation in a way that was theirs and theirs alone. They… should have known better.”
“What… exactly did they do?” Father asked quietly. His face was solemn and calculating.
“Something horrible,” Lord Zemi suddenly looked regretful. “It has many names amongst my kind, but I like to keep it simple and call it the Mistake. It was a funny thing, that Mistake. A work of mass Chaos that was Created. Irony is such a cruel thing, yes?”
SoYa’s mind reeled with the thought. He wondered if he was the only one struggling to make sense of the story that was beginning to unfold. A story that no other Earthian had ever been gifted to know. Especially not from the mouth of an Arweinydd himself.
“And what came after that Mistake was nothing. It was a universe that no longer held its spirit,” the Dreigiau frowned, trying to explain further in the best way he knew how. “The motion of life and growth had died along with the Mistake. Those That Came Before no longer were. But what they did not know was Those That Were Yet To Be had survived.”
“You’re speaking in circles again, Zemi,” Aunt SaRa chided him softly.
“Maybe. But for good reason. I want you all to understand where I come from. Who I am… and what you’re up against. And the only way to do that is to start at the beginning,” he gave her a soft look. “Don’t you agree?”
“If you say so.”
“But,” AsaHi’s voice was strained. “What does that have to do with you? If you weren’t there during the Mistake… if everything should have died then… why are we here? Why are you here? I don’t understand?”
“Ah… me?” Lord Zemi lifted a finger with a soft grin. “I almost did not exist. I do know that. For upon the destruction of Those That Came Before, there was a place where Those That Were Yet To Be waited. We slept.”
AsaHi tilted her head curiously.
“Our light was dim. Our awareness did not yet exist. We lay dormant, shrouded and unmoving. Unliving. Ungrowing.”
“So how did you get here if you were asleep?” she pondered.
“It was only by what I’d like to think was beyond chance that something did happened. It might have been a leftover ripple from the final aftermath of the Mistake. A good deal of power was given off at that moment. I do not know exactly how it happened,” his face was also pondering as he chose his words. “But the Light That Was Me was cast away, thrown off from the place in which we were left to sleep. Far away from the rest of Those That Were Yet To Be.”
“So poetic,” Father rolled his eyes.
“Naturally,” the Dreigiau gave a fangy grin.
“Then what happened?” AsaHi was leaning forward. Her face was a picture of absolute interest. Her eyes never left Lord Zemi’s face.
He peered at her with his own tilted head, seeming somewhat surprised at the warmth of the reception of his story. Then he continued, still grasping to find the right words to explain the unexplainable.
“Well, the Light That Was Me drifted,” he stated simply. “It drifted for time without measure. It drifted unknowing until the day that the fringes of Light touched something. It was the first something that it ever knew. That something was a Living World. Or, at least, it had been.”
“Our world?” Her knuckles had grown white, grasping her knees tightly.
“Yes,” the Dreigiau replied. “It was a world that held the potential to live again — as it once had before the Mistake came. The Light That Was Me was drawn to the Living World. Side by side, something began to happen. And after much time, the world breathed. When the world breathed, I Awoke.”
SoYa swallowed, thoughts shying away from grasping this last statement. It was obvious that Lord Zemi was a powerful being… but the fact that the essence of life on their world was linked to his own being was something too unnerving to consider.
Even AsaHi had fallen silent.
Either Lord Zemi did not recognize their reaction or he did not care. His words continued on, the story unfolding further.
“When I Awoke, I found myself alone. I did not know about Those That Were Yet To Be. I did not know about Those That Came Before. I only knew of myself and of the Living World. And because it was warm, and I was alone…” A soft smile flickered over his face, “I chose to watch it.”
“If that’s what you call it?” Father grunted quickly. “Let’s not even go into the sort of benefits you scored by simply being here, eh?”
“I did not know that Arweinydd grow in power and change based upon their connections to Living Worlds,” Lord Zemi spread his hands with an innocent expression. “That was not a concept that I learned, in fact, until I discovered the secrets of ‘Esgor-ar. I did not know that it was because I spent time watching the Living World that I had begun to transform myself.”
AsaHi’s cheeks had grown more and more pale.
“I was Me by then,” Lord Zemi grinned, thumbing a finger back at his own chest. “No longer simply a Light without awareness. I had become what is now known as an Arweinydd.”
“So there are more like yourself?” Aunt SaRa leaned back on her palms, crossing her ankles in front of her. “What happened to them?”
“Now… we’re getting into the point I am wanting to make,” the Dreigiau nodded. “I don’t know when it was that I discovered the sleeping place of Those That Were Yet To Be. They were nothing but Lights then. Lights without awareness. But the moment I came to them, much to my surprise, it was as if my own being Woke them. They began to know. They began to stir.”
SoYa’s mouth became a little ‘o’ shape. “They are alive as well? How come we never see them?”
“I tried to tell them about the wonderful Living Worlds that I had found. But they did not want to listen,” Lord Zemi turned his eyes upon the Apprentice. He wrinkled his nose in distaste. “They did not wish to search for you. They were not interested in the Living World and the people who existed there. No matter what I said to them, they only wanted to remain as they were.”
SoYa peered up into the Dreigiau’s eyes somberly. Somehow there was pain within those words that he could not quite touch. As if it was a struggle that was long born upon the Arweinydd’s shoulders.
“So eventually I left them.”
“You left them? Why?” AsaHi’s face lifted again. There was sadness behind her eyes as she watched.
Lord Zemi’s expression softened as well, meeting the girl’s gaze with his own. “My soul longed for the Earthian peoples and creatures — the ones that yearned to grow and learn. The ones that were more like me than even the Arweinydd were.”
She blinked up at him in silence.
“The more that they grew, the more that I became. Until one day… understanding came to me unlike any other. I discovered the secret of Making.”
“‘Esgor-ar…” Kudako hissed softly, looking at his own hands. “The Making of the Dragons? Like myself.”
“Yes, ‘Esgor-ar…” the Dreigiau nodded slowly. “I united my spirit with the creatures of the Living World through this. For the first time, I was more than aware. I was Feeling.”
AsaHi was still staring at Lord Zemi, her face absolutely captivated.
SoYa could feel the shivers still rippling down his spine.
Father peered up. “But the Others of your kind. They do not feel?”
“For the most part. No.” Lord Zemi stated, “That is why it is dangerous that we are up against one.”
Kudako blanched. “We are up against what?”
“Another Arweinydd,” Zento frowned.
AsaHi squeaked, “What? Why?”
“I have yet to figure out the why. But I know it to be true,” Lord Zemi lowered his eyes again. “Of the other Arweinydd I have spent time with, there were three that I chose to call my siblings. Of course… they aren’t really my siblings since my kind cannot be related by blood. I simply thought it was an interesting concept of the Earthian people and chose to adopt it.”
“And what of these siblings of yours?” Kudako’s face was hard.
“There are my two sisters… Zazo and little Zeni. And there is my brother, Zerom.”
SoYa jerked his head upwards, mind shifting back to the encounter he had at the Host Gate with the Sparrow.
Then that was true! She really was Lord Zemi’s sister!
“When AsaHi came to the Host Gate and performed the ritual…” he dropped his gaze on AsaHi. She began to squirm. “Something happened that was not supposed to. I reached out to protect her from the backlash of energy that was produced in the summoning. And a tear in the Gate appeared… allowing me to reach through to the other side in full form.”
“I…” AsaHi covered her mouth. “I didn’t know.”
“I know you didn’t. Don’t stress yourself over what’s been and done,” the Dreigiau purred softly. “There were good things that happened because of that. For one… I could take on a physical form unlike I’ve ever been able to.”
“But there were bad things too?” SoYa felt his voice creak.
Lord Zemi leveled his gaze on the Apprentice. “Zerom. My brother.”
“He was the one that took TsuYa.” Aunt SaRa’s face was sharp.
The Apprentice drew in a hissing breath. His mind flickered back to the image of his brother floating in the rage of darkness.
“And the Marked Creatures that attacked us on the ground… that would be his power as well?” Kudako pressed his lips together even more tightly.
“You are correct,” the Dreigiau nodded. He lifted one hand to indicate the tiny dark-haired girl that was still playing in the flowers, “And young Suzume as well. Luckily for her… not enough of the taint embedded itself into her body before I was able to remove most of it.”
“And TsuYa?” AsaHi’s voice was breathless.
“He… was not so lucky.”
