Adryan's Promise - Chapter 1.2 (The River)

I found my escape route.

The waterfall wasn’t flush with the cave’s opening after all; there was a gap on the left, and through this, a narrow pathway offered by a shelf of rock. It led along the outer wall of the cave, parallel to the mouth.

I was more than ready to leave—I had spent the better part of a week building my strength to do just that. Yet after taking a few steps toward the ledge, something caused me to hesitate.

My attention was stolen by an intense urge to jump into the torrent, to let it snatch me from the mouth of the cave and plunge me into the unknown. It was a stupid idea. I had no idea how high up I might be, or if I could swim—assuming I stayed in one piece and reached a body of water where that was even an option. I could think of a dozen reasons why not to do it. So then why was there a nagging in the pit of my stomach telling me to? Why, even after forcing myself to bury this strange desire, did it linger in the background, tugging at the corners of my mind?

I approached the ledge, this time with clenched fists and a tight jaw. It was thinner than I anticipated. I turned sideways so that my chest was flat against the wall, my back to the water. With arms outstretched, I sidestepped along, feeling for any bump or crevice I could grip on to. Some parts were so narrow that I had to inch along on tiptoes, while others were slick with moss and took twice as long to navigate.

At one point, there was a break in the waterfall and I was able to observe more of my surroundings. The cave was a mere blemish on the face of an enormous cliff. High above, a wide expanse of water surged over the brink. I looked down and felt my sense of balance disappear. The water fell a sobering distance before crashing into a bed of jagged rocks.

I continued until the water dispersed and disappeared altogether. There was a bend in the ledge and the texture of the cliff changed from solid rock to the grainy quality of dirt. My hands were white from the tension of pulling myself to the wall. A burning sensation in my arms warned me I couldn’t hold on much longer.

The cliff face connected with the flat side of a hill. The crest was just about in reach. I curled my fingers around the hilltop and felt tufts of grass feed between my fingertips, allowing me a firmer purchase.

There were a series of staggered holes in the dirt wall, as if someone had hung off the top and kicked out footholds. The dirt must have been soft enough to do that, which didn’t fill me with confidence attempting to scale it. But there wasn’t any other option. At least, I didn’t have enough time to find one. I placed a foot into one of the holes and pushed off, extending my reach over the hilltop. I was then able to step into the next set of footholds, launch myself up and roll onto the hill.

The instant relief on my body felt incredible. I laid on my back, panting for breath and waiting for the feeling to return in my arms and legs.

I did it. I was free of the cave.

The sky was stretched above, an azure blanket of infinite reach, unmarked but for the midday sun. It was the first time I had seen it, undistorted by the lens of the waterfall. Warm rays kissed my skin and made the hairs on my arms stand on end. I would have laid there and marvelled at it for longer had I not already missed being on my feet. Five days on your back will do that to you. 

I stood up and surveyed miles of pastures and rolling hills that sloped this way and that, leading nowhere and everywhere, eventually meeting the sky at the horizon.

A shadow of hopelessness crept up on me. I didn’t have a plan anymore. I escaped the cave, but hadn't considered what I would do after that.

Where should I go? How would I know when I got there?

A rush of wind came from behind, whipping my hair into a frenzy. The moment it passed, a sharp point touched the back of my neck and a soft voice whispered, “don’t move."

Everything about the situation told me I was in danger, but I wasn't sure how to react to it. Was I the kind of person who fell apart in moments like this? I turned around, slow enough not to startle the stranger, but fast enough so they couldn’t consider jamming their weapon in my neck.

I came face-to-face with a short woman wearing a brown, sleeveless cloak. Her hood was up and cast a shadow over her face—only her eyes, pale grey with a blue gleam, shone through. She clutched a metal throwing needle, the point of which was raised to my throat.

When our eyes met she gasped and stumbled backwards, falling on her butt. Her hood flew back, revealing a choppy mess of black hair.

“Your eyes!” she said, her voice high with astonishment.

Before I could ask what she meant, she snapped onto her feet. The movement was fast and unnatural, as if an invisible force had swept her up.

“It's not possible.” She raised the needle to my throat again.

“Could you point that thing, I don’t know, anywhere else?” I said. The words took even myself by surprise. Apparently, my first line of defence was provocation. I needed a new defence.

She hesitated but lowered the needle. I didn’t like the way she was staring at me; with a mixture of disbelief and curiosity.

“It's not possible," she said again. “You cannot be pure. You must be using soul magic.”

"I have no idea what you just said."

Her eyes narrowed. "Then you won't mind if I take you back to the city. The inspection is tomorrow. You can explain your purity to the royals and be on your way."

Again, I didn't understand a word she said. Obviously. I didn't even know my own name. But she mentioned a city, and that sounded like as good a place as any to start looking for answers.

"Lead the way," I said. I threw in a cocky smile for good measure.

Her expression flipped back to scepticism. Perhaps she wasn’t expecting me to call her bluff. She looked me up and down, sizing me up. Eventually, she shrugged and her face relaxed, though her eyes did not soften.

“To the city, then.” She tucked the needle inside her cloak, whirled around and began to amble up the edge of the hill.

“Um, that’s it?” I said, jogging after her. “You’re going to turn your back on me, just like that?”

“I am not in any danger from you.”

“Gee, thanks,” I said. “Look, I’m sure you’re great with that toothpick and everything, but let’s not kid ourselves here.”

“You are not going to attack me,” she said with finality. The way she strolled off, with or without me, eyes locked ahead, irritated me. Holding me at needle-point was one thing. This was just plain rude. She acted as if I posed as much threat as a dead fly.

“Care to explain that?” I asked, staring at the side of her head as it bobbed along in rhythm with her steps.

“There are two possibilities,” she said, as if it was so obvious it didn’t require an explanation. “The first and most unlikely, is that you really are pure, in which case you are not going to break your connection by attacking me.”

“I really hope I understand the second possibility.”

“Second,” she continued. “is that you are using soul magic to simply appear pure. Quite a draining craft, I hear. You would not have enough energy left for a fight with me.”

“I only need enough energy to fling you off this cliff.”

She didn’t respond. In fact, we stopped talking altogether. I didn’t understand half of what she said anyway, and I was probably one more ill-advised quip away from getting a needle in the eye.

The hill sloped upwards, curling to the brink of the cliff. We trekked for several minutes until the ground levelled out and we reached the river that fed the waterfall.

A stone track led along the bank. As we travelled, gravel crunching beneath our feet, I couldn’t peel my eyes away from the water. A few times I had to correct my path otherwise I would have stumbled over the edge and fallen in. Part of me wanted that to happen. It reminded me of how I felt before I left the cave, how I wanted to jump into the water and let it carry me away. The urge was more overwhelming this time, and not quite as easy to bury.

A bend in the track led away from the river and across a grassy plain that seemed to extend for miles. On the horizon, a dark green band stretched from point to point, too far to identify.

The further away we travelled from the river, the more my desire of wanting to stay with it, to join it, continued to grow. With every step, desire turned to yearning, which in turn gave way to absolute compulsion. The blood seemed to stop pumping through my veins and I couldn’t remember the last time I had taken a breath.

When did I stop moving?

The woman must have heard my footsteps cease because she spun around and shot me an exasperated glare. “Why are we stopped?”

“I-I can’t go on,” I said, hating that I stuttered, hating the shame of having to even say those words.

“If you already need a break, then—”

“No, it’s not that . . .” I took a deep breath, unable to believe what I was about to say. The words were at the back of my throat, and before I knew it, flew out.

“I can’t leave the river!”

I had just enough time to register the shock on her face before I lost control, turned back and ran flat out.

Nothing else mattered. Nothing else existed. It was just me, the river, and the painful gap in between, which I was closing as fast as my body would allow.

A streak of brown overtook me, accompanied by a gust of wind so powerful it almost swept me off the path along with it. Dirt kicked into the air, peppering my skin, forcing me to shield my eyes and run blind. I gave it time to settle before looking ahead. It was impossible, yet there she was, hands on hips, legs apart, casually observing me barrel towards her.

"Stop him," she said. To who, I had no idea.

A blast of wind slammed into me head-on, blowing my hair back and halting me mid-stride. I expected it to pass, but it was a continuous, unrelenting force. It may as well have been a solid wall. I pushed my shoulders forward and tucked my head in, yet no matter how much I struggled against it, I couldn't take another step.

"You're making a mistake," the woman called out, just audible over the roar of wind, which I realised had no effect on her whatsoever.

"Are you doing this?" I yelled, face twisted with rage.

"If you enter this river you will not come out again."

"I know what I'm doing," I lied, trying and failing to wrestle my way forward. "Let me go!"

"You have drawn power from this river. You must give it back.”

The wind ceased. I had been pushing against it so hard that the sudden absence of opposing force sent me sprawling forward onto my knees. But it wasn’t over. Another gale smashed into me, this one from behind. A familiar sensation washed over me; it was like when I touched the waterfall and felt it pour into my body.

But instead of giving me energy, the wind took it away.

Every ounce of power was leeched from my body, sapped from my fingers and toes, pulled from my arms and legs and wrenched through my chest. Not only did I feel that was true, I saw it. Tiny, iridescent orbs of light withdrew from my torso, carried toward the river by the airstream.

When the last orb left my chest, I collapsed onto the path, lightheaded and struggling to breathe. It was the cave all over again. My body was limp with exhaustion. I could only lay and wait for the world to end.

“How do you feel?”

She sounded close, but I had not heard her approach. The effort of rolling over to face her was painful to even consider, so I remained staring at the plains, unseeing.

“I have no energy.”

“Your body is weak, yes,” she said. “But do you feel yourself again? Are your thoughts your own?”

“I don’t want to jump in the river anymore, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Something slid under my legs and neck, and I was lifted off the ground. I braced myself for something painful (like a needle) but nothing happened. Instead, the woman carried me over to the riverbank and laid me on my back. 

“I will help you heal,” she said, sitting on an incline beside me and gazing into the water.

“Why?” I asked. “So you can take me to the city and make me be part of some ritual—”

“Inspection,” she corrected.

“Whatever. It still doesn’t sound like a tea party.”

“No, it doesn’t,” she agreed. There was a long silence before she continued. “I must take you to the city tomorrow so that you can see the inspection. You need to understand what it means to be pure.”

“Pure? You’ve made up your mind, then.”

“There is no longer a question of your purity. You could not have drawn that much power from the river unless your connection to it was absolute.”

“I still don’t know what that means. I don’t know what any of this means.”

There was another long pause. When she spoke, her voice was knotted with uncertainty. “I sense you are on a path you did not choose, in a world you do not understand.”

“Sounds about right,” I said, my voice growing faint.

“You must heal now. Close your eyes.”

Why not? It wasn’t like I was safer with them open. She could have killed me a thousand times and I wouldn’t have been able to lift a finger to stop her.

“Be still and listen,” she said, her voice gentle, slow. “You must understand Char before you can use its power.”

She must have sensed my snarky comeback because she continued in a hurry. “Char is the name of our world and the origin of all creations. Everything is protected by Char’s power.”

“Protected? Two minutes ago, you made it seem like the river wanted to eat me.”

“You took power that was not yours. There are consequences for such acts.”

“Like what? What would have happened?”

“Your connection is not just to Char, it is to all of its creations. Think of everything around you as an extension of Char, and a conduit to its power. The river. The grass. The air. Even you and I. Our physical vessels separate us, but spiritually we are united. That is why drawing power from another vessel should be a last resort. When you drew from the river, the physical barrier between you began to fade, until you were consumed by the need to join it. Had I not intervened, only one vessel would remain.

“Wait. You’re saying the river would have killed me?”

“Your vessel would cease to exist, yes.”

“And the rest of me?”

“Your spirit would have been bound to the river for eternity.”

“Oh,” I said, my voice little more than a soft exhale. “So how do I use Char’s power and not have that happen?”

She rose to her feet in one fluid movement and walked out of my peripheral vision.

“Where are you going?” I attempted to turn my head -- it was like trying to roll a boulder up a hill.

Her voice already sounded distant, each word more faded than the last. “You must be hungry. I will return before nightfall with food. Stay there.”

Stay there. She had a sense of humour after all. And she was right. I was hungry. At least, I guessed that was what the aches and grumbles in my stomach meant.

I was also defenceless. It seemed careless of her to leave me out in the open like that. She said I was protected by Char, which meant there was something to be protected from. Did she really trust Char to ensure my safety?

Her words replayed in my head, over and over, as if something would click and make everything fall into place. The words sounded as clear in my mind as when she had spoken them a moment ago.

“Your connection is not just to Char.”

I would have struggled to believe that, had I not already felt my connection to the waterfall, the link that joined us beyond the physical world.

But did that connection really extend to everything else?

As I lay, the midday sun beating down on my paralysed body, I closed my eyes and focused on my surroundings. The loose soil beneath me, the gentle breeze whispering against my skin, the scent of grass in the air, the rush of water filling my ears . . .

“Our physical vessels separate us . . . “

I felt something shift -- if felt was even the operative word.

Until that moment, I thought I consisted of two components; my physical body (or vessel, as she had called it) and my mind. But my self-awareness began to expand, making room for a third component, one I did not recognise but knew without hesitation or question was necessary to my survival. This part of me lived outside my mind, at the edge of my very existence, where the physical world was long forgotten and something greater laid beyond.

It was the furthest point my consciousness could go—everything that was me ended there, at a closed door.

“Spiritually, we are united.”

The door cracked open. Whatever was on the other side was too extraordinary for my imagination to accept. My eyes shot open, and a warm pulse reverberated throughout my vessel. I gasped, my back arching off the ground.

Energy. Life. Power – whatever it was, poured into me, animating my muscles and revitalising my body.

As quick as it started, the pulse fizzled away. The door closed, cutting off my connection to Char – I realised then that it could only be Char behind the door, and for the first time, understood that I had direct access to something greater than anything I could ever comprehend.