(50) As You Wish
***Author's Note***
Now that there are 50 chapters posted, I will be moving back to my originally planned posting schedule of M-W-F. Thanks so much to everyone who's read this far!
You can also read up to chapter 94 on Patreon, if you're interested. Feel free to hop in the Discord as well! 😊
***End Author's Note***
The giant walked ahead, Tara following behind. From this angle, she noticed some peculiarities. Well, he was already peculiar enough, but there were some additional things that stood out.
He had huge, muscled arms crossed in front of him as he walked, the veins bulging from his skin. He was completely hairless as far as she could see, and the horns atop his head were irregular, some pointing straight up, others curving, and still others pointing this way and that.
The strangest thing was the second pair of arms, much smaller than the first, clasped behind his back. Those, while looking rather normal for a human fighter, looked positively vestigial on the giant, who towered over eight feet tall, at least.
The arms did not appear atrophied or sickly; in fact, cords of agile muscles lined them, yet sitting just below the giant arms, they could only appear like those of a flightless bird.
The pair walked along the passage in silence, the light growing brighter with every step. Tara was contemplative, considering all that she had just been through, but she could only restrain herself for so long.
‘So, did I pass?” she finally asked.
“Pass? Pass what?” Myra replied, not looking back.
“You know, all that stuff. The passage, the cavern. Did I pass the test?” Tara clarified.
Myra was silent for a moment, seemingly considering before he responded.
“Some that have come to this mountain have called it ‘The Gauntlet’, but they, like you, have misunderstood its purpose. The passage through the mountain is not a test for you to succeed or fail. It is a challenge meant to draw out and highlight your strengths and weaknesses.
“You might consider it a preliminary rubric,” he chuckled, “else I would not have an idea of what to teach you.”
“You teach…fighting, right? Is it that complicated to figure out? Surely everyone just starts at a slightly different base,” Tara reasoned.
“What I teach, some boil down to fighting, but it is far more to me, as you will see,” Myra replied cryptically, still not so much as glancing back.
A silence passed between them for several long moments before Tara, again, could contain herself no longer.
“Well, what are my strengths and weaknesses, then?” she asked.
“That, I hope you will discover for yourself,” Myra said, chuckling again.
Tara huffed. Speaking with him was more frustrating than speaking with Nephthys, which was saying something.
They walked the path again, silent. Tara ran through her time in the cave once more, trying to suss out what he might have learned from her ‘performance’. Eventually, she recalled the end of the maze, and her mood soured further.
“Was it…all real? Were the things in the cave real? The snake? The…ogre?” she asked haltingly.
“Life will not always provide you with the closure you seek, dear child. You must learn to live with uncertainties and accept them,” he lectured. He paused and looked back over his shoulder at her. “And, perhaps, regrets.”
Tara followed, though she began to trail farther behind. She stared at the ground, moving lethargically.
“Perhaps it will be of no comfort to you, but know that every decision you have ever made, the good and the bad, has led you to the person you are today. In this way, successes and failures have forged you into your current form, and future successes and failures will continue to refine you.
“You may acquire regrets, may have them already, but it is those regrets that push you to do better, to be better, in the future. No decision you have ever made, even the bad, has been a waste,” Myra finished, allowing a blanket of silence to fall over them once again.
Tara sighed as she walked, picking up the pace, catching up with him. She must have appeared pretty dour for him to try to comfort her, though his message was one that had already buried itself in her heart long ago. If she could distill her entire life thus far into a single message, it would be to keep moving forward.
At last, after what must have been half an hour of walking, the pair broke out of the cave and into the clearest air Tara had ever felt. It bit at her and stung her skin like a thousand tiny needles and threatened the breath in her lungs, but it was like nothing she had ever experienced: clear, fresh, untainted.
“You will want to wear this. Your master thought ahead well. The coat will keep you warm, but more importantly, it will keep the breath in your lungs. The air up here will suffocate you within minutes,” Myra said, tossing the thick fur back to her.
She bundled up quickly, the familiar shield covering her body once again. She sighed in relief. Apparently, it was not just in her mind that the air felt like it was being stolen from her lungs.
She approached Myra, who stood atop a rocky shelf with a perilously steep drop. Gazing out over the mountain range, Tara’s breath was nearly stolen from her yet again. Peaks stretched toward the sky as far as her eyes could see, though she clearly stood atop the tallest.
Some were tall and slender, others were short and thick, but all seemed poised to snatch the sun from the sky, reaching ever for what lay beyond the blue. Snow-capped peaks were the entire vista, not a single patch of green visible, yet the scene’s beauty was unmatched.
“Behind, find my code,” Myra said, turning around and extending an arm toward the cliffside.
Next to the archway they had just exited through were carved six words in plain, huge lettering.
“Strength
Discipline
Determination
Wisdom
Compassion
Balance”
“Strength: Will you act when you must? Discipline: Will you abstain when you must? Determination: Will you continue forward when you must? Wisdom: How will you move when you must? Compassion: Will you move for others when you must? Balance: None by itself is the solution, only harmony,” Myra finished, lowering his arm.
Tara stared at the words, considering what Myra had said as he continued.
“This is my code. It is a rather martial code, but it is a code nonetheless. This is what I teach. Fighting is only one part of life, and it is not—must not be—the primary aspect of one’s character. Fight when you must, be restrained when you can, and seek peace in all things.”
“Respectable, if ambiguous,” Nephthys suddenly said.
Tara jumped to her tiptoes but, remembering she was in the presence of both Nephthys and Myra, caught herself, lowering from her toes slowly as she turned around.
Nephthys floated cross-legged in the air behind them, over the edge of the cliff, her arms crossed, seemingly uncaring for the drop below.
“Indeed. As I said, this is what I teach. It must be vague enough that students can adapt it to their own lives, should they choose. Even if they choose not to follow any of my tenets, it is the consideration that is important,” Myra explained, not even turning to look at Nephthys.
“Agreed. Having a code of morals and ethics that can be spelled out, rather than just an idea of things that are ‘good’ and ‘bad’, is important, lest one float through life, blowing whichever way the wind carries them,” Nephthys said, nodding.
“Well, now we come to it,” Myra suddenly said, the topic change abrupt. He turned around and stared Nephthys in the eyes, and she returned the stare.
“You wish me to train young Tara, Starchild?” Myra asked.
Starchild?
“Indeed. Tara will learn magic from me, but she must be able to defend herself in the meantime. She has ample strength, but she needs refinement,” Nephthys replied, not breaking the stare.
“I see. You are aware that you have created a shortcut for her, deprived her of the journey to my mountain?” Myra interrogated.
“I am. I was hoping you could overlook it.”
The two stared for several long moments, during which a sweat broke out on Tara’s back. Suddenly, Myra unfolded all four of his arms and seemed to tense, his muscles bulging.
“Very well. However, I will need some reassurances from you, Starchild,” he said, crouching into an obvious combat stance.
Nephthys stared at him, and though Tara expected her to sigh exasperatedly, as she had with everyone else who picked a fight with her, she did not. Instead, she floated over to the edge of the cliff to stand before crouching into a stance of her own.
Something in the air had shifted, Tara noted. The crisp, clean air suddenly felt heavy, laden with what she did not know, but it pressed down on her like a physical force.
“Very well,” she said.
What is happening? They’re not really going to—
Tara’s thoughts were interrupted by a burst of motion. It was so quick that she could not see it, only its aftereffects.
The ground cratered where Myra had once stood, and a shockwave from over the edge of the cliff tossed Tara’s hair back. Myra and Nephthys now faced each other in the air, several feet away from the cliff edge, both in a defensive stance, and both staring at each other.
“Do not insult me by attempting physical combat. I know it is not your specialty. You declined my training a couple of centuries ago, after all,” Myra said, his voice booming across the range.
“As you wish,” Nephthys replied, her voice reaching Tara’s ears strangely, as if they stood next to each other.
Nephthys suddenly vanished, just as clouds began to gather and swirl in the sky. The sight was strange, as they were clearly above where natural clouds would form. In fact, the vista before her saw a blanket of white clouds hugging mountains far below their peaks.
The unnatural clouds gathering were dyed a purple hue, and they swirled as if forming a tornado. Suddenly, a flare ignited in the center of them, a purple fire overtaking the clouds and swirling around. Nephthys appeared in the middle of it, and she extended her hand toward Myra.
Flashes of blinding light forced Tara into rapid blinking as bolts of purple lightning struck out at Myra. It was so fast that she could not see it, not to mention the blinding light, but Tara could have sworn she glimpsed Myra deflecting the lightning with his hands, but that could not be right.
Nephthys brought both her hands forward, palms facing Myra, and the entire cloud of purple fire pressed toward him. It seemed to twist and shift in its flight, becoming a great inferno serpent set to devour the giant whole. Tara shuddered, reminded of the snake in the hole.
When the flame snake impacted Myra, he met it with arms outstretched, his palms meeting the serpent’s jaws. The inferno poured past him, pushing him backward through the air.
Tara grimaced as the flames rushed toward her. There would be no dodging the purple serpent. It was big enough to sear the cap off this entire mountain. She would simply evaporate when it hit.
She closed her eyes, a strange sense of irony making her throat vibrate with hysteria.
Was she about to die because her two masters got carried away?
The flames smashed into the side of the mountain, yet Tara felt no more than a gentle breeze. The piles of snow along the path did not sizzle and melt, nor did the stone glow and liquify from the heat. It was as if they were ghostly or illusory flames.
Myra skidded to a halt just dozens of feet from Tara, shaking his smoking fists out, as if to cool them.
Nephthys, a tiny dot in the sky, suddenly glowed purple. The firmament flashed, and a huge moon appeared, dominating the sky, as if mocking Tara for thinking Myra was a giant. It seemed to glare down its violet light in disgust at all who writhed beneath it.
Nephthys appeared in the sky only a hundred-or-so feet from Myra, staring down at him, her halo of stars orbiting her head rapidly, the void visible through cracks in her skin glowing with radiant, angry light. Her disinterested eyes gazed at him, as if echoing the moon’s disdain.
Myra grimaced, clenching his fists tightly and crouching down.
Nephthys raised her hands slowly toward the sky, stars descending and orbiting around her, swirling closer and closer until they were a whirlpool of light that she wore as a cloak.
She lowered her left arm and raised her right, the light shifting to drape it like the sleeves of a long robe. She opened her hand, facing her palm toward Myra, and he braced with all of his strength, the muscles in his legs rippling and tightening.
However, the stars did not launch from her wrist. Instead, Myra suddenly shifted around, falling to his knees, a look of bewilderment on his face. His right foot, the one he had been bracing against the ground the hardest, had sunk into the stone up to his ankle, and the ground seemed to have shifted him off balance.
At the same time, the moon vanished, taking the stars with it. Only the clear blue sky was overhead, as if defying what Tara had seen with her own eyes.
Nephthys stood with her left hand behind her back, and her right hand was against Myra’s neck, the two at eye-level now that he had fallen. Her index and middle fingers were extended from her fist, the sharp nails poking him, depressing the skin on his neck, but not harming him.
Tara recognized this posture from sparring with Nephthys. This was her kill-sign, her indication that the fight was over, that her opponent would be dead if she so desired.
Myra’s look of astonishment faded, gradually replaced by a chuckle that boomed into a belly laugh, filling the mountain range with its mirth.