Rynth: Four Beats

| 6th of Teryusin — Year 362 of the Cycle of Synthesis, Grand Cycle ??? |

“Raoul, if I may have a moment of your time?”

Her voice stood out without question amongst the sea that was his friends and Krocko. He turned. They hadn’t heard her words. She pressed a finger to her lips, and then gestured for him to follow her past a door at the corner of the office. It’s definitely something important, he thought.

“Sorry,” he raised a hand to excuse himself. “I have something I need to ask Miss Marrow. I’ll be back in a bit.”

His sudden departure brought on a few raised eyebrows from his friends, but they didn’t seem to question it much and gave him their own approving nods. Raoul quickly paced past the desk in the middle and crossed the threshold into a records room. Dozens of bookshelves, all lined to the nines with thick, dusty color-coded folders aired up the dim. Jhestine wasn’t there, but instead found behind a shut sliding glass door that led to a spacious balcony populated by two small chairs.

Talk about privacy, he thought to himself, wrenching the door off to the side before shutting it back tightly. “Do you need something, Miss Marrow? You sent me a telepathic message.”

Her back faced him, eyes focused on the bustling streets below.

“Yeah, I have something I want to tell you. But I would like you to humor me for a short moment. How much do you know about the Cycles?”

“In what way?”

She held off, pondering her next words before shooting him a glance. “In general.”

“If you’re referring to the Cycles as a time period, then I’d have to quote my college textbook. It’s a way for us to place a tangible name to the various technological advancements we Rynthians have gone through.” He cut himself off, suddenly remembering his initial conversation with Krocko and how closely related in subject it was to the current. “Ah. I’m about to go onto a scholarly tangent again.”

“No, it’s okay!” reassured Jhestine, waving a hand off to gesture to him to continue. “Please keep going.”

Raoul flashed her a confused glance, but nonetheless shrugged and returned to recalling what he knew of the topic at hand. “As of the current Grand Cycle, we have gone through twelve Cycles. Awakening, Convergence, Shaping, Order, Exchange, Inquiry, Expansion, Industry, Integration, Innovation, Modernity, and Synthesis, which is the current. Encompassing this all is The Wheel, a colossal structure of magnificent proportions that is used to record when Rynthians progress fully to a new point in society. It turns when such an event happens.”

She pressed both her palms together and offered him an earnest series of golf claps. “You’re very learned for someone so young. I’m assuming you also know about the Grand Cycles.”

The phrase often triggered a number of different reactions depending on the person. What was the typical layman’s reaction to knowing they and everything they knew about the world was merely a footnote in the countless more that the universe had grown, experienced, and reset? What of the knowledge that the current day could be their last? One moment, a joyous father might be playing in the park with their child or embracing their spouse. The next they could be consumed in world-ending flame and burning in their own orifices.

“I recall as much as I’ve been taught. It’s been written, notated, and immortalized in all forms of media. My favorite telling of it is a fable called “The Last Flame”.”

“I’ve heard of that one. It’s about a red dragon wyrmling that expresses its desire to its parents to leave the lair and explore the world. Supposedly, it carried a fragment of Pneficus Kadore’s World-Cleansing Flame and felt the sudden dimness in its chest and realized that the end was near. It’s a well-known story that teaches people to live their lives to the fullest every single day.”

Looking back, it was probably a great contributor to why Raoul admired his father’s work.

“The reason I say this, Raoul, is because I wanted to levy a deep burden onto your shoulders. As a mentor, I firmly believe the best way for a person to grow is to know what lies beyond their sights and make sure they achieve it in the least painful way possible. There is no reason to yearn for power when it asks you to sacrifice your humanity or life for it. Maybe that’s why I never got along with warlocks.”

She continued, turning to face Raoul fully before placing a contrasting gentle hand on his shoulder. “When you first visited Apaxian Dynamics a few days ago and went through your Cycle and Emergence testing, we… saw something we hadn’t even thought was possible. Our records have few mentions of someone like you.”

“Miss Marrow, you’re making me squeal by making me wait.”

“...Haha, sorry. I suppose I owe it to you to say this plain and simple: you’re an outlier, Raoul. You hold the potential to attune and wield every Cycle on The Wheel while Driving.”

Was it possible to have eyebrows raised that high? Raoul couldn’t help but pause when those words left Jhestine’s lips. He deliberated on the meaning of the revelation for a bit. Awakening already granted him near-precognition and a devastating increase to his general perception. Objects that he previously gleaned with a great level of detail from far away had recently started seeming like they were directly in front of him. Not just that, his people-reading had improved as well. A single tentative glance at the eyes or the small microexpressions, or even just the actions of an unaware person allowed him to make effective guesswork on their entire personage. What did the other Cycles grant?

“I… that’s quite a revelation, Miss Marrow. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You’d already left by the time I could see for myself, but it was unmistakable once I inspected the screens. Your Path didn’t just exude Awakening energy, but also Convergence, Shaping, and practically every single other Cycle.”

“I’m not sure how I should proceed knowing this.”

“Well, we could think back to why it’s even possible in the first place. It isn’t uncommon for Drivers to drive one, two, or even three Cycles. The common point with each one of them is that they only have one Nature Cycle, while the rest are Creeds. A Nature Cycle is what you as a person are in line with intrinsically—it’s like if you were to take a personality test, only this one is infinitely more accurate than those could ever be.”

She continued. “Creed Cycles are different. They require you to believe in the principles they and the people that lived in it uphold. You’re powering it with pure conviction and belief, unlike Nature Cycles that function from both you as a person and your belief. You can’t embody it fully because that isn’t you as a person. It isn’t your personality. It’s weaker in that light.”

“But you..” She looked straight into his eyes, trying to peer into the depths of his soul. “You don’t have Creed Cycles. Your Awakening is a Nature Cycle, and if you rise up to awaken more, then I have no doubt that future Cycles will also be in your Nature. Would you maybe know why?”

“I…” Raoul trailed off, frantically searching his own mind for something that could satisfy an answer. “I suppose I’ve always been really good at easing into anyone’s good light. I recall befriending the entirety of all my classes throughout grade school. I always meshed really well with everyone, from the shy and quiet ones to the outgoing and loud ones. It only stopped when my mother forcibly changed me.”

“A social chameleon… It could be possible, but millions of people like you exist in the world. If it really was that simple, we’d have an actual term for omni-Cycle Drivers. No, I’m afraid there has to be something else. A bigger, more esoteric reason that distinguishes you from everybody in the world. But there’s no use thinking of it now.”

She patted his shoulder twice before pulling away. “You’ll be leaving Cias Buril soon, so I want you to keep an eye out. If you figure out anything, then do send me a text the next time you’re in a city with internet. That should be all. Thank you for talking with me.”

Raoul didn’t move for a few seconds. He was still contemplating on what to do. His mind landed on an answer for himself a short while later.

It wasn’t like anything had changed fundamentally about him in those tense few minutes. He was special, sure, but so were the people that would journey alongside him. As far as he was concerned, they were future aspects of his growth that he would hopefully tick down like events on a bucket list. And that was all that he needed for now.

When he finally returned to the office proper, everyone else was waiting for him.

“There you are!” Idri piped up, waving a hand to coax him over. “We were just talking about heading out to the train station. We don’t have any business left in the city.”

“I don’t see why not. The earlier we leave the better.” Raoul nodded.

“I’ll see you guys off just before the train station,” Krocko said. “Might be the last time we’re seeing each other for a while, so.”