‘The water will continue to rise.’
‘But one day it will spill onto the land and no longer be as it was.’
‘It will return to the earth, as all must one day,’ concluded Raquel. ‘Until then, its surface will always find calm again.’
‘Then one heals because that is the nature of being,’ said Jaden. ‘The ripples won’t last forever, and when there are too many stones, one will find death. One returns to what they were … the cycle continues. But how do I heal?’
Raquel directed her gaze to his chest, and he picked up the crystal from around his neck and placed it between his eyes. Raquel joined him a moment later on the tower, both looking out over the broken city of his mind.
‘The damage here is from generations,’ said Raquel.
‘My ancestors?’ asked Jaden, looking again at the ruins below.
Raquel nodded.
‘Their tragedies are passed onto me,’ said Jaden unsurely.
‘Just as their talents. Be gracious in knowing that there is a city to be in ruins.’
Raquel moved back through the single door behind them, and Jaden followed to find that there were no stairways in the room now, only another door at the end.
‘This changes every time I come here,’ Jaden observed.
‘One may only go where one is ready to travel,’ said Raquel, and she walked through the door ahead.
Jaden walked with her into a world of red and orange, of a desert of dried mud, cracked and broken as the water had dried up long ago. There were some black and dead trees still lying around in places. He recognised it as the lake he now sat beside in the real world. There were stones on what once had been the lakebed, but they were not the cause of the water disappearing. Something else had taken it away, but what he was not sure.
‘All changes,’ he said.
‘The water goes where it must.’
‘But I have a choice.’
‘You can heal,’ said Raquel, and she walked to him and held both his hands.
Steam began to rise around them as they closed their eyes and became silent. Jaden felt the warmth all over him, entering him as he breathed it in and it moved around his entire body. He could feel a burn at his right shoulder as the steam reached it, and then a tingling sensation. For what seemed hours, they remained in the steam, before Raquel finally released his hands and they exited the crystal’s realm.
Jaden opened his eyes and moved his right shoulder. There was no longer pain in it or a mark of where the boulder had hit. Raquel sat facing him with her eyes still closed. She had helped heal him somehow. The crystal must have been able to concentrate the body’s systems, allowing it to repair much faster than normal, perhaps aided further by the power Raquel possessed. The tower and city were his mind, but he was only allowed to explore a little of it, and it seemed to be aware of what he needed most each time he entered. He guessed some day, when he was ready, it would allow him to walk among the thousands of ruins he had seen below. But he did not know when that would be, and as much as he wanted to stay and find out more, he knew he had already spent too long with Raquel. He had to get to Corsec to deliver his message. It would most likely already be too late to deliver the message to the people of Ceahlin that they were welcome in Waikor. All he could hope for was that they had gone there anyway, and that Adonis and Blair were protecting Alyssa as they had promised.
‘I want to learn more,’ said Jaden. ‘But I need to get back to Waikor. Alyssa will be there.’
Raquel bowed slowly.
‘Will I see you again?’ he asked.
‘A path can be chosen, but not always where it leads.’
Jaden nodded, thinking he understood, and he got up to leave. He paused, and then knelt down again. He put his hands on either side of Raquel’s neck and lowered his head to hers in the embrace he had seen the statues in at the Daijuarn monastery. Her skin was the smoothest, softest thing he had ever touched and it felt as if it were sending constant waves of energy through him, hundreds each second. He wasn’t sure if the endobraces were reacting to her power or it was something about the Daijuarn embrace that connected them this way, but he knew he wanted to feel these sensations forevermore.
‘Thank you,’ he said, reluctantly ending the embrace.
Raquel kept her eyes closed, but smiled. Jaden took one last look at the beautiful woman in front of him, and then hopped off the ledge, making his way north. He would travel night and day until he reached Corsec, and then he would return to Waikor, where he hoped to find Alyssa. She would be there, unless Lendon, the Kayde of Ceahlin, had decided to stand and fight the Alliance alone, a possibility he shuddered at. Even with Adonis and Blair protecting them, the military force on its way would surely overpower the city and the Daijuar. Their only chance at salvation was to get to Waikor.