Rising Shards

Dr. Diast lined us all up by the tree in our void node, our usual spot for her in void pep talks. Despite the fire inside me that desperately wanted to fix things inspired by my talk with Arctus, I hadn’t even walked to any of my classes with Oka and Kalei or sat by them for like a whole week of classes. It sucked. It reminded me again of how much I sucked.

“So as I said in class, this thing has been named lots of different stuff. The center point, usually a temple, has also been called a tormentament. The process itself of going in there for the first time and getting your vision is commonly called Jump Fifteen, but it can also be called a memory trial—”

“Why?” Aira asked.

“I uh, well,” Diast said. “Because…you know…wait, which the tormentament or the Jump Fifteen?”

“Because the Cani scientists who discovered it had to test fifteen ‘jumps’ to verify the occurrence.” Lillia said.

“Thank you, Lillia, I completely froze up there. And now my own students will think I don’t know anything.”

“I mean, did we ever?” Kalei said.

Diast swatted Kalei with rolled-up papers, then explained the deal with her, me and Oka going in first. Lillia glared at me when Diast said I had gone into the temple accidentally first, which was really scary.

“While they’re doing their jumping and fifteening, the rest of you are going to determine the order for the rest of the trips.” Diast said.

“Why?” Aira asked.

“Because I already asked the rest of you what order you’d want to go in and you and Kalei nearly started wrestling.”

“I guess that makes sense,” Aira said.

“I wanted to show my physical dominance to prove I was deserving of the second to last one.” Kalei said.

“And that would have gotten you suspended, and you would definitely have not gotten second to last. And now you have a chance to!” Diast said. “Plus, I literally just told you you were going first or second, why are you talking about second to last? Seriously, was there extra sugar in the food this week? This is like wrangling toddlers. And not that reality show Wranglin’ Toddlers on the reality network, that show is completely fake. CGI babies.”

Somehow, the topic of Wranglin' Toddlers got Aira and Lillia in a heated debate. While they argued, Diast leaned close to Oka, Kalei, and I. “You guys wanna just go? This is gonna take a while. You can just walk up now, I made sure it’s unlocked.”

I nodded and headed down the sloping grass, hearing Diast bark out commands to try and calm the group down, and Laenie’s cries of terror after Diast fired off a warning blast of energy from her bloodsaber into the sky.

We stopped at the doors to the temple and the three of us had a real awkward pause. I turned to Kalei.

“Hey, so—” I said.

“I was such—” Kalei said.

We both stumbled over whatever we were trying to say.

“Let’s just try to get through this,” I said.

“Right,” Kalei said.

Oka didn’t say anything.

“Are you alright?” I asked, leaning onto a ledge that had a weird sludgy substance on it like melted moss.

Oka flinched, and her eyes widened in a way that looked like she had just woken up.

“Oh! Hey, sorry,” Oka said. “This is just. Kind of really weird for me.”

“I’m not really used to it either,” I said. I guess I had fights with Jeans constantly, but this one didn’t have the same feeling.

“What do you mean?” Oka said.

“Like how things have been super awkward between us this whole week?” Kalei said. “The fight?”

“Oh,” Oka said. “I wasn’t even thinking of…”

“What were you thinking of then?” I asked.

Oka sighed. “I’m…not sure I’m ready to face my memory trial. Or my Jump Fifteen, whatever.”

“I could go first,” Kalei offered. “This thing just beams a bunch of memories at us, right?”

“Kinda,” I said as I smeared the sludge on the door’s handle while opening it, feeling a little warbly as we passed through. The main room of the temple looked just like we left it. I was worried Oka or Kalei would have the demented monster looking version of their statues, but instead Kalei’s looked pretty much the same, just with her eyes closed. Oka’s remained unchanged. Maybe the place knew we were going to Kalei first?

“Alrighty.” Kalei said. “So what am I…doing here?”

“We just go through your door,” Oka said. “Then it starts.”

“Huh,” Kalei said. She tapped her foot.

“If you want, I could go first too—” Oka said.

“No, no,” Kalei said. “I’m just trying to think about what my thing would be.” She shrugged. “Guess we’ll find out.”