Chapter 57

  Hektor was giddy with anticipation.

  It was one of the few things that Hektor had been looking forward to upon coming to Roheim, but something always came up that prevented him from following through.

  Duties and tasks, appointments and meetings, responsibilities and expectations; things had a tendency of getting in the way. There was so much to do and Hektor couldn’t help but be diligent in his work and meticulous in proceeding with forethought.

  For most, it wouldn’t seem so from the outside looking in. It was only that Hektor worked in the medium of subtlety and discretion that his endeavor wasn’t abundantly clear for all to see.

  It didn’t help that Hektor wasn’t vainly concerned with how he was perceived. He cared, he couldn’t afford not to, but he was more preoccupied with doing things properly and correctly the first time round rather than worrying about his public image. Rather, he adhered to the stipulation that if he did his duty right and served his people well, his reputation would take care of itself.

  Ten days thence, and the time had finally come!

  Hektor was ready and waiting. As soon as his watch obliged to show three o’clock, Hektor was up and on the move. He had just stepped out of his quarters that the neighboring door opened to show Gideon ready and prepared to accompany him.

  “Morning,” Hektor greeted in a hushed tone, not wanting to disturb the tranquil silence that came with late nights and early mornings when any and all loudness went the way of taboo.

  The pair quietly made their way through the keep. Even as early as three in the morning, the fort was never truly unmanned as assigned guards patrolled their nightshifts.

  Without causing a furor, Hektor and Gideon emerged from the keep and onto the outdoor courtyard. The night had a pleasant chill, the slight breeze not letting the moist humidity to settle. The waning moon wasn’t enough to overcome the shadows of the outer walls, but for the lampposts that were brought and installed methodically for just such a purpose of illuminating the fort at nighttime.

  Crossing over to the stables, the pair took their prepared mounts and rode out inconspicuously into the night.

  Both of them aether-blessed, Hektor and Gideon could see more clearly in the dark and found traversal much easier than it should have been. All the same, Gideon edged out ahead to lead.

  Descending the hill, Gideon turned not towards town, but in the opposite direction, eastwards. Hektor followed, having never taken the route before. Urging the horses at an easy canter, it was only a couple hundred meters or so that the path was left neglected to be encroached upon by wild flora and abandoned to the natural undulations of the terrain. Beyond a once pruned boundary, copse of trees and wild shrubbery grew by the wayside and it was more the general use throughout many a decade that marked the trail they were taking than any considerable effort in its upkeep.

  It was another thing added to Hektor’s list of things that could be made better.

  For the moment, however, Hektor let his mind wander and enjoyed his outing.

  Dark as it was, Hektor’s head was on a swivel as he took in what he could of his uncharted surroundings. While the rolling hills lost a bit of their charm in the gloom, the night sky never disappointed with its blanket of stars.

  At their languid pace, it took considerably longer than necessary, but both Hektor and Gideon weren’t of a mind to rush. Soon enough, they came across a shallow gorge between two rocky hills that served as the eastern crown of the valley that cocooned the fort and town.

  Traversing the pass, they came out the other side at the base of yet another cliff, this one much steeper. Hektor could see how the cliff-face angled perfectly to hide the gorge from afar, obscuring the entryway to the valley.

  By this time, the skies were showing a brighter hue.

  Suddenly there was an urgency as Hektor spurred his horse at a quicker trot. Arriving at the base of the cliff, the path diverged to go round on either side, but Hektor had been told by Jamie of a better way.

  Eager and excited as he was, Hektor wasn’t all too confident of charging up the steep incline on horseback. The trail was narrow, barely a meter wide that zig-zagged up the cliff. Hektor, of all people, was someone who knew his limits and wasn’t the daredevil to test his skill in riding.

  Hektor waited at the foot of the cliff just long enough for Gideon to arrive by his side when he dismounted, leaving the reins of his horse within Gideon’s reach.

  Leaving Gideon to worry about the horses, Hektor began his climb on foot. He started at a jog, allowing for his legs to find firm footing after the ride over. On finding his rhythm, Hektor increased his pace to lunging strides up the trail, even cutting the winding trail occasionally by outright climbing across certain sections. While Hektor didn’t consider himself the best horseman, he was plenty aware of his physical abilities.

  Little more than five minutes later Hektor reached the ascent and the view in front of him left him speechless.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  Hektor saw the sea for the very first time.

  There weren’t the words to describe what he felt. How he felt. Only that the experience had an almost tangible weight to it, that it felt more real somehow.

  In that moment, Hektor was spellbound. Overcome at such a wonder, enraptured to something verging on an epiphany and catharsis rolled into one, Hektor let the moment overcome him. He didn’t try to understand. Nor did he try to make sense of it, incapable as he was of rational thought or contemplating emotions.

  Living wholly in the moment as he stared out to the sea stretching into the horizon, Hektor simply took it all in with a reverence for something greater than his self.

  He didn’t even realize when Gideon appeared a few minutes later to stand beside him. Gideon, in his wisdom, didn’t intrude on the sacred moment and let his ward have his fill of awe and wonder.

  Meanwhile, time went out of sync for Hektor. One second, he was gazing out to the dark churning waters from afar, and the next second the skies had brightened and the sun was about to rise.

  For the second time that morning, Hektor was shaken to his core as he saw his first sunrise over a sea.

  Seeing it in person; paintings, poems and songs didn’t do it justice. There was something of the Divine that lingered at a seaside dawn, a moment of profoundness that lent itself to those who were fortunate enough to witness it.

  Attuned with something much greater than himself, Hektor’s heart raced. His eyes glimmered, his chest echoed and bellowed with wonderous emotion. Shivering with tingling fingers and toes, he felt that if he were to take a step, he would reach out to the horizon and beyond.

  The moment passed as quickly as it had come, leaving Hektor feeling small yet brimming with vitality and embraced by Beauty.

  “Thank you,” Hektor whispered.

  A thank you to the World.

  Midnights found Hektor on the roof of the keep, blindly sparring with Gideon.

  The strange occurrence was a new regimen concocted between Hektor and Gideon in pursuit of his magical training.

  The peculiar habit aligned with the fact that Hektor had always described his magic akin to a muscle and its function as a singular and new sensation that he discovered upon his awakening. Therein, Hektor saw his magic akin to a metaphorical muscle, and thus strived to strengthen it so as he would any other muscle; by means of tinkering and repetitive training.

  Generally, psychic mages with telekinetic magic were the more common fare amongst their kind. But no two mages were ever the same, nor was their magic.

  Hektor’s magic, however, subscribed to the more conventionally regarded abilities of telekinesis. That of exerting a physical force in his vicinity without exerting any physical input directly himself.

  The same description applied to the most beginner of telekinetic spells any novice wizard would learn at the start of their wizardry education.

  The difference would always be that Hektor had such abilities as an inherent trait, while a wizard could only access them through the medium of wizardry and spells.

  Another feature peculiar to Hektor was that his telekinesis had quirks in it of itself.

  For one, Hektor retained a tactile sensation through his magic, his telekinesis having a feel to it that he could discern. The closest comparison would be to the sensation of touch. In that Hektor would feel the shape and position of the object he affected telekinetically through his magical perception and not just by sight.

  And such was the attribute Hektor was hoping to train as he sparred with Gideon.

  Though spar was too misleading a description. Blindfolded, Hektor tried to read Gideon’s movements as he shadow-fought against him.

  Suffice to say that Hektor hadn’t arrived at such a convoluted method without trial and error.

  On his own, Hektor had been attuning his magical perception by trying to sense his surroundings through his telekinesis ever since his awakening. The result of two years’ worth of perseverance and endeavor amounted to that in a stationary setting, Hektor could form a vague map of his environment between a radius of four to five meters. However, any small movements, his own or in the vicinity, decreased his perception severely to the point that everything became vague and indistinct. And all attempts at using his sight and telekinetic perception at the same time only exasperated the problems.

  Diligent, or stubborn or passionate, as he was, Hektor persevered to find solutions.

  Starting with the disadvantage that he was secretive and too paranoid to involve anyone else in his magical education, the first and simplest experiment was with a rubber ball.

  Which had expectedly ended up a failure.

  Tossed, bounced or caught, the ball proved to be too ambitious a starting point. Even at the slowest speeds, the ball was too fast to perceive magically and Hektor repeatedly fell into the habit of anticipating the ball’s trajectory rather than tracking it.

  Months after, Hektor could bounce a ball on a wall and catch it with his telekinesis, but he couldn’t sense the same solely by his magic’s perception.

  Over time, Hektor had persevered and continued to try other methods. The results of which were that his control and finesse through telekinesis had grown by leaps and bounds, but his magical perception retained minimal gains. Even the small increase to his magical strength was considerably high when compared to its perception. He could telekinetically control two pens at once with enough precision to write different scripts legibly, but at the same time his magic couldn’t perceive a pen if someone threw one at him.

  It was a maddening dilemma. Hektor felt that the answer was at the tip of his tongue. That it was very possible. After all, he did have the ability to sense the shape of things in his sphere of influence. Following that train of thought, he should be able to ‘see’ with his magic.

  Hektor remained of the belief that there was more to his magic and what he could do with it. He often thought of his magic akin to a musical instrument, like a piano. Only the piano had loose strings and its keys were arranged in nonsensical order. Leaving Hektor to tune the instrument and solve its keys so that he could play the piano to both his and the instrument’s best.

  In the past, Hektor faced the challenge alone.

  But things were different now. Hektor had grown and matured enough to entrust a select few to share some of his secrets and ask for help.

  And who could Hektor trust more than someone who was chosen by Sabina as his guardian?

  In the here and now, there was no space for unnecessary thoughts as Hektor focused on the task at hand, for Gideon had thrown a left jab at him.

  Gideon performed the movements at a snail’s pace, anticipating for Hektor’s magical sense to pick up the action.

  Even so, Hektor could only register small cues. Literally blind, Hektor could only make out the vague outline of Gideon through telekinesis, mostly by the dislocation of space that he inhabited.

  Gideon was silent as a ghost, masking all audible cues and forcing Hektor to strain his magic to sense the incoming attack.

  Sensing an object moving towards his face, Hektor took a step back, keeping his own movements painfully slow so that he did not add to the interference and distort his visualization further.

  Only to trip and stumble.

  In reflex, Hektor opened his eyes to find that Gideon had positioned his foot to trip him. Too focused on the punch, Hektor was blindsided by the blatant footwork.

  “Again,” chanted Gideon.

  Hektor closed his eyes, centered his stance and brought his arms up as Gideon had taught him. Repetition was key to finding answers and drawing conclusions.