After Sarah had gone, Simma found himself tangled in her words, the name she had mentioned looping through his mind like an echo he couldn't silence. He remembered reading it before, tucked away in the quiet recesses of the book, and now he couldn't shake the thought of Yiriana, how she had fallen for that man.
It wasn't impossible, of course. Life had a way of pairing unlikely souls, but for the first time, Simma felt a thread connect, one loose end finally knotting to another.
The answers were far from complete, but for now, he savoured the rare taste of progress. And, blimey. It felt good.
...
By dawn, Simma was already on his way for what would be his final training with the strange man before the tournament. No map was needed anymore, he knew the route to the Lotuses' quarter of the city, as well as the lines on his own palm.
The little shack he approached was a deceiver in every sense: outwardly a rusted relic of poverty, yet inside, it was as if one stepped into the birth of a new world.
Everything about going to training now felt normal to him, but the surreal nature of the place somehow still startled him. He had been going for days now, but the fact that a very low and the most poverty-stricken house turned out to be a heaven inside still hung his breath on a suicidal rope.
Simma needed not to be told after the third day he came for the training that the lotuses used magic. If he was to be told before he'd figure it out, that would mean that he was dumber than the dumbest.
This implication is due to the fact that the very door that turned out to be the threshold of the cliff that he was hurled out from like a ragdoll the first day of his training with the strange man, led to a different place and location the second day and the third.
And now, today, as the man had opened the door yet again and the rays of the sun simmered at his dark skin like some polished obsidian oily reflector, the door also turned out to be leading to a whole different place yet again.
But the good news was that he was not to be hurled out of a cliff this time.
The man, who had been continuously wearing a black fitting kimono girded at the waist with a red ribbon, said with a majestic grin lining one side of his cheek as if tailored onto it:
"After you, boy."
Simma swallowed, not like it was worse than being thrown off a cliff, but that he was walking through the door into a place of ruins.
It was like walking through the warped reflection of a city seen in shattered glass. Buildings lay gutted, some flipped inside-out as if a giant hand had wrenched them from their foundations. Smoke coiled in the air, veiling the sun in a dim, rust-coloured haze. The stench of burning still lingered, telling him the devastation was recent.
Buildings were shattered as if turned entirely upside down, both tall buildings and short ones.
Those that managed to be standing did so barely, clinging to life.
Cars, where spread through the cracked roads of the street, many seemed to have collided together, many were upside down, buried in flames, some were already rusty. But this cars had something different from the one he saw in the great city... Wheels...
The first time Simma had seen a car was in the great city, or so he thought. But now he really doubted if these ones could fly maybe this was the time before flying cars where made, who knows
As Simma walked through the door into the ruins, he suddenly felt so heavy. He tried to imagine what kind of cruelty had done something like this.
He took about three steps further as a tear lined his eye.
He bent over a body that was on the floor. A girl, ten years old, perhaps. Crumpled on the ground with a jagged shard of metal impaled through her torso. Her eyes remained wide open, as though still frozen in the horror of her final moment.
"No… no…" Simma whispered. Tears blurred his vision, though the grief was not entirely his own. Something deeper stirred within him, an ache that didn't feel borrowed but remembered.
Something strange was behind those tears, and the strange man seemed to understand it very clearly, for he didn't look surprised or even act as so. Rather, he walked up to Simma and held him by the shoulder.
"I know, right? It's too heavy to assimilate," he said, his voice calmer than the way Simma ever believed it would be.
"It's not your fault, trust me. All that could be done now is set what is left right."
Simma turned sharply to face him. The words carried weight beyond their surface, and it made the man feel all the more unfathomable, and also more strange every passing day.
"What do you mean it's not my fault?"
The man's grin returned, but it was the kind that concealed more than it revealed. And for some strange reasons Simma knew it.
"Well... was it your fault? I mean, I wouldn't judge you if it was."
He now bent beside him.
"But I would rip you apart here and now if it was."
Simma exhaled, no longer sure if the man held something back, but if he did, then he was so good at covering it. He kept on glaring at the man, the look on his face was the kind that said he was meant to say something.
"What then did you mean that we have to set what is remaining right?"
The man straightened, the weight of his presence almost bending the air.
"Don't be ridiculous, boy," he said.
That grin lining his face yet again. Somehow Simma couldn't shake the feeling that the man concealed something under those words or should he say threats he just threw at him. And literally the man did, but he hadn't seen the response he thought those words would get out of Simma, so he decided not to push further rather tackle it slowly.
He stood up and then raised his hand. A green surge of thick emerald energy emanated and coiled around his arm like a living flame. It moved into his his palms, forming an emerald translucent green sphere, with spectral lines lined in it, cutting through concentric circles embedded inside the sphere.
Then, as he moved his hand against the air, his eyes shone bright green as the surge that surrounded his arm seemed to spread and...
Impact.
The world answered.
The sun started to move. At first a bit slow, then the speed increased like it was being chased by a beast that thought it was a shiny bugger.
Before Simma would know, the sun set and then darkness, then - moon- and then dawn. Day collapsed into night, then night into day, again and again, until the sky became a blur of gold and silver. Time itself unravelled in a dizzying whirl.
The green surge encircling the man's hand was there effortlessly as the sun kept speeding through the sky, so also the moon.
But that wasn't just the case, as the sun sped past, so did time, for Simma saw as the ruins started moving as well. First, the little girl's body was gone, and then the ruins started rearranging, many building being renovated and many being broken completely and then starting to form from foundation.
Seasons danced in moments, and centuries passed in the space of breaths.
Just then, from the ruins, everything started changing until it first formed a stable city, old and ancient, and as the sun kept speeding past, it kept developing until at last it became...
"The Great City," Simma murmured, awe touching his voice. He was still looking at the big city covered by a force field.
He hadn't seen it from the outside before, but doing so now, it felt so alive and big.
The man lowered his hand, his eyes turning back its his normal black color.
"I assume you understand this?" he asked.
Simma just nodded, not only for the fact that what the man did was wave his hand to move time, but also seeing what the bloodbath had caused. It made him lack words for now.
The ruins which was there earlier was what the bloodbath caused, and somehow the man had made moved time forward through all the time it took to get to build the great city.
"But why? Why show me this, or does it have anything to do with my training?" Simma asked.
The man's gaze hardened, carrying that familiar undercurrent that always made Simma feel like a child about to be scolded for missing the obvious.
And as if what he was thinking was right, the man answered:
"What type of warrior... unh, unh... what type of Azren fights without knowing what he was fighting for?"
Simma looked down. He knew why he fought, or at least he thought he did. But the truth was, he hadn't yet fully understood it. Just as he hadn't yet fully understood himself.
But before he would speak, everywhere changed, and it turned out that they had been at the very first place that they trained, right at the river beside the forest, were he first met Ms. shady. But this time the man spared him the grace of beginning always with slapping a bowl filled with water.
So today, he was to begin with...
"400 push-ups and 450 sit-ups," the man ordered.
...