“Come on, we’re almost there,” Medis whispered.

  “Where are we going?” Jul asked, not for the first time.

  She glanced back the way they’d come.

  Nothing but swirling dots of white in that darkness of jagged, broken white lines.

  They were getting farther and farther from their uneven camp, which last night they had been forced to split in between two of the calcified trees. And instead of being back there, helping the others unpack as they made ready to move into the Den at last, they were here, running through the dark.

  “Somewhere important,” Medis said again from above her. “Don’t worry. I told Kur.”

  That was all Jul had gotten from the black and dark blue striped leontar thus far.

  Medis had woken her up ahead of the others, and insisted that Jul follow her somewhere important. Crucial even, the aethermancer had told her, with a serious glint to her eyes. Indeed, Kur had already been up, and he had given them a nod of acknowledgement, but the growing distance between them and the camp was starting to make Jul nervous.

  “Medis—”

  “A bit further. Hang in there, Jul,” the ranged rogue told her, throwing her a pointy smile. “Believe me, it will be worth it.”

  But Jul’s stomach continued to twist, her palms growing damp. Something was not right.

  “Medis! Please. Where are we going?”

  She clenched her jaw as the rogue ignored her and glanced at the trees and fungi around her with a deep frown.

  She hated that silent reality. Had done so from the very moment she had laid eyes on it, as she followed after Nar and Kur when they’d dragged the fungal nightmare out of that tunnel.

  Her [Instinct], while not screaming, had risen to attention at the sight of the dead trees, and the mushrooms swallowing them with their toxic bone dust coating the air. For nearly two weeks now, she hadn’t been able to take in a proper, full breath, and while the dust could be blamed for that, she knew better.

  She knew the quiet, clawed hand gripping her throat, squeezing her heart and crushing the appetite from her. That black and white reality whispered to her of a time that now felt so distant as to almost be someone else’s life. A time when he she scurried about the cubeplant, hiding from everyone, darting from shadow to shadow, and avoiding going home…

  Home.

  Her throat tightened.

  Tiny walls of plasti-click, and dented, cracked furniture of plasti-mold. The stench that hung, like a presence, over the entire house whenever her parents went on a binge… It stung her nose and choked her even now, thick with the dread of when the booze would run out.

  Her four hands clenched into fists as she forced herself to continue following Medis.

  It seared into her mind, both dark and bright. Both suffocating and blinding. Her stomach twisted at that suffocating, cloying, and all-consuming sensation. It was sickening, and she wanted to hurl it out from within her.

  She hated how much it had controlled her life before the Climb. That it had made her hide her weapons and class during that desperate ascent… And even now that she was out, away from those people she refused to call parents or even think up their names, that feeling still ruled her present and future as her affinity. Her true affinity.

  “You’re feeling it, aren’t you?” Medis asked without stopping.

  Jul didn’t reply.

  “Nar had issues with his sword in the Hungry Jungle, and Mach’s gone catatonic for the lack of even the tiniest breeze in this place. But the Jungle of Silence affects you too, doesn’t it?” the aethermancer asked. “I noticed it even before we stepped into this darkness… this quiet. This place is choking with fear, and you’ve picked on it since the very beginning.”

  Medis came to a sudden halt and Jul had to leap around her to avoid sending the two of them careening to the dust covered bottom of the jungle.

  “Medis, why are we—”

  The leontar was gone.

  “M-Medis?” Jul whispered, a tremor in her voice.

  There was more than just silence surrounding her now.

  The fear was like a presence, rising up from that tiny, cracked, stinking home, to breathe its booze filled breath at the back of her neck. No stench, no matter how foul, could ever compare to that vile concoction of crackers, jelly and dirty aetherium, and she could smell it again, burning into her nostrils, making her gag…

  The dragging footsteps echoed around her. The raspy, parched breathing, and the shifting of bodies in the bedroom, as her parents woke up from their stupor.

  They had drunk it all, down to the last drop, and Jul didn’t have any more of her own food to trade for the cursed liquid they craved…

  “Medis!” she called, louder than she should have.

  “Emotions are powerful things, Jul,” Medis whispered from somewhere behind her. “And emotional paths too, are powerful, because they are rooted in emotions.”

  “Where are you?” Jul asked. Begged, on the verge of tears.

  But Medis’ [Prowl] was unlike that of those amateur rogues who had spied their battle in the Gap. Medis was a true and trained hunter. She was one with her surroundings, stalking her prey without them ever realizing death was closing in.

  “Why are you doing this?” Jul whispered, trembling.

  “Anger drives Mul, and he feels it. Viy is chained by guilt, and she too, feels it,” Medis’ incorporeal voice said, from above her this time. “Eum’s bloodlust can be considered a form of emotion that is integral to his path. Maybe even Tun’s vengeful wrath can also be considered an emotion that powers him, fueling him the more his family gets hurt.”

  “Why?” Jul whispered, frantically panting as she searched for the rogue.

  Wherever she looked, there were only white specs in the air, and lines of broken white in a darkness that only smothered her more and more, the grip around her throat closing with every weak heartbeat within her chest.

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  Slap!

  “I told you to fetch more!”

  “We have no more food! I can’t—”

  Punch. Grabbed by the hair and thrown at the wall.

  Jul crumbled into a tiny ball.

  “Medis… help.”

  “Do you see what I’m getting at, Jul?” Medis said, her own tone of voice louder than it should’ve been. “You’re reaching for fear as though it’s something external. Something beyond you. Something to hold at arm’s length and wield as though it was one of your physical weapons. Something that is not you.”

  “Medis!” Jul cried, blocking her antennae with her hands.

  “But when you see, Jul, you see. When you smell, you smell. When you hear, you hear,” Medis continued, undeterred and raising her voice even louder. “That is the problem. The reason why you continue to fail to achieve the sense you need to progress in your path.”

  “Wha-What do you mean?” Jul panted.

  “What I mean is that you need to take it in, Jul. You need to make fear a part of yourself!” Medis said. “You mustn’t fight it. You mustn’t even resist it. Only when you embrace it, when their fear becomes your fear, will fear itself answer your command. Only then will it stop ruling you, and you will begin ruling it!”

  Jul raised her head, pulling back from the memories, the dead trees and swirling white dust coming into sight again.

  Oh, no!

  “Not so loud…” Jul pleaded, scanning their surroundings in growing terror.

  “You want to be brave, Jul. But bravery is not the absence of fear. It’s not even to ignore fear. To be brave means to stand tall in the face of it, and to keep going despite being afraid,” Medis said, and suddenly, her clawed hands came down over Jul’s shoulders. “So open yourself up. Feel the fear! Be afraid!”

  “Medis!”

  Her [Instinct] screamed, deafening her mind.

  “Yes! Something is coming, isn’t it?” Medis said. “And not one of us can fight it, Jul. Not Leon. Not Eum. Not Nar…”

  She shook her head. “Not even all of us combined can do anything against the Quiet, and with all this noise, they’re definitely already on their way. And it’s coming to get you, Jul. It’s coming to get you!”

  “Med—”

  “Feel it!” Medis shouted, shaking her. “Feel the fear within you, and then reach out for the fear around you. You are not the only one here that is scared of the Quiet! Feel our fear!”

  “I—I—”

  “It’s the same fear as yours, Jul,” Medis said, her tone dropping. “No matter its origin, no matter its reason, fear is fear. And right now, it's all around you, and within you as well, and it's up to you to connect with and embrace it.”

  The black and white dungeon contorted around Jul.

  One moment she was seeing, smelling and hearing. The dampness of the Jungle of Silence pressed against her skin. The hot, stale air coated with bone dust filled her airways, the tiny particles finding their way through the mask to deposit themselves within her lungs. The silence was crushing, her frantic heart racing…

  And then, she was sensing all those things… And more.

  Reality expanded.

  There were no words to describe it, for how can you show color to a blind person? Yet it was like discovering a new color. A new texture. A new dimension to reality. A new, soul-shattering truth upon which Creation had been built.

  She was trapped and smothered by her own fear, and then, she was a tiny, little furry animal.

  She cowered within a broken nook that had been formed by three dead branches coming together. And she was the spider that was laying in ambush, but which now stood absolutely still at the approach of a predator far, far beyond it. The one who ruled the silence.

  All her senses exploded, reaching out for miles around.

  She could hear the motes of dust as they sighed through the air. A beast gorged itself on a fresh kill with slurping, crunching wetness. She could even hear the whispers from the rest of the party as they packed up to leave. And tree trunks, once silent, now creaked in sorrow, lamenting the loss of their vitality, sapped and swallowed by the fungi that dominated the Jungle of Silence.

  And the fears… So many fears.

  Kur’s despair before the unbreakable reality he could not defeat was screaming. Row’s anxiety of their future was an incessant tapping. Nar’s worry and shame for the father he had failed was like a ceaseless, howling vortex. Cen’s doubts for the path she yet did not understand came in sudden screeches…

  Calli and Leon reeked of the fear of loss. Eum stank of the fear of not being enough.

  Era worried about her quest in the Dream, but it tasted bland, as though it was only a tiny worry. An afterthought. Meanwhile Sej and Sarke’s worry for their joint futures was an affront to her palate, and Jul gagged.

  All the emotions that fell under the umbrella of fear assaulted her, appearing as though they were sounds, smells or tastes. Yet she knew they were not.

  The quam grit her teeth, fighting to scream. To not curl up and hide.

  Medis held her from behind.

  “Hold your ground,” Medis whispered, her whiskers tickling Jul’s antennae. “You feel the fear, but it does not control you. You control fear. You are the one with the true affinity. You are the one who calls the shots. You are the one who will one day be its master, Jul. Call it to heed.”

  Jul took a deep breath, and exhaled shakily.

  It stank of rotten aetherium. Of agelessness. It… The two figures towered above her with many eyes of blazing darkness.

  I control you now, she told the double figures. You controlled me long enough, and now, you will be mine to do as I want. Anyone or anything that threatens my true family will feel you under my command.

  The last of the barriers and hesitation fell, and Jul flowed from herself. Her consciousness spread across the dark silence.

  If she wanted, she could touch the fear within the little furry being pretending not to exist under her feet. She could touch Kur’s despair and magnify it to the point it would render him a sobbing helplessness. She could turn Calli’s great mind to a puddle of horror. She could marshal Era’s doubts into an endless nightmare, threatening to—No. She could not touch Era’s fear. Or Leon’s, for example.

  Some fears were easier than others, others were barred from her. She could see, but not touch. Like Nar.

  His Nar’s shame burned him with a fury such she questioned how he could even function with it eating at him from within. He blazed. He blazed so brightly in her new sense of fear. Yet she knew she would never be able to touch his fear, nor manipulate it…

  Nar… You are—And I can—No! This isn’t what I—

  A window popped open before her just as Medis clamped a clawed, furry hand over her mouth.

  “Shhh!” Medis said, not caring if the rest of the domain party heard them. “The Quiet is here.”

  Even in the grip of the horror of the realization of the power now within her, of the terror of her screaming [Instinct] shouting at her to shut up and hide from the presence now positioned above her, she could still sense the fear oozing from Medis.

  The aethermancer, always so calm and collected, so in control of herself and every situation, trembled as she held Jul, and Jul could only squeeze her arms tightly with her own.

  The window before her, ignorant of the danger they faced, glowed before her eyes, only visible to Jul in its smoky dark grays.

  The fear around her rose to a crescendo, smothering her, and revealing a multitude of beasts, small and large, that had been completely hidden all around her, avoiding even her mighty senses. It was a survival trait necessary in order to make a life within the Jungle of Silence, as one must always avoid the attention of the apex predator that ruled there with impunity.

  But now, they had provoked it, and it was here.