top of page
Writer's pictureJay Lawson

The Agatheio Trials: Visitors from a Galaxy Over

Updated: Aug 22


The day had been the hottest in two moons, and Agatheio had long passed his boiling point. He looked to his master, who’d descended upon him wrapped with a fiery haze and called out. 


“It’s been hours, Ser Shuul,” he said, “at some point, you will have to face me!” His master laughed as he performed a landing that irritated his Prince with its grace. Agatheio extended the lengths of his wrists and stretched the ligaments in his shoulders. He lifted each arm in the air for a time, before bending them both at the elbow and raising his fists to his face. 


“Your guard has improved, young one,” Shuul said. 


“It will only continue to do so, the longer you stall.” 


“That, I have no doubt, but first you must answer the question—”


“—what does it mean to live through both minds?—”


It’d been a question posed to him that gave him pause more than once during their session. His instructor, in turn, drew his hands toward the center of his body. His face had been clean from any wrinkle or blemish, especially for a man his age—a number that had been lost to Agatheio; he only knew that his master had the longest stay on his father’s council. 


“When one hand motions,” Shuul said with his fist ringing through the air just past his pupil’s ear, “the other must prepare to counter!—” He’d used his left palm to fully snuff the scorching fist that’d been Agatheio’s pensive strike. Shuul had been silent during his instruction to allow his students to reflect on the words he would say—words said only once.


“One mind—,” Agatheio said, “—one mind creates the desire, and the other enacts it through focused action!” He’d shift the weight in his knee that was already in a forward motion. He pushed it through his master’s solar plexus. Shuul’s aura, nearly impenetrable, had once stood against the onslaught of a rampaging herd of Mygon beasts. The immediate pushback from the aura left the two men fatigued as they dogged their breath where they stood. The searing taste of smoked greenery had aroused the air. 


“Calm yourself, young Agatheio,” Shuul said. “Sit. Breathe.” Agatheio heeded his master’s request to bare the forest grounds. Agatheio watched him as he sat silently, eyes closed and his brow narrowed. He joined him, mirroring his position. He’d thought of nothing but his breath even though hundreds of questions and insightful remarks—or so he thought—of the lesson plagued him, yet he’d humbly kept them inward. 


“There is something that troubles you, Great Prince,” Shuul said with his eyes shut. “Your thoughts are erratic.” Somehow, either through the stillness of the forest or by his own accord, Shuul’s voice felt stronger than needed when he and Agatheio had been alone as they occupied the forest, so they believed. There was no echo, but Shuul spoke with much aplomb as if it’d been his land, and the occupants scampering about had been mere renters or even trespassers.


“Is one’s strengths—” Agatheio began, “—at risk when indecisiveness strikes? Where does it come from? How is one to combat such an enemy?” 


Agatheio almost saw something that would’ve defied all his previous notions of his master upon seeing him nearly break a smile. Before such an event could be witnessed though, within the depths of the forest came a formidable and vociferous clap, a round of applause from a singular entity sprouted around them. 


Shuul raised his fist beside his face just before his pupil had the time to form a word of the inevitable, “What was that?” Agatheio stunted his thoughts and refocused on his breath. His master had gracefully risen to—not his feet, but floated above the ground, suspended. His master looked at him with a deep concern blended with a look that resembled kind thoughts.


“Why don’t we see for ourselves, hm?”


***


They’d journey in a calming quietness, not an awkward silence. They’d each been invested in their thoughts and had happily gallivanted with their companion in peace. 


“Your question, Great Prince,” Shuul said, “has been one that I, myself have found difficulty in answering.” 


“So it is possible to stump the Head of Riddles.” Shuul’s gaze remained neutral while he pondered something with a plunging monologue. He and his pupil stepped over an outstretched root delineating deep through the forest. 


“For one’s true power to be revealed,” Shuul said, “must he ever begin inward.” This had been a revelation Agatheio needed to momentarily quell his curiosity which had instead fallen for what’d been a succeeding echoing crack behind the trees only a brisk pace away.


Agatheio had taken it upon himself to tear through the area within the bush first. He’d ignored any sense of danger, for this had been his land by birthright. Rather, his father’s. 


It’d been like stepping into a new room, where he’d find two strange-looking men with appearances unlike any he’d ever seen. His master had followed tightly behind him and stopped to marvel at their oddities. 


They had pink skin that’d been exposed. No hair. Their garbs conflicted with that of Shuul’s and his apprentice’s. Covering their heads had been clear bowls that left an abundance of space within, yet the strangers' heads still seemed distortedly large, as if their faces had been pressed against the material. Their robes had been white and barely scraped against the leaves along the forest floor. They’d nearly mirrored Agatheio and his master in their stance. It did not take long for the visitors to spot the opposing duo mere feet away from them.


They each shifted themselves and stopped further movement, animals caught in the middle of a predator’s gaze. 


“To what business hath ye here?” Agatheio asked.


Shuul placed an outstretched arm in front of his student to prevent him from engaging the pair as they’d fumbled with a small device made of technology neither of them had seen before. Agatheio would look to his master for further guidance, only to receive a silent nod as he patiently waited for the strangers to finish what they’d been doing. 


The strangers had waved their hands over their heads in an exacerbated mood. They’d shouted at each other, but Agatheio and his master had watched without understanding a word of their dilemma. They’d share a concerned glance before the aggravated words had started to resemble the melodious hum from a language of a tribe their kingdom had recently assimilated. 


“Eureka!” A stranger said, “Finally, Doppler, you’ve been playing around with that transceptor for ages, and  now look.” He pointed at Shuul and Agatheio as they crept closer. “You’ve attracted local attention!” 


“Oh, spare me,” the taller stranger said, “I’ve reason to believe your recklessness in closing the worm drive to the portal incorrectly the first time is what brought them here!” He’d been the one to introduce himself to the onlookers first, with the most manners. He turned to them with his palm straight beside his face but outstretched to meet Agatheio’s.“Greetings, low-kal! I am Hyverant of YU’danga.” 


Agatheio’s head turned toward his master who’d step forward. 


“You stand before the Royal Prince of Ithca,” Shuul said with a gesture toward his pupil. “Bowing is a custom of this land, to which I am sure you are foreign.” 


Hyverant had moved his hand to his side and leaned forward with his head down. “Forgive my ignorance.” 


“Be graceful, for it is your ignorance that has saved your life.” 


The visitor Hyverant had thumped his free arm against the thigh of his cohort who’d in turn quickly bowed before Agatheio. 


“Yes,” he said, “we too have our customs of a similar nature. We meant no disrespect. I am Sy’Trystian of YU’danga.”


Shuul remained ahead of Agatheio while the visitors lifted themselves to meet their mystified gaze. He’d allow Agatheio to overtake him while he met the visitors with warming enthusiasm. Shuul had never seen his Prince behave with such encompassing and passionate queries during their sessions before, yet still, the visitors answered each one happily and with reverence and respect. 


Agatheio had garnered that they’d been of a dimension completely separate from his own. He’d look over at his master several times during the intense anecdote of their arrival. Shuul silently scoffed at the notion of beings hailing from a dimension alternative to his reality. Demonstrations of their vast technology led Agatheio to believe they’d been authentic in their claim, and a transient lesson in what they’d termed: mathematics planted seeds of doubt in his master’s beliefs. 


Their final show of strength had been reopening the tear in the fabric of space and time before the Prince’s eyes. The deafening split between dimensions of the wormhole's departure had echoed beyond the treeline. They’d gracefully thank the kind and welcoming hospitality of the Ithcan Prince and his master before they each stepped through the wormhole, leaving student and master to their solitude to continue their session. The reverberating sting of the closing wormhole sent a sea of shivers throughout the young Prince’s core. The sharp jolt psyched him.


“Stall your aura, young Prince.” Shuul palmed his shoulder, keeping his energy firm. 


“Master Shuul,” Agatheio started a thoughtful introspection. Shuul waited patiently for him to continue, “Do you think—in their dimension—there are reflections of ourselves who do not share our lives? Our values?” 


“We mustn't forget ourselves. We are but our own, whose lives are ruled by one.” Agatheio had an expression of dissatisfaction. “The matter is no longer one of importance.”  Come, for our session has ended.”


***


  Agatheio tossed under his sheets that night—troubled and restless. He'd been tormented by a mental visage of a tarnished painting decaying on an otherwise empty wall. A flame would ignite under what his consciousness would deem a portrait. He’d recognize the distorted face of Hyverant peeling off the canvas. The fire burned until the painting fell, shattering until Agatheio’s eyes opened. He sat up, disturbed. 


He cried himself into a deep slumber.


12 views0 comments

Recent Posts

See All

Kommentarer


bottom of page