Chapter 5
~ The Final Test ~
“It’s not much further away,” the old man said, shoving aside undergrowth and small trees as he quickly blazed a trail even deeper into the forest. “You can keep up with an old man like me by now, right?”
It was fairly clear at this point that, of course, the old man was hardly just an ordinary old man. The speed with which he moved through the forest, though no longer seeming utterly impossible to Basjon, was still far quicker than someone his age could ever be expected to move; if the boy focused on him for long enough, he occasionally spotted a barely-noticeable flicker of orange around him, a dead giveaway that he was drawing upon his own Num Power.
“Yeah,” Jon said, leaping nearly a dozen feet in the air to clear a natural barricade of downed trees, “I’m right behind you.”
In only a few minutes, the two had managed to clear at least a couple of miles. Basjon wasn’t yet used to using his Num Power for such extended periods of time, but this hadn’t given him any trouble just yet; he was definitely feeling a bit tired, but considering how far and how fast he had been running, it was nothing compared to what he had expected. Before long, they had apparently reached the place that the old man had been looking for—Basjon didn’t see anything special around, but since his teacher had stopped in his tracks he assumed that they were probably there.
Rather than saying anything, the old man simply stopped and crouched down. He swept his staff across the ground several times to remove the piles of fallen leaves that covered it, then placed one of his hands palm-down against the flat, dusty stone beneath them. For several seconds, he remained completely still and silent, though a faint orange glow began to surround his entire body. Slowly, thin trails of orange light began to spread outward from him, covering the ground with a complex pattern of lines; in the very center, where both the old man and Basjon were standing, was a massive Num Power symbol. As the orange light illuminated their surroundings, it became clear that they were standing in the middle of an ancient stone circle of some sort—the dusty marble platform they were standing on was surrounded by a group of standing stones, covered up by vines and moss but now clearly visible through it all as the light of the strange old hermit’s Num Power shone on them.
The orange light beneath their feet continued to grow brighter and brighter, rising up further into the air as if forming a cage around the two. Eventually, it actually began to curve around and enclose them; at this point, the old man suddenly stood upright and jumped back away from the circle of Num Power surrounding Basjon—and just in time, apparently, as at that moment the energy seemed to solidify, trapping the boy inside. He reached up and touched the translucent wall of orange with one hand, confirming that that it was now quite solid and that he couldn’t simply pass through it like his teacher had done before it had changed.
“This is where the final test begins,” the old man said, nearly yelling at the top of his lungs just to get his voice to penetrate the barrier at all. “Just be careful in there… your surroundings are about to change quite a bit from what you see now.”
For a few moments, nothing seemed to happen. And then suddenly Basjon felt the ground below him suddenly give way—or, at least, that’s what it seemed like at first. What was actually happening was something a bit more unusual; the circular stone platform below him had become completely enveloped in Num Power, which was now swirling around endlessly downward like some sort of glowing orange whirlpool. He began to fall down through the no-longer-solid space beneath his feet, and then almost as quickly as it started it was over. He found himself standing on solid ground once again, but this time something was different about it—the grass beneath his feet was an oddly purplish shade of red, the trees around him were strange varieties he had never before seen, and the red-orange light of a sunset filtered down through the leaves which previously had blocked out almost all light. More noticeable than anything else, the cool shade of the forest just outside his home had been replaced with an oppressive heat; he very quickly removed his shirt and tied it around his waist to prevent himself from roasting alive.
“Okay,” he said to himself, “Where the heck am I…?”
Just as the old man said, his surroundings had certainly changed. Changed to what, he wasn’t yet sure; he had never heard of a place with such strange plantlife, and the sun was certainly not anywhere near setting the last time he saw it. He wasn’t sure exactly what time it was, since his trip into the heart of the woods had taken a while, but he was almost sure that it wasn’t that late yet. For a brief moment, he wondered if this might be some strange land thousands of miles from his home and that the portal of Num Power had sent him there as part of his training; after thinking about it for a moment, he figured that it must be some sort of illusion instead. This place he saw all around him was just too different to actually be part of the world he knew.
For a few minutes he just walked through this forest of broad-leafed red and yellow trees, occasionally stopping to glance at some other odd feature of the terrain that he might have otherwise just walked past. There were trees whose trunks were covered with foot-long thorns, sharp-edged crystalline rocks jutting out of the ground at seemingly random intervals, thick networks of briars of all different types… it seemed that everything here was spiky, like the land itself was out to get him. Occasionally he heard strange sounds off in the distance, as well as the somewhat more familiar buzzes of insects from within the trees and shrubs. Eventually, he managed to reach the edge of the strange forest, coming out into a vast plain covered with tall grasses. Off in the distance, the grass seemed to thin out and eventually stop entirely; he assumed that this was a desert, though he had only read about them in books and never seen one up close before. Deciding that wandering off into the desert was probably not the best idea, he instead went in the other direction and began to cross the grassland in front of him.
Before he had even managed to get twenty feet from the edge of the forest, there was a sound like a massive explosion and the ground shook all around him. He turned toward the direction of the explosion and found that the ground right behind him had been split by an enormous chasm, blocking his way back into the forest. Well, unless he wanted to try jumping twenty feet across, anyway—though he was probably capable of such a thing now thanks to his Num Power training, he still wasn’t confident that he’d be able to make it without ever trying such a thing before. For a moment he just stood and stared down into the pit, wondering what had caused it to open up so suddenly; after a while, however, he figured that standing there looking down a hole wasn’t going to do him much good and walked off into the grasses instead.
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Hours later, Basjon found himself lost in a sea of grass, having no idea which way to go. The fields extended as far as he could see in every direction; he was too far away from the forest he had started out in to even see it on the horizon now, and so far he had not spotted any other landmarks that would help him figure out exactly where he was. Not that they would help much anyway in such an unfamiliar place, but at least it would give him something else to look it besides grass, grass, and more grass. There wasn’t even the same variety here as there was in the forest—rather than strange new types of dangerous-looking trees around every corner, there were no trees or other plantlife at all, besides the endless grasses. There were no corners, either, but that was beside the point.
Eventually, he figured that he might be able to speed up his trip a bit using his Num Power. This was the final test of his Num Power training, after all—it only made sense that it would force him to actually use his powers, rather than simply dropping him off in some unfamiliar land and having him wander until he found his way back home. He paused for a moment and looked in every direction, then took off running at full speed, moving so quickly that it generated a rush of wind that rattled every blade of the dry grass as he rushed by. Hardly a minute passed before he became aware that he was not the only thing moving in the grass—on either side of him, something else was causing the grass to ripple as it moved among, keeping pace with his speed but lagging just a few feet behind him. Whatever these creatures were, they couldn’t have been very large; the grass was two or three feet tall, and yet the sources of these ripples of movement were completely concealed beneath it. Wanting to figure out just what was going on, he abruptly stopped, skidding to a half and kicking up a small cloud of dust after a few moments. The lines of movement in the grass stopped as well, and a faint breeze blew across the plains, causing the grass all around to rustle slightly. After there had been no more movement from the unknown creatures for over a minute, Basjon finally called out to them.
“Okay… I know someone’s in there,” he said, “Who are you?”
At that moment, the sources of the ripples in the grass revealed themselves. Two eight-foot-long, vaguely wormlike creatures leaped out of the grass and flew toward Basjon, screeching and reaching toward him with their tentacle-like mouthparts. He dodged out of the way as the came close, rolling across the ground for a split-second before jumping back to his feet. The worm-things collided in midair, getting tangled up with each other’s bodies for a few seconds and flailing about on the ground. Jon got a better look at the things that had attacked him—their bodies were segmented and wormlike, but their heads more closely resembled some sort of strange armored fish, aside from the tentacles surrounding their mouths. They had two tall fins on their backs, along with a third two-pronged one at the end of their tails and many smaller fins along both sides of their bodies.
By the time the bizarre worms had recovered, he was ready for them; when they both lunged at him again, he struck one in the underside with a Num Power-infused uppercut, sending it flying thirty feet into the air before arcing back down and slamming to the ground. The second was knocked aside by a spinning kick, spiraling through the air until finally it crashed through the grass and into the dirt. For a few minutes, the two creatures remained silent and motionless; then, slowly, each of the worms raised itself up off the ground and let out a long, high-pitched shriek.
All around Basjon, the grass suddenly began to ripple with movement. Several more worms rose up out of the grass all around him; before long, he was surrounded by dozens of the things, all screeching and waving their tentacles about. One by one, they lunged at him, each one launching itself faster than the last until eventually the air was filled with worms flying in one direction or another. Jon didn’t panic, however; he just stood and waited for the first of the worms to get close, then focused his Num Power into every inch of his body. His training with the chickens was now paying off—compared to dodging the Num Power-enhanced blows of the birds, avoiding the worms didn’t require too much effort. The only problem was that there were just so many of them. Before long, he lost track of just how many were coming at him, and several of them managed to latch onto his back, knocking him to the ground. The other worms piled on, their tentacles wrapping around every part of his body they could reach. He struggled against them, but his own strength just wasn’t enough to push them all away.
That is, before the orange glow of Num Power surrounded his entire body and his strength suddenly surged. He stood up, seeming to have no difficulty with the weight of more than a dozen of the giant worms, and then began to shake them off, sending them flying away in all directions. It was at this point that the creatures seemed to realize just what they were up against and rapidly scuttled off in all different directions through the grass.
“Well, that takes care of that problem,” Jon mumbled to himself, glancing out across the plains ahead of him. “Now I just need to figure out what I need to do to get back home…”
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Eventually, Basjon managed to leave the grasslands and reach an area of rougher terrain, with high cliffs and canyons all around. For a while, he simply walked through this new place, marveling at the strange rock formations that had somehow developed there. There seemed to be very little life around, but he already knew from his experience back on the plains that first impressions about whether or not anything was around weren’t always reliable, so he kept on the lookout for any more of those strange worms (or anything else equally dangerous.) After a while, he came upon what looked like a dead end—the wall of a high cliff, with no visible means of climbing up. Upon closer inspection, however, he found that there were a series of pillar-like rock formations nearby that he could use as stepping stones. He focused his Num Power into his feet and took a flying leap upward, landing directly on top of the shortest of the rock pillars.
“Huh,” he said to himself, looking down at his feet. “Not too bad for my first try.”
He continued to hop from one pillar to the next until finally he reached the cliff, barely managing to make the jump from the tallest pillar to the far-taller cliff above and having to quickly dive forward onto more solid ground when the edge of the cliff began to crumble underneath his feet. Standing before him, of course, was an even taller cliff face, separated only by a few feet of flat ground and a thin, scraggly-looking thorn-covered tree. For a few minutes he paced back and forth, not sure how to pass this obstacle—it was far too high for him to jump, even with his Num Power-enhanced legs, and there were no other rock formations nearby to help him out this time. After a while, the only thought that really came to mind was to somehow climb straight up the cliff, but he had no idea how he would ever accomplish that since there didn’t appear to be any hand-holds along its surface and he hadn’t brought any sort of climbing gear along.
Finally, he decided to sit down and rest for a moment, just to see if that helped him think of anything. He was just about to consider turning back and trying to find another way around when the thorny tree growing out of the side of the cliff caught his eye. He thought back to how once, when he was much younger, he had been able to climb up the wall of his house by jabbing pointy sticks into the cracks between the stones and pulling himself up by them. Immediately he ran over and snapped two thorns off from the tree, then attempted to jab one into the rock wall. Unfortunately, the thorn was not nearly hard enough to penetrate the stone, so instead it cracked and broke apart into splinters in his hand. Fortunately, none of these splinters managed to stick very far into his Num Power-enhanced skin, so he was able to pluck them all out without too much discomfort.
For a moment, he paused to think again, and soon he had come up with an idea that just might work. Picking another thorn from the tree, he stood in front of the cliff and then abruptly sat down, meditating and focusing intently on his hands. Num Power began to flow into them, surrounding them with a dim orange glow after only a few seconds. He then went one step further, attempting to focus his power not on his hands but on the thorns held within them. At first, this didn’t seem to be working; then, gradually, the orange aura began to spread to the brittle spikes of wood. After nearly a full minute of concentration, the thorns had been surrounded by what appeared to be a semi-solid “shell” of Num Power, reminding Jon of the barrier that had formed around him shortly before he had been sent to this unfamiliar place. Holding onto that thought, he pictured the thorns in his mind—not made of wood, but of the same translucent, solidified Num Power that had trapped him within the stone circle before. When he opened his eyes, what he was in his hands almost startled him: that last-minute, off-the-top-of-his-head plan of his had worked perfectly, and he now held a pair of climbing tools composed of pure Num Power.
He immediately went to work at scaling the cliff, jabbing the glowing thorns into the wall and pulling himself up one arms-length at a time. For once, he didn’t use his power to enhance his strength or speed; he almost instinctively knew that it would be difficult to maintain the barriers of Num Power around the thorns if he was trying to divide that power between several different places, and climbing was difficult enough when moving at a normal speed. A few times he started to slip, but quickly caught himself and made sure not to lose much of the distance he had gained to that point. Before too long, he had reached the top of the cliff—and this time, it was indeed the top, as no more cliffs could be seen rising up ahead in the distance. What was visible, however, was an ancient-looking ruin atop a small hill, its outer walls crumbling away as if it had been left unmaintained for many centuries. Basjon slowly approached the structure, still carrying the orange-cloaked thorns in his hands. Thanks to his encounter with the worms earlier, he was still almost expecting something to leap out and attack; when nothing did after a dozen yards of walking, he almost felt a bit disappointed.
As he finally reached the top of the little hill and stood before the decrepit old temple, there was a faint humming sound and the top step of its stone staircase began to glow with that familiar orange light. This glow spread upward for a few moments, and then a fuzzy image flashed into existence before him. It was a man, as far as he could tell, but a rather strange-looking one—he wore elaborately-decorated robes and had long hair, a pair of twisting horns grew from the sides of his head, and his ears were incredibly long and pointed. These were not the sort of pointy ears that Aykathla and Mekedzis both had, but something more along the lines of the ears that the elves he had read about in some of his parents’ old storybooks were said to have. As far as he knew, elves didn’t really exist—or, at least, if they did exist, nobody had seen one in several hundred years. They also weren’t supposed to have horns, of course; that would be kind of an odd detail to overlook.
Before he could think any more about the possible identity of the man in the image, it began to move as if speaking, and shortly afterward a scratchy-sounding voice seemed to emanate from somewhere deep within the building.
“Greetings, wanderer,” it said, “And welcome to the temple of Mušen Láma.”
Basjon blinked at the sound of the unfamiliar words, a bit confused as to what he had just heard.
“Moose and what?”
“Mušen Láma. I am unsure of what, exactly, your people call it, but that is our name for that power which glows orange.”
“A power that glows orange… oh! You mean Num Power, right?”
The image of the strange horned man nodded; he seemed to have heard the term before, though he apparently hadn’t immediately associated those words with the species of the boy standing in front of him.
“Indeed, it has been called as such,” the image said, “Though my records only show one other among your kind who has called it by that name in many years.”
“Who are you, anyway?”
“Merely a projection of one who once lived here,” he said, “And the fact that I am speaking to you now means that the man I represent is long dead.”
The image paused for a few moments, glancing around and looking over Basjon. After spotting the Num Power-encased thorns in his hands, it gave him an odd look, but went on anyway.
“I have been left here to ensure that those who are studying the ways of Num Power are able to learn the full extent of their abilities…”
Basjon glanced down at the thorns as well, only just then realizing that they were still surrounded by that shell of orange light that had surrounded them before he had started to climb up that last cliff. He focused on them again, pulling the Num Power away from them and returning them to normal once again.
“However,” the horned man continued, “It seems that, on your journey to reach this place, you have already learned most of what I was going to teach you.”
Jon blinked a few times, wondering what he meant. He then glanced down at the thorns in his hands, wondering if he could possibly be talking about the way he had used his Num Power to convert them into rock-climbing tools earlier. It seemed strange that this was the last thing he must learn—not something that seemed more immediately useful for what lay ahead, like how to fly or some other means of rapid transportation so he could actually reach the mountain and climb it before the year was over and Aykathla was forced to marry Mekedzis.
“Yes, that’s correct,” the image said, “That technique you used for encasing an object in a barrier of Num Power… only one other man I know of has ever developed such a power. With it, you can have any weapon or tool you could ever want, so long as you can find something to hold onto.”
At this point, the image began to move, slowly walking further into the temple. At several points, it actually passed through collapsed sections of roofs and walls, which Jon (being a living person with a body made up of solid matter like anyone else) had to climb over or shove out of the way instead. Eventually, they had reached a large, round room, with a circle of pillars along the edges and the symbol of Num Power on a raised platform in their center.
“I suppose this looks familiar,” the horned man said, “I suspect that you have arrived here through the use of a similar circle. But you are not going home just yet… first, you must learn to master that new technique of yours.”
A door in the wall nearby slid open, causing what looked like several long, dried-up old reeds to fall out and clatter across the floor. Basjon looked over them for a few seconds, then glanced back over at the flickering shape of the horned man standing closer to the center of the room.
“Go ahead,” he said, “Cast aside those thorns and pick up a staff. Any one of them will do.”
He glanced over them for a few moments, then eventually reached down and grabbed the one that looked the least brittle. Turning it over in his hands a few times, he finally managed to get a solid grip on it and swung it about as if it were a sword. The image nodded to him, and immediately he knew that he was supposed to infuse Num Power into it the same way he had done with the thorns before. He gripped the stick even more tightly and concentrated; just like before, nothing seemed to happen at first. Before too long, however, that familiar orange energy began to flow from his hands and spread across the outer surface of what he was holding, eventually surrounding the entire thing.
“Now, this is the most important part,” his disembodied teacher said, “Don’t simply encase that old stick with a shell shaped exactly like an old stick. Picture something a bit more useful, some weapon or tool that you’ve used before… and push your aura of Num Power into that shape.”
Jon closed his eyes and went over what the image had said—picture a weapon or a tool that he had used before, and push his Num Power aura into that shape… the only thing that immediately came to mind was an axe. Clearly, he had chopped too much wood in his childhood; still, it was appropriate, as such a thing could be used as either a weapon or a tool depending on the situation. He focused on the shape of an axe, picturing the old beat-up one he had used back home for so many years, and tried to shape his Num Power into something at least vaguely resembling it. At first, the orange glow around the stick in his hand just got wider on one end, looking more like a club than an axe; trying again, he was able to get it to form into vaguely the same shape, but it still wasn’t quite right—the edge wasn’t sharp, and it stuck out at an odd angle that would make it difficult to actually use for anything. Finally, on his third attempt, he succeeded; when he opened his eyes, he was holding a brittle old stick completely encased by the translucent orange shape of a typical wood-chopping axe.
“Hmm… an unusual choice,” the horned man said, “I was expecting something more along the lines of a sword, or perhaps a spear. But perhaps this is better—your mind does not wander directly to those tools crafted purely for combat.”
He took a step up onto the raised center section of the floor, then walked to the very middle of the Num Power symbol carved into it before turning to face Basjon once again.
“Now, remember that this is not the only shape your weapon can take,” he added. “This power of yours can be molded into any sort of object you can imagine... you need only find something of an appropriate size to shape it around.”
He knelt down, closing his eyes, and placed one hand palm-down on the symbol beneath his immaterial feet—the same pose that the old man in the woods had taken before sending him to this place for his final training session. As Num Power surged up around him, the image slowly began to disappear, as if using up his own power source in order to send the boy standing before him back home.
“Hurry, now,” he said, “Take your place on this platform, and you will be returned to your own world once again. I’m sure you have things to do that cannot wait much longer.”
Basjon nodded, dematerializing the shell of Num Power from around the old reed before jumping up into the circle just in time to avoid being sealed outside of it by the barrier that had formed around the outer edges. Just like before, the floor below him vanished, replaced by a swirling vortex of orange energy. He waved goodbye to the rapidly-fading image of the horned man in front of him, then dropped down into the portal and disappeared.
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