PSTH2: Chapter Seven

One of life’s little pleasures is a good cup of coffee. With earth, water, and wood magians maintaining farms across the southwestern parts of Oceanseed, it’s even able to be grown here at home. But it isn’t the Arabica bean that the Pre-Arrival cultures enjoyed, as that had all but died out shortly before magic arrived. What we have now is an approximation, grown from a combination of multiple different beans. Less acidic, but also less robust, and frequently needed to be enhanced with chicory root to have the dark, rich flavor we associate with coffee. It serves as a potent reminder of the greed of the proto-Obsidian Kings of the Pre-Arrival world.

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From The Plight of Coffee, 388 Modern-Era

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“Hello,” Gawain said, looking down at me as he strode through the crowd. I waited for him to say more, but that seemed to be all he intended to say.  I stared back at him and put my hands on my hips. Irritation flashed across his face and he gestured at me. 

“What do you want?” 

“Are you okay?” I demanded. “You’ve barely responded, brushed off my questions about your wellbeing, and half the time my messages don’t even get through to you. What do you mean, what do I want?”

“Ah,” Gawain said. Then, instead of answering, he continued to stare at me, saying nothing. I slammed my head forward, as if I was about to headbutt an imaginary wall, but with Gawain so close, I instead rammed my head right into his chest. There was a flash of pneuma as our essence instinctively shielded us from the headbutt. Gawian must have drastically misinterpreted the situation, however, as when I headbutted him, he wrapped his arms around me and drew me closer. I froze for a moment, before grunting in annoyance and putting my arms around him as well. After a moment, he let me go, and then finally got around to answering my questions. 

“I’m okay, I’ve just been busy. Mother insisted I bring all my Primals to level thirty before I was ready to go, and the training chambers don’t have a local network. It’s too easy to get distracted.”

I made a face at the word ‘training chambers’, and Gawain frowned at me, shaking his head as if to tell me to not even start, while he continued talking. 

“That meant four to six hours a day, I was without an augpad. Much of the rest time, I was working on music of some sort, since I don’t have a studio while traveling. That was probably another eight or nine hours a day. But those rooms are near the training chambers, so they have minimal signal as well. Then I was sleeping. I also had to do some studying theory, both magical and political. There is an election cycle coming up soon enough, the candidates are already undergoing their new education, and I want to understand the fullness of their takes so that I know who to support. It wasn’t my intention to worry or upset you or anyone else.” 

“You charged out, leaving all on your own, while crying,” I protested, staring back up at him, and he let out a slow sigh, closed his eyes, and said something under his breath. 

“Huh?” 

“Nothing important,” Gawain said, opening his eyes and looking at me. “I don’t know, Aiden. I was enjoying my life at the time, and I knew I needed to spend time away training. But you did the same thing. And there’s the pressure.” 

I looked up at him questioningly, and made a ‘hm’ sound when he didn’t seem to interpret that as a desire to know more about what he meant. 

“My mother is very successful,” he said. “Both on a personal level, and as a businesswoman.” 

“I remember you saying that her essence products production company expanded enough that Oceanseed had to step in and limit its reach, to prevent it from growing large enough to support a pseudo-obsidian king. Is she trying to get you to take over the business?” 

“No. Maybe? I don’t know. She doesn’t want to leave it to Oceanseed when she passes, but she’s not the monster you make her out to be. I was the one who chose to be a tamer. She offered to send me to business school, to get a degree in any field of magic I wanted to study, and a dozen other things. Tamer was probably the lowest on her list. But I made the choice when I was a child, and have never regretted it.” 

“I think that letting your children pick their own life path is the bare minimum,” I sniped back. “That’s not a point in her favor, it’s the minimum.” 

“If you say so,” Gawain said with a groan. “But it isn’t the source of the pressure. She’s a powerful person, with a level in the late nineties, working her way up. And that’s the one thing that she does expect of me.” 

“She expects you to become one of the most powerful individuals in the country?"

“Not necessarily. She wants and expects me to be successful. I have a lot of potential, and she wants to see me reach it. She expects me to reach it. And I want to reach it as well, but it is a lot of pressure. I felt like I hadn’t reached the level I could have, should have.” 

“That’s a lot,” I admitted. “I don’t know how I would handle being expected to become one of the nation’s top tamers.” 

“Do you intend to give up after collecting a set number of Councillor's seals?” Gawain asked. “That seems very unlike you.” 

“No, I want to win tournaments, and get an official sponsorship with the consortium. Maybe even work as a Councillor one day, or go into conservation after making a tidy sum for my future. But there’s a key difference there: I want that. I’m not being told I’m a failure if I don’t reach that level.” 

“My mother never said I’d be a failure if I didn’t become one of the highest ranked people in the Consortium.” 

“Right. And so if you failed to ever defeat a single other Councillor, she’d be fine with it?” 

“She would be disappointed that I didn’t live up to my potential. She wouldn’t tell me that I was a failure. I can do a lot, so I should.” 

“Do you not see how that’s not being called a failure with a shinier coat of paint? A poison pill coated in sugar is still poison.” 

“Aiden. Please. Let it go,” Gawain said, and I realized that there were tears starting to form in the corner of his eyes. I let out a rattling sigh, one so bone deep that it shook my whole body. 

Heart’s truth, there was no way that I’d let the topic go forever. If Gawain had been content with his mother’s abuses of power, then I might have dropped it and reported them to Vince, as well as to an investigation bureau. But he was torn up by her expectations, under his own words. He constantly was held under her thumb. I’d texted Vince, but there was a limited amount he could do. I could, at least, push Gawain to try and think for himself. 

But there was a time and place for everything, and even as much as I wanted to help Gawain escape his mother’s thumb, I didn’t want to hurt him. 

“Fine, I’ll drop it, at least for now.” 

“Thank you,” Gawain said. There was a long moment of silence after that, before he glanced around, then tilted his head to one side, long hair shifting as he did. “Where are Laurel and River?” 

“They’re on the way, they should catch up in a couple minutes,” I said. “River’s walking my bike. I Dashed ahead in the essence powered lane in order to meet with you early.” 

“You have noticeably improved,” Gawain said with a nod, dabbing at the edge of his eyes with his sleeve. “Where did you go to train? Back to Arkose? It’s got a reasonably high essence level, with less drain than a city.” 

“No, I went home,” I said. “Helped move the essence heart Vince, Laurel, River, and I all discovered there. Mostly trained while doing that.” 

Gawain’s eyes flicked up into the air as if he was approximating something, and then he frowned. 

“That does not make sense.” 

“You know you can just say it doesn’t make sense. Does not makes you sound either old or stuffy.” 

“That isn’t an explanation. All of you are in the mid level twenties, with Scales in the high twenties,” Gawain pointed out, and I waved him off. 

“I was getting there, patience, patience. I was hired to guard the anima batteries and stuff, so I didn’t have much to do. I spent most shifts cultivating the ambient essence around the heart, which was level nineteen. That’s far from nothing. Then after each shift, I fought a heart guardian.” 

“You what?” Gawain asked, blinking at me. “I– But– You– You are not the kind of person who would destroy a heart.” 

“Destroy? No, this was just for training both myself and the new heart guardian. It was usually a three on one, since the guardian only had two. The heart was the one who kept nudging them forward. Or maybe the guardians decided it? They would have been there while River was dispelling the controls. Honestly, Hex would have been higher level if not for the fact that a full third of her essence went to restructuring her ousia weave.”  

A strange light that I didn’t know how to interpret entered Gawain’s eyes, and I shifted from foot to foot, looking up at him. 

“What?” 

“Nothing, it’s just… I had all the anima and pneuma restoration I could want for my training, as well as a cultivation room located in an area secluded from other ambient essence draws, with an ambient level of forty-six. I barely managed to trudge over the level thirty barrier, and half of my Primals are still at twenty-nine, gathering the essence to cross the barrier. You were in a podunk village without any of that, and you’re still only an average of five levels behind me.” 

“Don’t insult my home,” I said defensively. “And we’ll catch up in levels. Five levels is hardly insurmountable. Vince’s weakest Primal, other than his new Auraptor, is in the seventies, while his Serest and Ltan are both at or near level one hundred.” 

“That is exactly the inverse of the problem,” Gawain said, his eyes crinkling in amusement. “I’m simply surprised you managed to get as far as you have. It’s genuinely very impressive.” 

“Oh, I guess so,” I said. “Thanks. But I did mean what I said. I’m going to catch up with you.” 

“I believe it,” Gawain said. “If we train together, I expect that the higher density essence will help pull you up.” 

“Is that how you did it?” I asked, genuinely curious how he’d made such a leap, even with the training conditions he’d described. It wasn’t impossible, but it was staggering. “From fighting your mother?” 

“She isn't a combat magian,” Gawain said, shaking his head. “And she was too busy to do that sort of training.”

“Mmm,” I said, nodding. “That only makes your growth even more impressive.”

Gawain looked guilty at that, and I debated for a long moment if I should press him or not. The fact he looked guilty probably meant that his mom had pushed him to do something wrong or illegal. Maybe his mom had found a way to evade the laws restricting how many essence stones could be purchased each year? That seemed like the kind of thing that she’d do, just from the impressions Gawain gave me. But I’d promised to drop it for now, and I liked to think that I was a man of my word. In the end, I dropped it, and was glad I did. 

“Hey!” Laurel called out, waving to us, and I turned to see River and Laurel walking up the docks, River wheeling my bike. Gawain turned and looked over, then waved. 

“Hello!”