UNTITLED: Book One

DAY 136.30

The difference between power and strength

Strength can navigate any space

Power is the place

After Tozi and Junaid are teleported into the city, Solara wades her way up to the small, black-sand island, her feet gliding through the water silently while the illumination of the water traces her path. She stops directly in front of the cross-legged Warden sitting in meditation with his head bowed. His twin blades are on the ground, one on his left and the other on his right side. They’re just casually laying there in the sand. They nearly blend in with it.

Solara calmly lowers to a crouch, leaning down to eye-level with The Warden, with her arms draped over her knees. She looks him up and down taking in his features, his posture—potential openings. She sees none. Tch. She smacks her teeth and turns her head to the side briefly in disgust. Both in herself, for not being able to—willing to—attack him right here and now, and him, because he’s nothing compared to her without his fancy weapons.

“You can try them for yourself.” The Warden he says, as if reading her mind. He slowly raises his head to look at her.

Though she can’t see them, she can feel his eyes staring through hers, “I know what you’re here for Solara, truly here for. But you won’t be able to use it without having these under your control first.”

He pats the blades against the sand. Solara stares at him a little longer with her blank face. After a while she looks down at the weapons and speaks up.

“I’ve attacked Thema before, so I know that if I attack you right now, then some sort of shield will automatically pop up. Last time hurt like a motherfucker.”

“You’ve gotten weaker.”

“No I haven’t. Not even close.” She quickly responds.

“Of course you have. You think you haven’t because you travel around with lab creations and surface dwellers. They make you feel powerful, but power isn’t strength, after all.”

“The Broker said the same thing. You two belong together… And no. I haven’t. Besides, apparently you are a surface dweller. All you have is a fancy weapon.” Solara repeats, her frustration visibly growing.

“All that special training seems wasted.” The Warden continues on, ignoring her jabs. “We trained you separately and better than the rest, harder, tougher, faster, smarter…and yet you still choose to be this. You chose to be weaker.”

“No. I haven’t.” Solara repeats herself while he is talking, but he’s not listening and continues talking as if she didn’t say anything. Like when he would torture her to make her resistant to unimaginable pains, assuring the scientists that she could take it, ignoring her pleas for them to stop.

“And when…” The Warden continues speaking over her as if she isn’t talking, ignoring her pain, yet again, and condescending her ‘weakness’ like he has always done. The only thing missing right now is the electric shocks. The burning. The poisons. The starving. The… just all of it. But his voice is the worst. This person who is not bigger, stronger, or faster—nor faced the same elements or pressures.

“No I haven’t!” Solara starts shouting over him, in his face as he retains his composure and continues to ignore her. Finding his power in her pain.

Traumatic memories begin flooding into her brain now like a montage. Drowning, freezing, burning, fighting—always fighting—and getting beaten. Blindfolded and starved, then told to dodge attacks for hours without being able to hit back. Starved and dehydrated, then made to fight in an artificially heated environment for 48 hours without stopping. Every time she broke, he would coldly stroke her hair, at her lowest, and then tell her empty words. And she could feel the condescension. She could feel it. How degrading it was, but at least it was a break from everything else that was much worse, and that’s all she wanted. A break. But it never stopped. She wished she could have done the trials that the others did.

“…you left the city, and you actually believed that you escaped. That leaving the city was smart. As if I didn’t allow it—I taught you better than that.”

“I. Am NOT. Weak.”

“…What could you possibly accomplish without this city? Why can’t you shed this weakness? Who do you think you are without m—…”

“I’M NOT WEAK!” Solara shouts in a high-pitched scream in his face. But he doesn’t care. It doesn’t matter how much she boils over, how hurt she is, how fucked up things have gotten because of him, he continues to instigate because he knows nothing else. Because that’s where his power is. His survival.

“…the city. Without us. Without me. Without your responsibilities to your family and…”

FAMILY? His audacity sends her over the top. She drops to her knees from her crouched position and pulls him in towards herself after grabbing his coat with both hands, then she scream in his face, “WHAT FAMILY? WHAT FUCKING FAMILY. WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU SUPPOSED TO BE TO ME? I DON’T EVEN KNOW YOU!”

Her pain is his power and so he bathes in it. He makes a disinterested expression and smacks his teeth as if he’s disappointed that she acted exactly how he was instigating her to act, exactly how he wanted her to act. Needed her to act.

“Look at you, tsk. You aren’t ready for the universe out there… Where did I go so wrong with you?” He says, shaking his head as he looks down.

All signs of her earlier mood completely wiped from her face, she plainly says, “Well first off dumbass…you let me grab you.”

It dawns on him. She was faking!? The only way for her to hurt him was for him to initiate physical touch or for him to let his guard down and allow her to touch him. She had figured it out after her few observations of him and Thema using their weapons.

As soon as the realization hits, he mentally calls upon his defenses. The blades, still right next to him, fly up towards her. At the same time, she’s sliding one head up his shirt to and to his neck, hoping to snap it in one fluid motion. Her other hand, with just four of her fingers, caves into his rib cage. But he’s quick too. She’s only able to barely brush past his neck with one hand, and to nick his lungs with his caved rib because the blades are just too fast. But, fortunately for her all that training paid off. She dodges one while catching the other with damn-near supernatural reflexes.

Images flood into her head the moment she touches the blade. Unlike the sword, these don’t reject her. And unlike with Thema, she sees it all clearly—a location, but it only flashes for a second. She doesn’t see the something or someone, and the image doesn’t last long enough for her to have anything more than the idea burned into the back of her mind.

The blade starts to burn her hand, its ownership still not transferred—or taken. Although it feels like minutes, this all happens in a split second. In that moment, her mind vividly goes to her place of comfort, Aiye.

Her vision goes dark and as it returns, she and The Warden hit the ground right next to Aiye, Thema and The Broker. Right in front of the dead body of Carbon, the now-standing Electrum, and The Dawn Hero.

The Dawn Hero looks at him. Her armor is no longer bright like a star, but like something that glows in the dark or under a blacklight. She grins an evil-looking grin with her pitch black eyes and black veins. Her pleasure at his arrival is like a sadistic predator that happens to come across injured prey.

In a creepy, predatory voice that barely has any traces of her original, she says, “Well now, hello Warden. I was starting to wonder where you went.”

The thunderous drum strikes once…