Offerings

There weren’t always dragons in the valley. The tiny paper creatures had flocked to this part of Remma as if they were drawn to the countryside like migratory birds. Mylin knew that wasn’t the case, however. One could say she had studied the things a little too closely by this point.

Like all other Imagir, these dragons had been Folded and instilled with a purpose. An Intent that compelled the paper sculptures to behave as instructed. These pale, little creatures—fluttering near her head, moving too fast to catch—were so intricate that Mylin had no doubt they had been Folded to incorporate several layers of Intent.

Such a thing was beyond her own skill, but she understood the foundations of Folding well enough by now to make an educated guess.

Mylin clung to the side of the valley’s southern mountain, feeling the wind rush up from beneath her, though she refused to look down the sheer drop. She wasn’t afraid of heights, but … she was afraid of falling.

Her willowy, red hair whipped before her eyes making it a challenge to see what would be her next handhold. Her palms felt clammy as she scanned the wall, strategizing her next few steps. No slipping! She barked in her mind, drying her free hand on the back of her dusty brown coat.

To her left rose the early morning sun, a giant red ball that was shrinking the tall black shadows of the trees that bled out beyond the Noisi River in the vast distance.

To her right, well…. To her right was a monster.

Jordi had always been cruel to her. Ever since they were children. Stuck in the same class as him her entire life, she had never been able to escape his company. With their Ascension approaching, Mylin could think of little else as exciting as the prospect of never seeing the stupid boy again. She wanted to be as far away from him as possible.

After Ascending, she would be able to go anywhere in the world she wanted. So long as her feet would take her there. So long as Jordi wasn’t.

He was glaring at her from the corner of his eye, inching his way up the mountain with a bit more speed than Mylin, though she was trying her best to beat him.

One could not Ascend without presenting the Dol with an Imagir. The more intricate the paper sculpture, the higher the Dol would raise you among the ranks. Though, Mylin knew that was likely nothing more than hearsay among the villagers back home. Still, she didn’t think it would hurt to present the Dol with a rarer than normal Offering. These dragons would undoubtedly be enough to grant her the height she felt worthy of Ascending to. She just knew it.

If only Jordi didn’t have to be there with her. Why couldn’t he think of his own Offering for the Dol? Hell, he could Fold his own multi-layered Imagir with ease. He had been the best in their class since day one. And he had always made sure she and everyone else knew it.

He’s just here to annoy me, Mylin thought, pulling a climbing hook from her shoulder-pack and swinging it into the rough stone wall, imagining it was Jordi’s face. She had to keep her calm, though, keep her breathing under control; the air was harder to breathe this high up. Her anger at her classmate boiled her blood; it drummed at her already pounding heart, doubling its tempo.

Mylin closed her eyes and breathed deeply. She focused on the flat page of her mind, her emptiness pressing against it like an iron feather. She tried to lift the corner, and suddenly there was lightning behind her eyes. A blinding flash. Alright, definitely not the corners, she thought, blinking away the blue dots that muddled her inner vision.

She focused on the page again, centering it within the Void of her mind’s eye. No corners, but maybe…. The paper began to wrinkle in the middle, slowly beginning to bunch up. She was … crumpling it. She was Folding in the Void!

She’d have to tell Professor Ewon all about this when she made it back to school. She made a mental note of it, winking to herself as if to solidify the memo. She knew herself well enough. And the trick did seem to work….

Mylin gave a start upon opening her eyes and realizing where she was. That she was still clinging to the side of a mountain. That she was attempting a climb she probably should not have been attempting.

Maybe that’s what it took. It had never occurred to Mylin that maybe to reach such a height in Folding, one would have to reach such a height in person. Though, it seemed rather arbitrary to her. And besides, it surely wasn’t possible.

Her mentor back home—before she went off to school—had been genuinely terrified of heights, and yet, Master Olsam was among one of the highest ranks of Folders.

Jordi was almost at the top, at least ten feet above her. He was stalled there now in his light brown coat and matching brown breeches. The boy was odd. He simply hung there, looking down at her with a crooked glare, his black hair flapping at his ears.

When he began to move again, his dark boots scraped across the mountain as he climbed, cascading handfuls of gravel that pelted Mylin’s head. She turned to the side to protect her eyes and screamed in her head to keep the sand from finding her tongue. Idiot! Idiot boy!

Mylin heard Jordi swing himself up to the flatter peak, the raining dust and debris finally ceasing now that he had summited.

She waited a few more seconds with eyes closed, giving the finer dust a chance to settle before turning her head back to the task at hand. She looked up and set her path in her mind. It seemed a relatively smooth trail from here.

A few minutes later, Mylin found herself atop the mountain’s peak, lying on her back and trying her best to catch her breath. It was harder to catch this high up. Much like a dragon, she mused with a smile. She couldn’t help it. She was exhausted, but … she had made it to the top. She was going to catch a dragon.

“AHHHH!”

A scream shot a chill down her spine, springing Mylin to her feet before she could even decide to do so on her own.

She was three long strides closer to the disturbance when she crested the plateau’s highest point. Looking down the subtle slope of the other side, she saw the source of the sound.

Jordi hid behind a large boulder with his hands over his ears, looking terrified. Mylin heard an awful sound worse than crying thunder, and suddenly as if from out of nowhere, a monstrous black beast was towering over Jordi’s boulder, tormenting the boy with a fury.

The beast leaped back and forth across the plateau with the grace of a panther, though it was shaped like a giant boar. Its large white tusks and bright white eyes glowed in stark contrast to the darkness of the rest of its body.

Its body … with what had to be at least a hundred shadowy arms or tentacles sticking out of the boar in all directions like a loaded pincushion. There was no other word for it. It was a monster. A real monster.

“AHHHH!” Jordi screamed again as the monster thrashed at his protective boulder with hundreds of whips that almost seemed to flow and sway more like vines than actual arms or tentacles. Though they never made contact with the boy. The massive beast appeared to be toying with him by Mylin’s estimation. Still, she had to do something to help. He was her classmate. Even if he was the worst….

She took a few steps back, quickly finding cover behind a pair of tall stones that stuck out from the ground. They looked like the teeth of a Giant … they were even shaped the right way.

Sitting down in the slight shade of the rocks, Mylin removed a stack of paper from her pack. She took up a sheet and held it tight between her hands.

And then she closed her eyes and started humming.

And Folding.

Her hands worked the paper into a trifold at first, followed by a subtle bend and a twist with a corner flick here and a pinch in the middle there. She hummed her Intention into the Imagir as she finished the Folds.

With a final Fold that twisted the paper spider into life, Mylin left the eight-legged thing to work on top of the stack of paper per her instructions. She didn’t even bother to turn around and make sure her creation was worthy of the task. Mylin saw no other option. She had to get Jordi out of there as soon as possible. Even if she thought he deserved a little torment for once. Though not like this, she shook her head.

Mylin ran down the slight downhill of the plateau, charging toward Jordi. The vast blueness of the sky in all directions was never lost on her. But for now, she was focused on getting the two of them out of their present situation. Alive.

“Jordi, you numbskull! Get outta there!” She screamed even as she continued to run at him. “We gotta go back this way! Come on, now, with me!”

The monster’s relentless thrashing at Jordi’s boulder still hadn’t let up, but for whatever reason, Jordi was on his feet, sprinting for her at record speed, dodging the lashing tentacles from behind by zigzagging his path. That only enraged the beast further; it roared a harumph of frustration that shook the ground beneath their feet. Then it started trotting up the slope in their direction.

“What should we do?” Jordi asked as he filed in beside Mylin with labored breaths, looking back and forth over his shoulder. His eyes were dry now. And fierce.

The monster was charging at them now. It would be upon them any second. Time almost seemed to slow around Mylin as the massive boar hurtled in their direction, its dark tentacles flailing like windblown strands of hair in its wake.

Just then, from off to the side where the spider had been doing its work, a barrage of paper balls catapulted toward the assaulting beast, stealing its attention if only briefly. One crumpled up piece of paper after another launched in long arcs across the bright blue backdrop of the sky, pelting the monster and driving it back slowly, one hit at a time.

The paper balls were more than just that, of course. Those wads of paper packed quite the punch, supposedly, though she had never been on the receiving end of such a volley, so it was hard for her to say exactly how hard they hit.

Regardless, she knew the truth to an extent; she had seen their destruction. Their aftermath. Only a madman would stand counter to such a thing.

At the very least, Mylin’s spider had done its job, it seemed. Though tenuous at best, the distraction did as much, if not more, than she had anticipated. It had given them a few more seconds to think. Just then, that was all she could have hoped for.

The monster only appeared more annoyed now, however. It started sluggishly up the incline of the plateau but began to pick up speed as the shadow-boar’s trot turned into a gallop. Each step upslope seemed to further enrage the dark, mindless creature as it bobbed its white-tusked head, sniffing out its prey.

The nearer the beast approached, the louder it began to howl, and the higher it raised its pitch until it was screaming beyond the hearing range of a human. But … hearing aside … Mylin could feel its war cry even still. Its distant, icy tone cut across her bones, freezing her where she stood.

It wasn’t that her eyes had stopped working. She saw the monstrous boar for what it was. An obstacle. A moving obstacle. And it was barreling straight at them. Even knowing all that, she just couldn’t help feeling for things. She was good at it.

“We have to go!” Mylin screamed, losing her composure and turning out to look across the valley. “The same way we came up—”

Mylin felt a sudden pressure in her middle. A shove to her side, she thought, though she couldn’t be sure. And then she was falling.

Did Jordi just…?

Her heart was in her throat. She really was falling, the wind tearing at her clothes, scattering weak buttons out across the valley. The turbulence buffeted her coat, flapping the flimsy leather at her sides like brown wings.

Her auburn hair whipped about her face, wrapping, and knotting, and ripping as she tumbled through the sky. Mylin closed her eyes and took a deep breath. All there was below was a swathe of trees and a shallow river that would flatten her as well as any hard ground from this high of a fall.

Mylin opened her eyes a blink to gauge her distance from the ground. She yanked a braid of red hair from her mouth and shut it. Screaming was not the answer. Not that she knew what it was, but she knew it was not that. It seemed she had more time than she suspected. A lot more time. How high did we climb?

She focused on the flat sheet of paper that was her mind. Concentrated. She began to pinch at the quarters. To squeeze the paper. The corners moved….

Mylin blinked, and she could make out the individual trees below her, getting closer.

She closed her eyes.

She crumbled the middle and twisted her page, corkscrewing the center—

She blinked again. The trees, ground, and river were all rushing up at her. It was all coming too fast. She had less time than she thought….

Mylin closed her eyes.

She imagined her finger pressing on the center of the twisting sheet within her mind. As the page corkscrewed further, she felt a sort of … dimple … in the paper. She pushed on it hard. Then harder. Harder! Until her entire arm tore through the center of the page.

She reached out her right arm and swung her climbing hook into the side of the mountain with a satisfying lurch to her shoulder that told her she had struck well.

When Mylin opened her eyes, she gave a start, not at her falling, but at the sight, or lack thereof, of her own right arm, which she could feel dangling securely from a climbing hook far above even as the rest of her body continued to fall to the river below.

Without knowing what she was even doing, Mylin imagined her left hand in a specific location below her and sent it there, stabbing her arm through the same paper in her mind, somehow creating a same but different hole. It was a paradox, but … she didn’t have time for analytical thoughts at the moment. Survival seemed a far better focus.

Somehow her instinct took over just then, and she was grateful for it. It all happened so fast. Mylin tumbled through the sky, and about thirty feet, fast approaching below her, she saw her own left arm sticking out of a floating hole in the air. She had the sudden image of her arms tying together in her mind; Folding them, she realized.

With a perfectly timed twist, Mylin positioned herself waist up and stretched out her left arm to grab the rope belt around her middle as her body fell into the floating arm’s reach. She grabbed the belt and swung her own body with a pop and a scream. It felt like her arm had broken off, but even so, it had done its job. Her downward momentum carried into the swing, and now her body was careening into the side of the mountain.

Again her instinct took control, and she simply watched as her arms UnFolded from the page, reuniting with her torso just in time for her to swing her right arm out again and hook into the mountain with a CLINK! Her climbing hook made good contact, but the rest of her body met the rock wall with a slam that knocked the air out of her.

She maintained her white-knuckled grip on the climbing hook, gasping through groans to fill her lungs. The air didn’t seem as heavy as it had been. She had fallen a long way.

Mylin refused to look down just yet, though. She needed to rest for a minute. Her left arm was completely useless—dislocated and hanging limp at her side now. She’d need to pop it back into its socket sooner than later, but she couldn’t do it while climbing.

Another paradox, she thought. Descending one-handed wasn’t something Mylin had ever thought to prepare for. She hadn’t exactly planned for there to be a monster at the top either….

After a few minutes of calm breathing, Mylin finally convinced herself to look down. She felt a mixture of relief and horror smack her in the face like a pair of hands. She was barely twenty feet above the ground.

Mylin figured she could handle twenty feet with only one good hand. And at this point, falling from here seemed nothing to her. Still, twenty feet….

She had come within twenty feet of utter death. Of being squashed into a paste…. She shivered at the thought before taking one more calming breath and then lowering herself down the cliff. One cautious step at a time.

Mylin kissed the ground once she had finally touched down. She hadn’t expected such a warm welcome. Just minutes earlier, she had expected the opposite. The dirt was her death bare minutes ago, a hammer coming down on her hard. Now, that same threatening hammerhead was what held her up, what kept her sturdy. The ground upon which she stood.

Putting her back against a tree for support, Mylin clenched her jaw and jammed her left shoulder back into its socket with a yelp. Through the pain and tears, she searched through her satchel for a stray piece of paper to no avail.

For a split second, she almost gave up on Jordi before coming to her senses and pulling out a spare sheet of paper from her coat’s inner pocket. She began to hum. And then her hands were Folding.

She made quick work of a commbird, pinching its wings and whispering the message she intended it to deliver. With haste, the Imagir took off, darting toward the mountaintop, its tiny paper wings battling the wind currents and winning.

Mylin closed her eyes once again and visualized the blank page of her mind. With the right Intent she thought she could…. Yes. There he is, she thought. Jordi appeared on the page, his location written in text, though it was as if she could see him, cowering in the crook of a pair of stones. She could see the writing on the page change. Her commbird was there now, flapping its way to Jordi. Mylin watched the commbird interact with him in her mind. Saw it play out on the page. She saw Jordi stand and make a run for the edge of the cliff. Good, she thought. He had gotten the message.

The writing on the page began to rush, faster and faster, the scribbles becoming harder to read with every word. Still, Mylin could vaguely make out the image of Jordi looking down from the peak, peering over the edge, the shadow-boar’s tentacles thrashing at him from behind.

That was enough for her. The reading was becoming too chaotic. Mylin thrust her right arm through the corkscrew sheet of her mind and felt leather in her palm. She grabbed hold to make sure of what she was touching. Reading the words on her inner page once again, Mylin made sure to verify her assumptions before shoving Jordi off the mountain.

Coming from the top of the mountain, she thought she could hear a faint scream. Jordi was coming, alright. Same way as me, she thought, fighting back a grin. He deserved a little torment as far as she was concerned.

Mylin strolled casually toward the nearest tree in the valley. She thought she’d take her time, give Jordi a chance to sweat the same as her. Falling from the sky was no joke. He should know what it felt like too.

At the nearest tree, Mylin lay down on her back and hugged the trunk between her arms. She focused on the page within her mind, the sheet within the Void. Jordi’s scream grew louder now, his voice echoing off the mountain walls, his body hurling down the valley.

Mylin lunged her right foot through the page. She was surprised to find her feet could Fold too. That was optimal, especially so regarding her plan. She hadn’t been sure it would work.

Jordi fell right past her first leg hole, but she kept trying. Her arms never left the tree’s trunk, but Mylin focused on the Void, on the paper in her mind, alternating her feet back and forth, sending them down one foot at a time like a rope, burning her concentration until she finally felt a tug.

Her leg felt the shock, but it didn’t dislocate like her arm. That was the only good news. Within minutes of alternating legs through the Void to create a ladder for the boy, Jordi had safely made it down to ground level.

Mylin sighed, limping off back toward the road that led to their school. She didn’t care if he was keeping up behind her. What a waste of time, she thought. No dragons…. She huffed her frustration as she made her way back to the main road.

“That commbird was actually really well made, Mylin,” Jordi said from a few feet back. “It was good messaging. Well done.”

“Yeah, well, I guess that’ll have to be my Offering then.” She sighed. “First Years can make commbirds, Jordi. If only I could’ve caught one of those dragons.”

“Yeah, well, what if you had caught two?” Jordi asked, pulling fast hands from his coat’s deep pockets to reveal a paper dragon in each. “I tweaked them a teeny bit. I lessened the other three Intents and added a small fourth.” He opened his arms, palms up displaying the pale, paper dragons. “I Folded them together—Entanglement, Professor Stehn calls it—so now they’ll always know where to find one another.”

“Jordi! How? I thought the monster was—“

“I don’t know.” He shrugged, the dragons dancing in his palms. “Fast hands, I guess,” he said with a grin that seemed more mischievous than usual, though she couldn’t be sure. “I move quickly,” he said in a tone that was definitely icier than normal….