Chương 34: Secret Revealed

Ch 34: Secret Revealed When the first light touched the distant snowy mountains, Sahirah and I were already near the boundary where the school property ended and the forest began.

"I just hope Principal Dickhead won't send a hunting team after us. It's going to suck having to escape without even being able to talk to each other." We both knew the risks we would be facing by leaving the range of Elitha's translation spell, but we were doing it anyway. This uncomfortable night, after Zorik's attempt to auction Sahirah during the tournament, left us both with a bad taste in our mouths.

The kind of feeling that pushed us toward rushing our private conversation, and hopefully solving everything that was keeping us from pushing to the third stage of dual cultivation.

"A girl is going to cast Haste a hundred times in a row if she has to." Sahirah held my hand before crossing the threshold, claiming the last words before translation became unavailable.

"As long as you don't resist being carried, we should be safe." I smiled awkwardly as we entered the forest, thinking that I might need to prepare myself mentally for the possibility I might be the one getting carried to safety this time. After all, she was the one with enough mana to outlast most people Zorik might pay to follow us. This thought was forgotten the moment I heard her unfiltered voice.

"Steradi kirnin zorest nir?" I just shook my head, and said, "I can't understand you, sorry." Her eyes widened a bit, perhaps slightly unprepared to hear me in my own language. But then she held my hand even tighter, her features hardening, her gaze telling me, "We can do this!" We pressed forward as the sun touched the canopies above us, our goal being to distance ourselves from Elitha's tower enough that there was no chance of her prying into our conversation.

This was not a guess on my part; Elitha had actually shared her range when I asked her. And oddly enough, she had promised not to go out of her way to eavesdrop on us, though according to her own words, she would also make no active effort not to. So that's why we had to get away from the school, though just a two-hour trip should be more than enough to ensure we had our privacy.

The sun continued its ascent as we kept pressing forward, climbing slopes, fighting the undergrowth, and eventually finding a few lakes that looked incredibly clean and blue under the morning light.

"Libirk zin agazif loar?"

"Yeah, the lake is beautiful." I wasn't exactly sure what she had said, but just by the fact she was pointing at the lake with a smile, I took my best guess even without understanding a single word. It was at the same time confusing and reassuring that we could communicate so well even with no translation spell at all, which greatly improved my hopes that my peer-to-peer translation solution might actually work for us.

If it could leverage the fact we were already quite familiar with each other, our brains might actually have an easy time filling the gaps that the spell couldn't. With that hopeful mindset, we continued our journey, walking along the lake banks, until we reached a small clearing where we could see all the lakes and even part of the school hidden by the tree line in the distance.

Sahirah let go of my hand, and reached for her backpack, where she retrieved a towel and what looked like some jerky, the only practical snack that both of us could eat. As she prepared what looked like a picnic spot for us, something I had no idea she had planned, I surveyed our surroundings, slightly concerned about the local fauna that I knew so little about. I raised my rune-filled arm the moment I heard a loud buzzing sound from behind a shrub.

But before I knew it, Sahirah was in front of me, lowering my arm and shaking her head in denial, dissuading me from even considering a spell. What did she see that I didn't? Well, likely a lot since I hadn't attended a single class about Navar's ecosystem and the species that lived here. The proof that she was right came when a large flying creature emerged from behind the large leaves of the shrub.

It looked like a dragonfly the size of a duck, and the weird thing about it was that its segmented body had a lot of glowing spots. I'm not gonna lie, the creature was a bit scary, but since Sahirah seemed so unconcerned about it, I also felt no fear as it approached us. To my surprise, it ignored her. The creature just came near me, hovering in the air in front of my face, and staring at me with its large compound eyes.

As I saw my own reflection in the flat surfaces of its eyes, it opened its mouth and a large soft appendage that looked more like a tentacle than a tongue came in my direction, tasting the droplets of sweat on my forehead. I felt uncomfortable and didn't know what to do, but Sahirah only burst out laughing.

"Kroaro zorin ikan human zahaa." Again, I had no idea what she said, but I suspect she was teasing me about human sweat tasting good to the local fauna.

"Well, guess I'm a fucking Disney princess now, and you're just the leftover lady the giant bugs despise." She stuck out her tongue at me, noticing I was teasing her back, even though she had no idea what I'd said. When the giant bug finally left, we both claimed a seat on the towel she had prepared. I finally reached into my own backpack and retrieved the translation prototype that I was the most optimistic about. Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

A copy for her, and a copy for me. She knew how to activate it without being told, since I had long ago standardized the activation point of my spheres. Nothing happened as the sphere glowed in between her fingers, which was a good sign, since both modules were dependent on each other to work properly. Still, I hesitated a moment before activating my copy. As the designer of the spell, I was very much aware of the side effects it would have when sharing snapshots of our mental status and feelings.

Even in success, the conversation awaiting us wouldn't be normal. Lying would be extremely hard, and hiding information would be equally challenging, making the incoming experience the most intimate thing we had ever done... Still, Sahirah was aware of this, and she hadn't hesitated, so why should I? A gentle touch and a small mana injection, and I activated my copy of the spell. My mind was instantly flooded with feelings that weren't my own. Anxiety. Fear. Hope. Even a sweet thing I didn't dare name.

It all crashed down on me at once, in a way that matched perfectly the expression I was seeing on her face. As amazing as it was, that whole thing was terrifying. The moment she averted her gaze, I knew exactly why she did it. Just like me, she was perfectly aware that hiding our feelings behind some teasing joke was not an option for either of us right now, and it scared her as much as it scared me. I cleared my throat to try to make things less awkward.

"Can you understand me?" I said.

"If you can, please proceed with the translation test." This was something we had discussed during the night. The best way to test the accuracy of my translation spell would be to share something we were both already familiar with. And the thing we chose for this was Sahirah sharing with me how exactly she remembered our first meeting on the very first day I arrived on Navar.

"A girl understands you." Her words felt more natural than I had imagined, her voice identical to the one I heard through Elitha's translation spell. I smiled, waiting for her to continue.

"I was frustrated the Driari made fun of me when I tried to get a meditation partner, so I went to the library to spend the evening." As she spoke, I could instantly tell it was the truth, since a hint of anger reached my mind when she mentioned the Driari. I could even feel her reaching deep into her mind to retrieve the memories of the day we met.

"I noticed you before you noticed me. When the intake clerk was explaining the basics to you, I was already observing you... I might have thought about asking you to be my meditation partner before I even knew your name." Oh. That felt very good to learn, and the fact she could read my feelings made her blush just slightly, though it seemed she didn't mind that much that her story was massaging my ego, and I was feeling good about it.

"Don't get me wrong, but at some point you became obsessed with that rune book and forgot about me. I almost left you alone at that table," she said.

"But a girl is glad she didn't, even though you got us in trouble with your failed spell." I remembered the incident myself. It was the first time she lent me some ink, and I used it to get us in trouble like all the other times afterward. One thing became evident: how fond we both were of that memory, how by now we both had forgotten the bad things about it, and only held on to the good things it led to.

Our gazes connected, and we both leaned forward to share a kiss, the sweetness doubled as any doubt about doing something wrong or using too much tongue got erased from our minds completely. It ended at the perfect moment, and we both knew the other wouldn't mind continuing, but only after we finally made the best use of our privacy to discuss the things we needed to discuss.

"Sahirah Fiora of Leodore," I said, finally bringing up that mysterious surname I had known for so long, yet had never been able to ask about.

"Why are you so concerned about hiding your surname?" I felt profound conflict emerging inside her. Part of her wanted to tell me everything right then, and another part felt terrible, knowing she shouldn't share her secret.

"A girl already told you her planet lost all its mana, but what she couldn't tell you was that this was the reason she was sent to Navar." Sent to? I frowned at the wording, hoping it was a mistake in translation. Because if it wasn't, that meant–"I'm an agent of my people, sent to Navar with a mission and a gate spell I memorized from birth. I've studied it every single day for as long as I can remember." Wait, she wanted to open a gate too? To let her people invade Navar the same way Navar wanted to invade Earth?

And an agent of her people? That was lot to digest at once. Yet her voice came to a stop before she could clarify those things, anxiety peaking inside her. And at the same time a certain weight lifted from her shoulders, she felt terrible about herself. Even with all her emotions vivid in my mind, I couldn't tell why she felt this terrible about telling me she was an agent.

"Why–" I swallowed, then finally managed to ask, "Why do you feel so terrible after telling me the truth?" She stared at the towel beneath us, her voice sounding incredibly weak when she spoke.

"A girl wasn't the only one. There were twenty of us," she said.

"And the elders made us swear an oath of secrecy in front of the whole city. The mission was our burden to carry.

"We had to keep this truth to ourselves during our twenty years on Navar. That's how long the elders thought it would take for us to absorb enough mana from this planet to cast the gate spell and open a path for our people to come here." It finally sank in. Sahirah wasn't the normal Riftstorm arrival like I was. She was the rarest species on Navar for a reason. Because nature had nothing to do with her presence here, and she was an agent her people had sent here with a mission. And if there had been twenty...

"The others," I said, "are they–""They didn't make it," she said, still looking at the towel beneath us.

"losses were expected. The elders didn't have enough mana crystals to stabilize the gate. They made us resistant to space distortions from birth... but it still wasn't enough." I felt the sorrow behind her words, the very air around us getting heavier. She was feeling it more than I was, and I could tell how much she blamed herself for sharing all of this with me.

"Is there anything you want to ask me about Earth?" She could probably tell my question was meant to distract her from that bad feeling, but she still decided to take the bait. Instead of staring at the towel, she got a piece of jerky for herself, and shamelessly claimed a spot on my lap, leaning against me as if I were her chair.

"Your planet is a prosperous society that got where it is without mana, isn't it? Maybe even stronger than than the Grey." She asked it casually as she ate, and through the translation spell, I could tell that her mind lingered on the fact she had broken an oath to share her species' secrets with me. Still, I answered her question.

"Yeah, I think we have more nice things than the Greys do, even though we don't have mana. And as much as I love mana, I also miss a lot of things from Earth." Sahirah kept eating her jerky while I held her, and for a while she didn't speak, just enjoying this picnic. First she ate her own portion of the jerky, and then mine, which I noticed and didn't even consider complaining. When she was nearly finished with her meal, she spoke again.

"You know, Eric, ever since I met you, I started to believe in the mission less and less, even though I could never give up on it after the price everyone paid for me to be here." As surprised as I was, I started stroking her hair instead of asking anything else, giving her all the space she needed to speak.

"But it's still hard for me to accept that now I am the girl who broke her oath and shared her people's biggest secret out of love, of all things." She dropped the L word and said nothing more, but I was sure she was listening to my feelings through the spell's connection. But what was I feeling exactly? I closed my eyes, and focused on myself instead of Sahirah.

Deep inside, I couldn't believe Sahirah had actually staked the future of her species on a guy whose pastime was creating gambling rings, and whose biggest achievement was creating a system that for now just showed levels hovering above people's heads. How could this girl make herself this vulnerable by offering her heart to someone like me? As that question crossed my mind, she laughed, but offered no comment to explain her laughter. When I opened my eyes, I noticed a small headache.

The translation spell was taking a toll on us. I deactivated the orb without saying anything to Sahirah, and she didn't even move, not even acknowledging the change as she kept enjoying the moment. We hadn't discussed things like the reason behind the color of her eyes, or the details of our relationship yet. We also had a war waiting for us at the school with a principal who had crossed a line. But that was fine.

Because we could talk in private anytime we wanted now, and the third stage of dual cultivation was closer than ever.