Angelos Odyssey

7-1

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Tavon

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When I open my eyes again, I’m standing in a green field surrounding a small lake at its center. Surrounding this circular patch of verdant green is a sprawling desert that’s lit brightly beneath the hot sun above us. I’m standing near a palm tree that’s opposite several others across the lake, and I also notice a group of gardens to my right that are squared off by rock-laden outcroppings.

Amegdion waits with his arms folded near the side of the lake closest to me. When I look up into his mask, he points toward the gardens and says, “One of your friends was concerned about you. He brought you into his pocket dimension, and I stopped time by wrapping his dimension up in my domain. You were doing well, but I think Spilsbury’s got you on the ropes. If he’s using Lord Jao to help him fight, then it’s only fair that you get some assistance, right?”

“Thanks,” I reply before looking over to where Baraka Williams stands hunched near a flower patch with a green watering pot in his hand.

As I start to approach, I notice that a faint light shimmers around the water that he sprinkles across a neat row of yellow and pink tulips. Baraka hums to himself as each tulip comes to life with a green outer shell of aura that’s passed on by his own energy and causes the flower patch to bloom with hardened emerald rings running along their stems. To Baraka’s left is a row of plump green tomatoes that all look ripe for the picking, and to his right is a row of eggplants; both glisten with a shade of green underneath shining droplets of water.

If Baraka sees me, he doesn’t acknowledge it. Instead, he stares out across the desert oasis as he continues to hum nonchalantly.

“You’re stressin’ me out,” he says.

“Why’s that?”

“You’re not going win this one,” sighs Baraka in reply, then he turns to me with the water pot and says, “hold this.”

When I take it from him, I see that he’s holding what looks like a blunt in his other hand. He takes a lighter out of his coat pocket and emits a small flame from it before holding it up to one end.

Baraka lights the blunt, takes a puff, exhales, and says to me from behind black sunglass, “I thought I’d give you a breather.”—he snaps his fingers and takes out a second blunt—“That’s why I rolled two.”

He hands the second blunt to me. “Thank you,” I reply in kind, and he offers me a light. As I take it, Baraka says, “Come with me,” and I walk with him outside of the small oasis into the wide-open desert.

While we stand amidst the hot sands, we both take a drag and stare out across the golden wasteland. Baraka looks to me, and, with a tear in his eye, he says, “I had to watch a stranger, someone I’d just formed a bond with, go up against something inhuman. It tore him all up, and I had to watch as he bled out and started to change. I had to watch him get cut and cut, and you know what, Tavon?”

He shakes his head, looks out at the desert, and goes on without waiting for my response, “I didn’t care too much for it. I came to offer you a blunt break, Tavon, because your friend back there said that things might go badly for you. You’ve got about five people backing you up right now—backing up a person everyone’s calling a murderer. How do you think that makes us feel?

“I’m watching my friend, the ‘Knight Killer,’ take hit after hit, and then he just keeps going. So why, Tavon, why would you make me watch that? They asked you to throw the fight, and you didn’t do it. Truth be told, I don’t want you to, either, and so how, not ‘why,’ how do you keep fighting? Please, answer me that. I have something important to tell you, but I need to know that I’m sharing this information with the right person.”

howhow He takes another puff and coughs midway through. As he covers his mouth to cough, I gather my thoughts while drawing smoke deep into my lungs. I hold it there for a moment, then I breathe out and feel that rush of adrenaline from before beginning to fade. I know I can’t let that happen, so I give my answer.

“I grew up with absolutely nothing. I knew that I had nothing as far as skills or an education, and my ‘dad’ died after he overdosed on some stuff that I quit a long time ago. The only thing I knew was that I was strong—maybe not all the time—but I was strong enough to protect my dad when it counted against someone who had more power than him.”

I start to remember something as I desert-gaze with Baraka.

“I was in love with this woman when I was younger, and she wanted me to live an easier life than what I had. We almost got it, but things didn’t work out. She died…”—I hesitate briefly as I feel emotion well up from within—“I don’t think I was strong enough to stop it. I don’t think I was strong enough to protect the people I cared about growing up, and I suffered for it. And, when I wasn’t strong enough to protect myself, I suffered even more.”

I take a deep breath, draw in more smoke, exhale, and try to finish, “Now, when I fight, I just let go. I don’t expect things to be easy for me, and I realized that the most enjoyment that I could get out of this life was to fight people who would push me to understand who I am.”

“I see,” Baraka nods. “Fighting makes you understand yourself.”

“Yeah. I always let pain be a lesson; it shocks me into moving faster, striking harder, and surviving as long as I can because, if I can’t have anything else, I want to be able to keep every win and loss committed to memory. I decided that maybe every fight represents a piece of who I am, and so I think, if I live through this, I’ll try to develop into a better warrior and teach my own style one day.” I smile and tell him, “That’s how I’ll make myself useful.”

“Is that your final answer?”

“Yeah,” I take a drag and nod before blowing smoke out of my mouth as I reply, “I think so.”

Baraka chuckles and smiles back at me, “That’s a really crazy thing to say, man, but I feel it.” He sighs and then calmly turns to me as he tries to take my hand in his; he puts his other hand on top of mine as he looks into my eyes and says, “I’m sorry for your loss. I really am. Sometimes just one soul makes all the difference in a person’s life.”

Baraka steps away and looks down as he takes a drag and says, “It’s nowhere near the same thing, but I lost a girl who was special to me a long time ago and never quite got over it. It changed my heart,” he looks back up and stares out at the desert with me as another tear runs down his cheek, “and so I let it make me a better writer, a better gardener, and a better poet. I see that in you, that will to take the pain buried inside of your soul and use it to improve, to refine something into a technique of your own. Tavon,”—he reaches into another one of his coat pockets to take out a series of scrolls that are bundled together—“what if I told you that I could write poems that translated into reality? What if I told you that meeting certain conditions and establishing specific vows bolstered the strength of these poems?”

I lift one eyebrow as I reply, “Huh. That sounds pretty amazing, actually. Could you show me?”

“That’s what I came here to do,” he replies with a solemn expression.

He pulls out a quill that burns with a jade light, breaks the seal on one scroll, and, before he writes, asks, “Did you answer that question truthfully and with your whole heart?”

“Yeah.”

Emerald-colored tau begins to run from his body to mine.

“Finish this sentence you said a few minutes ago: ‘I’ll try to develop and teach my own style one day…’”

“‘That’s how I’ll make myself uself.’”

Baraka nods and replies, “Okay. Stronger. This next one’s important. And dangerous. Ready?”

“Yeah. Go ahead.”

“If you lie here, then the god I’ve made a covenant with will sew your mouth shut for twenty years—so don’t lie, okay? Here’s my question to you: can you give me two lines that rhyme but that also represent who you are within the next thirty seconds? Make it good. Go.”

He hits me with this demand so fast that I’m not ready to deliver. I feel my anxiety push me to speak no matter what I have to say—

“Um…

“As long as I strike first, then I know I can’t be the worst.

“I hit like fire; to win is my burning desire.”

Baraka remains silent for the moment and looks down while thinking about the poem that I just said out loud.

“Hmm…” he nods, and his body comes aglow with a dark green aura. “I think that might’ve worked, but there’s only one way to find out. If she accepts it, then it’s smooth sailing. But, if she rejects what you’ve said…” he sighs, “then it’s going to be bad. There’s only one way to find out.”

she Baraka unwraps another scroll, holds it out in front of him, and begins to recite what it says: “I seek the Queen of the old and the new, the begetter of verses with rhythm that shines when it passes through. I seek the Goddess of Poetry; oh, Queen, let it be you…”

As he continues to recite, the faint outline of a form garbed in white robes begins to appear, shimmering as it does against the heat.

Baraka breathes a sigh of relief as he goes on to say, “Queen Rhythme, lend us your ears so that we may perform at our best. You’ve been called on by a fighter and poet, and we request your permission to use your power for the sake of art. My promise to you, my covenant, is that the poetry we construct here will enable my good friend to demonstrate moves and techniques this world has never seen before in order to defeat an insurmountable opponent.”

The outline from a few seconds ago solidifies into the frayed edges of a white robe that’s rimmed with a jade-colored halo. The top of this robe cuts off below metallic cylinders and a golden plate in the shape of a shield that makes up Queen Rhythme’s torso. Attached to the center of her torso is a bronze frame that’s arched upward to form two pointed shoulders and that’s rounded at the middle; the frame extends down so that each side of her body is marked by a golden plate that represents her left and right hands. Above the middle of the frame is the thin, metallic neck of Rhythme, and the top of her head is formed by what looks like a burning glass of white wine.