Reincarnation: A fight for survival

Chapter 15

The joyful look to Tanza's face sunk into a serious one, a hint of disappointment creeping into her tone as she said, "Then we will strip you of your memories and send you off to a distant land, ensuring you will never return or remember where our village lies."

A single bead of sweat ran down his back from the sheer conviction with which she said that. He wouldn't be dead, but then he probably wouldn't ever find Michael again, and losing his one friend in this world wasn't something he wanted to do. That really only left one option.

"What are the tests?"

Celia's hand brushed against his cheek, turning him towards her so she could bring their lips together. His heart thundered in his chest with a fire that threatened to make him break into sweat. At the same time, tides of calm washed over the beaches of his mind to wipe away his worry and leave him in a blank daze.

Smiling uncontrollably as her lips pulled away from his, the next thing to come out his mouth was, "I'm sure I can handle 'em."

Tanza chuckled and her smile returned. "I'm sure you will. You will face a challenge of strength, a test of the mind, and show of soul. Succeeding in these tests will yield a bounty beyond your wildest dreams. Do you, Galen Martin, accept?"

The Private nodded, still grinning wildly as he thought once again of what exactly that bounty might be. "I accept your challenges."

Throwing her hands up, Tanza looked to her elven sisters and yelled, "Then let the Kampti begin!"

..............................................

The side of the Great Tree looked down upon Galen as a beast loomed over its prey. A challenge of strength was issued to him to prove that his body was strong enough to handle any struggle. And that proved just an elegant way of saying that he had to scale to the first branch of the Great Tree.

It was one hundred feet above the ground. And he had to climb every inch along the outside.

There were the vines at the base to start, but they came to an end eventually and gave way to the notches and gaps in the bark. Those spaces were enough to climb with, sure enough, but going up wasn't going to be the biggest challenge. It was going to be not letting go. As he had learned many times before, rough bark didn't play nice with bare hands.

Nervously rubbing the callouses on his left hand, he looked back to Tanza and the gathered elves behind him. He was able to count forty-six elves total, each one of them watching him as he stood before their Great Tree. Celia herself was up in the front with a most hopeful look to her face as she held onto his gear for him.

"What happens if I fall?" he asked, looking back up at the tree and his objective above.

"Our magic will catch you, but then you will be cast off just the same as if you had said no," Tanza explained without breaking her smile. "But know this, Galen, that if you have the strength of the true noble heart, you will not fail."

"That's good to know," he muttered. It was now or never.

He spat into his hands and approached the tree, taking the first vines within his grasp and digging in his boots. Slowly, step by step, he began to climb. It wasn't so bad at first; in fact it was like the climbing wall in basic. Except the climbing wall wasn't blanketed in thousands of flowers that were covered in thorns.

By the time he was twenty feet up, sweat began to run his brow. He tried to get his next grip only for a splinter from the bark behind the vines to drive itself into his palm and cause him to cry out in pain. Grasping onto the vines with one hand, he drew the other in and sunk his teeth into the skin around splinter. A metallic taste filled his mouth as he got a grip on the slice of bark, wincing as he ripped it out and spat it out down to the ground below.

"Are you alright?" Tanza called.

"Just a scratch," he answered, reaching up and continuing to the next step. One foot at time, he pulled his way higher up the tree-side. Not bad so far, only seventy feet to go.

Only now he was at the point where the vines ended and the straight bark began. With the noon-sun beating on his back, Galen gritted his teeth and reach up to the next good grip above him. Several bits of wood stabbed into his palm as he took hold, several slivers tearing into his fingers. Yet the private pressed on, reaching up to grab the next piece. Taking hold of the tree's skin with a vengeance, he lifted his body up and again reached for the next—snap!

"Crap."

-snap-, "Oh, no."

-c***k- "You gotta be kidding me!"

The Private was left dangling by one hand as the bark under his boots gave way. Thirty-five feet above the forest floor, all he had was his left-handed grip and the adrenaline pumping through his veins to keep himself on the wall.

Streams of blood trickled from his fingers as the bark dug deeper into his hand. Galen clenched his teeth and screamed in his mind as he reached out to the side of the tree and pulled his right side back in. With two points of contact established, he dug his boots back into the bark to regain his footing and paused for a moment to let his heart settle down. When he was sure he was secure, he pulled his left hand off the wall and took a look at the damage done.

Every part of the appendage was bleeding profusely. The shredded skin barely holding on in some places and nearly gone in others. And that was when his hand began to tremble, sweat building on his palms and stinging wherever the outer skin had been peeled back. Suddenly his right hand was losing its grip.

"Push it out," he growled clenching that mangled hand into a fist. "You can do this... Push it out of your mind!"

He latched his wounded hand onto the wall, giving a primal roar as he pulled himself up another step. Tears began to run his face as wildly as the blood down his arms with more of the crimson life was welling up under the bandage on his bicep. It took even more of his waining strength to not cry out in pain as his sweat started salting his wounds. Yet, he reached up one more level. Pressed on and drove himself to go just one more inch.

Suddenly the weight lifted from his hands. A glowing aura encompassing his body to give him the feeling of weightlessness as he floated away from the side of the tree. All the pain in the world seemed to fall away as he lay there suspended by nothing but the air below him. It was then, in the back of his mind, that a voice began to whisper. The words from an melodic voice playing as clearly in his thoughts as they had to his ears.

"You have shown your strength, Galen. The challenge is won."

"But I wasn't finished," he whispered, his left hand trembling.

"No, you have finished. And you've exceeded what we expected."

It felt like icy fingers entwined with his hands, a frigid chill soaking into his fingers that quickly warmed with the soft glow in his palms. The blood on his skin turned to mist. His mangled skin stitched itself together. Even the bandage on his arm came undone with the gouge in his flesh sealing shut. Every cut, scratch, scrape, and bruise on his body swiftly disappeared in a bath of ice and warmth.

Yet even as the last wound healed, the force holding the young Private did not let him go. The world around him instead went bright before his eyes, brighter that the noon-sun above him and nearly blinding him with a flash of white light. Seconds later, he found himself inside the Great Tree hovering just inches above the boiling cauldron.

"Next you face the challenge of the mind. You have proven its strength over your body, but can you pass the true test?"

"I can..." he mumbled in a drowsy state, "I can do this."

The elves began pouring into the room from the outside, mumbling and giggling amongst themselves as they watched the soldier hover over the pot. Galen found himself scanning through the women, their nude bodies no longer fazing him as he searched for the one elf he knew. Or at least, sort of knew.

He spotted Celia stuck in the back of the crowd, blocked off behind a group of girls who stood on tiptoe to watch their darling hero face his next test. Tanza emerged from the crowd then, still set with that proud look of hers as her white aura flared. She came forth and knelt down beneath him while closing her eyes. He didn't need to ask her what she was doing as her voice quickly filled his head once again.

"Let us begin your next test. It shall strain your thoughts, probe your cleverness and imagination, and put your sense to the test. Words may be your foe or your ally, use them wisely. Are you ready?"

Eyes focusing on Celia in the back, he verbally answered, "Yes."

Tanza grinned, drawing out a long exhale as her telepathic voice stated, "Let us begin with a simple question. Why is it shameful to bury a man living in the desert?"

Riddles? The test is of riddles? Galen thought for a moment, wondering why they would use such a method to test one's mind. And to bury a man living in the desert? What is shameful of it? So vultures wouldn't get him? Because his body wouldn't breakdown?

No, his gut said something else. Words would be his foe in this, or his friend. Shameful to bury a man living in the desert... Living... living... Living!

"Because he is still alive," Galen answered in his head while chuckling aloud.

"Clever boy. But that is one of three, and the second shall not be so easy. So tell me, if you know, what it is that your hand would sow, if it is with one's eyes that another shall harvest?"

Galen relaxed a moment, a small grin forming on his lips as he answered, "Writing. Or a drawing."

"Very clever, Galen. But are you clever enough? Two men watch a crossing of two paths. One path leads to death, the other leads to wealth. One man always lies, yet one forever tells the truth. You have one question to ask these men to find the wealth, what is it?"

Holding in his laughter, Galen had to wonder if this was a true challenge or not. "Were you to be the other man, which direction would you point to lead me to the wealth? Wherever they point, I would go the other way."

Light flashed before Galen, his mind going into a fuzzy state. Images of his youth flashed before his eyes. Baseball games, TV shows, long trips in the car across the prairies. His father behind the wheel with mother in the front seat. Talking, laughing. Acting as if nothing was wrong with the world. He was thankful now to have a riddler of a father, always testing Galen and his mother with his quirky questions and their unheard-of answers. Especially since those exact same riddles had been repeated to him now.

As her felt the presence of the elf intruding in his mind, he reveled in the memories of how they passed time away when they were together on their long trips through the country. It warmed his heart to relive these long-dead memories of a time long past. Enough so that he didn't mind the other that observed them alongside him.