Jiji no. 8

Golden Kohns

Holy gods. What kind of creature does Holder and Ellaine had met?

For Holder, no beast that kind of creepy had he encountered in any forests yet. For Ellaine, her mind went blank, and was just shaking as she tightly grip Holder’s shoulders.

“AH! Vasmand! You dared to escape our training, and then now you had the gut to scare Holder and the Princess?” Another step echoed from below the stairs. This time, Holder was sure to whom does that voice belongs to.

“P—Professor, Help us!” said Ellaine.

Holder then eased a bit. He then looked at the insect-like creature in his front. “Vasmand,” he said, “Is this your Sankt Vessel, Professor?”

The insect-like creature spat green acid beside Holder. When it touched the ground, it sizzled and evaporated. Had it touched Holder’s body, he would be disintegrating just like the concrete he was stepping on.

“Vasmand, stop teasing,” Professor Zen appeared behind him. “No insect in the Middle Continent shall do that.”

Vasmand, the Sankt Vessel of Professor Zen, turned from being almost another Professor, down to being a bird. A mocking bird. But the head is of a king cobra.

“Ah!” Professor Zen slapped her forehead. “You’re a failure,” she said.

“What’s happening, Professor?”

The professor, with a loose, hanging shoulder, looked at them. With a sad face, she answered the Princess: “I’m trying to train with my Sankt Vessel. But no matter how many times we tried, he’s a failure.” She then scowled at the bird with cobra’s head sitting on her shoulder. She whispered: “You’re a disgrace.”

“Why is it, Professor? It seemed Vasmand is a great Sankt Vessel which has… a ugh… weird morphing taste?”

“No, Holder. Vasmand has different sets of skills than Jiji. Your Sankt Vessel can morph into different figures according to what you or he wants. But this FAILURE,” he stressed the word failure, “his power is to make a reflection. He was the demon of reflection. He was supposed to be able to make a thousand reflections of me or other people according to what he or I desires. But he CANNOT! He was just slacking!” Raging, she opened the bottle of booze on her hand, and gulped the liquid inside with straight gulps, like it was just a water.

Vasmand then jumped away of Professor’s shoulder, and landed on the concrete. He shifted into another form. A centipede. But with a human toddler’s head.

“Creepy,” Ellaine said.

“He is!” Professor Zen said, now her voice seems starting to be tangled.

“Professor,” called Holder. “I am here to ask about Jiji.”

“Ah, Jiji. Yes, Holder. Come, follow me.”

They started to walk. But Professor Zen’s way of walking is wobbling.

And so, Holder asked, “Are you okay, Professor Zen?”

“Aight! Aight! I am alright!”

Holder was in concern of the Professor, but he dared not to touch her, for the professor insists that she is alright. And so, they walked, until they finally reached the laboratory.

The Laboratory, as how it looked, is fascinating.

Kidding, it was just a normal laboratory, Holder believes.

There are two sections in the laboratory. The first section is a room which was covered in white paints. There were technological, alien-like Sen devices floating in the air. Professor Zen was not the only one in the laboratory. She had workers. There were other scientists in here too. One of the scientist was standing in front of that certain Sen device, and rapidly poking buttons with the use of his fingers. As it pokes the series of buttons, unreadable letters and figures started to appear at a floating tabular-like device. A screen. The other scientists were on the second section of the laboratory. There are at least ten scientists working in the second section. Holder can see the section through a fiber glass that divides the whole laboratory. On that part, there were more complex devices standing. More Sen-infused devices, technologies, wires and screens and papers and codes.

But there is one thing in which Holder took interested. A huge tube. It was standing in the center of the Laboratory.

“What is that, Professor?” asked Holder. He then pointed the tube that was standing in the second section of the room.

“What’s that? Ah, that is where Jiji is,” answered Professor Zen.

“Jiji?” Holder quickly took a strong, more focused look at the tube. “Why is he there?” he asked.

“We imprisoned him for a while,” answered Professor Zen. And, just like what happened when she’s drank, and then the conversation veered into more serious topic, her being drank were then flushed down. Gone.

Ellaine tapped Holder’s shoulder. When he looked at Ellaine, the Princess offered him a shirt. She had probably gotten it from one of the drawers in the laboratory.

Holder forgot that he was still in bandages, and the only cloth he wore is a tattered jean pants. Holder willingly took the white shirt, and wore it.

“Why did you imprison him?” asked Holder.

“Because if we don’t, the Kingdom would treat him as a threat. And when that happens, they could order us to kill Jiji. And I don’t want that to happen.”

Silence covered their conversation.

“Holder, your Sankt Vessel is in rage. We tried our best to calm him. But no matter what things had we tried, he’s still not responding to it. He can never be calmed,” Ellaine said.

“Why is it? Why is it that he is like that? What happened?”

“When you accidentally summoned a Kohn that shall never be summoned, he ate it.”

“I remember it. I saw it before I pass out.”

“It was the Kohn of all dark things combined and formed deep in your gut. Let me save the explanation because Nameless would explain it to you,” said Professor Zen.

“You were saved from the painful after effect of the dark Kohns you have summoned. But Jiji isn’t. He was constantly suffering from the poison of the Kohns he had eaten,” Ellaine then told.

“You know what, Holder, the first time I saw Jiji coming out from that same tube, he was just a cute black slime in which I thought would not be useful and powerful. And now, we have to put him back to that tube because we cannot handle his power.”

“Is there any possible ways I can help to resolve Jiji’s suffering?”

“I believe there is,” answered Professor. “But it would require to summon your Kohns. Again.”

“Holder, one of the reasons why Jiji was not responding to us is because he thought you are still in danger. That is why he is still at rage. But if you let him feel the Kohns in you, then, perhaps he would calm down. But be careful, you have to summon positive Kohns. If dark or something poisonous, he might think that you are still in danger.”

“But I thought he could feel my emotions. Whether I am fine or not, Jiji could feel it, doesn’t he?”

“The poisonous Kohns he ate had affected that sensory,” Zen again answered.

“Alright then, I will do it. I don’t want to see him suffering.”

As Holder was about to enter the second section of the laboratory, he heard Jiji’s scream and growl inside the Sen tube. He felt pain for Jiji. He quickly opened the glass door that would lead towards the second section of the laboratory. The scientists welcomed him with enthusiasm. Of course, they would, because the raging Sankt is fearful. They are in fear that the Sen tube is not enough to imprison him, and ‘that’ savage thing would happened again. They knew how Jiji cost lives of valued majic specialists.

Holder looked empathetically at the raging Sankt Vessel that was imprisoned in the Sen tube. “I am here, Jiji,” he said. “You need not to be raging.”

But the Sankt Vessel answered in a raspy, beast-like howl. The Sen tube was also made of Sen glass. That is why, Holder could see the black, smoke-like figure of Jiji, dancing chaotically inside the Sen tube. He was not the cute slime he was fond of looking at, anymore.

“I’ll make sure I can bring you back,” he said.

He opened his palm, and placed on the Sen tube in which Jiji was imprisoned. Before Holder closed his eyes, he met Jiji’s own red raging eyes.

He started concentrating. He found himself wandering again in the dimension of his emotions. To what positive Kohn he would summon, he wasn’t entirely sure. But what he was making sure of, at the time he was summoning Kohns, is that he would never touch the dark emotions again.

Then there’s this tingling sensation covering him as he touched a certain Kohn. It was bright, and not heavy, and peaceful in feeling. A Kohn that seems smiling at him. It wasn’t the Kohns of Happiness, because it was more light, and more satisfying in the feeling. As if he was enlightened from some dark experiences in life. As if he was bound free from chains and being imprisoned.

‘What is this Kohn?’ he asked himself.

And then, he decided to pull it.

He placed it towards his palm, laying on the Sen tube.

A burst of light shimmered through the whole laboratory. It was blinding. A golden light. And a Kohn made of gold.

Ellaine was shocked from what Holder showed. A golden Kohn. She never saw that, ever since, and never heard from Nameless who had thought her of the Kohn summoning skills.

Just like that, the two-day raging Sankt Vessel they can never bring towards being calm, was now fine. It stopped from its rages, from its growls and painful scream. Just like that, Jiji went back being a cute slime. Again.