Raoul quickly pushed himself upright before apologizing. "My apologies, Miss Marrow. I didn't know there were other people here."
She raised a hand to reassure him. "Don't be. You've seen Old Man Kane by the gate, right? He'll have been stationed at this park for three decades this spring. During that time, you could count on one hand the number of different people that visit this place. With you included, that bumps the number up to six."
The boy reached over to subconsciously scratch his neck, still embarrassed. "You said you knew the person the statue was based on."
"I do. He was a Pioneer, and I was a part of his party, along with two other former friends."
"Former?"
"Oh no, they're not dead," she waved her hands hurriedly. "One's managing a tavern somewhere in the world outside, while the other's working as a freelance Driver. He and I don't really see eye to eye."
"But nevermind that. I'd rather you focus on getting back to your meditating rather than listening to a stranger's stories. Here, why don't you sit down the same way you were doing earlier? Allow me to help you with your meditation."
Raoul tensed, but nodded and did as she said, settling back down on the grass cross-legged. Like before, his mind still was a cacophony of his past troubles. He breathed in deeply, attempting to return to peace of mind. His brows furrowed, hearing Jhestine position herself behind him. Slowly, she sat like he did.
"I'm going to place my hand on you. I want you to focus. You'll feel a slight intrusion in your spine, but I want you to ignore it and instead do your best to recall your awakening."
"My… awakening?" He mumbled.
"Oops. Sorry, I meant the moment you first managed to wield your powers. You're a Driver-in-training, right? Then you should have experienced a moment in your life when your convictions coalesced into pure energy. For most Drivers, that's the easiest and most tangible part to grasp in their mind, because it was new. Now, breathe for me."
He did as she asked, doing his best to separate once more the high-pitched ringing of the wind and the gentle flowing of the grass from his mind. He recalled to his thoughts the step-by-step process to inducing a perfect meditation, and then ably followed through it all until he reached the point wherein he had fallen. Again, that same anvil of repressed emotions descended upon him, shutting out any attempts at concentration.
Only this time, it began to fade away like the low tide of the sea. A warm and soft heat entered from his back and gradually began to spread throughout his entire body. Before he even realized it, his worries had disappeared from his mind. No, rather, it was as if an invisible wall had materialized between his head and his thoughts, completely cutting them off and preventing any of his concentration from being sapped away.
His thoughts traveled back four days.
The scorching embrace of the factory's Conduit left its mark on his mind. When he slept, the coldness of his room would shift erratically to and from the opposite end of the temperature spectrum, reminding him of how close he was to death.
He had to go deeper.
He combed through that day's events. His hands dug out both the Conduit and Krocko's test out from the ground, and he carved deeper. His mental efforts bore fruit, and instead of his awakening he focused on what had caused it to be so in the first place.
The faces of Idri, Avil, and Calliope flashed in bright split-second images in his mind, striking extensively enough for him to sink deeper into contemplation at the prospect of being able to see them again. He longed to once more connect with his friends, converse with them, and then continue moving forward together like they had promised.
Still he was in the shallows. He realized. It wasn't their connection to him that he was supposed to focus on. Rather, it was the grounds on which his Driving had stood from that he needed to analyze. While he respected and loved those three as much as he did his parents, he understood that they were not his end goal.
The identity he had built up from the times he had spent with each one of them. The young, malleable Raoul that could effortlessly glide between groups of people and fit in like an all-purpose tool. That was the past him.
It was time for reclamation.
The world around him was slowly disappearing. Everything, from all the slight prick from the blades of grass on his thighs, to the wave and whelm of the wind, to the mild woody scent of the burnt incense, and even the small bit of dust that had entered his mouth…. They were all gone. The hand that was resting on his back continued to exert that warm feeling, but even that ceased to be in his eyes. It didn't matter. Visual. Auditory. Haptic. Olfactory. Gustatory. Gone.
Replacing all these was instead a faint white light. It glimmered just at the periphery of his vision, and without restraint Raoul reached out to meet it. His body didn't move, but rather the him in his mind did.
"I… I feel it…" he murmured.
"Good," Jhestine's voice echoed from behind him and into his ears. "Focus on that."
Even Jhestine's response was null in his ears. He didn't need encouragement. Raoul was moving toward the light one step at a time. Gradually it began to near, and he felt as if he was crossing the doorway to Heaven. When he finally stepped through it, his balance fell short, mimicking the feeling of falling from a great height. Except, he was literally falling.
The sudden change of scenery was all too jarring; it took over a dozen seconds before he realized he wasn't sitting down anymore. The chaotic screeching of terminal-velocity wind assaulted his ears like the screeches of a banshee. He pushed his arms in front to shield his eyes, and he jerked his head downward, trying to figure out where he was—and more importantly, why he was falling.
Everywhere he looked was only met with the thick, impenetrable mass of endless fog. His breath finally caught up to him, and he found his voice in the form of a high-pitched, guttural scream.
"Ahhhhhh!!!"
About a few seconds into the crescendo of his caterwaul, his voice cut itself off, the sheer terror of the fall short-circuiting his mind.
His body continued to descend impressively for a few more seconds, only to be stopped as the landscape below revealed itself. By then, he was completely out of commission, and there was nothing to stop as he crashed into the earth's crust in a magnificent explosion mirroring the same that had just happened at Lupas Hendu a few days prior. This one too, left behind a sizable crater, and in its center was Raoul. Not a single scratch nor bruise made its mark on him, and the only sign of the sudden altitude shift came in the form of damp splotches on his clothes from his short journey through the clouds.
For minutes he remained there, still unconscious. When he did awake, however, he quickly pushed his face off the Raoul-face-shaped mark it had left on the ground. Groans littered his lips, and he struggled to not break out in a series of "ow's" and "ah's" from the all-encompassing bodily pain that was slowly abating.
When he finally brought himself to his feet, he swept off the dust that had unceremoniously stuck to his clothes with a few clean smacks. He swept his head up, looking to gain a level idea on the place he had just fallen into.
From a grass-populated field to an emblem of forsaken memories. He stood at the absolute center of a massive carved dirt road, marked with imperfections in the structure and layout. Twists and turns made the landscape, with some roads leading to avenues that were hidden beyond the fog-covered periphery, and with others linking back to the main path, which was much larger than the others.
Much of the scenery beyond the actual path itself was dimmed, similar to the low-lit interior of caves or the alleyways of old libraries. A few unlit metallic lanterns, braziers, candles, and all other manner of light sources dotted the edge of the center path, sprinkled in like salt and pepper on a savory dish.
A frown crept up Raoul's face. His Path was about as vague as vague could have been. The soft humming of the fog trailing all around him in a weird surround-sound was his only option for company. Wherever he looked, there seemed to be no end to the endless jumble of braided dirt roads and obscured vistas.
Krocko said The Path represents the metaphorical journey of my life. He thought to himself, spinning around once more to eye the entire place. Are the fog and paths supposed to depict how I'm unsure on where to go? And here I thought being brought to the place where my future would be shown would make things much clearer. Instead I'm left wit—
A distinct, familiar voice suddenly interrupted his inner thoughts.
"With a sense of helplessness, right? Figured."
He swiftly spun back. It took a second to register the speaker of the voice, but once he was able to behold the person, it made it that much easier to recognize them.
In front of him was a short and scrawny boy dressed in simple clothes—the kind someone would wear at home. His hair, a sun-bleached bone, was tied neatly into a bun and settled on the back of his head. His face, a full smile of teeth, carried with it one large scar that started a few inches above his left eyebrow and slashed down past his eyelids and ended just a finger's space to the left of his nose.
"That's not funny." The older Raoul scowled.