19.

Vivian woke up not ready to face the day. Light crept into her room as the day broke outside. Rolling out of bed, she threw things together in a sack. She popped into her mouth a hard boiled egg Ida had brought her, grabbed the refilled water canteen that Owen had given her, and dashed from the room. Her legs felt more akin to stone than flesh but she just ran through the stiffness.

The sun just barely finished cresting over the horizon when she reached the dusty stadium where Owen sat on the ground stretching. He appeared surprisingly flexible despite his hulking size.

Owen looked up at where she stood in the stands and laboriously clambered to his feet.

“Run there and back,” he said, then began a series of stretches for his shoulders.

“Where?” she asked.

Vivian waited but the only response she got was a grunt. Assuming he must mean the tower again, she took a breath and took off.

This time she paid special attention to which streets and alleys she ran down, mapping the city in her brain and noting landmarks. A stairway collapsed to the point of being more of a ramp of rumble. A statue of a woman missing her head and left arm. An obelisk snapped in half.

With her hand, she tapped the tower’s base stones before turning and heading directly back to Owen. Pride swelled in her as she entered the stadium only about an hour after leaving and without taking a single wrong turn on her return.

“Come back tomorrow at dawn,” Owen instructed upon seeing her once again.

Something inside Vivian wanted to protest and insist on learning how to fight with a weapon like he’d promised her. But she fought that down, gave him a smile along with a thanks, and went back to the library.

The next day went exactly the same as the second. Along with the third. Frustration bubbled up inside her but she never let Owen see it pop, only giving him a smile every time he sent her back to the library after her run. Several days continued and Owen’s communication with her devolved into a grunt and a point at the tower in the morning and a grunt and a point at the library when she returned at noon.

Vivian wanted to burst but she did as she was instructed.

After a week of daily runs, she came to the stadium in the morning to find Owen not doing his regular stretches but rather standing in the center of the stadium glaring up at her. She reassured herself that she had never seen Owen without a degree of glaring on his face, but still couldn’t shake the feeling of overwhelming self-consciousness. She approached him, giving him a charming smile and wishing him a good morning.

“Do you want to be here?” he asked, not returning her greeting nor her smile.

“Of-of course.”

“You’re either pathetic or a liar.”

Vivian took a step backward, stung by the bluntness of his words. “What do you mean?”

“Take initiative.” Owen turned his back to her and initiated his daily stretches.

Vivian stood there for a minute, trying to process what exactly he wanted from her. Finally, she ran to the tower. She felt her composure collapsing into pieces as she ran. Every morning she had arrived and done exactly as she had been told by Owen. That made her the ideal student, right? But why did Owen’s words seem so truthful?

She made it to the tower at a record speed. Then she made the return trip even faster than that speed. Owen didn’t acknowledge her in the slightest as she stood in the stadium watching him. After some time passed, she started to feel stupid just standing there, unnoticed and uncertain what to do, so she ran back to the library.

Ida greeted her cheerily upon seeing her back so early in the day. Vivian, naturally, returned the polite pleasantries but felt hollow on the inside.

She spent the day feeling like a feigned form of herself. She did everything she was supposed to, but her mind couldn’t be peeled away from Owen. She kept hearing the same words he spoke earlier repeat in her brain. She became so consumed by her thoughts that she completely missed Rin walking past her until after he was gone and she couldn’t seem to grasp or comprehend the words he had just spoken to her.

Opening the door to her room, she found a slip of paper on the ground under the door.

Try running somewhere new.

–Rin

Vivian read the four words over and over. She understood the words and the meaning, but not the why. She should obey, right? Follow Owen’s orders to exactness like a soldier following the commands of an officer. Vivian lay back on her bed, staring up at her ceiling. Do as you are told by your elders, a lesson taught since birth. Owen instructed her to run to the tower, so she had done so every day. Maybe she should have smiled more or been friendlier to him. Or maybe she should have brought him a gift, was that something that maybe noble mentors like Owen expected and it had just been something her teachers had forgotten to tell her about? Everything taught to her in both her lives had involved following instructions exactly. Then it clicked in her head. Owen must have said something about running in new paths around the city only he had mumbled it or she had misunderstood exactly what he had said. Of course. And Owen must have complained to Rin who, in turn, wanted to help her by leaving the cryptic note behind at her door. It made sense. Vivian smiled and nodded to herself as she drifted off to sleep.

The next day Vivian woke as the first beams of light peered through her window. She dressed quickly but still took great care in choosing her outfit. Something she could move around in. Vivian hesitated, remembering the time before she became Vivian Topaz and was simply Vivian. Back then she had been able to wear trousers and run through fields unconfined by corsets and lavish dresses she now wore daily. A confinement of nobility. It would be convenient to wear boots and trousers instead of skirts but that wasn’t possible. Even if she had access to them, which she didn’t, Ida would have a heart attack if she saw her in them. Finally, she simply slipped on a skirt.

As she exited the room, Vivian stumbled into Ida in the hall. Ida handed her a platter of poached eggs, toast, and sliced fruits, which Vivian shoveled down her throat right there in the hall in a very unladylike fashion. Ida obviously found her eating disgusting and Vivian felt a pang of guilt for not being more polite but felt urgent to get going. After slurping down the last piece of melon, she handed the platter back over, and bolted down the hall.

Only minutes later she found herself in the city streets. It still felt wrong to not obey Owen’s instructions so she ran to the tower first, but after she reached it she stopped and surveyed the city. She decided to try running the furthest side away from the Silvian Library. The city appeared massive, far larger than any she had ever visited in Neo Regnum, and the tower stood at the center of it all. She took off eastwards where the sun rose.

Vivian noticed several ancient statues and monuments she didn’t recognize as she ran . Even in shambles, their beauty was irrefutable. Once, she ducked into what she first assumed to be an alley but became shocked when she found herself in an empty open air bath. The walls were covered in a faded fresco filled with individuals of both sexes clad in little to no clothing. Shaking away the familiarity of the images, she left almost immediately after entering. Her heart pumped faster than her running had ever made it.

Later, she slowed her pace as she passed through a street with stone walls covered in chiseled in words. She attempted to read with her basic understanding of her own native language and found it far beyond her grasp, thinking it must be some ancient language. Some words seemed almost legible, but still most were completely foreign to her. Reading frustrated her to no end. Her tutors had attempted to drill the knowledge into her head but there had just been so many subjects to learn and not enough time. After a minute she gave up attempting to read the language and continued on her way.

Living at a library with all the knowledge in the world, but unable to read half a sentence. What an embarcement. She prayed Lynn never found out about her literacy. Those books he left her, unless they had pictures, would probably be more useful as an ornament on a shelf than in her hands.

Eventually Vivian arrived at an enormous gate with images of men and women engraved into the side of it. She stared up at it, the men at the base wore skirt-like outfits alongside the woman, whose skirts appeared identical, and every individual held spears, as if prepared for an invasion. Further up, she saw what appeared to be peddlers, merchants, farmers, and all sorts of mid-class men and women. Of course, at the top of the gate stood the nobles. Strategizing, performing astronomical feats with the stars, and signing laws.

Vivian exited the gate and approached the other side of the city’s wall. A moat had been dug at least twenty feet deep into the outside perimeter of the city but it had dried up long ago. Only a large trench in the ground remained, now overgrown with strange plants Vivian didn’t recognize. On the other side of it, Vivian could make out what probably had once been a road but now had simply become a slightly less dense path through the jungle.

Glancing back almost caused Vivian to stumble backwards into the foliage covered ditch. The exterior of the gate didn’t have the beautiful people the other side had carved into it; but, instead, grotesque beasts. The bottom had some animals she had seen at a menagerie Lord Ivory had brought her to. Animals like bears, scorpions, snakes, bats, and large cats chewed on bones which appeared human. The next level contained only a few beasts some of which she recognized through descriptions from stories she had been told growing up by the women her mother worked with. She noticed winged serpents, feral half-man half-animal creatures, and many more savage mythical monsters. At the top there stood men and women in hooded cloaks. Vivian felt a chill as she thought of Lynn’s story about the men who had murdered his family and left him half dead in the wreckage of his home. The stone man in the center seemed to almost be smiling at her under his hood. The man’s face couldn’t be seen but still he seemed to be calling out to her with sadistic joy.

Vivian turned and ran back to where the tower stood but couldn’t shake the goose prickles which popped up on her arms despite the sun's warm rays beating down from above. When she reached the entrance to Owen’s amphitheater she stood outside it for several minutes, still cowed by the stone engraving of a man’s appearance, before gathering her courage to face Owen.

He didn’t turn to face her at first, focused on his exercises, but Vivian had become accustomed to having to wait for him. When he completed his rituals of swinging the massive dulled blade in patterns, he turned to her and called her attention to him with his eyes.

She krept down from the stands.

Placing the blade down on the dirt with great care, he then spoke to her.

“Where did you go?”

“Well…I thought maybe I misunderstood you so I ran further today. To the far end of town, to the gate with images of men etched into the stone.”

Owen grunted. “I know where it is. Come back tomorrow.”

With no further instruction he grasped his great sword’s hilt and resumed slicing at the practice dummy in front of him.

Vivian turned and fled, her stomach feeling lighter than ever as she dashed through the streets toward the library.