| 5th of Teryusin — Year 362 of the Cycle of Synthesis, Grand Cycle ??? |
To the present day, the exact proximities and origins of The Path remained mostly a mystery to the wider scholarly world. For as long as Drivers had existed, so too did their Paths. Attempts to catalogue, distinguish, and accurately define the phenomenon under one single, strict definition were no less fruitful than if one were to shovel knee-deep snow during an ongoing blizzard or chasing one’s own shadow; the differences between each one were far too large.
In the end, the Rynthian Driving Council decided on one very loose description.
“The Path is the personal and innate other world that exists within each and every Driver. It details the literal road they travel through their lives, and acts as a measure of their growth, evolution, and eventual death.”
Without going into much depth and barring the word ‘literal’ pasted in the structure, it was more akin to metaphor than a real, physical plane. But it existed. And countless Drivers could instinctively access it with enough self-reflection and understanding.
Raoul stood in the middle of the Resonance Chamber, his eyes shut tightly. From the depths of his mind rose a single, hasted thought. And so he plunged the mental surface and pulled it forth with his bare hands, his focus spent entirely on attempting to imagine the empty white room as an extension of his own self. The Path was his, and he was the Path. The Resonance Chamber was the Path, and the Path was his.
Beads of sweat ran down like drops of rain from his forehead at the intensity. He hadn’t budged once since he began concentrating, and yet the mental strain of it all was already beginning to wear at his self. There wasn’t resistance. He was still desperately bridging the gap between reality and Path in his mind.
“Are you doing okay, Raoul? Shall I send Sai down to assist you?”
“…No, please don’t,” he muttered, the very suggestion posed by Jhestine seeming like poison to his concentration. “I want to do this myself.”
A crease enveloped Jhestine’s eyebrows, and she crossed her arms in surprise. Her help was being refused and to see the boy struggling more than he needed to was starting to itch at her conscience. She opened her lips again to speak, but found no words spilled out, only a sudden gasp of interest.
“Are you seeing this, Miss Marrow?” The scientist closest to her said, adjusting the glasses on her face. She pointed to the center of the room, finger trembling at the sight. “It’s… there’s wheat growing on the floors.”
For a moment, she was right. The very fabric of reality glitched, displaying faint images of golden brown stalks of wheat sprouting from the pure white of the chamber’s floors. Each one stood tall and swayed, mimicking the behavior of the real deal in turbulent winds. The persistent brightness shining off the lights managed a bright click, suddenly shrouding the entire place in darkness. Then, just as quick as it appeared, the lights flickered back on—only this time, the tone each one gave off was a fusion of molten gold and peach rose. Even the air ducts connected to the room below fed not clean, hyper-purified air, but the musty, dirt-scented outback of Midasia.
“Raoul?” Jhestine coughed, nearly shouting into the mic. “Are you okay?”
There was no response. His eyes had sunk back into their sockets. He was seeing something else entirely.
The intense, warm humidity of the jungle. The blistering heat and dryness of the endless desert. The frigid polars of the tundras. The endless, shifting wet waves of the ocean. Countless more biomes flashed through his eyes in what felt like a rapid collage of nature.
There, to his right. A chameleon perched on the edge of a tree’s branch. It stuck its tongue out at him, and from the tip of said tongue brushed ancient, unknowable whispers. They were hushed, like the whispers of bystanders at the event of a car crash. Raoul reached an arm out to call to the chameleon, but it disappeared like dust in the wind at his first effort.
Then, to his left. A snake rose in curls from the sea of sand that empowered the entire vicinity. Its eyes of amber locked with his own of white, and it quickly curled up against its leg like an affectionate pet. The next moment, it stuck out its tongue, hissing once again more unintelligible whispers. Its scales spiked against the legs of his pants, and the rattle on its end rang as time passed.
To his front, the cold frost of the northern tundras rushed against his face in an endless vale of the unknown. His clothes did little to protect him from the unannounced chill, and within seconds he had to wrap his arms around himself in a futile attempt to ward off the cold. A fox of white barked a few steps away, uttering the whispers again. It too approached, nuzzling its head against his other leg affectionately.
Then he fell backward, pushed by some hidden force. His body descended beneath the water’s surface in a great splash. His lack of breathable air stored in his lungs showed its effects immediately. Coughing fits breached his lips, the salty sting of the ocean’s waters flooding into his mouth. There, from behind, a great squid of massive proportions wrapped a lone tentacle around his neck. It did not exude any hostility, and even the pointed spikes on its suckers seemed to feel like soft cushions he could sink into. He was underwater, and yet he could easily hear the squid speak finally again the whispers.
It was gone the very next moment. Fifteen seconds were allocated for each of the four environments, and once the minute mark had passed, all four were whisked away, disappearing from his vision and senses like they hadn’t just occurred.
He blinked. His head dropped. Hands, untouched. Legs, slightly rustled from the kicking. His back… slightly sore from having literally fallen without something to break his fall.
There was one lingering effect. Even to his head, the whispers remained esoteric and unlike any other language he had ever heard, but despite their secrecy, he somehow understood each one. It was a voice belonging to a feminine figure, and the whispers were slowly forming into one just barely coherent sentence.
“Take… care… of… her…”
Take… care… of… who? He thought to himself. Who…?
A finger snap brought him out of his stupor. He blinked, sluggishly following the finger Jhestine was dragging in his line of sight.
“Raoul? Oh, thank the gods. You were gone for a second there.”
His senses too soon returned, and he shot up in a burst of energy. “I… I’m sorry. What happened?”
Another sigh of relief left Jhestine’s lips. She smiled, and then retreated to the side, her far arm spreading out to display the changes in the Resonance Chamber.
Replacing the motionless, monochromatic white of the room were fully grown stalks of wheat, grown in neat squares that covered the majority of the floorplan. Each one exuded the distinct smell of the countryside, tasting much more palatable to Raoul than the hospital-esque skin of the building. A constant, but not excessive sunset tone had taken over the lights, completely covering everything in a five o’ clock ambience. Finally, a single, bulky paved path trailed the length of the floor, traveling from the entrance to the secret door hidden behind the wall and cutting off there.
“The first few seconds were perfect. We could see changes in the white room beginning to appear, and we were ecstatic. We called out to you to stop, but you weren’t listening. As the seconds passed, the room slowly began to be overtaken by the wheat and sunset. I had to hurry here when you suddenly fell backward and were consuming the whole thing in your Path.”
“How was it?” asked Jhestine. “Did you feel the resistance?”
Raoul couldn’t help but tilt his head in clear confusion.
“Resistance…? No, Miss Marrow. I didn’t feel any resistance. It was like I had been shafted from lucidity to traveling the world in a single moment. I saw… dozens of different environments. Oceans. Deserts. Tundras. Jungles. They all lived, breathed, and interacted with me like I was there. Even the animals seemed to favor me.”
He continued. “Each one spoke initially in a tongue I couldn’t recognize, but towards the end of the trance I seemed to gain understanding. They all said the same thing: “Take care of her”. What… what does this mean, Miss Marrow?”
“I… I don’t know. You’ve genuinely stumped me. We haven’t had any records of Drivers experiencing visions like you have. Never mind the talking animals, realistic environments, and single, unknown request. There also hasn't been any mention of the world not resisting a Driver’s initial Emergence.”
Jhestine turned back, nodding to the scientists who were observing them. “Your Path’s manifested in the Resonance Chamber particularly strongly. It doesn’t seem like it’s going to disappear soon. Thankfully, that’ll give us some time to study its properties.”
She reached over, plucking a single stalk of wheat. With her other hand, she broke off the head and tossed it into her mouth. “Mm… Tastes… real. Ugh…”
He chuckled. “Do all Paths manifest fully real when emerged?”
“They do. Each one perfectly brings a small portion of the Driver’s inner Path into the real world, and that includes the properties they display when inside you. Check your phone.”
Raoul obliged, pulling out his phone. The clock on the lock screen wasn’t displaying the time like it should’ve been.
“I noticed it when I came down. My watch and phone weren’t working all of a sudden, and so I deduced it as being a property of your Path. That’s another thing, by the way. Paths often manifest as either open-ended or close-ended. The former doesn’t have an end point and melds into the environment, centering on the Driver and moving alongside them. The latter doesn’t, and cuts off completely at a certain point, remaining stable and real throughout. Yours… seems to be of the open-ended kind.”
“Ah, but I didn’t mean to go into a different tangent. We were here to figure out your Cycle. Luckily, we got what we needed the first few moments when your Path emerged. It’s…”
A drum roll sounded. A scientist from the Observation Chamber gave a thumbs up, flicking a switch to repeat the track.
“...Sorry, it’s a habit we have when announcing a Cycle. Yours is Awakening. The first Cycle—attributed to heightened perception, intuition, insight, and clarity. Congratulations, Raoul. Your Cycle describes the first Rynthians’ first realization that they are intelligent, thinking beings, their first efforts to cooperate, and their general awareness of the world around them.”