The fluorescent light flickered on, emitting a low hum, illuminating the washroom with a sterile white glow. The door shut behind me with a click, and I stepped in front of the chipped bathroom mirror, gripping the sink with one hand on either side. The cool porcelain helped ground me, brought me back to reality, and dispelled some of the dreamlike quality of how the day had gone.
Taking pains not to look up at the mirror- not yet at least- I twisted the faucet, just to splash some cool water on my face. I couldn't fool myself, I knew I was putting off trying to contact Aya just a little longer. Meeting Marlowe and Prince, and beginning to get a better idea of how big this whole... thing was, that I had become a part of, suddenly made me feel anxious about getting some real answers.
"My prince, raise your head," Aya's voice came to me, sweet and smoky.
I looked up and saw the woman, spirit, whatever she was. This time, she was at the forefront, as if she was standing between my reflection and the mirror surface somehow, though I knew that made no sense.
"Clever men, your new retainers," she said, holding one arm up to rub the ridge of her collarbone, her other hand at her elbow, "This is a... tenuous claim to demense, but it will suffice. You are well, my prince? You have escaped your pursuers for the nonce?"
"Yeah, for now," I replied standing up straighter, so I could look Aya in the eye, and be a little less tempted to stare at her chest. "The advice I was given was to ask you about magic. I need to go back to my apartment at some point, and if I'm going to handle the Harvesters, the people who were chasing me, somehow, I'll probably need some actual power. To protect myself with." It was awkward asking for it. Despite my reasons, under that silent, cross-armed stare I felt a little like a child asking for ice cream. "Uh, please."
Aya studied me for a time, and I was startled for a moment. I had never noticed how arresting her eyes were, a faded, creamy blue-grey that seemed at odds with her dark skin. I swallowed nervously, breaking from her gaze to focus unnecessarily on closing the running faucet. When I hesitantly raised my head again to meet her eyes one more, Aya finally opened her mouth.
"You need learn that you are now royalty of the eldest and greatest civilization that the world has ever known," she began, "Less than one hundred of the princes of Atlantis walk the earth, now, where once strode half a thousand. Every nation on earth owes something to the Lost Continent, and the Six Colonies you know today as Iraq, Egypt, China, India, Greece, and Peru- each one ruled by a succession of regimes but never abandoned by humanity since their founding. And now you have inherited a fraction of that glory. You must walk with your head high."
I sighed. It was hard not to think 'this royalty shit again'. "I understand how important this all is," I said tiredly, "But I'm standing in front of you in clothes that I slept in, wearing stolen shoes. I'm the last person anyone would call a prince right now. But I'm not going to survive to be much of anything without a little help, Aya."
She regarded me skeptically while I spoke, before giving her head a light shake and making a wordless "Hmph" noise when I was done. "Very well," she said eventually, "I can grant you three spells, the smallest sliver of your power, until you prove worthy of more."
I sighed again, and this time I could feel the tension in my shoulders ease. "Thank you," was my only reply, and I felt deeply grateful for it. Thus far, this stupid magical inheritance thing had only been trouble for me. Finally getting some actual, direct benefit from it would be nice.
Aya frowned at me again, pausing to gather herself. "First, you need to understand what magic is. What I am about to teach you are words from the first language, the language taught by our predecessors to the first humans to follow the pull of their dreams and arrive on the shores of Atlantis." I frowned to hear that, since it raised a whole lot of questions, but I didn't want to interrupt now that I was finally getting something useful from Aya other than vague warnings. "In time you will learn to combine these words," she continued, "How to build sentences and weave the words into more complex spells. The possibilities before you are endless, but first you have to earn your power."
The next thing she said I have trouble putting down in plain English. The syllables of the language of Atlantis are not easily understood. When she said the word, I cannot explain what it felt like hitting my ear. The best I can describe it is that it was like a loud burst of static, or or maybe a word coming out over an over-amped speaker system that was impossible to make out clearly. I did understand what it meant, but even then it doesn't have a one to one translation. It was similar to "stop" but it could also mean a liquid freeing, a process pausing, the end of a life, the finish of a race, the conclusion of a story... all depending on the context of the word.
"[STOP] has many uses, depending on the context and who or what you use it on," Aya explained patiently. For a second I thought I saw her eyes dart to the washroom door, but then they flicked back to me and she explained a little more quickly. "It is a demand, an order to something to cease movement, and because of that it can express itself very violently. If someone was charging you, for instance, they would be thrown back. The power of the power is proportional to the power that must be employed. If someone was merely walking towards you, [STOP] would cause them to freeze in place, but with less force than is they were charging, you see?"
