11-01-2017, 09:43 PM
"You earned that, you know"
Jai turned toward the man strolling beside him.
"What?"
His companion's words were clear, but Jai didn't know what he was referencing. He asked about it with a hint of apprehension about learning the answer. The man was of Jai's height, though thinner with advanced years, but not so much as to be stooped by weakness. More gray than Jai remembered swept through his brushed-back hair and the well-groomed whiskers on his chin. An impressively thick beard Jai gave up attempting to duplicate connected what filled the man's chin up to a narrow mustache. Jai scratched randomly at his own neck. A few more days without shaving and he'd look properly tousled. He smoothed his black sleeves anyway.
The gentleman clarified. He was dressed well in fine gray pants, a sandy colored shirt covered with a short vest and pale blue coat cut to mid-thigh. He strolled with a thin cane that seemed out of place along his confident stride, but it tapped lightly against the grass beside his every step. He gestured at the sword attached to Jai.
"When you were younger, the day the Tower Guard sounded the alarm that the city was under attack, they called any man of fighting age or background to volunteer for an assignment. I remember that day so clearly."
His voice trailed off in memory. "For days, the whole city held its breath. I ignored the rumors like they were nothing but superstitious nonsense and kept to my regular schedule. But when the real alarm came, I asked the men in our employee to represent us well, if any were so inclined to volunteer. But I myself pulled my hood low and snuck home through the shadows toward home unaccompanied. My father's voice pounded in my head the whole time. 'The only sorrow deeper than that of losing yourself is to lose it to the Shadow'. He used to say."
Jai blinked in utter shock. His father never spoke of his father. Let alone admitted to wisdoms the man may have imparted. It was as if his grandfather was a legend, proof only that he lived by the portrait of a man with tied back hair and penetrating blue eyes or the haunted look that sometimes danced behind his son when he was lost to memory. The reverence in his voice made it seem as if he was practicing it out loud for the first time right now.
His father went on. If he was hesitant to share so much now, after a lifetime of reservation, he did not appear it. "He told stories of the Borderlands when I was young. Stories told to him by his father, and so on. But that he inherited no shame when Asad left our homeland, and he would pass none on to me, because Asad's purpose all those years ago was purer than devotion to one cause or country. 'Love serves the Light too, perhaps more so than battle' He said. And his love was in Tar Valon."
His father paused, demonstrating such a face of shame contradicting what he just said. Jai pushed out images of a Malkieri nobleman packing his things to journey south. He almost believed he'd heard incorrectly. Any remorse he felt he deserved for his service to the Black Tower seemed dwarfed by the burden that gnawed at his father's soul now. Jai didn't want to hear what humbled so unshakable a man. Did he suddenly disagree with their guiltlessness?
"I rushed home to protect what I loved most in this world, knowing full well I would rather see the Blight smother all this,"
he gestured as though sweeping the whole island of Tar Valon under his arm, but also for the green and plush and perfect surroundings that nestled them presently. Birds called over head, something scampered through the strategic brush, a cool wind off the river rustled the leaves, "than to see my family come to harm."
Jai stopped himself from putting a hand on his father's shaking shoulder but looked away instead. So his father did what their greatfather Asad had done. Abandoned call to a greater duty for family. Jai found himself scratching the back of his neck, more puzzled than ever. Love serves the Light too? No. Love was tunnel vision. It blinded good intentions. It rendered dedication and duty into worthless trinkets. A man could walk very dark paths for that kind of obsession.
Jai was suddenly aware of the body he'd left behind in Caemlyn. He should have kicked it into the skimming space.
His father's voice interrupted the trance. "When I arrived home, I found your brother Zakar asking leave to go to his betrothed, not to the walls to fight."
Jai looked up. The selfless and noble Zakar was to be newly married back then. He supposed that was a normal reaction. His then-future sister-in-law was of a family like most in Tar Valon, one who lived without personal armsmen in their employ. They might have been in danger, Jai reflected.
Most of what he personally remembered of that day was catching whispers between his tutors. Or theorizing with his friends what put everyone on edge. He could still feel his sword master striking with renewed teachings and a darkened brow. Of noticing Tower Guard. How he'd watched them so closely at that age, dreaming of the day to climb the outer White Walls and stand on the edge above the river, armor gleaming with the sliver of dawn on his shoulders. The Guards were poised that day, but for what he only imagined. The reality of it, he couldn't actually imagine. He'd been only a kid himself, one raised far from the brotherhood of the Borderlands. Whatever their family's blood remembered, no living Kojima man at the time laid eyes on shadowspawn. None had for some generations. The same could not be said now, he exhaled thoughtfully. A surge of pride tempting him to end the day in the Borderlands rather than Arad Doman as was his destination. Both were admirable causes, but he wouldn't forsake duty twice in a row; he had to go back to Daryen At that tender age, though, none of his family witnessed the break of soldiers like waves on a seawall, let alone a sea of them so large to trample the green horizon with muddled shapes: human or otherwise.
When the streets went dark that night, monsters came out of the shadows. More than any other memory of that time, he remembered hearing guttural howls clogging the night like nightmarish wolves. He'd never heard a wolf, either at that age, but what sounds his friends created to jest up troublesome howls as kids. He remembered looking from a window onto the far street below and seeing things move about. Sometimes the orderly blocks of trained men, other times individual masses crawling forward like insects. But beneath the torch poles flaming with yellow light, none of them gleamed with the Tower's heroic armor.
He was suddenly so aware of where they were. The Ogier Grove was mostly protected from harm that night. Jai, like most of the city, assumed it was the Aes Sedai themselves who cast some spell across these precious timbers. If only such things were so easy, he reminisced sadly, casting eyes across the serene woodland all around. He understood why Zakar went to his find his bride.
His father went on, "He took my leave to go to her. Your other brother Andreu was consoling your mother. Being near frantic as she was unknowing where you were. But I knew."
His father stopped him, eyes falling to Asad's sword. It fit so well on Jai. He was long used to walking with it, but the comfort was not in physical grace, Jai was far too analytical a wielder to be called graceful. He was intense, purposeful even. But not artistic. Its presence was soothing in another way. The sword was the longest and best relationship he'd ever had with something, or someone, else. He stopped in mid stride, though, as his father captured the back of his neck with one hand and clapped the other onto his shoulder, and pulled eagerly, as though about to say something striking. Jai had a feeling he knew what was coming, and interrupted, "Dad, don't say it. I really don't deserve-"
He cut him off with a murmur. Jai fell quiet. "You were the only one of us, Jai Asad, my youngest, ready to suspend his life for a greater cause. When I found you with this sword ready to run into the night with the inheritance intended for Zakar, I knew you were the only one to earn it. You can do what Asad didn't. What I didn't. What Zakar and Andreu didn’t."
His father's eyes glistened with emotion. Jai felt his own do the same.
"I'm sorry I didn't ask to take it."
He spit out the apology, voice cracking as he searched his father's face; he might have said the same about saidin. Once caught with it, he returned the priceless blade to his father's hands, pulsing with defiance to be forbidden from answering the Guard's call. Certainly not apologetic. He could have passed of age, he remembered screaming with frustration into this man's face. He was tall back then, lean as most such youth, but muscular beyond his years from a lifetime attempting to train away the obsessions in his head. Or at least muffle what tried to drown him all the time. He would not get himself killed. He'd scoffed with so much rage, not understanding why the pinnacle of their family was running from the chance to do some real fighting for once in their family's recent history. He was a good swordsman! His father, the man before him who stared so honestly he might have been a stranger, never knew what his mornings with the Sword Trainer accomplished. Only that it kept his son from crossing the line into insanity, an unimaginable blight on such a perfect family. He'd tried to show him more than once, but there was no showing him. Jai remembered hating this man for making them hide.
His father shook his head in response as though he was trying to shut out the apology now as he had the defiance back then. What nearly shocked Jai out of his sanity was what came next. He was pulled into a hug. And it was fierce. Like he hadn't hugged his dad in twenty years. Which was about right, probably. It was strange, pressed against so much foreign warmth, but Jai didn't pull away. When he showed up on the doorstep last week, he'd met only a long and cautious look up and down his body clothed all in black, broken only at the end by a handshake that might have been between uneasy colleagues, not father and son.
They parted from the embrace, and Jai didn't quite know what to do with himself. So he scrubbed a hand through his hair and looked up at what scampered in the branches overhead. The question of whether he should voice what haunted him since the epiphany confronting Aharon loomed like foreboding flames. After all this. Talk of service and taking up Asad's sword when it was never intended for him like it was some reward for a job well done. Realizing his father saw the chance in his sacrifice to redeem what his greatfather left behind in Malkier. Assuming the weight of wisdoms echoed from the previous generation onto his shoulders all while wondering if he was suppose to reject them for the sins they were being made out to appear. After seeking his father to offer some gesture of goodbye amid promises to be less of a blight on their spotless family for good this time only to end up following him through the streets and end up strolling through the Ogier Grove. Considering any number of destinations the figure had in mind. Swallowing a knot of confusion as to why his father was unsurprised that Jai found him. Despite all this shocking atmosphere of genetic trust suddenly sprung up between them. After all that, he couldn't quite ask it.
Why were they so ashamed of what he was? They'd buried his memory when they learned he could channel like some passed away pet, mournful, but moving on soon after. In a city glorifying channelers, the Aes Sedai's power and honor loomed on the city scape like a glorious shout to the world, why the angst that Jai walked not to the white wand of that honor but into the embrace of darkness instead. He might as well have set off to discover what waited behind the mists smothering Dragonmount's peak. Or where lay the path to Shayol Ghul. In that mountain, he could see it looming between the clearance of trees, was the answer. The Dragon and the male Aes Sedai broke the world once, now he was collecting his army to do it again. And so save it. Or so goes the assumption.
Or was their silence born of shame at all? Or something far more simple? Nythadri had been very silent about what what haunted her. Was she ashamed of her brother? Or herself? You'll be waiting a long time, you know.. Despite the proclamation not to only a few hours later huddled inside his coat well protected from beach winds she finally shared the face of her ghost.
He breathed a resigned sigh and tugged at the cuffs of his sleeves lightly. "Look, I won't let you down."
The difficult emotions of the last few minutes vanished behind a weak smirk. It's intentions sincere. Though what those intentions were remained elusive. He pat the hilt of his sword. It wasn't an enormous blade as some Borderlanders were used to wielding, but no less able to dice up shadowspawn. At a passing glance, it seemed too elegant to hamstring trollocs or sever Myddraal necks. To be honest, Jai hadn't tried it very often against such foes. Except that first tour, of course. When he'd been too wounded and dazed to channel, but too provoked to retreat either. He didn't last more than a few blows against Thakan'dar poisoned steel, but that was not a fault of the sword. But of its wielder. I won't get myself killed. He remembered begging his father for some sign of confidence in his son. The crumbs of metallic dirt blanketed his tongue. He ended up with a body-long scar and six months recovery for that moment of defiance.
While he tightened the grip on his hilt with one hand, as though about to kneel like some pledging battle lord, his other fluttered across his stomach. A breeze cooled his face and eyes and heart, bringing resolution of the Builders' former glory and some peace to finally accept what awaited. Maybe. If at all possible, he'd like to avoid an end that left his insides smashed against the ground of war. Strangely soft, like laying in wet, sinking sand. Perhaps all the time in Arad Doman might be useful someday. He'd lain with his cheek in the sand and water lapping beneath his skin often enough to summon the imagery at need. It was more soothing than sinking into earth soiled by the oozes of war.
He set his jaw, voice calmer than he expected it to be. "Everybody dies, right?"
Nythadri's words. He steeled his jaw. "A long time ago I swore by all the world, I will make my death count."
His dad nodded solemnly. They arrived at the river edge of the Grove by then. He looked over the figure of his son studying the flow of the water toward the base of the mountain beyond. A curl of foreboding smoke rose from the cloud-covered peak. Arman turned from it and his eyes settled on the sharp, gold serpent at his son's collar. The sigil for the Dragon Reborn.
Then he witnessed what was possibly the only hint he would ever see of what his son was capable of doing. Or enjoying. Arman knew the gruesome tales nipping at an Asha'man's heels like everyone else, but he hesitated to believe his son had a place in them. Though he knew the sentiment was naive. Jai's face hardened a moment before the air itself shredded under a finger of light, a gouge whiter and brighter than lightning and lasted about as long. Then it widened into the shape of a portal. Beyond lay the outline of a generic room, although Arman was unaware of how the gateway almost opened upon the desolate Blightborder nor how close Jai had come to showing his father the evil the Lord Dragon meant to overthrow.
Jai moved away, and Arman realized how it was that Aharon came to be delivered without a break-in and how Jai's things disappeared over night. Though he remained quiet while Jai filled the air with the same conviction in his voice as had his previous resolution, "When that time comes, I would regret it if this is lost."
He curled his hand around the corded hilt, "I'll try to make sure someone knows to send it back. It doesn't deserve to rot with the rest of us."
He seemed about to say something else, but swallowed it behind a smile that barely touched his eyes. As though attempting to be soothing but Arman was unconvinced. The smile was for his sake rather than the usual display of his son's old cheerfulness. They nodded their goodbyes and the door of light disappeared a few moments later, and Arman Kojima was left alone with the view of Dragonmount hovering overhead. Accompanied only by the sound of birds and a calm river's breeze. He wondered how soon that day of blood and death would come. And shivered in spite of himself.
Jai turned toward the man strolling beside him.
"What?"
His companion's words were clear, but Jai didn't know what he was referencing. He asked about it with a hint of apprehension about learning the answer. The man was of Jai's height, though thinner with advanced years, but not so much as to be stooped by weakness. More gray than Jai remembered swept through his brushed-back hair and the well-groomed whiskers on his chin. An impressively thick beard Jai gave up attempting to duplicate connected what filled the man's chin up to a narrow mustache. Jai scratched randomly at his own neck. A few more days without shaving and he'd look properly tousled. He smoothed his black sleeves anyway.
The gentleman clarified. He was dressed well in fine gray pants, a sandy colored shirt covered with a short vest and pale blue coat cut to mid-thigh. He strolled with a thin cane that seemed out of place along his confident stride, but it tapped lightly against the grass beside his every step. He gestured at the sword attached to Jai.
"When you were younger, the day the Tower Guard sounded the alarm that the city was under attack, they called any man of fighting age or background to volunteer for an assignment. I remember that day so clearly."
His voice trailed off in memory. "For days, the whole city held its breath. I ignored the rumors like they were nothing but superstitious nonsense and kept to my regular schedule. But when the real alarm came, I asked the men in our employee to represent us well, if any were so inclined to volunteer. But I myself pulled my hood low and snuck home through the shadows toward home unaccompanied. My father's voice pounded in my head the whole time. 'The only sorrow deeper than that of losing yourself is to lose it to the Shadow'. He used to say."
Jai blinked in utter shock. His father never spoke of his father. Let alone admitted to wisdoms the man may have imparted. It was as if his grandfather was a legend, proof only that he lived by the portrait of a man with tied back hair and penetrating blue eyes or the haunted look that sometimes danced behind his son when he was lost to memory. The reverence in his voice made it seem as if he was practicing it out loud for the first time right now.
His father went on. If he was hesitant to share so much now, after a lifetime of reservation, he did not appear it. "He told stories of the Borderlands when I was young. Stories told to him by his father, and so on. But that he inherited no shame when Asad left our homeland, and he would pass none on to me, because Asad's purpose all those years ago was purer than devotion to one cause or country. 'Love serves the Light too, perhaps more so than battle' He said. And his love was in Tar Valon."
His father paused, demonstrating such a face of shame contradicting what he just said. Jai pushed out images of a Malkieri nobleman packing his things to journey south. He almost believed he'd heard incorrectly. Any remorse he felt he deserved for his service to the Black Tower seemed dwarfed by the burden that gnawed at his father's soul now. Jai didn't want to hear what humbled so unshakable a man. Did he suddenly disagree with their guiltlessness?
"I rushed home to protect what I loved most in this world, knowing full well I would rather see the Blight smother all this,"
he gestured as though sweeping the whole island of Tar Valon under his arm, but also for the green and plush and perfect surroundings that nestled them presently. Birds called over head, something scampered through the strategic brush, a cool wind off the river rustled the leaves, "than to see my family come to harm."
Jai stopped himself from putting a hand on his father's shaking shoulder but looked away instead. So his father did what their greatfather Asad had done. Abandoned call to a greater duty for family. Jai found himself scratching the back of his neck, more puzzled than ever. Love serves the Light too? No. Love was tunnel vision. It blinded good intentions. It rendered dedication and duty into worthless trinkets. A man could walk very dark paths for that kind of obsession.
Jai was suddenly aware of the body he'd left behind in Caemlyn. He should have kicked it into the skimming space.
His father's voice interrupted the trance. "When I arrived home, I found your brother Zakar asking leave to go to his betrothed, not to the walls to fight."
Jai looked up. The selfless and noble Zakar was to be newly married back then. He supposed that was a normal reaction. His then-future sister-in-law was of a family like most in Tar Valon, one who lived without personal armsmen in their employ. They might have been in danger, Jai reflected.
Most of what he personally remembered of that day was catching whispers between his tutors. Or theorizing with his friends what put everyone on edge. He could still feel his sword master striking with renewed teachings and a darkened brow. Of noticing Tower Guard. How he'd watched them so closely at that age, dreaming of the day to climb the outer White Walls and stand on the edge above the river, armor gleaming with the sliver of dawn on his shoulders. The Guards were poised that day, but for what he only imagined. The reality of it, he couldn't actually imagine. He'd been only a kid himself, one raised far from the brotherhood of the Borderlands. Whatever their family's blood remembered, no living Kojima man at the time laid eyes on shadowspawn. None had for some generations. The same could not be said now, he exhaled thoughtfully. A surge of pride tempting him to end the day in the Borderlands rather than Arad Doman as was his destination. Both were admirable causes, but he wouldn't forsake duty twice in a row; he had to go back to Daryen At that tender age, though, none of his family witnessed the break of soldiers like waves on a seawall, let alone a sea of them so large to trample the green horizon with muddled shapes: human or otherwise.
When the streets went dark that night, monsters came out of the shadows. More than any other memory of that time, he remembered hearing guttural howls clogging the night like nightmarish wolves. He'd never heard a wolf, either at that age, but what sounds his friends created to jest up troublesome howls as kids. He remembered looking from a window onto the far street below and seeing things move about. Sometimes the orderly blocks of trained men, other times individual masses crawling forward like insects. But beneath the torch poles flaming with yellow light, none of them gleamed with the Tower's heroic armor.
He was suddenly so aware of where they were. The Ogier Grove was mostly protected from harm that night. Jai, like most of the city, assumed it was the Aes Sedai themselves who cast some spell across these precious timbers. If only such things were so easy, he reminisced sadly, casting eyes across the serene woodland all around. He understood why Zakar went to his find his bride.
His father went on, "He took my leave to go to her. Your other brother Andreu was consoling your mother. Being near frantic as she was unknowing where you were. But I knew."
His father stopped him, eyes falling to Asad's sword. It fit so well on Jai. He was long used to walking with it, but the comfort was not in physical grace, Jai was far too analytical a wielder to be called graceful. He was intense, purposeful even. But not artistic. Its presence was soothing in another way. The sword was the longest and best relationship he'd ever had with something, or someone, else. He stopped in mid stride, though, as his father captured the back of his neck with one hand and clapped the other onto his shoulder, and pulled eagerly, as though about to say something striking. Jai had a feeling he knew what was coming, and interrupted, "Dad, don't say it. I really don't deserve-"
He cut him off with a murmur. Jai fell quiet. "You were the only one of us, Jai Asad, my youngest, ready to suspend his life for a greater cause. When I found you with this sword ready to run into the night with the inheritance intended for Zakar, I knew you were the only one to earn it. You can do what Asad didn't. What I didn't. What Zakar and Andreu didn’t."
His father's eyes glistened with emotion. Jai felt his own do the same.
"I'm sorry I didn't ask to take it."
He spit out the apology, voice cracking as he searched his father's face; he might have said the same about saidin. Once caught with it, he returned the priceless blade to his father's hands, pulsing with defiance to be forbidden from answering the Guard's call. Certainly not apologetic. He could have passed of age, he remembered screaming with frustration into this man's face. He was tall back then, lean as most such youth, but muscular beyond his years from a lifetime attempting to train away the obsessions in his head. Or at least muffle what tried to drown him all the time. He would not get himself killed. He'd scoffed with so much rage, not understanding why the pinnacle of their family was running from the chance to do some real fighting for once in their family's recent history. He was a good swordsman! His father, the man before him who stared so honestly he might have been a stranger, never knew what his mornings with the Sword Trainer accomplished. Only that it kept his son from crossing the line into insanity, an unimaginable blight on such a perfect family. He'd tried to show him more than once, but there was no showing him. Jai remembered hating this man for making them hide.
His father shook his head in response as though he was trying to shut out the apology now as he had the defiance back then. What nearly shocked Jai out of his sanity was what came next. He was pulled into a hug. And it was fierce. Like he hadn't hugged his dad in twenty years. Which was about right, probably. It was strange, pressed against so much foreign warmth, but Jai didn't pull away. When he showed up on the doorstep last week, he'd met only a long and cautious look up and down his body clothed all in black, broken only at the end by a handshake that might have been between uneasy colleagues, not father and son.
They parted from the embrace, and Jai didn't quite know what to do with himself. So he scrubbed a hand through his hair and looked up at what scampered in the branches overhead. The question of whether he should voice what haunted him since the epiphany confronting Aharon loomed like foreboding flames. After all this. Talk of service and taking up Asad's sword when it was never intended for him like it was some reward for a job well done. Realizing his father saw the chance in his sacrifice to redeem what his greatfather left behind in Malkier. Assuming the weight of wisdoms echoed from the previous generation onto his shoulders all while wondering if he was suppose to reject them for the sins they were being made out to appear. After seeking his father to offer some gesture of goodbye amid promises to be less of a blight on their spotless family for good this time only to end up following him through the streets and end up strolling through the Ogier Grove. Considering any number of destinations the figure had in mind. Swallowing a knot of confusion as to why his father was unsurprised that Jai found him. Despite all this shocking atmosphere of genetic trust suddenly sprung up between them. After all that, he couldn't quite ask it.
Why were they so ashamed of what he was? They'd buried his memory when they learned he could channel like some passed away pet, mournful, but moving on soon after. In a city glorifying channelers, the Aes Sedai's power and honor loomed on the city scape like a glorious shout to the world, why the angst that Jai walked not to the white wand of that honor but into the embrace of darkness instead. He might as well have set off to discover what waited behind the mists smothering Dragonmount's peak. Or where lay the path to Shayol Ghul. In that mountain, he could see it looming between the clearance of trees, was the answer. The Dragon and the male Aes Sedai broke the world once, now he was collecting his army to do it again. And so save it. Or so goes the assumption.
Or was their silence born of shame at all? Or something far more simple? Nythadri had been very silent about what what haunted her. Was she ashamed of her brother? Or herself? You'll be waiting a long time, you know.. Despite the proclamation not to only a few hours later huddled inside his coat well protected from beach winds she finally shared the face of her ghost.
He breathed a resigned sigh and tugged at the cuffs of his sleeves lightly. "Look, I won't let you down."
The difficult emotions of the last few minutes vanished behind a weak smirk. It's intentions sincere. Though what those intentions were remained elusive. He pat the hilt of his sword. It wasn't an enormous blade as some Borderlanders were used to wielding, but no less able to dice up shadowspawn. At a passing glance, it seemed too elegant to hamstring trollocs or sever Myddraal necks. To be honest, Jai hadn't tried it very often against such foes. Except that first tour, of course. When he'd been too wounded and dazed to channel, but too provoked to retreat either. He didn't last more than a few blows against Thakan'dar poisoned steel, but that was not a fault of the sword. But of its wielder. I won't get myself killed. He remembered begging his father for some sign of confidence in his son. The crumbs of metallic dirt blanketed his tongue. He ended up with a body-long scar and six months recovery for that moment of defiance.
While he tightened the grip on his hilt with one hand, as though about to kneel like some pledging battle lord, his other fluttered across his stomach. A breeze cooled his face and eyes and heart, bringing resolution of the Builders' former glory and some peace to finally accept what awaited. Maybe. If at all possible, he'd like to avoid an end that left his insides smashed against the ground of war. Strangely soft, like laying in wet, sinking sand. Perhaps all the time in Arad Doman might be useful someday. He'd lain with his cheek in the sand and water lapping beneath his skin often enough to summon the imagery at need. It was more soothing than sinking into earth soiled by the oozes of war.
He set his jaw, voice calmer than he expected it to be. "Everybody dies, right?"
Nythadri's words. He steeled his jaw. "A long time ago I swore by all the world, I will make my death count."
His dad nodded solemnly. They arrived at the river edge of the Grove by then. He looked over the figure of his son studying the flow of the water toward the base of the mountain beyond. A curl of foreboding smoke rose from the cloud-covered peak. Arman turned from it and his eyes settled on the sharp, gold serpent at his son's collar. The sigil for the Dragon Reborn.
Then he witnessed what was possibly the only hint he would ever see of what his son was capable of doing. Or enjoying. Arman knew the gruesome tales nipping at an Asha'man's heels like everyone else, but he hesitated to believe his son had a place in them. Though he knew the sentiment was naive. Jai's face hardened a moment before the air itself shredded under a finger of light, a gouge whiter and brighter than lightning and lasted about as long. Then it widened into the shape of a portal. Beyond lay the outline of a generic room, although Arman was unaware of how the gateway almost opened upon the desolate Blightborder nor how close Jai had come to showing his father the evil the Lord Dragon meant to overthrow.
Jai moved away, and Arman realized how it was that Aharon came to be delivered without a break-in and how Jai's things disappeared over night. Though he remained quiet while Jai filled the air with the same conviction in his voice as had his previous resolution, "When that time comes, I would regret it if this is lost."
He curled his hand around the corded hilt, "I'll try to make sure someone knows to send it back. It doesn't deserve to rot with the rest of us."
He seemed about to say something else, but swallowed it behind a smile that barely touched his eyes. As though attempting to be soothing but Arman was unconvinced. The smile was for his sake rather than the usual display of his son's old cheerfulness. They nodded their goodbyes and the door of light disappeared a few moments later, and Arman Kojima was left alone with the view of Dragonmount hovering overhead. Accompanied only by the sound of birds and a calm river's breeze. He wondered how soon that day of blood and death would come. And shivered in spite of himself.
Only darkness shows you the light.