Chapter 44: Reunion

44

Askauri joins his son on the balcony. Bealz ignores him. Turns his music up a notch.

Askauri is just as much at a loss for words. This is new ground for each of them. He knew, though, that it was his responsibility to bridge the gap. His son, he could only imagine, had been through enough so that his rough demeanor and gruff attitude should be understood.

Still, it wasn't easy to see and served as a harsh reminder that he had been absent for so much, not just his son's social development.

Askauri, in his own unique way, could relate to his son's emotional hesitancy, even after having grown up in such different circumstances. His father had died when he was but an infant, leaving him to be raised by a constant coterie of specialists and instructors without his guidance. And although his upbringing was very much traditional in the royal sense, it had left him with an objectively skewed understanding of his own son's fundamental needs.

Bealz was tough, though. Askauri could sense it within him. It made him proud, made him feel better for what was to come. He would need to be tough. Life in the Royal Courts wasn't for the weak. It would be even harder for him, having grown up so far removed from the idea of it.

There would be difficult obstacles and hurdles for both of them to overcome. Askauri just regrets that there would be no more time to prepare him. To prepare himself.

It was impressive enough that Bealz had not completely lost his shit over some of what he's seen, what he's no doubt had to justify against the only reality that he'd ever known.

Stepping close to him, Askauri places a hand gently on his son's shoulder. Bealz tenses slightly, maintains his stoic affectation, but doesn't move away.

Perhaps there are no words to say, Askauri thinks. Perhaps his presence would be the most important balm he could offer for his son's wounded heart. Perhaps it would be the best that he could offer to heal his own.

Askauri realizes that his perspective must shift, and that it must do so quickly. These were dangerous and uncertain times for the House of the Askai. And by extension, the Incata, as a whole.

Askauri had spent many years considering the impact of his son's sudden appearance before the Royal Courts, upon hearing of his brother's death, the death of the King, he understood that Bealz's existence alone would shake up all of the lines of succession within the varied Royal Houses. But Askauri had only considered this from a coldly formal, political point of view.

Now, standing with his son, truly feeling the weight of his own shortcomings as seen through the eyes of a young boy, he can only regret the way his introduction into Bealz's life had gone so far.

Particularly that part of it for which he was responsible. He'd made note of just as much while digging himself out from underneath the rubble back at The Passage.

Funny then, he considered, how quickly that was put aside. He chides himself for the hair trigger that had immediately allowed him to forgo all empathy and regret when he walked in on the sight of Bealz laughing to Jasi's easily disarming nature.

He'd completely forgotten about his son's needs and had been quick, yet again, to retreat back into his own, short-sighted self-interest. It was thoughtless and no doubt hurtful. He couldn't now blame Bealz for his sullen demeanor because of it.

Askauri knew at that moment as he awkwardly squeezed and massaged at his son's shoulder, that this was an obstacle that they could overcome together, however. That they could grow into what each of them needed the other to be.

Bealz turns to look into the face of his father, his hardened sneer softening despite his streetwise wishes, appreciative of the nearness of his dad. Even if he had turned out to be an asshole.

They stare silently into each others eyes. Sizing one another up. Bealz's feelings and emotions regarding his dad were yo-yo-ing all over the place. He wanted to tell him to take his fucking hand off of his shoulder. He wanted Askauri to hug him, to hold him close and tight. He wanted to curse at him, to laugh and to show him off to his friends and teachers and counselors. To make them see that he was somebody. That his dad was real.

Bealz wanted to say something. Anything. He settles for this moment. As has Askauri.

It is peaceful, comforting, for the briefest of moments that it lasts.

A look of fear and distress twists across both of their faces simultaneously, though, and their eyes are drawn to the Southern horizon, to the sudden flare of psychic energies erupting across several different dimensional planes, several hundred miles away.

Unbelievably, the impact of the eruption could be felt, like brutal, battering waves of heat, even from such a distance.

“Oh my god,” Askauri mutters, shocked at the sheer sense of destruction that spreads out from the epicenter of the explosion.

Bealz's eyes sting painfully. He can hear and feel his mother as she begins to scream in his mind. He clutches the sides of his head in agony and falls to the floor of the deck.

“Mama!,” he calls to her.

Bealz eyes screw close as the pressure in his head increases. “I need get to my Mama!”

Askauri is stunned speechless. He could feel the unprecedented waves of power spewing across the dimensional barriers. There were two different energy forms, their radiant flashes ripping through the curtain of reality.

Outside of the Wilds of the Incata, this was the most massive outpouring of energies Askauri had ever witnessed, and he stood at least two hundred miles away from its source. What was most frightening, most bewildering, though, was that he could sense Monique, or something like the woman she had been, right at the center of the explosion. It was her. But it was much more than her. It was as if a multitude had appeared.

Askauri gathers Bealz in his arms, looks back over his shoulder to see Jasi frantically running towards the open deck doors, looking frightened and concerned, and folds through the overlying astral plane.

It was time for a family reunion.