[Second Wonder visit backdated to August 9, 2020.]

"Where have you been?" Kaiah's tone was venomous as she rounded on him. Sawtooth had barely had the chance to fully acknowledge that he'd arrived in much the same area he'd been deposited on his first visit before the old knight's spirit was before him, snapping angrily.

And Sawtooth was not prepared to be treated poorly by some grandma ghost. "On Earth," he spat back. "Where my home is? Where I live? I'm not going to pop out here every day, even if I could!"

The switch from venomous to thoughtful was raptly apparent on Kaiah's face. "'Even if you could?'" She repeated evenly, tone softer with the inquiry.

"Yes!" Sawtooth remained as heated as he had with his first response. "I tried to come back sooner. You said I'd just have to say the pledge, but when I did, it just felt like I'd been slapped in the lungs, and I went a whole lot of nowhere." He'd tried a scattered handful of times, but each resulted in nothing. Sometimes he felt like the air had been sapped out of him, like he'd tried to expend whatever energy was necessary to make the trip, but it hadn't worked, and he'd just felt tired instead. His voice simmered down marginally as he grumbled out, "This was the only time it worked, obviously."

"You can't come back whenever you want..." Kaiah murmured, and it was clear how much that deflated her ire. "You can't stay because there is nothing here to sustain you, but you can't come and go as you please, either."

Though her body was only a spirit, and Sawtooth believed firmly that she couldn't physically feel anything, and she surely had no reason to move in the way an alive person would- Kaiah dipped to the ground anyway, palms ghosting over the dark earth as if she could sense something from it. "I should have suspected that she was weakened after all the centuries. Your bond isn't strong, and much of our wonder's power is dormant... Perhaps if you keep trying, it will get easier."

But she didn't sound confident.

Sawtooth swallowed. He scuffed his boot against the shiny black obsidian slab where he'd landed. "It wasn't always like this, then? You could come whenever you wanted?"

Kaiah's gaze wandered to him, and she gave a tiny shrug. "I almost never left. Saturn wasn't where I was born. It wasn't where my family lived, nor where I did most of my training, but when I inherited Sawtooth from Gran, it felt like home in my soul. She was never a bustling metropolis, but she was ours. Life flourished here; I could sustain myself and everyone who dwelled here, no matter how inhospitable the conditions."

"People lived here? More than just you?" Sawtooth asked, incredulous.

"Of course. We had our own civilization, one part of many that guarded Saturn. I had companions I hunted with, comrades I trained with, allies who helped me defend the source of our power: the Code." Sawtooth's face scrunched in confusion, but Kaiah continued. "I watched them all perish after I'd gone, just a silent observer, unable to do anything for them as our numbers and resources depleted until there was nothing more than what you see before you. A whole civilization just... dwindling to nearly nothing..."

"How? Why? What's the Code?" Sawtooth asked, face still screwed up as he tried to figure out how any of this made sense. He settled on the reality of it, already, but the why? The why was yet to be uncovered.

"How?" Kaiah prompted with a shrug. "It just did. No matter how many gardens they planted, the crop stopped being enough. No matter how they carefully measured what could be taken to sustain even a dying population, it wasn't enough to keep the prey from fading. Things became less and less until they ceased to be. The last of us died nearly two centuries after me, and this was what my world turned into. I'd wondered if it had something to do with Sawtooth not having a protector, but..." She shrugged again. "I'll have to think about it some more. I'd direct you to our books to see if you could find anything out, but I don't think you could read them, and I'd have some trouble turning the pages."

She gave a snort as she turned back to him. The sadness was clear in her eyes from the hardships of the past millennia, but there was a tenuous hope as well. "You don't even know the Code?" She demanded with a scoff. "The situation is even more dire than I feared. You really don't know anything. Alright, listen, then."

"The Code is what gives you the magic. It is what makes you Sawtooth and binds you to this place, one you'd never even seen or heard of before you first appeared here weeks ago. It is a source of immeasurable power- or rather, a piece of that source. Every wonder, for there are countless others like you that serve their own, has a piece of the Code. And every knight is born to protect their piece, to keep it from falling into the wrong hands. It propels our wonder and gives you your abilities."

She gave him a moment to let the thought sink in. "If your whole wonder is powered by one small piece, and it enables you to scale these spires and dash through this unforgiving terrain, can you imagine what one person could do if he wielded two pieces? Or ten? Or one hundred? We exist to protect Sawtooth and the piece of the Code she shelters, for the sanctity of everything in the universe."

Sawtooth blinked as he tried to wrap his mind around it. There were others like him. More wonders across the whole universe, and more knights protecting them. Countless numbers. "Oh, that boy."

"Huh?"

"There was a boy," Sawtooth explained. "When my weapon first showed up, when I first powered, there was a boy who picked me up and threw me into a car. He could, like-" Sawtooth wiggled his fingers through the air. "He put his hand in my chest, and there was something that came out. He must have been a knight, if he could do something like that."

Kaiah's confused expression had darkened so significantly that Sawtooth quieted the second he noticed it, blinking at her with an uncertainty of his own.

"That was not a knight," she hissed venomously. "We have no such powers, and even if we did, few would perform such a cruel act as stealing the starseed, the soul from a random passerby, let alone another knight."

She fixed him with the most dangerous look he'd seen from her yet, more frightening than her venom, more distressing than her anguish. "I don't know what that is, but if it attacked you-"

"He called me a knight," Sawtooth recalled briskly. "He knew what I was before I even met you."

"And he still attacked. It was always known there was more out there than just us, but the extent is almost unimaginable. Be careful. I can't tell you of anything that manifested on Earth after my death. I don't know of such things. ...But this is what you need to train for. For whatever darkness threatens this plane of existence."

"Because something must be," Kaiah insisted. "Something must be threatening you or Earth or Saturn or all of them for Sawtooth to have called to you, to have let your weapon appear before you sporadically when you have never been trained and don't even know the Code."

"It's distressing," she puffed. "But I said I'd help you, and I will.

She sighed. "I just wish I knew where to start. Everything I did as a page was centuries and centuries ago. Everything in my past seems hazy and unclear." She shook her head. "I'll be sure to remind you of any teachings as they come to me. And there is still nearly the entire wonder to show you. In addition to training you physically."

"What if I don't really want to do any of this?" Sawtooth asked. "Bad guys? Saving the universe? Magical powers? What if it's all too much for me?"

"Then you probably shouldn't have picked up your weapon," Kaiah answered with a shrug. "You should've let the boy take your starseed. If you aren't interested, I can't force you to come back to me. Sawtooth can to some extent, but the situation would have to be immeasurably dire, more so than anything she's experienced in the past thousand years." Her expression was sly as she peered at him, though. "But I don't think we need to worry about that. You already came back. Don't pretend to threaten me."

He scoffed and rolled his eyes.

But didn't disagree.

How could he? Elias wasn't blind to the anomalies and dangers of Destiny City. How many rumors had he heard of monstrous beasts attacking civilians? Or aliens invading? Mass hallucinations? Deaths? Missing persons? Evil? He would be stupid to reject an opportunity to harness a power to keep his daughter safe.

He'd be stupid to reject a power that let him jump over buildings.

Sawtooth scoffed as he settled back on his heels, hooking his thumbs through his belt loops as he eyed Kaiah with an expression akin to a smug sort of confidence. He was channeling all these powers, supposedly. And she was just a ghost. What could she possibly do to him?

"Alright, ma'am, I'm at your disposal, I guess. For the next couple hours, anyway."

Her response to his smile was something of a wicked grin of her own, a flash of teeth that may very well have belonged to a predator. "Good boy. We have a lot to cover and limited time to act. Given the circumstances, and your complete lack of ability and knowledge..." She made a gesture as if she was cracking her knuckles, and Sawtooth had the impression that it must have been from habit. "I will make sure you regret agreeing to train under me, Sawtooth."

[1692]