The Fifth Season: Chapter 17 Summary & Analysis

A year passes for Damaya at the Fulcrum. She is lonely, but she comes to think of herself not as a student but as a weapon—someone who doesn’t need friends or fun, only training and refining. Eventually she starts using her free hour after dinner to explore the Fulcrum grounds. There is little supervision of the grits during this time unless they enter the forbidden Ring Garden, so no one gives her any trouble as she wanders the miles of pathways, training areas, and landscaped grounds. She also explores the administrative buildings, which include practice chambers where ringed orogenes move around huge blocks of basalt as practice. Sometimes Damaya sees them doing this and longs to be like them.

Damaya is most intrigued by “Main,” the massive central building of the Fulcrum campus. This is full of offices for the orogenes to take care of their own internal business—as they can’t use any of Yumenes’s resources—and a wing for the Guardians as well. Damaya avoids this part and avoids Guardians whenever she sees them, as she begins to notice a strange and unpleasant sensation whenever one gets too close. In Main, there are also sections that are totally abandoned. After discovering one of these one night, Damaya preps the day before and then begins to explore it.

Making her way through the dark rooms, Damaya finds that the abandoned wings echo the structure of the other parts of Main, with its series of offices and meeting rooms. In them she discovers old books and clothes, and she tries on some of the ornate dresses that she finds. She also comes to rooms full of contraptions that she doesn’t understand. Every night now, she explores these abandoned parts of Main, and though she sometimes sees her teachers on her way to and from the building, none of them bother her. She enjoys having this private time to herself, seemingly secret from the universal order that is imposed on all the grits of the Fulcrum.

One day, however, a girl entirely unfamiliar to Damaya joins her group of grits on their march through Ring Garden. They have just finished their Applied Orogeny lesson, during which Marcasite praised Damaya’s work and told her that she would be ready for her first ring test soon—a year before anyone else in her age group. Damaya is so pleased by this that she almost misses the strange girl, but it also seems that she is the only one who notices her. The girl sees Damaya staring and winks at her, and Damaya becomes too flustered to say anything to the instructors.

When they return to the barracks for Free Hour, Damaya confronts the strange girl and asks who she is. The girl is very talkative and goes on about how she’s surprised that no one else has noticed her, and only when Damaya threatens to yell for the instructors does she introduce herself as Binof. Damaya starts asking her many more questions about what she’s doing here, but Binof hushes her. She tells Damaya that she’s here to look for something strange within the Fulcrum. She can’t describe it, but in trying to do so, she makes a hexagonal shape with her hands.

Though this seems nonsensical at first, Damaya actually knows what Binof means: the massive building of Main is circular in shape, but over time she has sessed and deduced that there is a large, hexagonal empty space in its center, around which all of the wings are built. Damaya calls it “a room without doors,” and Binof excitedly anticipates that this must be what she’s looking for.

More serious now, Damaya asks again who the strange girl is, and now she offers her full name: Binof Leadership Yumenes. Slowly, Damaya realizes what this means: Binof is not an orogene and is rather a member of one of the most powerful families on the continent. All Binof asks is that Damaya not give her away until she can find the room she’s looking for. Damaya asks why she’s doing this, and Binof says that she can’t tell her, but she’s looking for something that only Leaders know about. Binof seems confident that nothing will happen to her if she’s caught, but Damaya knows that she won’t be so lucky, as she’s not even a human.

Damaya again threatens to call an instructor, and in a panic, Binof offers her money and then privileges for the next time she leaves the Fulcrum. Cursing her, Damaya tells her that she has no need for money and is never allowed to leave the Fulcrum—she’s here, she says, because “it’s the only place we can be safe from people like you.” Damaya gets so angry at Binof and her privileged naïveté that she almost loses control and uses her orogeny. Binof notices this and isn’t afraid, but only more energetically curious than ever. Finally, she asks sincerely if Damaya will help her find the secret room, and Damaya reluctantly agrees, now very curious herself. Binof says that she’s seen some old architectural drawings of Main and has an idea where the secret entrance might be—it’s in one of the used parts of the building.

As Damaya leads Binof toward Main, she notices more adults looking at her than usual. At first, she thinks that they are suspicious, but then she realizes that they are actually quietly pleased that she—who they see as a lonely, wandering girl—has finally found a friend to join her. As they walk, Binof comments on how odd it is that the adults allow children such freedom, as they might hurt themselves, and Damaya stops her and reminds that they aren’t children: they’re grits. No one cares if they get hurt, and Binof needs to start acting like this if she’s going to pretend to be an orogene.

The two girls enter Main, and as they head toward the spot that Binof thinks contains an entrance to the secret inner room, Damaya grows uncomfortable because they’re now close to the Guardians’ wing. Binof says that, as an orogene, Damaya should be able to figure out where the hidden door is using her power. Damaya first scoffs at this but then realizes that she actually can do this to a certain degree. She tries it now, applying all the control and skill that she has learned over the last year and feeling her way along the inner walls of the building, finally finding a place where there is a gap.

Damaya now starts walking down the corridor until she comes to the place where she sessed the gap in the inner wall—it’s inside what seems to be a closed office building. Knowing how risky this is, Damaya knocks first, then tries the door but finds it locked. Binof now takes a tool from her pocket and begins to pick the lock. After a while Damaya gets frustrated, worried about being discovered, but finally Binof manages to get the door open. Inside is an empty office, though it seems grander and more ornate than others that Damaya has seen, and the lanterns inside are lit.

Continuing to search, Damaya opens a closet in the room. It seems like the right place, but she can sess that there is a missing gap beyond it, between the closet and the inner wall of the building itself. Binof searches the wall with her hands and finds a loose brick, which she removes to find an iron latch. Overwhelmingly curious now, Damaya tells her to open it. Binof does so, and the whole wall swings free, revealing a tunnel beyond. Damaya asks what Binof was hoping to find here, and when Binof is evasive, Damaya again threatens to turn her in.

Though she says that only Leaders are supposed to know this information, Binof finally relents. She tells Damaya that she’s learned that there’s some kind of mysterious artifact in the center of the Fulcrum. It is connected to a gap in history itself—after one Fifth Season that took place thousands of years ago, warlords took over as they usually do, but no one settled where Yumenes now is, even though it was the perfect place to build a city. This is because “there was something here.” Binof says she doesn’t know what that thing is, but it’s what she’s trying to find out now.

After this Fifth Season was the Madness Season, during which Warlord Verishe founded Sanze and became the first Emperor. Verishe built Yumenes around the mysterious artifact that everyone feared, and centuries later, the Fulcrum was established on top of the thing itself. Binof says that this is the mystery she’s trying to solve, and Damaya now silently agrees to continue helping her. Together they enter the tunnel.

Binof blunders ahead in the dark, and Damaya warns her to be careful, sessing that there’s something heavy and pressed down ahead—some kind of big hole. Suddenly lights activate around them, coming on to illuminate the way forward and then spreading outward to reveal a massive hexagonal chamber. The walls and floor are of plain stone, but there is an enormous pit in the center of the floor, itself also hexagonal. Both girls stare in awe. Damaya can sess that the pit is incredibly deep, and tapers to a point at its bottom. She also feels sure that no one dug this pit, but rather that something punched downward into the earth and left the hole as an impression.

Crouching and looking closer at the hexagonal pit, Damaya sees that its walls are lined with iron needles. As the two girls continue to wonder at what they’ve found, a voice suddenly speaks behind them. Damaya jumps in surprise and suddenly feels like she’s going to fall into the pit, and counterintuitively she even relaxes, feeling like her body is overwhelmingly heavy and ready to fall in. Binof catches her arm, and Damaya realizes that she wasn’t especially close to the pit’s edge at all—there’s no reason why she should have felt that falling in was inevitable. As she wonders at this, the source of the voice appears: it’s a Guardian.

The Guardian is a short-haired woman who seems older than Schaffa and is smiling in the same strange way that every Guardian seems to. The Guardian calls Damaya by name and says that Schaffa will be disappointed in her. Binof then declares that she is the one who ordered Damaya here, and it’s her fault. In a new and serious voice, she introduces herself as Leadership and apologizes to the Guardian. The Guardian’s smile fades, but she greets Binof in a pleasant voice. Binof says that her parents surely know where she is by now, so the Guardian can speak to them directly. Damaya realizes that this is a wise move on Binof’s part.

The Guardian smiles again at both girls and tells them to come with her, out of the chamber. As they leave, the lights go out behind them, and the Guardian locks the office’s door. In the Guardians’ wing, the woman stops Damaya and leads Binof away. Binof looks back, but Damaya avoids her eyes, feeling that the strange girl has already caused her enough trouble. Damaya waits there until the woman returns and leads her into a large new room, saying that she has sent for Schaffa, who is currently in Yumenes. This room is full of people, some wearing black uniforms, some burgundy uniforms, and some civilian clothes, and Damaya stares until the woman puts a hand on her head and turns her away, ushering her into a small office.

Damaya sits down and immediately apologizes to the Guardian, who sits down as well. Smiling again, the Guardian starts asking her questions that she doesn’t understand—if she touched one of the “extrusions” in the “socket,” and if it called to her. The Guardian’s smile has suddenly disappeared, and she is now speaking in an entirely different voice than before. She takes Damaya’s hand and starts to stroke it, asking her more questions about an unnamed thing that she says is angry and afraid, and “readying, for the time of return.”

It’s as if someone else is speaking through the Guardian’s body, and as the woman continues, she starts to press her thumb into the bones of Damaya’s hand that Schaffa broke a year and half ago. The woman keeps speaking as her thumbnail now cuts into Damaya’s skin, describing the unnamed thing that “did what it had to do, last time” and “made them a part of it.” Damaya finally yells at the Guardian that she doesn’t understand what’s happening. She knows that she is supposed to obey the Guardians, but what this woman is doing makes no sense according to the order of life at the Fulcrum.

Suddenly Schaffa enters the room and addresses the woman, whom he calls Timay. She continues to drone on, however, and Schaffa sighs and stabs his fingers into the back of her head. Suddenly she jolts forward and blood flows from her neck, and Damaya begins to scream. Schaffa continues, tearing something small out of the back of Timay’s skull. Timay slumps forward, another Guardian enters, and Schaffa gives the bloody object to the man, who leaves. At Schaffa’s terse request, two other Guardians enter, remove Timay’s body, and mop up the blood where she fell.

Schaffa then takes Damaya’s hand and examines where Timay cut her. He smiles sadly at her and says that she saw something she should not have—Guardians undergo a procedure where something is implanted, he says, and sometimes it must be removed. A Guardian’s connection to their orogenes can help them, but Timay had not maintained such connections. Damaya then remembers that when she first met Schaffa, he pressed his fingers to the back of her skull. She asks Schaffa what Timay was talking about, what was the angry thing she mentioned. Schaffa says that it was “Father Earth,” and that this is “a common delusion.” Schaffa then apologizes to Damaya again, and he seems so sincere that she starts to cry.

After a while, Schaffa picks Damaya up and lets her weep into his lap. She cries for a long time, not just because of the night’s trauma but because she feels like Schaffa is the only person who loves her, if in his own frightening and inexplicable way. When she finally stops crying, Schaffa says that he needs her to do something for him: to go down the hall and pass her first ring test. Damaya quickly understands that this is her only opportunity to prove herself useful and survive in light of the other things that have happened tonight. Schaffa asks her again, saying that his life is full of too much death, and he needs her to live.

Damaya thinks again of all the mysteries of the last year—what the “socket” is, where Crack went, and she feels suddenly that the Fulcrum’s way of life is “not right.” But Schaffa asks again, and she knows that she loves him too, however wrong that might be. She tells him that if she passes her test, she has picked a rogga name: Syenite. Schaffa says that he likes it, and Damaya resolves that she will indeed pass the test for Schaffa’s sake. The chapter ends with an obscured verse of stonelore, ending with “They are not masters of themselves; allow them no mastery of others.”