Old Life

The time Magdeline and I spent wandering the dark halls of this forgotten palace has made my mind go places I felt were once impossible. I no longer had to sleep and dream to see visions of my old life, but rather the memories were now just suddenly coming back to me. Perhaps this is the effect of slaying that pale dragon, but that's only speculation from me. "Her miasma will save us all." is what Fesha told me before she died, and remembering everything I had gone through: forgetting Magdeline's name when I first touched the black growth, my moment of confusion after barely touching the pale dragon's black breath, and seeing the dragon's breath leave that black residue on the ceiling, there was without a doubt a connected. Making these connections made me begin to somewhat resent Fesha. Her and the dragon had to have been the reason why I had long forgotten most of my life, but now that they are gone, my old life was starting to flood back in much faster than it had before.

I had a vision of a moment in my childhood. I was waiting in my house alone for a while, perhaps days, feeling lost and lonely. Suddenly, the soft creaking of the front door I heard from upstairs filled me with an irreplaceable joy. I rushed downstairs to see my mother against the heavenly light of the sun, but she was not the way I had last seen her. She was in a wheelchair and she had a bandage below her lips and another on her forehead. Bruises that have started to fade were on her arms and legs. She smiled gently but I knew she was in pain. The woman pushing her seemed to be from the hospital and told me it was going to be okay, but hearing the word "paralyzed" did not give me much hope.

There was another memory that came back to me, one of me much older. I found myself in a small bedroom, different from the room in my old house, but nonetheless, I recognized it. I opened the blinds to see skyscrapers ahead and the somewhat busy streets of an early city morning. I looked out at the cold and cloudy view of the skyline while changing into what looked like my work attire. As I was about to leave, I saw a semi-crumpled note on my nightstand in the hand writing of my mother. The note read, "Please, if you finally find the courage to leave the house today, promise me you'll find a way make up with them. I love you." in faded black ink, the same note I remembered from my long lost childhood. As I looked at it, I finished changing and headed out of my apartment.

I walked along the sidewalk watching the occasional car pass by. Trees overhead shaded me from the tiny drizzle that had started. I was walking alongside many others, some going the same direction as me, passing me, and others going opposite of me. I hit the turn that I knew was routine for me, leading me on a path that had barely any people. There were a few that I past, none worth mentioning, until one man going the opposite way as me was glaring at me with a look of hatred and despair. Something about him seemed familiar, but I could not make a connection with any other memories I still had of my old life, yet there is one memory that I remember feeling the same hatred and despair I saw in that man's eyes.

I stood atop a hill on a long dirt road that over looked a river and a small countryside town. A boy, about my age at this time, was running down the path. I turned my attention to the bottom of the hill to see a color that stuck out amongst the green grass, gray rocks, and the sparkling surface of the river. There was red, flowing down a large stone near the riverbed and getting washed away by the gentle stream.

I found a figure looming over me as drops of water fell onto my face. I was struggling for air and my vision was getting blurry. A tight pressure was wrapped around my neck and the hard concrete ground was cold against my back. The figure above me continued to squeeze as I had a moment of clarity to see the face of my attacker. It was the man who's eyes showed nothing but hatred and despair.

"Looketh there." Magdeline interrupted my flow of memories.

I looked ahead and saw a large arching entrance that met at a sharp point at the top. The details of its framework was cracked and dulled. As we past the threshold of the arch a series of the balls of light faded into existence, though they were not as bright or as large as the one in the king's throne room. As the room lit up, the details of this room made me realize where we were. It was a large room with multiple layers of wooden walkways along the walls. Large wooden, zigzagging stairs intertwining with each other led the way up to each of these walkways. Every wall in this room was a bookshelf, some filled with books, with some of their books having fell off the shelves into piles next to them. I looked at the books closest to me, their spines dusty, stained, ripped, or all three. Their pages were stained yellow and some so dark that it was hard to read the text. Judging from the large concentration of books here, I knew we had found what Lanus had told us about. We had finally made it to the royal archives. I took a couple steps in, their sounds echoing high into the ceiling. Magdeline and I looked at the various sections on the ground floor, then we went up another layer, then another. We skimmed through various books from different selves, looking for something worth reading. Finally, we landed on a section of books that had a category we had interest in. It was a series of bestiaries dedicated to the various animals of this world, one of those being dragons and their history.