Chapter 44 - Immortality

Eleanor sat on top of the coffin containing her ancestor, eating her sandwich, watching their reactions.

Alon stammered, “So t-there’s a guy in there right now? A-Alive?”

Eleanor sighed and shook her head. “No, of course not. To my absolute dismay, he’s been dead for plenty of centuries now.”

“But you said–”

“I should have just started with the story…” Eleanor rolled her eyes and began.

“When I was little, I had a brother. His name was… Huh, come to think of it, it’s not really coming back to me right now. Yuck.”

Bianca began to reach for her gun, but Tetsuo gently pressed her arm signaling her to wait.

“Well names don’t matter. The important part is that my little brother was a genius. The most revered in the land. No one knew how he did it but it was as if he could see the invisible. He understood everything, and discovered even more. Thanks to him, we entered a golden age of knowledge. Compared to him I was nothing…”

Eleanor took another bite and continued.

“Anyways… we both got older and drifted apart a bit. That’s just how it is between siblings you know? But even then, I still always loved my brother. We were family and I would never stop caring about him. I think he knew that too. Other family members would try to take advantage of him, you know? Money, tricks, fame, all that stuff that corrupts the soul. But I never wanted to ask him for anything. Even when I got sick, I just hid it from him. I didn’t want to be more of a burden than I already felt like, so I made sure he never found out. I guess, in hindsight maybe that was a mistake.”

“I died. I’m sure it was a very sad and tragic ordeal for everyone. I mean, how would I know? I wasn’t even there.” Eleanor laughed at her joke and looked around at them for a reaction. Seeing only faces of worry and confusion she frowned and continued. “The rest, I don’t know. I can’t tell you how long it had been, but it was like I had fallen asleep and immediately woken up here. This chamber is where I opened my eyes, and found my brother dead leaning against that bell.” Eleanor pointed to her seat behind the bell.

“I cried for days on end. I didn’t eat, I didn’t sleep, I just sat there holding him and cried. I don’t know how much time passed. I didn’t want to live without him, so I ended up trying something a bit… um… dramatic. I’d rather not go into the messy details, but the point is it didn’t work. I couldn’t starve, I couldn’t dehydrate, I couldn’t be hurt. All I could do was live. That’s when I figured it all out.”

Eleanor stood up off the coffin and dusted off where she had been sitting.

“For some inexplicable reason, my brother used his genius to trade his life for mine. And in the process also seemed to have made me immortal.”

Alon spoke first. “How is that possible?! I’ve known you since we were little!”

Eleanor shook her head. “Alon, you were little. I still look the same as I always did. Honestly, I don’t know what to make of you thinking that…” Eleanor sighed before continuing. “I’ve been doing this for over three hundred years now, trying to figure out how he pulled this off so I can give him his life back.”

Tetsuo dreaded the answer, but knew he had to ask it. “So when your brother brought you back… Is that what started the summoning phenomenon?”

Eleanor looked at Tetsuo saddened before shaking her head. “No. He was perfect. His ritual did exactly what it was supposed to. His life is mine.”

“So then–!” Eleanor raised her hand, interrupting Tetsuo and clearing her throat.

“For three hundred years, I’ve been trying to recreate his experiment. Same bell, same circle, just different combinations. Every week or so, once I have enough Ars built up inside me I try again. Every time I try it, I pray that the light doesn’t fade, so that I know it worked, so I know that he gets to open his eyes again instead of me. And every time as this room turns back to this same disgusting blue I’m left here knowing I failed again.”

“Every… week..?” Tetsuo looked down, repeating her words to himself. “So every week or so, when an Earthen appears in Alvania…” Slowly he raised his head up to see her looking away dejectedly.

“Sorry.”

A gunshot rang as Eleanor recoiled from being shot in the stomach. Tetsuo turned to see Bianca drew her gun, rage burning in her eyes, and was loading a second shot while looking straight at her head. Eleanor rolled over behind the coffin, and hid. Bianca kept her gun pointed at the edge where she was ducking.

Eleanor called out from behind. “Hold on, we can talk this out..!”

Bianca turned to Tetsuo, shaking her head. “She’s going to kill us. She’s been stalling this whole time to regenerate her Ars. That’s why she kept eating while she talked.”

Tetsuo looked over to the coffin and could see standing up shaking her head. “Of all the people I’ve summoned here by accident, why is it that your wife is the only one who can see right through me?”

Bianca fired again, but the wood from the coffin twisted upwards, creating a barrier between her and the marble. The shot splintered the wood, before clattering to the ground. As Bianca reloaded, Tetsuo vaulted over the coffin attempting to grab Eleanor. With surprising agility, she leapt backwards and produced a wall of ice from the ground. She pushed the wall at Tetsuo, forcing him away, as she calmly walked up to one of the tables, picking up a Ficium shortsword. She flipped it in her hand before pointing it at Bianca. A lightning bolt traveled between the shortsword and into Bianca’s gun, shocking her, and bringing her to her knees.

Tetsuo ran to her shouting, “Bianca!”

She wobbled back onto her feet and signaled to him to stop. “I’m… Fine… Just surprised… We can’t back down now.”

Tetsuo nodded and focused his attention back to Eleanor. She encased herself between four transparent walls made of ice and walked back to the center of the room, the walls following her. Tetsuo tried to break it with his gloves but the ice proved too thick. Eleanor almost seemed to be ignoring his pounding, as she continued to walk across the room.

“Stand back!” Alon shouted. He pointed his longsword at her walls and activated it, sending a beam of flame towards her. It proved ineffective as the ice walls remained standing. Suddenly Eleanor shouted.

“STOP!! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!!”

The three of them were taken aback by her outburst, confused. That was until Tetsuo noticed that the flames had managed to light the corner of the coffin on fire. Eleanor melted the walls and used them to douse the flame. Bianca and Tetsuo looked at each other and realized they had found her weakness.

“ALON, SET THE COFFIN ON FIRE!!!”

Alon instantly understood, and aimed his blade directly at Eleanor and the coffin. The beam of flame engulfed them both. A stone came flying out from where Eleanor was and struck Alon in the jaw, knocking him to the ground. From the smoke stood Eleanor standing over the smoking skeletal remains of her brother. They were completely clean, almost as if they were a model. The fire had burned away her headband, causing her hair to hang over her face. She stood up and pointed her Ficium sword at Alon, sending a bolt of electricity into his body. He writhed from the shock, before collapsing onto the ground.

Eleanor turned to Tetsuo and Bianca and pointed her blade at them.

“You’ve really gone and done it now.”