The Calm

Everything is a blur.

After one has nearly died—again—one doesn’t tend to be particularly strong. Or coherent for long. As many times as I have died and returned to a healthy body, I’ve had to endure clawing back from the brink. It never becomes any more pleasant.

Someone deals with my near-corpse, someone speaks to me, but beyond my dear sweet sister’s voice disappearing elsewhere, I don’t take note of much. I won’t take much to drag away after weeks of wasting. They could dump me in with the pigs and it would mean all the same to me.

For a moment... I must have had freedom. At what point did I return? In time for the chain to snap around my wrists again, in the fog of fever as we returned from Noruaas’s caverns, or even earlier... during the battle...?

The mess of tumbling back through a half-broken chain between shards of memory feels like a dream. Maybe I do dream of it. More voices, and more memories of people long-dead to me, who might be alive here. Everything’s jumbled.

They call a name that doesn’t belong to me. Speak with a concern that feels out of place. Where is Sels? Usually I’d be getting the sharp stab of a blunt bill to the forehead by now....

Ah, she died, didn’t she....

The side of my face still burns when I awake.

I open my eyes and the world is a strange place made of aged but well-kept wood and papered walls painted by an artisan. More importantly, there’s sunlight streaming through an open window.

The sky... is blue?

It takes me a moment to recall where I am. When I am. If I can be sure of that. If my own mind isn’t playing tricks on me, or the afterlife isn’t what they claim.

The bed is soft, springy, as I sit up and run my hand over a silken sheet. My eyes would ache from the bright colours assaulting me if they weren’t already aching from fatigue. Washed-out memories of the imperial rooms come to mind.

Did we really have opulence like this...?

The room is quiet, as well. Not silent, not filled with the faint whisper of a howling wind or distant cries, or the oppression of a held breath—quiet. There’s the rush of leaves in a gentle spring breeze, faint sounds of chatter and movement reaching through the closed door, and the twitter of birds. Beneath it all, I hear water lapping.

A strange dream.

I stand—and nearly fall like a newborn deer—eventually wrapping my hands around the solid, polished wood of the window frame. Polished. Silky smooth. And outside the grass grows green and lush enough to hide the beaten earth, the trees blush with leaves, rolling emerald hills that turn to mountains touching a brilliant sapphire sky—

Were they always that colourful, or have my memories washed out? How long...?

Let’s see... after Ilempo, Teinyo and his obsession with infernos, then Ahike.... A hundred? Though things did somewhat begin to recover before Isesst ruined it all for good....

I finger my barely-stubbled chin—someone must have shaved me in my sleep, a disturbing thought—and a flicker of movement catches the corner of my eye, though I haven’t sensed anyone else. There does appear to be a strange man hiding in a polished steel mirror standing on a small shrine against the wall, however. Absolutely unrecognisable, but he must be me, from the way his hand twitches from his chin to an imaginary sword he doesn’t possess. And slowly reaches up towards his curly blond, short-cropped scalp once he realises.

Ah.

Fair, short hair, blue eyes, haggard and pale face.... If I needed confirmation, then this certainly confirms I am in a world two hundred years younger. These features belong to a stranger from another lifetime, almost another man entirely, even if he never truly aged. Illness seems to have left him more worn than I was even at two hundred. Ironic.

I run fingertips over the side facing away from the mirror, tracing sore furrows—rough skin with a strange heat to it. So new and yet so old.

This is an opportunity, some might say.

The ghost watches me appraisingly, waiting to see what I’ll do, mentally tracing a crack in a once-whole chain, weighing a future bowing under two gruelling centuries that was erased with one snap. To him, the answer would have been obvious.

He was also a fool.

I do briefly consider acquiring a sharp, pointy object to finish what was started. Unfortunately I’d likely find myself back again, in excruciating pain, when she fumbles into resurrecting me the immediate way. And shouted at by certain surviving members of my team.

A world where Meil is still alive. That’s a terrifying thought.

Footsteps and a familiar presence draw nearer. Speak of the devil, it also seems I’m about to have company of the sororal kind. What joy.

Idly, I draw a glimmering strand of spiriscence—spirit essence—to my palm in a familiar glyph, and imbue the windowsill’s wood to pull out a perfect, lacquered needle.

Let’s test something, shall we?

Dear sister steps into the room quietly, and finds a splinter slicing the air a whisker from her nose.

It was intended to slice skin. Seems I’m still bound tight enough. Unfortunate.

She freezes, her dark eyes locking on the shard of wood embedded in the wall, then me.

“I’m sorry, just testing my limits.” I smile. “It seems they’re quite limited.”

“Why,” she begins, still stiffly frozen there on her back foot, “did you feel the need to test... anything?”

“Curiosity.” I call the needle back, and she visibly flinches as it passes her nose once more, slotting neatly back into the windowsill. With another imbuing, it merges flawlessly into the grain. “The flaw in this chain shouldn’t have escaped your notice. We wouldn’t want any incidents, would we.”

She doesn’t speak for a long while, choosing to study me from across the room with no hint of subtlety whatsoever, her slight frown glaringly obvious, the thoughts flitting through her mind almost clear enough to be written in ink across her face.

Innocent, naive; painfully young. As much a stranger as my own reflection.

“Are you... alright, Lonni?”

“Perfectly, little sister.” I turn to lean on the sill. “You, however, seem rattled. Is something wrong? Does something unsettle you?”

From the corner of my eye, her expression twists. She never relaxes. “You aren’t Lonni, are you? From the moment you returned, there was something different about you. Am I, perhaps, really speaking with a servant of Noruaas inhabiting my brother?”

“Is that what you’d like?” I don’t move.

Her face hardens under my eye. “You will release him.”

...

I laugh. And continue laughing as she advances. Perhaps intent on purging some devil from my supposedly-possessed body? Of all things, she’s genuine about this. Truly, this is something else.

This really isn’t my own time. This isn’t the sister I knew. This is a softer girl from before endless wars and closed doors. A mere child.

And yet, even then, was she really so innocent?

“Stay your hand.” I wave her back, the mirth just about weakening my knees. “Don’t be so hasty. It’s not what you’re assuming.”

“Then what is it?” she says, far more liberal with the ice than her future self. “You awoke a moment ago after two days asleep, immediately tried to kill me—again—and are now laughing like a madman. Pray tell, what am I meant to assume?”

“I did not try to kill you, I tried to draw blood.”

“Does that not seem alarming at all to you?”

“Hf.” I smile tightly. “You live a life of comfort, don’t you. No, I’m not your Lonni, but I am the same man.”

“I have no patience for riddles.”

“You change immensely, then. I recall nothing but riddles in our unfortunate future.” I turn and lean back instead, resting my head against the frame. I haven’t laughed like that in years. “No, I’m your oh-so-beloved older brother from that unfortunate future, sent back—by you—to this time. Using that chain, if you want to know how.”

Her eyes dart to the chain-links as I flash them into visible existence with a flick of my hand and a push of spiriscence. “Resurrection.... So it really does...?”

“Next time you inflict magic on someone, research it first. You have a bad habit.” I let my eyes close. I’m reminded of being followed around by a petulant three-year-old demanding to hold my training sword.

She would panic and choose the immediate resurrection if I went with the first option, wouldn’t she.

“What... happened?”

“Well, Noruaas isn’t quite dead,” I hum. “And neither are its generals. In about, oh, four years, the capital will wind up half-flattened by one, and Father and I will die.”

“Then it—?”

“Ten years after that, another will crawl out of the fissures, and we’ll be in trouble all over again. By year twenty, Lush Valley is a wasteland, and I will have died some trivial amount of times.” I open my eyes, and watch her face pale. “By the end, there is nothing left, the world is a cracked ruin of rock and dust, and Noruaas returns.”

“And you’ve... I can....” She visibly pulls herself together, straightening rigidly. “The chain pulled you back to now? To before all of this happens?”

“My spirit is chained to the mortal realm, and specifically to you. Should I die, I can be brought back to whatever point in time you desire. Should you die, I’ll still be pulled back to a time you were alive.” I settle myself more comfortably. “Don’t test it, or I’ll really try to kill you.”

“It certainly seems to have cracked something in your mind,” she says flatly. “It also seems we must waste no time preparing.”

I sigh. And that would be the second option. “I suppose.”

I’ve been given a second opportunity. A shame to waste it.

I study my hand, gaunt and with fewer callouses, practically soft. As I am, I’m weak, exhausted in moments by walking across a small room, imbuing a needle, and talking to a woman barely into adulthood who believes she knows everything—though I wasn’t so different at this age. This is going to be painful, whatever I do.

But, at least most of the people I knew are still alive in this time....

I let my hand fall, and straighten. Well, if I’m going to be chained as humanity’s saviour once again, I’ll do it my way. And I’ll do it right, this time.

“What, has my oh-so righteous brother, the eternally noble Prince-heir of the Empire, given up? You certainly aren’t yourself—”

“I’ll be leaving for Fishmouth,” I grunt, pushing off the windowsill and brushing past her. “You can make preparations to leave for Nachisi. I’ll meet you along the way.”

“What?” She turns. “Why?”

I pull travelling clothes from the assortment helpfully placed in the room’s dresser, ignoring what was set at the base of the bed. “There’s someone I need to meet.”

And hopefully she’ll come willingly. I’d rather not die.