Abyssal Road Trip

Amdirlain’s PoV - Outlands - Outpost of the Monastery of the Western Reaches

Beneath Sarith’s public mind, her mental walls reminded Amdirlain of the chaos streams, black and impenetrable. As Amdirlain had extended a mental touch towards her, a white light formed a seam in the wall closest to her and allowed Amdirlain inside. The foyer of Sarith’s mind palace was as bare as the dormitory courtyard in Limbo and matched that space with its stark walls and interior doors spread along its walls. Yet, unlike the isolated direction markers hidden in its grains and colour shifts, the words looped the room and presented details of Sarith’s family. It provided a record of their service in the city guard across the millennia since its founding.

“Know I had expected to feel more of a burden when your mind touched against mine,” said Sarith. “Know your presence in my mind is very ethereal and delicate.”

Amdirlain smiled. “I can manage precision, and I’ve had to touch many Mortal minds over the years.”

“What image are you using to touch my mind so lightly?” enquired Sarith.

“We had devices that could send images and video between remote locations without skills being needed,” replied Amdirlain. “It was polite not to shout, and one got used to relaxing when presented images.”

Being vegged out on the couch or watching a computer screen counts as being relaxed.

Sarith tilted her head inquiringly, but Amdirlain signalled its unimportance.

“Do you think it silly that I’ve kept my mind palace the same?” asked Sarith.

“Never worry about what someone else thinks of that which you treasure,” replied Amdirlain, and she turned in a circle to take the legacy in. “That’s a lot of pressure to have carried with you, and it’s no wonder you felt compelled to qualify for the city guard. Does keeping it in your entryway remind you of the pressure you lived with through your childhood?”

“Know that the negative aspects of my past don’t attract my focus as much as the positive,” replied Sarith. “Does it hurt to remember that my family maintained the safety of others above their own well-being? Should a Healer not put their patient above the demands of those that don’t have their continued good health in mind?”

“I benefited from the second point, so I certainly won’t argue,” said Amdirlain.

“Know that not everyone cares if they’ve benefited in the past,” said Sarith, and her mouth briefly tightened.

A lance of pain rose through Sarith’s theme, and Amdirlain winced. “Have you had to defend those protected by your oath from any former patient?”

“Yes,” sighed Sarith. “Know healers must be impartial in who they tend to, and we maintain our oaths, no matter how difficult.”

“I hope I’m not getting you to edge towards the limits of your oaths,” said Amdirlain.

Sarith motioned reassuringly. “Do you think I would have offered if that were possible?”

“I’ve had people offer things they shouldn't to me before,” explained Amdirlain. “I try to head things off before they get into trouble.”

“Try?”

A trace of concern trickled across their connection that was only a fragment of the noise within Sarith’s melody, and Amdirlain projected reassurance. “People have to make their own choices.”

Sarith twitched and gave a loud snort. “Knowing when to stop digging is the first step to getting out of a hole.”

Amdirlain barked laughter that earned a smile from Sarith, who took a single step. Her mental image reappeared at the door in the left wall, which she opened and beckoned Amdirlain through. The room expanded when Amdirlain crossed the threshold so she stood in an eight-cubic-metre room furnished with a low grey stone table in its centre and deep cushions on opposite sides. One cushion felt to be the guest spot, and Amdirlain settled herself on it without objection, taking in the details of weave and materials that Sarith had included within her mental construct.

Once Sarith sat across the table, her fingers tapped a gentle pattern against her leg; the regular noise was a touch of normalcy in a place controlled by Sarith’s mind.

“Know I’ll take you through variations of the technique I’ve used,” advised Sarith. “Before we start, why do you think this room would make a bad image to use?”

“With only one door, the filter would be very selective,” said Amdirlain.

Sarith frowned tightly. “Do you wish to try again?”

“I’ve been considering it from the perspective of only being able to see a narrow area within the scene playing out,” explained Amdirlain. “If it’s not that which is the issue, then I’d have to say the concept of a door itself. Doors allow someone in and out, so the trauma from the person’s memory is practically invited.”

“Know that is correct and takes us onto why there are so many variations of the construct,” said Sarith. “Given what I’ve already said about its use, why might that be?”

“They’re for use within someone’s mind, so their mind handles the translation of the symbolism you use,” replied Amdirlain. “Does that mean you would normally have to observe their thoughts for a time to know what approach to use?”

“Yes,” said Sarith unhappily. “Know this will prove restrictive with the memory recovery you want.”

“Yeah, some of them are from a very alien perspective, and others were horrible enough that I’ve been careful about revisiting them,” sighed Amdirlain. “Is there anything else?”

Sarith motioned her for patience. “Know that the techniques are still an option, but you should plan for failure so the outer filters can collapse in multiple ways.”

The surrounding room changed to a layered barrier with the swirling sky of Limbo overhead. The innermost barrier was a hardened cage with gaps that would barely let a canary hop through; beyond it was netting supported by a framework of poles, but the outermost layer was a group of trees whose canopies overlapped their position. The stone floor had transformed into a trapdoor, and Amdirlain resisted the temptation to find out what was beneath it.

Sarith’s lips twitched when she caught Amdirlain’s glance. “Know if this were for a patient’s mind, my construct would include a chute to shunt me from their mind if the inner filter was at risk of breach.”

“Since we’re in your mind, a chute would eject me and take you into your fortress?” enquired Amdirlain.

“Excellent,” laughed Sarith. “Know my preparations hadn’t gone to that extent since the only purpose was a demonstration of mixed symbolism, and you’re inside the barrier at present.”

Sarith took the layers apart and peeled back the mental construct of the cage, showing Amdirlain the interior workings with its shunts and redirections of energy sent against it. After having reconstructed it several times while Amdirlain watched, Sarith gave a rueful smile. “Know this would be easier if we had some training tools to emulate neural networks. You recognised what the framework is doing, correct?”

“It’s not a barrier exactly. You’re putting in place redirections to avoid your mind forming emotional connections to the perceived situation,” said Amdirlain, “The downside is that it doesn’t let you fully understand what the other person has gone through by using these filters.”

“Know that is the purpose,” agreed Sarith. “Didn’t you have to break down the traumatic things you had seen to become emotionally separated from them?”

“Yes, but that was in part because I used a Power called Soul Sight on a group of the damned in the Abyss,” replied Amdirlain. “That was horrific in itself, and to compound the issue I experienced the damned’s actions as if I had committed the deeds myself.”

Sarith blanched, and her hands froze, the steady tapping falling silent. “Know I’m unsure I can understand what it would be like to have gone through such horrors. How did you forgive me for lashing out against you?”

“Sarith, you were a child angry at a situation you felt was unfair and didn’t understand. Would I have been in the right to lash out at you in return when I had no intention of explaining myself to you?” asked Amdirlain. “Such conduct would have been malicious and cruel.”

“How do you have such a strong code of conduct? Know that I’ve treated traumatised individuals that have lashed out with physical violence at the slightest provocation,” said Sarith. “You would have been not only traumatised and dealing with situations not your own doing but were admittedly dealing with your own challenging situation. What choice did you make that led you along such a path of discipline and control that you could be kind to a nasty child?”

Amdirlain paused in mid-protest. “You were angry and frustrated, but I never saw you as nasty. My choice was simple: I wanted to be a good person.”

“Is that not an ideal many people have?” asked Sarith. “Know from my experience, even those who have such aspirations still lack tolerance when they’re in pain.”

“No, I want to be a good person, but I feel I’m not,” corrected Amdirlain. “If I can see what a good person would do, I take it, but sometimes it’s a struggle.”

Sarith snorted. “Upon whose classification aren’t you good? By that of your enemies?”

“Under a Healer’s oath, you can’t share anything I talk to you about?”

Sarith’s curiosity spiked, yet the mental contact remained composed. “Am I your Healer?”

“It might seem unimportant, but if I’m going to talk to you about it, you’d have to be,” said Amdirlain.

“Know if you need to talk to someone, even if I’m only temporarily your Healer, I’ll hold your words under oath,” offered Sarith. “Is it an issue you’ve discussed with someone before?”

Amdirlain grunted, and her hands scratched along her legs. “I haven’t been able to.”

“No one at all? What could be so bad you wouldn’t entrust someone with the details before now?”

“It’s a really old event, and I’m convinced that any of my friends I could have talked to would have brushed it off,” said Amdirlain.

“Know that how we as individuals feel about something is always valid to us,” said Sarith. “But knowing they would see it as minor, you are unable to reevaluate it?”

“But it wasn’t nothing. I always felt it showed I was rotten inside and that anything I did wouldn’t be enough to make up for it,” said Amdirlain. “One of our sayings is a reminder that beauty is only skin deep, but that ugliness can go far deeper. To me that has always been about a person’s behaviour rather than appearance. People behave and look how they want people to see them but, under pressure, whatever ugliness is inside them comes out. I’ve always seen my sentiment from that occasion as ugly, and what I did after that was either me pretending or making up for that event.”

“Yet you felt your friends would see it as minor?” asked Sarith. “Why?”

“I didn’t physically do anything,” replied Amdirlain. “Since there was no action, they’d brush it off. Likely tell me something like: you were under pressure, it’s no big deal, or you must forgive yourself. But I won’t forget it and can’t seem to let go, and I know it still affects me and the judgment calls I make. Heck, I often fail to make judgement calls when a child is in danger, I charge right in.”

“Know you have my Healer’s oath,” repeated Sarith reassuringly.

Though only part of her consciousness was linked to Sarith’s mind, Amdirlain still rose and paced about that inner space. Their conversation had lasted fragments of a second within their blindingly fast mental exchange, but an eternity suddenly weighed on Amdirlain’s shoulders and icy cold blades twisted in her guts.

“When I was a teenager, I was sick. It was the type of sickness where if you didn’t get treatment, you’d die,” said Amdirlain, licking her lips. “We had no magic or psionics, just physically demanding medicines to treat it. The healers of my world ran all these tests and discussed the odds of a successful treatment and, percentage-wise, my odds were in the low eighties. All great and cheery, right? But fuck, those numbers were scary to me. A nearly two-in-ten chance I was going to die petrified me, and my mum was putting on a brave face, but I could taste her fear in the air. In the days before I started treatment, I’d walk into a room, and her fear would be suffocating.”

“And this was unusual for a mother to fear for a daughter in danger?”

“It wasn’t normal to me, that wasn’t how my mother normally behaved. To me she was always the bravest woman I knew; she’d assess risks and take precautions but she didn’t give into fear. Yet, I can understand why. My mother had a bunch of miscarriages after my brother and gave up trying to have another child. It took eleven years from his birth for me to come along by surprise, so the fear of losing her miracle baby to cancer—that was insane. That fear choked her and was palpable to me. Once I started treatment she was back to normal, and focused on ensuring I was as comfortable as possible, while the medicines’ impact made my life miserable.”

The fatigue and fear of those days uncoiled within Amdirlain, but she held it back, restrained behind her Mental Hardening. Late night muffled crying from her parents bedroom tickled at the back of her mind, and dug at the imagined sorrow her parents had gone through with her later death.

“But you survived?” asked Sarith. “I mean, that wasn’t how that life ended?”

“Sorry, I was just giving some background. No, it wasn’t how I died, and I survived another twenty-odd years. But I turned up to the treatment rooms with that probability of a successful treatment running around in my head. It wasn’t the odds of success. In my teenage brain, it meant two in ten of us were going to die, and there was a group already in the treatment room,” said Amdirlain. “So when I walked into that room with a group of girls and boys, I wanted anyone else in the room to die but me. Two weeks later, a girl I met and liked died. I’d seen her a couple of days earlier and then she was just dead. I never learnt precisely why, people just gave stupid platitudes to the kids. Yet her odds had been better than mine. No one else from that treatment room died before I was in remission.”

“You carried this sense of being stained because you felt you had ill-wished her?”

“Yes.”

“Did you have the ability to affect such an outcome?”

Amdirlain shrugged tightly. “Not that I was aware of, but maybe I did. Certainly, I could do it effortlessly now if I wanted to.”

“But there was no evidence you possessed such ability at that time?” persisted Sarith gently.

“No, there wasn’t,” sighed Amdirlain. “That’s part of why I think they’d have just brushed it off.”

“You said you’ve lived other horrible lives? If you had retained that degree of power, wouldn’t others around you have perished?” asked Sarith.

“I didn’t say it was logical,” rebuffed Amdirlain firmly. “Just, after her funeral, I started feeling that nothing I did would ever be enough to make up for it. It’s this itch that I can never reach, just constantly digging at me and saying: look at the ugliness in you, everything you do is pretend.”

“Does telling me about it make you feel better?” asked Sarith. “As you said, logically, you had an emotional reaction while under threat with a life-threatening illness. You didn’t attack her? Or treat her with hostility?”

“No, we spoke quite a bit as she had the treatment chair next to mine,” said Amdirlain. “She’d tell me jokes to cheer me up. I, who’d ill-wished her, was who she spent her time worrying about cheering up.”

“Know I can understand the guilt you carry; if you’ll remember that I almost killed or at least mentally burnt out other novices by lashing out. Yet, is there more to it than that?” asked Sarith. “Either in the incident itself or a connected incident that aggravated that feeling of guilt?”

“Livia,” whispered Amdirlain. “When I was trapped as a Succubus, I wanted out of the Abyss more than anything.”

“Your Tier 7 evolution allowed you to shed that form, correct?” asked Sarith.

“Yes,” replied Amdirlain. “But before that, I was summoned to the Material Plane, and that’s when I met Livia. The Summoner killed her as part of the ritual to draw me out, and corruption washed through her Soul.”

“Know that I can see how your sense of guilt would draw parallels: another child killed because of something you wished for,” said Sarith. “Did you know someone needed to die for that to occur?”

“No, and technically they didn’t. The sacrifice approach he used was on the advice of another Demon,” said Amdirlain. “I made zero effort to resist the summoning. A Summoner weaker than him could have gotten me out of the Abyss with only a chalk circle, though keeping me contained was a different matter.”

“Know that Healer’s oath or not I feel you choose to tell me, at least in some part, that I’d revile you for this,” said Sarith and she raised a hand to still Amdirlain’s protest. “Know that given our history It would make sense for a person to reject you and give part of you the confirmation you seek.”

Amdirlain bit her lip and then nodded jerkily. “I didn’t do it for that, but I can see your point.”

“Know that I don’t revile you for either situation. Do you feel you can achieve an objective state on either of these matters on your own?”

“I’ve tried for decades to do that,” admitted Amdirlain.

“Would Sarah brush off your concern about that guilt?” asked Sarith.

Amdirlain sighed. “I feel like she should, but I doubt she will.”

“Might it be that you feel like she should because part of you hopes she will justify your doubt?”

“She’s too fiercely protective,” said Amdirlain.

Sarith laughed. “You do know that is quite rich coming from you?”

“I know what my issue is, and we had a term for it, but that doesn’t help me shake it,” said Amdirlain.

Ori had a case which was far worse than mine.

“Know the guilt of those who remain is hard,” said Sarith.

“Those who remain. We call it survivor’s guilt,” advised Amdirlain.

Sarith smiled. “Do you see my people being satisfied with mere survival?”

Amdirlain laughed. “If they merely wanted to survive, they wouldn’t have chosen Limbo for their home.”

“How do you ask forgiveness from a dead girl not even of this realm? Know though, in my view, it’s not her forgiveness you need.”

“What do I need then?”

“Know that you must face a greater challenge and determine the answer to a simple question. Why do you feel it’s necessary to be perfect?” asked Sarith. “Was this something your last parents instilled in you?”

Amdirlain swallowed down the emotions that churned inside her, and Pain Eater didn’t lessen the unsettled feeling. “They always gave me things I didn’t feel I’d earned.”

“You wouldn’t want to give your child things?” asked Sarith.

“When I was little, I took them for granted, but I had older relatives who’d struggled a lot growing up. I don’t know how old I was exactly, but their stories of rationing and hand-me-downs made me feel entitled and uncomfortably privileged, and I didn’t like seeing myself that way,” explained Amdirlain. “I know other people that didn’t see things that way, but it’s how I felt about it.”

“With your potential to recover memories from past lives, do you feel it might have been something from one of those that influenced you?” asked Sarith.

“I don’t know,” sighed Amdirlain. “It’s a theory.”

Sarith sighed. “Given that you talked about billions of years earlier, what qualifies as prolonged?”

“It was months here and there, spread out over four centuries or more,” clarified Amdirlain. “That life ended with their death following a battle, and the recollection began with an attack on a wedding in his youth.”

“Is it strange to have experienced a male perspective?” asked Sarith. “Know concerning your statement to Nomein, it would seem a strange and potentially uncomfortable situation.”

“During the recollection of the memories, their perspective seems natural, but afterwards, it’s like I read someone’s memories of events rather than lived them myself,” replied Amdirlain. “That seems to remove any sense of strangeness with the situation.”

“Know my primary concern is whether it will work with these memories as they are both internal and strangely external to your mind,” admitted Sarith.

“I can experiment on a few easier ones once I’ve learnt it,” proposed Amdirlain. “Learning the technique and the variations will at least stretch my Telepathy.”

“Know such experimentation should be avoided unless it is our last option. Would you be able to make some of the constructs used to emulate minds?” asked Sarith. “Know the programming of those is fairly straightforward and would allow you to try out various imagery to see which you can most efficiently use in constructing the mental shunts.”

“I can ask Sarah to build us some,” proposed Amdirlain. “I know she has pseudo-intelligence included in different devices she’s constructed for our projects.”

“Do you have any memories you’d be willing to share with me so I might evaluate its potential effectiveness?” asked Sarith.

“What’s your biggest concern?” countered Amdirlain.

“Know there are two points that concern me,” said Sarith. “How close do these past life memories feel compared to living experiences?”

“Sometimes it’s as if I’m living through the moments I’m experiencing but, since I don’t have all their background knowledge and skills, I don’t always catch why they’re doing things,” explained Amdirlain. “This effectively limits how much I learn from any of the memories.”

Sarith sat quietly, but Amdirlain could feel her mind churning busily. “Know that brings me to my second point, that you stumble across them and aren’t taking them in order. Know proper preparation will prove difficult without knowing more about the life.”

“Surely, when you’re dealing with trauma, you’re not getting everything from the patients in order?” protested Amdirlain.

Sarith pursed her lips and nodded sharply. “Know often we get their experience in reverse as we work towards the core of the trauma, but we know more about them as individuals first and aren’t trying to learn more from their memories than the progression of their problems.”

“What sort of memory are you after?”

“Know if there is a painful memory you’ve retrieved that doesn’t feel personal, I’ll show you the technique in use,” offered Sarith.

“How would that work?” asked Amdirlain. “This isn’t exactly your standard situation.”

“Know I’d need to know some details on the life first and your help in determining the most effective symbolism,” explained Sarith, indicating the cage about them. “Know I’d then take you through how I’d reconstruct the mental framework and test its suitability before I get you to project the memory at me.”

“What about the variations you mentioned?” asked Amdirlain.

“Know what I’ve taken you through so far is considered the foundational level of the technique,” said Sarith. “Do you plan to run before you can walk?”

Amdirlain laughed. “I’m always picking fights above my grade.”

Sarith’s reproving look sealed Amdirlain’s amusement away. “Know my preference is to ensure your safety and your memories must be taken seriously.”

“I’ve been told I tend to use humour to deflect my nervousness,” admitted Amdirlain.

“Why don’t you consider your emotions properly instead of deflecting them and, in that respect, belittling how you feel?” asked Sarith.

“It’s not my intention to do that,” protested Amdirlain.

Sarith’s frown twitched into existence before she smoothed her expression into stillness. “Are you sure? Do you not always work to reduce challenges to manageable parts? How do your subconscious habits deal with intimidating emotions?”

“I don’t know,” admitted Amdirlain.

“Know it is something I wish you to think upon,” said Sarith. “Know it is important to determine what is a coping mechanism versus what behaviour is being harmful to oneself. Know, I believe I’ve said enough on that point. Shall we progress onto the matter of your concern?”

Amdirlain nodded hesitantly, and Sarith's brows raised in surprise.

“What memory would you share?”

“The particular memory happens on the day he was taken prisoner by a group of elves that enslaved his Clan,” advised Amdirlain. “He spent centuries in their mine and refinery, but it’s the events of his capture that I’ve got a niggling feeling about that I want to sort out.”

“You’re curious?”

Amdirlain shrugged broadly. “It was his fiancee who was killed right before their wedding ceremony; there is nothing I can do to change that now. Yet something familiar about her has been itching at the back of my mind, and it would be good to get rid of the distraction.”

“How was she killed?”

“She was struck in the initial assault when the first troops hit,” advised Amdirlain.

Sarith’s mouth tightened. “Are you sure that wouldn’t be an intrusion?”

“Because you’re only potentially temporarily my Healer?” asked Amdirlain. “The life didn’t happen in this realm. As such, I can’t see you learning anything from it that even puts me in an uncomfortable position, let alone posing a risk. Would you prefer me to share it from my recollection of events or draw it up from my Soul again?”

“You can do that?” asked Sarith. “But didn’t you say you stumble upon them in erratic moments?”

“Initially, yes. However, once I’ve recalled memories, I can access them,” advised Amdirlain. “The Anar refer to it as their life becoming attuned to their Soul’s memories, and that attunement lets them be drawn forth.”

Amdirlain could feel Sarith’s mind working busily beneath the presented layer of the mind palace again.

“Know feelings of familiarity can arise from many causes,” said Sarith.

“I was wondering if it was one of the Anar or Lómë that I’ve seen in other memories,” explained Amdirlain. “I think the possibility is why her familiarity has been niggling at me so much.”

“Why do you believe people you knew in one life were present in that one?”

“As part of her Dragon heritage, Sarah has access to all her past life memories, and her nature lets her process and access them without issue. Though she has to redevelop the skills again, the knowledge to do so is accessible,” explained Amdirlain.

“Dragons can do that?” gasped Sarith.

Amdirlain smiled. “Most can’t. The normal bloodline memories that go down to them involve key events, their ancestors’ impressions of species, places, and magic. While alive, many dragons use objects as placeholders to help recall information down the millennia.”

“Are you talking about a Dragon’s treasure?” inquired Sarith. “Is that why they’re such hoarders?”

“That and all the material gives them something to play with when they’re bored between naps,” laughed Amdirlain. “I’d swear, you’d be hard-pressed to tell them apart from felines, just with more power and scales.”

“Know that all the worlds we visited had elves, and some had domesticated felines living with them,” said Sarith.

“They’re not on every world, but I think the creator of the realm must have fallen in love with the beauty of the elven people in other realms,” said Amdirlain. “I’ve heard about some elves that were ugly on the inside, but they still possessed an ethereal beauty.”

The recollections of the dwarven Patriarch skipped backwards through his life as Amdirlain sought the start of his captivity. Finally, an image of a silver and grey-hued stone temple manifested fully between them and caused the room to expand as the memory grew. Amdirlain took in the high arched ceiling of Clan Mithrilblood’s Temple, a pang of bitter regret surging upwards only to be restrained behind Amdirlain’s Mental Hardening, and she avoided sharing it with Sarith. Amdirlain’s original recollection of the choosing day had been vague, shattered fragments of a wedding day, but she’d recalled more since then.

Amdirlain stood on the side where her past self had been, looking across the hall’s width to the bride-to-be.

There was a fierce look of pride and satisfaction in the Dwarf maid’s gaze when she exited the forge room on the Temple’s far side to stare across at Amdirlain. Soot marked her new leather apron to symbolise the crafting of their new life together, and her newly made wedding day gift was clasped in her hands.

Primarily a Miner, he had rehearsed the construction of the piece he’d intended to gift her a hundred times in preparation for today, and yet he wished he’d practised a hundred more to ensure it was worthy of her. His nervousness dissipated when her gaze flickered down at the item she clasped. The sly smile that flitted across her lips told him that her gift would likely appeal to his sense of humour even while it tugged their elders’ beards.

An explosion lifted her into the air, and both physical and magical bolts drove through her on the way to join the rest of the strikes that annihilated the officiating Priest and his aides. She skipped across the floor, the twisting momentum imparted by the strikes flinging the wrapped gift from her failing grasp, bouncing it between guests to lie unwrapped beneath a bench.

The memory of the temple hall froze when Sarith moved among the images projected within her Mind Palace.

“Know it is unfathomable how you can share such a memory so easily,” said Sarith, and she motioned to the fallen maid. “How do you not register pain or grief at this sight?”

“I do, but I’ve kept it behind my mental walls and not inflicted it on you,” explained Amdirlain. Sarith tsked, and Amdirlain motioned reassuringly. “I’m not compartmentalising. That approach certainly has a long-term cost and isn’t a road I intend to go down again. I meant only what I said: I’m blocking his distress from coming through the mental link.”

Sarith crouched in front of the fallen bride and touched her blood-stained braids gently, and though she couldn’t adjust the memory, her hand covered the dwarven maid’s eyes.

“In how many lifetimes did you and Sarah get married?” asked Sarith, not looking up from the fallen lady at her feet.

Amdirlain’s presence suddenly hardened against Sarith’s mind; the pain of the memory and their contact suddenly pounded with potency. “We haven’t! What are you talking about?”

With a pained hiss, Sarith held up a hand, and Amdirlain felt the structure Sarith had demonstrated come into place between them, sliding the intensity of the emotions off along the surface of Sarith’s mind.

Sharp notes slapped against Amdirlain’s awareness, and she pulled back. “What makes you say that, Sarith? She looked nothing like her.”

“Know it was just a question, but there was something about how she looked at you,” replied Sarith. “Are you sure that wasn’t a past life for Sarah? Know the image in the memory felt like your mental touch when you referred to her earlier.”

Amdirlain froze, and she broke mental contact with Sarith.

What did Sarah say about that lifetime? She said she’d died on the day that the clan got rounded up and was reborn in the mines. Sarah got dragged into misery twice because of our oath to be sisters pulled her in.

A grunt escaped Amdirlain’s lips, and she found herself in the Patriarch’s youthful form, solid fingers well calloused by his time learning his craft at the forge. As Sarith blinked, the youthful Dwarf vanished to be replaced by an aged Patriarch. His snow-white beard had gaps where crisscrossing scars prevented the beard from properly growing. One eye was half closed by scarring, and a thumb and pinkie were gone from his left hand—blood from remembered wounds saturated clothing before Amdirlain’s regenerative abilities sealed the life-threatening injuries.

The last memory of a youth dying in his arms tore at the back of Amdirlain’s awareness, and tears flowed into her beard. With a snarl, she snapped free of the memory and back into her Wood Elf form, causing Sarith to blink and jerk ramrod straight on the bench.

“Know from my perspective, having witnessed even a fragment of that memory, I have trouble understanding how you still believe there is always a choice,” said Sarith. “What was the choice that he had in his life? How is it a choice that his beloved was dead, that he ended up enslaved, to end in a state like that?”

Amdirlain's lips parted in a smile that conveyed a snarl. “Giving up is a choice. Lashing out is a choice. Holding on to hope is a choice. There are many choices in life. Some will take us to darker places than others, but hoping to improve your life always starts with a choice. They broke free when the rebels made them the opening, killing thousands of slavers in the process, and got the core of their clan to freedom.”

Sarith exhaled slowly until every bit of air she could vent had left. “Should I have not offered to help you?”

“Perhaps not,” said Amdirlain, and she reappeared next to Sarith and rested a hand on her shoulder. “But I appreciate you helping me see.”

“Have I made things worse?”

“No, you haven’t. It was shocking more than anything,” replied Amdirlain, and she laughed bitterly. “I was talking to someone else about being blinded by the perspective of youth. It seems I’ve got more blinkers of my own than I care to admit and, no matter who is involved, I can’t get past them. Sometimes, a shock can help us see things properly.”

“Know that with such an occurrence, a shock can merely be unsettling rather than enlightening, and it takes time to determine which you’ve experienced,” countered Sarith.

“You’re pretty ready to dismiss insight,” said Amdirlain.

Sarith smiled. “Know our definition of what insight entails must vary; while I had an insight into who the individual in your memory was, you...”

“Experienced a strong emotional reaction and distress,” interjected Amdirlain.

Sarith patted Amdirlain’s hand and stood. “Know that you being able to acknowledge that it was distressing is a good sign.”

When Sarith let the front gate close behind her, Amdirlain sighed and cracked her neck from side to side.

Should I have chosen that memory to share?

In the distance, Amdirlain heard Kadaklan’s bright melody starting in her direction. Not wanting to bother him, she returned to the bench to meditate and still her emotions before his arrival.