The Beginning After The End

ARTHUR LEYWIN

"Hello, Arthur."

The voice reached me through a distant, ethereal but familiar mist. I was drowsy, nestled in the hollow of a cozy blanket of thoughtless fatigue. The familiar voice had something exciting, but that was not enough to get me out of my metaphorical nest. As I pierced the fog of my sleep, this thought sparked a spark and a burning idea irradiated the fugue.

This fatigue seemed abnormal to me. Not natural, even. As if sleep had pushed its claws into me and wouldn't let go of me.

The ether gushes out of my nucleus in response to my discomfort, and the fog dissipated. I stood upright suddenly and looked around me, half panicked, without remembering how I had gotten to where I was. I was surrounded by bright white stones, moulded in curves and arches.

"Calm, Arthur, calm."

Turning my eyes off from the unusual architecture of the building that surrounded me, I focused on the elderly woman sitting near my bed. Her wrinkles dug as she addressed me a warm smile, and for a moment I had fifteen years old again. The panic dissipated almost as fast as it had come. I was in bed. Regis, in his puppy form, lying on the blanket at my feet and slept deeply. I was safe.

”Lady Myre. It's been a long time..."

“For me, it seems to me that little time has passed,” she simply replied.

I thought about the difference in our views and wondered whether my own estimate of time was valid. After all, how long had it been in the keystone? How many lives had I lived since my last meeting with Myre? According to one interpretation, it was an eternity. According to another, it was only a few short years. For the first time, I was really seeing the foreign perspective of asuras like Kezess and Agrona, and I thought I was a little bit of understanding how they saw the passage of time.

"Where am I?"

"Epheotus," she said. His eyes turned to one of the arched windows, and my gaze followed his. "More precisely, you're in the city of Everburn."

Through the curved window, I could see the buildings on the other side of the street. The walls were clean and smooth, in white stone or cream, and rose to the roofs covered with turquoise and cyan tiles. Bent windows, mirrors of the one by which I looked, sprinkled the facades, but I could not distinguish much of what was behind it. As I examined the buildings, an asura with soft green hair passed, her eyebrows frown by concentration, mouth moving as he spoke under the effect of his breath, apparently for himself.

Behind the buildings, the shadow of a massive and distant mountain, scarcely more than a blue silhouette against a blue sky background, dominated the city. The mountain had a characteristic split shape.

“One of the many dragon towns in the shadow of Mount Geolus, yes,” continued Myre. "I thought it would be more... comfortable for your family. That the castle, I mean."

"Where are Ellie and my mother?"

Although grandmother's smile never left her face, Myra's gaze was intense and attentive. I couldn't help thinking that she was reading in me like a book. "I felt you were waking up and I sent them for a little race. Forgive me, Arthur, but I wanted to talk to you alone."

Stretching my eyebrows, I stood up in a seated position and tilted my legs out of bed. I was dressed in a silk night shirt which I did not recognize, the bright white of which contrasted with the forest green of the sheets. "Are you talking to me? As a guest or as a prisoner?”

"Don't forget that you yourself asked Windsom to bring your family to Epheotus," she replied, but her tone remained gentle. "You are, as before, my welcome guest, Arthur."

I thought about all this as the fragments of my memory continued to be put back in place. “Agrona?”

Myra acquiesced, her silver-grey hair floating around her face. “He is imprisoned in Indrath Castle. He and his relative, Oludari Vritra, both. But..."

His hesitation and nervous expression twisted my stomach. "What's the case, Myre?"

Looking out the window towards Mount Geolus, she leaned slightly forward. “Agrona is mute. Even Kezess failed to get Agrona talking. Even his thoughts are veiled, if any. But he feels... bad. Empty. Arthur, I must know what happened in this cave."

I quickly thought about what Kezess could already know. Were they able to take anything in my mind without my knowledge? I asked myself darkly. Even though I wanted to trust Myre, I couldn't trust Kezess, and it was his wife. They had appeared together in the cave, just before I fell unconscious, and she could be operating on her behalf at that particular time.

Activating the King's Gambit prudently, I divided my mind into several branches, each focusing on a different layer of truth, potential truth and pure and simple lies. Aloud, I said, "Using a power that the ancient jinn called Destiny, an aspect of the ether, I was able to destroy the potential of the Heref going by separating it from both the reincarnated version of Cecilia, my old friend of the Earth, and Agana himself, making him unable to use his power for himself. The act caused a kind of shockwave. Maybe it had an effect on his mind."

Again, this piercing look. "You learned to control this... fate, then?"

'No,' I said, letting my eyes fall and my voice fill with regret. The different branches of my thoughts were superimposed on each other, all thinking the same thing. "It wasn't something I could use, only... influence. And again, only in the moments that followed the resolution of the keystone. Power is not something that can be controlled.”

I didn't know whether I was telling the truth or not, but I kept the thread of that thought buried under several others. Thanks to the presence and help of Destiny, I had been able to directly modify these sons in a way that I did not fully understand, but I had not had time to consider my agreement with fate or the consequences of the keystone. I didn't yet know what these events had revealed in me. My only concern was that Kezess would not learn everything I knew, neither about fate nor about repeated genocides of dragons.

'Ah, well, it's perhaps better that,' said Myre, 'not giving any external indication that she doubted what I was saying or even that she could read the different branches intertwined with my thoughts. "It's better not to touch that kind of thing." With a little nod, she concentrated on me again, and her smile came back. "You probably want to know more about what happened, of course. All the dragons were reminded of Epheotus, and the breach was closed. What Agrona hoped to achieve by taking it back, he missed it."

I frowned, focusing on a little detail. “I understood that Epheotus would die if the breach was closed.”

“The connection remains,” Myre patiently explained, “but the gate is closed. It would take an etheric knowledge beyond everything that still exists--self--Arthur-- to cut the fastener that binds Epheotus to your world."

This is what the rebellious jinn hoped to accomplish by using Destiny. I have seen this possibility in my own research, with Destiny by my side, through potential futures. But doing that would be an act of genocide as horrible as the dragons themselves did. I would perhaps do so if there were no other way to prevent Kezess from repeating the story, but even then, I do not know if I could condemn the whole species asura to wither slowly while Epheotus dissolves around them.

"I see," I said after a while, relaxing the King's Gambit. "I shouldn't stay long, then. I don't want to be rude, Lady Myre, but I'd like to talk to my family."

She swept away my words with a back hand. "There's no rudeness in there, Arthur." His tone quickly hardened, becoming more serious. "You had an incredibly trying experience. I can still feel the broken echoes of so many false memories jostling in your mind. Take time to rest and talk to your loved ones. You are welcome here as long as you need it. You have rendered our two worlds an indescribable service by ending the long rebellion of Agrona.”

She got up just as I heard Ellie and Mom's voices outside. "I'll leave you to your family. I'm sure you have a lot to say to yourself."

"Wait," I said, another memory finally being put in place. “What Tessia?”

Myre addressed to me an accomplice smile. "Don't worry, she's here. She'll wake up soon, I guess. You had to both recover."

When she turned away, I had the impression that a veil was getting behind my eyes. My mind touched both that of Regis and Sylvie, my thoughts intertwined with theirs.

'Arthur, you're awake,' thought Sylvie, the surprise spreading through the threads of our mental connection. 'I didn't feel you were starting to move.'

Regis's head broke away from the blanket and he turned to me to look at me with a dark air. 'It was time, Beautiful with Sleeping,' said he, thoughts laden with fatigue. He had exhausted all his ether by giving it to me, after I burned it in search of the future with fate, the King's Gambit and the power of the last keystone...

Outside my room, Myre directed my sister and mother towards me. The curtain which had just strayed to allow Myra to pass opened up again when Ellie ran into the room, with her eyes wide and her mouth open. Seeing me already seated, she went forward as if to throw herself at me, then hesitated. His smile faltered, outstretched by anxiety. Eventually, she stepped forward and leaned over to gently hug me.

I accepted the embrace with gratitude, glad to see her unscathed from the trials she had had to endure in my absence. Indemne, but not affected. Behind her, Mom lingered in the doorway, with a hand holding the curtain. “Windsom has respected its market share? And you were treated well?”

Ellie recoiled, folding her arms and taking a severe air. "Actually, we..."

“We were treated very well here,” Mother quickly said, cutting Ellie speech. My sister gave her a glance to which Mom responded. I could not read exactly what non-verbal sign passed between them, but it was clear that they were holding something. "It's amazing, Arthur. It's like a whole new world."

I stood up, suddenly feeling uncomfortable in my silk night clothes in this strange room. “I have seen some of the Alacry attacks from inside the keystone. I, a flood of tangled memories tore away from the lips and overwhelmed me in waves. I remembered Varay, lying inert in the centre of a devastated battlefield. I remembered the Alacryens collapsing in their cells. But there were also other memories, confused by time, distance and a kind of unreality. I saw the consequences of things that had not yet happened, or that might not happen at all.

Sylvie's presence grabbed me like two strong hands on either side of my face, forcing my attention to move forward. Respire, Arthur. We're here to support you. You don't have to carry all that weight on your own."

Based on her presence in my mind, I transferred some of the weight to her. Regis rose on trembling legs, frowning on his puppy's face. Together, my two companions leaned, but the sudden and suffocating presence of the waves only intensified. Like a man who drowned, I was driving them into my fall.

“Arthur?” Mother had taken a step forward, but her face was blurred, her expression was nothing more than a shadow blown on her face.

Without conscious intent, the ether escaped from my nucleus and filled my limbs, trying to support me against the mental weight of so many lives of memories taking place through my consciousness all at once. Regis stumbled forward, dematerialized, and slipped into my body, bulging in me. Later, I felt Sylvie pierce under the force of so many raw memories.

Realizing that the King's Gambit had helped me contain the tide, I completely reactivated it. I saw myself reflected in my mother's shiny eyes, the shiny crown of light on my blond hair. My consciousness divised, then further divided, fracturing in such a way that every competing thought and memory was supported by their own branch of focused consciousness.

In front of me, Mom and Ellie exchanged a glance. "Are you all right?" asked Ellie, with a heavy tone of anxiety and disappointment. His shattered eyes turned several times towards the luminous crown.

I had used a lot of the King's Gambit before trying to reach the fourth keystone. Even though I had learned to partially activate the godrune, which had the effect of increasing my faculties without the golden crown shining on my forehead being fully manifested, I could not have noticed Ellie's change in behaviour while I was planning my actions with the help of the godrune.

There were several possible reasons for Ellie's antipathy for the King's Gambit, but the most likely was that she did not like the change I had undergone by channelling the godrune. Although it allowed me to divide my mind and think of several things at the same time, thereby greatly increasing the speed of my cognition, it also required a more purely logical view of events, getting rid of emotional reactions. It was quite natural that my sister, with whom I had an essentially emotional relationship, found it unpleasant.

As this thought descended along one branch, my mother focused on another. Instead of being worried or hesitant like Ellie, the shadows around her eyes, the digging of her wrinkles, the paleness of her skin, and her sagging posture suggested nothing but exhaustion close to weakening. The events that preceded my absence and took place during it completely exhausted it. She had softened for a moment, relaxing for the first time in weeks, but it had quickly turned into a new layer of fatigue when I had been struck by the sudden influx of memories of the keystone.

My mother wanted nothing but my presence, my strength and the fact that I would take away some of the burden of concern from her.

Parallel to these thoughts, branches of concentration treated and compartmentalized all the memories of the many different lives I had lived inside the keystone. But lives were only a small percentage of memories, and my last efforts were aimed at convincing the conscious aspect of fate that there was another way to move forward than to completely break out the etheric kingdom and allow the concentrated ether there to be part of the physical world in an explosion that would destroy Dicathen, Alacrya, and Epheotus.

The time lines and futures I had seen were almost innumerable. The ability of the keystone to simulate alternative realities, combined with the King's Gambit and the presence of Destiny, had acted as an almost infinite kaleidoscope, with each fractal motif representing an entire reality and a sequence of events through which I had simultaneously sought the solution to my own problem and that of Destiny. It turned out that the latter was the simplest of the two to be solved, even though even my almost infinite resources--at that time-- had revealed that the beginning of the path I had to take, and not the resolution I had sought.

Entropy. In the background, I kept dissecting the idea. An unnatural pressure accumulated behind the veil of our known dimension, like water behind a dam.

It turned out that Destiny was neither the dam's builder, desirous of obstructing its flow, nor the water itself, which flowed only according to its limits. No, he was closer to a conscious incarnation of the natural sciences and their expectations. An arbiter of the laws of magic and science. Where water does not feel the desire to go beyond the dam and does not care about the banks of the river, the Destiny and by extension, all the ether feel the urge to sink. More accurately, the ether was the dissipating mist, with the moisture particles forming the mist spread out until they could no longer be seen. He.

"Arthur?" repeated Mom.

I smiled, aware of the mechanical aspect of expression. "I'm fine. I'm glad you're both doing well. When I see Windsom, I'll tell him what I think." Focusing on Ellie, I added, "And don't worry about this old jinn relic. I'm sure it can be repaired."

They exchanged a look again. I released the King's Gambit until I felt the crown faded. The influx of memories having been dealt with, I no longer needed the complete effect of godrune. However, I did not completely interrupt the mana flow that fed it, recognizing that it was a mistake to have done it the first time. Instead, I left a constant net of ether to keep the rune activated and support my lazy mind with extra threads to process everything that was going on.

Mom stepped forward and put a hand on my cheek. "I'm very proud of you, Arthur. You succeeded. You saved the world."

In my mind, I saw dragons destroy civilization after civilization, resetting the world over and over again. "I'm not sure that's true. Not yet, anyway. But I'm not done fighting."

Ellie suddenly smiled, bouncing on her feet. "And you saved Yourss. I always knew you'd come back, but I couldn't believe it when the dragons brought you here with Sylvie and Tessia."

The branch of my thoughts about Tessia and what had happened to her went to the foreground of my consciousness. "Where is she?"

Ellie weakened in the seriousness of my tone, but made a gesture backwards, through the curtain that closed this room.

"I'd like to see her." Without waiting for an answer, I got up and passed Mom and Ellie, pulling the curtain aside and crossing the door with a single gesture.

The large living room was airy and bright. The high curved ceilings, doors and curved windows were distinguished from all the architectural styles I had seen in Dicathen or Alacrya. The walls were made of a smooth, white stone that was not marked by tools. Blues, greens, and yellows were detached from white in the form of carpets, drapes, bright crystals that illuminated the darkest corners, and blunders that filled the space not only with colors, but also with a bouquet of sweet smells.

Feeling Tessia's mana signature shining from its now white core, I bypassed a small table that had grown from a single piece of wood to direct me to another room, also separated from the rest of the house by a curtain. I stopped for a moment before I pushed the curtain aside, and I thought about what was waiting for Tessia when she finally woke up.

She had been a prisoner of her own body since before the destruction of Elenoir. She had seen Cecilia become a weapon for Agrona, unable to intervene. She had learned the truth about me and my past life, but had also certainly been subjected to all sorts of lies. Even if I were still not convinced of the form that a relationship might take, what would Tessia think of it?

The memory of our exchange in the Wall was repeated in the background of my thoughts.

"I love you." Even now, I couldn't believe I had told him. It was so complicated, with my memories of previous life still secret, and the fear that she would react like my parents, or even worse, was powerful.

"I love you too, idiot. But we're at war. We both have responsibilities and people who need us.” His voice had been a solemn murmur and his eyes full of tears, but his lips had sketched an uncertain smile as we teased ourselves to break the tension.

"I know. And I have things to tell you, so if we made a promise?"

“What kind of promise?”

“The promise to stay alive so that we can have a future together, a relationship...a family.”

"I promise."

It seemed incredible to me to have been brave enough and full of hope to make such a promise. I'd had lived through so many things ever since, I'd been close to so many things, I'd seen the truth of power in this world...

Now I felt like it was a crazy promise. Desperate, blind and mad with hope.

My hand plunged into the bright cloth of the curtain, shunning it.

In a small room almost identical to the one I had woken up, Tess was lying in a similar bed, with the same thick emerald green blankets, although hers were half removed. She was also dressed in the same way, with silky night clothes made of white cloth embroidered with green vineyards, so perfect for her that I suddenly wondered if Myre had not ordered them specifically for Tessia.

When I took a step into the room, it shook slightly. Her silver hair floated on the pillow around her, and for a moment the image of her I saw was superimposed on another image of her, of another life, when we had just married and had we been lying together in our marital bed for the first time .

It's not real, I remembered when the blood stained the memory.

I took a second step and opened her eyes. I dived into his vitreous teal eyes, moving like a dream to the edge of his bed. My fingers touched the surface of its cover but did not touch it. My tongue seemed to multiply inside my mouth. I realized distracted that I had forgotten to continue to channel the ether into the King's Gambit.

Ellie was then by my side, leaning over Tessia and crushing her in a ferocious embrace. "Tess," she exclaimed.

“E-Ellie?” Over Ellie's shoulder, I could see Tess looking around her with astonishment and confusion. "What happened? Where am I by the sky." She letped Ellie and raised her hands behind my sister, staring at her tight fingers. "My body. I control my body."

Ellie stifled a sob as he recoiled, one hand on her mouth. Mom put one hand on her shoulder, exerting a slight pressure. “Eleanor, we should give them some time.”

Ellie's mouth opened, but no words came out. After a few seconds, she nodded and turned away. Mom threw a half-pleasant, half-warning, smiled at Tessia, and then took me out of the room following my sister.

"Arthur..." Tessia breathed, standing up, with her back leaning against the headboard. "Of course. Forgive me, I remember now. We... we were saying goodbye. I thought..." She swallowed heavily and lowered her eyes to her clasped hands.

"I was never going to let that happen," I assured him. The words seemed hollow to me as I prognosted them, against the backdrop of my many battles against Cecilia and my hesitations about what to do with the Inheritance. It seemed certain that Tessia would have understood my fight... and my failures.

The ghost of a smile appeared on his features. She was pale, especially at the lips, and a melancholy of which I did not remember had taken root in her expression at rest. Otherwise, she was exactly as I still imagined in my mind: strong, beautiful and royal. Unwillingly, I glanced at his neck, aware of the absence of the cord which should have borne half of the pendant in the shape of a leaf and heart. My hand was carried to my chest, where mine should have rested, but I had lost it at the City of Telmore after the battle against Nico and Cadell.

She seemed to understand. "It was really beautiful. The pendant, I mean. Finally, the moment. The promise. Everything was beautiful. Not as I had imagined, of course. Not then at that time, and certainly not after, but... at least we had that. It was real."

"That's true," I assured him. My gaze was fixed on the floor. Suddenly I felt his hand take hold of mine. His fingers intertwined in mine. Slowly, I turned around to look at her. "I thought everything I said."

She stared at our intertwined fingers. His jaw was clenched, his eyes scrutinizing, his lips clenched. It was not someone looking for comfort or physical comfort in touch. No, I had rather the impression that she was holding me like an anchor.

"At least I finally understand why you could never repay me when we were younger." The ghost of a smile has returned. "For me, you were this... mystical and beautiful fascination. I had taken care of you even before we could come to 'employer'. To see you live in our house, with us--with me--it was like coming out of a fairy tale." His eyes slowly rose up my arm, from my neck, from my lips, and finally stood on my own eyes. "But for you... I was just a child. A stupid little girl."

"I'm sorry I couldn't tell you," I said quickly, maintaining eye contact. "I never wanted to lie to you, I couldn't…”

'I know,' she said in the silence that settled down after I got away, the words I broke. "There's nothing you've done that I haven't already forgiven."

I looked for his eyes, the fold of his eyebrows, the tension in each of his breaths, the stumbling beats of his heart. What does this mean for our promise? I wanted to ask him, but I restrained myself. It was too much to ask him at that moment. Requiring an answer on his part just to help me sort out my own emotions would be unfair.

But one thing was clear. Things between us were different from what they were at the time of our promise, and I didn't know if we could find what we had lost.