32 Autumn 218, the battle with Blackwing
The rooms are discreet, contiguous structures, sensibly organized by an organic intuition; designed like a prison stretched to infinity, bookended by darkness and divided by chambers containing time. Sealed within each cell is a memory, its events and emotions all safely contained behind an invisible wall:
In one room, Ethan stares down at the corpse of the man he and Talith have just killed. The warm blood from the body is already beginning to freeze against the Swan’s armor. Adrenaline pulses through his veins.
Words (now lost) are exchanged between the boys. Ethan covers the dead man’s face. Lumotu moves around to the man’s side and prepares his dagger.
“…dad always said, ‘there’s magic in everything.’”
Lumotu carves into the corpse’s exposed stomach, his little hands sifting through organs in search of a rock that held no importance outside the lesson of its recovery.
He was about twelve at the time - before his growth spurt.
Halfling children are so small…
In the next room, Ethan is standing on a mountainside. River light is circling around them as Vanja calls upon her magic. Ethan is anxious - Talith is dead; Kelwin has captured Danica.
As the world begins to shift and fade, he looks down to meet Lumotu’s eyes. He is smiling. It was the same smile Ethan knew from the child who said a stick would make him invisible and a bedsheet could make him fly. Pain never blunted his optimism; there was something good in everything.
The smile was empowering. He felt its reassurance. They could do this. They would rescue Danica.
Ethan smiled back and offered a single, determined nod.
The fog grew thicker between them, until neither could see the other.
For a moment, Lumotu’s eyes light up with the spark of recollection. “Don’t forget…” he begins to say, but the fog continues to grow, his words fade and grow distant, muffled like a conversation from beneath a lake.
The world shifts beneath them, the fog clears away… and Lumotu is gone forever.
Moving further through the corridor:
Ethan sits outside of a fancy restaurant dressed in noble attire, wearing the face of Luke Bastion. He watches as Leon Silverun is transfixed by the incredible story being shared by Francis Alucard. As Francis laughs, Ethan hears the unmistakably familiar sounds of Garbon, who is mixing parts of their own adventures with the many stories he has collected through texts while traveling across half the barony; some of the same stories he would tell Ethan as they played their modified versions of DragonChess.
In the next room, Garbon is on his knees in front of a giant, the Roasted Swan flaming behind him, smoke dissipating into the clouded night sky. Ethan rounds the corner with the others, sprinting towards the commotion and sounds coming from their home. Garbon locks eyes with Ethan and gives a subtle imploring head shake.
‘No,’ it says. ‘It’s too late…’
The Wolf drives an obsidian blade through his friend - there would be no more stories together. No more meals. No more games.
Garbon is dead before the hilt presses against his chest. Someone shouts, “No!” and the survivors are scattered into the city.
The rooms continue. A handshake from Leon. A final nod from Rye. The surprise and anger on the Grand Inquisitor’s face as she raged against the indignity, the absurdity, the impossibility of her own death.
…a giggle from Danica as she removes her Autumn’s Turn mask…
There is a rumbling from deep beneath the structure. The torches illuminating the corridor dwindle as Danica is hurled into the sky, her body reduced to dust. The light that spilled into the future is extinguished and the past fades until only the torches of the present remain, barely more than embers.
Suddenly, inexplicably, he is back in Aelorean’s Crossing. They are home again. All of them. They stand together in that little village before all the terror, pain and death. The weight of the years is stripped away and they play like the children their bodies once again appear to be.
He smells the familiar stench from the dirt and trees, and the smoke from the fires warming each of the little homes. He hears the old, once familiar voices from the nearby street and the tavern in the distance.
Impossibly, they have stepped in their own past. This memory of a past that never was and a future that always will be. Anything they do now will change this moment and nothing else. The pain of the future will not be diverted. Everyone Ethan is standing next to will die. Some will come back. Others will be lost forever.
Danica will still die. He knows this even though it hasn’t happened.
He runs to hold onto her as she starts to fade. A million stars appear in the sky but he can’t turn away from the one he’s holding onto.
And then, in an instant, the past is gone and he is standing back on the deck of a sinking ship, water spilling over the tops of his boots. The world seems quiet and empty…
Time skips again. Roux and Astarael are on the deck of the ship. There is a flash of light from beneath the water, two golden feathers disappear and Danica is once again before them, unscathed.
But was this real…?
The rumbling from beneath the structure intensifies and the ground begins to shake.
Danica moves towards him and places her hands on his face. He is terrified that she will fade again, just as she had moments before - decades in the altered past that somehow connected with this new present.
…How many layers of sleep exist?
All of them have been lost. All of them. And the ones who return come back changed, somehow.
If she fades again, all this will have been for nothing…
She was the last one. And her light was extinguished in seconds.
She may not even really be here at all…
The chambers within the infinite room shake violently, their walls collapsing. The love and pain and loss contained within each come flooding into the darkened corridor, swirling together in a violent cocktail of emotions.
All the things he had done. Everything done to him. The things that he stole, the people that were lost.
Everyone he ever loved was dead, missing or changed. Anyone that knew him or may ever really know him would die. The gods couldn’t see Ethan, but they appeared very interested in all those around him; a seemingly tireless source of entertainment.
He held onto her as he cried, not realizing that he was still speaking. Yet floating to the surface, fighting its way from beneath the depths of panic and confusion, was the familiar sensation of home. She was here. This was real.
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