“You didn’t say that things between us aren’t going to progress, Empress,” she purred as she casually picked up my glass and took a deep sip of wine from it. “Only that I had to learn your lessons first.”
“I told you that I’ve waited a long time for you,” she said as she sat back down again, totally at ease. “Now that I’ve found you, I can wait a little bit longer.”
Well, dammit if the tables hadn’t been completely turned on me. I’d brought Líann here, in part, to let her know how things were going to be between us, and due to my own weakness and lack of restraint, it was her who was letting me know just how things were going to unfold.
“Perhaps we should stop now,” I sighed. “I think we both have a great deal to consider, and you have a lot of work to do refining your people skills.”
“I shall take to Thelmé’s lessons with a new sense of urgency, Empress,” she let my title roll off her tongue as she got up to take her leave.
“And if you don’t mind,” she added as she reached the door. “I’m going to keep this little outfit. I find that it suits me well and will remind me of what we shared today every time I put it on. I’ll leave my gown for you in exchange; perhaps you might see fit to wear it for me sometime.”
Her glance back at me as she closed the door told me all I needed to know—she knew that we were bound together from that moment on, and that all she had to do was bide her time and overcome the hurdles I had set before her to make her wishes come true. I, on the other hand, had to figure out how I was going to deal with the total mess I’d made of things.
Tási, Venna, and Ella were going nowhere, but sooner or later I was going to have to figure out where Líann would fit into things. And she wasn’t just another lover whose wants and needs I’d have to consider. She was a Queen destined to be with me many decades before the dead man even thought of creating my template in his stupid game.
What the hell had I been thinking when I sent her that fucking tendril? She was fire, a damn raging inferno sitting next to me, and I’d carelessly poured fuel on those flames like an idiot. I simply couldn’t allow myself to ever do that again. If I had an inkling, or even the barest suspicion that there was an attraction between myself and someone else, I could never risk that again. The potential consequences were just more than I could bear anymore; for myself, for the people I loved, and for whomever the unfortunate victim of my rogue powers might be.
But, as was all too often the case, my insights came to me just a bit too late. The damage had already been done, and all I could do was pick up the pieces. My link with Líann had been forged, and that connection would eventually grow into something much stronger, of that I had no doubt. All I could try to do was control just when and how that happened, and do my absolute best to prevent it from ever causing Tási any pain.
“There was nothing you could do, Dreya,” Nentai’s familiar and strangely comforting words came from behind me as I paced the room. “She was destined for you. All you did was perhaps speed things up a little.”
“You could have warned me!” I snapped in frustration.
“As you may recall, Empress,” Nentai chided me gently. “I did warn you about precisely this issue, although even I wasn’t aware of Líann’s visions until she told you herself.”
“Please tell me she’s the last,” I implored her. “I can’t do this anymore. It’s not fair to any of them, especially Tási.”
“I can’t tell you what you want to hear, Dreya,” Nentai replied to me. “I don’t have the answer to the question you’re asking me. But if I had to guess, I would say that Líann will be the last of them, at least for a while.”
“For a while?” I responded in frustration. “What does that even mean?”
“You are one of the Deathless, Dreya, and a Sintári on top of that,” Nentai reminded me. “I honestly have no idea how that combination, and your own uniqueness, will affect your lifespan or even how you age.
“The Sintári of old lived for hundreds of years, and I would anticipate that you will live at least that long as well. But you are also one of the Deathless, and your birth in the magic of the Great Barrier will more than likely lend you even more… vigor.”
“I know that you’re only trying to help me, Nentai, and I appreciate that,” I sighed as I sat down heavily in my chair. “But that’s not what I needed to hear right now.”
“It’s exactly what you needed to hear,” she admonished me. “You’re focusing too much on right now and ignoring the long-term. Over the centuries of your life, you will love many different people, Dreya. And you will lose them all eventually, but how you choose to perceive that fact will be up to you. You can dwell on the pain of their eventual loss, or you can cherish each of them for as long as possible.”
“I told you that your love will be a gift to those you choose to share it with,” Nentai recalled our past conversation for me. “But theirs will also be a gift to you in return. You can squander it worrying about things you have no control over, or you can make the most of it for as long as it lasts.”
“It’s not an easy thing that you’re asking of me,” I replied after I let her words roll around in my head for a while. The thought of living for centuries, and possibly longer was daunting, and knowing that I would love and lose repeatedly during those long years was even more unnerving.
“Do you think I don’t know that already?” Nentai replied pointedly.
What an idiot I was. Of course she knew what she was asking of me. The Goddess was already thousands of years old, and her only contemporaries were her own siblings. Any love she’d shared over those nearly endless years would have been with mortals from this world, all of whom would have died in the relative blink of an eye for her.
“How do you deal with it?” I asked cautiously.
“I don’t,” she confessed. “At least I haven’t in quite some time. It stopped being worth the pain of loss a long time ago, at least for me. But you’re different, Dreya, you thrive on love. You need to feel it, that’s part of who you are. I don’t think you’ll ever stop needing it, and that’s why I’m telling you all this. You’re going to have to be stronger than I am, to find some way to deal with the loss and move on. Because without someone beside you to lend you strength, you will wither away to nothing.”
“And I thought Líann had given me a lot to consider,” I smiled at her weakly.
“I’m truly sorry to have caused you so much distress,” Nentai soothed. “Would you like me to set your mind at ease, as I did for you before?”
“While I appreciate your offer, and that would probably help me, there is still so much left for me to do today,” I replied with regret. “Answering Gilfri’s request being the most pressing of those issues.”
“Then I will leave you to tend to your affairs, Empress,” Nentai responded as she shimmered and vanished from my sight.
I stared blankly at the wall for a few moments before I finally got up and left the room. When I left the chamber, I immediately went to see Talína, and delivered Gilfri’s request to her.
“I need you to draft an appropriate response to the King of Olóra.” I said as I handed her the parchment. “Let him know that I accept his offer to come here.”
“Of course, Empress,” Talína replied. “I will keep you informed of any additional correspondence I receive on this matter, and I have already taken care of the other issue you asked me to handle for you. I will let you know when I receive a response from Queen Nadiel.”
“You are most efficient, Talína,” I complimented her. “Thank you.”
“My pleasure, Empress,” she replied.
It was kind of nice to have someone who could handle the minor issues for me. While it still left me with all the truly weighty matters, being relieved of the burden of the minutia was liberating. I hadn’t counted on the matter of Gilfri being so easily addressed, so I altered my plans and headed for the Garrison.
As Aiva and the rest of my guards followed me do
wn the stairs, I realized how foolish it was of me to refuse Nentai’s offer to help me clear my thoughts. When she had put me to sleep that one time before, I had rested peacefully and woken up with a sense of ease. It was as if the entire time that I’d slept, my mind had worked on the troubles I’d faced, and come to a resolution without me having to endure the emotionally difficult process. I’d forgotten that I had acquired Talína’s services that morning and anticipated that I would have to draft a carefully worded response to Gilfri’s letter myself—something that I found rather difficult to do. Instead, I’d been able hand off the task to Talína, who’d probably have a perfectly written letter finished in no time.
We arrived at the Garrison quickly, and as a diversion for my mind, I headed for the forge as soon as we got there. Aiva almost missed a step when she realized the destination I had in mind, and I smiled at her slyly as we approached the building.
“Hello Hilgreth, Georl!” I called out to the smiths as we arrived. “What have you got in the fire today?”
“Just building up our stocks, Empress,” Hilgreth replied. “We have enough for everyone right now, but with the way things are going, there’ll be more before you know it.”
“And what about you, Georl?” I prompted him in a teasing voice. “What’s been heating your fires lately?”
“Umm… coal, Empress?” He fumbled as his cheeks flushed green.
“Come now,” I taunted. “Isn’t there anything special you’ve been keeping warm?”
“She knows, Georl,” Aiva confessed as she stared at the ground beneath her feet, ruining my fun.
“Aiva!” I scolded her. “I wasn’t done with him yet!”
“Sorry,” she replied sheepishly.
“I’ve been enjoying having a little bit of girl-talk with Aiva recently, Georl,” I explained to the suddenly befuddled smith. “She’s very special to me, so I’ll be quite disappointed if you mistreat her in any way.”
“I would never do such a thing,” he protested.
“No, I don’t suppose you would,” I replied in amusement. “Actually, I’m quite certain that you’re not even capable of that.”
After a little bit more small talk and a brief conversation with Clorid and Madren, I left to look out over the Garrison wall. It was nearing sunset, and the view from atop its parapets was stunning, but as the sunlight faded over the mountaintops, a lone soldier came running towards the walls.
“Help!” He cried as he got closer. “They’re all dead!”
The gate was quickly lowered, and the panicked soldier was escorted inside where he broke down and could only repeat the same phrase over and over for quite some time.
“All dead.”
“All dead.”
“All dead.”
We got nothing else from him before he was finally led away to the infirmary.
“He was part of the patrol from the outpost,” Evans noted as the crowd that had gather around dispersed. “I’ll need to send out a squad to investigate what happened to them.”
“I’m going with them,” I told him.
“Forgive me, Empress, but no you’re not,” he replied firmly. “You have soldiers for a reason, and there is still the issue of the attempts on your life.”
“I could probably take out any squad you could put together myself, First Marshal,” I reminded him of my power. “It’s too late now, but I will speak to my Ministers and see which of them wishes to join me and we will handle this in the morning.”
“I cannot allow you to do that,” he stood firm in his opposition.
“You can’t stop me,” I replied as I glared back at him.
“No, I probably can’t,” he conceded. “But I can make sure that you have company. I will assemble my squad and they will join you when you set out tomorrow.”
“I can accept that. I have one small item to handle in the morning, and I will depart as soon as I attend to it,” I told him as I remembered the interviews I had scheduled with the other secretaries.
“You’re not going out there without us either,” Aiva added forcefully.
“I wouldn’t dream of it, Aiva,” I lied to her.
“No, I’m sure that you wouldn’t… Empress,” she replied dryly.
“Tana, could you run ahead and see if you can get my Ministers together for me?” I asked one of the guards as we started on our way back.
Without saying a word, Tana shot forward and rushed ahead to summon my companions to my chambers for me. Hopefully, they would be waiting there by the time I got back, and we could all go out on another adventure together the next morning. Something simple and straightforward like back in our old days—well at least the old days several months ago.
“Are you out of your mind?” Tási scolded me incredulously when I told them what I intended to do.
“You. The Empress. Going out to hunt who knows what that’s already apparently wiped out an entire patrol? Are you fucking insane?”
“I have to agree with you rather animated Commander, Dreya,” Stel chimed in. “You are far too valuable for something so dangerous.”
“How valuable were the people we lost, Stel?” I countered angrily.
“Priceless,” he replied. “But that doesn’t change the facts. You cannot do this.”
“Are you intending to try and stop me?” I challenged him.
“You know that I cannot,” he gave in. “But it’s my hope that you’ll see reason.”
“Not likely,” Tási huffed.
“Completely out of the question, I would say,” Venna added as she rolled her eyes.
“Good, so now that that’s settled, what time do we leave?” Khorim broke in.
“I have one quick thing to take care of after breakfast, and then we go,” I told them. “I’m heading out, regardless. Whoever is here with me can come along.”
“Then I guess we’ll all see you in the morning, Empress,” Broda said as she got up.
“It’s foolishness, but I will be here,” Stel added.
One by one they all left, and as they did, each of my companions promised to join me in my search for the unknown killers who’d apparently slaughtered an entire group of my soldiers. When they were gone, I retired to my bedroom, wanting nothing more than to fall asleep and forget the awful day I’d had, but as I stripped off my armor and tried to crawl beneath the covers, Tási just couldn’t let it go.
“What is wrong with you?” She continued to badger me. “First Líann, now this. I don’t understand wha—”
“Can we not do this every fucking night?!” I screamed at her.
“You keep coming after me night after night. I can’t take it anymore!” I raged at her. “Do you know how difficult this is for me? Can’t you leave it alone for once? Gilfri, Líann, Nentai, something killing my soldiers, and now you too. I need a fucking break, dammit!”
“I’m sorry,” she managed after a moment. “I didn’t realize all you’d been through today.”
“It’s not just today, Tási, its every day,” I softened my tone. “Every day something else seems to hit me. Maybe it’s not fair, but I need to be able to count on you to support me, not criticize everything I do.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“No, honestly, I don’t,” I replied as I sunk down on the bed. “It’s all such a mess and I just want to go to bed, leave here in the morning and go kill something.”
“Alright,” she said as she climbed in bed beside me. “Will you let me put you to sleep?”
After stupidly rejecting Nentai’s offer earlier, I had learned my lesson and rolled over on my stomach for her gratefully. As she started working out the bundle of tightly knotted muscle in my shoulders, I apologized to her.
“I’m sorry for yelling at you, Tási. Between the all the bad news and how much I screwed up today, I lost my temper.”
“Shhh,” she whispered to me. “You said you didn’t want to talk about it.”
“I lied, at least a little,” I admitted reluct
antly. “I know how long humans live, and even dwarves and elves, but I have no idea how long halfling’s lives are.”
“That’s an odd thing to bring up,” Tási replied.
“Just tell me.”
“Well, if we make it to old age,” Tási responded, reminding me just how cruel this world was to her people. “We can live almost as long as humans do. But we age quite differently. Humans and the other races grow old gradually, while we do so quite abruptly. Up until we reach almost sixty, the aging process is very slow for us, but then it comes on rapidly. Once it starts, it only takes a short while before we die of natural causes.”
“So, I still have about forty years with you?” I whispered.
“Why are you even thinking about this?” Tási asked in complete confusion.
“Nentai told me that I’m going to live for hundreds of years, if not longer,” I explained. “I’m going to have to watch you and everyone else I care about die, while I just keep going on.”
“We may have forty years or only forty hours,” Tási replied. “Shouldn’t we make the most of it?”
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out how to do,” I admitted. “But knowing the truth only makes it more difficult.”
“You can have Líann when I’m gone,” Tási joked.
“Please don’t say that.”
“Venna, Ella, Líann, or someone else then,” she persisted more seriously. “If you can find comfort with one of them when I’m gone, I want you to. If this is bothering you so much, then you should know how I feel about it.”
“Can we talk about something else, please?”
“Sure,” she replied. “Gilfri, Líann, or the mysterious killer?”
“I have no idea which is worse,” I lamented.
“Líann,” she teased. “Definitely Líann.”
I let her comment lie and tried to relax as best I could, and her gentle probing fingers and the warm, flowing impulses that she sent in to my shoulders soothed me to sleep before long.
21
Something nagged at the back of my mind the next morning as I got up and slipped into my armor. It wasn’t any of the issues that had concerned me the day before—none of those were quite so subtle as this. It felt like… I’d overlooked something, something important that I should have remembered. After a moment, I decided to check on my notifications, since it was the only thing I could think of to do.
Second Skin: Unified: A litRPG Adventure (Second Skin Book 3) Page 66
