by Jamie Murray
"Whatever you were doing here didn't work," Jameson said firmly.
"Look at you, figuring it all out," said Devin. "The Forces have been acting strangely ever since you returned to this world from whatever place you disappeared to. They've become erratic and oddly passionate about finding you. It only took some fair planning in order to draw you out. I knew you wouldn't abandon your friend. Oh, stop pointing that weapon at me. I am not going to fight you."
"Then why did you want me to come here?" Jameson said angrily.
"I wanted you to see you for myself," Devin said simply. "And, even, offer you some advice."
"Advice?"
"Simple advice which I have confidence you will fulfill." He pointed directly at Jameson and stared right into him. "Resurrect your Spirits. Complete your Prophecy. I challenge you to do it."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Jameson said, frustratingly.
"The Spirits must rise again and I must collect all the points of this triangle before I can obtain the power I deserve," Devin declared. "You've already begun your journey. I dare you not to finish it."
Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Luke, his bow still ready to rise.
"This is something you should have done the first time around," Devin stated. "If only you had read your Prophecy more carefully, perhaps your friend wouldn't have had to die those ten years ago."
The last statement hit one of Jameson's nerves and he found himself automatically opting to charge the supposedly great Devin. Luke called out for him to stop, but Jameson was not prepared to allow Devin to simply walk away. When he was within striking range, Devin raised a hand and somehow repelled Jameson so he bounced off thin air as if he was striking a solid wall. Luke fired a single arrow at the man but it, like Jameson, simply fell away from him.
Jameson hit the floor and was about to try a second time, though he stopped because of a strange look in Devin expression. Hesitantly, Jameson got to his feet but remained out of reach.
"Are you the reason I was gone for ten years?" Jameson questioned steadily.
"Boy, if I wanted you to disappear, you wouldn't have come back. All the luck in the world, child."
He strode away from Jameson and walked right by Luke, their shoulders nearly touching as he went by. Luke turned and watched him go, awkwardly and hesitantly, and when Devin stepped down off the altar, Luke ran to his friend to make sure he was all right.
"Can we really just let him go like this?" Luke asked quietly as they watched Devin strut down the tunnel.
"We don't have a choice," Jameson said. "I can't beat him like this."
"What are you going to do?"
Jameson paused and tried to reason through that question to find the right answer. Finally, he looked over his shoulder at Baloric who had not moved during the entire encounter.
"I have to take his challenge."
28. Tenses
Chapter 28
Louisa gasped out loud when Luke pushed the door open to allow Jameson to hobble through with Baloric over his shoulder. Cyrus immediately relieved Jameson of the weight and eased Baloric onto the single bed in the corner of the room, laying him down flat and covering him with a blanket.
Johanna looked as though she was trying to keep herself from crying in front of the others. She began to ask a question, but if she went any further then she knew she would burst into tears, so she only said, "Never mind," and turned her back to the group, facing Baloric.
"I am happy to see Luke again, at least," Cyrus said. "That's the one upside."
"I realized I was being foolish," Luke admitted.
"You're a good fighter. It'll be good to have you around."
"Tell us exactly what happened," Louisa said to Jameson.
Jameson sat down and exhaled deeply. He told them about the fake Baloric he had rescued from the execution, then encountering Quinn and destroying her, which is when he met up with Luke. He had this feeling he knew were Baloric would be and he had to get there as soon as possible so they left.
He told them about finding Baloric and then finding Devin who offered him a challenge to revive the Spirits. Admittedly, he wasn't sure if Devin knew whether or not the Rain Stone had already crumbled or if Luke was the supposed Resurrected Spirit, but he simply let them all go.
"Let all of you go," Louisa said, wringing her fingers. "Why would he do that?"
"He said the ritual he was trying to perform was useless without the other points of the triangle," Jameson said. "The Fighter and the Protector. That's you two."
"And then he said he also needed the Heart, which was you, Jameson," Luke added.
"If he gets us all there then he'll do the ritual and sort of alluded to the idea that he would have all the power that he would ever need," Jameson explained. "The thing is, I have no way to fight him."
"What about the stones?" Erestina asked, standing up and going over to Baloric.
"They don't work," Jameson sighed. "Well, not when I want them. I thought maybe Devin didn't know that, but I'm pretty sure he does."
"What about the Rain Stone?" Cyrus asked. "You don't have it anymore."
"It only worked when Luke was around, and then it shattered, and now I obviously don't have it anymore."
"Luke, have you been exhibiting any qualities that may be attributed to the Rain Stone's power?" Louisa asked.
"I haven't tried," Luke said uneasily.
"Jameson, wait," Johanna interrupted, her eyes closed tightly. "Are you saying that you have to travel around to all the different nations again and then go inside the Shrines one at a time? Like you did ten years ago?"
"Ten years ago, we didn't go into the Shrines," Jameson said. "We didn't even go to a lot of them. We didn't resurrect the Spirits. It was something we were supposed to do. I think… because of the absence of the Resurrected Spirits… that's why everything went wrong when it did."
"So we can fix it," Louisa established. "We can make it right. All we have to do is go to these Shrines and resurrect the Spirits."
Jameson sighed again. "We need to bring the person who will be able to absorb the light," he said.
"What do you mean?" Luke asked.
"You were the person who was destined to absorb the power of the Rain Spirit," Jameson said. "When we were outside that room, we heard your voice, remember? And only you and I could hear it."
"I remember the two of you could hear voices," Cyrus added. "What was said?"
Jameson looked down and closed his eyes, thinking hard. "I think I knew," he said in a rehearsed tone, as if his mind automatically projected the words. "That you would leave someday, I think." He paused a moment, thinking he was finished, but then he was compelled to continue. "I'm coming back. I will. Just after I finish this." Again, he thought he was finished, then he spoke, "That's the thing. I don't think you are. Not for a long, long time."
He opened his eyes and looked around the room at the others who were perhaps waiting for an explanation.
"What was that?" Johanna asked.
"That's the memory," Jameson said. "That's what came out when we knew we would have to put the little stone in the wall blocking us from that big ball of light."
"We can make as many inferences as we want," Cyrus said. "But what about Baloric? He should be our top priority."
"He's alive," Louisa said. "That's more than we expected."
"But he's not responding to anything," Erestina said quietly, lightly touching the side of Baloric's face with the back of her hand, but he did not stir. "He hasn't moved."
"He moved a little bit when we first found him," Jameson said optimistically.
"What can we do?" Johanna asked in a very finite tone.
Jameson didn't have any answer for her even though he wanted one. When he was going to report this feeling, he was surprised to have Cyrus suddenly intervene with a response which he had clearly been bursting to announce much earlier but didn't have the means to bring it up.
"A few years ago," he began. "Princess
Erestina and I found ourselves in Gislan. We were looking for the Shadow Shrine. But we were apprehended by a group of soldiers who called themselves loyal to a woman called Joy Angel."
"The Angel," Louisa breathed.
"We met her," Jameson added.
"At first, we didn't know if we were going to be able to escape," Cyrus explained. "We actually didn't even see Joy Angel until several days after we were kept in her complex."
"You were kept as prisoners," Louisa inferred.
"Not really, even," Erestina said cautiously, as if she was certain Louisa didn't want to hear the answer. "I mean, we were separated. But our doors weren't locked. We were not tied up."
"That's different from how we were treated," Jameson said, crossing his arms to ponder the situation.
"One day, they told me Joy Angel would see me," Cyrus said. "So I went and saw her. She just asked me why I had ventured into her territory and I told her the truth, so she asked me why I was looking for the Shadow Shrine. We were just curious. And then she asked me if I knew Baloric. It was really sudden."
"Why would she ask about Baloric?" Johanna practically demanded.
"Baloric was a slave there for a year," Louisa said. "He was there when we first met him."
"Joy Angel said something to me that I, at the time, didn't care to consider," Cyrus admitted somewhat ashamedly. "The only thing I cared about was getting away from that place. She only told me that Baloric was dead."
"Dead?" nearly all of them repeated.
"That was how I reacted," Cyrus said. "But then she looked confused as if she didn't know why she had said it. Then she said Baloric looks dead. And the only thing that could save him was a rarity located to the south of her home. I thought she was trying to tell me to go to that place to find whatever she was talking about. But then she changed her statement again."
"Then what was it?" questioned Louisa.
"Baloric will look dead," Cyrus answered. "And she still talked about the rarity. Then she told me I was too early and that I could go. And, right from there, some soldiers took me to the outside of her territory where Erestina already was. And… we just left. We were happy to be out of there."
"You didn't come back to Miner Town after all that?" Johanna demanded.
"It didn't seem important to remember," Cyrus confessed. "To me, she seemed like a rambling madwoman. The only reason I'm bringing it up now was because…I don't know. I just suddenly remembered it."
"It's actually strange," Jameson said with a sigh. "When the Angel brought Walden and me to see her, she said some weird stuff to us too. I had never seen her before in my life, but she came right up to me and she said, 'I've met you before.' Then she told me I was older when she met me."
"Tenses," Luke said.
"What?" Jameson asked.
"Well, both time, she confused past, present and future," Luke observed. "I mean, I've never seen her or met her or talked to her. But it seems like…I don't know. 'Baloric looks dead' versus 'Baloric will look dead.' 'I met you when you were older.' What exactly is this woman?"
"A very powerful Gislan," Louisa said softly. "Did Daigh ever say anything about the Angel having an ability to see the future?"
"I don't know," Jameson said, shaking his head. "Did he say anything to you?"
"Louisa never listens to anything Baloric says," Johanna interrupted.
"Sh," Louisa hissed. "He never said anything like that."
"But what about that rarity you were talking about?" Luke questioned Cyrus. "What's that? Whatever it is, maybe it'll help."
"She never said what it was," Cyrus said. "And we didn't look for it."
"She said you were too early," said Jameson, feeling a little excited. "Maybe she was seeing this moment in time. Whatever rarity she was talking about has got to be what we're looking for. We have to go to Gislan."
"Hold on," Louisa instructed before everyone could jump up and start packing. "Didn't we have to escape from that place? You're talking about going back there?"
"It's all we've got," Jameson said. "Baloric is still alive but he won't be for too much longer if he stays like that. We've got to chase every possibility to wake him up. The Angel said Cyrus was too early, which means she expects him back."
"I want to go too," Johanna declared.
"We've got to all go together," Jameson agreed as he stood up and started looking around for things to bring. "We can't split up anymore."
"How do you expect to get there?" Louisa said, putting her hands on her hips. "We can't exactly prop him up on a horse for a distance like that. Honestly, why do I have to be the one who's thinking rationally here?"
"We could go back to Miner Town to get the carriage," Johanna suggested. "We'll bring it back here and unload it. Baloric would fit in the back and he could lie down."
"We don't have time for that," said Louisa. "Daigh doesn't have time for that."
Jameson slowly put down the backpack he had been in the midst of loading, then wandered to the window as Erestina made a passing comment of selling some things in order to buy something small. He looked out the window and could barely see the street leading to the main market area of the city.
"Wait," he said, putting a hand up. "I know where we could get one."
"Where?" Louisa asked.
"I'll be back," Jameson said. "Trust me."
Without waiting for the others to respond, he went right to the doorway and flung himself out of it, running down the street as fast as he could.
29. Your Real Name
Chapter 29
It would be a lie if Jameson said he wasn't excited to see Meg again. It had been a considerably long time since he had left her home without telling her where he was going or when he would be back. At the time, he wasn't sure if he really ever was going back.
He did feel guilty about suddenly appearing at her doorway with a hasty request to take her carriage. Still, he didn't have time to talk to her or explain everything to her, but he did think she was owed at least something brief.
When he knocked on the door, she didn't answer. He cautiously pushed it open because it was unlocked and hoped he wouldn't startle her as he entered the store which hadn't changed. It was still stocked full of cloths and there was even an unfinished green garment on her table where she would sit.
"We're not—"
Jameson looked up as she heard Meg's voice coming from the stairway leading to the small apartment. She was standing on the landing and gazing down at him, her mouth open and eyes wide.
"You're back!" she exclaimed, hurrying down the stairs and running over to him. He expected her to stop but she didn't; instead, she jumped right into his arms and hugged him, wrapping her arms around him and holding so tightly that he was fairly certain he would have been able to pry her off of him even if he wanted.
"I'm sorry for leaving so suddenly, Meg," he said.
"I hoped you would come back," she said, her voice muffled in his shirt. She pulled her head away from him and there were tears in her eyes which she quickly wiped away. "You have your own clothes. Did you…remember everything?"
At first, Jameson wasn't sure if he should tell her. On his way over, he was sure he was going to leave her with at least a short explanation but now, as he stood before her, he wondered just how much he should reveal.
"Most everything," he said.
"Oh," Meg said quietly. She definitely wanted to inquire further, but she somehow felt that if there was any information which she would want to know, then Jameson probably would have told her already.
"The thing is," Jameson began.
Meg instead opted to interrupt him and change the subject. "Did you go to the execution? I was too afraid to go so I stayed here. But I somehow knew Baloric would escape. How did he do it? I heard people stormed the stage. Did you see?"
Jameson paused noticeably again.
"Never mind," Meg offered. "Just…I don't want to know anything. Don't tell me a thing."
"What do you mean?
" Jameson questioned.
"You found out your life and you found out where you live and everything," Meg said definitively. "I know you've just come back to say goodbye, and I've made a fool of myself. So… just thank you. That's it. Thank you for coming to say goodbye."
Jameson, of course, was not satisfied with that as a last goodbye. In fact, the last thing he wanted was a last goodbye. And, even though he should have just said that to her, he couldn't find the correct assortment of words which would have not sounded harsh.
