Prince in the Tower

by Stephan Morse

  My mind swept away, reliving a moment from months ago. It’d been after Kahina completed her transformation, but before I’d suffered relocation to Tennison. There’d been a period where my eyes were useless from overusing the flame during a fight with Tal, Roy, and a third. I didn’t remember the name.

  I could feel them. My other mind had called them the Lithe Twins. They’d been graceful, like cats. Then the other woman, had my mind had a name for her? I’d back peddled onto a roof to get away, but not before she pulled off the trinket. Don and Dee, they were all familiar. I’d marked them in my mind as people to watch out for.

  That damnable woman had tried to kill me. She’d been the one to remove the trinket in the first place. She’d been the one to reveal who I was and ruin the plans that were laid. Because of her, Roy and the others had been forced to mess up my mind even more.

  It was her fault. Rage welled abruptly. I screamed. There was pressure in my neck. It pushed hard and caused both shoulders to bunch.

  I knew the cost of casting this out in human form. My eyesight and senses would burn away until regeneration solved the problem.

  But I couldn’t stop.

  The fire poured forth.

  Another moment of blindness hit me. I had been thirteen and been in a roaring match with Tal over food and girls. Tal believed I should ignore women until I’d gotten older. It wasn’t even a school girl, since I’d been returned to home schooling.

  “He was breathing fire,” Tal repeated.

  I huddled in the most secure corner of my bedroom. The blankets felt familiar but every other sense keeping me anchored in the world had shut off.

  “Is he blind?” Roy asked.

  “Just keep him calm until the Daniels get here.”

  Fingers rubbed up and down the fabric. At the same time, my hands wrung against the sheeting from my solitary confinement.

  “I don’t have to do anything. He looks dead,” Roy said. “His eyes aren’t focused. He’s been in that corner for three hours and hasn’t moved once.”

  “He breathed fire.”

  “You said that already.”

  “It set off the sprinklers. He actually breathed fire out of his mouth,” Tal repeated.

  “And he calmed down under the water,” Roy stated.

  Fear not the Water. Each drop brings Clarity to our mind.

  I remembered the mantra. My father’s words, which had beaten into my head, were the only thoughts to survive the gulf between timelines. That’s how Daniel explained it. Whatever the reason, they stuck with me.

  “Voice to our rage,” I muttered.

  Footsteps shuffled, but I couldn’t feel their rhythm. My own feet kicked to push me further into the wall. There were no other places to go. I closed my eyes, not that it made a difference.

  “What?”

  “Be not afraid. The Elements are our gifts.” My chest heaved. “Fire is rage. Born from anger. A gift.” I snorted.

  “The elements?” Roy asked. He shook his head. The smell of food lingered in the air but I couldn’t bring myself to leave the corner’s safety.

  Hunger could be addressed once they were gone. Guilt went into the mental box to be processed over a meal. Tal’s downstairs would be an utter wreck. The flame had totaled a chunk of the gym and forced Tal to start rebuilding.

  “I know what he is,” Tal muttered.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I recognize the chant. Or something close. From your great grandfather’s old stories. Old as the dances.” Tal spoke slowly and Roy said nothing. The plate clattered and slid across the floorboards toward me. I fumbled for the dish. “His stories used to tell of creatures before the Purge. One was a huge winged monster that ruled the skies and called fire and earth to its bidding.”

  Fear not the Sky. Air bends to our will.

  I didn’t know what Tal meant. His words gave me hope in unraveling my own nature.

  “What am I?” I asked.

  “The Great Beast,” Tal muttered.

  The memory shattered into a hundred black feathers. I stared at the bricking about me. The metal had melted. My clothes and bedding were cinders. A hole in the cell’s rear displayed daylight, which was the only fact keeping my room from being suffocatingly tiny.

  I huffed. With each deep breath the air vibrated and ground rumbled. I had cause to be angry. None of the choices I made resulted in positive outcomes. She’d pulled my cover after I agreed to find a lost child related to Muni.

  It wasn’t simply Agent Brand, whoever the hell she was, but me. This entire time in jail I’d been forced to reflect on every aspect of life bringing me to this status.

  Tal reminded me my other form was a creature of fire and earth that flew through the sky. My father’s words, we had gifts from the elements, with a sky-high price tag. Using abilities required energy. It required catering to my nature.

  I took slower steadying breaths in an effort to calm down. Rain pelted in from the hole in my cell. The water reminded me of the final gift. It’d been the reason I’d calmed down when spewing fire both in the past, and now.

  Fear not the Water. Each drop brings Clarity to our mind.

  The ground continued to rumble. I felt the madness but distantly. I’d had successes. Kahina lived. My adopted family survived along with all the other stragglers I’d brought together.

  What you claim defines you.

  That was it then. In all the self-searching and memories rushing by, I needed to hold onto one simple fact. I had a replacement family, to make up for the girl I’d lost decades ago.

  What you claim relies on you.

  Daniel continued to search for leads. Roy held the small community together while I did what I could. They relied on me, not to be their leader, not exactly. It’d been in my very nature even when I returned. My job was to find those lost and bring them back to somewhere safe.

  What you claim wounds you.

  Leo was part of the family. He needed to be kept safe. Muni was part of the family. She needed to avoid her pursuers. Even if it killed me. Even if it meant I’d have to fight that creature on the other side.

  Being weakened by my own emotions couldn’t stop the need to help them. My earlier bout of fire had blinded me, but a trace amount of my senses still lingered.

  “What was that?” a faint voice asked.

  “Feeding time,” another responded. But I couldn’t rightly say who was speaking.

  The walls of my cell still rumbled from aftershocks, even as darkness claimed my mind as it had my sight.

  13

  Medical Ward

  Unconsciousness didn’t prevent my mind from processing the memories. More drifted by, some in whole pieces, many in tatters. I remembered Daniel bringing Rachel in and saying she’d been a part of their program for ages. There was a story there I’d never learned.

  Muni visited frequently. She was another person Daniel claimed had been scouted by Western Sector’s agents. Privately he told me they were races deemed by some factions within the Hunters to be “Sufferable.” Muni had simply shown up one day and incorporated herself into their programs.

  Daniel’s father, also named Daniel, had felt the same way about me. I’d been lucky to be found while still a child. Adults were harder to excuse. Having the red-headed boy as my first friend helped immensely.

  As the past came and went, other sensations would overlay them strangely. There was a pressure on my arms. It tightened frequently. After that a bright light would flash across my eyes. I’d groan and attempt to see beyond the bright spot. No amount of effort turned the world visible.

  Other words mixed in between my memories. Words like sedation along with tones of worry and concern. Anger and rumbling. More lights. More memories.

  Then an abrupt and a sharp pain forced me to sit up. Huffs escaped rapidly while my mind looked around. Danger was everywhere, and this wasn’t where I’d passed out.

  Lights above me were either broken or suffering from an electrical ou
tage. They flickered on briefly with a sharp buzz then slowly faded out. Thick plastic blocked daylight from coming inside. This certainly was not the isolation cell I’d been spending time in.

  It had all the trappings of a medical ward. Rows of bottles sat behind a triple locked shelf. Pieces of the safety glass were shattered. There were signs of torn up bedding and broken metal frames on the gurney next to me.

  My hand clutched one side where something sharp was sticking out. I pulled out a thin blade at least six inches long from where it’d been embedded into flesh. Fingers pressed against the wound but blood slipped by in a small dribble.

  “Use the compress next to you.” The words were nervous and vibrated strangely. My senses were picking up the reverberation as her words were swallowed by solid objects.

  I blinked a few times and tried to make out who was talking. They were an indistinct ball of blackness.

  Questions could be saved until after I staunched the flow. I pressed the pad into my side with what strength was left to me. Every muscle felt worn. The simple act of lifting my arm and pressing with fingers caused aches.

  “I’m sorry.” She didn’t sound apologetic.

  “For?”

  “Waking you up like that. You were being swept under the tide of memories.”

  Hell. I didn’t even need to consult my resurfacing history. The talk of memories and the foggy feeling over my mind were enough.

  “Muni?”

  Silence.

  “It’s you, right? You said you’d help fix this.” The world spun and I lay back for a moment. Now I knew Muni had been the one to stab me. The wound hurt more than when Spike had shived me in the yard. Weakness and being in a human form made my skin easier to pierce.

  My eyes swept closed. The loss of consciousness that resulted frightened me into sitting up again. I winced from pain and looked under the bandage. The blood flow had nearly stopped.

  “Hurts,” I muttered.

  “Their sedation kept you from breaking more while enthralled.” The woman stepped closer. I could make out a bit more of her face. It was a mess of black feathers and tresses.

  “Sedation?” I asked.

  My senses were able to reach out for more details. I reviewed multiple memories where I’d burned myself to blindness. There were dozens to choose from, and normally it took a few days to recover.

  “You’ve been sedated for days. The Warden believes you to be a hidden race whose gifts make you mentally disabled. He seems to be mixed on how you handle you. He stated you should be on a third strike. He’s vexed at the violation of his own rules.”

  I tried resting one arm on a side rail but ended up slamming into it instead. Uneven jerking resulted in my arm being pulled back and coddled. The brief motion hurt even more than lying.

  “What happened?” My face felt numb and words slurred as bad as Tal’s ever had. Even my thoughts were moving slowly.

  “The trinket failed and released a flood.”

  She stopped and waited for me to respond. My thoughts went in circles a dozen times before landing on an explanation. Agent Brand had removed it first.

  “I took it off,” I said. Muni was close enough to make out fully. Her face looked human. I’d expected a raven.

  “I warned you.” Muni’s head cocked to one side and then back. Eyes flickered to the exits and windows. “Everything has a price.”

  “How do I stop it?” Even now I was struggling to stay anchored. Woozy drugs battled against the sharp throbbing pound.

  I’d reminded myself of the importance of protecting my family. That self-assertion did no good when my mind was all screwed up. At the moment I couldn’t eat a sandwich without remembering a dozen other sandwiches across the years.

  “All rivers run a course,” she said.

  “Rivers. Oceans,” I mumbled. She’d told me that before and compared my mind to a hurricane.

  I felt another rumble. This one was not caused by my going wild and pulling on excessive powers. A light fixture above me swung as it flickered. The electricity buzzed and renewed dimming light.

  Muni’s face was unrecognizable from the one she presented in the bar. Gone was the pale waitress with jet black hair and ribbons. Finally, under all the illusion and misdirected memories, was her real face. The same dark shades littered across feathers.

  “The strongest memories would surface first. Hard, like a balloon held underwater until it bursts.” She paced slowly. I lost my mind and saw her, overlaying with other moments. A bird could have hopped along in the same manner.

  “Yeah.” The first recovered memory had been of my nature. Second had been the truth behind Kahina and me breaking up. Then Daniel’s purpose, and the bizarre reality as I landed. Each one lingered strongly for different reasons.

  “My part of the bargain has been met. You promised me my brother. You said you had a clue.”

  “I remember.”

  “Where is he, Great Lord? Where is my brother?” One hand pinched and dug at the straps holding down my legs. Every attempt was a poor example of depth perception and coordination.

  “Not here.” Memories spun by me as I attempted to hone in on the one discovery I’d managed to gather. Tracking her brother’s feather had worked, exactly once, when I’d attempted to hunt him down in the abandoned train lot. There’d been vague sensations of empty space where something solid should be. Near, but far. Huge but tiny. The emotion had been distorted beyond belief.

  “You promised me!” She took the most daring step of her life toward me and almost immediately backed up. “This was so much easier when you remembered nothing. I didn’t have to be scared of you then. But I need the memories of the real you. I can’t pull them out of your mind like I can with others.”

  “Drugged. Tired. Why be scared now?” How long had she been around Julianne’s? Muni could have followed me for years and I’d never know for sure. This entire conversation was suspect in so many ways.

  “Because you terrify me,” she said.

  “Why?” My eyes drifted to one side and narrowed to slits. “I don’t hit girls first.”

  “You hold too many memories for one man. All powerful, deep things that burn and drown me if I pry. No one else is like that, no one but you. Not even him. The dead god whose name I hold.”

  “And that”—I struggled and creased my brow—“scares”—exhaustion dragged at my senses and even the sharp pain had started to dim—“you?”

  “More than anything.”

  I gave up the struggle and fell backward onto the cot I was half strapped to. Muni’s words gave me nothing new. We’d talked about this much and more prior to utilizing the original trinket.

  “Except losing your brother forever.”

  “Yes, Great Lord.”

  “Why?” This was a question I didn’t know the answer to.

  “Because I’d be alone.”

  Silence reigned as the lights flickered above. My senses weren’t ranging far enough to detect the source of the problem. The medical ward, or nurse’s office, whatever Warden Bennett considered this place, should have had other people in it.

  “Being the last of your kind is a terrifying thing,” I said.

  “Yes, Great Lord.”

  “I understand.” The sympathetic words slipped by without thought. “I do understand...” Drugs did funny things to my mental filters.

  Hell.

  “My brother, Lord? Do you know where he is?”

  “He doesn’t exist, Muni.” If he was alive I’d be able to track him down. The drugs addled me another handful of breaths before I remembered. There’d been a connect to that strange big and small sense.

  “I don’t understand,” she said.

  Years ago, I’d tried to track Muni’s brother for her. Part of my duties, obligations, the deal. Many reasons for one action.

  Normally, for people, things, I’d be able to get a direction, a pull. For those deceased I’d get nothing.

  Muni’s brother had been a sens
e of direction without clarity. There were possibilities there, which I only knew of because Daniel and I had discussed possibilities over the years.

  “He might be, in another time. Line.” My chest hurt. “Along with someone I left behind.” If it was possible for gods to come through the changing between worlds, maybe it would be possible for someone to exist on the other side.

  Was that even possible? The lingering sedation made it hard to think clearly. I could remember discussing the facts with someone but it felt distant.

  She tapped a tray with her fingers. The repetitive sound annoyed me. “You must find him.”

  “I honor my deals,” I muttered.

  A fairly large amount of drool had dribbled out the side of my mouth by now. My slack jawed expression and inability to swallow made me feel foolish. Muni might forgive me for being a bumbling idiot.

  There was something important I needed to tell Muni. People hunted her, in the same manner as the Order of Merlin chased me. Their end goal might not be world breaking but having a being that could alter memories wouldn’t be good.

  I missed some logic with that thought. There were other factors. Shaggy had said Muni was licensed. I remembered having that thought once before. Warden Bennett knew of Muni, along with other Hunters, or Sector agents.

  The lines between all these factions felt thinner than ever. Hunters were a group in play. Their members apparently split between those helping “acceptable” Hidden, those bent on wiping them out, The Order of Merlin, and hopefully a few who simply didn’t care.

  Assaults from the past hadn’t stayed at bay during my entire drug induced sleep. Downing the bottles nearby wasn’t an answer. I’d burned a hole in the jail cell. Muni had shown up, finally, and maybe she had long term answers.

  “What do I do?”

  “Survive.”

  The doors slammed open. “Found you!” a female shouted.