Artorian’s mind hopped to it, gluing the pieces together once he was okay. When he’d died by Brianna’s blade, his mind had been canted in the Seed Core. Unlike last time, he did not fall into a pleasant, long, dreamless slumber.
This time, someone was waiting for him. For Scilla had been right. He had to sleep, and when he did, she’d be there. With his regrets that he said he would face, and then hadn’t. His voice remained despondent, but he was no longer talking to himself. “Why, Scilla… why? Why show me a memory that wasn’t mine?”
Scilla’s blighted form slunk from the ceiling, settling in the shape of the innocent Chasuble girl as she sat next to him. Donned in his favorite pink-petal robe, no less. Everything was pink with this one. Surely adding the robe was going overboard? She didn’t indulge his musings, her young voice answering. “Everything has a beginning. Some meddling old stranger I know started at the end, and worked backwards.”
Artorian mockingly mumbled, and pulled his Soul Item into this space. He wasn’t surprised when it worked. Just thankful. “I’ll work on this instead, thank you very much.”
Scilla didn’t bat an eye. “Go ahead. It won’t help you. Not even a little bit. Get it as big and puffy as you want, until it has gravity all by itself and pulls whole moons into its orbit. It won’t let you reach A-rank one.”
The old man grumbled louder, biting into the edge of the pillow just to muffle his own outcry. When sated, he vanished the item back to where it had come from, and regarded Scilla with a very downcast expression. “Fine. What will, then?”
Scilla didn’t smile. Her response was just flat, and to the point. “Me. It’s me. I decide now. The Law has a soft spot for you. She would let you cheat. Cheat all the way to the Third-Step soul ranks. Just so you can run right towards her and take the baton. She wants you to. She’s ready to go. However, she also knows that she’s only given you the kind lessons. The gentle gains. Love isn’t all sunshine and rainbows. There is pain. There is so, so much pain. She’s a tender soul at heart, and I? I’m not. I will beat you with that baton until you advance. Only when you tackle the ten big regrets I choose from your life, and work through them, will I hand over your Liminal energy so you can Incarnate.”
Artorian raised a brow. “Why ten?”
Scilla wiggled her finger, ten blighted orbs forming around the digit to hover. “A-rank zero to A-rank zenith. A rank for a regret. You may no longer lock them away, but that doesn’t mean you resolved them. The Law let it be my choice, and this is my choice. You will never make an increase again without me. Because I don’t care how wonderful you make that pillow. I don’t care for your excuses. I don’t care for what you’re trying to do. Both the Law and I know that you will exemplify the concept just by existing. You don’t bind to a Law that high without being suitable. It seems that people either like to forget, or are oblivious, to the costs the higher Laws incur. To know Love, you must know and feel all facets, and you must feel them without filter. Without defenses. In full, and with all the joy and agony that comes with it. You must let it flow over you, through you, and past you. Like a fear usurped.”
Artorian swallowed. The horror gripping his heart was apt, and he didn’t know of a challenge he’d faced worse than this. He would have to experience a few unpleasant things all over again. Well… nobody got anywhere by sitting still. “I take it… we start the day of the shovel, and the rain?”
Scilla wagged her finger to the negative. “Earlier. We start the day you ran away. The day you led yourself astray. We start with the first choice that began the path nobody expected. The path that twists through fields of blue, heralded by a voice of stone, to bring you where you are today.”
Artorian clenched his teeth and his hands. “So… what do I do?”
Scilla’s head turned, addressing him with a directness that stabbed straight to his soul. His vision twisted as he was wrenched from the bonfire room in more ways than one, his form breaking to become something—and someone—else as Scilla spoke.
“Run, boy, run!”
Chapter Nineteen
Bright sun slapped Merli’s face as he tumbled onto the courtyard path. His previously immaculate robes immediately dirt-stained. As they frequently were any time he did this, and he’d sure built up a reputation for it over his youth. He was freshly twelve, and had been so big a thorn in his family’s side that his free-spirited nature was legendary.
Unfortunately, a mere single foot out the door, and Father had him by the scruff of his neck. Robe in this case, but neck all the same. Merli opened his mouth to protest, but a hand with pills was slapped onto it, forcing him to swallow the incredibly bitter-tasting medicine. The pills made his face scrunch as if he’d just bitten into the sourest of lemons.
His father snapped, tone stern. “Stop trying to run away! You have studies to do and calligraphy to finish. I know your brother went out into the world a few years ago, and you are aching to chase him. You cannot, your constitution is weak. Return to your chambers and rest, drink the herbal tea. I know it’s bitter.”
Merli struggled, face contorted like an unhappy trapped animal. “No! I’m twelve! You can’t keep me! You can’t!”
His father looked as stern as he sounded. Draped in flawless violet and gold-hem robes, the patriarch wasn’t having any of his youngest’s pish. “I can, and I will. You will live in this household, and you will die in this household. It’s for your own good. You’re fragile, and you keep hurting yourself. You think I like seeing you get hurt? Get back inside! I have more important things to do as Patriarch than to play overseer all day, every day.”
Artorian’s perspective in Merli snapped his hand to his heart from how painful that statement was, and Merli’s actual body followed suit. That had not been something he’d done the first time. The original time that this had happened. He could influence the memory? Originally, he had just broken down and cried. Merli still did, but with his hand clamped to his heart.
Able to somewhat dissociate himself from Merli’s perspective, he looked his young self over. Crackers… he was so small back then. Shouldn’t the boy have gone through a growth spurt already? He was so puny, and awfully thin. No wonder he was held back. Nobody would believe the moxie that spouted from such a pint-sized bean sprout. No matter how you sliced it, Merli at twelve looked like a completely defenseless child. One that appeared sick. Abyss, was that gray on his throat and cheeks?
Merli was ushered back into the main family hall, and sat down next to one of the displeased branch family elders, who shot Merli a side-eye before ignoring him altogether. The youngest son of the patriarch was a disgrace to the family, and the elder mumbled under his breath in disdain. “Twelve already, and took so poorly to the pills that at best it’s keeping his vital energy in check. What a mistake the heavens must have made in creating this child.”
Merli heard him, and snapped back. “I’m not a mistake.”
The hall elder just flashed him a rotten smile. “Doesn’t make you wanted, whelp!”
Merli couldn’t handle more negativity today. Not today. Not after overhearing that he might be forced to take the worst pill his family had in its possession. That entombed evil-looking thing was named a ‘sealing pill.’ It was supposedly kept in reserve for the heinous, treacherous, and murderous. Instead, upon waking in the morning, his father had ordered him to take it. That didn’t mean he wanted to take it, as he knew the pills were still making him sick. They’d been making him sick all his life, and he lost weeks of playtime to bedrest.
He shot up from the chair, saw nobody was looking—or perhaps cared—and ran back to the door he’d come from. His satchels were still on his back, and they jingled as he went. The elder grimaced with pleasure, indulging an evil, awful expression. Merli was back at the door in no time, bolting out through the courtyard and rushing into the blue field. He was not going to take that pill! He wasn’t!
In the hall, the patriarch returned to the congregation of elders with a terrible display. He
shocked the gathering to their hearts on seeing that his majestic long beard was cut off, and instead placed in a box. “My family elders… it is time. They come. We must declare.”
The patriarch saw an empty seat and frowned. “Where is my son?”
His cultivator-powered eyes saw the trail of footsteps lead back to a very much open main hall door. “Toast.”
Artorian held his heart. Right. Crackers, and toast. Toast was his father’s saying for when something went awry, while crackers had been his. When had he… adopted it? He didn’t know. He could not call upon a connecting memory. Scilla just slapped him back to task, not letting him wiggle away for even a moment as Merli’s perspective once again took the forefront.
Through endless fields of tall blue grass. Morovian grass. Merli ran, and ran. His feet took him faster than they should. Then they took him faster than they could. Yet as he ran, he was as the wind, and would be free. Unbeknownst to Merli, but very much visible to Artorian, Merli’s stunted and shuttered center roiled. The sound of glass shattering was heard, and a lesser wind-based affinity channel opened in full within the youth.
A terrible thing to happen, as Artorian saw the corruption in his young body. How… so much. How? That was easily twelve times the amount he’d seen at fifty in the Fringe, when he had taken those initial observation notes. What happened? Had… had his family given him pills, cultivation pills, to try to make him stronger, when he hadn’t had even a single active affinity channel before this point? No wonder it made him sick, so how was he still kicking?
Taking a second, deeper glance, he could now see resplendent light shine within the roiling mass of blackened filth. Not his sunlight, nor refined Essence as he knew it. Rather this was his vital energy, and sweet mercy, there was so much of it. His corruption couldn’t tether to it? The vital energy rebuked it rather than letting the corruption adhere, take, and consume it like it normally would. Or should?
It didn’t. That was the end result. The vital energy and the corruption didn’t mix. Oh. No. There, the new Essence he was taking in through the weak air-affinity channel. That stuff was being converted and eaten by the corruption.
Then what the heck was vital Essence? Since apparently it was different. It… Artorian’s mind leapt. “Quintessence?”
Merli spoke the word even though Artorian said it. Merli didn’t register it. It hadn’t happened in the original memory, so Merli acted no differently as he ran away through the fields of Morovia. His legs hurt. They were definitely taking him faster than they could handle. He knew he’d broken his legs before, just never why.
Merli wanted to see the path, and in response air Essence swirled behind his eyes. He needed to find the way, and that thought consumed him. Corruption lost its hold on the raw Essence, which instead flocked to the beacon of need. Then like the sudden appearance of a summer breeze, Merli saw, and the wind was his guide. Sound ceased around the boy, and grass parted before he passed to form the wake. The environment bent via the playful revolution of wind in response to the single, defined desire. A desire that wind, of all things, embodied best. Run free.
Artorian pressed his hands over his mouth. No, nononono. With that much corruption, using any Essence in the body would allow that corruption to enter the meridian pathways, and run rampant outside of the center.
Merli’s skin was deathly gray before he reached the river. He had run free, and wild. He’d been the wind and it felt wonderful. Collapsing, he didn’t notice that he’d broken his legs again. Only that he had when his eyes opened to see the reflection of the sky moving in the river, it wasn’t pretty. Not this time. It was all just gray. Fairly drab, actually. The view lacked all color. Just as Merli’s dull, glazed gray eyes did.
He didn’t notice when his father picked him up in a panic, and hurriedly carried him back to the cauldron chamber. “The sealing pill! Untomb it! I need it. I need it now! We need everything in his power space out. It is killing my boy. It has to get out!”
The grimacing elder from before already had the keys and solvents ready. The seals were undone, chains broken, and the dreaded ‘sealing pill’ was properly unearthed. It had been the hope Merli would take it willingly. There were horrible side effects to those who took it unwillingly.
A pharmacist counselor was swiftly at the concerned patriarch’s side. “It is ready, my lord. Here is the pill. I… I am sorry. It will strip him of everything. The supporting effects of every pill he has ever taken. Any advancement. Everything. The sealing pill will consume it, expending itself until the solvents reach its central component. The Immaculate Core at its center from the beast you killed in your youth. Then… then it’s up to the heavens themselves.”
Artorian jolted as he felt a sudden touch. Scilla held his shoulder. Just to tell him something. “Nothing you do—nothing—will have any impact on what’s to come.”
Artorian looked back at Scilla with desperation, falling into the memory when she instead pushed him back in.
Merli was slumped in someone’s arms. While the boy was not unconscious, he was certainly not present. The sealing pill was administered, and Artorian felt unbridled terror as he watched. The pill’s outer layers immediately sucked in corruption like a desert-dry sponge. Which cracked when heavily suffused to feed the core within.
Artorian had trouble believing it even as he saw it. He’d dismissed the pharmacist’s words, but… an Immaculate Core? That must have meant something else in those days. Surely his father wouldn’t have gotten an… he mumbled to himself in realization. “I’ll be abyssed. That’s an actual Immaculate Beast Core.”
That would consume him. He was food to that wretched thing. Merli could in no way, shape, or form survive an encounter with a Core of that quality. Forget his corruption. He’d be dead in less than a minute. Artorian shot up from his seated position in the bonfire space, bursting with power as he just could not stand to sit there and do nothing. “No! No!”
The last shell around the Core crackled away, swallowed via consumption as the center of little Merli was laid bare. The Immaculate Core was freed. It woke, hungered, and saw bounty and riches. Paltry treasure, on second glance. It would consume all the same. It reached out with a mere desire, and further heaps of corruption vanished faster than a Dwarf could evaporate brandy in a drinking contest.
Still the Core hungered, and pulled further until it touched the delicious vital Essence. Now it would judge, and measure. A tether of it was pulled, but it gained none. A voice spoke to the Core, but it was not the one being addressed. Just the sound of an old man yelling at someone that didn’t seem to be in the same room. “Impact or no, I will not sit by and do nothing!”
The Core pulled again, but there was interference that didn’t belong in the memory. A hand espousing a single, defining, core characteristic rebuked it. The Core looked at what worthless fool was denying it a scrumptious meal should it find this heart to be filled with the dark, and it found only celestine vision. The concept of ‘the unyielding’ held it firm, and the Core didn’t know if that aspect was something already present in the meal it was eating, or if the attribute was being added now. That wasn’t right. Even the Core knew something was wrong. Just not what. Or how. Instead, the Core proposed an offer. An offer even the unyielding could not refuse.
In the twisted memory that was quickly degrading from his meddling, Artorian heard it say, “Grant me a future, and I shall grant this one theirs.”
The Core ceased trying to pull at the well of vital energy, though freely consumed every last scrap of corruption. That wasn’t protected as it posed the more important follow up question. “Do you rebuke me?”
The Core knew well of the side-effects it could cause to a body that was unwilling. The grip on it felt loosened. Rather than prevent its hunger, and detain it further, the idea of an open hand was offered. A strange gesture, but the Core was certainly old enough to understand the meaning. They shook on it, and Merli woke, choking as he coughed up the Immaculate Core. It harmless
ly plinked onto the gleaming, reflective floor. That was too much for the memory to handle, tearing at the seams before shattering entirely.
Artorian was rebuked back to the bonfire space, his hand felt like it was on fire. He’d been thrown out when the memory had been changed too much. He was so confused. Especially given Scilla’s note that nothing he did here would matter. “What… what happened?”
Scilla shrugged. “Nothing. That was just a memory. Nothing could have possibly happened. Time only goes forwards. Even if concepts and ideas can exist in a different layer altogether. I don’t suppose you’ve ever had them? Thoughts of words never heard, but knew and understood? What do I know? I’m just a dreamt one, and you’re not done.”
Scilla reformed the memory—without the effects of his tampering—letting it play from a later point before hurling her charge into it. Artorian fell. He tripped over his robes that were several sizes too big for his current form. “No. Wait. Scilla! I have questions!”
His pleas didn’t matter to Scilla, he’d learn by doing.
Merli drew breath, and woke with a killer headache on his mother’s lap. On the upside, he didn’t feel sick. Just slow. Horribly slow as wall-shattering shouts and arguments occurred in a building he wasn’t even in. So loud was this yelling that he heard it anyway, even if he didn’t understand a word of it.
He was mentioned, though! He could tell that much in his woozy state. Elders bickered with his father, but his father wasn’t having any of it and howled over their voices. “He must leave. We are sending him to the academy! He has no hope to survive what’s coming. He must leave the homeland. I will not have your arguments. No, no, and again no! He is still my son. I will not let you put him in the cauldron to make pills out of him! You dare even suggest something like that to me? You will be made pills out of for such accusations! He is going to the academy and that. Is. Final. I do not care about the expected side-effects. Listen to the pharmacist!”
Anima: A Divine Dungeon Series (Artorian's Archives Book 6) Page 15
