But my arm itched, and when I reached to scratch it, I felt something like paint on it. I looked at it and found that someone had written—not tattooed, but written—the word ‘love’ over and over on my arm in Woadfolk script, leading all the way up to my armband. When I looked over to the table next to my bed, I saw a note and a crown that looked like it had been braided out of twigs, leaves, and flowers. It was a fragile thing, not made by an expert, but I thought it looked to be made with care, and I had to wonder who had made it, and why. The note helped my groggy mind figure it out.
Wes,
Sorry this be so silly. Just wanted to return the favor. I love ye.
-Merada.
It had been a rough couple of days. But I felt pleased and honored and embarrassed by Merada’s little act, all at once.
If only there wasn’t so much screaming down the hall.
I followed the direction of the voices, since I was hungry anyway, and most of the women here were wonderful enough to drop anything they were doing to make me food. So I figured I’d stop whatever fight was going on, and get fed at the same time, solving two problems at once.
And if I couldn’t get away with that much, I figured I needed to rethink this business of being king.
As I rounded the corner, the voices became distinct enough to recognize. Stell was here, and she was with Breena and Merada. That put me into a good mood instantly, until I realized that they were fighting, and that, since Stell was a Starsown, and Breena and Merada were both of her Satellites, Stell was technically having a three-way argument with herself.
Wait, Teeth spoke up in my mind. Are all three-ways bad?
Shut the hell up and go back to bed, I replied tiredly. He grumbled a reply I couldn’t hear, and I finally got close enough to make out individual words. When did my manor get so big? I wondered stupidly, before I began to eavesdrop.
“Can I just say—” Breena started to say timidly.
“No!” Merada and Stell both snapped at once, and then Stell’s voice rang out again. “And you should be old enough to know better, Breena! You’re supposed to be on my side!”
“The bloody hell, she should!” Merada snapped back. “She saw the same things I saw! Ye be the one actin’ irrational about all this!”
“She’s not wrong, Stell,” Breena said in a loud, but reasonable voice, inexplicably the calmest one of the group. “It really did go down the way she described it. And it wasn’t the first time, either.”
“You’re right, it wasn’t the first time!” Stell shouted back, sounding the least calm, which made even less sense. Stell had remained pretty composed the whole time she had handled a half dozen or so cataclysm-sized Challenges. But now, her temper was beating the drums of war on top of her vocal chords. “It wasn’t any time! Because it never happened the way you two thought it did! You’re just blinded by what you’re both going through!”
“And ye be blinded by yer fear!” Merada’s voice rose to the challenge. “Ye won’t believe how we both changed, because ye be afraid of changin’ yerself!”
“I am not afraid!” Stell screeched. “Just because I only believe ninety-nine percent of all the impossible things he’s done, instead of the whole hundred, does not make me the delusional one! You didn’t really kill part of an Umbra! And he didn’t really fix you!” The Starsown’s voice cracked at the end of her sentence. “Other people can’t fix us! I know! I’ve made them try!”
“Ye’re not listenin’,” Merada said quietly, but intently. If I hadn’t kept walking, I wouldn’t have been able to hear her. “I didn’t say he fixed me. I said he believed in me. I said he was there for me, and it made all the difference. The demon ye didn’t want to tell me about tried to take me somewhere dark, and then the man ye be afraid of leaped in after me, and didn’t leave until I could crawl me way out. And I be just a little bit more whole for goin’ through it all.”
“And that’s where you’re both wrong,” Stell insisted flatly. “I know exactly what you’re both feeling. I’ve felt before, too. And I wouldn’t listen when anyone tried to tell me different, just like you’re both not listening to me right now. Which just makes this conversation even more stupid and pointless, but we’re going through with it anyway, because I’ve just had it. I’m going to spell out everything for you both one more time, and just hope that you two will realize that I’ve seen far more than both of you combined, and that you get most of your feelings from me anyway, and that I just might know what I’m talking about. After that, we’re going to drop the matter and just stop speaking of it. So here it goes: You’re not free. Neither of you are. It doesn’t matter how light and magical everything feels right now. It doesn’t matter that today was a special day and things went differently than they used to. And it doesn’t matter that it’s all happening right now, after a person that makes you feel things you’ve never felt before has suddenly shown up. Because nothing is happening the way your feelings are saying they are. You’re not free from all your problems. You’re not a hundred times more powerful, even though you both feel that way right now. You’re just in love!” She spat the last sentence like the admission cost her. Grief colored her next rush of words. “That’s why you think our family’s going to come back! That’s why you think Cavus can die one day! That’s why you think a whole bunch of other stupid, embarrassing things that you want are finally going to happen! But the feelings are going to fade, Breena! The feelings are going to fade, Merada! They’re going to fade when the guy you’ve fallen for finally shows he isn’t the perfect, dashing prince you think he is, and he leaves you behind! And you better hope he does!” Stell’s voice began to crack as she spoke. “You better hope that he’s not the kind of imperfect guy that always tries to be a better man! Because if he does, it’s going to get him killed! He’s going to keep trying to ‘be there when ye needed him to,’ Merada, like the other really good men that used to be in my life, long before you two were around, and Cavus is going to tear him apart! Like he’s done every single time! And don’t tell me, ‘this time was different!’ It wasn’t!” she snapped, getting angry again. “Wes has already died to Cavus! Wes has died more times than any other man who dared to be anything at all for us, combined! And if either of you keep getting involved with him, it’s just going to lead him on! He’s going to take bigger and bigger risks for us until he faces Cavus’ real strength and finally runs out of tricks! Then he’ll die for good, right when a lot of other people need him the most, and Cavus will try to make his death as hideously painful as possible!”
She was just a room away now. I could hear her panting from all the shouting.
“I can’t be a mom for you guys,” Stell said next, groaning in frustration. “I try. I try to make your jobs as safe as possible, which is ridiculous, because your jobs literally involve the fate of entire worlds. But I do what I can to try and prepare you guys, protect you in any way I can. Put as much power into you as I can spare, even though I can never put that much. Give you all the knowledge I can afford to share, so that you never feel unprepared while you do your work. I even work with the Icons to make sure you all get time off, and that you have friends, and surrogate family. I tried to put all kinds of failsafes so that you wouldn’t find it easy to fall for any random Challenger you work with. I should have worried about it more with Merada, and that’s on me. But you, Breena?” Stell asked in a hurt tone. “You know more. You should know better. You should know that if I do something to you guys, that there’s a reason. Even if it’s frustrating, and even though—since you get most of your emotions from me—I probably want that thing, too. But that doesn’t make it right. It doesn’t make it responsible. It doesn’t mean it won’t endanger billions, even hundreds of billions of lives, if all you do is give in a little bit. Instead, it makes it even more important that you support the rest of yourself and keep the focus on your job! The one you do to save lives! Including the life of the one that agreed to help us!”
At that point, I turned what wa
s probably the hundredth corner in this obnoxiously long hallway and entered the room.
None of Stell’s bodies had noticed me yet. Merada’s arms were crossed and her lips were compressed, while she glared smoldering daggers at her primary body. Breena had shrunk back to her normal form and hovered between the two women. Her head whipped back and forth between Stell and Merada, as if the two were somehow pulling her in half, but she was biting her lip and blinking as if she was trying not to cry.
Stell had changed again.
Her skin was a shade brighter than it had been the last time I saw her, though her hair was still curly. The change made her appear to be of Indian descent. She was clenching her fists at her sides, and she was huffing, as if she had just fought a wild animal. A loose, black t-shirt covered most of her torso, with a disappointed looking face and the words ‘I paused my game for this?’ written on the front. By the time I had finished reading it, her beautiful, currently-brown eyes swiveled over to me, and she found a way to make her next heave a sigh.
“Oh, hello, Wes. You’re here. What a pleasant surprise,” she said ironically, her eyes traveling to my arm. “Oh, and look. Someone did something inappropriate and unprofessional to you while you were sleeping again. Let me apologize for that, and ensure that the person responsible will be punished.”
“Punished?” Merada asked with flashing eyes. “Ye have a daughter ye can ground? Or a well-paid hirelin’ that ye can fire and replace?”
Stell turned on her and opened her mouth.
“You guys are loud,” I said bluntly, before she could speak.
All three of Stell’s mouths snapped shut immediately.
“I just thought you should know,” I continued, “I mean, I could hear you guys all the way from my room, and this place has grown bigger somehow, so that was pretty far away. You might be waking a lot of people up.”
Their eyes widened all at once.
“Sorry,” Stell and Merada said tritely at the same time, shooting each other annoyed looks afterwards. “We didn’t mean to wake you—ye,” they finished, again in unison, while glaring at each other and watching the other body’s mouth.
“No, I woke up on my own,” I said carefully. “But do we have any food? Or did I miss breakfast?”
“It be afternoon,” Merada replied quietly.
“But Guineve just made you some soup,” Breena spoke up, before giving me an uncertain look. “Is that going to be enough?”
“Soup?” Stell asked worriedly, eyes widening. “She usually makes more than just soup after a Challenge.” I could see gears start to turn behind her eyes. “Which means she might be running out of ingredients. Breena, message Guineve and ask her what she needs. I know Wes just asked for breakfast, but if he really overtaxed his mana to the point of unconsciousness, then he has to be painfully hungry right now. After Merada gets more ingredients from the supplies I just delivered, go help her make brunch and coffee for Wes. Merada will cover lunch and tea, and I’ll be over in a minute to do dinner and dessert. If we hurry, we can probably have most of it made before Wes finishes the soup.”
The other two women nodded immediately, and briskly left the room. They didn’t even stop to point out just how badly Stell was contradicting herself right now. Just before I felt them reach out to me through the mindlink to check on me, I felt a jumble of emotions from Merada, as if she wanted to explain the writing she had painted on my arm, but was too embarrassed to know where to begin.
Thank you, I sent to her, trying to project appreciation and acceptance. I was honored.
I only saw the back of her head as she walked away, but I could have sworn that she began smiling.
We’ll talk it about it some more later, if ye be willin’, she sent me.
I’d like that, I agreed, turning my attention back to Stell.
“It’s good to see you,” I told her.
“Thanks,” she smiled brightly, then shook her head. “Right. Super-mana fatigue. We should get you off your feet.”
“Really, I feel fine,” I insisted, but Stell began pulling me out of the room. “I mean, this stuff happens a lot more frequently than I’m proud of, but I seem okay.”
“Yes, but you’re stronger now,” Stell replied without looking back. “You have a larger mana pool, and your magics are all at the Practitioner level. And you’re still making use of two Dragon Bonds at the same time. That makes the backlash to your system a lot greater than it was before. Humor me and just take it easy today, okay? Please?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I replied as Stell led me into a spacious area with chairs and a dining table. Was this new, too?
She pulled the most comfortable-looking chair out and dragged me into it.
“Alright, we’ll have food for you soon,” she said as she sat down next to me. “I’m about to leave to make sure, but…” she reached over and put her hand over mine. “I wanted to ask if you were alright. After how yesterday ended.”
I thought that question was odd. She was apparently refusing to believe that her newly rescued family members were anything more than dissipating ghosts, or bait in another trap set by Cavus, but she took the confirmation of my father’s death completely seriously.
“I guess I am,” I replied uncertainly. “We haven’t really had a chance to talk about my dad.”
“No,” Stell said as she shook her head. “And if I’m honest, I don’t even know what to say about it. You’re the first Challenger to have a previous one as a close relative. It’s never happened before,” she sighed as she said that. “And I know that probably doesn’t mean much, because I say ‘never happened before’ all the time around you. But I didn’t even think of it as a possibility, and since you didn’t want to talk about your dad back then, I just took it as a coincidence that you both had red hair and similar features. I thought maybe you two might have been distantly related, especially since John never told me his last name, and you told Breena,” Stell took another breath, “that your father had committed suicide after doing bad things.”
“I deeply regret ever believing that,” I said softly, not looking at her.
“I know,” Stell said. “And I hate how Earth is like that. How people are taught to always look for a catch in good men and good women, and to go ‘aha!’ when they finally discover something. Your world teaches its children to be suspicious of good people, but not in a way that really protects anyone. Just in a way that makes people condemn each other more quickly. But this isn’t supposed to be about my views on your world,” she added guiltily.
“No, I think it’s relevant,” I decided. “I think Dad’s enemies used that very suspicion to make the cover-up for his murder more believable. That he must have had something to hide. But yeah, I think our family history is part of why I could come here after he did.”
Then again, maybe it had more to do with his finding Breaker, and somehow leaving it to me through a video game years after his death. That was another piece of insanity that I wish I had asked him about in my dream last night.
“Icons,” Stell said as she covered her face with her hands. “We haven’t even really talked about the fact that you’re dealing with an extinct species of dragon bonded to your family. And I was there for the second part of that.”
“I know,” I replied. “We’ve just been running around battling evil demigods and stopping them from overrunning entire worlds.”
“Mostly, yes,” Stell said with just a hint of an edge to her voice. “No. I’m sorry. You didn’t deserve that. But there’s so much that we both need to process, and this… inexplicable tension between you and my Satellites is taking up time that should be spent on other issues.”
Right, I scoffed. Inexplicable.
“Can you tell me a little bit about my dad?” I asked instead. “What was he like?”
“A lot like you,” Stell admitted. “Kind. Brave. Quick on his feet when a problem showed up. He started out with Lightning, like you did, but he just sort of comprehended the Ideals of A
ir and Earth on his own, over time. He utilized a rare Path that gave him special foresight, and he used it to deal with a lot of Challenges in advance.”
“Did it give him dreams?” I asked intently.
“I don’t know,” Stell asked, surprised by my question. “He never talked about them, and Breena said she never noticed any weird brain waves related to dreams. Wait…” she caught herself. “He mentioned one dream, right after he finished the Tumult. It reminded me of my own nightmares about Cavus. But until very recently, those had been gone for decades. The only time I had them at all was right after a Tumult. So when John told me he had a similar dream, under similar circumstances, I told him the same thing I told myself those days—that the nightmare creature he saw was a monster his mind had created to help him deal with the stress of almost seeing a world end,” she sighed, covering more of her face with her palms. “And because I didn’t take him seriously, the monster from that dream came and killed him.” Wet eyes peeked at me through her hands. “I’m sorry, Wes. I’m sorry I got your father killed.”
“No, you didn’t,” I answered flatly. “Cavus didn’t seek out my dad. My dad sought out Cavus. To protect me.” Stell blinked at that. “Cavus just told me. A man that looked like me hunted him down one day, and began blasting him with silver lightning. Cavus didn’t even want to fight him, but when he tried to flee, the human followed him, blasting him over and over with the lightning and telling him to stay away from his family, stay away from his son.” I stared hard at the Starsown across the table. “If anyone should blame themselves over Dad’s death, it’s me.”
“That’s impossible,” Stell replied. “Your father had already returned to Earth. He couldn’t travel to other worlds anymore.” She blinked. “Impossible… Right. Of course I’d think that about a Malcolm, and be wrong. It’s pretty much how I divide up my journal now.”
I smiled at that, in spite of everything.
“At least you know it’s hereditary,” I told her.
She smiled back at me, but it was a sad smile.
Lighting Distant Shores (Challenger's Call Book 4) Page 13
