by Cale Plamann
It wasn’t like Micah stopped training altogether. He still raided dungeons with Telivern and his daemons late at night, working on his spells, skills, and experience. Still, one or two runs a week was a far cry from his daily fights. No matter how he tried to assure himself that he was moving in the right direction, that taking a moment for himself wasn’t wrong, Micah couldn’t help but feel like he was missing something.
Finally, he arrived at his parents’ house in a rather pensive mood. Micah barely managed one knock before his mother opened the door, sweeping him inside. Trevor was already there, chatting with their father about a new line of doublets he was working on.
Before Micah could introduce himself, he stumbled forward from an impact to his lower back. Esther’s tiny hands wrapped his torso in a hug.
“Well, hello to you too.” He chuckled, awkwardly reaching behind himself to ruffle her hair. “You’re awfully eager to see me for someone that just spent the entire day with me.”
“I told Mommy and Daddy about your deer!” she responded cheerfully, her tiny fingers digging into Micah’s stomach. “They said that they wanted to meet him too!”
“Micah!” Trevor’s eyes lit up, noticing Micah after Esther’s unprovoked assault. “Jo seemed a lot happier this morning, and Sarah was able to drag it out of her that you two made up. Of course, Sarah was peeved, but then again, she’s sour about everything. Now, tell me, what’s the story with Jo and this ‘magical deer’ that Esther is so wound up about?”
“Sit down first.” Their mother bustled by, shooing them toward the table. “The rolls are already out. I’ll have the fruit, jam, and cured meats out in a second. You can talk about girls or work all you want, but at least do it while sitting down and eating. I know how busy everyone is and I don’t want you showing up late to your next appointment and then using that as an excuse to avoid a family get-together next time.”
Micah chuckled and pulled out a chair, the worn wood of the seat scraping noisily against the freshly sanded planks of the floor. Everything was just as he remembered it. The kitchen was small and filled with shadows, lit by the orange glow of the hearth. The smell of fresh bread filled the air, and the faint scent of meat and herbs toyed with the edges of his senses.
It was the same thing every time he went back. The sounds, smells, and bustle of home. Now that he had a moment away from the constant stress and challenge of bettering himself, Micah began to realize how much he missed it.
A wave of nostalgia washed over him as Trevor and Esther fought good-naturedly for the bread, their mother interrupting them to place a plate of jam on the table. Micah’s father quietly ate a roll, a smile on his face as he watched the playful bickering.
“Now, honey.” Micah’s mother rested a hand on his shoulder as she leaned past him to set down a plate of cured meats. “Esther said that you let her play with some sort of dangerous wild animal? I certainly don’t recall you running that idea past me when you stopped over here, but maybe my memory isn’t working that well in my old age.”
Micah shrank back from her touch as she sat next to him, deftly making herself a sandwich of fresh bread and cured pork. If it wasn’t for the faint smile dancing across the tips of her mouth, he’d have been truly frightened. No matter how many loops he lived, her ire wasn’t something that Micah was prepared to take lightly.
“That was my friend Telivern.” He grabbed a glass of water and drank, trying to cover his nervousness over the situation. “I met Telivern when it was just an ordinary buck. We had our share of adventures, and eventually, it evolved. We’ve been through a lot together and I trust it with my life. Frankly, I trust it more than any human not in this room.”
“What about Jo?” Trevor asked, winking at Micah.
He scowled back at his brother, feeling his mother’s gaze boring into his side as her full attention returned to him.
“Yes,” his mother followed up, her eyes narrowed to slits, “what about Jo? Trevor says that you’ve had a little bit of a fling with a girl in his squad. I do have to ask, Micah. Why is it that I’m only finding out important facts about my little boy’s life from Trevor? Is there something about this trollop that you’re trying to hide from me?”
“Trollop?” Micah put his hands up, leaning back in the chair. “That’s hardly fair—you don’t even know her. Jo’s a lot of fun, but we didn’t really know if it was going to be anything more than that until recently. Now that we’re planning on making things official, I’d have brought her around… sooner or later. Probably much later,” he mumbled under his breath.
“Oh, so you were ‘just having fun’ with some poor girl, then?” His mother’s expression changed in a moment. “I thought I raised you better than that.” She turned to his father. “Jon, tell Micah that I raised him better than that.”
“Veronica.” He shook his head, reaching for another roll. “There is no way in any of the hells that I would get involved with this. If you want to torment the boy, go ahead, but the way I figure? He’s eighteen. The boy is entitled to a couple of secrets. Gods know I had my share when I was his age.”
“Trevor”—Esther turned her overly large eyes on Micah’s brother—“is it bad if Micah had a lot of fun with Jo? I was there and they looked like they had loads of fun!”
Micah turned redder than the strawberry jam on the table as Trevor literally fell out of his chair laughing. His father let out a startled guffaw before he managed to silence himself with the fresh-baked bread. Even his mother had a hard time keeping a smile from her face as she restrained a laugh.
“We’re just teasing Micah,” his mother intervened, studiously ignoring Trevor’s rolling and crying form on the kitchen floor. “You really don’t need to know what that means yet.”
“Or ever,” his father chimed in, having recovered from his sudden need to eat. “You’re my little girl, and I think it would be just fine if you never bothered to pick up that habit of Trevor’s.”
“Dad!” Trevor sat up from the floor, wiping tears from his face. “It’s not my fault that the ladies love me. I’d try beating them back with a stick, but you and Mom have raised me to never beat a woman. It’s just not in my nature.”
Micah rolled his eyes and snagged some of the cured meat for his sandwich. Trevor could go on for hours if given the chance. Depending upon the moment, the man was either a braggart or the most sincere friend one could have.
Quickly finishing the roll, Micah washed it down with a glass of water, a smile on his face as he watched Trevor banter with his father. This was what he’d been missing over all of those years. Sure, he’d gotten stronger, but he’d never gotten a chance to live a proper childhood and develop honest friendships. The closest he’d had was his relationship with his squad in the first timeline. Ever since then, he’d been adrift, disconnected from the realities that he floated through.
“Mommy,” Esther said in a quiet voice. Micah frowned. She was much paler than usual. “I really don’t feel that good, Mommy. I think my tummy is upset.”
His mother put the back of her hand against Esther’s forehead and frowned. Even from where he sat, Micah could see the beginning of cold sweat accumulating on her pallid skin.
“How about I get you a tonic, honey?” His mother stood up and took a step toward a nearby cabinet where she kept the powders and herbal remedies that the family made do with. They weren’t poor, but the services of a proper healer were expensive, only for nobles or a real emergency.
“Let me, Mom.” Micah placed his hand on Esther’s arm and mouthed the handful of words to Augmented Healing. “At some point, I became a healer. Looking after Esther is the least that I could do.”
He barely registered his mother’s nod as the spell sank into his sister. He frowned. There was nothing wrong, yet everything was working incorrectly.
Usually, the spell worked in conjunction with his Anatomy skill to identify internal problems in the patient so that it could magically fix them. With Esther, he couldn’t pinpo
int a virus, wound, or mana imbalance that was afflicting her. By all rights, she should be doing perfectly.
The spell revealed a different story. There wasn’t anything specific wrong, but everything about her was off. Her temperature was much hotter than was healthy, her blood moved slower than it should, and her very cells almost seemed to reject the energy that was transmitted to them by what blood did reach them.
He cast Regeneration on her instead, hoping that the fourth-tier spell could fix what his second-tier casting couldn’t identify. Nothing changed.
Micah’s frown deepened. Almost in horror, a thought came to him. He looked down at his hands on her forearm, glowing faintly red.
Slowly, he closed his eyes. The red light was no longer content to just remain in his body. A corona of Elsewhere’s energy shone off of him as waves of thrumming power filled an area about two arm’s lengths from him.
Without opening his eyes, he turned his sightless gaze to Esther. She was visible in his pitch-black world, the faint red glow of Elsewhere clinging to her slight form, attaching to every cell.
“Oh no,” Micah whispered, his eyes jolting open as images from yesterday ran through his mind. Esther on his back. Him holding Esther’s hand. Climbing up a tree with Esther under the crook of his arm and placing her on a branch.
“Oh gods, no.” His eyes widened as he remembered the sandy soil and dead grass outside the cave. He looked down at Esther. Her skin showed just the faintest hints of yellow. The same yellow of the crisp, dead plants just inside his shop windows.
49
The Cost
The Brensen lifted another rock to the top of the formation that housed Micah’s cave. Above him, the three Onkerts that he’d summoned after his return from the Great Depths chipped the boulders into rough bricks and piled them atop each other. Already the base of a structure was beginning to take shape.
Micah sighed as he looked around the clearing. The grass was completely dead. Over the week or so since Esther had fallen ill, the aura surrounding him had grown in both size and intensity. When he closed his eyes, he could already see the field spreading almost five body lengths from his outstretched hands.
Forty days. Forty days until the cooldown on Blessed Return ran down. He closed his hand. He’d told Trevor not to follow him and sent Telivern away. He couldn’t stomach the idea of his mere presence hurting another person he loved.
Almost worse than anything was how easy the Onkerts were to summon. He barely even needed a touch of temporal energy to bring them over for two months. Communing with Elsewhere was as natural as breathing to him now, and the prospect scared him. With each ritual he used, Micah could feel the mists on the other side calling to him.
It was becoming harder to resist. Every time he opened a portal, his blood sang and, through the tethers, his daemons responded back. Their voices rose in a glorious chorus of chaos and unmaking. He could almost understand them. The whines of the Onkerts, the squawks of the Brensens, and the hiss of the Luocas—they were like words spoken in another room. Micah felt like he only needed to concentrate and their meaning would be clear to him.
It was a line he shouldn’t cross. Somehow he knew that actually speaking with the daemons would cost him something vital. No amount of Arcana gain would be worth what he’d have to leave behind.
Instead, the solution was isolation. Set himself up far enough from Basil’s Cove that the aura surrounding him wouldn’t harm anyone and wait out the cooldown. The only downside was that solitude and worry were already driving him mad. Every day, there was nothing to do but read through the books he’d copied into the Ageless Folio from the Academy library and worry about Esther.
If he was honest with himself, his stir craziness was the reason he’d decided to build the tower. He’d spent days coming up with excuses: it would give him a better view of the area, it would suspend Micah high in the air and prevent his energy from harming the local ecosystem any more than it already had, and even just that it would look cool.
Deep down, Micah knew that he needed a project. As much as he liked going over the books in the Folio and research, he was struggling emotionally. During his brief periods of sleep, he still dreamt about the Royal Knights, waking with a start and covered in sweat.
Sending Telivern away had hit him harder than he expected. There was something about the stag’s presence that comforted him; it created an island of placidity in the raging ocean of his ambitions. Now? He had nothing but time and no one to spend it with. It was enough to drive a man mad, and Micah knew that he was closer to crossing that bridge than he’d like.
Micah turned, his hand reaching for his spear as he heard a twig snapping in the woods. Mentally he probed for the threads connecting him to the daemons, only to relax when he recognized Jo and Trevor walking out of the forest, their faces grim.
He closed his eyes, watching Jo’s dim, glowing form approach his corona of fire. Just as she approached the edge, he opened his eyes and raised a hand, halting their advance.
“That’s close enough.” He smiled slightly. “After the incident with Esther opened my eyes to what was going on, I’ve explored its limits. Right now, you’re as close as you can safely approach.”
“We’re almost twenty paces from you, Micah.” Trevor frowned. “What’s happening? You just ran off after Esther fell ill and we haven’t seen you in days. I was only able to find out about this place after talking with Jo.”
“Did Jo tell you that I’ve seen the future?” Micah asked, cocking his head toward her. Jo shook her head, frowning back at him. “I don’t suppose there’s any harm now.” Micah chuckled slightly. “My blessing is a Mythic gift from Mursa. It lets me travel into the past.”
“I thought you got a book?” Trevor asked, confusion evident in his voice. “I know you’ve been secretive about your gift, but I’ve seen the book. I don’t know how you could have faked it.”
“I do have a book.” Micah summoned the Folio and paged to a description of Bitollan. “It records everything I see or do and helps me learn skills and spells. It also tracks what I’ve learned in my previous lives.”
“This is a lot to take in, Micah.” Trevor glanced from Jo back to him. “It also doesn’t explain what happened to Esther or why you’re hiding in the woods with an army of daemons.”
“In my first life”—Micah turned back to the rock formation, watching the daemons continue their construction—“I lived normally. I joined the Lancers and became a member of Jo’s team. With a healer, they never bothered to assign you, Trevor.”
“Wait,” Jo cut in, her brow furrowing slightly. “You never told me about this. That we were teammates in the past. What else is there?”
“Just let me finish.” Micah directed a Brensen to continue carrying another large boulder to the top of the other rocks. “We adventured and grew close. We dated for a time.” He smiled slightly, his face still turned from Jo and Trevor. “It didn’t work out, but that was for the best. I was young and timid. What did happen”—Micah turned back to them, his face grim as he began reliving the memories that still occasionally haunted his infrequent dreams—“is that the Durgh attacked. Westmarch must have violated their rules of honor, ignored the results of a duel or something. We were dispatched to investigate the rumors of their attack. They attacked from ambush and killed almost the entirety of our group.”
He pointed at them. “Both of you died to save me. I had to watch Jo take her last breath. Even that was robbed of me with Trevor’s death. He carried me from the battle and was wounded too badly to continue. Drekt carried me the rest of the way, leaving Trevor behind.”
For a second, no one spoke. Jo shifted slightly, uncharacteristic anxiety on her face. Trevor scratched at his chin silently, the only sound being the thud of the Onkert placing bricks atop the boulder.
“Hypothetically”—Trevor waved a hand—“let’s say that this is true. What does it even mean? How does it explain you sequestering yourself out here?”
“I’ve lived a life since then.” Micah smiled slightly. “I’m almost thirty now. I tried to solve the problem of the invasion by asking for help, and I failed. This time, I tried to solve the problem on my own.”
“What happened?” Jo asked, interrupting Micah’s monologue with worry in her eyes. “You disappeared and came back. You told me that everything was fine, that we had time to grow together. Now you isolate yourself from everyone and you’re speaking like the protagonist from a bard’s tragedy.”
“A tragic protagonist.” Micah laughed blackly. “That fits, I suppose. This time, I won, but the cost was too high.”
“Seriously,” Trevor said, looking back and forth between Micah and Jo, “what in the Sixteen is happening? You were always a serious kid, Micah, but Jo’s right. You’ve caught a serious case of the melodrama.”
“I needed power and I needed it fast.” Micah shrugged, turning back to the daemons. “Ritual magic and daemon summoning provided that power. Unfortunately, I didn’t heed the warnings in the grimoire I learned the ritual from. I took too much power too quickly and it changed me. I barely sleep and eat. At some point, I began to emit the same energy as the daemons. Simply being in my presence harms living things. That’s the reason why this clearing is a wasteland, and that’s the reason that Esther got sick. I am dangerous to be around.”
“You’ll find a cure, Micah,” Jo said hopefully from behind him. “Seriously, you may be the smartest person I know. If anyone can come up with a ritual to undo whatever this is, it’s you.”
“Yeah,” Trevor chimed in. “I don’t know half of the stuff you’re saying right now, and it all sounds kinda like mopey navel-gazing to me, but if there’s a problem, you should just fix it. Less whining, more studying. That’s the Micah I know.”
“It’ll fix itself,” Micah replied, watching the ongoing construction. “My blessing can be used again in forty days. Just over a month”—he turned back—"and this will all be a dream. I’ll be thirteen again, trying to find a solution to the invasion that won’t involve my enslavement or mass death. For a fourth time, we’ll grow up together. Maybe next time, I’ll be as smart as you seem to think I am and actually solve this dilemma.”