Restart Again: Volume 2

by Adam Ladner Scott

  I nodded my head graciously. “Thank you, Marin, that would be great. I think we’ll take you up on that.” Lia made no move to follow me as I stood up, so I gave her a gentle bump with my elbow. “What do you think, Lia? You feeling up to a quick nap?”

  “Uhm, sure,” she said quietly. As she stood, she seemed to remember herself, and she bobbed her head towards Marin. “Thanks, Marin.”

  “No problem!” Marin responded cheerfully as she stacked up our dishes from lunch. “I’ll wake you up just before sundown.” With that, she stood and took the plates into the back room to what I assumed was a kitchen.

  Lia shuffled out behind her, hanging a left instead of a right. Her sudden lack of energy concerned me as I followed her into the extremely narrow hallway behind Marin’s shop. Did I say something wrong? I didn’t think sleeping was a controversial topic. We ascended the tall, creaking staircase and entered the aforementioned room to find that Marin hadn’t lied: the room was hardly larger than a walk-in closet, with a small window on the far wall and only a single storage chest and a modest bed as furnishings.

  “Well, I suppose you could technically call this a guest room,” I joked. Lia gave a delayed nod in response, then moved to the bed and quietly sat down at the edge. Her eyes were downcast as she whispered something under her breath, too softly for me to hear. “What was that?” I asked, joining her on the uncomfortably firm mattress.

  Her hands balled into fists against her legs, and I heard her breath fall into a strained meditative pattern as she scrunched her eyes shut. I could feel pulses of energy radiating out of her, carrying two overwhelming emotions: anger and fear. After a few moments of measured breathing she reopened her eyes, and although they glistened in the late afternoon sun, no tears fell to her cheeks. “I said...we still have time. We could still run.”

  My breath caught in my throat at the sound of her trembling voice. This isn’t what her life should be. She shouldn’t have to be afraid like this. I placed a comforting hand on her leg. “You can stay here tonight, Lia. You’ve already done so much, and I don’t want you to feel like you have to—”

  “What? No,” she blurted out, recoiling away from the thought. “I’m not afraid; I know I can handle whatever’s out there.”

  I sat with my brow wrinkled in thought. “I’m not sure I understand, then. What’s bothering you?”

  She stared at me, dumbfounded. “What’s bothering...this could be your last night here! If we go out there and stop the Dominion, you’re going to get taken away again!” Her hands clasped one of mine with panicked strength. “You want to stay here, right? Don’t you want to stay with me?”

  There was a sudden, droning buzz in my head that made it hard to think. I knew that she was right, but my subconscious had once again repressed that fact from me once I had confirmed the Dominion was in Attetsia. “Of course that’s what I want, Lia. That’s the only thing I want.”

  “Then let’s go!” She sprang to her feet and pulled up on my hand to follow her. “Val wouldn’t have time to go after us if we left now! We could make it all the way to Lybesa before the King even knows we’re gone, and then they’d never find us.” Her desperate attempts to haul me up from the bed intensified as I sat in place, unmoving. “You’ve already told Val about the Dominion; she can just bring down the army to take care of it!”

  “Lia, I can’t leave,” I said softly, shaking my head. “I have to see this through.”

  The pitch and volume of her voice had risen consistently over the course of the conversation, and it neared its breaking point as she continued to plead with me. “Why? You’ve already done more than anybody to save the world, and it’s not even your world!” She dove to her knees and stared up at me, the tears in her eyes now freely flowing down her face. “What about your farm? What about the peaceful life you wanted to live? That all goes away if you go out tonight!”

  I frowned. “Even so, I have to do it.” Her rising emotions had a strangely calming effect on me; while there was a hard knot growing in my stomach at the thought of being thrown back into the darkness between worlds, I had to remain in control if I were to have any chance at calming her down.

  She shook her head back and forth violently, sending shining globes of tears down to splash on the floor. “It’s not fair!” Her demeanor shifted all at once as she punched the floorboards repeatedly, leaving a fist-shaped crater filled with splinters and droplets of blood in her wake. “IT’S NOT FAIR!” she screamed to nobody. The air whistled in her throat as she strained to breathe and began to sob.

  Carefully, I slid down to the floor and took her injured hand in mine, letting out a burst of healing energy to close her cuts. “I know it’s not fair. I’m so sorry that I got you caught up in all of this.” I stared off through the wall as I reflected on the entirety of the situation. “I’m not sure if I’m cursed, or if I angered some sort of god, or if fate always had my life planned this way. That fate ruined my life once, and punished me in the next one when I tried to fight against it. I think it’s better for everyone if I just go along with it for once.”

  “I-It’s not better...for me,” she managed to say between violent sniffles. Slowly, she leaned her head down into my chest and pressed forward, until my back was up against the bedframe and she had partially collapsed into my lap.

  I ran my fingers through the loose strands of hair along the side of her face. “Even for you. If I don’t go, everybody you’ve ever known could die. Your parents, Val, everyone. What’s my life against the whole world?” The statement was true, but I couldn’t find the strength to accept the fact myself.

  Lia shook her head against my shoulder. “But it’s your life!” Her arms snaked around my torso and squeezed tightly. “I don’t want to be here...without you.”

  Although my heart ached from the suffering I felt in her aura, a smile came to my lips as she echoed my thoughts. “I don’t want to leave you,” I replied. “I’m going to do everything I can to make sure I stay here with you. I just...don’t want to make you a promise I can’t keep.”

  I scratched the top of her head in soothing circles as she curled further into a ball in my lap, drawing her knees up under her chin as she continued to cry. The room slowly grew brighter as the afternoon sun began to sink over the city, sending brilliant golden rays across the room to shine against the opposite wall. At one point, a set of heavy footsteps approached the door, but they retreated a moment later without knocking.

  Lia’s breathing gradually transitioned from labored cries to a more steady, measured pattern, and she eventually fell asleep still nestled up in my arms. I did my best to shift into a slightly more comfortable position without waking her, then closed my eyes and tried to join her. My head was a muddled mess of emotions, which filtered to the forefront now that Lia was no longer in an immediate panic. I mirrored her sadness and rage at the position I was in, and the fear of the upcoming darkness grew with every passing second.

  A new feeling had grown up out of the chaos during our conversation, and it was the only thing that enabled me to finally fall asleep: resolve. As terrifying as the night to come was, I knew what had to be done, and I knew why it had to be done. Even if it means I die again...I have to do it for her. For Lia. For Alda. For Amaya. For all of them.

  ---

  I blinked my eyes to fight off the haze obscuring my vision. My surroundings seemed to shift with every blink: in one moment, I was sitting on the floor of Marin’s guest room, with Lia wrapped tightly in my arms, but the next moment had me sitting alone on the edge of my bed in the room I once shared with Amaya. As I turned my head to observe the room, I noticed a heavy feeling of drag on my body, as if I were submerged in a tank of viscous liquid.

  “This is a dream,” I stated out loud, mostly for my own benefit.

  The sound of creaking wood caught my attention. “Oh, you’re a quick one, aren’t you?” asked a familiar female voice. The hair on the back of my neck stood up as I turned to find Amaya lounging sideways
in her usual chair, watching me with amusement. “How’ve you been, love?”

  I sighed. “Seeing as you’re just me, shouldn’t you already know that? We’ve done this dance before.”

  Her head lolled backwards over the arm of the chair lazily, spilling a golden cascade of hair down to brush along the floorboards. “If we’re both aware of that, and I’m still asking, I guess that shows just how much you want to talk to me, doesn’t it?” She giggled as she turned to face me upside-down. “So, spill it!”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. “I took your advice after our last, uhm, conversation. Lia and I talked, and I told her how I feel. It went really well, all things considered.”

  Amaya clapped her hands excitedly and shot back up to a normal sitting position. “Oh, that’s so great, Elden!” Her smile was shining and full of joy, just as I remembered it. “I bet you’ve been feeling better since then, right?”

  “Well, yes and no,” I said, tilting my head to one side in consideration. “It’s been great spending time with Lia, but recently I’ve been having these...episodes. I get so angry that I lose track of myself, and my flashbacks have been so vivid it’s like I’m actually reliving the memories.” Hearing the thoughts spoken out loud helped me to realize something. “I’m scared, Amaya. I don’t know what’s going on.”

  Her smile faded to a pursed frown. “I’m sorry to hear that, love.” She stood up and crossed the room to stand in front of me, taking my hands in hers. “I wish you could remember everything. You wouldn’t feel so terrible if you did.”

  “Remember...what?” I asked, confused. “I would never forget anything about you.”

  She shook her head. “Not consciously, no. But there are memories that you’ve locked away, for one reason or another.”

  “I don’t know what you mean, Amaya,” I told her, forgetting I was in a dream. “What memories? What am I forgetting?”

  “I can help you remember,” she said sweetly, caressing my cheek, “but you have to promise me something.”

  “Anything,” I said immediately, gripping her hand tighter.

  Somewhere in the distance, I heard the sharp sound of glass shattering. It pierced the dreamlike fog around us and cut straight into my chest, where it began to reverberate and grow in strength. A chill raced down my spine and tingled out into my extremities, and I felt every alarm rage out in my head all at once.

  “When the time comes,” Amaya whispered, lowering her face to within a few inches of mine, “you need to promise you’ll keep your eyes open.”

  “What?” I asked vacantly, too caught up in my panic to fully take in my surroundings. The shattering sound crashed over me again, deafening this time, and I closed my eyes and flinched away from the sound.

  “No, Elden,” she whispered again, her voice now buried within a dissonant collection of screams. My eyes shot open and beheld a scene of horror before me; Amaya’s face was riddled with pulsing black veins, branching out from the smoking pits that were her eyes and mouth. Her skin had faded to porcelain white, and her beautiful golden hair was burning within black, billowing flames. The cacophony of voices called out again, seemingly from everywhere at once.

  “EYES OPEN, ELDEN.”

  ---

  I screamed and threw my body backwards with every ounce of strength I had in a desperate attempt to escape the vision before me. I felt a sharp impact against my shoulder blades, followed a moment later by the sound of wood smashing against wood. My sword materialized in my hands, and I held it out in front of me, putting distance between me and the rest of the world.

  Although my eyes were open, the information they transmitted was lost before it reached my brain, and I stood in an undefined, dark world. It seemed as though time had frozen solid around me as I stood alone, defending myself against an unknown threat. My mind was too electrified to remember what it was that had caused my panic in the first place, but whatever it was, I could still feel its presence in my head.

  After what felt like hours, a sensation that had been hidden among the chaos inside me suddenly became clear: I was expending an enormous amount of mana. The revelation led to another, and another, and set off a chain reaction that brought my mind screeching to a halt. In just a few moments, the world around me had become crystal clear. I was standing in Marin’s guest room among the shattered remains of the guest bed’s wooden frame, and I was pointing my sword directly at Lia.

  My now clear mind processed the information with stunning efficiency. Lia’s arm was out towards me, and her eyes were wide with terror and concern. It looked as though she were frozen in place, but when I watched for long enough, I could see that she was actually approaching me at an almost imperceptibly slow pace. I attempted to lower my sword, but I found that my body reacted at a significantly reduced speed as well, though it was leagues faster than Lia’s movement.

  I woke up from a nightmare. My body reacted by putting distance between me and what I presumed to be the source of danger, which destroyed the bed I had fallen asleep against. My mind is processing information at such an accelerated rate that the world seems frozen in comparison, due to the Combat Acceleration enhancement which is being fueled by a massive expenditure of mana. There is no threat present.

  I cut off the flow of mana to the enhancement all at once, and the world disappeared out from around me once again, although this time my consciousness went with it. When I awoke, I found that I had collapsed against the upturned mattress and was now sprawled out across it. Lia was kneeling beside me and held my face in her hands. As my eyes flickered open, she let out a wordless cry of relief and pressed her forehead against mine.

  “Primes, you scared me, Lux,” she said, her voice shaking. “You really scared me.”

  “I’m, uhm, sorry about that,” I replied groggily, my head pounding after the intense shifting of mana. “I had a...nightmare.”

  “Are you hurt, Lux?” Val’s voice asked. I squinted my eyes and looked past Lia’s head, and found that both Val and Marin were standing in the doorway to the guest room.

  “No, I think I’m okay,” I said as I rubbed my temples. “What, err, what happened?”

  “You started screaming in your sleep,” Lia answered, sitting back on her feet. “I couldn’t wake you up no matter what I did. Marin and Val came to see what was wrong, and then you…” She looked to the sisters as she searched for the right words.

  “You threw yourself backwards in your sleep. It appears as though you knocked yourself unconscious in the process, as you toppled over before you truly gained your feet,” Val finished.

  So that whole ordeal took less than a second of real time? The idea was fascinating, but I had a hard time focusing on it over the throbbing headache. Carefully, I rocked forward onto my feet and stood, supporting myself on the wall with one hand. “Sorry about all this, everyone. I’m alright.” I surveyed the wreckage around me and cringed. “Marin, I’ll pay you back for the bed, and anything else I damaged.”

  “No, don’t worry about that! I’m just glad you’re okay!” Marin said with a nervous smile. “It was an awful bed anyways.”

  I pulled an imperial from my coin purse and tossed it to her. “I insist. I appreciate you feeding and sheltering Lia and me during this whole ordeal, so think of this as a thank you for that as well, if you’d like.” She stared wide-eyed at the coin in silence, turning it over in inspection in her hands. It sparkled in the thin beams of orange sunlight that lit the room, which finally registered in my dulled mind. “Speaking of which, what time is it? How long do we have before we need to leave?”

  “The streets will be filled with civilians attending to their evening business within the hour,” Val answered. “We will have the greatest chance of travelling to the Council district unnoticed if we move through the crowd.”

  Lia looked me over with apparent concern, so I gave her a reassuring nod. She nodded back and turned to Val. “We’ll be ready,” she declared.

  “I will give you time to prepare,”
Val said haltingly. She gave an awkward half bow, then turned and left the room, corralling Marin along with her.

  As soon as the door closed, I slumped back against the wall and cradled my pounding head. “You think you guys can handle this one on your own? I need another nap,” I joked with a rough chuckle.

  Lia didn’t laugh as she moved to my side and brushed the overgrown mop of black hair out of my face with the back of her hand. “What happened, Lux?”

  “I really did have a nightmare. It was...” I faltered as an image of the distorted visage of Amaya flashed angrily in my head. “It was about the Dominion again. The dreams have been getting more intense since we entered the city; I’m getting flashes of them while I’m awake now, too.” It felt wrong to lie to her, but I couldn’t stomach the idea of thinking of what I had seen in my dreams, let alone talk about it.

  “What about after you woke up? The energy burning off around you was so strong, I didn’t even have to use Detection to feel it.” She looked over to the closed door. “I’m not sure Val actually believes that you knocked yourself out by jumping out of your sleep, and I know that I don’t.”

  I sighed. “I think I activated some of my enhancements in my sleep. I think it was my Combat Acceleration, but it was so amplified that my mind was moving faster than the world around me. Coming down from a spell like that apparently has…” I groaned and slid down to the floor. “Ramifications.”

  Lia joined me on the floor and intertwined her hand with mine. “Are you going to be okay?”

  “Honestly?” I closed my eyes and leaned my head against her shoulder. “I have no idea.”

  She rested her head against mine and sat with me in silence. “That’s fine,” she said eventually. “No matter what happens, I’ll take care of you.”

  “Thanks, Lia,” I smiled. The pounding in my head had lessened slightly while we rested on the floor, though I attributed most of the recovery to simply being in her presence. “I love you.”