by Dean Murray
My mind recoiled from what I did after that. I rarely used my abilities during that time—relying on the power of the scepter—but when I did, my fueling emotion was an anger that was so strong it was nearly unhinged.
It was the destruction of Atlantis that finally brought me back to myself. I'd been too successful. My campaign to eradicate all of the civilizations that had threatened us brought Awakened we hadn't even known about into an alliance powerful enough to destroy Byron and the others in my absence.
Somehow the Lady found me and convinced me to entrust the scepter into her care. I died a short time later, hunted by the tattered remnants of the armies I'd shattered with bolts of lightning.
Things grew even darker after that. Human sacrifice abounded and being born an Awakened was a delayed death sentence. Once our powers awakened we never aged, but few of us lasted more than a few decades.
I skipped forward thousands of years, years where I seemed not to have any memories. The only flashes from that time period seemed to be fragments of memory seen through the Lady's eyes or occasionally through Intravil's.
I came back to myself partway through an incarnation, came back to concern in Kyle's eyes as he helped me out of bed. I relived the times in London that I'd read about in the journal in Kyle's bunker. I experienced the decades before that, and I found out that I was every bit as happy as my journal had led me to believe I'd been.
I felt the pain of our escape from London, and watched as Jace continued to hold himself in the background of my life as I tried to rebuild my relationship with Kyle, tried to connect with what was left of the man he'd been.
It all flashed through my mind in an instant, and then my eyes opened and met Kyle's back in the real world, the world where we each had a sword in our chest, and a battle between the Seelie and Unseelie Courts raged around us.
The pressure inside of my head had been matched with pain in my chest and a tingle in my arm. I'd allowed myself to become too distracted. He had the upper hand, but I finally understood something that I'd never fully understood before. Not in a dozen incarnations or ten thousand years.
Strong emotions could come about from circumstance. Fear, anger, joy, they could all be transitory things that washed through us and changed us for a time, but circumstance wasn't the key to the emotions that brought real power.
Real power came about by investment. Emotions capable of altering the landscape of the world, of creating artifacts or birthing new fae only occurred when someone had dedicated unimaginable resources towards an end.
The sword in my hands wasn't Bethany's, it was mine—the final of three artifacts that I'd created. I wasn't the only Awakened to have ever created an artifact, but by all indications I was one of the most successful. Each time it had been the result of decades or even a century of research, research that had been powered by concern for my friends and family, concern for the people I'd loved the most.
Each time I'd been convinced that my creating an artifact would be the key to saving the people who were most important to me, and each time I'd tapped into the joy that thought had brought to me.
The last time I'd known I wasn't going to survive to see the next sunset, but I'd still known that I'd succeeded, that I'd managed to create something that was going to eventually allow me to protect everyone I cared about.
It was going to take time to delve back through my memories and understand what the crystal sword did, but for now I knew it somehow connected me to past lives, and that it allowed me to tap into the emotions I'd felt when I'd created it.
Each time I'd touched that vast, powerful reservoir of emotion I'd been convinced that nothing could be stronger, but I'd been wrong. Kyle's rage at being thwarted in his centuries-long campaign to make sure that he could take control of the world was the equal of what I'd felt twenty years ago. It might even be slightly stronger.
It wasn't, however, as strong as the joy I felt at knowing that after thousands of years of effort I'd finally achieved what I set out to do. All of the people I'd ever cared about—all of the fae and Awakened who I'd sacrificed so much for—were here now with me and I finally had the power to protect them.
That was a joy that dwarfed anything I'd ever felt across ten thousand years of life. I reached down into that pool of emotion and began slowly pushing Kyle out of my body. The stream of memories leaving through my forehead was a torrent that should have drained me a dozen times over in just a few seconds, but my memories also seemed to be vast and limitless in ways that I didn't understand.
I freed myself from Kyle's attacks with an ease that shouldn't have been possible, and I watched fear blossom in his eyes. I pushed against the arteries leaving his heart, and felt him desperately trying to keep them from tearing.
His efforts weren't equal to the worst that I could do. I could have easily killed him then and there, but I held back. I pushed him right to the edge of his capacity, and I watched the light in his eyes go out. I watched his eyes turn from the shuttered, cynical windows of someone who'd seen far too much of the worst the world had to offer, to the innocent, bright eyes of a child.
I watched centuries of experience vanish and didn't relax my attack until he dropped to my feet, unconscious. I reached out to Bethany and Intravil—mind to mind—and asked them to watch over Kyle. I felt their shock over the fact that they couldn't block my thoughts anymore, but that was unimportant.
They acknowledged my request, and that was all the assurance I needed to pull Excalibur from my chest, healing myself at the same time that I pulled my latest creation from Kyle's chest and healed him without even touching him. I stepped away from Kyle and with a thought brought the war to a halt. Every Awakened fighting a metal-clad fae was instantly incinerated, and then a series of silver, spinning disks materialized at various points in the battlefield and cut the surviving dark fae to pieces.
It was only after every single threat had been neutralized that I finally let myself collapse.
Epilogue
I woke in a strange and wonderful bedroom. It reminded me a little of Kyle's bunker. It had the same lack of windows and the same extra-bright lighting aimed at making the room feel bright and airy.
As soon as Bethany realized I was awake, she shot out of the room like her wings were on fire. A few seconds later the tastefully-furnished room was filled with bodies. Dad and Ari were there—both looking a little shell-shocked as a result of the battle—as were Jace, Kat, Byron, Bethany, Intravil, and the Lady.
All of the people—nearly all of the people—I'd ever cared about were there with me. It wasn't quite perfect, but the fact that all of the rest of them would eventually be reborn into new incarnations meant that it would eventually be perfect.
I looked around the room and smiled at Byron first. "I assume I have you to thank for the accommodations?"
"Yes. We're down to just one ward around Camelot now, but it's still stronger than anything else within a thousand miles. It seemed prudent to get you and that sword somewhere safe while you were unable to defend yourself. The Seelie Court—aided by the few surviving Awakened—is busy mopping up outside. They seem to have things under control, but nobody wanted to take any risks—not with a weapon that apparently puts all other artifacts to shame."
The Lady nodded gravely. "You've handed us the opportunity we've been waiting thousands of years for. With nearly the entire Unseelie Court disembodied at one time there is nothing to stop us from destroying them again and again each time they manifest a new form. It will be a task that will take years, but with our superior mobility, there will be very few of them who escape."
She had questions, I could see that, but she seemed willing to let me decide what was answered and when. After thousands of years, we'd returned to the state we'd been in during my first incarnation. I was once again the one with the most answers. The most surprising part of all of that was the fact that she was perfectly happy for the table to be flipped around.
I had so much that I wanted to
tell all of them, but there was something else that was even more important. I checked that my new sword was still safely at my side, and then cleared my throat. "What about Kyle? Is he here too, or did you decide to leave him on the other side of the wards?"
Byron frowned. "I wanted to leave him out there, but Jace insisted he be brought inside. We have a work room that includes a smaller ward. It wouldn't be enough to keep him contained in his heyday, but now that his memories are all gone and we've secured both Excalibur and the necklace, it will do."
"Could you please take me to him?"
Nobody was particularly happy about that request, but after a second Byron nodded and led the way out of the bedroom. Everyone had reasons to dislike Kyle, but it was the flash of disappointment on Jace's face that was the hardest to bear.
He'd convinced Byron to offer Kyle sanctuary, but I could see now that he'd done so only because he'd known it was what I would have wanted.
Kyle was still asleep when we arrived, which defeated the purpose of going to him, but at least I could make sure that he didn't wake up locked in a magical prison. I thought for a moment that Byron was going to refuse to pull Kyle out, but I reached back into memories from times when my word had been law, and wrapped myself in the same kind of surety.
Once Kyle was resting comfortably in the bed I'd occupied only minutes before, I turned back to everyone else.
"Some of us have suspected for a while now that things went differently than everyone expected during the end of my last incarnation. Bethany knew what happened, but she did an amazing job keeping everything quiet."
"It was your last request. I couldn't do less than my best for you. It was the only way that I would get you back—the real you."
I could see the confusion on everyone else's face—everyone but Jace. He'd obviously understood more than he'd let on about what he'd found in my research journals. Not all, but enough to put many of the pieces together once the reality of my sword was staring him in the face.
"I was killed by Sandra and Mephistoles—just like everyone thought—but I spent the night before creating an artifact, creating this sword. It's not an accident that it's made of crystal—that's the only structure I could find that had a chance of storing our memories. This artifact is a composite of most of the memories I burned up during the process of creating it, but it's also much more.
"It also serves as a kind of magnet for all memories—especially for memories from my past incarnations. It connects me to those memories in ways that I still need to explore, but for now it's enough to say that I can experience some of my past lives and it also serves as an emotional reservoir."
Kat let out a low whistle. "That's how you were able to wipe Kyle clean. You weren't just burning memories from this incarnation, you were burning memories from thousands of years ago."
"Yes. That's also the reason for all of the other things that have been happening that we couldn't understand. I've been linked to this sword to some degree even while Bethany had it hidden away in the in-between. That's why I defaulted to happiness instead of anger, it's why my memories crystalized back through my entire life rather than just from the point of awakening forward. It's even the reason that I was able to pick up effects so quickly and the explanation for my being able to outlast Sandra in our fight. I should have lost more memories than I actually ended up losing."
"Why did you let Sandra kill you at the end of your last incarnation?"
Jace had asked the question, but I could see that he knew at least part of the answer already.
"The artifact needed time to mature and finish stabilizing."
"Now that it's stabilized, how much do you remember?"
"A lot. My earliest incarnations are very spotty, but I seem to be able to access any memories that are a part of a fae I'm actually in physical contact with. I remembered big portions of my first incarnation because the Lady was touching me while I was fighting Kyle."
I gave them a second to digest that particular piece of information. It was so obvious in a lot of ways, but none of us had seen it. Up until now, only the Lady had known that I was her creator. She'd no doubt known that I'd created Intravil, but even that knowledge had probably been hidden from all but a few people.
"There's more. It turns out that Byron was my original father in that first incarnation, and I created Intravil during a failed experiment during the time of Atlantis."
Kat looked like her jaw had come completely unhinged. "How are you remembering that now? You aren't touching either of them…"
"Once I access the memories that make them up, I created a duplicate of those memories. As time goes on, I'll regain everything that was ever lost—either because my sword will draw it to me, or because I come into contact with the fae who've absorbed those memories. For now though, the clearest memories—other than the stuff I got from the Lady and Intravil—are from my last incarnation. There are holes there—probably stuff that Kregor absorbed—but most of it seems pretty complete."
Jace flinched. He knew. He'd suspected, but now he knew that I remembered my time with Kyle with near-perfect clarity. I wished that there was a way not to hurt Jace, but I wasn't doing him any favors by hiding the extent of the changes my sword had worked on me.
It was bad enough that Jace knew I'd just spent what felt like years swimming back down memory lane—through a time when I'd been happily married to Kyle—but I could see that everyone else was starting to clue in too.
The Lady was the first to clear her throat. "Fenrir, the Minotaur and the Dragon aren't scheduled to rematerialize for a while still, but it's not a perfect science. It would probably be best if Intravil and I were out there ready to assist in case we get an unexpected surge of people reappearing."
I grabbed her arm, stopping her before she could leave. It was the kind of action that I never would have considered before this, but the balance of power had shifted back to something much more like our early days together.
I had a well of emotions and memories that was the next best thing to limitless. There was still a chance that she would eventually become more powerful than me, but that day was centuries in the distance.
As things stood now, even working two-hundred years' worth of effects to satisfy my debt to her wouldn't even be a sacrifice because I would know that those memories would eventually all make their way back to me.
"Were you ever going to tell me?"
"I don't know. I provided you with hints, but it was safer for you if nobody suspected that I had a weak spot where you were concerned. I've tried to tell you over more incarnations than most people can imagine, but you became so different after that first incarnation. You were darker—driven by anger more than anything else. I kept hoping each time you died that you would come back the way I remembered you from the first time around, but time and time again you didn't.
"I'd nearly given up hope by the time I saw you outside of Kyle's bunker. You were still driven mostly by anger, but for the first time in forever, there was an undertone of joy there. I could sense it in the energy I absorbed during the fight with Fenrir."
I nodded in understanding of all of the things she wasn't saying. Nobody else could possibly understand the lonely vigil she'd experienced. I would probably be hailed as a hero for having turned the course of this battle and saving billions of people, but it had been the Lady who had laid much of the ground-work for our victory.
She'd fought an unending war against the dark fae even before the Unseelie Court had existed, and she'd done it primarily because I—in my first incarnation—had asked her to. It was a kind of loyalty that defied understanding or definition.
"Thank you for trusting me with the Scepter of Storms. I know how hard that must have been for you."
"It wasn't as hard as you think. I'd seen you relinquish it before—I knew that you would give it back to me again when the time was right."
One by one, the rest of my friends and family filed out of the room. Ari went quietly, but I coul
d see the questions in my dad's eyes as Kat led him out. I gave him my most reassuring smile, hoping that it would help him see that he was always going to be my father, that nothing I'd remembered had changed that.
Byron might have been my first father, but that didn't take anything away from the man who had spent the last seventeen years caring for me, the man who'd pressed on even after Mom had died. I owed a great debt to him, a debt that I was going to do my best to repay in the time I had left with him.
It wasn't surprising to me that Byron lingered on after most of the others had left. "I'm not sure what to say. The idea that I might have had a family in past incarnations isn't exactly a shock, but I never thought that any of them might have been Awakened. I never thought that I might be standing face to face with someone who could tell me how it all started. Where do we go from here?"
"We take it a day at a time. It's going to take some time, but I'll do my best to fill you in on the high points. I don't know anything at all about several of your incarnations, but in the two I know best, you were a great man, one I was proud to know."
"I only wish that I'd continued that legacy this time around. I nearly cost us everything with my vain quest to sidestep the violence I saw coming for me centuries ago."
I reached up and wrapped my arms around him. "There is a thread of shared experience that runs through our various incarnations, Byron. It's slender—so thin that most of the time we never even suspect it might be there, but it is. After what you've been through in some of your previous lives, I don't blame you for wanting a break from war.
"It doesn't make you any less of a great man. There is a reason that the Lady agreed to assist you. She broke thousands of years of neutrality to help you create Camelot. I think that she recognized you from my stories. I think that she wanted to help the man I'd told her about, the man who made me what I was."