Too much ‘telling’ for one chapter -.- I need to do better… Also, this ending will likely not change while doing my rewrite. (Well, the diction and minor points might, but main points will not.)
When I do the rewrite I will likely change some stuff about how I present DeMorte and his personality to better fit this ending, but I will put more about that at the end.
Though I do regret that Leo’s appearance near the end practically turning into a cameo, when I wrote it… well, the characters actually say it all.
2 Minor reminders:
-If it starts in quotes and does not end in quotes, it is either a typo or the same person speaking for multiple paragraphs (apologies if this confuses or aggravates anyone)
-I am not done with this story just yet!
Apologies if you find any mistakes, please post if you see any.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy the chapter.
Chapter 40: Rebirth
“I have to admit, I did not expect that.” I heard the bookish voice just as I woke up, though I did not see him. I covered my eyes to block out the bright light that seems to be staring me directly in the face.
“Too bright.” I mumbled sitting up with an unpleasant headache. I was in some sort of sunken bowl of rock, but it was too perfectly smoothed around the edges for me to think that it was natural. It partly reminded me of that odd noble object… a fish bowl? Either that or the arena where DeMorte used to fight his challengers.
Wait, DeMorte…
“Not time to wake all the way up just yet.” A raspy voice made me turn to find a disgusting looking being that looked like it had just climbed out of a cauldron of acid. Where he came from, I had no idea, but he hardly looked threatening and even I could not feel any magic coming from him.
“If you want me to fix your face or something first, I will need a large feast first.” I half joked, wondering what in the world happened to him. I tried to ignore my headache and concentrate on what he said. “Wake up all the way? Where are we anyway?”
“A dream-like world between your mental construct and the real world.” He smiled and I nearly flinched despite myself, because of how fresh his wounds were he made a ghastly sight. “Think of me as your convenient explainer, since that one is not much of a talker.”
His head hardly moved, but I realized that the burn man had indicated behind me and I turned to find a young man. He was basically the opposite of the burned man in every way, with skin so pale and unscarred that I suddenly found myself wondering if he was even real, or had somehow been grown in a vat somewhere.
Point in fact, the burned man had just suggested that none of this was real.
I turned and took a few steps back, trying to keep both men in my peripheral vision. “Oh and would you mind explaining who or what you 2 are?”
A wheezing laugh answered me and both figures slowly moved towards each other, making it easier for me to track them. “That would be too easy. We do have some time after all and we never get to chat like this. That said, it would be odd if you did not at least know our names.” He gave a small, slightly painful looking bow before continuing. “I am De and my friend here is Morte.”
I seriously wanted to knock them around a bit. De and Morte? Really?
The burned man spoke around another wheezing laugh. “It is true you know, although I know that you hate it more than anything else in the world, we are who we are.” The laughing stopped. “3 heads, remember?”
I felt slightly sick. This could be a Nalk trick, but if it was not… “I am not insane.” I said quietly.
The burned man’s face looked sad, but also wary. “I would need a definition of insanity before I could comment on that.”
The other figure just nodded silently, while my mind raced in every direction while trying to figure out what was going on.
In the end I took a deep breath and decided to just concentrate on what was going on in front of me. I had 2 men who were claiming to be… derivatives of me or something. Now, what currently mattered was not their identity, but why they were here. “Alright then, why are you here De?”
Another ghastly smile, I did not react this time though, I had seen worse. “We wanted to talk with you about your choices, because you have quite a few and things are only going to get more complicated as time goes on. Starting with your name.”
He paused and I found myself annoyed, why did he want me to prompt him? “My name?”
“Yes, who are you right now?”
The urge to hit him swelled again and I nearly followed through with it. “Is that not obvious?”
“If it was, I would have called you by your name already.”
I blinked and realized that he really had not called me by a name thus far. “I am De-” my voice caught in my throat and I could not get the rest out.
“No, I thought we already settled this, I am De.” Stoning man! “Now, who are you?”
It felt like someone was steadily applying more and more pressure on a sword that was placed, edge down, the top of my head.
I was in a fight. There was a weight, a massive amount of discontent, which used to be in the back of my mind, pushing me. Now it felt like I had lost that weight, the thing that had driven me forward was no longer pressing down on me.
It felt both wonderfully liberating and terribly wrong at the same time. If I could compare it to anything it would be like shrugging off my armor after a long and vicious fight. It felt like I was shedding a burden and getting rid of something I was intimately familiar with at the same time.
“What?” I did not even realize that I actually asked the question aloud until De responded.
“It is alright to be confused, just give it some time. We just had quite the odd experience, though thankfully our burns are more metaphorical in nature than what my face and body would suggest.” He wheezed in what was likely a sigh, but could have been a brief laugh instead. “That is what can happen when you give someone the determination and time to create a counter for someone else, luckily we were used to such things, but even so…”
“It was Bella and DeMorte who were fighting, but I only know I won… so who am I? Should that not be really easy to answer?” I won, I knew that, but what did that mean? How exactly did I ‘win’ the fight?
“Well we are-” De stopped speaking and looked at Morte, who started talking for the first time since he appeared.
“Our mind is currently reforming and trying to decide how to organize itself. Technically it should be doing this automatically, in the subconscious, but the way the mental construct came unraveled near the end was counter-productive. When DeMorte’s consciousness slipped and Bella attacked the remnants that resulted from that slip, we suffered limited brain damage to surprisingly specific areas.”
I blinked, his voice was surprisingly youthful and I was, while not quite unnerved, certainly distracted by it. Especially since the voice finally kicked my memory into gear. It was a fun experiment I did a while back, I changed my vocal cords to match what my voice in my previous life sounded like and recorded it.
Hearing it without my own body distorting the sound was odd at the time, but that recording was exactly what he sounded like and it was much stranger hearing it from someone else. Though De was too raspy to tell, I thought that there might be similarities there too.
Wait, “Remnants?”
“Remnants of the Guilt” De said simply.
This time I flinched badly. “Do you mean that…”
This time Morte spoke. “You kept shadows, imprints of the people who you killed. Each soul added to your memories and changed you, thus you became first a duality and eventually a tri-pronged existence. With your past, present, and future all separating their existences to keep some form of sanity. You would have become a Soul Mage by any other name, if the Remnants had been any stronger.”
My mouth opened and closed uselessly a few times. I knew that I retained brief flashes, insights that came from knowing just who someone was, but I always thought that those were just memories. That I had the same thing that all other Soul Mages had, the same danger of madness and was completely unaware of it was…
I felt sick. My head was felt like it was slowly being cut in 2, I seemed to be having an identity crisis, and I just learned that my entire understanding of my own sanity was questionable.
Plus, I finally realized something important based off what these 2 were supposed to look like.
Both of them had taken their ‘metaphorical’ forms. Morte was the young and unexperienced form of DeMorte, a clone that had not truly lived outside of a small and safe box. De on the other hand, looked like he had gone for a flight and gotten too close to a star.
What was it that De had said? 3 heads?
“My symbol. You 2 are the outside heads, purely metaphorically though, because you are not actually separate beings. Unless you are a Nalk illusion of course, but even then, I would still be the middle head, the leader.” I ignored everything else for the moment and concentrated on that.
They both nodded in unison. “That is why we have these names.” De took the lead again. “I represent the past and your motivations. As you can see by my body, Bella did do some damage to us, although that was actually quite helpful from my point of view.” He grimaced and I noted for the first time that I had a sense of who they were. It was not a complete understanding, but an awareness of them, which was slowly growing in the back of my mind.
He continued. “Those shadows, the Remnants, they became more stubborn as time went on and while they could not interfere with our actions directly, they could lean one direction or another and make life more complicated for us. You called them a weight without realizing just how apt that description actually was. They would interact with your subconscious and get behind your decisions, pushing you to stick to them.
“It took them decades to come together, but in the end it seems that it was literally the will of the dead that you make their deaths worth something. The fact that there was now a new body and a new world in front of them may have just confused them more, but I cannot say for certain.” He made a point of meeting my eyes, “I am just a representation of the mental divides within your own mind. I am not your subconscious itself, so I do not know everything about the Remnants, just the broad strokes.”
I felt the other 2 seem to get closer without seeing them move. It was very gradual, but I still took a step back to counter the feeling.
“So you represent my past and the other one my future.” All 3 of us nodded, it was questionable if I was still sane, but trying to determine if this was a Nalk plan or if it was a Nalk attempt to use reverse phycology would just confuse me even more. I already had too much nonsense to deal with as it was. “What did you mean Bella’s damage to you was helpful?”
“Ah that, she effectively burned away the spirits that were pushing you from behind. That was the major source of all the damage we suffered collectively. Fortunately, she basically spent the last few cycles poking around your brain and learning everything she could about you. If you think about it, the fact that your memories had to be carved into this new body would have made it fairly obvious to spot… or at least that is my theory, but none of us know if we can use our spirit as a sort of extra memory space.
“She also paid an important price for that, which was why I asked you who you are.” De pointed at his eyes with 2 fingers, “You will notice that we are not blinded, like we should be, which obviously means that some change within you has taken place, but there is also the thing in your forehead to consider.”
I blinked and started to reach up to my forehead when I noticed that my body was not the same as it had been. It was not scared like De’s was, nor perfectly pure of scars like Morte’s, but instead it was almost translucent. With faint black veins that ran through an odd greenish smoke and a golden outline that showed where my skin was supposed to be. My body was also different, taller and more muscular than Bella’s body, but still slightly feminine.
It was more nonsense in a day so full of the stuff that I felt tired despite the fact that the day, if I recalled correctly, should have only just started outside of this place. Regardless, I touched my forehead and felt that there was something there. It was cool and oval in shape, traveling lengthwise above and between my eyes.
“What is this?” I asked, the other 2, obviously unable to see it myself.
“It is a yellow stone of gem or some type.” De said simply. “If I had to guess, I would say that-”
“SHHH!” Morte cut De off and shook his head. “He still needs to decide who he is before you can tell him that. Although the fact that we have been addressing him as a male might have already effected the direction of his path.”
I felt concern and a vague certainty growing in us. We were connected and we knew what happened, but it had to be reached naturally. “Bella burned out many of the shadows,” I acknowledged, a vague memory coming back to me, “but she also paid a price. She left herself open and DeMorte.” I frowned, there was something wrong, “He did not kill her. He…”
The headache made itself known again and I winced, but I thought about that memory hard. I somehow knew what both of them wanted and what they did. Bella wanted to live, but DeMorte thought that she meant to kill him.
Though her actions that started growing a thought in his mind. In fact they both realized it at the very end of their fight.
DeMorte realized, on some level, that he was being pushed. The Remnants thought of Bella as part of them and the thought that she could remain independent was impossible. She was a brief figure, someone that should just be subsumed into their collective consciousness and they pushed DeMorte down that path. With him thinking that Bella was never meant to exist and that it would be easy to absorb her, a fragment of his existence, he did not bother trying to coexist.
Bella, for her part, realized that DeMorte had mistaken her. Her original thoughts about DeMorte were familial, but as she equated absorption with her death as an individual, Bella slowly realized that DeMorte was an enemy. She tried a few ingenious tricks that would likely not work on anyone else, in any other situation, before she finally thought that she own.
Then she found out that DeMorte had taken care to account for her feelings and honestly thought that they were the same. That he was holding back the weight of the Remnants and trying to convince her with words as much as force. After all, the Remnants could not stop DeMorte’s other driving force, something that even they likely feared, the Guilt.
DeMorte had it practically engraved into his brain to try and avoid the guilt if at all possible, so he tried to avoid directly attacking and ‘killing’ Bella, even though he did not seem to recognize it at the time.
In the drawn out fight that resulted, Bella finally figured out that she could never truly win, as long as DeMorte wanted to absorb her, he would in the end. So, she did the only thing she could do and removed his reason for wanting to absorb her instead.
The Remnants, the shadows of the dead, had pushed DeMorte so hard that he had barely considered his own first rule. ‘Know both your and the enemies’ objective.’ If he had, DeMorte would have realized that Bella could be extremely helpful for him in the long term, perhaps even casting spells alongside him in battle.
Instead, they both fought unnecessarily… though Bella did have more than a few problems with DeMorte’s personality too…
I shook my head and tried to concentrate on what happened after that. Bella attacked the shadows and DeMorte’s memories, burning them away. However, in doing so she left herself open to attack by the remaining shadows then…
Then DeMorte regained control. He ended the fighting, crushing everything with his will, with his anger. He had been controlled, manipulated, and had not noticed it at all.
Looking back, the Guilt might have been a reason that the Nalks themselves had trouble with him. So from my point of view it was actually quite reasonable for him to not notice something that grew over a period of decades.
Concentrate.
DeMorte crushed the Remnants who were still attacking Bella into a sphere and burned it away before turning to Bella. He did not kill her though, I knew that, I just… could not remember what he did.
The headache pushed me away from those memories and I realized that the other 2 were now quite close. I tried to step back, but it felt like I was trapped.
“You have to choose who you are and who you become.” They spoke together. “We will still be here, but you must make that decision before anything else can proceed.”
I stared at them and realized that they were close enough to- before I could finish that thought, my body moved and I hit them both. Since I was more interested in just hitting them both than I was actually hurting them, I did not put my weight into either blow. “I am who I am.” I stated forcibly. “Both of you need to shut up about what my name is. I define my name, not the other way around.”
They blinked in unison and smiled. It was freaking creepy, especially when they spoke together again. “In that case, you should be ready to remember.”
Then De spoke without Morte. “I will still be your past, but how you interpret the past changes with every moment in the present and it can change what you see for the future, so please be careful.” He seemed to turn to dust at that point, disintegrating before my eyes.
I felt a part of my mind settle as he did and my headache finally started to disappear in earnest.
Morte remained and spoke up. “The past creates the present and the present creates the future, but you never like the complicated stuff that I come up with anyway. A thousand plans for a thousand different options and possibilities in the world, yet you always keep me on my toes. Whether DeMorte or Bella or something else altogether, we will adapt to you and you to us.” He started to fade, not disappear like De did, but fade as if he were just a shadow himself. “Though 3 heads might not be enough for what is coming in our future.”
Even my ‘other heads’ were dramatic it seemed. I finally felt my headache disappear and I ignored the knowledge that I could ‘regrow’ those 2 on my shoulders at any time.
I looked up at the opening above me and ignored the bright glare of the star in the sky while diving back into my memories.
DeMorte… he had crushed Bella down, reducing her without killing her so that he could deal with his own mind first. He could not ignore the damage that she had helped cause, but she had taken away the pressure to absorb her, so he instead…
So I instead put her in here for safe keeping. I reached up to my forehead and touched the stone there. It was warm and if I pushed I could feel Bella in there. She had been hurt though, reduced by the Remnants who attacked her.
As it stood I could absorb her, rebuild her into another part of my personality, or even use her as a receptacle for any and all future shadows. It was my decision and mine alone…
…
…
…
I ripped Bella’s concentrated essence from my head and concentrated on the star. It should not have been so bright, but Nalk tricks aside, I figured that it was my subconscious giving me a hint. I forced my eyes to ignore the brightness of the star and threw Bella’s stone up into the air.
She flew farther than the natural laws of the world would normally allow, but stone them all anyway, this was my world and my world needed 2 stars.
A few moments later, Bella reached where I wanted her to be and seemed to explode. The yellow stone became a nice yellow star, albeit noticeably smaller than its partner.
“Wake up, Bella, we need to talk.”
I rose up in the air with a thought and left the fishbowl of a cave, rising into the sky. On a whim I also produced wings on my back, since I was flying.
I did not pay attention to the area around me, but concentrated on the star that represented Bella.
“I am still alive?” Her voice was weak, but it still carried so that I had no trouble hearing it.
“For now.” I kept my voice simple, not cold, but not warm either. “We need to talk about the future Bella.”
I heard, or felt, a sigh reverberate through the air. “Fine, what do you want DeMorte?”
“A decently sized penis, 2 or 3 beautiful women, a large feast, and some Furutsu alcohol, but that is not important right now.” I would have made a deadpan face, but I did not currently have a face.
There was a pause, before a slightly wary Bella responded. “Oh is that all? Well, I am not sure what your definition of a ‘decently sized’ sex organ would be, but I categorically refuse to give you that monster you used to have. In any case, I suppose the question becomes: ‘what do you need?’ DeMorte.”
“What I need is to evolve.”
…
Was it that hard to accept?
“DeMorte, even ignoring the fact that individuals cannot evolve, only populations, I still find that statement too off-balance, even for you.”
I smiled, or tried to… not having a face was odd, but I was vaguely sure that the smoke was responding correctly. “Also, please stop that smile as it is creepy.” Ah, so it did work.
I stopped smiling and refused to sigh, I wanted a more relaxed atmosphere, but I guess this was the best I was going to get. “I want you to join with me Bella, specifically, as an extra set of eyes to watch over me and second guess my moves.”
“Pardon?”
“We are going to face the Nalk pawns that they call Players after this. If I understand their rules well enough, our biggest disadvantage will be that the Nalks can talk to or at least nudge others at any time. Therefore they can see what plans I have and counter them by simply having their Players go left or something similar. In order to counter this I would need someone to bounce ideas off in a way that the Nalks would not overhear.
You defied me to the point where you were actually able to hurt me and even chose an imaginative option to beat me. Not only that, but you beat me to the extent where I feel obligated to congratulate you. I can count on a single hand how many people have gotten the best of me and I want you to know that you did that better than anyone else… including my wife.”
“I am honored to have almost, but not quite, have beaten you while you held back.”
“Sarcasm help nothing right now Bella. The point is that I think you can make me stronger and to that extent I am willing to change. In fact, regardless of what you choose, I plan on working as a traveling mender as soon as we can escape from the city.”
“So you want me to be your mental sparring partner? Do you think that doing a little medical work will suddenly make you okay in my eyes? In your own eyes? You have more than a few issues DeMorte and I am not sure that I can deal with them for the rest of our natural life.”
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
I took a deep breath. “That is part of why I want you to join with me. You should be able to stay just separate enough from me to see what I plan and try to comment on it from a slightly more impartial view. I want you to be my watcher.”
She shook her head. “A watcher like what I suspect that you are thinking of needs to have the power to stop something if it needs to be stopped and would I not need my own watcher? To keep you trusting that I am not just disagreeing with you.”
I carefully weighed the words before I said them. Partly because I needed to be careful to say it correctly, but also partly because I did not want to cheapen the words. “I want you to be someone I can trust to watch me while the rest of the people I plan to gather watch us both, plus… I want to trust you Bella.”
That got her, the star that represented her flickered and a ball of light detached from the mass to float down to me.
Slowly it morphed into a shape that I knew fairly well. She was rather thin and frail, with distinctly pointed ears that were pointlessly elongated by the Nalks. Her other features were hard to see since she was made of light like I was of green smoke. She was however, noticeably smaller than me, leaving me towering over her like… well, rather like a demon of legends would the protagonist.
The yellow-orange orbs that represented Bella’s eyes narrowed as they stared at me. “Who are you and what have you done with DeMorte?”
I opened my mouth to announce that I ate him, because he was crunchy and good with a side of tomato sauce, but I relented. “I did nothing to him, but I did have to look through both of our minds while figuring out who I was supposed to be. It gave me a new perspective on what I planned to do before and what I could do instead.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that burning holes in someone’s brain does have a bit of an effect on their behavior, little girl.”
“What about our body?” Smooth subject change.
Luckily, that particular question had become spectacularly easy to answer. “I had far too many children, problem children and otherwise, in my previous life. To the point where I could die childless for 10 more lifetimes and not regret it. As a male I would have significantly more… power in making sure that such things were impossible, but there is another way, which is partly why I used the word evolve.”
“Wait, so just like that you are going to give up on the thing that you have been pushing and fighting me over for the last 8 cycles?” Her eyes narrowed further, which was only practical because of her current form.
I tried to raise an eyebrow in response, but had no idea how successful I was, darn smoke face. “What part about someone burning holes in my brain did you not understand? Stones I am glad I only changed this much, you could have driven us insane if you had not spent so long traipsing through my memories before our little fight. Your aim was quite good. Anyway, why you are acting so surprised at the changes you caused?”
I continued without letting her answer. “Besides, I never said I was going to stay a woman.” I sent her a pulse of what I had in mind directly to her.
Finally her orb eyes widened again. “This is… you want to become genderless? Does that not count as a literal dead-end in evolution? I mean, really DeMorte, just stop using the word if you do not know what it means.”
That last part made me grimace, “I know what the word means Bella, besides the idea that resulted in my current goal is from your head.”
Bella got it almost immediately, “The genetic recoder.” I nodded. It would have been ready by the time we were about to turn 16, but I chose to concentrate on becoming male another way because of the time constraints and danger of using it, so its creation fell behind. The magical device was supposed to transform someone based on the changes it made to their genetic code, but actually using it on myself would likely just get myself killed.
If we used it on someone else though, well, Dras could be considered a preview of people to come.
“Why?” Bella had thought about it fairly hard for a moment and now she was concentrating on me again. “What would be the purpose DeMorte? A private army? A personal force that you could use to conquer another kingdom for yourself?”
I hissed. “Is there anyone with more inclination to not kill others than me? Anyone at all Bella!?” I felt my form growing and changing, but I was not doing it to try an intimidate her. I wanted to show her the body of my spirit form in case she did not notice previously. Though I did not completely change, deciding to keep my limbs and wings while increasing their size.
“I have scars Bella, perhaps you did not see them because you have grown too used to them. I know that I certainly do my best to ignore them, but they even show up on my spirit form.” The smoke that represented my torso changed into reptilian scales and I felt my other 2 heads grow. The scars that covered my entire body were impossible not to see like this.
Bella’s response both impressed and infuriated me. “Those do not matter, what matters is why you suddenly want to ‘help’ turn strangers into people as strong as our current body is.”
I let out another hiss, this one so deep that it bordered on a growl. “These scars are a part of who I am Bella, they are what helped make me who I am and I am sure that if you looked closely you would see a few fresh burn marks too. Oh, and I will ask you to remember that this is my spirit form, which means that only the meaningful scars show themselves, the ones that made me who I am.”
That diverted her attention for a moment, but I knew what she was going to say next, so I went ahead and started talking.
“I should answer your question, though.” I took a breath. “I know that my views on family were… a little skewed based on my experiences and when I was sorting us out.” I sighed. “I remembered and compared your experiences and beliefs to my own. I have no desire for more children, nor to fight another war, and I am still not particularly fond of trusting other, but…” Bella waited patiently as I tried to make sure the phrasing was right. “…I want to live a different life from what I did previously.
“I want to see where I can go with this knowledge. I want to see how much we can learn about the world around us.” I shook my head. “You know, the single most depressing thing I noticed about your memories Bella is how much you grew to hate me without thinking about the future. You used to dream about how we could change things and make the lives of others better, but then you concentrated only on me and how you disliked who I was.
“People are going to continue to be themselves no matter what I do, but I do not feel the need to be the King in charge of their idiocy. What I want is to give them more choices. I want to have a group that I can trust surround me and help me stay out of trouble after I – after WE start improving the lives of others.
“That said, I am not going to run a charity Bella, I can see us ending up as some rich noble’s personal mender, but I do feel that I have taken more than enough lives and if I can avoid that then almost anything would be preferable… Though I do not think that the Nalks will let that happen, so I plan to make very, very close friends with the Histones for when we get sucked into the fighting.
“Then, no matter what happens in the Nalk’s accursed game, we should be able to do some good in this life. Plus, who knows, maybe my soul will find its way back to Gorith after this is all over and he will take those actions into account when he weighs my soul… assuming it is not destroyed first.” I gave a half-hearted laugh at that.
All of my heads stared down at Bella’s form of light, though I felt that the other heads felt different than usual, they were still reptilian. I deliberately kept my center head human, but I knew that hardly felt right. The wings and limbs, however, felt like something I should have obtained a long time ago.
Although… if this was to be my new spirit form, then it was a serious indicator of my mental state and how much I had changed today… because of this little girl.
Bella for her part had watched me as closely as possible without moving and I could practically feel her judging and weighing every word that I spoke. “If I refuse?”
I almost lied to her and simply told her that nothing would happen, but I thought better of it. “I cannot have you as a risk in my head Bella. If you refuse, I will crush your existence down into a small fragment like I did previously and find a way to either place you in a stillborn or a clone of our current body.”
She stared at me, “That hardly seems like something you would have offered me previously.”
“It was not, but it should have been.” I admitted.
Her voice was quiet. “Do you actually think that you could do that?”
“For anyone else? No. For you? Maybe. For myself? No. I am not sure how many memories I can live with, much less pass on into another body, but for destroying the Remnants that were pushing me without my knowledge, I will try. We will have to experiment on that to find out for sure, though I admit that it would basically be practicing with Soul Magic…”
Her face shifted at that, as if swallowing something bitter. “I can change my mind later?”
“I do not think so, I need to be able to count on you Bella.”
“Are you going to keep being a stoning graveborn?”
“Most probably.”
“So you are still going to kill people?”
“Yes, but only as needed.”
“Your definition of ‘needed’ worries me.”
“So help me change.”
“Do you think you can?”
“…Life, by its simple act of being, changes everything around it. Everything and everyone changes little girl, stones, I have been changing just while in front of you, talking about the future. That said, I am just asking you to help me control what I change into. In the end it is your choice.”
“I do not like my choices.”
“Those who do are either fortunate or stupid.”
“…Old stone-soul.”
That was a new one… I liked it.
I slowly held out my hand, though paw might have been more appropriate. Gigantic as I was in comparison to Bella’s small form I felt surprisingly vulnerable and exposed. That said, I just had most of my beliefs about ‘who I was’ turned on their head and then get rolled up into an improvised weapon to metaphorically bash me over the head a few times… I had been vulnerable for a lot longer than I originally thought.
I had made too many mistakes to not want someone backing me up from now on, especially in my head. I lived a life based on luck, brutality, and risk.
With my life as the Bandit King over, even in my head, I now wanted to live a different life. If I could avoid bloodshed, good, but if not, I would not hesitate.
I was not the Bandit King anymore, but I might still think like him a bit. If there was a better way to remind myself than keeping Bella around, I could not think of it.
Bella herself was hesitating, but when she came to her decision, it did not leave me disappointed.
“I do not like this and we are far from being friends DeMorte, but you need someone to keep an eye on you so…” There was the slightest pause between her words and when she extended her hand to mine, but I did not care.
“Thank you, Bella.” I smiled as her hand touched the tip of a claw I did not notice before. Did I tell my hand to grow claws? It still felt right.
“Still a creepy smile.” This time my smile grew wider and Bella’s image shrunk down. Part of her dissipated into the air around us, into my mind, while the rest of her compressed into a small stone again, leaving me alone.
She would be my binary partner, my Beta, into the future. Although, how much she would talk to me, or even if it was possible for her to talk to me like she used to, I had no clue. Still, it was over and now I could finally wake-
I felt my body change. My head elongated and became more reptilian while my entire body grew scales and my wings became leathery as they grew even larger. My arms and legs also developed differently and I felt an extremely odd sensation which could only be described as growing a tail.
Bella, in her yellow stone or gem or whatever form, also started hovering in midair before she flew up and directly impacted my forehead. She then proceeded to imbed herself there in the most painful way possible, with brute force. After a moment to collect myself from the pain I felt what seemed like a ‘you got what you deserve’ message pop into my head.
I tried to hiss, but it came out as a more beastly snarl. Then I felt Bella’s energy start radiating out to the other heads. I looked to my left and right as, shockingly, her energy congregated in their blind eyes. Quickly they started to glow and they seemed to have their sight restored, although it was not under my control, but Bella’s.
I also felt an incredibly itchy sensation coming from the gem/stone/Bella (who seemed amused that I was confused what she was) and mentally created a mirror to see what happened.
Bella had turned into a third eye on my forehead…
I think my personality wore off on her more than it should have, because while it felt oddly correct, it was far creepier than any shadow smile I could have created.
So I was now a 3 headed winged reptile with 4 limbs and seven eyes… why did that remind me of some old story…
I felt some irritation and realized that Bella had taken offense to the creepy comment. Quickly deciding that it was time to go, I gave a parting glance at the binary stars.
They felt… balanced somehow. Ah, did they feel like home or something? A growing annoyance killed the thought.
I willed myself to wake up from this mental world. It was time to have a talk with that familiar voice.
---------------------------------
The familiar face of said voice was there to greet me when I opened my eyes. “Leo,” I greeted in a slightly rough voice.
“I give you greetings, but I wonder what name I should call you by from now on?” Leo responded politely.
“Dragoon, King of the world.” I answered, deadpan.
Leo blinked and copied me, “How about Sill, princess of sand?”
“DeMorte will do fine.” I stood up.
“So the Bandit King yet lives?”
“Was there any doubt?”
“Yes, actually there was.” Leo sighed as I stretched. It was barely light out, only a bit brighter than when I say down, but I still felt the need to stretch. Leo stared at me, watching me through his glasses. “You might be interested to know my people have only interfered in your new life a few times, before you were born, when I set up the barrier,” I happily did not feel the need to wince at that, “when you escaped the Sister’s temple, and when I gave your guard a stomach virus.” I froze at the last one.
It was only a slight surprise that the Nalks had a hand in helping to get me arrested, but that Leo had helped me escape was a surprise. Maybe it was arrogance, but it never occurred to me.
‘It was partly arrogance, but it was also partly how desperate you were to escape.’ Bella whispered in my ear… thankfully her voice more melodious than sultry. I felt a brief stab of pain in the back of my mind.
“Why are you telling me?” I asked, quietly adding ‘and why should I believe you’ in my head.
Leo shrugged, “I originally wanted to have a nice long talk with you about the future DeMorte, but I get the feeling that it would be wasted. So instead I figured that it would be best to confirm something that you have no doubt thought about: that my people are good enough at predictions that we have to forecast decades in advance to keep things fun.” He met my eyes and bored into me. “You would have a very hard time predicting what events were or were not influence by us so just be yourself.”
I snorted and reached over to scratch at the runes surrounding me. I did just enough damage to break their patterns and render them inert. “If you wanted me to do that Leo, you never should have told me about your precious ‘game’ in the first place and just reincarnated me without saying a word.”
“We tried that once, it did not work out well.” Leo looked annoyed by the memory.
I snorted. “I take it that you have ‘forecasted’ my decision about this then.” I picked up the diary I spent so much trouble getting just yesterday.
Leo nodded. “It depended on how your merge went, but this was hardly likely to happen.”
“Happy to be unpredictable.” I grunted.
“I never said that it was unpredictable, just unlikely.”
I stared Leo in the eyes, “I was looking forward to talking with you, but there is not much to discuss is there?”
“Not particularly, though, I do have a question for you DeMorte, before I go.” I raised an eyebrow at Leo, obviously if he could forecast what I was going to do he would not need to ask. So was he actually asking anything, or was he telling me something? “What will you do about Dras? He was blamed for your escape, since there was clearly no way you could have done it yourself.” He explained it so blandly that the words took a second to register.
I grimaced. Dras… “We will see.”
Leo stared at me for a moment before nodding, “yes, yes we will,” then he vanished. “I wish you luck, DeMorte-Bella, as you will soon witness what the Game is really like as it will begin in just under a full cycle. You will feel it through the ground when it does.”
…I really wanted to know how he did that. After Leo disappeared both his voice and that odd Nalk energy they used bounced everywhere around me and made it nearly impossible to tell where he was.
As he stopped talking though, I felt the energy leave and quietly made sure to both collect my things and make sure that all of my runes were destroyed, before sneaking away.
I would not be the Bandit King Reborn anymore, but I still had those abilities and I needed to sort
First, I needed to talk to the Histones. Then I would see about helping Dras out and escaping the city. After that, I would see what I could do as a mender and start looking for a good test subject for the genetic recoder.
After all that… well I would have to deal with the Nalks, but I clearly had not noticed their hands at work before, so all I currently had planned was to react at the situation dictated. We would all see about what happened after that.
* * *
[u]Leo’s personal study[u]:
Leo entered his study doing mental calculations and projections so complex that he barely noticed his wife sitting in one of the chairs, naked except for her cloak. She was black as obsidian today, so she blended in.
Leo only stopped and noticed her when he saw the folder in his seat. Selaugh was pouting when he looked up. “Are you sure you like me better in a female form? You hardly seem to notice me like this and I swear that you were thinking of DeMorte when you walked in, again.”
“The former Bandit King has been ignored up until now because of convenience as much as dismissive arrogance. The fact that he took such an unlikely path with Bella means that things will change and others will no longer be able to ignore him. Not even you.” Leo stated seriously, picking up the folder, “Your choice of a player I assume?”
She nodded and spun around to lean forward. “Are you sure that is it? I do not mind a little physical form reversal you know.” Her body quickly changed into DeMorte’s form, his male form from his previous life, naturally not adding any clothes in doing so. “You can even stay in that form if you prefer.”
“No.”
Selaugh smirked and returned her form to its previous state, this time turning her skin a bright pink.
She gave up fast. Leo turned his attentions away from the paper to her. “Are you ever going to be perfectly serious with me?” Leo asked, half joking as he could never expect a serious answer from her.
Selaugh pouted “Oh of course dear, whenever one of us suffers some horrible tragedy or something, I will be serious and respectful then.” She giggled, “Just not for too long after.”
Leo blinked in surprise, “Wait, you were serious the day we got married.”
She broke off her giggling and stared at him, “We have been married for how many millennia and you only just noticed that?” Then she let loose a laugh and launched across the table to kiss him deeply.
Leo paused just long enough to look at his wife’s paperwork before wishing DeMorte luck again. One of the best Nalk Backers had just chosen his wife for her player and even Leo had no idea how that would end.
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Arc 1 of BKR is now over, I plan to do a better job in arc 2 – until then, thank you all for reading my story thus far, sincerely,
Bob_Sagit.
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General notes:
Original title for the chapter was “Bandit King Reborn,” but that felt a bit corny and I would hate it if people read the title ahead of time and jumped a conclusion about Bella.
So, DeMorte went through something that shattered his old mentality and let him accept Bella, I hope that everyone finds this an acceptable ending. DeMorte was so stubborn that I could not think of any other way to make him fall in line.
As it stands Bella is about 15-20% of DeMorte, but she still has her own personality and will function as his watchdog into the future. Though she will be much more in the background than so far.
DeMorte will have some personality changes, but I do not feel that he can do a complete 180 – I hope that I represented Bella’s understanding of this when she accepted DeMorte’s deal, but if you feel that I could have done this better, please feel free to state so in the comments or send me a personal message.
Announcements:
-The BKR rewrite is going to take a fair bit of time and my schedule is already weird, therefore I will not be posting any new chapters, but instead building them up for a batch release.
-I plan to release the rewrite under a different name as it will not include 3rd person PoV except for Bella’s. I still need to talk with some people about it though as I plan to make this Fic the continuous version, and will post chapter 41 here in December.
-In a week or 2 I will be posting one last chapter that serve as both a special list of what I have changed from this version of BKR when rewriting (i.e.: the removal of Gía)
-Thank you all for reading, if you want to chat or ask me anything, you will likely be able to find me at chatango the fastest, under the name “MrBobSagit,” but I will also check my PMs periodically.
Have a good one everyone. o/