The trio left the alley a short time after. Fortunately, the noble had turned unconscious quickly after Siraye started her job, and they hadn’t had to deal with his screams for too long. Siraye threw the weapon on the ground once she was finished and left with both a satisfied and disgusted smile.
They wandered for a bit in silence before Siraye spoke again.
“Sorry if it felt too much, Mahon, but I can’t bear this kind of person. They see a twenty years old woman and suddenly they think she should do whatever they want because they have been pampered all their life and they never ever heard a no for answer. I don’t regret what I did, and I’d do it again a hundred times without hesitation if it’s for teaching them a lesson.”
Mahon shrugged. He wasn’t in for unnecessary violence, but thinking back to the Fada cultists, he had to admit he had massacred his own fair share of people without batting an eye when he thought they had gone too far. Who was he to judge?
“As Jorik said, your grief, your sentence.”
They continued to walk in silence for a bit, and quickly Siraye managed to find a landmark so she could guide them back to streets she knew.
“Say, Siraye. Can I ask you a question? Just don’t take it badly.” Mahon asked after some time.
Siraye turned her head to him and smiled. “Sure. You can always ask. Whether I answer or not will depend on the question, though.”
“How old are you?”
“Hahaha. Nope, I’m not gonna answer that. Why do you care? You’re falling for me?” She teased.
“Ok, then how old do you think Jorik is?” Mahon continued without missing a bit. It had been some time now that something troubled him when it comes to everybody’s age, and he had to go to the bottom of the matter.
“At first I thought nineteen,” she guessed after a few seconds of observing Jorik, “but you said seventeen before right?”
“What?!! No I said, sev…” Jorik choked when he heard her answer, but Mahon gestured for him not to say anything.
“And me?” He asked instead.
“You’re a bit older than him, right?” She mused. “Twenty, twenty-one? I’m not that good at guessing age.”
“How old was the oldest person you met?” Mahon asked again, trying to keep a neutral face even though he knew his questions were getting weirder and weirder.
“What kind of question is that?” She frowned and turned her head to face him. “What do you want to know? Just say it, I won’t mock you or get mad.”
Mahon exchanged a brief look with Jorik, who now understood what Mahon was trying to do, and nodded. Taking a deep breath, Mahon asked the troubling question he had in his head since the last few days.
“How long do people live?”
Siraye looked at him flabbergasted before she remembered her previous words and switched to a more neutral expression.
“Oh… There is no need to be ashamed not to know that if you lived in a secluded place training all your life, I guess. Usually, most people get to the age of eighty if they don’t die before from unnatural causes. Obviously, there are always exceptions. I heard that a woman lived up to a century, but that’s the only case I heard about. I don’t even know if it’s true. The older I witnessed by myself would have been eighty-five, eighty-six, something like that.”
Mahon and Jorik stayed silent for a bit after her statement, pondering what it truly meant.
“So you’re really twenty something?” Mahon asked in the end.
“Yes.” Siraye simply answered. She didn’t make fun of them, sensing the topic was particularly sensible for her two comrades. “Is something the matter?” She then asked after another prolonged silence.
Jorik and Mahon exchanged a glance, unsure of how to proceed. Should they trust Siraye with this or would it reveal too much about them? On the other hand, if they didn’t confess to Siraye, they didn’t have anyone else they could talk to. Could they really stay in the dark for so long until they could meet someone they really trusted?
There is no reward without risk.
Mahon made his decision right at that moment. He trusted Siraye enough to try it, and he valued much more that knowledge than risking whatever could occur if rumors spread they were centuries old.
“Don’t you know of anyone living for centuries?” He asked in a soft voice.
“No.” She immediately answered. “That’s just impossible…” Seeing their downcast look, she pursued. “Hey, listen guys. What’s wrong with you? If you have something to say, just say it. I’m not gonna judge you or anything. I just cut a man’s balls ten minutes ago, I think we’re past some wrong assumptions, aren’t we?”
The duo exchanged one last look before they mutually agreed to share more about it.
“I’m not seventeen.” Jorik said. “I’m seventy.”
“And I’m over two hundreds.” Mahon completed.
Siraye looked at them with big round eyes before she bursted out laughing. “Wow, you almost got me!”
“But it’s true.” Mahon said in a serious voice.
“Oh really? Then you can explain what happened a hundred fifty years ago then? Or did you just spend two whole centuries in a cave?” She sneered.
“No, I didn’t.” Mahon shook his head. “But I lost my memories twenty-three years ago.”
Siraye looked at him with an unamused face. “Oh, I see. And I guess you too?” She then said to Jorik.
“Yes. But for me it was thirty years ago, actually.”
“Let me resume.” She started ironically. “You are both very old, but you happen to have lost your memory so you’re in fact very young?”
“Exactly!” Mahon nodded.
“Idiots!” She immediately yelled. “Who made you believe that? They just tricked you.”
“No, but that’s the truth.” Jorik intervened. “We actually know a lot of people more than four or five centuries old, and they retained all of their memories.”
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
“How can you be so sure?” Siraye countered. “They were just old people right? How can you confirm they lived for centuries?”
“There were stories and…” Jorik started, but Siraye cut him.
“Bullshit! You were just getting tricked. It’s impossible for people to live that long. If you really lost your memory, they could have told you anything and you’ll have believed it nonetheless. But do you realize now how you can’t actually prove it? I’m telling you, you got tricked. On a side note, it’s actually a funny prank.” She added for herself.
“No, that’s not possible.” Jorik continued. “My family explained to me what happened during my youth and before I lost my memories. I’ve lived for thirty years already, and I perfectly remember having a full grown body thirty years ago. So even if they tricked me, I would have lived at least fifty years, and yet you told me I looked nineteen. How do you explain that?”
“You sure you know what a year is, and they didn’t trick you with this either?” Siraye asked with a skeptical tone.
Jorik chuckled. “We were secluded, but we didn’t live in a cave. I know a year is a full rotation of the seasons.”
“Hmmm…” Siraye mused out loud. “I don’t know how they did it then. Maybe you grew really quickly and because you trained your body so much it stopped aging and that’s why you look so young despite being thirty.”
“I’m seventy.” Jorik growled.
“Ok, fine, fine. If you want to believe it, then do. I’m not gonna argue with you anymore. There is no point. You’ll realize the truth by yourself in a few years, anyway. You still wanna go to the Great Fresco tonight or are you tired already with everything that happened? Cause we’re back to the main streets right now.”
As if to confirm her words, she turned left, and the trio instantly arrived at the main street they had been on, half an hour earlier. They didn’t need to consult long before they dropped the age subject and agreed for Siraye to lead them to the Great Fresco. They would have more time to discuss it once they would be in Nightmare, anyway.
Although Stonewell’s population was equivalent to Ratho, the city took up more space, and they needed a good thirty minutes to reach the old center of the city. As they approached closer, the architecture of the building started to change. The gray stone that had been used until then slowly changed to a beige-looking one, and the buildings became shorter but wider.
Even the streets changed. They had been very wide in the outer area whereas they grew thinner once they entered the historical center. The road evolved from the earth of ground to a nice pavement the same color as the building. Everything suddenly seemed clearer and cleaner.
Although everything was cream white, it wasn’t dirtied or marked by the passage of time in any way. Ancient sculptures and ornaments hung from the windows or decorated the doors. Only the people hadn’t changed, and the crowd had even become larger, rendering the circulation a bit slow in the thinner streets.
Fortunately, they didn’t have to go far as the Great Fresco was depicted almost right at the entrance of the old district. A wide wall section had been cleared of any irregularities, and even the stone’s junction couldn’t be seen. It was twenty meters long, and the whole piece gave the illusion it had been carved from one single giant block.
Although people crowded in front of it, the paintings went up to six meters high, and it could easily be observed from afar. Mahon and Jorik stopped dead in their tracks as they took in the impressive work.
It was separated into two main parts, left and right. On the left, the shades were mainly blue whereas the reds dominated the right part. In the junction of the two colors, two groups of people met each other.
On the blue side, twelve people were depicted vividly. They were tall, pretty, and although very human-like, there was no doubt that they were the Fada from how perfect they looked. In front of them, on the red side there were numerous people with crowns, bowing their heads to the twelve Fada. The central scene took most of the size of the wall, but there were plenty of details between the two delegations meeting each other.
Siraye smiled at Mahon and Jorik’s reaction, and she quickly found an empty seat on a nearby bench, letting the duo immerse themself in the scene. It was always like that the first time someone saw the Great Fresco.
Mahon let himself slowly sink in the masterpiece. His eyes took in the Fada’s delegation, and he moved closer to observe every single detail. In Ratho, they used to represent the twelve Fada with identical features, and only their sex and the color of their robe changed. Whereas Stonewell’s depiction was completely different.
They’re all different.
Observing the different faces, they all had different appearances. Some were thin. Some were fat. Some were joyous. Some were unhappy. They all had their own features and expressions. They all had swords at their waist, but they each carried different tools in their hands: spear, torch, money, book…
That book! Is this Hylde? The man from the journal? Was it all true? Mahon stopped in astonishment as he eyed a man writing on a book while observing attentively the humans standing in front of him. The book was the exact copy he had seen when in the Fada cult. It was that secret document that had ignited the flames of rebellion in the heart of enough people to create the Fada cult. It can’t be…
Ignoring his surprise, Mahon continued to scrutinize the man. If I remember correctly, Hylde should be representing White.
Mahon observed further, but the twelve Fada only bathed in a blue light and their clothes were very ordinary. The man’s sandals were white, but as the other Fada, and Mahon quickly dismissed it.
Is there really no other Color than Blue and Red here?
Mahon moved back to try to get a broader picture of all the twelve, and see if he could notice a notable difference. Starting with Hylde, he picked anything that was white on him and compared it to the other personages, but he failed to make any connection until he noticed a faint white hue around the man’s ears.
What’s that? An earring?
He moved closer to get a better look and then switched to the other Fada. The second one he looked at had a slight green dot at the same emplacement as Hylde. Excited, Mahon continued to move laterally to check on the next one, and he too had an earring. It was red this time.
That should be it!
After some back and forth, Mahon checked all the Fada, and indeed there were twelve earrings in the six different Colors. Each Color was present twice, as it should be. So the Colors do exist, only they’re almost nonexistent here while they ruled our life back in Ratho.
Having so much yet to see, Mahon went to see the rest of the fresco. Although the twelve Fada and the kings and emperors meeting them was taking at least two-thirds of the painting, there were many things depicted behind them.
He started on the right with the human side in a red hue. Behind the kings and emperors there were numerous armies fighting each other and cities burning, but everywhere around, there were strange standalone drawings. One of them was a series of dozens of human’s heads all in different postures: crying, laughing, angry, frightened, delighted…
As he saw this scene, Mahon couldn’t help but remember all the times the people in the caravan had reacted with strong emotions to the smallest things. Did the Fada depicted the range of human emotions?
Near these pictures, there were multiple sketches of people sleeping on beds. The strangest thing was that the beds were incredibly detailed, and there were quotations and measurements noted on the side as if it was very important.
Yet another scene depicted an old person sitting cross-legged with flames sprouting from both his hands. Another one represented a warrior in different fighting postures with a burning sword in his hands.
Are these all the things the Fada studied or discovered about humans?
There was a passage in Hylde’s journal that had particularly impacted Mahon, and it was when the Fada had been strangely reacting to people sleeping. Is that why there are so many paintings of people sleeping?
Walking to the other side of the fresco, Mahon witnessed there also was an army standing behind the twelve Fada. This army wasn’t fighting however, it was orderly staying put, waiting for its order. Near the armies, there were a lot of Earth tents. It was the exact same ones Mahon and Jorik had learnt to create in the scouting lessons back in Ratho.
Earth magic!
The simple fact that the Fada hadn’t been just twelve was already a big shock to Mahon, there was nothing to say about Earth magic appearing on the Fada side and not on the human side, but, nonetheless, what shocked him the most was the map drawn beside the army.
It was a map of an island bathing in beautiful lights. On the island stood an amazing city, and the artist had tried to convey that the Fada were coming to the humans from this island.
Only that map wasn’t unknown to Mahon. Except for the city, he had drawn the island’s contours many, many times before. It had come to a point where he could easily draw it with its eyes closed.
He wouldn’t mistake it for anything else.
“Nightmare?!”