Even though he’d only been learning from Aberfa for a few days, it felt like forever and a certain chill was starting to set in. Moving from his dreams into the waking world was a journey from night to day, and not just literally. The cold, empty dreams gave way to warmth, energy, and the noise of a caravan going through their duties. The few children that had joined were up, screaming and laughing as soon as the sun rose, and the normal hustle and bustle of the merchants and guards, oxes and horses gave the real world a quality that Aberfa’s projections could never live up to.
Chatting with his friends over breakfast was completely different than any conversation with Aberfa. Davi could say the wrong thing, and no one would capitalize on it to make him feel dumb. Zilly could tell an off-color joke and everyone would just laugh instead of growing angry. Sion could misunderstand something, and no one would try to make him feel like an idiot. When Brin was a little quiet, Myra would ask him what’s wrong, and not just to get more ammunition to use against him later.
He’d started to forget that people could be this way. It bothered him how quickly he was already starting to fear Aberfa’s moods. How long could he go on like this? At the same time, he didn’t want it to end. Not yet. He was learning so much.
Brin spent a while just basking in the association with non-psychotic people, letting it restore his balance, and made no move to pull away. Davi had to join Jeffrey for music practice right after breakfast, but Zilly, and Myra walked alongside him and Sion while the [Merchant] boy told them stories of his most unusual purchases. It wasn’t until two hours after the caravan started walking that he found a good time to move away for a private discussion with Hogg.
“What’s up? What did you learn this time?” Hogg asked when he pulled him to the side for a private conversation.
“Aberfa wants to make a deal. With you.”
“Tell her no.”
Brin grinned and said, “Just hear me out.”
Hogg curled his lip in disgust. “If I hear you out I’m going to say yes, I just know it. She’s completely nuts but she’s good at what she does; I have to give her that much.”
“So… do you not want me to tell you what she–”
“Of course I want to hear it! What did she say?”
Brin laughed, then stifled it to something appropriately grim for the subject matter. “She’s willing to give us the location of an Arcaenean safehouse here in Frenaria, one close by that’s not too far off the road towards Blackcliff. We can steal all the intel and artifacts, and kill or capture the [Witch] running it. She even hinted that we might even find out what the undead are doing with all those tunnels.”
“What’s the catch?”
“The catch is that she wants me to face the [Witch’s] familiar. I have to fight it alone.”
Hogg shook his head. “I knew this would happen. Alright, tell her I agree.”
Brin paused. “What? Just like that?”
“What? You didn’t expect me to agree?”
“No, I did, but I thought you’d put up a token argument first. Usually you’d say something about how we don’t need to bother with things that don't concern us. We’re not Frenarian counter-spies.”
Hogg stared into the horizon, as if trying to root out hidden [Witches] then and there. “If there really is a [Witch] on the road from here to Blackcliff, then we’re going to pass by her either way, whether we know she’s there or not. There’s also the fact that we have no guarantee that Aberfa isn’t also talking to the [Witch] in question. If we tell her no, she might just go to the [Witch] and have her set up an ambush. Then we’d be fighting her anyway, but on much worse terms.”
“I don’t think she can talk to anyone other than me. If she could, why doesn’t she? She could’ve been pumping you and Lumina for information this whole time, before we ever realized she was there,” said Brin.
“You're probably right, but we can’t assume anything. Her power must have some kind of limits, but we don't know what those are yet. She can control other monsters, we know that much,” said Hogg. He cleared his throat and then looked to the side. “So, listen. Has she ever given you any clue about where she is? Or what?”
Brin shook his head. “No. She’s pretending that she’s still a [Witch], and I haven’t called her out on it yet. I’m waiting for the right moment.”
He felt mildly sick at that admission. He had a piece of information that he knew would hurt her feelings when he brought it up, so he was waiting for exactly the right time to do the most damage. Sure, she definitely deserved it, but this was Aberfa-style thinking.
“Look, anything you can find out, no matter how small, could be important. It would only take the tiniest little clue to get us on the right trail.”
“I’ll do my best.”
For the rest of the day, Brin drifted in and out of conversations with his friends, but spent most of his time fiddling with his half-lute and thinking. He pushed his fingers across the frets, practicing scales and trying to remember a few of his favorite songs from Earth.
He needed to find out where Aberfa’s real-world body was. He still didn’t even know what it was. For all he knew, she was a group of microbes that was already living inside his brain.
But he couldn’t just ask her. He needed to trick her into revealing the information somehow. But how? She was a professional about this, and Brin wasn’t. He needed a foolproof strategy.
He played his half-lute, and plotted.
When night came, the nightmare started off in a forest. Not a Bogland forest, but something closer to the environment they were in now. The ground was dry and bare, and the trunks of tall pines were devoid of branches except for at the very top where they all competed for every inch of sunlight.
“He agreed,” said Brin.
“I knew he would,” said Aberfa. She waved, and a map of the general area appeared in the air. She poked at a spot above the road, right before the part where the road they were on branched north to Blackcliff. “This is where she is. You’ll find a grove of large black oaks. Look for a cave exactly seven hundred and seventy-seven feet north of the northmost black oak.”
Brin’s [Memories in Glass] wouldn’t let him forget it. “I’m surprised that you didn’t ask for an Oath. Are you sure he won’t pretend to agree until we find the [Witch] and then kill her and the familiar himself?” asked Brin.
“Well, yes. Oaths don’t really stick when made to my kind. And there’s nothing an [Illusionist] loves more than a good secret. He’s already wondering what I might give him next time if he plays along this time,” said Aberfa.
Brin wanted to speak up in Hogg’s defense, but there was nothing to argue with there. She’d really encapsulated him so well.
“So what are we doing tonight?” Brin asked.
“Bears,” said Aberfa.
“What?”
Aberfa was already gone, and in her place, a monster was charging at him from her place. He dodged a claw, rolled to the side, and booked it. He ran through the forest, and the monster pursued but he quickly gained ground on it. Whatever this thing was, it seemed to be slower than him; it must be lower level.
At first, his mind didn’t register “bear”. He saw what he thought looked like a half-dog half-gorilla bearing down on him, but then realized that was because so much of its fur was missing. Its face was almost completely hairless, and what little fur it had remaining on its body was patchy on saggy gray skin.
It roared as it ran, a rare experience from the monsters he’d fought, and right away he got the impression that this animal was sick and insane.
The cause was clear. There were horrid growths all over its body, the size and color of cherries. They stuck out of the skin so far that they bounced with the bear’s movement, and clusters of close-together ones were connected with sickly red veins.
Brin forced the horror of its appearance out of his mind and concentrated on one thing: it was an enemy.
With no weapon in sight, he was forced to summon one, and was grateful to find his magic ready and responsive. This wasn’t him from the past, this was his capability now, which would make this easier.
He summoned a spear, pushing in mana from what felt like a limitless supply, and turned back to meet the enemy. The bear wasn’t as fast as him, but he couldn’t assume that he was stronger. He needed to keep out of wrestling range.
He stayed light on his feet and tested the bear with quick jabs, always moving so that it couldn’t pin him down. He pushed magic into his spear jabbed at the bear, pushing the spear harder and making it move quicker. Scores of bloody gouges appeared across the bear's body, but it didn’t seem to make a difference. It fought with berserker fury, uncaring of any injury.
He felt something from [Know What’s Wyrd] as he fought; this animal had no real claim or argument at all. It didn’t care about territory or hunger, and didn’t see him as a threat or as prey. It fought because it was mad. Brin’s half-formed claim of wanting to stay alive was so much stronger it was a mountain against an anthill, but that didn’t seem to matter. The mismatch didn’t weaken the bear or strengthen him. Because the bear wasn’t fighting with magic, from what he understood. Still, the fact that there was no clash of wills at all felt strange.
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On a hunch, he stopped trying to hurt the bear, and instead started aiming for the cherry growth. He popped the first one, which sent a spray of mist into the air.
Immediately he felt the Wyrd of the disease, and it was strong.
Survive. Grow. Consume. Spread. Reproduce.
Every instinct a living creature could have was distilled to its primal essence and charged with full force. The disease had to do all those things at once, to the maximum degree all the time, or it couldn’t do any of them. More, he felt real Wyrd from the disease. It had been created by a [Witch] and her magic still empowered it.
Even a sniff of the molecules in the air was enough to give the disease an attack vector, and he felt its claim begin to sap his will and weaken his magic. He needed a claim of his own, and fast.
He sent back an argument that was close to the Survive. Resist. Defend. Simple arguments had a simple rebuttal. The disease had the right to spread because that’s all it could do. Brin had the right to resist and defend himself, because that’s all he could do.
The scales balanced, but the brief distraction had almost been enough to undo him. A paw swatted the spear from his hand, and the bear bit at him, but its wild, uncoordinated force had the creature butting him with its head before even opening its mouth.
Brin rolled with the blow and came up with a newly summoned dagger in his hand. A crude thing, and he had to knap a jagged edge onto it as he swung. The dagger sharpened just in time for Brin to drive it into the bear’s neck.
He ran again, giving himself some space to summon more blades, then used his magic to launch them at the bear from a distance. It was slow, and not the most flashy finish, but fighting a bear at melee range was stupid if you could outrun it.
After a few minutes, he put enough jagged glass into the bear that not even the [Witch]-made disease could keep it moving, and it fell to the ground, dead.
Brin expected it to be over, and for Aberfa to appear so she could tell him he’d done everything wrong. She didn’t show. Instead, he heard three more roars.
Right. She hadn’t said, “bear.” She’d said, “bears.”
Brin ran. This time, he didn’t bother summoning a spear, and kept running away while pelting them with projectiles. It was slow going, and even then wasn’t foolproof. Aberfa kept cheating by teleporting the bears right behind him any time he got enough distance to start feeling safe.
When he finally put the last of them down, he was tired, sweaty, and covered with more than a few bloody gouges. In real life he’d be worried about the blood loss, but here he was mostly only worried about the disease. He’d breathed in a lot of it from the air, and each of his wounds had carried another payload of pathogens straight into his bloodstream.
Now that it was in his body, its argument had changed. This is our home. You can’t evict us from our home. It took every ounce of will Brin had to make it clear that no, this body was his. Even so, he was losing ground. He didn’t want to know what would happen if he was completely consumed.
“So you see?” said Aberfa, finally arriving back in the dream with a calmly interested look on her face as she eyed his wounds. “Your argument has greatly reduced the spread of the pathogen.”
“This is the reduced effect?” asked Brin through gritted teeth.
“Oh yes. The one who made it is long since dead, but she’s legendary in Arcaena. She had the honor of being slain by the Queen herself, an acknowledgment that she’d become a true threat.”
Brin didn’t care about some dead old [Witch]. “Can I use this against the common cold? Am I immune to all diseases now?”
“No…” said Aberfa. Then she smiled wickedly. “And yes.”
“What do you mean?”
“This method is much harder to use against natural illnesses, but now that you have a feel for it I think you’ll be able to manage. And most of the time you’ll only be able to slow it down, not purge it completely. Not with this method. There’s another method. Do you not remember?”
It was so, so hard to think when the disease was poisoning his body but that just made it more important. He thought back to when he’d first learned about cherry bears, and how that same night he’d dreamed about a cure to their disease. “You told me in a dream, before I realized that you were you, that this can be cured with boiling water.”
“That’s right,” she said.
“Could you hurry and get rid of this disease? It’s uncomfortable.”
“I thought you’d never ask.” Aberfa stepped to the side. Behind her, a giant cauldron full of water was set up over a roaring fire. She nodded her head to it. “Get in.”
“You can’t be serious,” said Brin. It looked like a stereotypical witch cauldron, big and black.
“You want the cure, don’t you?”
“I don’t need the cure! This is just a dream. I could wake myself up any time and the disease would be gone,” said Brin.
Aberfa pursed her lips in annoyance, but for once there was no extra punishment of pain or bad emotions. Brin almost missed it. “Wouldn’t you like to experience the cure for the first time here where you’re safe, or out in the world? Stop whining. It’s not even very hot.”
Brin grumbled, but she was right. It really wasn’t more than lukewarm, even if he didn’t have [Heat Resistance]. He got into the water, and found the temperature wasn’t uncomfortable in the least.
What did make Brin uncomfortable was the fact that it wasn’t just water. The liquid was foamy and greenish now that he was looking at it closely. He felt something brush his leg, and pulled it out to find it was a chicken foot. Soon after, a small eyeball bobbed to the surface.
“Oh gross, what is this?”
Aberfa shrugged. “I don’t know what you mean.”
Brin glowered at her, and she stared back with a blank expression. Slowly, the water got warmer.
“So tell me,” said Aberfa. “How does [Heat Resistance] work? Does it shield you from heat, or does it change the amount of heat your body can accept before being damaged?”
“It shields me from heat,” Brin said, before pausing to realize that he didn’t actually know. “Doesn’t it?”
“The correct answer,” said Aberfa, “is that it does both.”
“Oh,” said Brin. That was an important distinction. He didn’t want to feel grateful to Aberfa, but he did and for once he didn’t think it was because she was injecting him with artificial emotions.
“[Heat Resistance] will increase the degree to which your internal temperature can rise before you are harmed. It is your best and most important [Glasser] Skill. By far!” All at once, she was at the edge of the cauldron, grabbing Brin with both hands to bring herself nearly nose-to-nose with Brin, a look of absolute fury on her face. “You had a chance to upgrade it and you took [Shape Glass] instead! Foolish! You have been ruined! I spent years preparing you and all that effort was wasted by the advice of dunces and idiots!”
She stepped back, massaging her forehead. “Foolish. So foolish.”
Brin didn’t bother arguing. The water was starting to get hot enough that he could feel it. Tiny bubbles were forming on the edges of the surface. “The body fights off diseases by increasing its own temperature to the point that the disease can’t survive. If I can survive higher temperatures, I can fight off worse diseases. That’s what this is. You're raising my body temperature artificially in order to kill the cherry bear pathogen before it drives me crazy and kills me.”
“Exactly,” said Aberfa. “You’ll want to pay attention to the exact moment the disease departs your body. There’s a thin line between removing germs and boiling yourself alive.”
“I don’t get it, though. Are fevers and flus really that big of a deal? With high Vitality they shouldn’t be a problem. I don’t remember seeing much sickness in Hammon’s Bog.”
“You were spoiled in that town you grew up in. That's Bruna's work, I think.” Aberfa practically spat the name of Davi’s mom, a non-evil [Witch].
“Is it worse in other places?”
“Even in a place like the Boglands where monsters roam free, I still suspect that illness was the most prevalent cause of death in children. Outside of Hammon’s Bog of course. There, I assume, it’s undead raids?”
She said that last with a little smirk.
Brin wanted to stand and call her out. He didn’t let anyone mock the dead of Hammon’s Bog, not even her. But the water was boiling now, and he was too lethargic to move. This was… this was too hot. Much too hot. Now that he was looking for it, he noticed through the Wyrd that the disease had already departed.
“That’s…”
“Hmm? Speak up, dear,” said Aberfa, leaning her ear closely. When Brin couldn’t do more than mumble, she shrugged. “I can’t understand you.”
She bent down, and picked up a huge wooden spoon as tall as she was. She dunked it into Brin’s bath and started to stir.
Stirring… In a panic, he realized that this wasn’t a bath. It was a stew. A [Witch’s] brew. She was boiling him alive.
That thought was enough to force his lethargic body into motion, and he managed to stand and topple himself over the edge.
Sweet, blessed cool air touched his skin, giving him energy and making him feel the pain that he’d been numb to moments before.
Aberfa laughed and kicked the cauldron over. It landed on him, burning his skin from the outside parts that’d been above the water level, and as it rolled onto him it splashed the entire contents all over him again. She kept laughing.
“Oh, oh, oh dear that’s! That’s! You look exactly like when I did this the first time!”
She stopped laughing abruptly with a hiccup. “The first time that I… Aberthol…”
She suddenly grew silent, and the energy of the dream seemed to fade. His body became less substantial, taking the pain and tiredness with it.
His anger rose in its place. Meanwhile, Aberfa withdrew into herself. She sat on the ground, hugging her knees and suddenly looking very small.
He smiled a Scarred One smile. She was starting to realize, wasn’t she? He wasn’t her son, not her real son. As much as she wanted to claim she was the mother of his body only, she was starting to notice that it wasn’t the same.
He could end it here. He could tell her that he wasn’t her real son. The bond between them would break, and it would be over. She would be out of his dreams and out of his life.
That’s what his anger wanted him to do. Those were the words that would hurt her the most, so they were the words he wanted to say. It was also his anger that held him back. As much as it would hurt her, it wouldn’t even be close to what she deserved.
If he was free of her, then she would also be free of him. Is that what he wanted?
For once, rather than give in to instinct, he activated [Directed Meditation]. In a place apart from emotion. He calmly thought it through.
He could be done with her. Every minute that he spent with her was a danger. She’d killed Bowers, probably by putting him to sleep with that monster and then killing him in his dreams. He had to assume that she had the ability to kill him at any moment, and that the only reason she abstained was out of hope that he could still be her son.
The practical thing to do here would be to break their bond now, and then spend the rest of his life keeping the sleep charms near every time he slept. He didn’t care about this woman. This was Aberthol’s problem, and Aberthol had chosen to leave rather than deal with it. Why had the gods even given him [Filial Piety]? They had to know that he didn’t see Cadwy and Aberfa as his parents.
On the other hand, she’d just casually dropped a cure to nearly all diseases right onto his lap tonight. Every minute he spent with her was a leap ahead in knowledge and power. Power for him, and also power to help the world against Arcaena. He wasn’t exactly patriotic for Frenaria, but he had a hundred reasons to hate Arcaena.
This was valuable to him, as long as he didn’t die for it, and he honestly didn’t think that’s what she wanted for him.
There was also the fact that ignoring Aberfa wouldn’t make her go away. He had no way to find her at present, so if he tried to run away now he’d be looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life. Keeping things as they were now wouldn’t work, either. She was too guarded, too clever to accidentally drop a clue that would let him find her body and kill her for good.
He needed to change the dynamic. He needed to gain her trust.
He shuddered when he dropped [Directed Meditation] and it dawned on him exactly what he was considering. But it was the only way.
The only way out was through.
He stepped up to Aberfa and put a hand gently on her shoulder. “Can you tell me about it?”
She looked at him, fear and spite in her eyes, but also sorrow.
He steeled himself, but tried to make his face look softer. “I hate that I don’t have any memories of you… and dad. Can you show me what our life was like? Can you give me my memories back… mother?”