Why am I back here? I look up at the waterfall that once was my place of solace, but now has become something dreadful, yet horrifyingly hopeful at the same time. I bury my face into my hands and try to push my begging heart deeper into the dark wells of my being, but with each beat of my pleading heart comes a memory of the smiling faces of the family reality denied to give me.

I grab a large rock and throw it into the pool the waterfall forms at its base just to hear the splashing sounds it would make, hoping that a sudden interruption to the constant drone of the crashing water would tie my crying soul back to what is tangible: something that is not a convincing hallucination, but something truly real to pull me back to my senses… however in the ripples of the water I see the wife I never had outside of the delusions of happiness given me by pleasant dreams and Aurhea. My eyes drift to the mouth of the cave that produces the waterfall that hides the Totalion secret, and I feel myself take a tentative step into the cold water of the waterfall’s pool, and in the uncomfortable coldness of the turbid water I find similitude.

I look into my distorted reflection cast by the pool of water, and I see Aeramen and Skath. The crashing of water and ripples of the pool interrupt my thoughts with sound, vision, and touch. I kneel in the water and let the cold liquid soak my skin and clothes as I stare into alien eyes, that briefly reveal the familiarity of what they once were in the constantly moving waves created by the pounding of water upon stone. As I gaze into the pool there are brief moments, I see the memory of what I once was; however, I chuckle as I realize that the glimpses of Skath in my reflection may not even be what I once looked like. I’m forgetting small details about myself, as the longer I wear another face, who I once was disappears like the ripples that reach the banks of this pool.

“She’s gone,” I mutter as I stare into my reflection, “there’s no reason to keep that face.”

Knowing that Argentum could change my body and appearance gave me the confidence to mold my body back into what I once was, or at least what my memories still depict. Within my soul I give the order and my essence travels through my entire body and attaches itself to organs, bones, muscle, and flesh. I picture what my old face and body looked like, and familiar growing pains overtake me. In their familiarity this time the pains do not overwhelm me, as I mold my body back to what I hope it once was.

I watch muscle fibers like small snakes under my flesh, writhe and wriggle their way into new configurations, my bones compress and stretch to accommodate the changes, and my organs shift slightly within my frame to adjust to my transforming body. Through all of this discomfort and torment my eyes do not part from my reflection. I wish to watch and make modifications as changes appear to my vision, and so I force myself to observe and obligate my will to keep me conscious as I make agonizing decisions to get Skath back into this world. My arms plunge into the water as steaming sweat pours from my pores. My body trembles violently with each second I force my return to self. My muscles burn and they eventually give out due to the immense stress my spirit forces upon my physical body to endure.

My arms collapse, my body falls into the water with a faint splash, and I now lay in the waters of the falls’ shallows. The rippling water laps my face as I stare into half of my new face’s reflection. Even though I recognize the changes, I can only imagine that my current reflection is even remotely similar to the Skath I wish was staring back at me. My face may now be a recreation of my memories, but the person looking back doesn’t feel like me anymore. I somehow still see Aeramen, though his face isn’t what is looking at me from the water. A tear intermingled with sweat trickles out of my eye down the crest of my nose and into the water, and I realize that my memories have betrayed me. With all my physical strength I push myself upward to get a full look at Skath’s face, but my eyes turn away from the image presented to me. Forcing myself to look into the eyes of Skath, those eyes are just as alien as the eyes of Aeramen. My attempt to touch and reclaim something real again, has only unveiled that the realms of memory are just as counterfeit as the world given to me by Aurhea.

If my memories can fail, then does that mean nothing stored in the vaults of my mind can be considered real and true. My eyes reach up to the cave mouth spewing the falls and somehow it feels like Aurhea is beckoning to me. I look to the future and it doesn’t exist! I can make plans, I can postulate possibilities, but nothing exists until it occurs. I reach into the past, and how it is interpreted, remembered, or even forgotten makes the past a vacuous hole of lies intermingled with the extinguishing flames of truth until the flickers become nothing but the darkness of lies. If the only thing that is real is the present, then maybe Aurhea is right… maybe the experience of family was real for the time I did experience it within the moments she manipulated my mind. Perhaps… what she showed me… was real after all…

It can’t be! But can it! No! Yes! I want the world Aurhea gave me, but this is the real world. However, maybe this isn’t the real world, but what Aurhea showed me was the real world. What is real? Even when I was in Aurhea’s delusion, I began to forget this reality and that other place became real. So, is this real, or is that real? Do my senses cheat so much as to make it so that I can’t even determine what is real anymore!

My breathing is heavy and uncontrolled as my mind spirals into anxious fits as it tries to make sense of anything anymore. Within these prolonged moments that feel like eternities of anguish, my mind finds freedom in distraction. I feel two arms wrap around me and I hear a song, that though in-tune calls back to my fractured memories in such a way that hearkens to a feeling more real than what I currently sense, think, and experience.

A lullaby, one sung to me while I was little, but sung so horribly if I were to attempt to replicate the tune it wouldn’t have one. The only reason that the tuneful singing reaches the memory of a tone-deaf rendition, is not because I recognize the words, but the feeling behind the singing itself hearkens to emotions tied to the hazy recollections of childhood. Though my body and mind were in turmoil, the whirling tides of thought quell and the trembling of my body ceases as I can now focus upon the singing, the tender embrace of Esther, and gentle ripples that crash into my arms and legs.

“Esther, we might want to get out of the water,” I say regaining my composure with each word I speak to her, “I may not be able to catch a cold, but you can.”

I awkwardly attempt to stand up only to stumble and catch myself upon my knees as my new body’s proportions has thrown off my kinesthesia, which makes me feel like I’m piloting a phantom body at the same time as my actual body. The sensation is a lot like when I puppet my body using my essence to force my physical body to move faster than I am physically capable. Though, I find it odd that I didn’t experience this much lack of bodily control when Argentum changed me from Skath to Aeramen.

Now that my mind is studying my body after being lost in emotional turmoil, I begin to notice my soul is painfully bashing into my flesh, and it dawns on me that I have expended a lot of essence to change my body which I didn’t use when Argentum transformed me. Though I find it odd that I somehow burned through all the essence within my body and within the scars of my essence reservoir. I should have close to seventeen complete recharges for the essence and blood required for my body and spells on my arms and shoulder blade all within the storage spells I have inscribed upon the vertebrae of my spine now due to my soul’s attempts to militarize my flesh against my the nightmares my brain conjures. In addition to the essence and blood restoration spells, the amount of charges and power of all of my spells have been enhanced since I fought Gehenna. The arsenal upon my flesh has been utterly drained and now my scars are open wounds void of essence filled blood.

As I continue to try to move my new body with the grace of a toddler, I realize that my lack of essence may be the reason I was able to adapt to Aeramen easier than I am to Skath’s body. I might have been subconsciously using essence control to puppet Aeramen’s body when I became Aeramen to compensate for my lack of familiarity with Aeramen’s body. Due to my lack of essence right after I transformed myself into Skath after using internal based soulcraft techniques, puppeting this body with soulcraft is just not in my grasp right now.

In finally being able to sense the greatest spiritual pain within, my mind also acknowledges an immense physical fatigue and agonizing soreness all over my body. This pain and tiredness wasn’t present in my first transformation, which might be because Argentum transformed me allowing me to retain all my essence allowing me to heal from the transformation and adapt to it. I might have to just endure and live with my self-inflicted weakness until my soul produces more essence to help heal any damage I’ve afflicted myself with.

I once again struggle to stand up, and finally succeed. I lean down to help Esther up to her own feet, but I lose balance and fall back into the pool of water, splashing Esther in the process. Esther seeing my infantile display of bodily control, lets out a smothered motherly laugh as if to try to spare my feelings but being incapable of expressing her amusement and gets up on her own to then extend a hand to help me to my feet. I stare at her hand, my pride somewhat deflated and tentatively grasp her hand to then be pulled to my feet. I take a step forward, but my body almost dumps me back into the water. Esther, seeing how disbalanced I am throws one of my arms over her shoulder and grabs onto me before I can fall again. I end up having to use her as a crutch as we stumble our way out of the pool of water and onto dry land.

Finally reaching the dry soil of the shore I let go of Esther and gracelessly sit myself upon the shore and grasp my chest as my soul continues to pound violently upon my insides. Esther remains standing looking at the waterfall and then says, “Ashe, Cran, and Argentum are worried about you. They told me that you passed out and after you woke up you ran off into the woods your eyes streaming with tears screaming, ‘give them back…’ Do you want to talk about what happened?”

I sit silently, my head weakly drifting up to the mouth of the waterfall. I want to speak, but I’m too exhausted to speak. I lean my head into Esther’s shoulder and tears once more fall from my eyes. There is even a tiredness in my emotional state right now to accompany my physical and spiritual exhaustion, as the confusion, sorrow, and frustration have drained me. Eventually, after some time of resting in Esther’s real embrace, I regain a modicum of strength. I need to talk, but I don’t want to. However, I have held too much within myself and all that I have sealed within, which like my soul that is still trying to breach my flesh, harrowing thoughts and feelings I’m failing to now repress are tearing my mind apart.

“Do you know what it is like to wake up from a dream so convincing that you think it is real, and desperately wish was real?” I ask feebly turning my head to look at the waterfall as I speak, “Do you know what it is like to have everything you ever wanted given to you, only to have it stolen in a second… What happened in the caverns held in that waterfall wasn’t the first time I’ve experienced loss, as I’ve watched so many of those I cared for snuffed out one by one. But I’ve yet to experience having so many stolen from me all at once. They were all back and now they are all gone again. For a brief moment I lived in a world where my most dearest of dreams was so tangible that it might as well have been real, only to return to the nightmare that I created here. Even in this moment I can’t tell if what I’m experiencing now is real, as this feels just like what I saw and felt in that dream.”

I bury my face in my hands as my body starts to tremble once more, “There is a part of me that hopes this is just a nightmare, and that when I open my eyes again, that I’ll be with Uzuri and our unborn child once more. That I’ll be able to visit my parents and enjoy their company. That I’ll be able to sit around a fire with Geracht again, eating skewered vegetables and meat. That the Gehennan weren’t massacred because my actions were the beginning of their end. That the pain and sorrow I feel are just the wretched cries of a nightmare prolonged. I can’t even recognize my own face anymore! I think and breath, but everything outside my eyes feels wrong!”

Esther rests a hand on my head and strokes my hair not immediately speaking, but just allowing the moment to progress. She then pinches my cheek suddenly and I let out a yelp wondering why she did what she did. Esther lets out another chuckle and then says, “convinced now that this real? You didn’t wake up, and I’m still here.”

It can’t be that simple, can it? I look at Esther’s smiling face and I look at my face’s reflection again, but despite a moment of surprising clarity, confusion creeps back in. Esther then kneels next to me and swirls a finger in the pool of water obscuring my and her reflection as she says, “I only know that the face looking back at me is me because I know what to expect when looking into the water. Every time I look into the water a new face looks back, and I realize that may be a blessing. The last time I looked into that water I was the fearful wife of Gehenna, and the face that looks back at me now is a mourning mother, sister, cousin, aunt, and yet a woman free of her abuser. Sorrow and happiness intertwining in perpetual uncertainty of what will come… The face looking back at me right now isn’t fully real as I cast my perceptions upon it.”

Esther then takes my hands into hers and has me grasp my face and moves my head so that I can look her in her eyes and face before she continues, “Even what you see right now is like the pool of water that we both just stared into. Your thoughts like the ripples of the pool cloud your perception of me. You may see a woman who condemned many of her family to death to protect the wife and unborn child of her dead son. You may see a wife that betrayed her husband. You may see a heretic that turned away from and perverted the religion of her mother. You may also see an Aunt that ostracized her sister out of jealousy for her forbidden love. What I was isn’t what I am. What I am isn’t what I’ll always be. Who I’ll be is yet to be discovered. What is real is becoming not what is or was necessarily, and becoming isn’t really something that can be seen, but it comes from within making it hard to perceive.”

“So, my internal thoughts are what are real and what make reality and me? Then why shouldn’t I go back to the mountain and submit myself to the dreams of Aurhea?” I ask not fully satisfied with Esther’s comforting words.

Esther gently smiles and caresses my face with her own hand and says, “you’ve answered your own question, haven’t you? A dream isn’t real, no matter how much we want it to be.”

“What if my thoughts, perceptions, feelings, sensations, all succumb to a dream in such a way that the dream becomes real. What I am, was, and become all become linked to the dream. Does that mean that it is real, and maybe more real than what is out here?” I ask my head again attempting to turn to the mouth of the waterfall, but Esther’s hand firmly prevents my head from moving toward it.

“Then you’ll leave everyone and everything that joins you in this dream,” says Esther with tears in her eyes, “If what is here and in there are two convincing dreams, then you have to decide which dream to abandon. Though it may be selfish of me to say this, sometimes the world of nightmares requires the dreamer to stay… as the dreamer may hold the key to making a nightmare into a dream. I know that I’ve been able to dream again thanks to you.”

Esther’s hands slip from my face and then clasps my body to her. In collapsing into her embrace, the feelings of realness consume me again. A nostalgia of memories that no longer have images, but faint reflections soothe the tempest of thought and I let myself drown in the peace. In drowning in this peace that feels long forgotten, I hadn’t realized that I had closed my eyes to focus on the feelings that tie me to this plane, that when I open them, I am shocked to see that Esther and I aren’t alone.

“Perhaps I should have been the one to find you first. I sent a prophetess, priestess, theologian? Oh right, matriarch is the word that this hole in the mountains uses for a spiritual leader… anyway, I sent a matriarch to cloud your mind further with talks of dreams, when your experience is one that I have suffered thousands of times over,” says Argentum staring at the mouth of the waterfall, “in fact, I am intimately aware of the blurring of reality and the perverse ‘dreams’ that my daughter can conjure. Afterall, I was her first test subject and the crucible for her art’s perfection.”

Esther lets go of me, rises to her feet, and faces Argentum, “What did you do to him?”

“I did nothing but show him the errs and shame of a beguiled king and a blind father,” says my master breaking his prolonged eye contact with the mouth of the waterfall, “what I failed to predict was how my shame would affect the boy. His mixed heritage is something I am familiar with, but that doesn’t mean I know of his sensitivities personally. Familiarity isn’t knowledge, and it appears that the spiritual pressure of the soul reservoir forced his dream to wander outside of his body, permitting an audience that should have never occurred.”

“There’s that word again, dream, but not used like it should be,” I say remembering Aurhea using that word similarly to how Argentum just did.

Argentum lets out a sigh and explains quickly as it is clear that he has more pressing matters to explore, “Essence is the existential matter of all things and was rediscovered by Angtos, whereas dream is the potential matter inherent in organisms generated not by existence but will and action and this was rediscovered by my daughter. When essence and dream coalesce that is when a soul is created. Essence became the domain of the celandil as they learned to manipulate it with their souls. Dream was theorized to be the domain of man, but instead of tapping into a font of the unknown in a spiritual sense, man went forward to develop their potential through the physical world via the sciences. My daughter theorized that human celandil hybrids being sensitive to the spiritual half of reality due to their celandilic lineage can tap into the dream constructed portion of the soul. It is in this connection that celandil halfers can cast their gaze into the spiritual portion of our world and even see far beyond what their physical senses can muster. In other words, it is through the manipulation of dream that you can see and hear essence and souls.”

“So that’s why I can throw my gaze beyond my body when I peer into the world of essence and truth,” I say remembering how I was able to track Dargot with my spiritual eyes, and even follow Gehenna the night before Uzuri’s rescue. I never really questioned why my spiritual eyes could leave my body, travel long distances, and even focus in on different places in such a way it was like I was walking in a secondary body as it felt so natural and a part of me that I never needed to question it. If there really is a tertiary spiritual component that isn’t essence and souls that isn’t influenced by the essence flesh barrier, it would explain why I’m able to use my spiritual eyes so freely when I literally have to bleed to use my celandilic abilities.

Argentum cracks his knuckles and reclines backward to be caught by an ornate wooden chair created through his soul craft and says, “I can only assume from all this talk of dreams and inability to determine what is real comes from an unfortunate meeting with my daughter.”

“I met a woman in the reservoir named Aurhea. If she is your daughter, then yes, I’ve met her,” I say my mind reflecting on the glowing goddess contained in the soul reservoir.

My master nods his head and says, “as I’ve never spoken her name to you, that confirms that you have met her and experienced the cruelty of her powers.”

“She showed me a world where all of my mistakes, all of the blood that they have spilt, all of the sorrow of loss, and the joys I’ve denied were corrected and given to me,” I say and I feel my hands clasp at the mud underneath them to help ground myself, “Uzuri was my wife, we had a kid on the way, my parents were alive, Geracht was alive, the Gehennan were alive.”

Argentum leans back in his chair and stares at the sky before responding, “my precious wife Gyflahel didn’t die in childbirth due to a broken promise. My father showed me the love I craved from him that he never showed me or my mother upon this plane. my mother didn’t die pleading to be seen by the man that scorned her as an inadequate substitute. My people were never cursed with bodies that could never reach the future. My brother didn’t see me as the reason behind the slaughter of his first family. I wasn’t the king that damned his people and the world to the will of a daughter whose aspirations and heart became monstrous but whose actions are still my responsibility. I wasn’t a king at all, forced to take upon myself the sins of his people and family as that is the burden of a true king. A true king is he who delights in his people’s successes but must also bear the pains and sins of his people when they suffer and commit evil. Their sins are my sins, as my failures create the precedence of the desires that generate evil. The joy to not have that weight upon my mind and shoulders, was an immense peace and temptation.”

“It felt so real,” I say seeing the hollow yet immense pain present in my reflection in Argentum’s eyes. Argentum smiles a weak half smile acknowledging our shared experience, but in touching upon cursed memories his face contorts as if still tormented by the thought that maybe what we are both experiencing in this moment isn’t true reality.

“It truly did… even my soul’s perceived mind warped and twisted to convince me of the realness of that ethereal painting made by my daughter’s hand. If it wasn’t for a technicality in the soul reservoir’s construction, needs, and testing, I would have never escaped, and never had wanted to,” says Argentum who begins to shudder in his seat, “the scientific truth of time being relative is the horror of the soul reservoir. I spent ten years in the reservoir, but experienced an eternity of simulated lives and deaths created by Aurhea through her channeling my deepest desires that when I was released my mind nearly shattered. I desperately desired to return to the soul reservoir, but a dear friend and the remnant of my people that were recruited as the designated guardians of the soul reservoir and those that were incapable or rejected of being implanted into the reservoir saved me. Through their care, I was able to get well enough to reclaim my mind. Luckily the physical memory held in the brain does eventually triumph over the spiritual imprint of Aurhea’s illusions. So, give it some time and you’ll be able to separate the illusions of the reservoir from the realities of this world.”

“Why was soul reservoir made in the first place,” I ask as the way Argentum speaks makes it sound like he never intended for the reservoir to have reached its current state. He the king of his people tested the reservoir for ten years, and according to the small detail of his recovery being aided by the totalion who the reservoir rejected, must mean that Aurhea is more to blame than Argentum for that prison of souls under the mountain than Argentum.

Argentum sighs and leans forward as he responds, “I trusted my daughter.”

“Wait, that’s it? That’s all the explanation I get. That bloody hell didn’t just appear in a day,” I say surprised that four words was the sum totality of why the soul reservoir was created.

Argentum lets out a weak chuckle and says, “all you asked was why, and I gave you my why, but the why of a king is different than the why of a father. The world Angtos aspired to build was a world to be solely given to man and man alone. Thus, he cursed each of his creations. My why as a king was that my daughter promised to eliminate the curses of my people. We were born to die, and my daughter promised a world where my people would thrive. Thus, trust and a better future for my people became the whys that allowed for that abomination to be constructed.”

“Why is it that every time you give me an answer your answers just make more questions?” I say with an exasperated sigh as now Argentum is talking about curses as some reasoning for that unjustifiable machine of flesh and souls.

“I guess it is because I often think you know more than you do,” says my uncle rubbing his head with his hand while he stretches his wings behind himself, “you can live a thousand years and still only grow more ignorant. The curse of age is that it often tricks the mind into viewing the world as it was and not is. When I look upon you, I see your father and his father before him and my mind cheats and tells me that you were there during several momentous occasions that are now twisted by myth and history. Sometimes my guarded heart wishes you were there, so I’d not have to explain things I wish would die in the deep wells of memory…”

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Argentum inhales a long breath, closes his eyes and raises his head before continuing, “I, like my father and your father, do not like relishing in the past as it is like using a knife to reopen the most dreadful of scars. Perhaps I subconsciously wish for the blade to cut shallow and not deep in the futile desire that you were there with us in creating this world, all so I do not need to relive what Aurhea attempted to remove to enslave me.”

“I guess that makes sense,” I mutter as I too have mental wounds that have yet to scar that I can only guess will be treated with the same care that Argentum exhibits in his words.

Argentum then unexpectedly lets out a chuckle that eventually becomes a loud laugh. The laughter is strangely nostalgic as when Argentum gains his composure he says, “The mind is a funny thing. Just as I see your father and my father in you, this doesn’t mean I can’t see you, as I still can see the desperate boy I met not so long ago. I can still remember the joy I felt being summoned by your father after years of waiting for his call, years of praying that one day he’d be ready to be brothers again, years of yearning to have the relationship we once had as mentor and student… only to see his distrustful eyes and his body poised to defend his boy from me.”

Just as swiftly as Argentum was jovial, his face contorts and guilt shades his expression as his wings droop behind him, “At first, I saw the boy as a tool to ingratiate myself back into your father’s good graces, only to eventually realize that our relationship still remained in a pile of burning corpses that in my inaction I inadvertently caused. In the end of a hopeful interaction that was becoming a miserable disaster, the boy revealed to me that the future was yet to be set in stone, and that despite Aurhea’s attempts to rid the world of any potential rivals, the world produced one anyway.”

“The day you heard my people’s cries, I knew I had to have you, and thus the king and not the uncle proposed a debt to bind you to me. I’ll never be worthy of your forgiveness, and I’ll never be worthy of my people’s either, as my greatest sin has always been my struggle to choose the role I should have played. I should have been a father instead of a king, a king instead of a father, an uncle instead of a king… alas the past is already scrawled in stone, and I cannot change it,” continues Argentum as he gets up from his chair to stand next to me on the sand of the shores of the waterfall’s pool.

“My father said that you betrayed him. He made it sound like you convinced the dracaquan to betray the celandil remnants and might have tipped off humanity as well to where the celandil my father gathered were about to set sail to a new land safe from humanity… how do I know that these words aren’t just meant to manipulate me into feeling sorry for you, as you just admitted that you were trying to use me to get back into my father’s good graces,” I say cooly, as just having my mind played with and nearly subjugated has me a bit on edge and not in a very trusting mood.

“That is a fair accusation to levy towards me,” says my master with a deep sigh, “all I can say in my defense is that a lot can happen in ten years of absence. However, a king must take responsibility, especially for the lethal judgments of a daughter and princess.”

“Does that mean that the celandil genocide was orchestrated by your daughter while you were testing the soul reservoir?” I say, shocked at this revelation, shocked that Argentum would take responsibility for something he wasn’t around for. My father died hating Argentum thinking he was the mastermind behind the death of his first family!

Argentum raises a hand to stop me from continuing to speak my thoughts. It looks like he is about to predict that I was going to try and recuse him from the sins he has claimed as his own. Argentum nods his confirmation of my previous statement and responds, “a king takes responsibility. Even if the decision wasn’t his own, if an act takes place in the name of the king’s nation it might have well been his decision, as through my action or inaction the act took place, and it will be I as the king that must deal with consequences no matter how joyous or painful. The consequences of the celandil genocide were some of the most painful I had ever experienced, as in that day I betrayed a brother, failed my people, and was betrayed by my daughter.”

“But!” I attempt to interject, but again Argentum silences me with a simple gesture of his hand.

“I’m the one who put my daughter in charge of my nation during my absence! It was my decision and trust that led to the complete destruction of the celandil and the creation of the soul reservoir,” says Argentum firmly to emphasize that it doesn’t matter what I say, his mind has already assigned the permanent guilt of sins that may not even belong to him.

“That may be so, but you weren’t the king for those ten years,” I mutter not really knowing why I’m saying these words, perhaps a part of me wishes to dissociate sins I claim that may not be my own, but I force myself to hold within my soul.

Argentum’s lips curl in a sneer as he says, “and you were supposedly dead when the Gehennan massacre came to pass, yet it was the groundwork we both placed that led to the great harm afflicted upon others despite our supposed absences. In the end, we both stand condemned. We both tried to create better worlds for the peoples we chose, and yet destroyed the lives of so many through those we inspired by our actions and the consequences of said actions. Sometimes the sins we gather are not necessarily just sins of commission and omission, but of inspiration. Most will never know the pains of this third type of sin, but those like us who will not know of a mortal human death will become intimately acquainted with it.”

Nothing but the pounding falls could be heard after Argentum concluded his remark. I had no response as I understood. If I hadn’t acted the Gehennan wouldn’t be dead. If Argentum didn’t trust his daughter the celandil may have made a new start on a new land, and the soul reservoir wouldn’t have been made. We were catalysts for tragedy.

“Both of you are wrong,” those words surprise both Argentum and I as I feel like we both had forgotten that Esther was here with us, “Skath even in his altered appearance defended the Gehennan! It was Uzuri, Upendo, Stephanos, and I that made the decision to destroy them. Given the way you speak, you would have defended your brother and his people if you were able. Shouldn’t you weigh your intentions against what others did with your legacies!”

“Intentions,” scoffs Argentum turning his attention away from the rippling pool, “those are personal and rarely escape the mind. Results are tangible and scar reality. It doesn’t matter what I intended, as I merely wished for my people to escape the curses of my father. I wanted them to live beyond the limitations of their creation. I wanted us to live when we were born to die… I was desperate and long overspent, and my daughter gave me hope. Hope was my intention, and now we live in a world where hope will destroy the old world and birth a world of Aurhea’s intentions. It doesn’t matter what I intended; the result of my hope will be a world baptized in blood.”

“I guess you are determined to burn upon your self-constructed pyre, but leave Skath out of your self-immolation,” says Esther and I feel her pull on my shoulders as if to try to get me to my feet to walk away from the flagellatory king, “I may not understand much of what has been spoken, but right now I see two men who continue to break themselves to expiate guilt they create for themselves in abundance. Perhaps you two need to forgive yourselves before seeking to receive forgiveness from beyond the grave.”

“It is for expiation, that I need Skath!” yells Argentum and I look up to see his eyes watering as I can tell that the king’s façade is now breaking into something new, and oddly real.

I see Esther glare as she gives up on raising me to my feet and looks Argentum in the eyes. She is much smaller than him, but in her own way she now feels like she is towering over him. The Esther that once held the weight of her fear of Gehenna and the misguided respect of her zealous mother, is not the Esther that stands now before a king. Though this new persona possesses some awkwardness, a matriarch has awakened. Esther points to me and then herself before speaking, “I know you do not believe in my faith. Martog’s maw, sometimes I don’t believe in it much myself. But, what I do know is that at times confession, or rather honesty, true honesty with oneself and others leads to paths of healing. You’ve revealed some, but held back much, and it is in that holding back that you cloud the future for yourself and Skath. Sometimes it’s not opening a wound, so much as amputating a gangrenous limb that leads to true healing.”

“So, you wish for me to vent?” says Argentum clicking his tongue to then turn his back to Esther and I, “What do you wish for me to say that hasn’t already been said to those I trust most? Figures that a supposed priestess would propose confession, but there is nothing left to confess. The only way for me to find peace is to either see this world freed from my daughter’s future or condemned to it.”

“Then why fight against your daughter at all?” I ask remembering how Argentum had said he was to remain neutral in the competing futures his daughter and I were to fight for.

“Because…” Argentum begins to speak but tilts his head to think only to start and stop his next thought with stuttered syllables until he finally settles on what he wishes to say, “this world, humanity, teratolion, glirdon, dracaquan, huto… totalion are like drinking overly bitter tea during a beautiful sunset. At one point in my life, I could only acknowledge the bitter taste of the tea and ignored the painted skies, but now I cannot but acknowledge both simultaneously. If the world were destroyed and transformed into the materials for new paints to create a new future, then at least I’d be able to see what once was and miss all that was all the same. I’ve lived for so long, that I’ve seen the cycles of destruction and recreation over and over again, and at this moment in time I don’t think the world as it is warrants a complete rewrite to its current draft. I do not have the power to fight anymore, but I still wish to see if this current wonderous world will fight to continue its existence.”

“Huto?” I say hearing the word in a new context that sparks some connections, “I’ve only heard that word once and that was in my conversation with Aurhea. With the new context you’ve given me, does this mean that the Huto are another people that lives on this world like the totalion and teratolion.”

“They are the reason for my neutrality,” says Argentum and his wings lower behind him and his body begins to quake as his torso turns to stare at a new portion of the sky. His eyes don’t look at the waterfall but look toward the west in such a way that it seems like his mind is being carried far away.

I attempt to find the strength to stand up, but I still haven’t recovered, which normally my soul would have generated enough essence to at least give me human strength by now. I rub my face and with all the mental fortitude my physical training with Angtos and my father gave me I force my body to stand as my muscles scream and my soul begins to ricochet agonizingly faster off of my essence flesh barrier. I approach Argentum and stand between his wings as I shakily place a hand upon his shoulder, “if I am to help you, I need to know more than just questions.”

“I know!” snaps Argentum his voice becoming ragged with emotional exhaustion, “I know…”

“The Huto are the result of my people curing their curse without my or my daughter’s intervention,” explains Argentum after a moment of deep breathing to reclaim some remnant of his kingly persona, “In escaping the lands of humanity with my people to make a new life, like your father aspired to do with the celandil remnant, I simultaneously left a possible cure behind that I had learned to hate. The Huto are a lot like you, a hybrid. Human genes are surprisingly strong in their expression and in a sense cured the curses placed upon my people naturally instead of spiritually. The totalion didn’t have a future, but the Huto do, and it is in part that they exist that I must simultaneously find a way to create the possibility for another future, but it is because my daughter also knows they exist that I must appear to remain neutral.”

“I don’t think you can stay neutral anymore,” I say seeing Aurhea in my mind’s eye, “Aurhea knows now that I exist, and that you are the reason that I am what I am now: a threat to her future. She said that she will no longer spare the Huto.”

Argentum’s wings puff up much like a frightened bird puffs up their feathers, but eventually they gradually fall so far that they now sully themselves in the dirt. Argentum’s voice responds in a defeated whisper, “at least I have secured peace for them for as long as I have. Aurhea sees them as an abomination but has also used them to ensure my compliance. Now that we face the last years of my partial dominion of the soul reservoir as its external celandilic guardian and caretaker, their end was soon to come to pass anyway. For them to live, they rely upon our success in thwarting Aurhea.”

“Does this mean that you’ll be my complete ally in what is to come?” I ask acknowledging the shift in Argentum’s words. When we spoke at my parents’ funeral, he chose his words carefully as if constrained, now he speaks as if he has chosen his path.

Argentum nods his head and turns back toward Esther and I, “I already was your ally, and now that my last binding has been loosed, I can now act fully in that capacity.”

“Then be honest with me,” I say, and I see Argentum grimace at my request.

Argentum flaps his wings nervously, as if subconsciously he wishes to run away. It’s clear to me that the scars of his past run deep, so deep that what he has spoken of must have pained him deeply to reveal. Argentum, after calming himself to the point his wings ceased to shake once more, grasps his suit coat and his eyes widen in recognition and realization. He sticks a hand in his suit coat and produces a golden amulet covered in celandilic script attached to a chain. He opens the amulet revealing that it is a locket and his eyes water as he detaches the chain from whatever it was attached to within his suit and with great effort of will he grabs one of my hands and places the amulet within it.

“If the past pains me to speak of it, then I will let my honest advocate speak for me,” says Argentum as I look into the locket to see it contains a small container filled with soul filled blood almost making it look like the inside of the amulet is adorned with a rather large ruby, and on the other side of the amulet is a small painting of a dignified totalion man.

Argentum closes my fingers around the amulet to shut it within my hand, “I entrust to you the soul of my dearest friend and confidant, Cintharoar. He basically forced me to create this locket and carry his soul within it so that I’d have a friend to guide me in the dark times to come, and now I wish for him to guide you. In the future, you will need to commune with the souls of my people, and this will be your training to do just that. Commune with Cintharoar and he will reveal to you my past and answer your questions. Unfortunately, I at this moment am not strong enough of will to open my scars to you, as they were opened thousands if not millions of times by my daughter and those wounds she dealt me have yet to fully heal even after close to a thousand years of wanting them to close.”

“I’ll need a lot of practice communing with souls if I am to help anyone of the fractured souls that are in the soul reservoir. Some of those poor souls are now completely silent and inert after the torturous negligence afflicted upon them by Aurhea,” I say clasping the sacred gift to my chest. Argentum just gave me a sacred gift that he wore upon his heart. I may not fully understand why Cintharoar wanted this horrible imprisonment that I have become somewhat acquainted with, but from the sheen and luster of the locket, I can tell that Argentum has dutifully cared for his friend in his current sanguinous and spiritual state.

Argentum looks surprised by what I just said and raises an eyebrow to beckon me to explain more by what I meant. I’m not sure why Argentum would want to know more, as he should already know the fate of his people’s souls. Then again, our conversation has taken different turns with nearly every statement and action. The give and take of the words shared in our conversation has sent us through a labyrinth of emotions and thoughts that may take a lifetime to unravel and maybe it is because of the knots made in our conversation that he needs me to clarify what I said.

“What? Don’t you know what your daughter has planned?” I ask observing newly beading sweat emerge on the brow of Argentum.

Argentum turns his head back and forth in deep thought as he mutters, “She plans on transforming my people into celandil, and then use them as an army paired with the millennium of built-up essence to unleash soul craft of immense power to purge the predicted miniscule remnants of humanity, teratolion, glirdon, dracaquan, and huto after her manipulated world war concludes. Originally the plan was to just fix our biology, but then when I was released, those that were rejected by the soul reservoir revealed her new plan to give them not just better bodies, but celandilic powers to claim not just a future for our people but the world itself.”

“I don’t think that’s the plan anymore, or ever was the plan,” I say remembering back to when Argentum and I spoke over the graves of my parents. He explained to me that he has been pumping the minds of his people with benevolent propaganda for a millennium, whilst he went forth to try to destroy humanity through their own hands. Now that I know that Argentum as a king has taken responsibility for his daughter’s schemes, nearly every time he said I, he should have said Aurhea in that conversation. Aurhea has been using the Huto as hostages to keep Argentum compliant, that is why he needed me to be his champion to make it appear that he remained neutral to protect his ‘new’ people, the Huto. I think I’m starting to understand Argentum and the dire situation he involved me in.

“My people who were called upon to guard the soul reservoir, and who were rejected by it told me that those that were received by the soul reservoir were being prepared to receive the blessing of not only new bodies, but new souls, and a new world. They told me that my people were being taught all the lessons they would need to become more than just totalion, more than celandil, but a people of utopia,” says Argentum trying to understand what I just said, but in his panic it is clear that the pieces he is picking up in my words are spilling to the ground faster than he can connect them together.

I shake my head and say, “I think you should reevaluate one word you just said. You asked me once if I could start over, go back to square one, destroy the history of the world, and all the differences to essentially create a world without needless conflict, would I do it? You yourself within that question told me the goal of the soul reservoir and that is to get rid of what Aurhea calls disparity. Let me ask, when you said new souls, did you picture that being a soul transformed like we can change our bodies and appearance? A mere alteration of state, but no actual modification to the unique identity connected to the soul itself? That Aurhea was changing the soul from a human state to a celandilic state? If so, then you have the wrong idea, as souls so disparately different from each other as defined by Aurhea would bring needless conflict into the future and thus fly in the face of her definition of utopia. The bodies in the soul reservoir are what are being converted from a human to a celandilic state not the souls. The souls of your people are basically just a power source for Aurhea to ascend to godhood, and her own soul will be split into the seeds of a new race of artificial celandil.”

My words drain the color from Argentums face, and he stumbles to the ground upon his knees, “all this time I thought I was preparing you to be the internal caretaker of the soul reservoir to undo the damage of a thousand years of propaganda, but now… what has become of my people’s souls?”

“You said that I could hear the screams of your people,” I say looking upon the pathetic visage of a man that once only radiated the strength of a kingly persona.

He raises his hands up in exasperation, “Screams? Do you mean the cries of my people? As in rallying cries of soldiers long prepared and impatient desiring the blood of their perceived enemies.”

“No,” I say taken aback by these words, as I always interpreted the word cries differently based upon what I’ve personally heard with my spiritual ears, “the screams I hear are of pain and anguish. What is even more worrying is the silence of souls long abandoned and broken by a thousand lonely years of contemptuous neglect. Those souls hang in a void of endless darkness, and it appears, only we were the victims of Aurhea’s sickly sweet dreams.”

“That can’t be, please tell me this isn’t true,” says Argentum clasping his face with his hands his breath becoming more and more ragged with each inhale he attempts to bring air into his lungs.

I kneel by the desperate man whose life has been destroyed through betrayals of the most high order, by one that he should have been trustworthy, but I cannot spare him with a lie as he’d know I was medicating dung to soothe new wounds, “what screams I hear, are the sorry few that still have voices to scream as so many have gone silent and now float broken in an abyss ruled by a goddess that sees them as the necessary garbage that will build her dreams.”

Argentum doesn’t respond. He sits utterly despondent in nihilistic dread, as his eyes wander to the hell that he helped create. This reaction of complete despair overwhelms my aunt and I in such a way that we too are held silent by the radiating pressure of Argentum’s collapse into his fracturing psyche. Without warning the shattered man begins to mutter to himself, “all is lost… I failed them all… I found another, only for that dimmest hope to be yet another cruel joke… I thought they’d… she’d listen to reason, but if this madness is all that is left in her heart… nothing can be done to avert catastrophe…”

Argentum has lived thousands of lives honeyed in the sweetest of lies, something I only had the most diluted of tastes to experience. He has experienced betrayals and sorrows all for the insidious virtues of trust and hope. In some odd way, I see myself in the king, a strange reflection, as we both fought for better worlds that ripped at our brains and stabbed us through our backs to tear at our hearts.

I have some semblance of what he has gone through, but my past’s weight is small in comparison to his. What he is going through I can empathize with as the disappointment and trauma of trust, expectation, and futures lost is immense. What we will go through in the near future, I cannot imagine as I don’t think either of us truly has pure hope untainted.

Knowing what I know now, I cannot abandon my life debt. Knowing what I know now, I cannot return to illusions of conjured dreams. All I fought for, and all that was lost will be for nothing if Aurhea’s future comes to pass. In fact, all I’ve learned of Aurhea leads me to believe that if I were to pursue the succor she offers, I too may become a shattered floating soul in an abyss. Will I kneel and relinquish the lives of those I love here in this dream, just to shatter and have this world burn?

The world I fought for may not be my ideal, but despite all the tragedy and loss, there are still a few that I hold extremely precious that I’d fight for, that I’d kill for. Those five I hold above all that yet live, deserve a chance to create their futures. I freed Uzuri and now she is a queen and rani. Geracht died, but his mother, wife, and child live on. Ashe still lives and deserves a chance to love.

To a lesser extent there are others that motivate me that still breath that I defended with my life that deserve a chance. The Gehennan were destroyed, but the Unadeamy, the last of my mother’s family walk uncertainly toward a future hopefully hand in claw with the teratolion. So many have died, but so many still live. So many still live.

The memory of my grandfather showing me the entirety of Nuren evokes a new sensation in my heart that has long been mired in sorrowful guilt and shame. The world is filled with people, who still live, who still breathe, who go about their lives ignorant of Aurhea’s apocalypse. People who have families, friends, their own Mariams, Turases, and Gerachts. The pain I have felt, and feel will fill this world for an excruciating moment, and then my world will come to know the silence of a past forgotten as Aurhea’s heralds proclaim her future. It is that silence, that cruel forgetful silence that haunts me as I peer into a future yet decided. It is that immense quieting of millions of souls, and especially the silencing of the five souls that I hold close to my heart that calls my mind to reflect on the hundreds that I personally and through inspiration destroyed. Can I sit by and watch an entire world burn, when maybe I could have done something to prevent its fall into complete oblivion?

Is everything I’ve done for nothing? Will I when Aurhea’s demi-gods come searching for the remnants of man kneel broken and defeated welcoming the blade that will end my suffering? I have fought for the future once, and I’ve won and lost, experienced joys and pains… and I’ve become lost in that pain. I see the huddled weeping pacifistic boy I was within my mind’s eye, and now I take steps away from him as I am once again obligated to pick up the sword for those I love as a man. I cannot die knowing I didn’t at least try to protect the very little that is upon this world that I cherish with all my heart. My hand was stayed as the slave Aeramen, but now I can wield my spear again as the freed Skath!

The future is not set in stone.

I take a deep breath as I look upon the shattered husk before me, a man that I was slowly becoming as I was succumbing to my own past’s pains and sorrows. Pains and sorrows that I know will follow me forever, but instead of holding me still, they will guide me like Upendo is guided by the souls he holds close to his spirit. I won’t beg forgiveness, but guidance from the specters that haunt me.

I once again unsteadily rise to my feet, and with all the force of my will, I obligate my body to limp away from Argentum and Esther. I now know what I must do, and ultimately it is time to say goodbye to this hole in the mountains. Now that I am free of Argentum, it is time for me to make my own path, which is ironically the same path that I would have walked as a slave.

“Where are you going?” asks Esther surprised by my sudden actions.

I let out a breathy chuckle, “I must protect all I have left. You, Uzuri, Ashe, Geracht’s kid and by protecting you maybe even this damned world as well. Martog’s balls, I spent almost my whole life trying to save Uzuri, the goddess be damned if I just give up and let her die now. I’ve got a war to stop, souls to save, and a goddess to thwart. I may fail, I probably will, but I’d rather die trying to save a future where all those that I cherish will have a future, rather than sit here and stew in my regrets. I’ve done that for far too long.”

Argentum gets up from his knees and stares at me in disbelief, “I’ve freed you. You don’t have to do this. There is no future, Aurhea has already won!”

“And as a free man, I choose to fight for a future for those I cherish!” I say looking back at Esther and somewhat begrudgingly at my uncle as well, “This may sound strange to you uncle, but I choose to fight not because I’ll win, but because if I don’t, I’ll already be dead. I was already dead; I just didn’t want to admit it. I choose to fight now because I’ve lost so much, and I can’t just sit back and die knowing that those I love will be killed because I did nothing. I’ve already done nothing and I’ve seen friends, family, and those that could have become family in the future be snuffed out, and in my freedom I can’t live behind a mask of pacifistic passivity anymore. I choose to live again, even if my path may bring more suffering upon me. Even if I may be called upon again to be a warrior and monster that sits upon a mound of corpses that in life threatened my precious ones. Even if at the end of my journey I fail, at least I’ll have tried and failed to protect all that I love, at least I’ll have lived worthy of the few souls that will plead for me when I am dragged to hell.”

“You don’t have to do this,” says my uncle who stares up at the waterfall with eyes filled with the fear of a piously sinful man in the presence of his goddess.

“I’m going to pack my few belongings and go talk to Upendo to begin negotiations with Tackenae to establish trade with the Western Mountain halls,” I say with a half-smile crossing my lips as I wave my valediction to my uncle, “I think you should check up on the huto, as Aurhea’s threat may already be in motion.”

“How are you going to stop Aurhea, I don’t even know how the soul reservoir functions? I just know that I’m somehow connected to it and can only draw upon its essence with Aurhea’s permission!” shouts Argentum as I continue to walk toward my parents’ cabin, “You can’t destroy it, as Aurhea protects it with the essence stored in the reservoir? What do you plan to do with the reservoir and my people’s souls? Are you going to submit yourself to the reservoir, and potentially be overwhelmed by Aurhea as you were before?”

“I apparently have five to maybe ten years to figure that out,” I say, but even though I have a newfound sense of purpose giving me a boost in confidence, those words my uncle just said fill my gut with an uneasy dread and anxiety as I face the hourglass that limits my chances to alter Aurhea’s future.