Iago opened his eyes to a bright light. It was glaring directly at him. He closed his lids and lay, noticing the strange swaying motion. It wasn’t long before he understood that he was being carried in a stretcher.

With great effort, he lifted his head lightly to look at the person holding the front. He had his back to him, but Iago instantly knew it was a stranger.

Stranger?

He closed his eyes for a second. There’s new people in the camp already? Don’t they work fast. And they were even carrying him to goddess only knew where. He was almost certain he should be concerned about that, but he was too tired for it. Exhaustion crashed over him, and he fell asleep once more.

When he awoke again, it was night time. He recognised Scorpius crouched nearby. He was sitting away from the fire and the people, almost hidden in the darkness. He noticed Iago’s wakefulness but did not come to check.

That was unusual. Then Iago remembered. He recalled the reason why he was so tired.

Relief flooded him. She was dead. She was finally dead. No more Winteridges left in this world. The land was free from their cursed existence. Or well, soon will be. He was soon going to follow his dearest sister into the Lady Death’s embrace.

It was only for the better. He sighed with content and closed his eyes.

His next wakefulness met him with light darkness. It wasn’t morning yet but people were rising, sharing dry rations among themselves. There was no smell to reach him, but Iago’s stomach grumbled just at the mere thought of food. How long has he been out? It must’ve been days.

He pushed himself up as far as he could, which wasn’t that high, and surveyed the camp. Most people were familiar. Mala was sitting with Jistas and Evic, chatting animatedly. They seemed quite happy. A stark contrast to the brooding group of the children soldiers. They were sitting in a tight group and not talking.

Malek was slightly further from others. He sat with shoulders slumped and hands clenched around his sword hilt. From time to time, he would glare at Iago. The look would have chilled him if not for the fact that Iago had seen hundreds of them. Thousands maybe even.

His memory was filled with such eyes. Any soldier who’d passed through the lands he conquered knew those looks. It was the stare of the defeated one promising revenge. Hell worse than anything Lady Death could offer for the sinners. He’d killed their loved ones, after all. Orders or no orders, it was his hand that slew the unfortunate enemy soldiers.

“He’d have already killed you if I hadn’t stopped him,” Scorpius said, crouching down beside him.

Iago glanced at his companion, the only person he’d trusted in this life, but saw no compassion there. He let himself go and dropped his head on the stretcher. Eyes closed, he lay without saying a word.

“You killed him,” Scorpius stated in a low voice. He tried to control his voice, hide how much it’d hurt him, but the lingering disgust and disappointment wasn’t hard to distinguish.

There was nothing to hide there. “I did.”

“You could have saved him.”

Another true statement. “Yes.”

“But you didn’t.”

“No, I didn’t.”

The clip answers only served to fuel the fire burning within the young nosferatu. Uncaring of Iago’s injuries, he shook him. “Is that all you have to say? No apology? No explanation? Just a useless ‘yes’?”

“And if I said I was sorry, would that help? Bring him back?” He glowered at his friend. “I’m sorry, I feel like shit for having used his death. But if I could redo it all, I’d still do the same. Happy?”

Scorpius blanched at his words, thrown off by the outburst. But he soon caught the gist of it. Or the only part that his grieving mind could cared for.

“You did it on purpose?”

This conversation was going nowhere. No excuses would work. Nor should they. A young child was dead. An innocent that was there by accident. “How did he got caught?” Iago asked instead of answering.

“He noticed that you and the others were going into the building and followed, wanting to help probably. One of the survivors saw him entering not long after you, but was too busy fighting Mistress’ servants to get him back,” Scorpius explained quietly.

His anger was gone in a heartbeat as he recalled the little boy that kept pestering him all the time. Water pooled in the corners of his eyes, and Iago turned away.

He didn’t want to see this. Know the pain left for those who lived.

His legacy.

Why was it that wherever he went, behind him spread a river of tears. Those of enemies and friends alike. He’d never been conserved with either. Everyone got an equal share of suffering for having encountered him.

He closed his tired eyes, and wished to remember a better time. Before everything had ended up this way. But there was nothing in his mind to hold onto. From the moment he was born, he was a disgrace, a stain upon the pristine name of his family.

Tortured and disregarded for years, he only escaped to be humiliated before the whole country. Too shamed to continue, he joined the army and killed whoever he was told to kill.

Kallum, why did you ever bother with saving me?

He remembered the youthful medic that approached him, eager to finish his apprenticeship by rehabilitating the embittered soldier. Harsh words meant nothing to the youth, he just smiled and did what he wanted. He set the twisted broken body and then continued on by providing the simplest but most precious of things - his friendship.

“Why are you crying?” Scorpius asked sharply.

Iago raised his had, touching his cheeks. They were wet. When..?

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“I- I re- It’s nothing.” He shook his head to clear it off the stray thoughts. Killing his best friend, the only person that had ever cared for his existence. No! No thinking about that. That was the stray thoughts he was trying to clear. “I’m tired, let me sleep.”

Scorpius’ reply was a half-grunt, half-laugh. He then disappeared for a moment before coming back with a piece of smoked meat. “Eat it. I won’t have you starve to death.”

The question ‘why’ lingered on the tip of Iago’s tongue but he held it back. He didn’t want to restart the conversation. If they wanted to keep him alive, then so be it - he’ll live. It wasn’t like they could put him through more misery than he was already in.

He took the small offering and ate it bite by bite.

It hurt trying to chew the stretchy meat. His jaw, similar to all the rest of his body, was in a state of constant pain. Moving any muscle was a challenge he’d never willingly undertake. But he was hungry. He had to force himself to finish that small titbit. Then he instantly fell asleep, tired beyond reason.

The next week and a half passed in a blur. He would wake up and quickly fall into a fitful state of dreaming. Then he’d wake screaming, or drenched in sweat, unaware of where he was. He would try to stand up, fight, but soon his energy would desert him and he’d drop back, half-dead.

Scorpius took care of him during all that time. Feeding him and making sure he didn’t kill himself with his stunts. It wasn’t one of the smartest ideas to try and stand up in a moving stretcher.

When the fever finally passed, Iago was left in the already familiar state of exhaustion. All he wanted was to sleep and never wake up. Why was Scorpius still bothering to keep him alive? Here he was again, bringing precious water to give him.

The nosferatu crouched beside him, and as if reading his thoughts, said, “It’s not for you I’m doing this. I want to hear the answers.”

“Answers to what?” Iago asked, taking the cup of water into his shaking hands.

He leaned against the rock behind him and steadied his elbows against the structure. The liquid wet his parched throat, and he smiled, enjoying the little pleasures of life.

It was late evening, and most people were readying for the night. Small tents were built and soon most people disappeared within them.

There was none for Iago, of course. Even sick, he was left to fend off the nature’s whims in the open. Cruel but fair. He wanted for all this to end anyway.

Scorpius lowered himself, sitting down cross-legged. He eyed Iago with a strange look. The shaper couldn’t decide what hid behind those brown orbs. Earlier anger and disappointment, betrayal, were easy to see, but now… now, he wasn’t sure.

“Who are you?”

That was a simple one. He could answer it. “Elecar Winteridge.”

“But you don’t look like him.”

Simple as well. If he continued with such questions, Iago could get through this without a sweat. Not recalling anything he didn’t want to recall, too.

“Because I’m not him.”

“Explain,” Scorpius ordered. His voice was quiet and calm. Did he know that he was talking with a madman? Did he accept in his heart that the answers won’t make sense? “Explain!” the voice repeated again, this time louder.

“This is Iago Farrisal,” he said, pointing at his heart. He then lifted his finger to his head. “This is Elecar.”

Iago was gratified with a shadow of bewilderment passing through Scorpius’ face. He quickly hid it, though.

“Tell me, what happened to you.”

The softness in the voice was hard to ignore. Not to mention the question itself. There was no easy way to explain this one. How do you surmise a lifetime into a sentence?

But he had to try. Scorpius deserved to know. If only to despise him more. To know that it was the right decision to let him die. All Winteridges deserved that.

“Before everything happened, I wanted to clear the world of evil.” He chuckled to himself. “At my age, and still a foolish idealist. Some people just never grow up. I should have died for it. Did actually. But Kallum had thought it unfair. An even bigger fool than me. He’d unearthed an ancient artefact at some point.

“He was always doing that, you know. Most people, even the greatest shaper families and royalty, didn’t see a single one in their lifetime. But he, he gifted me one soon after we met.” He brought out the cracked amulet from under his shirt. “It was supposed to protect me in the battles, and it did. So many times…”

“You’re changing the topic,” Scorpius noted.

“Oh yeah… The topic…”

Iago didn’t want to talk about it. Was it necessary? Probably. But it didn’t change his reluctance about it. The things that had happened, the cruelty and cold-bloodedness of them.

He waited for awhile but Scorpius didn’t go anywhere. He sat, quiet, and waited for him to continue with infinite patience. Damn nosferatu. He did have a lifespan unequalled by humans. Wasted time meant nothing to him.

“The second was the one that changed everything , but the third… The third was this.” He reached to touch the crystal earring. Its jagged surface was cool to his still warmer than normal temperature. “I have no idea how it works, but when I died, my soul was sucked away and I woke up in this body. Lost in unfamiliar memories.”

“So, there has really been an Iago?”

“Have you ever wondered?” he asked, raising his eyes to look at the endless sky above. Countless starts returned his gaze. “What is a human? Is is the sum of one’s memories? Or is there something more that makes us who we are? If you gave yourself a different set of memories, a new past, would you still be you?”

Scorpius shifted uncomfortably. “What do you mean?”

Iago smiled at him. “When I woke up, I had no idea who I was. It was as if the brilliant tapestry of my memories was torn to ribbons and then put together by a first day apprentice seamstress. I was rich and starving at the same time. My siblings tortured me one day, and we played forgetting everything the next. I hated, despised them at the same time as I loved and adored them. Twenty and ninety-years-old. Nothing made sense. I wondered who I was, what did all those clashing memories meant, but there was no answer coming.

“I was all alone in a world ravaged by powers no one should have touched. And I knew I was the one who let them out. Or a part of me, anyway. I didn’t recall everything that had happened right before the destruction.”

He hesitated for a moment, uncertain if he should say it. But what did it matter? Kallum was who he was. Whatever he said now, it wouldn’t change the past. Wherever he was remembered well or not, wouldn’t change the fact that he was dead. And the dead didn’t have a reason to care for the living, and what they thought of them.

So he continued, “In time, I remembered. Right before the artefact’s activation, Kallum had approached one of his students with an offer the kid could not refuse. If Iago agreed to give away his life, his family would be taken care off for the rest of their lives. They would even be allowed to have an education. And the youth knew it would be true. Whatever his faults, Kallum never lied. He did what he promised.

“Then who are you now? Iago or Elecar?”

Iago lowered his head, looking at his two hands. They weren’t his. Not really. Or were they? How could one know? Even now he was conflicted. Half of his memories, the smaller ones, barely ten years of them, told him that this was who he was.

But the bigger part, a relic of a man, bitterly pointed out that he’d never looked like that. His skin had always been white, hardly darkening even in the sun. Through the years it had wrinkled, skin hanging in some places. His hands had never had this bronzed sheen to them.

His hair had always been long too. Black as midnight. He’d had a striking posture with them flowing in the wind. Or so others often told him. In time, they had greyed and thinned, but he’d never cut them. It was a memento of his past, the dashing hero he’d once been. The heights he’d reached that were never enough.

So what was this red mass on his head? It wasn’t even close to his. And yet… And yet it felt so natural. Looking in a mirror, not once had he thought he saw a stranger’s face. It was him, after all.

“I’d like to know that too,” he whispered. His voice was so low, the nosferatu had to strain to hear him. He sighed, and pushed it all away. Back to the deepest corners of his mind where he kept everything that didn’t need to see the light of day. “It doesn’t matter who I was, or am. Only actions have any merit, and you know what I’ve done. Why keep stretching it out?”

Scorpius watched him, unblinking. “I want to know if there’s even a little of the man that saved me left in you. Or has he died along with Orin.”

How do you answer that?

Iago didn’t know, so he closed his eyes and pretended to fall asleep. After some time, Scorpius stood up and left him. The night-time desert returned to its now natural silence, and Iago wondered about what he’d done. What he’d said.

Kallum, Kallum… Why did you curse me with another existence? What madness whispered in your ear that I’d be happier the second time?