The mourning dove appears once again. It weeps.

I listen, and find the world crumbling into place in the sphere of dreams, the city-mountain of sandstone and many tiers falling into blocks below my feet. Blocks. Blocks. Broken blocks. Jagged. Carved. Crumbled.

I land with a thud atop the topmost layer, almost as if pushed onto it. It’s the same as I remember from a month ago. The skies are rife with a yellow smog; a growling yellow sun shines a caustic light onto the barren landscape. The only difference I see is that the columns of ash and smoke that used to rise from the tiers of the city have doubled in size. Immolation.

My hair is loosened from its bun into a flowing priestess’s locks out back, my bangs fluttering minutely in the wind. I envision myself in a simple but practical armor of bronze, but it does not flicker into existence on my torso and chest. My shoulders are made bare.

I sigh.

I conjure a simple spear, but find its wooden grains vanish from existence.

Minerva is giving me almost no control of her dream. I do not welcome it. The effect of René’s condition is threatening to destroy her psyche. Yet, in this moment where the emotions are the wildest, churning and roiling like wild magic, glimpses of an even deeper subconscious can reveal themselves. And that is why I am here – to see the memories that Minerva rejects. To find the truth. I shall confront the Dragon again.

I march into the recesses of the giant gate at the topmost level, bringing me into the mountain. Once again, it opens to a dark hall the hue of deep teal, shadows draped in many places. But this time, the air that wafts from below smells like the remains of a bloated corpse. I nearly retch at its dire quality. Whatever creatures I face will be at the peak of their power.

I spy the wide and colossal spiraled staircases leading me down into the morass of memory. At each layer before, I had fought a demon. I step onto the first stair, and momentarily scream, as spikes skewer the soles of my foot.

I conjure platforms of ice under my feet, to shield against the spikes on the stairs, only for them to disappear as quickly as I make them. I conjure them again and again, sparing me brief seconds, cycling them through so my feet won’t be pierced.

I descend the steps, one by one, looking through the memories once again. Multicolored frescoes of Minerva’s younger days come alive in a kaleidoscope of images at first, vomiting themselves onto the walls of the descending rotunda into haphazard messes of dizziness.

Minerva’s youngest memories as a toddler. Shattered. Her father from some distance away at in a brightly lit garden, holding his arms wide open as if to welcome her embrace. Minerva – with a careful wobble – waddles her way, one brave step at a time, towards her father, almost falling, almost stumbling – but bravely marching on all the same. Her father reaches out to her and hoists her up, laughing and chuckling along with Minerva’s own little giggles. She turns to see her father, but he has no face. No eyes. No nose. No mouth. Someone has stolen it. She screams. Her mother in the distance with a sun-hat cuts roses, nicking her finger on their thorns. She swears.

I descend, cautious of approaching demons. Yet, none assault me.

The next memory is Minerva at school. She is at the nurse’s office. She had been chasing squirrels around the yard with her friends, and was climbing a tree when the branch she was on snapped and plummeted her to the sides of an iron fence. A handsome boy had run to save her – a boy with a hair of charcoal navy – but her arm hit the fence first. Tears run down her cheeks with the throbbing stings of the open gash on her left arm, broken too. The nurse puts it in a cast, wrapping the bandages and sliding a thick splint under, reprimanding her with words that still stings to hear. The boy asks if she’s okay. She says ‘mmm-hmm’. Would she climb the tree again? No.

I descend.

The next memory on the walk is so vivid that I place my fingers on the smoothed, polished wall of the spiral rotunda, and find myself being yanked into the very moment it was taken. Minerva is incensed. She shouts at her mother, while her father tries to come between the both of them, trying to allay their fight. Her mother tells her that she will no longer date the boy named Hugo. Hugo, head drooping, stands outside with flowers splashed with rain, just beyond the front door that is half-open. His hair is of charcoal navy; Hugo’s the same boy who had brought her to the nurse in elementary school. Minerva’s father tries to say a few words to his wife, but before he can finish his words, Minerva throws down her teacup, shattering it on the floor. The shards slice open her foot. She rushes to her room, but there’s no gauze.

I am pulled through and forced in the currents through the steps of time, appearing amidst that wooden house.

The next memory is that of Minerva in tears, holding a scrunched-up letter in her hand, the ink of its writer smudged by her falling teardrops. The letter reads “I’m sorry.” Hugo has gone away to another republic, far far away. He says his father needs him there for a work with little hope of ever returning. Minerva bunches it up and throws it away. It rests in the trash.

I plummet further, the memory thickening to the point that I can touch and feel the world around. It sticks to me like slime.

The next memory is Minerva working as an assistant florist, dressed in a bright yellow sundress with a wide-brimmed hat about to fly off her head. She arranges tulips in little pots by the canal, drawing with a large chalk the prices of her bundles of roses gathered next to her, marking it with a little face that smiles. A boat comes drifting down the canal with a rowman and a plainly-dressed young gentleman in gray. His hair is charcoal blue. Their gazes meet. “Your name is...?” They ask, lips parted in mirthful surprise.

Ocean waves splash across my head as the salt stings my eyes. I’m on a ship. Sailors hurry past my figure. The next memory is that of Minerva and Hugo on a ship towards the Empire of Jin. Hugo mans the helm; Minerva right behind, charting the waves on a lookout. She is a navigator. She still wears the same wide-brimmed hat, her hair now in luscious locks of lucent gray falling to her waist. She gives Hugo a kiss, holding their faces close, lost in the moment between each other’s eyes, Minerva’s cyan, Hugo’s gray, but a long mighty shadow drifts over the helm. The Great Gates of Jin, colossal stone towers stretching miles into the heavens, part the clouds and blots the Sun.

The fragrance of the summer sea and blocks of tea waft up to my nose. “Empyrean Harmony,” the crate reads. Minerva and Hugo, with minute wrinkles on their faces now, proudly sign the import paper on the deck of their ship, La Belle Dame sans Peur, reading a Denaro figure of 24 followed by four zeros. The Port of the Republic of Ascension bids the arrival of their ship with cheers and wows, the first to import the mightiest tea in the world into the republics. A young boy with cream hair and explorer’s cape spots them with a spyglass. His eyes are full of stars.

The next memory unfolds on the shores of a shining sea. Hugo holds up his son René, showing him the vista of a New Year’s sunrise. Minerva gently takes René in her arms, still a baby, drifting off to sleep on her heart. It’s been a long night, with lots of fireworks. Minerva’s gaze meets Hugo’s, and they share in a kiss, the sun rising between their noses.

The next memory uncovers by the gardened daffodils on a small stone cottage in the mountains. Tulips dance and flutter in the wind. Minerva holds out her hands in an embrace, her hair coming to her shoulder now, tied in a braid. A straw-hat rests in an angle atop her head. René takes his shaky first steps, his father Hugo just behind him, ready to catch him should he fall. René stumbles a little, but determined, pushes his fist into the grass, and gets up again. He takes one step with his right. Another with his left. His sight never leaves his mother’s. But he falls backwards. Hugo is gone, whistling with his hands tucked in his pockets towards the mountains. Minerva makes a puzzled look.

The next memory is that in an elementary school. It’s parents’ day. The nurse, now old, giggles with Minerva as little René strides into the hallways valiantly with his little collar-up shirt and suspenders, wearing a tie. Other children contemptuously address him as ‘a show-off’. René glowers at them. Minerva and Hugo stand at the back of the classroom as René proudly raises his hands and is the first to answer a question. It’s about the sea and ships. His answer’s wrong.

The scene materializes to a sandy arena outside. René and his class are playing tagball, but is losing. The gym teacher pauses the game, and asks for volunteers from the spectating parents to join in and have fun. No one steps forward.

They lose the game, 3 to 17.

The next memory unfolds in the dim light of their dining room in a modest mansion. Minerva holds Hugo close in her arms. Dry trails from tears mark both of their faces. On the table, a bill, a piece of white paper, the sigil of a hospital. Little René peeks out from his bedroom door. Hugo spots him and brings him close. They stroll outside, where the lights of Serien far below greet their eyes. There are no stars overhead. Minerva watches over them, stirring a pot of tea. Perhaps it was never their tea.

A shattering sound of glass explodes like a cannonshot upon my entrance to the next. As I step in cautiously, an atmosphere of blood-red assault my vision. Hugo shields René behind him, arms outstretched, cornered against a wall. Three men in blood-red burgundy suits raise their Quans. They’re here to collect their debts.

“Not my family,” he says. “Not my son.”

The men cock their head. The leader of them all steps forward, presenting a sigil from his ring.

He presses his ring into a vial of dark red ink, and presses it upon the envelope, handing it to René.

Hugo pleads.

“Not my son.”

“Yes your son.”

A thunderclap and a bang.

Hugo falls to the ground. Eyes glazed.

A solitary tear descends from his eye.

“Dad...?”

As I try to wade through to the next memory, a cacophonous rumble pierces my ears. A gargoyle, a raven, and an owl all black perches themselves onto the stone pediments, framing the perimeter of this dream. Hollow sockets greet my gaze where their eyes should be. Their necks turn without sound as I proceed cautiously into the funeral.

All the world turns to shades of ash, the only colors permitted the red of blood and the violence of blue. Clamors. Shouts. Minerva lets out hoarse screams, her face wrinkling overnight. The cyan jewel of her eyes drowning under the waves. René sits still, his face hollow, tears having dried long ago. He’s alone now. And he always will be.

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

A skewering pain spears my heart as the memory dissolves and I wade into the next. Each step feels like fighting against a coursing river; or feeling like under suspended honey, my feet struggle to move forward.

The landscape changes to that of René alone on the porch of their mansion. He puts a strawberry into his mouth. The juices and seeds burst forth in his mouth like gangrified flesh. It tastes like one too. As his legs dissolve, bone and sinew remain.

The landscape changes to that of René with a fever, delirious with real monsters. His bedroom in their small mansion hold only a dim lamp by the side of a table. Rain splatters outside. Minerva is seated on a chair, face-down on the tea table with her arms sprawled on the patterned tablecloth, her hair loosened into a featureless carpet of gray with frayed threads of navy.

René cries out for his father, flailing, kicking the bedsheets away.

Up on the ceiling, a wraith with black robes, holding a scythe.

The reaper has come;

The reaper has come;

The reaper has come.

Clouds of black smoke choke my throat and sting my eyes as the memory liquefies into tar and binds me to where I stand, but I resist.

Last time, I was stopped here. But this time, I must go further. I need to know what happened to René. I need to know the exact sequence of events. What is beyond this point is what probably tarnished and dyed the joyous memories of her recollection into the writhing collection of nightmares. A person’s state of mind can twist even the brightest of their memories into visages of trauma.

The tar sticks to my throat and threatens to twist it.

Fire. 10,000%. I burn, as my body becomes wreathed in flame, and the tar evaporates in an odious stench.

Various tendrils and spikes of tenebris metal arrive at where I stand, their tips singing in the wind.

Ice. Fire. Metal Earth Shard.

I deflect them all, and cleave the ground with the fury of my advance.

I spy the body of the white Dragon caught in a net, and on top, the nightmare guardians of gargoyle, raven, and owl pressing it down, intending to suffocate it.

They come alive, conjuring up long pillars of metal that pummel my body. I cough blood. I break them with the arts I recall, and drive my fist headfirst into the head of the gargoyle.

It issues a cacophonous scream as it turns to dust.

I make a roundhouse kick to the head of the owl. It simply rotates his head, a full 360 degrees, and issues a screech that bursts my left eardrum.

I skewer it with a momentary lance, leaving a hole through its feathered torso. The raven cleaves my forearm in half with its beak as I grab it and pummel it into the ground, until only sinew hangs off its tongue going ‘blegh’.

The dragon breaks free from its weighted prison, ascending to the sky, facing me down.

“You come again, Descender.”

“I do.”

“I am the Keeper of the Gates. If you proceed past here, there is no going back.”

“I understand.”

The dragon takes to the sky, and with its dancing coils in the morass of utter black, a heavy gate of circular metal materializes and creaks open.

I proceed past it, and find myself in the same bedroom. René’s.

Minerva shakes René.

“...René? René?” she exclaims. “René?! René! RENÉ!”

But he does not awake. His eyes are gently closed. I reach out to touch him.

He’s cold.

All around me are the howling of wolves and the cacophony of slaughters. I proceed through to the next part of her dream-memory, getting cut by thousands of threads emanating, issuing, bursting forth from her psyche intended to keep everyone – even her own consciousness – out of this place. I regenerate my body as fast as I am cut, my flesh growing, cut, and regrowing in the thousands of places, blood sallying forth from my determined growls. I have to see the end of her memory to the present.

Minerva holds the casket of her son day and night until no tears remain and no voice comes. She looks to the sky in prayer for the divinities, but they do not answer her. Her head is shaved.

Just – one – more – step! I roar, reaching for the handle of the next door, her last memory as far as my eye can see. I turn the round knob, and force it open.

The red threads vanish. The howling stops.

Hundreds of children are lined up at an assembly. This isn’t the one, says Minerva, brushing aside.

Another visage of a hundred children.

Children in two hundreds.

Children in thousands.

Children in tens of thousands.

Then suddenly, the hazy figure of the superintendent with the dirty cravat.

Minerva points to a boy. He looks just like René.

“Manfred Bastian?”

Minerva responds. “René Cartier.”

I finally let go of the threads of my mind holding my soul together. I rocket up.

* * *

“You again! What do you want? If you’re not here to adopt or –”

I grab him by the lapel, Jules by my side.

“Manfred. Manfred Bastian. Did you make him sick? What did you do to him?”

The children recoil in a mixture of surprise and – from what I can spy at a glance – furtive delight.

“Sick? Don’t know what the Naraks you’re talking about –”

“Yes you do,” I say shaking him, standing so close. “Laws mandate you keep health records for each child that passes through. You didn’t show it to me the last time. You’re going to show it to me now.”

“And what if I don’t?”

“Then all of your dirty business here is gonna get reported after we smash your face in!”

Jules cocks his head, briefly adjusting his sleeve so the intendent can see a glimmer of his Quan.

“The records... the records... damn it, the records...” he fumbles, shuffling away piles upon piles of binders and files.

“Medical... no, this is last year’s... there... there and – here!” He fishes out the folder. I snatch it away and peruse through the names of individual children adopted 3 years ago.

Manfred, Manfred... there he is.

His record letter in bold reads:

No known medical conditions.

A small, faded photogram fading at the edges show his face in more detail. I peer at it.

The same eyes I remember. And yet, he is not thin. Not at all. He looks round.

“That’s all I’ve got! You can’t be asking me for more!”

“We don’t need to,” I say, rushing out the E. J. Greenwood with Jules.

It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you – it’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.

“Damn witch,” I hear him mutter under his breath.

Was I? Or was someone else?

* * *

Minerva’s in René’s – Manfred’s – bedroom when we arrive. She is wiping the fever-sweat off him, helping him up from the bed so he can take a sip of tea.

“How is he?”

“Not any better. I don’t know why so suddenly! It’s all happened after that seizure and I’m – please, Amelie, could you do a dive again!”

“Right away,” I say. He’s burning to the touch. “M – René. René. Can you hear me? René?” I ask, trying to split my conscious so as not to haphazardly call him by ‘Manfred’.

No response.

I crack the bar of Eisen without hesitation and inhale deeply. I entwine my fingers with Manfred’s clammy hands. I cannot make him out. It is of such an arduous journey that the candleflame of consciousness flickers in and out.

He stabilizes for the time being.

I don’t understand. Not even the doctor does. How can Manfred be sick? He is not being preyed upon by beings or monsters like this! People don’t just fall sick – his condition was stable just a week ago until this seizure began! I don’t get it!

And as the storm of thoughts cloud my mind, I see Minerva request me for more tea and water from downstairs.

The night is falling. And I am in no position to sleep here.

I take the pot and refill it with hot water, bringing it back – but before I do, a sudden pang of irascible consciousness hits my mind.

Has Manfred drunken any water? Any pure water to begin with?

I’ve never actually seen him drink a glass. There was a rare allergy called allergy to water, but that was exceptionally rare that the last patient I’ve heard lived over a decade ago...

I’ve made no objections to Minerva’s tea because I drunk it, she drunk it, Manfred drunk it, everyone drunk it – but then again, if Manfred’s sickness must have a reason, it could very well be that it originates from what he eats. And he does consume quite a lot of tea.

The fact that Manfred was healthy – even at the blasted orphanage – speaks to his constitution. It’s only after he was adopted by Minerva that he became sick. Perhaps it’s what Manfred had been fed that he is sick?

Suddenly, the teapot I’m holding feels unright. As if a part of my mind knows something is gravely wrong. I lay it down on the dining room table again, puzzled, concerned. And as I notice the pattern of flowers on the teapot, and its minute spout, I notice something screaming from my memory.

Minerva and I and Jules have always drunk out of a teapot with a spout that was chipped minutely at the end.

This teapot is whole.

By instinct, I open my goatskin flask and pour the steaming tea into it as a sample. Though I can’t tell why, I know something is wrong, and it could be very well be this tea. This was only a suspicion, though.

I open the lid of the pot. Just a block of tea inside. It greets me, arms folded. Completely ordinary.

But ordinary hides many things under its guise.

I empty the teapot into the drain, place a new tea block, and pour the hot one in. In the meantime, I bring water upstairs.

“Thank you,” Minerva says, not paying attention whether it was tea or water I held in my hand. She feeds it to Manfred – René – argh damn it!

Manfred opens his eyes. He is groggy, but thankfully, he is called back.

The night is approaching. I cannot afford to stay. Not with this goatskin back.

I rush to take the last train for the night.

* * *

“This? The tea?” asks Jules, his brows furrowed. He takes the goatskin out and pours it into a pristine flask.

“I think so. Something must be wrong with the tea. I don’t have any evidence, just a hunch. You can analyze it, right?”

“I can,” he answers, “but it’ll take time.”

“How fast?”

“By tomorrow morning. If I work through the night. Listen, are you sure that this is the – “

I explain my reasoning to him, and my minute observation. Perhaps Minerva was careful not to let any foreign object or contact mar Manfred’s tea, and reserved a separate pot for him. I could very well be spinning tales because I’m paranoid. Maybe it’s because of the Eisen I took. I can see and sense and feel everything small and minute. That’s why I noticed that the teapots were different.

“Alright. I’ll see what I can do.”

Jules shakes me awake. “Amelie, Amelie, you’ve got to see this,” he says.

The stoichiometric paper is tarnished black. My heart drops.

“What... what does it test for?”

“Varuviere of various kinds. Toxins.”

“And it’s been...”

“I think you’re right,” he answers, shaking his head, cupping his mouth.

“What the hell... this can’t happen! This can’t be! NOOOO!” I scream, falling back on the floor. “No, no, this is incorrect, my goatskin is... maybe my goatskin is tarnished, it’s – I –”

“Your goatskin is as fine as it’s ever been. You’ve never gotten sick by drinking from it. And you’ve had it what, two, three years ever since you set up the shop?” Jules asks, shaking his head, rubbing the ridge of his nose, plopping himself down onto the chair.

A nausea of the deepest kind begins to roil my stomach. Doubled with the effects from Eisen, I retch even though there’s nothing to retch except slime.

Minerva – Minerva - you – you - !

This was criminal. More than criminal. Minerva... Minerva was a murderer!

“Jules, we’ve gotta get to Argent right away. We have to separate Manfred from Minerva, right now!”

“Amelie – wait! The next train is not until 5 hours –”

“Then we report her! Right away! I am going to ping the Serien council right away, send officers to the – to the cottage – remove her –”

All the world swims in visions of various colors. Memories of the future begin flooding my mind, of Manfred dying.

“She’s the one! She’s the one behind Manfred’s sickness! SHE HAS BEEN POISONING HIM!”

“Amelie, AMELIE!” He grabs me by the shoulder, helping me still. “Wait. We’ve got to think things through right now. Just spare a few minutes for me, yeah?”

“I can’t! She’s a murderer! She’s the one that’s been – “

“I know, I KNOW! Wait a moment,” says Jules. “I know. Let’s think things through. The tea. Manfred has been drinking it for close to 3 years. Yet, he hasn’t died. Right?”

“Right!” I answer, my eyes swivelling like crazy, not focused on Jules.

“Amelie! Stay with me. One wrong move and we can get both of them killed! Minerva’s likely not in a healthy state of mind. Never has been. Listen, the tea – the poison – it’s likely to be slow-acting. It’s likely to be slow-acting, okay? It took a long time for Manfred to become like this. So he’s certainly not going to die right now or today. We still have time.”

“Time for what? What can we do other than get the council involved?”

“Listen, Amelie. Both of us want to save Manfred. If there’s a poison, there can be an antidote. Do you get my point?”

“An antidote? But – but you can’t make one?”

“That’s right, I can’t. Not with my skills. But there’s someone who can. Remember the doctor?”

A flash of relief comes across me. He hasn’t been able to visit for more than three weeks by this point for reasons unknown, but I know his address in the city of Serien. He lives only a twenty-five-minute run from our shop.

“We’re going to get the doctor to make the antidote first. We show him the results of this poison. And then he – or us – or all of us – are going to visit Manfred again, feed him the antidote. We remove the risk of Manfred’s death first. And then we think of what to do with Minerva. Got it?”

“Got – got it...” I stutter.

“Pack your things,” says Jules, carefully packing the results of his test – and the sample of Minerva’s poisoned tea remaining – into his alchemical satchel.