With D’Argen’s entire being hurting when he opened his mahee to run, he was unable to get them too far away. Not that he could tell. Lilian, however, kept pushing him and telling him to go further and further. That they were catching up.

D’Argen did not see anything but white space.

After one such run that ended so abruptly even D’Argen stumbled and fell, he refused to get up. He rolled over and sat up, but refused to do more than that. It felt like he was sitting on rocks and in shallow water and among pine needles.

“How big is this place anyway?” D’Argen gasped out from between his knees as he tried to level out his breathing. He also tried not to think about what, exactly, he was breathing in.

“It is Trace,” Lilian responded from beside him. They were not winded at all. There was a tension in their small frame that D’Argen only recognized due to the many times they fought side by side.

“What do you mean, Trace?”

“Exactly as it sounds. You came to me in Evadia, and we are now almost—”

“Wait, wait, wait.” D’Argen lifted a hand in the air to stall them. He took a deep breath and then focused on Lilian fully. “We are in Trace?”

Lilian nodded slowly. “The realms are not separate. Think of them as layers.”

“Even the gods’ realm?”

Lilian scowled at him. “You are not ready to know. Not yet. Your mind… it may not be able to handle it.”

“Handle what?” D’Argen snapped out in anger. “The fact that Darania was the one to cast us out?”

“How did you know?”

“I heard her voice. I remember hearing her voice.” D’Argen watched Lilian carefully as he spoke. Their face played with a lot of different emotions and though he did not recognize most of them, he did recognize the anger it settled into.

“We have to keep moving. Until we can get you back,” they said.

“I don’t want to go back. Not to that place. I want to return to—”

“You are not ready yet.”

“What does that even mean?!”

“It means that your mind is broken!” Lilian snapped back. D’Argen recoiled at the anger in their voice but even more so from their words. So, it was true. There really was something wrong with him.

“Look, it will get better, it will fix itself, but you need to give it time,” Lilian added quietly.

“How much?” he asked, just as quiet and faint.

“What?”

“How much time?” he repeated, firming his resolve. Delcaus had taken centuries.

“A few more years.”

“More?” D’Argen gasped out. “How long have I been here? Has it been the millennia I—”

“Not even a decade. Trust me. Everything is… well… it is not fine out in the real world, but it can make do without you for a bit longer.”

“You can see it all?”

“Some. Look, leave this for now. Your mind is most important.”

“Not my mahee?”

Lilian quickly shook their head then said, “Your mahee is protecting your body and trying to heal the container. It will take time. Be glad you are the only one here and that you did not also bring Thar with you. Be glad the chains around Thar’s mahee kept him safe.”

There was too much information coming at him.

“But if the mahee wants me dead, to be here, then why would it heal me?”

“Because that is its first priority. To heal. To create. Only once it cannot do so will it call you back to itself. Only once you let it, will it consume you.”

“As you let it?” D’Argen asked, anger returning to his voice.

Lilian squirmed on the spot then nodded quickly. “I was wrong,” they whispered out.

D’Argen glared at them but there was no point to be angry with something that he could not fix. Unless…

“If you are here… does that mean you can come back?”

“Do not even think of it!” Lilian snapped back. “Do you want me to break the mortal realm? Because that is what will happen. There is not much keeping it together to begin with and having one of us, as we truly are, living among the mortals would break both them and the world. No.”

“You keep telling me all these things but most of them don’t make sense. Please, Lilian, explain it to me. Tell me why—”

“Anything I tell you now, you will most likely forget, so there is no point. If you even understand it at all. Just know, I will always look out for you.” Finally, Lilian seemed calmer.

After they took a deep breath, D’Argen noticed a shimmer in the white around them. The outlines of grass and flowers appeared in the white, clouds in the sky, but it was Lilian reaching into their robes that drew his attention. When they pulled their hand out from the folds near their chest, they were holding a small glass vial filled with blood.

“Do you remember giving this to me?” Lilian asked quietly, staring at the glass. It had the same gold stopper as the one D’Argen carried but there were no engraved flowers in either the gold or the glass itself.

D’Argen nodded. He remembered that he could not come up with a motif and the vial only had a few straight lines etched into it, circling from the bottom to halfway up the top. He had not even thought about it when he handed it to Lilian for safekeeping.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

“Would you still give it to me now?” Lilian asked.

D’Argen once more nodded without even thinking about it. There was no question. He trusted Lilian above all others – even above Vah’mor and his more recent connection to Thar.

As he watched, the vial disappeared from their hand as if it was never there. The outlines around them both faded away and then D’Argen had a thought that wanted to take over his need to question Lilian.

This was the same space he and Thar were in before, when Lilian forced him out by trying to kill him with tears in their eyes. He concentrated on the white under him and felt the blades of grass slipping between his fingers. After a moment, their faint outlines appeared. He remembered the multitude of flowers that filled the fields with every imaginable colour. While the colours did not appear, flowers started swaying to a gentle breeze. He looked up at Lilian in shock only to see them staring at the ground in wonder.

“Is this your breeze?” he asked.

“No,” Lilian’s answer was breathy. “I do not have my mahee here, I cannot control the winds.”

“Then—”

“It is you,” they interrupted him. “And… last time, Thar did—”

This time, Lilian’s words were cut off as a stone column shot up from the ground right beside them. D’Argen quickly got up to his feet and stared at it. A moment later, the column faded away like ink dissolving in water.

D’Argen wondered for a moment if the awe he had now was the same one that Ehora felt whenever she entered someone’s mind and created her illusions. She was so good at it. The thought of her made his throat dry out with the scent of cannabis and the grass at his feet changed to that shape, even if it remained short and small.

“What are you doing?” Lilian asked him quietly.

D’Argen ignored them in favour of concentrating. Four stone walls shot up around them and into the air.

Was Ehora here? Could she guide him through this? He had a hard time keeping track of who was dead and who was not with his two sets of memories – one of which he now knew was false for sure.

The walls stopped before they got too high and then a ceiling fell from nowhere atop them. But what if it was round? No. No. A room. A room he knew very well. The stone pulled apart to create windows and then shimmer in one spot to create a wooden door.

But was it just not real? Or was Ehora in his mind even now, slipping into his thoughts and forcing them to her whims as he slept away under Darania’s watchful eyes.

The room was starting to look too much like the stone house where he and Kassar had been locked up. The stray thought was enough to make metal bars waver into the air between him and Lilian.

No. If that was the case, it would not be Ehora playing with his mind, but Santis. Santis was dead in both sets of memories.

D’Argen tried to remove the bars but they solidified. He let go of the vision in his head completely, as he had the stone column, but the walls and bars remained.

“How are you doing this?” Lilian asked in wonder and touched the stone.

Instead of trying to figure out why the structure remained, D’Argen remembered what the walls of Evadia felt like under his fingertips. He watched as the veins from marble spread out from where Lilian’s fingers were. He remembered the decorative trim at the bottom and the grey wooden floor of his rooms. He remembered the carpet with dyed threads that kept his feet warm in the winters he spent at the castle.

None of the colours appeared, but the shades of grey were just as he knew them. The balcony doors melted into view and heavy curtains fell to hang from a metal bar that was not there earlier. He could not recall the pattern on the curtains, but he knew the view out of his balcony so well.

As he stared, the mountain outlines bled into view. He almost smiled before he noticed something wrong. He knew the view from his balcony. The mountain was not so tall. It was not so sharp. The forest at its skirts had a visible path in the break of the trees. Yet what he saw now was a different ridge and the balcony faded away completely. It took him a moment to realize that the rooms around them faded away as well.

“They found us,” Lilian whispered.

D’Argen knew that to be the truth when the mountain’s outline turned even more jagged and then each tip separated from the others and took on its own shape. When those shapes started moving, they gained arms and legs. He could not tell who was who, but the outlined figures were approaching them.

Lilian was beside him in seconds, gripping his arm. D’Argen turned, ready to run, when he realized that Lilian was not urging him to go but keeping him in place.

“What is it?” D’Argen asked them.

But it was not Lilian looking back at him. The lines on their face were so familiar and the way their hair fell over one eye when they did not wear their clips made D’Argen want to brush the strands away. But it was not Lilian.

Lilian had said the dead did not have a hold over them yet. Not as strong. But that did not mean it did not have a hold at all. Lilian’s hand tightened around his wrist. D’Argen remembered the silver bracer he still had on when he fell to the mortal realm. The metal appeared and the pressure on his wrist lessened. D’Argen replaced the bracer with the leather gloves Upates made for him and slipped his hand away before Lilian could grab him tighter.

“Run,” Lilian whispered though their mouth did not move.

D’Argen knew what he had to do. He grabbed Lilian’s wrist instead and then opened his mahee. It stabbed at him, and he screamed from the pain, but the outlines faded away into the distance. When he slid to a stop, he let go of Lilian, but their nails were digging into him.

“Farther,” they said.

D’Argen could not. The grip on his arm turned painful. Lilian’s nails sank through the leather and into his skin. He forced his mahee open once more and all he could think of was that he wished he could not feel it. There was nothing around him at all and he had no clue where he was running to. He felt the blood soaking into his glove.

When he slid to a stop again, he did so on his knees. Lilian dragged along the ground for a few steps but did not let him go.

“I can’t,” he gasped out, tears streaming down his face. He let go of Lilian’s hand, but Lilian’s nails were deep into the tissue of his arm, latching on like demons’ claws. He barely felt the pain of it as he yanked his arm away and bits of flesh remained with Lilian’s hand.

“Not. Far. Enough.” Lilian gasped out beside him and then started clawing at the white ground.

D’Argen ignored them. He could not. He clutched at his chest as his vision darkened. If this was all the mahee, it would be best to leave. The pain was horrible. It was worse than anything he could ever remember feeling. He was tempted to dig into his own chest and try and find his mahee, tear it out, so it could never hurt him again.

But it would be so much better if it was not there at all.

A gasp beside him had him wrenching his eyes open only to freeze. Dark. Black. It was like they were surrounded in a sea of the black silhouettes. D’Argen panicked and reached for Lilian with his bloodied arm. There was a gap in the black, right there—

It closed as the black melted together. The air above them was still white.

No matter how much it hurt, he had to use his mahee so that they would—

The gap appeared again and D’Argen froze.

“What are you doing?” Lilian asked from beside him and finally sounded like themselves.

“Wait,” D’Argen whispered.

Lilian was back to themselves, now that they were farther from the mahee and—the white gap widened. But if they were not near the mahee at all, if they tore it out of themselves—the white gap disappeared. Lilian did not have their mahee. D’Argen had it. But Lilian was still here, even without it. The black crawled up into the white above them like it was forming a dome.

D’Argen closed his eyes and tried to calm his heart and breath.

Long ago, Vah’mor had told him that he needed to learn how to fight without his mahee. They said it should never come to pass, but it would be best to always be prepared. D’Argen suspected at the time that they just wanted a sparring partner that could actually challenge them. As someone who used their mahee on instinct and reflex both, it was hard not to use it to jump out of the way of a blade. It took him centuries before he could spar with Vah’mor without using his mahee at all. He had yet to win a bout.

The trick to not using his mahee had been to close it off completely and pretend it did not exist.

He pulled back. There was no touching the mahee or opening it. There was no mahee there. The pain inside him slowly faded and the more it did, the easier it was to question why the pain existed at all. It did not. There was no cause for it.

When D’Argen opened his eyes, he was staring at nothing at all. Everything around him faded away to pure black and there was not a single spec of the white space in sight.