I only lasted ten minutes.

Although she wasn’t heavy – in fact, I could already drag her along using only muscle strength rather easily – it just got boring after the fifth minute, and tiring after the tenth.

And so, I decided to wait until she wakes up on her own, which didn’t nearly take as long as I thought it would.

I expected something between a week and a month, yet after three days, she was awake and back to normal.

Well, not really back to normal, since she started quivering in fear as soon as her terror-filled eyes noticed me, but besides that, she was completely healthy.

I took her by the hand and, after a short and fruitless struggle on her side, focused my attention on the Soulthread linking me and the girl’s mother, finding the mother many, many kilometres away from the initial city I dropped her off at.

What a journey it must have been for her, after such an experience.  

I created some sort of ‘bridge’ out of Energy parallel to the Soulthread and stopped it just slightly in front of the target. Afterwards, I took one final look at the girl beside me and saw her meekly holding my hand, although she was still shivering while doing so.

Creating a portal on both ends of the Energy Bridge, it took us but a single step to bypass the incredibly long distance and the numerous obstacles located between the desert and the destination.

She looked at me with a newfound awe and a question started form in her mind, her mouth already open when she quickly remembered who it was she was dealing with.

Even with her high-speed of travelling, of which I am sure she is proud of, it would have taken her at least a month or two to get to the desert, yet here I was, taking but a single step to cross the enormous distance without even the slightest look of exhaustion visible. Her pride most be hurt, but I have done much worse than just hurting her pride, so she stayed silent.

Since I hadn’t bothered setting the destination outside of the city, or even outside her residence for that matter, me and the girl were greeted with the surprised faces of the mother and the father, making themselves comfortable in nice-looking chairs with a cup of tea in hand.

I heard the porcelain shatter as the father dropped the cup, but when I looked at him, it was my turn to be surprised, albeit not visibly so.

For a second, clearly visible in the father’s eyes, was a very brief moment of an absolute fear. Very unlike the mother, who held only surprise.

Sure, a stranger just suddenly arrived in your living room out of nowhere, but the fear in his eyes seemed much too deeply engraved. But even then, I could just write it off as some form of xenophobia or whatever.

If it wasn’t for one thing.

I remember him.

I do not know from where or when, but I’m sure this isn’t the first time I’ve seen his face, although the horns – protruding from the temples and arching upwards – and the tail resting next to his leg – the same cross-shaped tip as his daughter – looked out of place to me, the face was definitely one known to me.

Which should be impossible.

After freezing the world, the only two people I encountered were these two beside and in front of me, the mother-daughter pair, and every other face I can remember should have either perished long ago or have been killed during my man-made ice age.

Yet, here sat a man whose face I definitely know.

Of course, there is the chance that the gene alignment has the exact same configuration of someone from long, long ago. But this already nearing the realm of impossibility and then factor in that I couldn’t possibly have met every single person that ever lived, especially when you include my many times of self-imposed isolation.

And then there is the fact that even of those faces I see, I barely remember those somewhat important, let alone the random faces on random people.

I only remember those that I’ve somehow needed to deal with, whether it be in a friendly or unfriendly manner.

So, coincidences now ruled out, who is this man?

Very suspicious.

But, first things first.

Her surprised face turning into a radiant smile, the mother stood up and rushed towards me, grabbing one of my hands with both and fixing her gaze upon my eyes.

“Lord, you have finally come!” Her voice resounding with glee.

Time has been very kind to her, although I rather attribute this to my power I shared with her.

In these forty-two years I haven’t seen her – making her age probably around sixty-something – she still looked like a woman in her mid-twenties, looking not even close to entering her thirties.

And most important of all, although I cannot be sure, she looked happy.

“Ahem.” I heard the now-standing father cough, all trace of fear in his eyes gone, or, at least, carefully hidden.

She let go of my hand, looking down in embarrassment while taking a step back.

“A pleasure to meet Lillian’s saviour. My name is Solon and I’m sorry I haven’t made suitable preparations for a guest of your… importance. I expected Emily to take longer in guiding you here. She wasn’t rude, I hope? Anyway, make yourself comfortable while I instruct the servants to prepare for a feast, but before I leave, might I ask your Lordship’s name?” The father said, making this smooth and grateful-sounding self-introduction. Also, I just now noticed I didn’t know the names of Emily and Lillian.

But, although he might have tried to force my attention on him during his introduction, I still noticed it.

The faces of Lillian and Emily.

For but a slight moment, their faces, one still looking embarrassed and the other still fearful of me, both changed into a puzzled look, although they quickly returned to their initial expressions.

But, even if it was but for a second, I still saw it. I don’t know at what exact part of Solon’s self-introduction they were puzzled by, but it strengthened my suspicions that I knew this man, and vice versa.

I thought for a second, thinking what name I should give. Through the many, many eras I lived through, my name changed quite a number of times, so I was debating which one to pick.

I decided on my most recent one, the one name I shared together with my wife and the name most important to me.

“…Acedia.” I said after a slight pause.

And there it was.

For a brief moment, Solon’s eyes once again betrayed a deep fear of me. This moment was even shorter than the last, but this time I could also see it from much closer.

Inside those eyes was not exactly fear, it was a deep-rooted form of terror, almost as if the name Acedia carried with it an unbelievable trauma.

This was both good and bad.

Not only made this absolutely certain that this man was, indeed, suspicious, it also limited the time-range from which I could know him from.

 The bad thing was, it was the era I had the most interaction, considering me having a race to protect, being dragged along by my wife to meet people and the many conferences I had to attend between numerous races. The options were much too many to instantly remember whose face Solon’s was.

Also bad, I personally killed – or at least, thought I killed – every single thing in that era. That he might have survived that, was definitely not good news.

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Solon’s face turned back into one of a gracious host.

“Acedia… an interesting name, my Lord. Then, I’ll be off. Please, make yourself at home and catch up with my wife. Emily, come with me.”

When Emily meekly followed her father’s orders, both Solon and Lillian were shocked to see her obey so meekly, but fortunately, didn’t investigate further.

“Please, Acedia… may I call you that?” Lillian asked with a voice mixed with a fearful embarrassment and one belonging to a hostess as soon as Solon and Emily left the room and shut the door.

I nodded, not caring about how she called me, and her beamed happiness.

“Then please, Acedia, have a seat.”

She ushered me towards previously Solon’s chair, urging me to sit while she cleaned the nearly-forgotten broken cup, grabbed a new cup from one of the three glass-door cupboards and poured me a cup of tea from the porcelain teapot on the small wooden coffee table.

After doing all this, she poured herself a cup of tea and, instead of sitting in the chair she previously sat – opposite of the one I’m sitting on –, seated herself on the couch between the two chairs, picking the side closest to me.

“If there is anything you want to ask me, please do.” She asked, staring me with eyes showing a mixture of hope – hoping I showed interest in her, knowing she forcefully dragged me hear – and the delight of seeing me.

After contemplating for sometime on what to exactly ask, I decided to ask her what I initially wanted to know ever since meeting her.

“Why are you alive?”

“I-I’m sorry, what do you mean?” She asked as if all hope in the world was crushed and I could see her eyes slowly water.

Damn, my fault.

Sometimes, I have issues wording my intentions, another reason why I rarely bother speaking, besides it being bothersome to interact with others.

She must have thought I was somehow displeased with her survival.

Which, for the record, I’m definitely not.

“Sorry. I meant, why did you choose to live?”

This was the question I wanted to know. How could someone with such a bleak life so far, still decide to continue living.

Placing her hand on her heart, she sighed with relief before answering my question.

“It was because of you. Having you heal me, I decided I must survive, not for myself, but for the kindness you . And when you gave me power – by the way, I’m sorry for asking so shamelessly – I wanted to proof myself worthy to receive such benevolence from… my… God.” The last words were barely audible, as she hung her head low, the embarrassment visible even in the red tips of her ears half-hidden behind her long black hair.

Honestly, it was as I suspected. She deified me and made that her reason to live.  It wasn’t the answer I wanted, I wanted something more substantial, hoping it could imply to me, but alas.

But, although an important question, it wasn’t the most important one I had for her.

“What do you live for now?”

Besides some half-assed kindness and wanting to know the reason why she choose for life, this too was one of the primary reasons I saved her. To see if she could figure out a reason behind life after such a horrifying introduction to it.

Naturally, once again hoping I could use it for my own. Or at least get some inspiration or something.

But, even before her answer, I knew she would disappoint me.

“I have a loving husband and, although she is troublesome, spoiled and – I’ll admit – a bad character due to my failure in parenting, I still love my daughter. I cannot bear to leave them, and I cannot bear for them to leave me.” She said, both cheerfully and resolutely.

As I thought, disappointing.

I didn’t show it on my face, but I was disappointed. Though it was but slightly, since I could understand her feelings, it definitely wasn’t what I hoped for. I already had a family and lost them horribly and I do not want it to happen again.

But, despite being somewhat disappointed, I’m still incredibly grateful for giving birth to her Immortal daughter, even if I needed to wait a long time before I can question her.

So I don’t consider saving her a waste of my time and effort. Thankfully.

If I did, I would have ignored everything my wife wanted me to learn. She wouldn’t have wanted me to think saving someone was a waste of effort.

After a long silence and a sip of the tea, I asked her for her story, even if I wasn’t very interested.

Apparently, she followed a routine many escaped slaves went through. At the city I dropped her off, she travelled with a merchant’s caravan to protect it, honing her martial skills and understanding of Energy, until she arrived at a place she thought okay to settle in.

Now it trails off from the standard slave-escape story, and turned somewhat fairytale-like, she admitted.

She won a tournament using her skills and won a position as the bodyguard of the city’s Lord, Solon. Although initially a professional relationship, when she saved him during an assassination attempt, they fell in love etcetera, etcetera.

She rattled on and on and continued with stories about her present-day life and about her husband and daughter.

I wish my life had a fairytale spin like that, but I won’t hope for it anymore. I went through too much for that.

While listening to her story, my mind was partially preoccupied trying to figure out where I know Solon’s face from, scanning through the many faces, trying to fit the pieces together, when suddenly, the key was provided to me by Lillian.

“…but, honestly, I was surprised he’d let you call him Solon so quickly.”

This definitely deserved attention and I quickly asked: “How so?”

It must have been the reason why she and Emily were surprised during the introduction.

“Well, my husband has a rather long and strange name, but he still introduces himself with it and only allows his close friends and family to call him Solon.”

Understanding what she said, I urged her.

“What is his full name?”

She slightly giggled and said: “Cirly Solomavon Andronevon, strange name, right?” She said, trying to pronounce the exotic name correctly.

...

……….

……………

Ah…

Really….

Him……

For my past to hunt me like this………

How cruel God is…………......