White. It was the colour of the loose white shirt wrapping around her body like an oversized armour, the walls around them and the sheets surrounding the bony thin woman in front of him. John squinted his eyes, trying to make her face out, but a strange haze seemed to shroud his senses.
He felt himself speak, but no words seemed to come out.
The woman shook her head, causing a disorderly mess of golden hair to shake around the pillow. John only realized that her lips were red when they started to slowly move, forcing silent syllable after syllable out. It went on for a while, and he could feel his body shake with every word that came out of her mouth.
He looked down, where he saw his hands holding a pair of milky white bony hands. John’s vision moved closer to the blurry face, where he whispered something unintelligible into her ears.
The white bedsheets shifted as the woman turned around to have a better look at him. The haze cleared around her eyes, revealing a pair of dull blue eyes. When John gazed at them, an unexplainable feeling of wrongness welled up in the pit of his gut. He wasn’t sure what connection he had to this woman, but he obviously knew her, and there was just as obviously something horribly wrong about the situation he was in.
“****, I appreciate your kindness, I really do. But let’s be honest here. Do you think I’ll survive this operation?” a slightly raspy but nevertheless melodic voice resounded in John’s ears.
His grip on her hands tightened. “Of course you will. I even booked a table at the Nightingale in order to celebrate your recovery.” An extremely forced smile forced itself upon his face. “So please, don’t say things like that. You’re going to be okay, I promise.”
Her rosy red lips curved into a smile. “Hey, can you promise to just listen to what I’m going to say next?”
“Of course I can. I’ll listen from now to tomorrow evening if you want to.”
The smile finally reached her slowly brightening eyes. “I know that my chances are slim. So I want to say something to you just in case I won’t make it.”
John tried to gulp, but the spit inside his mouth had vanished. His gut felt like a wrecking ball had just smashed into it, but he still didn’t know why. Was this woman that important to him?
“If fate permits it, let us meet again in another life-“
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A sudden feeling of falling, followed by a dull pain on the side of his face ripped John out of his dream. The smell of old wood invaded his nose, bringing him out of his sleep induced confusion. Slowly opening his eyes, John realized that he was lying on the ground. His somewhat indistinct bed was right next to the spot he had fallen onto.
He sighed, his sluggish mind commanding a similarly sluggish body to move towards the bed again. Wiping the spittle at the corner of his mouth away, John rubbed the stinging left side of his face before he crawled into the comfortably warm bed again, pulling his blanket with him.
Once John had found a comfortable position to sleep in again, he closed his eyes and waited for sleep to embrace him. However, a single thought continued haunting him.
‘What was that dream?’
They say that you can’t remember something you have forgotten. It was true. John didn’t have the faintest clue who that woman could be. Was it an extremely realistic dream or an impactful memory of his? No matter how much he thought about it, a conclusion continued to elude him.
He sighed, running a hand through his hair in frustration. What else could he have forgotten? Forgetting things was natural and normal, but he knew that a memory as impactful as that couldn’t possibly have been forgotten the normal way. Rather than that, it was the kind to be branded into one’s very soul; something that one wouldn’t forget no matter how much time passed.
Burying his face into his pillow, John couldn’t help releasing an exasperated groan. This entire matter was one big circle jerk. There was no way to remember something you don’t know anything about. Even now his head was entirely blank in regards to that woman.
What was he missing? Did it have something to do with his reincarnation? But why would he remember almost everything about his old friend but nothing about her?
‘Did someone mess with my memories?’
John threw the pillow to the side and opened his eyes, causing a moonlit ceiling to reveal itself to him. Goosebumps appeared all over his body as he followed that train of thought even further. What even guaranteed that he was who he thought he was? Perhaps his entire past life was but a crazy delusion, which would certainly explain his mastery of the language the people spoke in these lands.
But if that truly were the case, why didn’t he have any memories of ever living here? Although his body appeared to be quite young, he was most certainly older than a toddler despite most of the men and women he had met until now having called him that way.
Realizing that he could ramble on and on about this topic for ages if he wanted to, John decided to simply write every detail about the dream he had just had down for later examination. That way, he wouldn’t have to struggle with remembering it again after falling asleep again.
He stared at the table that seemed to be countless lightyears away from him, then at the comfortably warm blanket he was wrapped up in.
Sighing in resignation, John pulled the blanket closer and hopped out of the bed, almost tumbling to the ground in the process.
Then, after he had awkwardly stabilized himself and hopped towards the desk, John managed to wriggle a hand out of the tight embrace of his blanket, exposing it to the chilling cold outside. After cramming around the drawers for a few minutes, he finally found what he had been searching for: A painting brush that the warriors of this new world used as a substitute for pens.
Remembering the instructions that the old geezer had given him during his first lesson, John drew some aether from his core and led it towards the fingers that gripped the brush. To his surprise, he felt a small tug at the aether slowly coursing through the channels at his fingertips. He relinquished his control over it, watching the brush’s tip darken by a considerable amount as the aether was forcibly pulled from his fingertips.
It was an utterly disgusting feeling, as if someone had ripped a strand of flesh from the deepest core of his fingers.
John ignored it and tentatively drew a circle on the blank sheet of paper in front of him. It turned out to be far uglier than he had expected, but he saw it as a successful test nonetheless. He hadn’t done anything by hand in decades, so that wasn’t anything surprising.
Setting the tip of the brush down on the paper once again, John started noting every little detail down, only to stop midway whilst writing his first word.
Every movement he attempted with his fingers felt so terribly wrong. His wrist was stiff, and the loops and lines were at places they weren’t supposed to be at. Even the first letter turned out to be more of a scrawl than he had expected. It was unreadable, even by himself.
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Realizing the mistake he had just made, John wanted to slap himself. How could he expect this new body of his to be capable of writing a language it had never experienced?
‘Wait, maybe I’m just unable to write it because I’ve never actually done so in reality?’
John shook his head, clearing it of unnecessary thoughts. He needed to focus.
The next few hours were spent in a frustrating series of failures. By the time the sun had risen above the gargantuan walls surrounding him, sending glaring rays directly onto his desk, his eyes were completely bloodshot. At some point of time the blanket had fallen onto the ground, leaving the shivering boy in the merciless cold.
The fingers holding the brush had new indentations at the spots they had been touched the brush at. John had long since stopped feeling anything in them, yet he still tried to scribble an acceptable A onto what was probably the thousandth sheet of paper.
His parched tongue swept across a pair of dried lips. Just as John was about to attempt once again, a familiar gong ripped him out of his crazed state.
His head shot up, not daring to believe that this much time had already passed. It was then that he finally noticed the gigantic mess he had created in his room. Countless sheets were scattered across the ground, going from right beside over the blanket to the edge of the bed, where some had even slid under it.
Having finished staring at the mess he had created himself, John stood up and started stretching his stiff body, bringing some warmth back into it again. Then he picked the sheets up and ordered them in a neat pile which he hid under the bed. He’d die from embarrassment if anyone were to ever see those scribbles of his.
After he had made sure that he didn’t overlook anything, John walked out of his door and into the direction of the classroom, where Ronnie soon joined him.
“You okay?” the boy asked after looking him over a few times.
John yawned, stretching his arms so wide that he almost hit a few fellow students. “Well, let’s say that this was a loooong night for me.”
“Good for you, I guess?”
“Not at all. In fact, I regret every second I wasted.”
Ronnie hummed, walking on his toes in order to measure how far away they were from their destination. “What do you think will we be taught today?”
John shrugged, ignoring the annoyed looks some of the upperclassmen and -women were starting to shoot into his direction. “I don’t know? Really, I think that I’m the only one in our class who doesn’t have the slightest clue in regards to what warriors are even capable of.”
“Right, I almost forgot that you don’t possess even the smallest hint of common sense.”
The two approached the already opened door, stepping through it together.
It seemed like they were the last ones to arrive since all of the other children had already taken their seats. The sound of quiet chatter could be heard throughout the room, and John could feel a few pairs of eyes focus on him before turning away.
“Can’t you hurry up for a bit? We’ve been waiting for, like, half an age!” Logan shouted from behind John as soon as he had sat down.
“Shut up Logan. We all know that you’re the one who normally arrives last,” Andrea shouted back before either John or Ronnie could respond.
A subdued cough coming from the blackboard swiftly caused all sounds to ebb away, including the words that remained stuck in Logan’s throat. A wild tuft of almost platin blonde hair on his head swivelled around as the boy turned around and assumed an attentive position.
Their teacher waited for it to be entirely silent before he started speaking. “Today is going to be a special day for all of you. It will be the day in which you are going to choose the objects that are going to accompany you for the rest of your life, whether it is in the thicket of the wild forests outside of Frumentum or the deep seas next to Cyma-“
Logan snorted derisively at the mention of Cyma, earning him a threatening glare from his teacher.
“That’s right, today you are going to choose your main weapons, or at least the type of weapon you’re going to use in the future.” Their teacher’s eyes gained a strange lustre to them that intensified with every word he spoke. “Follow me kids.”
The old man walked out with his hands clasped behind his back, waiting for them outside the door. Once all of them had assembled, he started walking forward with a brisk pace that most of them were barely able to keep up with.
Cursing his short legs, John stumbled after the dragon on his teacher’s back.
It didn’t take long for them to arrive at their destination: One of the many training fields that dotted the landscape in the spacious garden surrounding the main building of the Golden Gate. Marked by the comfortably warm sand underneath their feet, the area it occupied was big enough to fit groups that were ten times as big as the one John was in. Lush green grass grew on its edges, unperturbed by its sandy surroundings. A few dozen metres away, John could make out other groups either training with various weapons or Meditating.
They had formed a half circle around their teacher, who was staring at a group to their left with a malicious smirk on his face.
Once he had turned his head towards them again, the old man snapped his fingers, causing dozens of different wooden weapons of all shapes and sizes to appear in the air.
John sucked in a deep breath. What was this sorcery? He clenched his fists tightly, biting his lips at the feat that could only be described as magical in front of him. Would he be able to do the same one day? To make his weapons appear out of nowhere and control them as he wished?
“Now is the time to choose your weapon,” the geezer stated, at the same time stopping Jessica, who had already started advancing into the direction of a particularly large wooden club, in her tracks by raising his hand in her direction. A quick glare was everything he needed to make the crimson haired girl obediently go back into the half circle again. “Think before you step forward, however. Choosing the wrong weapon may cost you your little lives during one of the many cruel trials you are undoubtedly going to face in your lives.”
With that, he stepped back and let the horde of excited children storm at the weapons he had prepared.
Unlike the others, John just stood back and watched at first. Picking one’s weapon would probably be one of the most important decisions he would make in this life, and he didn’t want to mess it up by just going up to a random weapon and declaring it his.
After everything was said and done, he still believed himself to be a person from a completely different age. As such, the only information he had about medieval cold weaponry was very prone to be exaggerated to say the least.
After a while of spectating, John noted that there didn’t seem to be a particular tendency between the choices the children around him made. Almost all kinds of weapons, ranging from an oversized stick to the combination of a mace and a shield, were now in the hands of his classmates. Ronnie had chosen what came to John’s mind whenever he thought about swords: A double edged, slightly elongated mass of wood that became gradually became sharper towards the tip.
The black-haired boy was staring at the wooden weapon in his hands with an infatuated gaze, seeming to have lost track of his surroundings. Of the children around him, some were in the same state whilst others shook their heads and looked for other weapons.
John quirked an eyebrow. Why did those kids make choosing a weapon look like a permanent choice? Sure, determining one’s weapon may be vital, but if it proved to unsuitable you could just swap it out with another. Ronnie’s state in particular unnerved him as it seemed plain weird.
“No need to be so nervous about it. You’ll eventually realize what the right weapon is if you just search for it, believe me,” the old man shouted with a frown on his face.
Nodding in acknowledgement at the words that were probably meant for everyone present, John slowly stepped forward, almost ducking under a hammerhead that almost hit him on his head. He clicked his tongue and let his gaze roam around the area, scanning it for any weapon that may be suitable for him.
Swords, maces, cudgels, bows, shields and spears of all varieties and sizes passed by him, but they none of them managed to arouse his attention. Just as John was about to give up and grab whatever weapon was closest to him, he found his gaze glued to a halberd.
Just like the other weapons he had seen until now, it was wooden, but it seemed to emanate a sort of fatal attraction that didn’t match its material. The shaft, longer than John was tall, gently swayed as it glided through the air, and the spearhead connected to two axeblades bobbed with each movement.
There was no way to describe the feeling John was experiencing at that moment, for he knew that there was no rational reason for it to seem so different for him.
And yet here he was, plucking the weapon out of the air as if it were a golden apple from Idun’s garden.
Its weight felt slightly heavy in his hands. But that heaviness only served to make John feel more secure as he tightly grasped the wooden shaft. The fragrance of fresh wood wafted into his nose as he raised it up to eye-level, inspecting every fine vein on the wood.
It was perfect. He didn’t know how, or even why he felt that, but it was definitely the weapon he was destined for. Although there may be other weapons he would use once the situation called for it, John instinctively knew that he would never separate from this marvellous work of art.
But the moment passed, and the wooden weapon wrenched itself out of his hands, slowly flying towards the old man and disappearing once they got close.
“Okay, now that you know what your ideal weapons looks like,” the demonic geezer started with a look that clearly stated his joy at the dissatisfied faces of the children around him, “you’re going to recreate it inside your cores.”
As soon as he finished speaking, dozens of milky white drops whistled through the air to land on their foreheads, where they turned into raw aether nourishing their cores.
“What are you staring at me for? Go sit down and create your weapons!