“I’m telling you, I’ve got a reading!”

The words echoed off the shattered stone and metal, as if ghosts taunted those foolish enough to delve into the ruins Alarion called his home.

“And I’m telling you, Kaplhe, that this whole building is going to fall in on our heads if we take one wrong step.” A second voice replied, deeper than the first. “Do you even know how to calibrate that thing?”

“Do I-? Yes! Obviously!” Probably. “It was a strong reading. Maybe an enchante-”

“Quiet. Both of you!”

It was strange for Alarion to relive a moment of his life from the same perspective but with new information.

Would it have changed anything if he had understood them at the time? He wasn’t sure. Hiding down in the darkness, Alarion had been convinced that they were coming for him. Hunting for him. Why else would three grown men be delving into an empty basement in the worst part of the Old City, risking Vitrian patrols, feral wildlife and the Ruination?

In a way, they had been coming for him.

The Tic-tic-tic-tic of their meter had Alarion’s teeth on edge as he lay in wait, stone in hand. They were coming closer. That noise was coming closer. His body was tense with flight or flight instincts, but Alarion had nowhere to run.

“Mother of-” The blonde man screamed as a chunk of masonry destroyed his good looks and sent blood flowing in rivers from his crooked nose. The soft orange light the man carried shattered on the ground, plunging the room into darkness as he asked, “Did you see it?”

“See what?” The second man asked a moment before doom came for him.

Alarion fought like a savage, throwing his body weight behind each strike as he pummeled the complete stranger into the dirt. He was terrified, and that fear was reflected in the ferocity of his attacks. They were as desperate as they were violent, as though he were trying to communicate a single solitary message.

Go away.

Of course, the man couldn’t. Not with Alarion atop him. Resistance faltered under the impact of Alarion’s Awakened strength, cartilage crumpled and eventually the man’s skull gave way with a crack that made the boy’s stomach drop.

In that instant, Alarion could see into Val’s mind, and not only through the glistening impact crater he had left in the man’s head.

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

He saw Val and Kaphle laughing alongside one another, simple children at play. He saw the man’s first failed attempt at thievery and the beating that it earned him. There were familiar memories of training under a harsh tutor, then the disjointed recollection of a narcotic binge. Val fought over a girl who loved him and slept with a man who he hated.

Stretches of quiet nights were interspersed with flashes of violence. Val was on the losing end of each and every one of them. Always the victim, never the aggressor. He saw the boy stand up for a friend only to be abandoned in the scrum. He saw him try to protect his meager possessions in an orphanage and the months of small abuses that followed.

Alarion watched through Val’s eyes as the world made him cruel. As it took things from him one piece at a time, until the young man felt he had no choice but to start taking from others.

Val’s parents featured only briefly in his memories and even then they were little more than shapes, smells and sounds. The memories of an infant who had his family torn away all too soon.

Alarion had expected the rush of information. He’d thought he’d even prepared for it. But it overwhelmed him all the same, blurring the lines of his sense of self.

It had been easier to endure the last time. Righteous indignation had buoyed his self image amidst the chaos of foreign memories and emotions. That man had been a bastard and Alarion had killed him in self-defence. The butcher got what he had coming.

Val did not.

He was no different than Alarion. An orphan trying to carve a place for himself in an unkind world. He’d left behind friends. Lovers. Peers who depended on him. There was no excusing what Alarion had done.

And there was no way to take it back.

The blonde boy with the broken nose had every reason to want Alarion dead. He’d been close with Val, and Alarion had killed him. But rather than take vengeance, as they easily could have, he gave Alarion a new lease on life.

Alarion agreed. Tension bled out of his body as it came back under his control. The older man with the knife was circling just at the edge of Alarion’s peripheral vision, but he made no move to stop him. He knew how this had to end.

Worse, he suspected what was coming next. And he had no idea if he had the stomach to endure what remained of the challenge.

History repeated itself as a blind-side hook sent Alarion on the lightless walk.

—

Her voice was soft and kind, full of music as she repeated his name and sung her instructions.

He protested against the coarse fabric of his pillowcase.

She scolded him playfully. He felt a nudge on his shoulder, light but insistent.

It was not an idle threat. The Vitrians would have loved his mother. She never made a promise or a threat if she wasn’t intent on seeing it through. She’d poured fresh well water on him more than once in his youth, then made him hang his own sheets up to dry. She’d certainly do it again. Especially on such an important day.

Alarion asked, looking up to find his mother framed by a beam of sunlight streaming in through the open window.

She smiled.