XXXII. WHERE I LEAVE

  A woman screamed in the throes of labor as her midwives urged her to push in Catharonian Elysian. A cleric embraced the dawn as the woman gave a loud cry and pushed the wailing child from her womb. Aichlan looked down to his torn and dirtied uniform, his hands rough with callouses and blackened with dirt. The bedchambers are of an affluent family, and though his grasp of Catharonian Elysian was tenuous at best, he recognized enough to know he was in the bedchambers of a noble in Alighieri. The events of the previous hour, days, year or seconds were already blurred between half remembered dreams and hallucinations.

  “What is all this now?” Aichlan watched in confusion as a nurse walked directly in front of him without pause or concern.

  He was clothed again, in the uniform Alice had presented him with at the outset of the expedition. Even his sword was at his hip, and his targe in hand. If he had left the mortal plane, he was back now.

  “I have been waiting for you Aichlan.”

  Morana coyly teased her hair as she cast a lusty eye his way. Her skin was like snow and her drop waisted black evening gown was the color of chimney soot. About her waist was a belt made of several dozen keys. Aichlan reflexively leapt back and drew his sword, only for her to magically snatch it from his grasp.

  “I am here for business rather than pleasure I am afraid.” Morana waved her hand and the sword plunged itself into the stone floor. “So, if you’d please…”

  “Why have you brought me here witch?” Acihlan demanded, eyeing his sword as it stood in the stone with disbelief.

  Morana placed her hand to her breast. “Me? Oh, no dear.”

Aichlan cautiously approached his weapon and gave it a tug. He warily glanced up at Morana, who made no moves against him. He grasped the hilt with both hands and pulled with all his might, but the weapon would not budge. Aichlan attempted several more times, trying vainly to get some sort of leverage before finally giving up.

  “Here,” Morana grabbed a hooded cloak from thin air and wrapped it around herself, “Perhaps this will be easier.”

  As she raised the hood, the youthful woman turned to a hunched over crone with cataracts and wispy grey hair. She held in one hand a staff with a lantern and blue flamed candle hanging from the crook. She looked like many depictions of the personification of death, the one in charge of unlocking the bodies of the dead so that their souls would be free to ascend to Elysium. Aichlan snarled, more lies. She was playing with him.

  “Do they still tell stories of me, I wonder?” she rasped with a hoarse cackle.

  “What do you want with me?”

  Morana ran a boney finger across the keys around her waist and picked one out. “This one is yours….”

  The key was a bent and slightly tarnished silver skeleton key. Before he could ask her what she meant, Morana had picked out another key, a new one made of gold and fit for a pin and tumbler lock. She held it up with a crooked smile, revealing the single rotted tooth left in her mouth.

  “And this one is also yours.”

  “I don’t understand…” One only had a single key, as one only had the single body.

  Morana pointed towards the now swaddled babe, cradled in its mother’s arms. “As one life ends, so another begins.”

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  Aichlan looked to the child and back to Morana as the pieces began to fall into place. He shook his head and took a step back, as Morana slowly advanced with her toothless grin.

  “No…what the hell is this?” Aichlan demanded. “I want answers damn you!”

  Morana cackled and plunged the silver key into his chest. “Soon Osric’s army of demons will descend upon the world and the end will commence. This is the home of a Catharonian general; you are to be his son. You must protect Renata, for she serves as the key to close the gates once again and prevent Osric from entering the realm of dawn”

  Aichlan felt a cold embrace sweep over him as his body went limp. “Don’t…don’t you serve Osric…. why?”

  Morana cackled as she slowly shook her head. “Death serves no master child, for all are susceptible to my caress.”

  Morana turned over the key and Aichlan collapsed to the ground, his lifeless eyes staring up into the ceiling. As she tried to remove the key and release his soul, it stuck in the lock and refused to budge.

  “Such a stubborn mule” she clucked her toungue and attempted to turn the lock over again. “It’s not like you’ll die, per se. You can have a lovely mother and happy sweet, pointless childhood again, don’t you want that?”

  Morana placed her foot to Aichlan’s chest and tried to force the key out. “Damnit…”

  Aichlan’s hand shot up and clutched her by the wrist. “I already had those things.”

  Morana gasped, and attempted to pry the cold, dead hand from her wrist. Despite being a corpse, his voice still escaped from parted blue lips, his eyes were lifeless, but still an ember smoldered somewhere within.

  “The gods placed you on this earth to protect Renata, and they placed Renata on this earth to serve as a key to the gates of the realm of dusk. You have died and been reborn since the destruction of the first civilizations, as has Renata.” Morana smacked Aichlan’s hand. “Let go of me.”

   “So what, we’re just tools?”

  Morana tried to release his hand from hers as his lifeless eyes still stared out vacantly. “Essentially, yes.”

  “Why do I not remember any of this? Assuming it is the truth.”

  “Your soul lives on, you don’t need to remember anything,” Morana jabbed him hard in the chest with the butt of her staff, “all you need to do is obey.”

  “What of Ashe? And my son? I only seek to be reunited with them both. If I cannot have this wish granted, then return me to the soil whence I came. I never asked for any of this and can’t be expected to shoulder such burdens.”

  “What the hell is with you?” Morana asked exasperated. “Just die already, it will literally last but a moment.”

   “I’m not about to have my life dictated to me with your threats of damnation held over my head! If I cannot be with the one that I love, then you can take this rebirth shit and shove it back up your ass.”

  Morana leaned in and looked into his lifeless eyes, perplexed by his talkativeness. “That is not your choice to make. Your purpose is to protect Renata. It always has been, and always will be, till the end of time. You will be born and reborn, each time starting anew. You can either live or you can die. You cannot fight destiny.”

  “No, my purpose is to find a purpose, and this isn’t it. I choose to fight.”

  The key abruptly turned back and the spark of life returned to Aichlan’s eyes. He took a gasping breath and pushed Morana back against the wall. With trepidation, he pulled the key from his chest and tossed it across the room.

Morana rolled her eyes as she propped herself up with her staff. “You know I can just go pick it up, don’t you?”

   “I’m leaving. Damn me if you want. Or can for that matter.”

  A door appeared beside him and opened, revealing a brilliant blinding light. Morana laughed and dusted herself off. Aichlan felt drawn to the light, but was also terrified of it.

   “Tell me, where will you go Aichlan? What will you do hmm?” Morana paced as she regarded Aichlan with amusement. “If Osric doesn’t kill you then The Order will. You have nowhere left to hide. You’ve just made enemies with both heaven and hell in your miserable lifetime!”

  Aichlan stared into the brilliant infinity that was the door. It either represented eternity or oblivion, but at this point, he did not care either way. He had had enough of being a puppet, of being yanked hither and thither on the whims of another.

  “So be it. I didn’t really care for either of them.” Aichlan took one final breath and stepped into the light.