--- HIVREN, THE YEAR 791, WINTERTIME ---
The building shook slightly, which was getting a tad bit old at this point. Hivren sent his sister an apologetic look. “That’s the twins.”
Felosin smiled slightly, “They haven’t collapsed the building yet, which is better than when I was their age.”
“I could have them move to the training grounds at the old palace, they’re just going to keep going at it.”
She shook her head, “leave them be, it’s not like I’m going to get offended and march down there to kick their rear ends into shape.”
Hivren squinted at her, unsure if she was joking. She wasn’t often the joking type, and Hivren could easily see Felosin chasing the two pre-teens around a training yard, insisting that they be prepared mentally and physically for their years of adventuring that were on the horizon. She was an… interesting aunt, that’s for certain. Hivren was just glad that she wasn’t his aunt. “Well, thank you for not beating up my children for no reason.”
“You’re welcome!”
Hivren sighed, “So, back to business. You’re sure that the Senset plan is viable? Whenever I talk to Onix she makes it seem like she’s trying to pit me against the whole city.”
Felosin frowned, leaning back in her chair, “I’m not certain, but when I talked to Steris she seemed sure that most of the nobility is corrupt at the moment. If Onix is trying to get allies against them, then doesn’t that mean the Senset are on our side in all this?”
“It feels almost like social suicide…”
“The Senset seem to acctually want to make a cohesive magical society, with strict rules and guidelines for educating and regulating magic. Isn’t that a good thing? They already have Queen Steris on their side, and practically the entirety of Sanaria besides the royal family and us. Whether we like it or not, their idea is going to get implemented back home the moment the royals crack.”
Hivren sighed, finally understanding, “And if we help them get footing for it here, they’ll be in our debt. And since they’re rising in power in Sanaria that debt would be worth more.”
Felosin nodded, “With the popularity of the mentoring program the Ayfel has been refining, and how Starsbane has been falling out of favor…”
“It makes me the biggest authority when it comes to magical education in most of Melor.” Hivren finished.
“Exactly.”
He massaged his temples, “I see now why they were trying so hard to keep me from rebuilding the Ayfel. They probably saw this coming from a mile away while I’m still trying to figure out how to keep a bunch of children from blowing up the building.”
The room shook again as if to accentuate his pains. Felosin smirked, “You took that upon yourself.”
“I know…”
Her gaze softened, “I know we haven’t really talked about… well Kureia, how are you doing there?”
Hivren felt his mind grow distant. Kureia, there was still pain there. It was less now after nearly three and a half years, but there was still pain. “I’m… well I’m certainly still going.” He sighed, “It feels normal at this point to have her gone, but the twins are still taking it better than I am. I miss her, you know? But it’s mostly the little things.”
Felosin nodded in understanding, she seemed a bit relieved that he wasn’t about to start crying, the closest person she’d ever lost had been Harrel. That; well that had hurt both of them. “I heard that the two of you used to chat for hours about all kinds of philosophical topics.”
Hivren blinked at her, “who told you that?”
“Fora.”
Hivren snorted lightly, “That girl…”
Felosin nodded, “That girl indeed. Has she contacted you yet?”
“No,” Hivren said with a sigh, “I had to hear about what she was doing from Aymi.”
Felosin nodded, “I’ve seen her a few times in the capital. You could probably corner her if you wanted to. She’s guarding something so it isn’t like she can just leave.”
He thought about that for a moment, it might be a good idea, but in his experience, Fora was the worst possible person to try and corner. She’d be more likely to gate you across the city or replace herself with a clone while she snuck out the back door… or any number of other things. “I’ll wait for her to come to me. I’m sure it’ll happen eventually.”
“By that point I suspect you’ll be old and gray.”
“Whatever it takes.”
Felosin shook her head with a slight smile.
--- FORA, THE YEARS 789-792 ---
Dying is not my favorite pastime, and the golden dragon in front of me didn’t seem to like it any more than I did.
I drifted in the nothingness, reminded of the various things I’d left behind not so long ago. “Gium, right?” I asked the serpentine dragon, figuring it would probably answer that at least.
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It sighed, “Yes… Can you stop talking now? I’m in the middle of something.”
I would have frowned at him if I’d had a face at the moment, “What, are you messing with my affinity again? Didn’t you say last time that you can’t do that again?”
“That is what I said, yes. I’m attempting to appeal to higher authority.”
“What?”
He remained silent, still drifting there. I wasn’t completely certain why he was even letting me see him at the moment, though honestly I doubted I would ever be able to understand a god. “Is there like, some kind of bigger god that you have to get permission from in order to smite me?”
He glared at me.
“Is that a yes?”
“Stop tormenting me with your existence.”
“Now that’s not fair, I’m sure I’ll keep existing no matter what either of us does about it.”
“Don’t remind me.”
“You reminded yourself.”
There was silence for a long moment.
I examined my body again, it looked around fourteen maybe at the moment. Sparks why did this always take so long… “Hey, so why can’t dimensionalists do time magic?”
He glared at me again, “That is the ORDER of things.”
I stared at him for a long moment at that word, it had felt… powerful, as if the entirety of his being was encased in that one sound. My mind barely seemed capable of reconciling that technically it was the same word as ‘order.’ “Ah… do other places follow that?”
“Of course not, they’re chaotic, unruly. The only world I have any presence on besides this one is barely any better.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“I really want you to just leave forever.”
“That’s making me want to do so even less.” I glanced at my body again, it was maybe thirteen at this point. Ughhh, so sparking slow. “Hey, how about if you make it so I can do time magic, I’ll leave.”
“That’s impossible.”
“I’m sure you could do it.”
“I am the god of ORDER, I cannot do something that I know would cause chaos.”
Then what the sparks was that whole thing with destroying society every few thousand years?! I glanced at my body again, it was perhaps twelve, and… “Wait, where did she come from?!”
There was a second me standing beside my body, frowning at it.
And she was clearly not dead.
--- ELIAX - CLONE, THE YEAR 792, SPRINGTIME ---
Claiming The rebirth point had been inordinately difficult, but Eliax wasn’t about to let it out of her sight now that she had it. After three years of fighting over the legal and social problems with the building and basically bribing Steris, Eliax finally had unlimited access to the spot where her real self had died.
I think they just got tired of her lurking around the building and sneaking in with teleports, but all that mattered was that Eliax could finally study it to her heart's content.
Which is to say, entering the between realm and looking for her real body.
Eliax walked through the silvery tunnels, examining every nook and cranny. It wasn’t in the space that represented me, for… some reason, but she’d checked there quite a while ago just to be sure. The longer the clone looked, the more she was certain that she had to find the space that represented that exact spot of death.
The only problem was that Eliax wasn’t exactly sure where I’d died, so she ended up combing through the tunnels, searching for any sign of my demise. The clone wasn’t even sure if she would be able to see my body, and the crystalline tunnels weren’t exactly comprehensive.
As such, it took her two whole months of searching before she peeked into one particular tunnel and stopped in her tracks.
The body looked about twelve or thirteen as far as Eliax could tell, but it was fully healed. And it had only been three years. That threw out her idea that most of the rebirth time was spent on the healing, which meant it was literally just wasting time and energy trying to turn me exactly back to eight years old.
Most of that… ugh… most of that was probably spent undoing puberty to be honest, which was extra wasteful since I always hit that particular milestone around elven.
My clone that was Eliax frowned at the body, tapping her chin with a thoughtful expression.
Alright then, what could she try in order to reset the rebirth age to where the body was at now?
--- FORA ---
I pulled in a breath sharply, feeling almost euphoric at the sensation. Sparks, that was wonderful.
I took in another breath, relishing the feeling.
That’s when I felt a deep horrible pain in my chest. My eyes flew open, meeting the gaze of an unfamiliar man, his gaze cruel and relentless, the rune of his soul based around fire and art, his skin the frostbite blue of Divaria.
There was no justice.
I died. Again.
I stared in bafflement at the golden dragon as he formed in the center of my view, he seemed to be preening. The dragon stared into my eyes and then laughed, “Hah! HAH! Yes! It worked!”
I felt my anger rise up out of almost nowhere, “What the sparks did you do?!”
“I sent an assassin, little hero. Ever heard of them? I asked as many gods as I could and they all agreed that killing an enemy who will continue to come back forever is most certainly within our rules. It’s not actually killing, you see… If you’ll recover eventually.”
“You can’t keep killing me whenever I come back that’s…”
“Not fair? Since when is ORDER fair? You aren’t speaking to Kalteii, what’s fair and just and part of the true consequences is most certainly not a part of my decision making process.”
I stared at him, speechless. “So then…”
“You’ll continue to die, every time that you come back. I will simply kill you again.”
And so he did.
Over.
And over.
AND OVER.