It was dark and light, a world of dawn and dusk where he floated weightless, his eyes opening and closing with no sense of whether he was sleeping or awakening. Bubbles floated by, snippets of words growing louder as he passed.
Clarke, this is our home now. Isn't it pretty?
Was he Clarke? Was the voice talking to him? He had no body, only a consciousness that turned slowly in this void, whatever he was seeing beyond his control as it slowly turned by. Another orb came closer, shadow beings moving inside.
STOP IT! I don't EVER want to see you trying to make something up again! I won't tolerate anything but absolute truth!
He remembered that. Once, and only once, he'd wanted to write a story. Some childish non-sense about a dragon like Mrs...who had told him the story? He'd started with himself and another boy seeing a dragon flying over the fields and his mother had caught a glimpse of it as he wrote and torn it from his hands, tearing it into shreds. There had been a sighting of a dragon around that time.
The thoughts would whisper at him or yell at him as he drifted by, disconnected, chronological bubbles with no order.
She's a strange one...always goes crazy after her episodes but I think I've tracked down what she is. I've made Twinty her body guard so she's in good hands but I...I should be afraid of her. But by god do her words sound sweet. I've been an assassin for so long that once in a while it's nice to hear someone wanting to bring people together. It's horse shit but still, nice.
He hadn't been there for that...were those his own thoughts or...no, they had been written by someone else who knew his mother.
I've seen this amazing world in my dreams, remnants of it in ancient logs and books. A world where everyone worked together to build and create amazing wonders. Buildings that reached so high into the sky they pierced clouds, medicines so powerful they have people on their feet in minutes. Pipes that bring water right into your house so you don't freeze the necessary parts off on the way to an outhouse! Where we have control of hot and cold, light and dark and where people are all walking forward together and not on their own.
An orb flew past him, this one shaking with the emotion inside.
What!? You can't make weapons out of it, this is to help people not kill them! Well yeah, defending yourself is fine but...if we arm ourselves first and help people second it sends the wrong message...
Something passed close and it's gravity pulled him in, swung him wildly round and round until everything was a blur of color and rapid light and dark.
I want a world my son can be safe in, that all of our children can be safe in.
Something shot through the dark and his consciousness stopped, pierced through on a gleaming black hook and he was rising, pulled faster and faster through nothing with all lights and colors melting away.
He gasped, sucking in a huge lungful of air as he bolted upright. His hands tangled in the sheets wet with his sweat and he gasped and his eyes flicked around the room. Dark stone walls lit by a single small candle. Outside the small orb of light the darkness whispered at him, things fleeing from its very edges, always in his peripheral vision.
And beside him, fast asleep in a chair, was Twinty Sevin. His snores rattled in his nose, snorts that settled when he breathed out. Clarke reached out to make sure he was there but somehow Twinty lashed his hand out and grabbed the hand before it could touch him. He seemed confused just waking up but his eyes adjusted from shock to happiness.
“You're awake. How do you feel?”
He took quick mental stock of himself. He was hungry and a sharp pain jolted behind his eyes every few seconds, a dull ache like rolling thunder inside his skull behind that. That didn't bother him but his pulse raced, eyes darting every which way while tendrils of smoke disappeared from the edges of his vision like fingers. Panic surged up his spine.
“Did it...it happened! Something is changed, something isn't as it should be! I was on the road, reading those books we found in the castle-”
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Twinty grabbed Clarke's face, looking into his eyes, checked his pulse. Then slapped him a few times, stinging blows that smarted after the palms left his face.
“Good, good, if that's all then everything went as it should.”
He dragged him out of bed, throwing some clothes into his hands and pushing him along to get dressed.
“What are you do-where are we going?”
“No time. I had to give you a potion, a very expensive potion that I expect compensation for, that would erase your memories from the last week. You went off your nut, boy, and I figured that whatever existential horror you saw in the universe could be dealt with simply by not knowing. Ignorance is bliss and all that.”
He poked his head through his shirt and glared at Twinty. His stomach swirled at the thought that he had been thrust back into a world of not knowing, of having forgotten how things should be.
“Memory erasure...you mean that potion that is so bizarrely picky that even a drop can take off extra weeks or months!?”
Twinty patted him on the back.
“Don't be such a baby, I got the mixture right didn't I? I only took off a week, more or less.”
“But-!”
“Boy, you were a gibbering fool when I found you after the stunt you pulled. Don't backtalk me about risk especially when you were playing around with a power like yours like it was a toy!”
Clarke pulled his shirt down, buttoned his pants and was thrust out into a corridor, stone tunnels lit by torches, the noise of hundreds of rushing furry bodies yards away.
“What power!? We're in the ratling burrows...? How-”
“Will you quit asking how? I will tell you everything but we have to move!”
“But my research! My mother-”
“You found her!”
Clarke was speechless, his eyes widening as he was pushed down tunnels past rats that parted the way for their unofficial king.
“I did? Why in the world did I need to have my memory wiped! You bastard, I spent so much-”
“Shut up! I'm trying to tell you but there's so little time.”
They turned down tunnels left and right, up and down until they stopped at a door that opened into a warehouse. A horse was saddled and waiting, a set of saddle bags set aside on a table.
“You found that your mother is most likely being held in Wubwé. The elven nation was supporting colonies like Whaler's Wharf that set up away from the homeland and what you found specifically points to the relic hunting and cleanup crew of The Roots. They were the only ones, the secret security force of the elven nation, that would have known the innermost workings of what the researchers there were doing. But other people know too.”
He quickly explained, helping Clarke into his coat and throwing the saddle bags over the horse.
“And why did that mean you had to erase my memories?”
“Because you're a Script User, Clarke, just like her. That's why they took her. She was dangerous to just let roam free and useful when something needed covering up by simply writing down what they wanted to have had happened and it became the truth.”
He put his hands on Clarke's shoulders.
“You spent every second after seeing you had the same ability trying to simply...make her appear, to bring her to you and, from what I've seen, those powers don't work on other Script Users. That's why you didn't forget back then.”
“Then why-”
“Clarke...you were altering reality, or trying. You're not a god or a monster or a madman. You were looking at the fact of reality, what is and is not and changing it. You can't use that power or it's going to destroy you again. It eats at your sanity. THAT is why you can't use it! Why your mother was always telling you to only write what actually is.”
He took it in but it swirled through his mind, the words and ideas like a vortex.
“Okay...I...I guess. So I...I have to go.”
Twinty clapped him on the shoulder and nodded.
“That's right. Alouella and the others should be way ahead of you by now, as well as Weatherworn but we have one big advantage over him in this one thing.”
“A headstart?”
“Heh, hardly. The leader of The Roots is Alouella's father.”
Clarke's lip curled and fresh anger propped up in his bewilderment as everything hit him all at once.
“So he was the one that-! Well he's not going to let me take her away if he was the one that-!”
Clarke snarled but Twinty pulled his collar so they were seeing eye to eye.
“No, he's not and he wasn't the head of The Roots back then, just an officer. But now that he is the leader you could learn where she is, what guards and defenses she has by going through his things. And he can't know who you are. Your mother altered an entire town's memories just so you could go on and be yourself. Do you understand? ”
He met the rat's eyes and slowly nodded. That that man had moved into town specifically to take his mother and had the gall to stay, going so far as building a house had him shaking in fury. Thoughts of murdering his friend's father rose and he tried to cap them off. Whatever he did, he didn't want to lose Alouella too for a little thing like murdering his mother's kidnapper.
“I understand. I don't like to talk about myself anyway.”
He hopped on the horse, checking his pockets one last time.
The hole, potions...wait, there's a second hole..
“Hey, isn't this one yours?”
Twinty waved it off.
“I couldn't get into yours. You're keeping a god damn shark in there that nearly escaped into the city! It burrowed through several homes before we caught it again.”
“No one was hurt?”
“Nah. Well...no one who didn't deserve it. Now go. Bring Aggatha back.”
He nodded and looked off into the tunnel before giving the horse a little spur. He rode through the tunnels until they let out through some brush far from the city, pounding across open trails under the night sky.