“Hey Gramps, I’m back.”
Home sweet home. It had taken Darius considerably longer than he would have liked to come home. After dealing with Johnsie, the entire town was left on high alert leaving him to move at a snail’s pace back, and Darius’s large sack of goodies didn’t speed up the process. By the time he reached the place, it was already nearing midnight.
Darius huffed in the air and was met with the fragrance of horse manure and rotting animals, just the way he remembered it. “Still as rancid as ever.” The house or more like small hut Darius lived in alongside his grandfather, was the last little bit of home they had left aside from each other.
The top of the roof had many holes that Darius and his grandfather had to patch up over the year, the walls felt as if they were made about 200 years ago; they creaked and were not hard to break, as noted by Darius for falling through the walls more times than he could count, and the floorboards had patches of grass and dirt where the wood rotted and fertilized the plant underneath.
Even with all that being true, Darius had grown to become fond of the place. With nowhere else to call home at time, when the world was at its worst. This run-down building was one of the very few “comforts” they could afford. A sort of crude attachment developed to the point where the Darius and his grandfather didn’t move even when they had the chance, a choice they constantly regretted, though the fact that it was so remote that even the Don didn’t know about it did alleviate some of the pain.
“Darius, is that you?” said a weak voice from the kitchen.
“No, it’s Damien gramps. Sorry if I scared you, so please don’t bludgeon me to death.”
The false voice was a little trick Damien devised using a device that he procured during one of his jobs. The device being a small box that could record sounds and play them back. This enabled Damien’s grandfather, Jerimiah, an old man nearing his 80’s to hide behind the door with a weapon, in this case his cane. Being a head shorter than his grandson, even with his can poised high above his head, the old man couldn’t be called much of a threat.
“I wasn’t scared, I was just… alert. I mean look at you. You look like you came back from the dead to haunt me. What did this?”
“It was one of those paint bombs I made, Gramps. A little bit of gunpowder and a whole lotta paint. I ran into some trouble with Johnsie, so I had to use one”.
“You and those gadgets of yours, when do you even find the time to make them? No matter, as long as they prove useful to you and keep you sa-” suddenly Jerimiah fell to the ground with a coughing fit. Immediately Damien ran to his side.
“Gramps!” Damien yelled. “He’s coughing blood! I need to get him some medicine, no, I need to get to a doctor!” Damien moved Jerimiah to the only bed in the house hoping his grandfather could hold out long enough for him to get help. “I’ll be right back gramps, there’s got to be someone who can help.”
Yet as Damien tried to leave, a weak hand grabbing his arm forced him to stop, “No Damien, you know just as well as I, why we cannot do that.”
Damien only lightly struggled against Jerimiah, knowing what he said was the truth. “Gramps! I’ll find someone who wouldn’t recognize us, or at least someone who wouldn’t tell. Please, let me find you somebody.”
Damien felt Jerimiah’s grip grow tighter, “You are still 80 years too young to try and fool me, boy. 80 years of life has done me well. I already know there is no one like that, until you’re safe, our identities must remain hidden.”
Jerimiah’s eyes were resolute, there would be no changing his mind, and again Damien knew his grandfather was in the right, but it didn’t make him feel any better. Instead, he just relented, sitting down on the bed next to his grandfather’s feet.
“Damien, I understand that your fear, but it is not sickness that ails me, but old age. I have outlived my wife, my child, but I do not want to outlive you.” Damien was frustrated, there was so little he could do for his grandfather, his only family left. Damien turned his head from Jerimiah, not wanting his tears to be seen. “Please, do not turn away, let me see your eyes. It’s been so long.”
Damien was a bit hesitant as he though, "It's been a while since I’ve taken out my contacts."
Nearby, Darius looked at a mirror and saw himself, but it felt like he was looking at his doppelganger. Someone who looked exactly the same except for his eyes. He removed his contacts, replacing them with a pair of thin framed glasses, and saw himself once again with eyes as purple as the evening twilight. Damien Grayson, former prince of Acumenos.
Jerimiah was overcome with emotion, “Your mother… I miss her so much. I’m so sorry that I couldn’t protect her, I’m so sorry Damien.”
“Grandpa, remember when you first told me about New Dawn? That day when Mom and Dad came into the room dead tired? Well, Mom was faking it, she just didn’t want you to yell at her.”
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Behind tears, a slight chuckle escaped Jerimiah’s lips, “Of course she did that, and yes, I would have definitely yelled at her. She was a lot like you in that sense, so intelligent and cunning, and never scared to try and slip one past her parents. Remember on your 14th birthday when she bought you that dagger? If your grandmother was still around then, the tongue-lashing Liz would have given her.”
Damien’s head started to ache, it did this whenever he thought back to what he called the void years. A period of about three years of his life from when he was 13 that he could not remember. He never told his grandfather about this, simply agreeing to whatever Jerimiah said about these years. Damien already got into enough trouble that Jerimiah had to worry about, no point in adding more.
They spent nearly an hour just reminiscing, reflecting on what was, and what could have been, had not for Shining Twilight. “It’s been nearly six months since you did that job for that Don fellow. Will you be leaving Journey soon?”
"There’s the big question. One we’ve both have been putting off for quite some time,” Damien thought before he addressed his grandfather. “Within a week, Don Klaus has already given me notice, they’re docked and resupplying. the Don’s many things, but he’ll at least keep his promises, including his promise to take care of you while I’m gone.”
Jerimiah face turned grim as he looked onto his grandson, “I care little for whatever happens to me; it’s you I’m worried for. The Torrential Seas carry their name for a reason! You should forget about those stories I told you as a child and find a new lease on life. Find a nice girl, look for a new job, or even keep the one you have. I really don’t care! Please, you don’t have to carry the weight of Acumenos on your shoulders! You need to-”
Darius grabbed a hold on his grandfather’s hand and held tightly, “Gramps where do you see us in 10 years?” Jerimiah went silent, he hadn’t heard this question from his grandson in some time. “Because I don’t see us hiding, terrified that if anybody found out who we were, then we’d be killed!”
His grandson was right, “I see you safe, maybe with some great grandchildren scampering around,” Jerimiah replied. “I see you in a home not riddled with decay. I see me being able to visit my wife and daughter’s graves. I see our troubles past, and I see us… you happy.”
“That won’t happen as long as Shining Twilight is around.”
“Why does it need to be you?! Why must my grandson put himself in such danger?! Why… Why can’t I stop you?” Jerimiah returned his grandson’s grasp, “Please, you don’t have to go.”
“Yes, I do. Remember all those stories you used to tell me as a kid, the ones about a far-off Kingdom where its inhabitants controlled magic.”
Jerimiah clung closely to his grandson’s warmth. “A kingdom far past the Torrential Seas with lights not powered by fire but by creatures I had never seen before, people preforming feats that no human should be capable of: controlling life, manipulating light, morphing their bodies. Yes, it’s a place I could never forget.”
“Then it is real, or do you deny that?”
“I regret telling you those stories every day, but New Dawn is as real as you or me,” Jerimiah said looking deep into Damien’s purple eyes. Stoic and unwavering, there was nothing he could say that would change Damien’s mind.
“Listen to me Damien, I don’t think I can stop you, so I need you to understand something. There is a way to cross the Torrential Seas safely, in fact, I do believe it might be the only way, however it will require for you to steal an incredibly rare and treasured item from the Sheildon royal family.”
Damien started to sweat upon hearing these words, a rare treasure from Sheildon. With his luck it could only be one thing. "On Iroh’s thick brow, I’m going to have to steal the Grande Verde from the Don?!"
“The what? No! Nearly a millennium ago our ancestors came to this land from New Dawn. They had decided that they wanted nothing to do with magic, fearing the implications of the power imbalances that the usage of magic would hold. Several families, including the Graysons, set off on a journey to find a new place to settle far from New Dawn, until they eventually settled here in the archipelago that they named Journey.”
"That’s swell and all but Gramps, you forgot to answer the most pressing question. How did they cross the Torrential Seas?”
Jerimiah started to blush; he had completely forgotten the original point of telling his story. “Well, you see Damien, six of the most influential families, each brought an item of great importance. Each a staff that granted them great power, including the power to control the seas, enough to even calm the Contusis. In order to survive, you’ll need one of these staffs. You will be able to recognize them based on the strange etchings within them.
Damien stared blankly at his grandfather for a full minute before he could speak. “H-hold that thought.”
Damien left to the space he called his room, and went to his bed, an extremely torn couch he’d found in a dump. From inside, he took out the staff e had stolen alongside the Grande Verde all those months ago. Kept hidden purely because he knew his grandfather always disapproved of him stealing more than what they needed.
Just like his grandfather said, the staff carried many strange etchings, and as he held onto it made it feel as if a strange otherworldly energy seep into him. Returning to his grandfather, Damien presented it to him.
“Now I know what you want to ask, and yes, I’ve had this for a long time, yes, I got it from the vault, yes, it was during a job for the Don, and no, no one knows I was there… for the most part.”
Jerimiah held tightly onto the staff, holding onto it quite lovingly. Nearly a decade of old memories suddenly rushing into his mind. “You never cease to amaze me, Damien. You’ll have to give me the full story a different time, right now these old bones need some rest.”
Satisfied, Damien stood to give Jerimiah the entire bed. Turning off all the candles near the head of the bed, Damien wished his grandfather a good night. “Before you go, it’s midnight is it not? Then let me be the first to say happy birthday.”
"It's already the 19th of Vitnova's Dawn? Then I’m 19, huh? Time sure flies by.”
“Is there anything you’d like to do or like to have. Not that you wouldn’t take it yourself if you wanted it.”
Damien responded with a chuckle, “No, your terrible jokes are more than enough. I love you, Gramps.”
“I love you too.”