Alistar left the estate with a complicated mix of guilt and self-pity, knowing that he would never get to enjoy the normal youth that Patricia wanted him to experience. With such thoughts on his mind, he set off for the outskirts of the county, determined to unearth the secret behind the mysterious madman once and for all.

***

“That backstabbing bastard…”

“Who?” asked Alistar, impatient after repeating the same conversations time and time again over the past several hours. “How did this person betray you?”

“Curses…terrible curses…”

Alistar perked up as he finally received a relevant response. At this point in his constant lines of questioning, he’d decided to try to steer the man’s memory in another direction.

“Do you know who Dalia Silver is?”

“My wife…she’s my wife.” Going completely still, the man said, “How are you talking to me right now? They can never speak, not after the first few decades. Mute, they’re always mute…” Going still once more, he gasped as if someone had just removed a hand from over his mouth. “Dalia, is she okay? Tell me, where is my wife?”

Going against all of his instincts, Alistar plunged his dagger into the man’s neck with sickening ease, causing him to fall limply to the ground amidst a series of spine-tingling gurgles. He had already witnessed the man die several times, in some instances appearing to suicide out of instinct rather than as a result of any coherent thought. With this in mind, Alistar had taken the risk of staining his soul in an effort to preserve any bit of sanity that might happen to manifest within the pitiful man’s mind, as had been requested of him by the person in question during his initial visit.

Ten seconds…thirty seconds…fifty seconds…

A rising sense of horror settled in as Alistar began to wonder if the man’s revivals weren’t infinite in number. What if he had actually killed him just now? Wouldn’t that mean that he was a murderer, no better than the guards in Crystellum and those that had sent his family there?

An immense weight was lifted from his shoulders as the man began to move a short while later, the wound on his neck sealing itself shut as if time itself were being reversed.

Pushing himself up on shaky arms, the man felt the dampness of the dirt beneath his hands and began to feel around, leaning in close to sniff at the blood that had pooled around him in his unconscious moments.

“This isn’t something I could have managed,” he coughed, taking in a few ragged breaths before spitting out some blood and then saying, “Who’s there? Am…am I being tortured again? Not that you would tell me.” Flipping on his back, he said, “Please, just let me stay like this for a few minutes. Just let me be me, even if it’s only for a short time.”

“Finally,” breathed Alistar, falling to the ground as he let out a deep sigh of relief. “I thought I killed you for a moment.”

“Oh? They sent someone who can talk this time?”

“For the hundredth time, I’m not involved with whoever locked you in here.”

“How do you know I’m sealed here, then?”

“You told me, though you forgot yourself shortly after.”

Sitting up and crossing his legs, the man pointed at the barrels along the left wall of the cave. “Although I’m terribly confused, if you truly don’t mean me any harm, then could you fetch me an apple?”

“There aren’t any. I brought you something better, though.” He handed the man the bag of food that he’d brought along this time around, the previous one lying empty at the far end of the cave.

Digging into a large piece of soft bread, grateful tears spilled from the man’s shrivelled ducts as he ate in silence for several minutes.

“Since this doesn’t seem to be our first meeting, I assume it’s safe to say that you’re not my enemy. Am I correct?”

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

“I’m not.”

Alistar healed the man as much as his mending spell would allow, improving his withered appearance by a significant margin.

“Many thanks…” Not without suspicion, he rasped, “Who are you, then? Why is your aura so familiar?”

Alistar filled the man in on all of their previous interactions, ending with an apology for having stabbed him in the neck.

“I’ve already forgotten it, so it’s best you do as well.” Sitting still as stone, he collected his thoughts for a minute or so before speaking up in a disbelieving voice. “To think that it’s been over five hundred years. Are you really one of Dalia’s descendants?”

“One of many. There are hundreds of us, probably a lot more.”

Tears continued to spill down the man’s face, these having nothing to do with the food that he’d just consumed. “No need to say anymore. Surely she was blackmailed by that bastard Tephon. Their families were always close allies with one another, and her father had constantly tried to push them together. That, and the fact that she only had healing magics at her disposal… Tell me, what happened after the war? Did the Drunish peoples resettle in the west, as planned?”

“That…”

“No, on second thought, don’t tell me. If I fall into too strong of a shock, it could trigger a relapse. Help me up, would you, boy? There should be a chair nearby.”

The man must have been referring to a pile of decayed wood that looked like little more than tinder for a future fire.

“The only things in this cave are some barrels, some rotten wood, an old book and a rolled up rug.”

“Rolled up rug?”

“It…it smells strongly of waste.”

“There’s no bed? No gold? No armour or magic crystals?”

“Nothing, sir.”

“Figures. You know, many of my belongings were sealed here along with me. A sort of mockery to who I once was, doomed to be accompanied by my useless riches and nothing else.”

“Who took them away?”

“Nobody good, that’s for sure. Alistar, was it? Tell me, what’s the state of the world? One of my last memories was being in the Kalkas Kingdom, just before a great battle. Is that where we are?”

Alistar had never heard of this kingdom. “We’re on the fringes of the Kingdom of Civus. It’s the kingdom that Dalia Silver founded after the war.”

“She founded it here? But she hated this region more than anything. Surely there’s some significance to that.” Licking his lips to moisten them, he continued, “Even if she married Tephon in the end, it couldn’t have been an amicable affair.” Fumbling with the bag of food, he pulled out a wineskin and helped himself to its contents. “Good wine.” Snickering self-depreciatingly, he added, “Though I suppose even horse piss would seem a luxury to me these days. Ah, go on about the state of the world, though. How many kingdoms are there? What are the names of the current royal houses?”

“Sir, before that… You wouldn’t happen to recognize the name Aglain of Lahn, would you?”

“Oh? So he’s still known even after all these years?”

“He was one of humanity’s greatest heroes, after all.”

“Hero, is it?” After remaining quiet for a time, he said, “Tell me, boy. How is it that you can use magic in here? Only those with specific talismans can do so, and the amount of people in possession of such things are only a few.”

“I’m not sure. I just use it as I normally do and there aren’t any problems.”

“So you can cast uninhibited?” Letting out a weak laugh, he spoke to the cave at large. “Who would have thought that my salvation would be delivered to me by a frightened rabbit, of all things?”

“What do you mean?”

“You said you wound up here after chasing your friend’s pet, did you not?”

“About your salvation, I mean.”

“If you can truly cast magic in here then there’s a chance that you can help me escape.”

Alistar was immediately wary. As much as he pitied the man, he was completely ignorant as to why he had been trapped within this cave to begin with. What if it was for good reason? He couldn’t act recklessly, not with so many unknowns at play.

“You said that you had been cursed. How so?”

“Did you not just kill me only to watch me come back to life? I’m immortal, boy, and not by choice. In my time, such a curse was only placed on the most heinous of criminals, all of which were chained to heavy stones and left to drown for eternity in the deep seas.”

Alistar’s stomach turned at the thought. “Does that mean that even now…?”

“It’s tough to say. Not much is known about this curse, only that it was created by a dark magus named Neiro many centuries before my time. He was the only arch magus to ever follow the path of those devious dread magics, though he supposedly died before he could perfect the spell. Must’ve been too wary to use it on himself, so it clearly isn’t foolproof.” With a bit of pride, he added, “Was killed right outside of my hometown, actually. They say it took nearly everyone on the continent to do so. Say, does Lahn still exist?”

“It’s the capital of the empire.”

“You don’t say!”

“And your other curse? You said there were multiple.”

“The curse of weakness. As I am now, I’ve no more strength than a newborn babe, and I’ll remain like this forever unless the curse is broken. The curse of immortality was always used alongside this one, so that even if by some miracle someone were to escape the depths of the northern seas, they would still have no chance of making it ashore.”

“And you think I can help you with that?”

The man wore a wrinkled frown, folding his hands over his groin in an attempt at modesty. “You’ve got an abnormal amount of energy within you, so there’s a chance. If only I had those crystals of mine… Blast it, it seems that Limnin’s dogs took liberties with my possessions when they came to replenish my food stores.”

“By Limnin, you don’t mean Saint Limnin, do you? The founder of the Lucian Faith?”

The man held up a hand that was suddenly shaking with rage. “No more on this topic, lest I lose myself again.”