I’ve given it up, not for a wife.
The bottle’s alls I needs for me’s.”
- Old-Man Jones, Happily Ever After, (304, 3rd Era)
Enide stared at the canopy tent at the end of the convey; she hunched over on a wooden box and a bottle of beer hand. Within that tent was Erec. She’d seen him that morning, ensuring he was still hanging on. Now that they were dozens of miles from Muerte, they were at least out of the danger of lizards chopping their heads off and hanging them around like ‘Mis decorations.
She was still feeling the terror of the dip of the inbetween she’d taken—but dragging around Erec there, this time, was a bit easier. That desperation to save him had let them get through, even though she’d felt the eyes keenly aware of her as they passed through it for only a handful of seconds. It was enough to make her never want to touch that place again. Never go that deep in the between; just thinking about it made her skin crawl. But she’d had to. All for the sake of Erec.
But Erec wasn’t alright. Naw, nothing close to that. That annoying woman—Olivia was her name, Enide knew—said they had to drag him to the cardinal in their little Kingdom: one of those red-robed bastards, if they wanted any chance to patch what was wrong. That other lady, the weird one with the kink for crystals, kept spewing some nonsense about there being a split from his soul and body, which was equally as confusing. The main thing was, from even a physical health perspective, Erec was well… Fucked up.
The big guy’s body was a mess of internal hemorrhaging and torn muscles that made it a wonder that he was still holding together. Only regular doses of healing from the Knights kept him tugging along. And they weren’t too sure they’d even make it to the Kingdom, even driving like there wasn’t a tomorrow.
Enide took a long sip of her beer, it tasted like sour piss, but maybe that was her mood doing that talking for her tastebuds. Those Knights kept prancing around, fretting over him; they all knew he was tough, but she was nervous.
She shouldn’t have listened to that psycho. His plans always tended toward the self-sacrificing suicidal sort. That kinda thing drove her nuts. The moment she realized what he was doing, she’d popped back in to follow and watch, but by then, the scale of the fighting had gotten out of hand. They were tossing around blows that would’ve made an Arch-Magi blush and tearing apart the whole vault. It was all she could do to stay out of the way. The idiot decided he was going to fight to the death like a stubborn animal. And all she could do was watch and wait. She’d be damned if she’d let him die like that. The moment she saw her chance to drag him off, she did. And tried to get help for him, but… None of them were enough.
She tapped her foot on the ground, her beer spilling as she did so, Enide swore.
Yniol stumbled up to his camping chair next to her, letting out a puff of exhausted air as he sat down. “Well, that Duke’s a grouch, but think he’ll survive.”
“Aww, lucky him. His son’s a wreck too, but I’m sure the spoiled brat will be thrilled to know daddy’s gonna pull through.” Enide said back and snorted. It wasn’t nice to those two, but the only one of those Knights she had in her to worry about right now was Erec. The fact that he was the question mark instead of that grizzled old vet wasn’t fair in her book.
“Man hurt an Arch-Magi and took his prize; gotta respect that. Don’tcha think?
“The Arch-Magi blew his load on a buncha magic earlier to get in, then got jumped before a full recovery when he didn’t see it coming. I’m happy he put a dent into the rat before he scurried away, sure.” Enide sighed. “Just on edge, I dunno. Wondering if I could said something to change his mind, convinced him somehow to run instead of… that…” she tried to look away from the tent at her dad, but failed.
“Nah. That boy has a strong will and too much courage. Fools like him run on luck, til it runs dry. I know you two… Are going on,” Yniol hedged his voice, “And I like him, really do. We hope for the best, but we can’t control everything. Ya know that. We all do.”
“Sure,” Enide soured more and downed the rest of her beer, then threw the bottle at the ground, taking a sad little delight as it violently shattered. It wasn’t much, but it did make her feel the tiniest bit better.
Her skin itched, and she stood up, going for the pistol at her side. She felt it, that split in the world, that tunnel that went somewhere else. It was more keen now, after she’d dived deeper than ever those two times. And this one tasted like cherries and sunshine—an odd sensation that most of these connections didn’t come close to usually. They were sour and disgusting. But this one was different. Enide shouted her warning, and sure enough, a Rift burst into the wasteland twenty feet from their convoy.
What kinda of crap was this? Couldn’t they let them lick their wounds before the world shoveled more dirt onto them?
Three cloaked figures stomped out of the Rift, and in response, Enide fired off her las-rifle, backed up by the immediate shots from a couple of the closest in the Pack to their guns—the bullets and the laser bounced off a transparent bubble that spawned before the cloaked figures. They held up their hands in a gesture to stop, but her family kept firing; if their bullets couldn’t end the threat, then they could at least buy time.
The cavalry didn’t hesitate. Boldwick and a couple of the other Knights stormed the Rift, weapons and magic already spinning up to mess up the monsters.
But they stopped halfway across the charge.
An oddly familiar woman followed the cloaked monsters out, short red hair cropped tight to a thin face with a frown on it—on her back was a massive sword, she scanned the oncoming Knights, who faltered at her approach. With a gesture, she straightened her back and pounded a closed hand on her chest. That was their salute to one another in the Kingdom, Enide found out—a way to display comradery.
“Boldwick,” She said, her voice icy. “You have something I want.”
“Dame Isolde,” Boldwick replied with a dip of his head. “I don’t believe that the device we fished out of that vault should be the top of your concerns.”
“I disagree, and cut the ‘dame,’ I will no longer abide by the titles of your Kingdom.”
“Then at the least, you will abide to show enough restraint in trying to strong-arm me for this mysterious device and instead spend the time to see your dying son,” Boldwick said, his voice ringing out deeply across the battlefield. The woman’s icy facade shattered, concern obvious in her eyes.
Ah. That’s why she looked familiar. Searching those hard lines on that face, the stance the woman took. She could see it now, the similarity between the mother and son. That and the eyes were the giveaway. It didn’t take much for Enide to guess where Erec got his stubborn streak. Enide frowned. So long that boy had struggled to find this woman, and the moment she finally decided to show up was when he was too messed up to even realize? New ɴᴏᴠᴇʟ ᴄhapters are published on NoveI[F]ire.net
“Aye, in that tent is Erec. Hanging on by a thread. I’d thought you’d come to pay your respects after neglecting your duty as a mother for so long, but it may be that I was wrong.”
She shot him a dark look, a hand reaching towards her sword; one of the cloaked figures walked over to her and leaned in, locked in a short but heated discussion. Isolde eventually put her hand at her side and, in a tight voice spoke. “Boldwick, I’ve been given permission. Follow me through the Rift with him, and I’ll see to Erec’s recovery.”
Boldwick weighed her words and looked at the tent. And with that, the deal was sealed.
In short order, he and three other Knights were ferrying Erec through the portal into another world at his direction. Enide tried to follow, but the Knights wouldn’t let any of her Pack through. This was their business, or so Rochester said. But at this point, this far into the wasteland, their lives were already so mixed and matched that she didn’t think that argument had that much of a leg to stand on. Yet Rochester enforced his demands anyway.
Enide watched the Rift as they went through, burning the feeling of the place on the other side into her soul.
If that boy didn’t return, she’d chase him. Chase those weird cloaked things into their cherries and sunshine-tasting world, and yank him back. Even if it meant going all the way through the between. Enide shivered as she pictured the things in the dark, there.
— - ☢ - — - ☼ - — - ☢ - —
Erec drifted for an endless tide, surrounded by a silver sea. It ebbed and flowed around him, its heat a welcoming feeling on his skin. Warm and comforting, above broiled a hateful sea of normal fire, but down beneath that, is where he belonged. It was more him than anything else, and here he could stay, his eyes closed as it flowed over him.
There wasn’t pain in this heat, there wasn’t sorrow here, and he’d earned this respite and peace.
Goddess knew he’d driven himself past what he could manage, broken through the veil on who he was; an echo of a hero was all that was left. A last refrain of chivalry and nobility that sounded through the ages, a last note in a dying world to bring some semblance of the height that humanity could bring.
He was human, and like them all, he’d fallen and, eventually, met his match.
But he was content. He’d ended that which he’d put on himself, realized what it meant to be a man in this world, and accepted it.
No regret. When that final curtain fell, when he found himself in the endless tide, soaking in the heat, that was the one thing that went through him. The truth until he melted away. The choices he’d made, and the fights he’d taken on, they were him. And that was fine.
So it was with annoyance he opened his eyes to see the startling form of a woman’s face above, manifested in that sea of angry red fire.
“Come,” it commanded.
With the swirling flames, the features of that face were hard to discern, and already unraveling from the world he’d left for his peace, Erec couldn’t quite tell whom that face belonged to. The voice rang with an odd familiarity that at once only sparked that annoyance further. How dare it command him on what to do. Hadn’t he paid enough blood, shed his life for the people he’d cared about? What had it done to deal with those issues? Where had it been?
The silver fire around him roiled. Erec climbed to his feet, standing on the surface of those silver flames, eyes burning a hole right into the angry face above. “Go fuck yourself.”
The face above snorted. “Sunshine, I’ve missed you.”
With that, the fire above stopped moving. He saw her, and at once, he understood. That was his mother, looking down on him from on high; the fire that made her face… Didn’t stop moving. It froze, a cold wind snapped around him, and the flickers of flames became living sculptures of glass-like ice as she stared at him; Erec let the silver flame wrap around him, but it was too sudden. A hand made of ice reached down from above, flicking his secure cloak of silver away, then snapping him up in those fingers.
“I’ve never stopped loving you, Erec” She said, her voice filled with truth, but Erec didn’t want to accept it. He struggled in that grasp as it pulled him. “Come back. It is certainly not your time yet. Your body is not willing to give in. All we need to do is let it find your soul.”
Try as he might, there wasn’t a way to combat it.
He was pulled into a blizzard, into numbness, and then back into pain.