280, 2/3

Erick wasn’t dead, but he certainly wasn’t alive, either.

He had no body, but he had something of a soul and a mind, perhaps.

The only thing he truly had was a purpose.

To Understand.

Even his enemies. Even people who deserved no good things. Even the worst people imaginable.

Erick still tried to understand.

And then, to help in a constructive way.

– – – –

Nhatuan was an old man doing the job of young men, because he could, and they could not.

He stepped among the reeds, gently pressing them aside as his feet sank into the mud. It cloyed, that mud. His feet were bare, so he did not get overly stuck, but still this was a danger. The reed-liars could catch him and drain him dry if he stumbled into one of them. The mudhoppers might hop into his body, and turn him into mud.

He had to brave this danger, anyway.

Nhatuan was too old for this shit, but he was still one of the strongest hunters of their village, even at 98 years old. He had never accreted as he should have, or else he would be living a lot longer than this… But what was the point of accretion? To live longer under the knives of the Hollow elves? If he had accreted he would have been taken from his family, from his wife and his adopted kids, and then all of their grandchildren. The City took everyone who could accrete. No. This was a better life by far. Even Nhatuan, who had had no children of his own, and had thus helped raise all the other children in the village, was still useful, just as he was.

Nhatuan was old and infertile, but this was a good life anyway.

“A life I will spend well, or die trying,” he muttered, as he moved. “Cloak me Dark, I beg of you.”

He snuck through the reeds, silent as a snake, right up to the walls of the castle. The guards above didn’t see him. Nhatuan was good at blending. He was a hunter, and he hunted well, his small knacks of power serving him well, but he was a hunter of beasts and not of men.

The men in the castle were hunters of men, and Nhatuan was going to die tonight, one way or another, but he was going to make sure his family survived—

A window was open? Just a single leap above the waters? What fool would leave a window open that low! They were begging to be drained by the reed-liars!

Nhatuan thanked the Dark and began climbing, his heart racing hard, his blood pumping harder. His mind was clear and the hunt was on. He scaled into the building, grabbing stone that seemed too easy to grab, finding the window not actually open at all, but half-open. Easily broken, though.

A guard slept in the room. Sleeping by a window? The insanity. Even a cracked-open window was an invitation to be killed out here, at this hour.

Nhatuan’s blade came down in the man’s throat and then whipped around into the man’s chest, granting him his requested death.

The man died with eyes flashing open and gurgles that were easily mistaken for the noise of bugs in the swamp.

Nhatuan breathed hard. Too hard. He had never killed a man except in his dreams. Those dreams seemed so far away, and yet so close, on this night.

God’s own luck smiled upon him that night. The warriors were drunk off of a feast, and Nhatuan found the drunken warriors were easy pickings. Sleeping evils easy to kill. Had everyone taken leave of their senses tonight? A party in enemy territory, held with this much alcohol? Insanity.

Maybe they would all die tonight, as they should have died decades ago when the Hollow elves first came to this land, conquering. Back then they had been a lot stronger than this, though. But were they, really? Nhatuan lamented all the years lost to the insanity of believing these people strong! The ache and pain of their rule! It was all so ephemeral!

Nhatuan was so much stronger than he thought he was. All he had needed was the courage to act.

He should have done this long ago.

And yet…

Nhatuan made it all the way up to the leader’s rooms, which were unlocked. Nhatuan was crying by now, but they were silent tears. He had not wanted to do this. He had thought that it would be harder. But it was not hard at all.

These men were rumored to have orders to kill the villages of the entire swamp and prepare for the expansions of the capital, but they were lax in their duties. They were lax in their patrols. They were not lax in the beating of men and women in the village, and the claiming of First Nights of all new wives, and the theft of every pretty thing anyone ever found or made in the villages—

Nhatuan breathed in the Dark, and focused.

The man in the rooms ahead had beaten and raped Nhatuan’s granddaughter last week in the process of stealing the necklace of gold that Nhatuan had made for her.

That had been the final breaking point.

No more.

Nhatuan stalked down the stone hallway, the shadows swirling around, the evertorches on the walls making the darkness seem even blacker. He stepped through the black, and his knife became a claw, though he did not notice the claw at all. His senses expanded, though he did not notice the expansion at all. He did not notice how his clothes fell away, and how a delusion he had wrapped himself in finally gave way to a truth.

There was a reason he was a good hunter, and why the reed-liars and the mudhoppers and the fanged beasts of the marsh avoided him, except for when he went in to their territory. There was a reason he had such an easy time killing these men. There was a truth he was still unwilling to see.

But Erick saw it.

There, for the ride, Erick saw Nhatuan’s truth.

Nhatuan slipped into the head guard’s chambers, clipping little alarms in the air that were stretched like webs across the door, breaking their power and preventing them from signaling. He had always had that knack, that ability to just break magic. It was necessary when hunting weavers in the marshes, for weaver threads were always filled with alarms. Nhatuan had never had a second thought about how he could do that, and every time he tried to teach his adopted children they could never grasp his simple explanations.

Sometimes people had knacks that they couldn’t explain.

Nhatuan slipped into the bed chambers of the man he would kill and make everything better.

The man lay in bed—

To the side, chained to a wall, was a woman. She was Aliani; the girlfriend to Nhatuan’s favorite grandson. She was thought lost to the city. She was an excellent seamstress. She had told everyone how she had gained a big opportunity in the city, and so they had a big party for her and gave her gifts and she left. That was what had happened.

This is also what had happened.

Aliana had a chain around her neck and she lay on a reed mattress on the floor. She had a bowl of water and a chamberpot next to her bed, on opposite sides of her area. She had no clothes and only a thin blanket. She shivered as she slept.

Nhatuan had been crying for the pain he was inflicting tonight.

His tears dried.

The Dark visited him as Nhatuan stared down at the head guard.

This man was the cause of the villages’ problems.

Nhatuan had killed everyone else of note in the entire castle, so it was no trouble to start the head guard’s execution with a slash across the throat and hands, quick as a flicker of desire and intent. The man woke, unable to speak, unable to manage magic with his hands, unable to defend himself at all. His eyes were wide open and he gurgled profusely as Nhatuan began disassembling the man.

He started with the man’s feet.

His screams were justice.

When he was done, he noticed that Aliana was awake and huddled in the corner, quietly crying, trying to make herself unseen.

… She was quite pathetic, wasn’t she?

She probably could have killed that man herself, had she the heart to break out of her station—

There was a mirror.

Nhatuan saw himself in the mirror—

Erick saw himself in the mirror as a very young white dragon with a leviathan-like body, maybe 3 meters long. Underfed. Still full of rage, and yet now, full of surprise. Mana poured out of Nhatuan’s body in that moment, deepening the Darkness all around, and somehow Erick focused inward, realizing that he had deluded himself into believing things that were not true. He had told himself those dreams when he was young were just that; dreams. He told himself that he was not a dragon. That he did not escape the marsh and imitate a boy and then ate that boy and took his place in that family. Good people did not do that. Good people like him, like the boy Nhatuan, did not kill.

That’s what his real parents had told Erick, had told Nhatuan, that he was really their good child, and Erick was a good boy. That is what Erick had believed for so long, easily ignoring the looks his parents gave him when they thought he wasn’t looking.

Erick/Nhatuan was a good boy. He was a good boy, and not a misshapen dragon. He was a good boy, who helped everyone. He was a good boy.

Good boys don’t murder 23 castle guards.

… But great boys did.

Erick coiled power into himself, like he had finally opened his mouth to drink the rain that he had been denying his body all these decades. It was easy for him to become more than he appeared to be; to become who he was.

Nhatuan was a dragon.

When the Hollow elves from the city came to discover what had happened, Nhatuan revealed himself as more than a dragon.

With fire and knives, Nhatuan showed the Hollow elf army that he was also a Wizard.

– – – –

In the brief moments between moments, Erick knew he was not Nothanganathor, and he was not Nhatuan either.

But a part of him was.

Or maybe a part of him had been.

Erick swam in memories older and deeper than either of them. It was like being Ashes Woodfield again, at the Glittering Depths of Greendale, in Greensoil. It was like seeing a great many things, buried, and yet freshly unearthed.

They were all fragments of The Prince.

They were all pieces of Xoat.

That was how Erick was doing this.

He was living memories that weren’t exactly his, and yet, they were.

– – – –

Nhatuan changed his name and found the Painted Cosmology full of people who did not appreciate him, so he moved on to other universes, exploring the cosmos.

– – – –

Erick was Nothanganathor, and also not.

The dragon was a man right now, looking at himself in a mirror, smiling wide. Erick was in that mirror. Nothanganathor only saw himself, though. He looked happier than ever before. Happier than most men. He wore an ornate black robe over white garments, while his room was the room of a city lord; ornate, but not too ornate. Everything was simply nice.

It was centuries since the last time Erick had seen Nothanganathor.

With casual twists of power, Nothanganathor gestured at the mirror, asking himself, “Do I have a fae coming to my wedding today? Or just spying on me from the mirrors?”

Erick found himself stepping out of the mirror, asking, “I’m unsure.”

Before that moment, the visions had been unalterable. He had been along for the ride.

Maybe they were still unalterable.

Erick had stepped out of the mirror and voiced words, but he had been riding a groove in history, and not actually making any decisions for himself. He was here, and yet not.

Erick tried to tell Nothanganathor off, to eradicate him with fire and hate.

Nothing happened.

Erick was chained to the memory of Xoat, here in this place and time, somewhere far removed from Veird and everything that would come later.

Nothanganathor said, “As long as you don’t cause any trouble, I would love your attendance. Gifts are unnecessary.”

Erick found himself saying, “I’m going back in the mirror. I should not be here.”

Nothanganathor nodded.

Erick stepped into the mirror.

Nothanganathor began to walk away…

And Erick followed anyway.

Nothanganathor asked him, “Are you content to only watch?”

“I seem unable to not watch.”

“At least take off the black coat. This is my wedding day. Not yours.”

Erick dislodged the coat that had been put on him when he was in the mirror. It reappeared on his body, and he once again matched Nothanganathor. “Ignore it. I’m already trying to.”

Somehow, Erick could say those words, but not others. Had those words been a part of the history? Or his own addition?

He tried to kill Nothanganathor again.

Nothing happened.

Nothanganathor nodded.

Nothanganathor continued on, with Erick following behind like a lost soul. Guards and confidants asked Nothanganathor what was happening, but Erick said nothing and Nothanganathor told people to ignore him, and so that is what happened.

Soon enough, Erick found himself standing to the side at a wedding he never imagined attending.

He was not Nothanganathor’s best man, for that honor belonged to another, and that role wasn’t even codified like that in this world. Nothanganathor had several ‘best men’. Nothing about this scenario made any sense, because time was moving funny, and fast, and loose. The sky was not really there except in an impression. The crowd was not really there except as a brush stroke of colorful commoners and several noble families, with the nobles more present than the commoners.

Ara, the Witch of the Marsh, was there, for she was the bride.

She was the most real thing here, except for Nothanganathor and Erick. Ara was beautiful. Red hair, perfect skin, a strong build and bright green eyes. Her sisters, second-born Agatha and third-born Aragathara, were there as ‘best women’. Upon looking at Agatha and Aragathara, though, Erick revised his opinion about Ara. Agatha and Aragathara were more real; they had imperfections in their eyes, and bodies, and real expressions of disbelief and acceptance that this was really happening.

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Ara was the most beautiful thing there, but she was also a lie.

A conjuring of Wizardry. Her beauty was fake. Her love a reflection remembered imperfectly perfect.

She had been fully obliterated in the Curse of Obscurity and what was left remained alive in Nothanganathor’s Sign of Power, and in the absolute deepest parts of his soul. This event here was, perhaps, the node upon which the entity known as ‘Ara’ still existed, for she no longer existed as anything but this.

Erick looked upon the brush-painted crowd, and saw that they all seemed more real than Ara.

Half of the crowd was full of humans and elves and belonged to Nothanganathor. The other half belonged to the witches, and there were all manner of non-human and elemental and otherwise on the witches’ side of the crowd.

Erick recalled this history. This location. Things look painted because Nothanganathor had made them that way, but this event happened inside the Fractal Universe, for the Painted Cosmology held nothing but pain for Nothanganathor, and so he had sought to make a home here, in this universe, on this world that held so much Darkness from the Painted Cosmology.

A Priest of Infinity, from some culture that Erick did not know and wearing an infinity symbol on his brow, presided over the union, speaking of how Nothanganathor and Ara had fought each other and warred over the world for too long, until a true evil showed itself and both of them put aside their hatred and became one force. The world was saved now, and power would join power to ensure the world remained saved. It was a clunky sermon according to what Erick was seeing, but the two people at the center wanted the union to be expressed in this way, for this was not a simple wedding. It was the healing of an ancient hurt.

Bride and groom kissed.

The vision closed to a focus, and all that was left was Nothanganathor and Ara, in an embrace.

Nothanganathor teased his new wife about how she shouldn’t have invited the fae, but he was glad nothing had happened. Ara teased right back about how Nothanganathor must have invited them, because she certainly didn’t.

The newlyweds both glanced toward Erick, both of them surprised, and questioning.

Erick was already gone.

– – – –

In the between-space, Erick saw Darkness.

It roared at him from every angle, with every voice he had ever known. It did not mean to yell, but it had no other way of communication, and so it yelled.

Erick accepted what he saw, and what he heard.

– – – –

Nothanganathor smiled as he woke with Ara in his arms.

Ara was up a second later.

She was even less real in this vision, with only an impression of red around her hair area, green around her eye areas, and pale cream everywhere else, but Nothanganathor pretended she was a real person.

He held a one-sided conversation.

“Let’s stay in bed. The kids are full-grown. We don’t have to care about them anymore.”

“I’m sure they can kill those spirit beasts on their own.”

“Well yes, that is my draconic nature taking over. I was left to fend for myself and I turned out just fine.”