Algernon Black

(Chapter 16) Goodbyes are the Greetings of the Next Adventure

"Well that one girl seemed nice," Jared said as Lucy walked him back to the carriage. "Not the black haired one."

Lucy laughed. "Yes, she did." Although she thought even if Pecilia's intentions were perhaps not the best, it still made her happy someone had come out of their way to greet her.

"I really hope you can make good friends here, Lucy," Jared said, recalling how important his small group were to him during his time in Attwood. "Allies even."

"Allies?" Lucy questioned. "Am I preparing for war?"

Jared smiled, but his eyes were heavy.

"Wars come in all different forms. This may just help you with one type of battle." From his coat pocket, Jared pulled out an object that looked like a cross wrapped in white cloth and a leather brown casing. "I didn't have time to wrap it."

When the heavy weight of the present fell into Lucy's hand, she pulled back the cloth to reveal a crystal dagger. The shimmering white iridescent stone of the blade ended in a shape tapered point and as she turned the weapon around it shimmered back every color of the rainbow.

"It's beautiful," Lucy said, but that was an understatement. It was one of those creations so perfectly crafted it would become a family heirloom for generations to admire. Or it would be put in a glass case for no one to touch because it was too precious an object to be soiled by human hands.

"It's made of Opalus," Jared revealed. "It was fortified in the forges of a creation practitioner, so the stone is as powerful as any metal. King Levithan's weapons were always said to be made of this material because it supposedly brought clarity to the mind and spirit. I hope this can lead you closer to him in some way. If there is one thing to learn while you're at this school let it be the teachings of the last good king."

"He lived a thousand years," Lucy stated, still examining the weapon. "What could he teach me that still applies now?"

"Everything," Jared immediately replied as his tone veered Lucy's attention back to him. "As I grow older the more I realize the oldest teachings stay the most relevant."

Jared chuckled at Lucy's still doubtful face and ruffled her hair. "Well in time I'm sure you'll understand what I mean."

Lucy looked up at her brother through the heaviness of his hand weighing her head down. He sometimes did this when she thought he didn't want her seeing his expression which she didn't have the words to describe besides it looking like a mixture of happiness and regret.

At the moment of their parting, Jared couldn't help but recall the start of their adventure together ten years ago. He had just finished his fourth year at Attwood and returned home for the first time in years. He was young, only four years older than Lucy was now, and he was convinced the world was his for the taking. He had the favoritism of one of Attwood's most respected teachers and after a few more years under his guidance, he was going to be a professor at the school as well. It was the first steppingstone to the end of his goals, becoming a Purveyor of the Conclave. The highest-ranking position, in the most powerful country in the world. He would become one of them and fix Attwood. Revert it back to the school King Leviathan had intended it to be, and from there he would repair the world. In the eyes of a twenty-one-year-old, it all seemed so finite. His future was a mountain he was walking towards, and it was only getting bigger in his field of vision every day. Until his pathway changed the moment, he walked through the doors of his childhood home.

No one greeted him when he entered. It didn't even seem like anyone lived in what was now the shell of his childhood home. There was a lack of life in the air, especially near Lucy's room where it was unnaturally quiet to be holding in an eight-year-old child. He thought maybe they moved her room, but when he opened her door, she was sitting by her window with her hand reaching as far out as it could go like she was trying to catch the sunlight. Spotting him, a tight look of fear passed her childlike face before she recognized her brother on a figure that looked like her father's and smiled. She got up immediately, but her knees buckled under her dainty weight. But she forced herself back up again to run over on unsteady legs with open arms and a smile bigger than all her body mass combined at the time. Jared bent down to pick her up and it was like picking up an empty box, she was so skinny. Only then was he fully faced with the facts of her neglect, the ones he had been choosing to ignore for years because she didn't fit into his goals.

He walked with Lucy in his arms to their mother's room, where she laid bedridden from her rapidly deteriorating health. And after his mother spoke those three words to Lucy, Jared never put her down in that home again.

At least Lucy didn't live with those memories as he did. He and the mind sower had made sure of that.

Lucy took Jared's hand from her head and held it between her palms.

"Jared, you raised me in the world, but now it's up to me to bring myself up in it."

Jared looked down at his little sister who all of the sudden seemed taller, even when she was the same height as always. He examined what else about her had changed in their years of traveling. Her hair had lightened, and her skin tanned, which made her gray eyes stick out all the more. A great change to her time as a hollow child.

"Just don't go anywhere so high, that your own brother can't reach you," Jared said, with a sad smile. He wrapped his hands around each other to make sure he didn't grab for her again, no matter how much he wanted to.

"Never," Lucy said, pulling her brother into a hug.

Jared hugged her back. "Every great adventure I've had in life, I've had with you. This is just the start of your first one without me."

"I won't ever be without you," Lucy said to the one constant in her life. To all the comfort and safety, she knew of the world. The idea of being without him was unfathomable, but she had a dream that could only be found in that discomfort. "I'll carry you forever."

Jared smiled at her words that warmed his heart greater than anything ever said to him. He had been worried about feeling unfulfilled when he took on the role of a parent. That he might grow to resent her for it, but truly nothing had felt more rewarding in his entire life than protecting and raising his little sister. It had been his sole purpose for the last ten years, and it wouldn't stop even as they parted. "I'm going to miss you, Lucy. But I'll be back for you," Jared whispered into her hair like it was of dire urgency. "I promise."

Lucy didn't know why, but she felt as if he was going off to war. She hugged him tighter.