Discordant Note | TBATE

Chapter 7: Contract

Toren Daen

I floated in a sea of thought. I drifted under luminous water, pushed along by currents of emotion and consciousness. All around me were crumbs of everything I knew. I was an indistinct body of blaring white; featureless and empty. I watched as a book meandered along the current, pulled past my lazy form.

'The Beginning After the End,' it read in flowing golden script.

Orbs of light began to flicker along the same current I was in, streaming toward something. I knew I had a destination. And this flow: it was my friend and companion in this journey. My possessions drifted in the current with me, flashing between orbs of light: things that together made a collage of who I was. An old photo of my family together when I was young, a worn stuffed animal long since left behind, my first earned dollar. From afar, it probably looked like useless clutter. But every item meant something real to me, something core to myself.

Slowly, more items began to join the current. They were unfamiliar though, causing a new emotion to rise in the deep blue. A beautiful violin drifted close to an old vinyl record from one of my favorite bands. A painting of myself and my brother, far younger and in clothes fitting for a Renaissance fair, mingled with the phone I had held on to for years. I spied a piece of paper, too: some sort of official document stamped with a winged serpent swam about my college degree.

They shouldn't be with me, I knew, but they somehow still filled in the gaps I didn't even notice were there. My confusion shifted to anticipation, however, as my destination neared.

My body and all the things that made me me shifted up and up, towards the surface of the water. I breached the surface, streaking into the sky. Dawn was stretching its warm breath over the horizon, exhaling pinks and purples and oranges across the sky in a beautiful display. I soared towards the edge of the light, my pace speeding up exponentially. Items moved with me, dancing merrily in the sky about me.

I laughed in a strange sense of euphoria, the hope and joy from the rising sun washing over me like a mother's embrace. The horizon inched closer, a possible impossibility. The sun peeked over the water, greeting me with its warmth. At the center, somehow visible even through the glare, was a single red feather.

It pulled me onward, beckoning me to my fate. I extended my arms, the heat finally suffusing me. I pulled the items into my body one by one. It was right: each filling a puzzle piece in my spirit. With every memento and every memory that merged with me, my body grew more defined. My skin changed from glowing white to a familiar pale skin tone. My face shifted, my features growing sharper. Hair grew from my head, short and well-groomed.

I gasped, finally whole.

—

I snapped awake, nearly stumbling off the chair I was draped across. I patted myself down, assuring myself I wasn't a stark-white being that looked too much like Truth from Full Metal Alchemist for my comfort. Everything was in place.

Everything was in place.

I slowly lowered my hands.

I let out a shuddering breath, walking toward the casket once more. Norgan lay within, peaceful in his final rest. He was taken far too soon, and I could only wish he had found another chance as I had. He deserved better than what he got.

His body was clothed, but I knew a stab wound had pierced his sternum and severed the spinal cord, shattering his mana core and dooming him to a slow, painful death.

I could remember the moment it had happened, now: the thin blade piercing his body with barely any resistance. Norgan's expression: more disbelief than pain. And my own helplessness as I was forced to watch our aggressor's anger as she stripped me of all that I cared for.