The Scholar's Tale (Original Fantasy)

Sidestory: Lunacy

Aina

I felt freer than I'd had in years.

As far as not living in a creation prone to falling apart with nothing to pull it back together. In terms of my person, I was scarcely less burdened.

After Ryzhan helped prevent what could've been the end of everything, he faded from my perception. That would've usually perplexed me, because few things I was interested in could hide from me, not without carving obvious voids around them, and the mage was still someone I was invested in.

Distance in space or time or their counterparts had little to do with my senses; it was mostly intent that mattered.

Did he not want to be found, or did someone else want him hidden? Ah, no matter. I had a hunch we'd meet again (my spine snapped as it turned and straightened, a sliver of will undoing the transformation that expression had prompted), and though my instincts were duller than my active searching, most of the time, they were more profound too, missing less even if the paths they traced were less exact.

I flew over the tides, near the moon, as I pondered that. The distance between me and the sea could be neither measured nor bridged by the sane (and what did that say about me?), while the silver orb at my back was both unnuterably distant and close enough for me to feel its breath, like jagged glass sliding around my insides.

It sounded like it was holding its breath to aboid laughing. Unusual restraint.

Did I want the mage back? Back in Midworld, that was. He'd do good work here but also anywhere else he went, so what did the place matter? I held little love for this bloodied cesspool of a realm. Being born here had only given me more chances for my disdain to grown than an outsider would've had.

Did I want Ryzhan back in...my life? My Lunacy coiled at the thought, urging me to rend him to pieces or make him one with my substance - affection wasn't really a thing, where my monster came from, and so it framed anything that agitated it like a clever but vicious animal would have.

Ryzhan, back in my...how close were we, really, nowadays? I somehow doubted my help to make him reach his true potential had done anything to let that childhood crush bloom, not that being spurned was even close to being in my considerations. What comcerned me was a mage who could make any power his by remembering it feeling slighted by me and taking revenge.

My shoulders rose in a shrug at the possibility. What would happen, would happen. Contesting the Mage of Memories in a fight was improbable at nest, to say less of winning. That brought peace of mind, because there was no point in fretting over something one couldn't affect. That way lay stress, tiredness and little useful.

My madness stirred lazily, feeling like something between a snake and a scorpion, cold and slimt, as it wove about my chest and upper back. It was beginning to think about the mage as a danger if not an enemy (it could be surprisingly nuance when it came to reasons things needed to be killed), and that was driving it to take a war form, to pour one within and over us, that we might be girded for battle in our power.

I dismissed that. Even had I agreed, there was no one to fight.

Ryzhan as an enemy...I was not eager to find out how deathless I really was, if he bore a grudge. That was the sort of thing stories about immortals cursing eternity were made of. I would rather flee than face my mirrored power and a myriad ones alien to me but no less devastating.

Ryzhan as a friend. I'd have to claw that back, wouldn't I? We had been friends, as children. I was still fond of him, otherwise we could've never recaptured that spark in the Clockwork Court, but was he, still?

Objectively, I knew he had no reason to resent me. Any single person's suffering was meaningless in the face of macrocosmic oblivion; I would've gladly faced thrice the pain he'd been reforged in forever if that meant everything went on, but that had not been my sacrifice to make. If only things had bedn that simple, I could've spared him the...