Garlox quest

Chapter 18; let us meet again.

'I'm very sorry that I had to do that, Mex.' He had only just opened his eyes, and found himself trapped in the castle's basement. 'Please.. Queenly, I'm not mad.. I just want to understand.' She was always looking determined about what she was doing, because she always knew, and had a back up plan if things went wrong, but for the first time he saw desperation in her eyes. 'I wish I could, but.. there is a lot of stuff I do not know as well.. there are a few things that I can tell you, however.' She stood up, and turned her back to Mex, her hands on her back. 'First of all, why you can't return..' Mex frowned a little, but knew that yelling provided no answers. 'You see, in your world.. you don't have a body anymore. If you leave this world, you'll vanish like the wind. Only your mind could go on. Your mother died the same way.' It was obviously that she had a hard time telling this to Mex. As things got harder, her posture would become more aggressive. 'My.. mother?' 'Yes.  I know that you don't trust most of the things that your memory tells you. But in this world, your mother was a witch.' She looked down, as she was about to tell everything about the life that they'd shared together. 'She was married to your father, and provided many potions for the people here. However she was slightly.. ehm.. adventurous.' Queenly turned around again, and sat down on the chair across from Mex. 'She was the first one to discover the portal to the world you know, and lived in. She went looking for this world, because you died in birth. Your mother knew that somewhere you were alive and well. However she didn't know where, or when. She locked herself up, fed up on how she could never see you alive. ... I'm a bit vague on the details, but I knew that she found a person. She granted you another life, and soon enough you also came alive in this world. But that isn't all. There was something odd about you. You did things that made no sense, you spoke to people who weren't there, you interacted with objects yet unknown to our kind. And well, suddenly you stoof infront of us, you somehow gained a sister we never knew of.'

'Even in the memory I have of this place, I can't quite remember her myself now.. I knew she was, but something felt off..' Mex tried to think back about his earliest memory about his sister, but he couldn't think of any. 'Neither do we.. anyway, we took you inside the town during one of our town's ceremonies. We call it Lurthix. It's when we're thankful that winter is over, and spring will grant us life again. It is very widely celebrated, we hope that the gods will give us more crops, and vivid coloured flowers, if we praise them hard enough. It's common for people at the age of twelve to participate in this ceremony. It being the age of adulthood. However, something was off about your being. You would walk into walls, and laugh when no one had even talked to you. You were there in body, but never in mind. That was one of the reasons no one dared to come near you. You mother wanted to see what was wrong, and tried to visit the other you, the you that you are now in mind. But as she had no body in that other world, she got sucked in, and her mind was doomed to roam that world forever. After that terible moment with your mother, your father left the house and left you to be. It was hard, but on routine people of the village would take care of you. You could eat in that other world, but your body in this world was famished. It was a hard task, but as you can see it was well worth it. Part of your soul must have been kept in this world's body. And so your mind could escape. And about six weeks ago.. everything seemed normal. You just came to the castle, and claimed to be a Polish boy. The poor knights reported back to me, and I took over the case.

'But.. there is one thing that I do not understand..' Mex looked her in the eye, as he was about to ask everything about his new life. 'Only one? My I would have at least a dozen.' He frowned again, and Queenly awkwardly looked away. '.. you were saying?' 'Ahem.. yes..' Mex cleared his throat, and tried to become more comfortable in the tied down position he was in. 'Christopher is your real brother, right?' She was looking mildly surprised when Mex asked her that question. 'After everything I've told you, you decide to ask about my low life brother? Mex, this is no time for feelings! You must understand in what kind of situation we are!' She slammed the palms of her hand on the table, and looked at Mex fiercely. 'Christopher was never meant to be my brother! And I do not care about him being dead. Not in the slightest, you understand?!' Mex swallowed, and nodded. 'Is there anything you want to ask about.. well, I don't know.. more relevant things?' She seemed to be boiling with anger, her palms still being flat out on the table. 'Well.. ehm.. what do you mean with 'I was there in body, but not in spirit?' Queenly started to relax a little bit, and answered Mex's question. 'Well, see it like a game of chess. You had two boards, and two different opponents. You would play only seeing one of the boards, but make the same moves on the other board. Even if they made no sense.' 'That.. must've been quite difficult.' 'It was, but in some cases it was hilarious as well. We will never forget that you once got fully undressed in the middle of the towns square, and pretended to take a bath. People had to pull thorns out of your behind for days.' Queenly slighty started to chuckle thinking back about that very moment. 'It has been one of the weirdest reports I've seen' 'So much for a first impression, huh?'