Discordiae - Jackson's Story

Chapter 6 - A Memory Returns

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Otherworld 

Petra watched as the shadow of an image, thought long gone from their world, strode his way through the familiar caverns... Everything about this creature could be labeled as 'somber' from his clothes and dark hair to the tendrils of smoke which seemed to ebb off of him and briefly mark his trail behind him. If a walk could carry both brooding and sorrowful, it would be his; the most melancholy of gestures.

"You've been away a while, haven't you?" echoed a different man's voice; One she hadn't seen in waiting. It was a soothing sound like leaves in the Fall.

"Yea, well... It happens. You know me," came the response as the man soldiered on in his mournful trudge. He paused several moments before speaking again, and turning the full way around to face a man in violet robes. "How are you everywhere, Falcion? Maybe you really are the wind."

"I do. That is true." Falcion lightly chuckled and scratched at his white stubble. "You've come back at a good time. Petra tells me she needs a guide for one of her charges."

A guide? She flurgled with excitement. Was it going to be that easy to find Jackson a guide? And if this person was whom she thought he was... well, he'd have his work cut out for him. But still... for him to be Jackson's mentor.

"I'm pretty sure I left because of the last one..." returning to his slow, mournful gait up the mountain's trail.

"That wasn't your fault." Falcion said in a reassuring tone as he took steps beside the man.

"We both know it was." the dark man said bitterly, puffing out smoke and walking further into and about the chambers of the Grand Hall that marked the entrance of the Academy.

Petra buzzed with anticipation. It had to be him. They've been waiting for so long... He needed to return.

"No... No, it wasn't. Lang'zhe wasn't your fault." Falcion's ethereal voice continued calmly as they walked together. "You know candidates don't always pass their tests."

"Yea..." the man said looking through eyes glazed over in haunted memory, "but they don't always get erased for it either." 

"The Authority believes Fading to be a mercy... You--"

"They're bigoted zealots and you know it!" The man interjected strongly as he turned on Falcion; Cutting off what he felt would be yet another stream of excuses. They always had excuses for their actions.

"I still remember her eyes, Falcion." he said speaking slowly as his anger climbed higher mountains still as he looked deeper into the elderly man's eyes than anyone had dared in millennia. His smoke turned into mist as though the very air cried at the memory.

"Her face as she was stolen from me... As she was stolen from this world! She was terrified! She didn't understand! How could she?! That's my failure." He broke his stare and slumped against a wall. The memory was exhaustive, but it was rarely far from his mind: Her arms as she embraced him one last time. Her voice leaving, as she was faded from the world's collective memory. The fading process created by The Authority was claimed to be a mercy, but he knew it was just another cruel trick in their arsenal meant to punish people like him.  His connection to her being one of the few reasons he could carry her memory and always would.