7.16

  “There is no point where I ever need to stop writing.” - The Historian

  “So, where to next?” Noam asked.

  I rolled a burnt coin between my fingers. “Heads or tails?”

  “Neither of those two are options,” Tai retorted. “I need to get back to my hometown and report the news of my brother’s death. How about you guys?”

  Noam and I shrugged, while Utoqa shook his head. Celine thought for a moment, “I wish to keep traveling to find some people, but I don’t know where they are.”

  “Then heads for Tai, tails for Celine,” I flipped the coin, and caught it on the back of my hand. “Heads! My vote is for Tai”

  “We’re not leaving this to chance,” Tai murmured.

  Grinning, I raised the coin to view, and showed that both sides were charred black by flame, neither side was recognizable from under the soot. Tai frowned slightly in recognition, but didn’t comment.

  “I also vote for Tai,” Celine said. “Yours seems more urgent, since I don’t know where to look, I’m just trying to cover a wide area. Maybe the people I’m looking for are at your hometown.”

  “That’s majority,” Noam scooted out of the driver’s seat. “Lead the way, brave leader of ours.”

  Tai hmphed, “Well I’m glad somebody is finally acknowledging it.”

  My mum wouldn’t stop sobbing.

  “Maaa,” I sighed, “you’ve been crying since you picked us up at the station.”

  The slightly chubby woman wiped her eyes, an effort as futile as Sisyphus’s stone. “It’s just… I can’t remember the last time you decided to go outside.” She sobbed some more, then wrapped Matt into a hug. “Thank you for being Declan’s friend.”

  Matt patted her back, “Where would he be without me?”

  “Probably home, where it is air conditioned.” Unlike the unyielding dry heat of home, the heat here was more akin to a wet weighted blanket. Heavy and humid in a way that wrung the sweat out of your pores. Only a few minutes outside, and it looked like I had just stepped out of a shower.

  I passed mum a napkin, “Anyways, how is the will reading going?”

  She dabbed her eyes with it, then brushed her hair back in a gesture I’ve long learned was ‘gossip’ mode. “Oh terrible. Tiff- that’s your third aunt, keeps trying to dispute the will, and won’t let the rest of us leave until she gets what she wants.”

  Matt, ever in tune with regular human conversation, asked, “She thinks she didn’t get enough?”

  “Oh no,” ma chuckled, “They gave her a manor.”

  “Why doesn’t she want it then?” I asked.

  Ma showed us a picture of the manor, which looked like a combination of a haunted house and something that would give a safety inspector a heart attack. “Get this, the house is so old it actually has asbestos and lead paint! She can’t renovate it because it’s a historical protected site, and can’t do tours because of the health code violations.”

  “Well, that’s one way to say who’s your least favorite child.”

  “Matt, you can’t say those thoughts out loud,” ma admonished, “You have to think privately that Tiff is an idiot for falling for a pyramid scheme and losing custody of her kids after she got caught smuggling endangered animals.”

  Knowing ma, she was more pissed at the fact my aunt was caught rather than the actual morality of the action.

  She gossiped some more about my extended family as we arrived at the ClaireBNB she was staying. I’m sure I definitely met themat some point, and will be meeting them soon, but it was a blur of names and half remembered faces. People who were strangers in all but name, I had put them out of my mind when I was young and realized I wouldn’t be interacting with them on a regular basis.

  After dinner, Matt went to bed first, tucked out after our long journey.

  Leaving my ma and I.

  She opened a pack of chips and emptied it into a bowl between us at the dinner table, and I was reminded- No, I realized that Matt wasn’t the only person who knew me well.

  “So, what is this about?” she began.

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  “Mum, what should I do if I realized I was a terrible person?”

  She mulled over the question for a while, eventually asking, “Which part?”

  Before I could answer, she continued in a deadpan voice much like my own. “That you are fat, kinda ugly, have no regard for your own health, lack empathy, would almost certainly be a misanthrope if Matt didn’t find you, won’t do anything you find annoying unless someone forces you into it, kind of a coward now that I think about it, and most importantly,” her voice rose slightly, going from an analytic monotone to genuinely slightly miffed, “You don’t have a girlfriend and probably won’t give me grandkids.”

  I raised an eyebrow, “You were taking notes?”

  “I realized if you were anything like me then this conversation was long in coming,” she idly chewed a chip. “You took a lot more from my side of the family, unfortunately. So which is it?”

  “I am not a good person.” I told her everything, about Eve and her dead father, about Gaia and the game, about Indiri and its inhabitants.

  “I have learned that I do not particularly care for people unless they benefit me or those close to me. I would leave people to die and would not feel guilty if people died because of my actions.” It was not introspection that brought me to this point, but experience, from condemning a town to die to the Accumulation of White Lies because I feared for my life, from killing people both in combat and carelessness.

  The realization that there was an entire realized digital world caused ma to raise an eyebrow, but she was more focused than that, now mulling over my question.

  To which, she posed one of her own. “Why didn’t you kill that encampment of goblins?”

  “Because I saw that they were people-” I paused, that was true, but it was also misleading. That was not the reason I decided not to kill all those goblins. “Because I was curious, even if the diplomatic route failed, I still had the option. I simply wanted to try out all outcomes.”

  “And the boy, Johnny Joymoon?”

  “I felt bad, so I brought him along, but I didn’t feel terrible enough that I wouldn’t have left him there. I knew I could handle the threat his haunting came with, so it was curiosity that brought me there.”

  Ma posed her final question, “And why do you want to be a decent person?”

  This was an answer that I once would’ve spent a long time to think about, however, my mind went to Utoqa, and found that this question had already been asked and answered. “Because that is what everyone around me is, everyone I know tries to help people, and to not be…”

  I imagined evil, I imagined myself a terrible person, or even less, continuing as I had been, and I found him… “Uninspired.” A nihilism that drifted with the river current to the waterfall. Doing nothing new or different like a dead leaf in the face of entropy.

  Ma patted my back, “You’ll be fine Declan, if you have one good point it’s that you won’t stop until a task is done. No, the far more important thing would be getting a girlfriend.”

  I groaned, “Mum, I’m seventeen, that’s too early to be considering this stuff.”

  “I caught your dad when I was younger than that,” she retorted.

  “Don’t talk about ba like he’s a fish.”

  The party had stopped to rest by another shrine to Bundriroc, common stones surrounded their cart and beasts of burden in a protective circle, ringed by another circle of mushrooms. Dustin rested within the shade of the carriage at the center, unaware in torpor, though capable of action in a single moment. While Noam and Utoqa were out hunting for game, Tai was practicing sword katas when Celine laid out her cloak as a cushion over a nearby stone, and sat to watch her friend, “You alright Tai?”

  The elf raised an eyebrow, blade never ceasing in motion, “I’m fine.”

  “You know what race I am, Tai,” Celine pointed out, her skin and hair shifted to a pale white to illustrate her point. “I can sense you aren’t doing well.”

  The sword whistled as it tore roughly through the air, the branch of a nearby tree fell, neatly cut off at its base. She sighed, sheathed her sword and took a long drink from her water skin, before pouring the rest over her head to cool off. “I forgot about that, you are too… normal. I’m re-examining biases I didn’t know I had for people like you.”

  Celine didn’t judge, she of all people understood how a changeling could be unnerving to people. Shapeshifting, the ability to sense emotions, even more so when wielded by a curse witch that held the elf’s life in a small doll. That power, that trust, had already been perverted.

  Tai collapsed beside her, grunting in satisfaction as she did so. “You rely on your innate ability to read emotions too much. The good old fashioned method works just as well.” Tai offered Celine her waterskin, “I don’t blame you for what happened with Glascoin, you took the hit for me, which more than proves your heart.”

  Celine took a small sip, more out of solidarity than thirst. “But your mind has been troubled.”

  This Tai did not deny, “My brother is dead.” She unsheathed the sword and laid it on her lap, it was old, yet well maintained, the grip molded by a century of use to perfectly fit the hand that wielded it. Countless decades of practice by her side as family and mentor.

  None of which Tai remembered. Neither face nor form, art nor artist. All that was left was this orphan sword and the name writ on its blade.

  “I lost someone, and experienced both his deaths. We were all affected by the Accumulation of White Lies, so none of us remember him, maybe my family still remembers him.” She sheathed the blade. “I refuse to believe that monster was so powerful as to affect them half a continent away.”

  In a place beyond the skies. There was a place that once was a library. Within was a figure. He sat at a desk older than years could count. His singular eye appeared pure black and never stopped staring at the world above. He never blinked, and a fresh coat of dust had long settled around him, masking his body in a veil of grey.

  The sound of his pen never stopped, for the Historian never stopped writing. Never stopped recording what he saw.

  “It is the end of the year 2856 of the Third Age, Dustin Thrice Blinded travels with his newly formed party, the Toy Dragons. They seek to bring news of Kai Gnari’s death to his hometown.”

  Yet now, there was the sound of two pens, as the Historian’s other hand wrote on the other page:

  “It is the end of the year 2129 on Earth. Declan Lu carries the shell of the God Explorer through the world’s equator, and through him made a deal with Eve.”

  The two pens joined together in the middle, writing a single sentence spread between the two pages.

  “Eve can no longer halt the convergence of our worlds, but she can slow it. The Gate will remained sealed for a year longer so that Declan / Dustin may gather power and wisdom, and become worthy as the Guardian of the Gate.”

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