Chapter 106: Omake#6

It's foggy. Or is it misty?

I'm not sure what blocks my view but it's cold and harsh on my skin, even as I'm curled up in my rather expensive fur blanket. Aren isn't the only one who gets to pinch out of Asher's pile of gold.

But that's irrelevant. Compared to the cold that wracks through me, I wonder, am I really covered in an expensive fur blanket?

Peering my eyes open I find that I'm not. I also find that I'm confused; weren't my eyes already open?

The mist or fog is still here, I blink and carrying out the mere action feels like an eternity. What is this feeling of lethargy? 

My neck feels stiff as a rock too, it should be laying on to softest goose feathers but…no. I'm standing, or am I floating?

I manage to get a look at below my neck; I can't find my feet. It's clouded in the mist…or is it a fog?

My arm and hands too, they're taken into the cloudy miasma. But I'm not scared.

Why?

Shouldn't my heart be trembling with fear and anxiety now? I'm somewhere not near and there's nothing around me…nothing except that sparkle in the distance.

I should go to it.

The thought that I should approach that twinkling light in the distance sits over all others. I'm not sure why but I'm perfectly fine with it.

I start to move. My body, a bit more than a torso zooms past the mist or fog, but the distance between us doesn't seem to reduce.

That is until I'm right in front of it.

By the flash of light my eyes sting with pain and I squint and raise my hands over them protectively.

The cold worsens. I can feel my fingers aching, my lips drying and even my hair protesting the cold.

But there's something else. There's someone else.

On the floor…on the mist or fog, laid down on his stomach with tears streaming down his cheek is Anselm.

I attempt to call out his name but not a sound comes out. With horror I find I no longer have a mouth. My teeth are gone, my tongue is too. It's a dreadful feeling but I'm not afforded the chance to process it.

Anselm stands, his head faced up, a grim smile on his face and the light, the cold approaches.

I want to scream but...

He cries some more and I'm filled with fear as the light begins to envelope him.

I can't move.

Before the light touches me the same force that pushed me forward pulls me back. I'm yanked away at violent speeds, and I've left Anselm to be swallowed up by the light. A light so familiar.

As I speed further away the fog and mist fades and a sky is apparent, then a roof, and then I can see my arm and hands outstretched in desperate reach for Anselm.

And then, my eyes open a second time.

With a gasp and a speeding heart my body jerks awake and I will my mind to latch on to every detail of what I've just experienced.

As I recall the experience, I look about myself. I am not in a field of mist or fog, I am in my room, in the house in Aste in the Kingdom of Ire.

I am home and I've got my limbs and mouth safely attached to my body. 

As my heart begins to calm, I start piecing what I saw together.

Anselm going into the light?

"Vuius help me, I pray those two are alright." I plead to the Goddess above.

With a huff I ready myself for the day. First step; getting out of bed.

My feet hit the floor with reluctant determination and far more dread and anxiety than the day before. Whatever that dream was about, I hope it was simply a dream.

I've seen and felt that light before, it was the light of Anera, the Goddess of Light and Life.

There was that searching glow that invasively touched my soul and tempted Anselm, it's the light he missed out on once and never got to see again until Asher and Carbina.

I don't know any of the people who went up to Anera that night, and I don't feel as sad as Asher or Anselm about it. But when I think about Anselm going up as well, being enveloped in that cold, peering light that sees through all.

I feel frightened.

Our relationship may have started out as a final attempt at rebelling against Mother and Merlara, and the extension of their authority over my life; Asher, but it's grown into something I didn't intend it to.

Something far more genuine and truer than anything I've experienced in years. I want Anselm alive; I want him back from the dead and in a body not constructed out of Asher's mana, in a body that can feel and experience life untethered to Asher's presence.

A body that is flesh and blood.

Setting my middle finger over my ring finger and crossing my arms over my chest so the crossed fingers touch my shoulders, I begin to recite the ancient morning prayers to Vuius.

"Aeui. Aui. Atrecui." The words long ingrained into me come out like they're meant to. In the language I beg the Glorious Mother for her mercies and thank her for her guidance.

But I'm distracted, my lips recite the words like a poem but my mind is far off, thinking of what could have become of Anselm.

I wonder, if given the chance to go to Anera again, would he take it? I never got to ask these types of questions. Partially because Asher made it so easy to think of Anselm as a living human and not just a ghost he set loose from Anera's trap for the forgotten.

Thinking of such, I don't believe I'm in much support of Anselm going back to Anera. What kind of Goddess does that to a soul? Leave it, stuck in place and forgotten. Tormented by silence and loneliness in that cave for years.

My heart bleeds for him.

Once I'm done with my prayer, I set the bath, it's a luxury I've quickly and shamelessly gotten accustom to. Cold baths, warm or hot baths, any type of bath really.

I love the feeling of scraping the grim and dirt off of my body with water and soap. And the feeling of being renewed I'm left with afterwards is all I look forward to when I work up at the North.

Ugh! And there goes my good morning.

The North. Simply thinking of it brings a flood of thoughts, stressful thoughts. There's so much going on there and like an alchemical reaction there's also much going on in Aste proper.

Ugh! There goes what's left of my optimism. Alchemy…Kelv. He didn't heed my warning, in fact, he did the exact opposite of what I've told him to do.

He's part of the reason there's so much turmoil in the North, or perhaps it would be fair and right to say I'm part of the reason he's part of the reason there's so much turmoil in the North.

After I told him to back off the humans and help elves as I am, as everyone else was, he went off to create a group of bloodthirsty elves seeking only war and loss.

I doubt he even has a handle on things. The members of this group of his don't exactly have a muzzle on, many of them have already attacked and killed humans, not in self-defence but for no other reason than they're different from them. 

It exhausts me to deal with this through Aren, more to the point, it exhausts me to deal with this at all. 

But Asher and Anselm have been gone for much longer than I thought they would be. It's been a week since we last spoke. They should have made it to Frozia in two more days after we spoke and killed whatever Cultist stand in their way and made it back home by now but…no dice.

Worse is, there aren't any orders coming down from Asher, when he asked if I wanted to make a Nation, I didn't think he'd be leaving all the heavy lifting to me. Ugh.

My water just the right temperature for my skin, I step out of the bathroom and further out through my room door, heading towards the kitchen; I should put something on while I'm soaking.

As soon as I'm through my room door I hear it. A banging on the front door, all the way downstairs. Whoever that is, they must be desperate to come in.

A part of me worries it might be the Synagogue; someone finally caught on and reported me to the Priest that march about the city. It's something I'm healthily afraid of in this neighbourhood full of humans.

I step down the stairs, forgoing my original mission to start a meal in the kitchen. The banging throws waves of anxiety through me, I feel like running, but is there anywhere to run?

I shake my head and slap my cheeks. I'm being unreasonable, if it were really the Synagogue they wouldn't politely knock on the door when they know a free elf is inside.

It's someone else, most definitely.

With my resolve complete I head down and even yell at the person at the door, "Stop banging at my door you damn psycho!"

Pulling the door open by it's silver handle I'm treated to a view of a part raggedy, part luxurious looking man, Aren.

He's panting and huffing and sweating like a pig. 

He pushes the door open and stumbles pasts me into the living room. "Dear Vuius! What happened to you?"

Looking up at me, his eyes heavy with bags, his face slick with oil and sweat, swimming in dirt filled expensive clothes, he says to me in laboured breath, "The Mayor, the Mayor is after me, he's after us."