Chương 14: Chapter 1.14: Face the Abyss

Favius wasn't sulking. Children sulk. I am contemplating my situation. His jaw tensed. Yeah, if I repeat it often enough, I might actually believe it. After he had been sent to his room, he had kicked out Tiro and was now alone with Brutus. I don't even know why I kicked him out. I guess— I guess I'm not as good a person as I think I am. But it's just so tempting to snap and tell someone to fuck off.

Favius kept ruminating, and definitely not sulking, as he went over the day's events—how he had reached his siblings, only to remain powerless against Hesnia. Absentmindedly, he noticed Brutus's contemplative expression and the way the man kept stealing glances at him whenever he looked elsewhere in the room. Favius let out another groan. I need to keep my family safe, but I don't know what I can do. He looked at Brutus, at the man's stern expression and furrowed brow. Maybe I should have followed his suggestion?

Take my siblings and escape to Rhexion? I— damn it, I thought that following Marcus would be the path of least resistance and would give me resources, but— He shuddered. Was it really the correct choice? Not for me, but for my family? As his thoughts kept spiraling, hours passed, and the light shifted toward the orange of late afternoon before Brutus suddenly got up. He began undressing and addressed him.

"Favius, put on your loincloth, we are going on a run." A tightness seized Favius's chest, but he fought down his first instinct. Telling Brutus to fuck off didn't seem wise. He let out a breath. Yeah, running might clear my mind. Might be a good way to end this shitty day. Soon they were both ready, clad in loincloths and bare-chested, and Brutus opened the door. Favius noted absentmindedly that he had leaned the axe on the wall. Not visible to anyone in the corridor, but within easy reach.

Brutus took a step out, and Favius followed to find Tiro and two bronze-clad family guardsmen waiting there. His personal slave narrowed his eyes before inclining his head.

"Young master. Dominus Kestrelo. What may I get for you?" Brutus took a step forward, but Tiro stepped into his path. Favius couldn't see the man's face, yet something in it made Tiro and the guards flinch.

"We are going on a run," Brutus informed them without any particular intonation. Tiro shook his head and smiled apologetically.

"I'm sorry, but the ladies instructions were clear. The young master is under house arrest. You, though, may leave." Brutus took a step forward, and suddenly his hand was around Tiro's throat.

"We are going on a run," he said, his voice noticeably tense. It was no longer relaxed like it had been during all previous confrontations.

"The only thing that you can do is decide how many people I'm going to kill on my way out of this house." One of the guards went for his sword, but the other one grabbed his arm and shook his head. Brutus didn't seem to register it, as Tiro's eyes widened and he lowered his head.

"You may leave." Brutus didn't even dignify the man with a response. He simply gave him a shove and dropped him to the floor, where the man collapsed. Brutus turned to Favius.

"Follow along." They began running in silence, warm evening air on their skin, along rocky paths through olive orchards, then up a vineyard toward a small forested mountain. The sun was a few finger widths from the horizon when they reached the forest. Favius took a deep breath and smiled at the rich smell of cypress, oaks, pines, and acacias. Strange that I recognise so many plant, even when this is an alien planet.

Soon they scrambled up a goat path, even spooking a small herd of the animals before reaching the top of the mountain. Favius's eyes widened as he saw that the northern face of the hill was a straight cliff going down maybe a hundred meters. The sunset was beautiful in the cloudless sky, with Messenger and the Daughter already visible before he focused on the sun disappearing over the western mountains. It was almost enough.

The panorama and the run were almost enough to make him forget, or at least not think about, Hesnia. Rustling steps sounded behind him, and Brutus spoke up.

"Favius?"

"Yes?" he responded. Only silence answered. He felt a strange tension in the air and turned around. Brutus blurred towards him, his hand shooting forward like a viper. Favius yelped as the cultivator grabbed him by the throat and stepped up, right to the edge of the abyss, holding him up. And even though Favius was held above the man's head, cold eyes full of killing intent stared down at him. For a moment, Favius struggled before reason reasserted itself, and he grabbed Brutus's forearm with both of his hands.

"What the fuck?" he hissed at the man, barely believing what was happening. Brutus studied him with a cold anger before he began to speak.

"At first, I thought you were just taking the death of your parents strangely. Then in the city, I thought you wanted to escape. But instead you told me those strange things and went to the market. That was unexpected," he said, a slow menace building in his voice.

"But yesterday evening?" He chuckled.

"You should have seen your face and your voice. Those eyes, the icy anger you displayed. That was no child's anger." Favius's eyes widened as the man continued as though laying out an academic thesis.

"And now today, that ill-thought yet oddly brilliant plot. If it wasn't for your obvious care for your siblings, I would throw you off this cliff right now, whoever you really are." Blood rushed through Favius's ears in tune to his hammering heartbeat. Have I really been this obvious? Brutus stared at him, and the silence stretched. He slowly tightened his grip around Favius's throat, and Favius let out a choking gasp.

"So tell me, boy, who are you?" Absurdly the first response that sprang to Favius's mind was asking the man if anyone really knows who they are. He swallowed the reaction down in an instant. It took only a second of seeing the intent in Brutus's eye to dismiss the idea of lying. But Favius's heart was still hammering. How do you tell someone from a primitive world that you woke up in someone else's body with memories of a modern life? You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

He took a ragged breath through his constricted throat before venturing an answer.

"I told you I had this dream." Brutus hummed as if tasting the words, then gave a minuscule nod.

"I— I don't know what happened to me. The day I collapsed, after Marius woke me, I had all those memories of a different life. And then I met this entity the next night, and it told me—" he swallowed hard, "that it brought me here to… to test me," he stammered. Brutus narrowed his eyes.

"The entity is what told you to explore the market in the city? And—" he tilted his head slightly, "those strange instructions about what to do when you would die? It gave you some sort of healing or immortality?" Favius thoughts ground to a halt.

"How?", he whispered. Brutus chuckled.

"It's not too hard to guess based on the myths. The punishments the gods reserved for the immortals were always cruel. And what you proposed is nearly exactly the thing philosophers who think themselves clever enough to circumvent the punishments of the gods would come up with." Favius let out a breath of relief.

"So you believe me?" The moment he finished speaking, he knew it had been the wrong thing to say. Brutus sneered.

"No. Stop serving me lies." For a second, his hand slipped on Favius's throat, and he dropped a few centimeters. He tried to scream, but Brutus caught him again, violently squeezing his throat.

"Tell me the truth. What happened to Favius?"

"We became one," the panicking boy replied.

"Parts of his memories were lost and replaced with memories of the other world. But..." he trailed off, tears filling his eyes.

"But what?" Brutus insisted harshly.

"I can remember what I learned, but I don't remember my family. I knew there was a woman, but—" Brutus let out a harsh chuckle, stared him coldly in the eyes, and then delivered his verdict.

"Bullshit." Weightlessness asserted itself on him, and Favius screamed as he fell. His hands clawed at Brutus' arm, but he found no purchase. For a fraction of a heartbeat, he saw the ground beneath him, the lonely pines that had claimed the rocky slope, and saw his shattered corpse on those stones. Then something nearly yanked his arm out of its socket, and only years of combat training made him pull up his legs and brace himself against the cliff.

He fought down his rapid breath and looked up at Brutus, who was kneeling on the edge and had caught him by the wrist. Again, those cold eyes, full of anger and killing intent, studied him. A smile settled over the man's bearded face, and he chuckled.

"You truly believe what you are telling me?" He shook his head and, with a grin, pulled Favius back onto the cliff. He couldn't think. His heart was hammering. His eyes glanced to the side before he too let out a chuckle. Running is pointless. The only way I could escape— He looked down the cliff that he had barely avoided. Would be jumping, and even then he might still get me. Fuck. And he even knows about my immortality. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

His chuckling deranged into manic laughter and it took him over a minute to regain control. Fucking hell, the adrenaline spike you get from near death exepereices... Brutus settled down at the edge of the cliff, his sandals idly hanging over the abyss, and tapped the stone beside him. Reluctantly, Favius sat down.

"Tell me about this woman. And this family you can't remember," Brutus said at an almost inaudible volume as he studied the sun that had halfway disappeared over the peaks of the western mountains. Favius swallowed as tears suddenly welled up in his eyes.

"I remember them— her, but only that we experienced something together. There was a night I spent with her in the park watching the stars. I remember the park. I remember the sky, but I don't even recall her name. There is a frayed black absence where she should be." He leaned forward, resting his head on his palms, and began crying. Brutus simply sat there, his thoughts unreadable and irrelevant. Slowly, he told the man stories of the people who had been taken from him.

Then they settled into a long silence as the sun finally disappeared behind the mountains. Favius had straightened, but tears were still running down his cheeks unbidden. He took another long breath. Brutus drew a long breath of his own.

"So tell me of this world you saw in your vision. What were its greatest warriors capable of?" Favius smiled, remembering his time at university.

"Our greatest warriors could—" He forced his mouth shut before he could complete the sentence. Create fragments of the sun on the surface of the earth, wiping out cities bigger than Cindrath in an instant. That's something I shouldn't be sharing until it's needed. He glanced sideways at Brutus. Hell, I don't even know if the very knowledge of nuclear bombs isn't grounds for execution from a reasonable person's perspective. He shook his head.

"We fought with bows propelled by fire, but war had become rare in our world. Our world has nearly destroyed itself several times." Brutus hummed, and Favius continued more quickly.

"You remember the lights illuminating the Tower of the Luminarii? We had lights like that in every house. Nearly everyone owned a carriage of steel that could carry more than a hundred men would be able to lift. We built towers that would dwarf the ones of the Academy, and could nearly heal every disease imaginable." Brutus smirked and turned towards him.

"It sounds like a utopian vision." Favius chuckled harshly.

"In the most developed parts of the world, yes. But there were still entire continents of people barely scraping by and living at the edge of poverty."

"Hmm." Brutus stroked his beard and gestured Favius to continue. So he did, breaking down the wonders of modernity into terms the warrior-cultivator would understand. As the last rays of the sun stopped illuminating the low clouds over the horizon, silence settled over them again before Brutus let out a long sigh and shook his head.

"Something clearly happened to you, and what you described... it sounds too rich for a delusion." He sighed again, and their eyes met.

"I swore an oath to you and your father, and you are still you, even though there's something older inside you as well."

"And who knowns", the man said with a grin, "maybe you were chosen by the gods." Favius let out a long breath of his own as a leaden weight dropped away from his heart into the dark abyss below. He won't kill me. And he's going to stay loyal. They walked down the hill in the darkness. He could see perfectly by the light of the Daughter, and Brutus seemed to have no difficulty despite the lack of light.

Slowly, all the panic and worry turned into excited relief as he realized he finally had someone he could trust in this world. As they left the forest and could see the estate silhouetted against the starry sky, his stomach tightened again.

"Brutus?"

"Yes?"

"What should we do about Hesnia?" They continued down the vineyard before Brutus replied.

"In physical terms, there's little she can do. And survive." He paused with a dark smirk.

"In practical terms..." He shook his head.

"What she's doing cannot stand. But you'll have to find some way to coexist with her." Favius let out a long breath as they walked through the gnarled olive trees. There was still dread, worry, and uncertainty, but he was no longer alone. He had someone he could truly trust. A smile played over his face. I wanna try a few things based on what I've learned so far, now that I can share modern knowledge with Brutus.