Chương 1144: 1174 - Yer Awake

Waking up after a long time asleep felt strange. He'd gone so long without sleep that he'd almost forgotten what it felt like to wake up. Consciousness returned slowly, fading in, leaving him aware enough to know that he was awake without quite remembering what he'd been doing before… falling asleep? Or being knocked unconscious?

The ache in his bones certainly supported the latter claim, but his memory was foggy at best, and he could barely remember anything at all, least of all how he'd come to find himself where he lay. All around him was dark, too dark to see, though he wasn't long bereft of his senses. He lay on a bed of soft grass rooted in thick, loamy soil. He knew this without even being able to see as his sense of touch was the first to return to him.

No proper bed he'd ever laid upon had ever been this comfortable, so he lay where he was, unmoving, for a long time. How long, he wasn't sure. Seconds, hours, or years; it could've been any amount of time and he wouldn't know the difference. Hearing came back gradually, with the whistling of the wind through dense thickets of nearby trees providing a calming soundscape to relax in.

At some point, he became aware of a sporadically ringing bell, though for how long it had been ringing, he wasn't sure—he was aware enough to know that he was far from totally aware, but finally processing the sound of the bell had him start to feel concerned. It was clearly a small bell, handheld at the largest, but it rang with such clarity that it was impossible to ignore once he became aware of it. Every ten seconds or so, it would ring, reminding him that he was a person, that he was alive, that he was real.

Between the bell and the wind came the constant sound of running water—a river most likely, and close by if the sound was any indication. He willed himself to rise, but his body refused to cooperate. Paralysis had taken him, and dull panic tried to force its way to the front of his mind, but his unusual calmness prevented it from achieving its goals.

'Unusual? Am I usually calm?' he wondered. He wasn't sure, but his mind conjured the bodily sensation of faint desperation, wrath, and terror as the last emotions he felt before… this. Without more specific memories, those feelings were almost alien, and he inspected them with detached curiosity, as if they weren't his emotions. His hearing began returning quicker and quicker, and he started picking up on other sounds, too.

Despite apparently being out in nature somewhere, he couldn't hear any animal calls or birdsong or buzzing insects. It was like everything around him was dead. However, carried on the wind came the faintest din of laughter and celebration. Clinking glass and thudding flagons, the occasional whoop or cry of encouragement… The unmistakable sounds of people. He wasn't alone here. His serenity had been disturbed.

In the briefest moment of clarity, he realized the reason why the world around him was dark—his eyes shot open, revealing his surroundings to him in perfect clarity, and the sight finally returned strength to his limbs. He shot up, suddenly terrified, the implications of his surroundings not lost on him. The soft grass was ghostly white, shedding soft light from every blade, giving the riverbank he found himself on an ethereal glow.

Behind him lay ghostly trees that didn't shake in the wind, though their bare branches gave off rivers of pale mist that inundated his surroundings. Everything beyond about two hundred feet was obscured by this mist. What concerned him most of all was the river in front of him, whose waters were an ethereal blue-white. Its flow was sedate, though it gave off such an aura of dread that he couldn't help but shiver from the sight alone.

It was wide—too wide for him to see across to the other riverbank with all the mist in the way, though he could tell that the sounds of celebration were coming from somewhere on the other bank. As he stared at the ghostly river, he thought he saw movement in the corner of his eye. Boats on the river, shadowy animals coming to the water to drink, and the forsaken, wailing in the field as they failed to find their way to the Aesii right in front of them.

None of what he thought he saw was there when he turned his gaze upon them, vanishing as his eyes swiveled in their sockets, but reappearing when he turned away. The bell sounded, drawing his attention to its source—an old man sat upon the riverbank, though where he'd come from, he couldn't say. It was as if this latest sounding of the bell had conjured him from nowhere. The bell in question was the size of his finger from the last knuckle to his fingernail and hung from a long staff in the man's hand.

The aged man, dressed in a simple black tunic and black sandals, stood on the river bank, a silvery fishing line cast into its blue-white water. His skin was deathly pale and wrinkled like old leather, while from his head sprouted only a few strands of wispy white hair. He wasn't overly tall, his frame was sickeningly skinny, and his back was hunched as if from a lifetime of back-breaking labor. Only a few steps away was a small rowboat, just large enough for four people, pulled onto the bank.

"Finally awake are ye?" the old man shouted in the common tongue, though with a particular accent that he associated more with the lower classes.

"Took ye long enough! I was startin' teh think ye'd never open yer blinkers!" He struggled to his feet, his alarm at where he found himself almost being overpowered by sheer confusion. There were many questions he had to ask, but the first was hard to choose…

"Where… Who are you?" The old man laughed, the sound coming like a high-pitched wheeze. It sounded off, as if it were a mere facsimile of a laugh rather than something genuine from an actual human being.

"That's not the question ye should be askin'," the man responded with a wide grin that would've been toothy if the man hadn't been missing most of his teeth.

"The real question is who're ye? Eh? Ye gotta name, sonny? Can ye remember it?" He opened his mouth to answer— of course he remembered his name; how could he not? But as his throat tensed to speak, no sound came. His tongue didn't move. His mind gave him nothing. He couldn't remember his name.

"What is… who am I?" he asked, though his tone was more demanding than he'd intended.

"Few remember when they get here," the old man said.

"It's fine. Just get ready an' I'll take ye across. Ye can hear all o' that, right? Ye got plenty waitin' for ye over there…"

"No," he quietly replied, before repeating it louder and more insistently.

"No! I may not remember me, but I know where this is! I am not dead! I can't be! I have too much to do!" Brief flashes hit his mind like a sack of bricks. Beast blood, desperate violence, and lightning as black as the Void itself. Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. The old man chuckled again, sending shivers down his spine.

He shook his staff again, and the bell sounded, though where before it had been calming and peaceful, it now sounded like the mourner's bell that had filled the streets of his hometown after his mother had been murdered.

"She's waiting for ye… over there …" the old man said with a dreadful grin. He pointed with his staff into the mist across the blue-white water.

"Let me take ye to her…" He dropped to his knees; there was nothing he wanted to do less than go with the old man. He took a few steps back.

"No! I can't! I can't! This can't be! I was winning! I had almost beaten that monster! The war…" He paused, unsure where those words had come from. The old man spat on the riverbank.

"Startin' teh remember, are ye? I suppose ye should. Yer not dead, boy, though ye should be."

"Explain!" he demanded, the tone of a man who was long used to being in charge coming easily to him now.

"Yer a little shit fer usin' that tone with me," the old man grumbled.

"But… eh. Here's the thing, sonny. Ye got a choice teh make. An important choice. Are ye dead or not?" The old man laughed a third time, as if whether or not he was dead was the most hilarious thing that could've ever been contemplated.

"I'm not dead!" he declared. The old man's laughter continued for another second.

"Are ye sure?" he asked after gasping for breath.

"Peace an' love are right there! One boat ride is all that separates ye from yer lost loved ones! Bein' dead isn't so bad, sonny, you'll see!"

"I'm not dead!" he insisted.

"Hehehehe HEHEHEHE," the man belted.

"Ye'll regret that, sonny! But… I'll see you again…" The man grinned his unnerving, toothless smile, and snapped his fingers. And the Aesii around him vanished. And he woke up—this time, for real.

Terris' eyes shot open, his heart beating faster than it ever had before, wild, primal terror filling his body like nothing ever had before. He'd seen the face of death and returned. He found himself in a familiar setting—the luxurious bedchambers in his palace overlooking his capital city, Drowned Star. However, this familiarity soon inspired worry as the last thing he remembered was clashing with Leon Raime, not lying down to sleep in his own bed.

His Ebon Glacier had met the beast-in-human-skin's weapon, there was an explosion, and Terris remembered nothing more after that. A shriek drew his attention to a servant girl who stood by the door, a wash basin rolling across the floor from where she'd dropped it. Her shriek wasn't directed at the dropped basin, however, but at him, with her eyes wide with surprise and fear.

Before he could get a chance to say anything, she darted out of the room as several of his guards swarmed in, weapons drawn and auras raging wildly. When they saw him, however, they froze, their eyes widening behind their visors. A moment later, the familiar sight of his personal healer rushed in, a wild look in his eye.

"My Eminent Lord!" the healer exclaimed.

"You're awake! You have returned!"

"What… happened?" Terris demanded, his voice raspy and weak. He only now realized that his body was just as weak, as he could barely hold himself upright in bed. His muscles had atrophied away into nothing, while his skin had turned gray and flaky. He could feel that his hair had grown out of control, and running down his exposed arms were faint black vein-like patterns. Given his shirt and bed covers, he couldn't see if they extended to the rest of his body, but given how terribly he felt, he assumed they did.

"The… war?"

"Give us a moment, if you please," the healer asked the guards, and after a weak nod from Terris, they left the room, closing the door behind them. Privacy wards activated, sealing Terris away from the rest of the world with no company but his tenth-tier healer, one of the men he trusted most in the world.

"How… did I… get back… here?" Terris asked as he flopped onto his back while his healer rushed over, some draught already conjured.

"The war…?" The healer held the draught up to Terris' lips and as soon as the liquid touched his lips, he began to feel more energetic. Not better, or less pained, but a bit of strength returned to his limbs.

"The war has been over for a long time, Your Eminence," the healer grimly stated.

"It's been twenty-five years. Princess Miuna brokered a peace between us and Leon Raime almost as soon as you were knocked out." If he weren't already slowly drinking the potion, Terris would've shouted in alarm and dismay. Losing a quarter of a century hurt, especially since it was the longest amount of time he'd ever 'lost' in such a manner, but he knew that other immortals might sleep for centuries or longer when they were bored and that they might consider a quarter of a century to be a quick nap.

Still, he wasn't quite old enough for that kind of perspective. More than that, knowing that the war was over was a greater shock.

"Terms?" he asked as the healer took the bottle from his lips.

"Unfavorable for us," the healer stated.

"Favorable for Miuna and Leon Raime. With her word, our invincible King's favorite daughter has taken away our only casus belli against Leon Raime. Worse than that, vacating his position wasn't a demand, so he's had twenty-five years to fortify and strengthen his position."

"We must… do something!" Terris exclaimed, before the smile of that old man on the riverbank came back to him, and a deep, soul-turning shudder ran through his body.

"Be careful with this potion, and don't summon your magic until I've given you leave," the healer grimly stated, having noticed the shiver.

"I'll be honest, Your Eminence, I'd thought you were never going to wake. I long ago reached the limit of my profession, and so did many of my most esteemed colleagues. We all thought that you were just barely on this side of death, and that you were soon to embark on your final journey down the Aesii." Terris shut his mouth, not daring to give voice to his vision—'Or was it a dream?' Regardless, to speak of it would make it real, and there were few things he wanted less than that.

"Prepare… for war…" Terris demanded." You need to heal first!" the healer insisted.

"And… these past twenty-five years haven't been particularly easy on your domains. I'm afraid that as much as Leon Raime has strengthened his position, ours has decayed by an order of magnitude more. He's even managed to ascend to the twelfth-tier! Even at your peak, you wouldn't hold as great of an advantage over him as you did during the war two and a half decades ago!

Your Strategoi have run amok and your military forces have not proven up to the task of maintaining the peace given the heavy casualties they suffered. With you so injured, they haven't been able to properly reconstitute! More than that… I can't say as I'm not in the meetings. But I'll say this: you've lost much, Your Eminence—wealth, land, people… authority —and going to war right now would be foolhardy. Of course, that's just my opinion, and once you're more recovered, you can see for yourself."

Despair ran through Terris' body. He could barely move, barely talk, and his magic felt distant and uncontrolled. No matter what he did, it didn't respond to his call. He wasn't even sure if he was still a twelfth-tier mage or if his injuries had broken him so thoroughly as to cripple his magical foundation. Reluctantly, he agreed with his healer. Recovery would be his focus for the foreseeable future, but he wouldn't forget what he'd seen from that monster. That Ascended Beast was far too dangerous to let live.

It galled Terris that it wore the face of a human, even taking a human name— Leon Raime —but it was that power it commanded that made it a truly dangerous creature. It had silver-blue lightning, Doomfire, and the black lightning that had proven itself to be more dangerous than Terris thought anyone, even the monster itself, could've ever conceived of. It had to die. If it managed to reproduce, then it could spell the end of human civilization.

Even the hypothetical return of the Primal Gods and Devils, killed off and interred in the Divine Graveyard so long ago, would pale in comparison to the ruin that that winged beast would bring to the universe. With a sigh, Terris ordered the healer to send for his advisors—if any remained, at any rate. He was a patient man, he could wait until he'd recovered from the losses and injuries he'd suffered, even if it took a thousand years. When Leon Raime inevitably crossed the line, he'd be ready.

He'd return all the suffering inflicted upon his person a million times over on that monster. But first, he needed to know the state of his Despotate. If it was as bad as his healer led him to believe, he might just need that millennium to recover fully… and during that time, Leon Raime would only grow stronger. But there would come a time when he made a mistake. Someone would see what Terris could see, someone with greater power than anyone else.

Terris' eyes momentarily graced a heavily decorated written copy of Khosrow's Law on one of his bookshelves. Though it may not be taken as seriously as it should be, someone would do as bid in the Great Lord's Law and move to rid humanity of this troublesome Ascended Beast. It was inevitable…