Chương 126: Shortcut

"Eoin… the Fetch told me what happened to you. I don't want you to do this," Miriam said. Eoin bounced on his toes and shook out his hands as if he were preparing for a fight.

"As much as I appreciate you trying to spare my trauma, we simply don't have time for you to finally be sympathetic to me, Miriam."

"I'm serious, Eoin! We can figure out something else," Miriam insisted. He ignored her.

"Listen. I have never actually done this, so I can't give you much guidance about what to expect. You need to hone in on my skill for the Unbroken Channel. It should be easier to do now that you have some training in the forms - you'll be able to feel what you're looking for. I will tell you that this is also going to cost you."

"Cost me?"

"The whole point of us doing this training was for you to build mastery while you layer in your fórsa. The work is what gets you to the Third Ring. If you're skipping ahead, it will just mean that mastery for you will likely be a higher bar than it would have been otherwise." Eoin exhaled deeply, steadying himself.

"But if we die here I suppose that would be worse. So… we'll deal with it when the time comes." Miriam grimaced, but nodded.

"Ok. We'll figure it out."

"Fetch?" Eoin said, deliberately not looking at it.

"Yes?"

"Do it."

"Eoin, wait -" Miriam said, but before she could finish, the Eldest's hand was around her neck. Miriam floated in blackness for a moment. All around her she could feel the Fetch just behind the dark, instinctively reaching for her, but pulling back in fear. Then in the distance she could see a pinprick of light, growing closer and closer until her dark world was blazing with white light.

"Selkies are just fat sea cows who haven't learned to stay in the water where we don't have to look at their oily faces!" a voice shouted in her ear. Miriam scrambled back in shock. She was standing on a high wall - what looked like a battlement. There was a light dusting of snow everywhere. She was not dressed warmly - just simple white clothes - tight-fitting enough not to get in her way. Training clothes, she realized.

The voice that had insulted her belonged to a young-looking woman with hair like spikes bound up in a tie in the back.

"And Muirdris are just blowfish who can't find their way back to the sea," Miriam heard herself say. The woman slammed her fist into Miriam's stomach, sending him flying across the wall.

"Don't forget it's we Muirdris you're here to learn from, little Eoin." Eoin's memories! Miriam realized. She was witnessing the memories where he had learned the Path of the Unbroken Channel. Actually no - she was living his memories.

"You'd better try to hurry through," Eoin said, suddenly a voice in her head.

"Ugggh. The Fetch is trying not to torment me too badly, but honestly they are bad at not doing it." Miriam concentrated and the memory flashed forward to a moment when Eoin, swords in hand, was working through the first forms. The young Muirdris was his instructor it seemed like, though it was confusing why he had spoken to her so dismissively before if that were the case. She criticized his balance, mocked his stance and laughed at the power of his swing.

"To be fair, even I can tell she's right," Miriam said inside Eoin's head.

"Thanks," Eoin said.

"You're here to learn from me, remember?"

"No," Miriam said.

"I'm here to learn from her." She focused on the woman - her name was Kiera, she suddenly knew. Kiera demonstrated the technique flawlessly, with a grace that, if she were being honest, surpassed even Eoin's current mastery of the technique.

"What is a Muirdris?" Miriam asked.

"Eggghhh. They're kind of like Selkies if Selkies grew up from spiny blowfish instead of seals." So, the quill-like hair made sense. Miriam found Kiera fascinating - she seemed young, even for a Sidhe, but she wielded such power and skill. Suddenly Miriam could remember what Kiera's lips tasted like, and what it felt like to have their fingers entwined, and the weight of her… Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

"Hey! Keep the snooping to the fighting, please?"

"Eoin! You dog! With your instructor?" Miriam giggled.

"How in the world did that happen? At this point it really seems like she hates you."

"Well… that never really changed much. We just found different outlets for our distaste for each other." Eoin sounded sheepish.

"Maybe I can meet her one day."

"Miriam, she died six hundred years ago. She was an old woman."

"Oh," Miriam said, deflating.

"I suppose I hadn't thought much about what you must have lost, living so long."

"Honestly… I don't think I even remembered her until now. Makes me wonder what other memories might still be in my head, locked away. But please - we have to focus you up. I can't keep this up forever." Miriam found that the more she tried to live inside Eoin's memory, the longer it took, and the less control she actually had to skim along the timeline. Instead she floated over vast swaths of time, letting the object of her interest boil up to her. The Path of the Unbroken Channel. She saw drills on the First Form.

The Second. Sparring with Kiera and another small circle of friends who even in this augmented recall Eoin couldn't seem to remember the names of. Miriam suddenly remembered hours and hours of practicing drill after drill. It reminded her very much of her last month in the Merrow village with Eoin himself. But then she broke through what she already knew. New forms that she'd never been taught. Endless repetition breaking through to new creativity.

Spars with Kiera become more even - then, at times, little victories here and there. She could feel the power and control in her muscles. She could read the intent in her opponents' strikes. Her balance was a revelation - upright held no dominion over her any more, as she could attack from any angle and be in control of any fall or tumble. In between the training, she couldn't help but pick up snippets of life outside the sword. Eoin had been sent here by his… uncle? That didn't seem quite right.

An older-seeming figure with authority. He could not leave until he had attained rank among the swordsmen. There was some politics she didn't understand involved - something in his presence there had larger implications for some countries… or warring factions? She couldn't tell if his success in the Unbroken Channel would prevent a war or start one, but she felt positive it would be one of the two.

"Sorry," Eoin said, noticing her interest.

"I don't even remember myself. Interesting stuff, though, huh?" Then after skimming over years and years of training - one memory grabbed her with stark clarity. Eoin, kneeling in an arena, his two swords resting on his knees. Before him was another student - a Muirdris. She recognized him from many other flashbacks - smiling, laughing, buying Eoin drinks. He was not smiling now. Eoin came to his feet as a voice called for them to begin. He and his opponent were tornados of blades.

Miriam thought that she wouldn't be able to keep up with the speed they - both Fifths - were displaying, but in this memory she could. The opponent was good - very good. But it was the same here as it had been with Onóra. Eoin was simply, effortlessly, better. Blood dripped over the arena floor as his opponent began to show the results of Eoin's indomitable skill. He was slowing, even as Eoin's movements began to go faster.

Finally, the Selkie batted both blades out of his opponent's hands and circled his arms back inward, slamming his double blades both through his opponent's stomach down to the hilt.

"I'm sorry," the Eoin-of-the-past whispered.

"I still don't know why that happened," the present Eoin speaking in Miriam's head said sadly.

"This moment I did remember, but I don't remember why we were fighting. Why he had to die. Or even what his name was. I think at one time he had been my friend, though."

"Maybe you had no choice," Miriam said consolingly.

"No. I think I did. I think he was an obstacle - to what, and for what purpose I don't know. But I very much feel in my gut that to me, whatever else his death might have meant personally or politically… he was a benchmark. To see how good I had become." Eoin let out a small whimper of pain.

"Miriam, I think you've got everything I can give you now. Call on your Fetch friend to end this."

"Eldest?" Miriam called.

"Eldest, we're finished. Pull us out." Darkness descended again. There was a hissing noise that wasn't actually made of sound. It's difficult. Every part of me is burning to continue. I... may need your help, Miriam. The taste of a mind so old, so… dense… it's literally intoxicating. Even more so than it was the first time. Invisibly, Miriam grimaced, but she was done letting the Fetch toy with Eoin's mind - even if it had been on her behalf.

Even though she could not see anything of her own body in this state, that didn't stop her from filling the empty darkness with black fire. She heard a pained shrieking, and then she was back in the Merrow village, at the edge of the Fetchwoods. The Eldest was cradling a scaled arm - Miriam's own dead arm - to its chest.

"Eldest! I'm sorry. Are you all right?"

"It is no more than I asked you to do," the Eldest reassured her.

"I will heal. A younger Fetch might not have bore it so well." Abruptly, Eoin vomited. He doubled over on the trail, his entire form heaving.

"Eoin!" Miriam knelt beside him.

"Are you ok?"

"Oh, yes, fine. So fine." Eoin wiped his mouth. His cheeks looked sunken, his eyes dark and hollow.

"Perhaps if I'm lucky, I will forget this a few hundred years from now."

"Thank you, Eoin. That… was more than I should have ever asked of you," Miriam said. He patted her hand.

"It's ok. It was necessary. And if I am to endure relentless torment, then there is no better reason than to save my own skin. Come, Sol - Ultán? Who are you now? Anyway. Come with me. We have a lot of gemcraft to do." Miriam watched him lead Ultán away back to his workshop. For her part, Miriam turned the other way, looking down the path towards the road leading to the Fetchwoods.

"I hope that was enough to give me an edge. Or at least… let me give Sol enough time to do whatever it is he's planning." The Fetch shrugged.

"We may be poor copies of a true messenger of death, like yourself, but one thing is clear. When we show you your deaths, eventually, one of them will become true. That is an inescapable fact, for everyone. Let us just hope that yours is not here and not now." The Eldest hesitated, looking at Eoin walking away.

"Well… it's true of almost everyone."