Chapter 68

Aris spent the rest of the day putting out fires. Violence had broken out across the capital city of Fiell just as he had predicted, but his proactive action and the fact that he’d experienced the violent visions and had lost men just like the masses had during the attack from the Inquisitors had made the news that he was with them spread quickly. It traveled with him as Aris led his company trodding across the town, quelling the miniature riots that broke out around the various dead nobles estates.

Not one of the houses had escaped ransacking from the frightened and greedy public who’s recent loss had fueled an avarice for something, anything, that could act as a salve for the uncertainty and fear that infected their whole existence.

They looted everything.

They fought over the valuables. More than one life had been taken in the violence that had ensued when the mobs had stumbled onto the jewelry boxes and the safes of the dead Veaish noble families.

Aris mobilized every city guard on post, and they kept the violence at bay, but even then it was barely enough to keep Fiell from exploding like a poorly maintained flour mill. Violence was everywhere and bled out from the estates into the streets. Aris’ forces clashed with Edrian’s troops who were intent on killing the dissidents.

The fighting bled long into the night and it was well past one in the morning when exhaustion forced Aris and his company to head back to his estate.

Most of the fires had been put out. There would would be more violent clashes throughout the night, but the city had gained a somewhat passable semblance of equilibrium. They wouldn’t be losing their home tonight and for now, at least this evening, no, morning, there was enough of a break in the chaos that Aris could return home.

He could return to the embrace of his wife.

Still Sephira’s words nagged at him. He couldn’t shake the feeling that Evrain was just stirring the pot. That he was slowly building the violence until it boiled over into an orgy of death.

He couldn’t escape the idea that Evrain was thriving off of the violence and confusion. That he couldn’t afford a route by his troops. That he needed the chaos.

If he were to destroy what was left of the Vealand he had brought to its knees as he’d rose to power all those years ago after ‘saving’ the empire from the threat that Aris now knew the monster had caused and had enabled taking of the throne, he would lose something precious to him.

Aris needed to know what it was the Emperor would lose.

He needed to confront the man.

*****

Kestrel was so tired by the time he returned to the barracks and fell into bed, his eyes being pulled into a world of sleep, that he hadn’t noticed Aris leaving. He hadn’t seen the General take his horse and ride off to the keep. Every part of his body had hurt and though his knife wounds had been cleaned and bandaged he knew that he would have long scars crossing his body the rest of his days as souvenirs from the battle this morning.

Even then, despite the burning intensity of the wounds he had sustained, his tiredness had trumped it.

He couldn’t move.

He collapsed into his bed and fallen into the deep embrace of a dreamless sleep. He fell asleep and let Aris ride off to the keep on his own like a monumental fool.

*****

The guards had seen Aris coming. They tried to stop him.

He informed them that he would take their lives if they fought him and they would be giving up their breath for the traitor who’d started the fires and kidnapped their children and turned them into the monstrous Inquisitors that had caused so much fear and pain.

Half of them had walked away then.

Three of them joined him after he explained Memory Magic and had gazed into their past.

They trusted him. He had known them since they had started in their service. Aris had personally trained nearly half of them.

He held true to his word and killed the few left that stood against them.

Twenty minutes later Aris had done what his brother Van and his friend Dren had given their lives for. He was standing in front of Emperor Evrain who was bedecked in silken night-robes. One of the men who had joined him had fallen to the resistant guards, but two remained by his side. They had been loyal city guards under him before receiving their elevated posts.

“I’ve been expecting you. I am disappointed in my men though,” Evrain greeted Aris as the man strode into his room. “I’ll have to kill them later. They’ve betrayed me, and those who betray me die. Always.”

“I’m not going to let you do that,” Aris said.

Emperor Evrain laughed. A deep belly guffaw. “You think that you can stop me? Seriously?”

“Probably not,” Aris said. “But I can try.”

Evrain laughed more. “This is why I love you my friend. I saw your spark. I saw that you had a chip on your shoulder. That you always had to prove the world wrong. They said you were too young to make General, then you make it five years earlier than the previous record. You’ll never be a good politician? Well, you played my cabinet masterfully. I love that. You remind me of me. We exist to prove the world wrong. I exist to prove the world wrong. Would you like to see?” he asked. “I would love to show you, to see you despair. To see you fight me.”

Aris’ eyebrows knit.

“Oh, I’m not tricking you. Here, take a hold. You’re a Memory Mage, I had always suspected it, but I didn’t KNOW it until you caught us after I tripped in that cabinet meeting,” Evrain said, his voice even and strong. “I felt it then, you know? I felt you looking into my past. I felt your eyes on us. I felt you,” he said.

Aris opened his mouth to reply, but Evrain held a finger up to shush him. The Emperor wanted his silence?

Fine.

That would be more ammunition for his fight against the monster.

“You’re the first person that’s done that in years. The last Memory Mage to look into my past was about forty years ago. She died soon afterwords,” he said. “But I want you to see this. I want you to see who I am. I want you to see who your brother was executed for standing against. I want you to see and I want you to fight me.”

Evrain proffered his hand. “Take it. Look. I swear I’ll do you no harm.”

Could he believe the man? His whole existence was a lie.

Still he had to take the chance.

Aris took the Evrain’s hand.

He was instantly transported back in time. He was at some sort of Academy. He was listening in on a lecture. They sounded just like Wallace as they broke down the functions of Memory Magic. They broke down every facet of it. The tested it on each other. One would hide an object from a Taker, they would hide it in the deepest, darkest corners of the Academy then the class would have to find the one who hid the object and afterwords, as they searched for it, they had to avoid the touch of the Forgotten who had been tasked with stealing that memory from everyone else. They were the guardian’s of the treasure. The Givers were told to suss out what the object was and share the memory with everyone, battling the touch of the Forgotten.

It was child’s play. They had been given the power to rewrite whole worlds, —because what was memory if not one’s interpretation of the world?— and they contented themselves with these games of patty-cake. It was an embarrassment. They were wasting their potential. Why were they so easily satisfied? He would die before he let himself be sated by so little.

The scene skipped. Aris tried to dig in. He felt that there was something there. Something that he was important. He rammed into Emperor Evrain’s memories.

“Stop it,” the Emperor said. “I’m granting you a gift. You will accept it on my terms or not at all.”

Aris nodded. He wanted to see as much of the man as he could. He wouldn’t waste it this chance. He would have another opportunity to delve into the man’s memories later.

He swore it to himself.

Right now though, he would take whatever he could get. Anything was better than nothing. At least this way he would have something. Some sort of information, some sort of weapon to form against the man.

He could always stab him here.

That thought crossed his mind. It took everything he had not to do so. Something about the Emperor’s demeanor told him that he would die before the knife found its home in Evrain’s chest.

He focused again.

He sat in the tower. He was an old man now. He looked nothing like his old self. He had destroyed his old school years ago. He’d taken their lives like it was nothing. He had laughed as he’d done so. He could still see the look of betrayal in their eyes.

Betrayal?

They were the ones who’d betrayed him!

When he’d approached them with new methods, methods of maximizing the power of the magic that they SAID that they were masters of, they had balked at him. They had threatened to expel him if he followed up on his research.

That hadn’t stopped him from experimenting. Of course he had continued. He was a pioneer. Lives were recked and people killed? Damn them all. What did he care? They said what he was doing couldn’t be done. He had to prove them wrong. It was a compulsion. He needed to see just how far he could push the boundaries of magic.

They stripped him of everything and thrown him out with nothing when they had caught wind of what he’d done. Those that proclaimed to be masters of Memory Magic had discarded him when he had strained to find the limits of that magic.

They were cowards.

They were spineless fools.

They died at the hands of the fruits of his research into the depths of Memory Magic. He still remembered that night. It had been fittingly apocalyptic. It had happened as the cusp of one of the typhoons that had plagued their city had hugged the coast, drenching everything with stinging rains and winds that threatened to tear skin off the bones it held to.

He had chosen to strike then. He loved the irony and symbolism of it.

He walked up to the gate. He pushed a memory life-long friendship onto the guards. So strong was his manipulation that the last words on their lips as the dagger slid across their throats was an offering of forgiveness. The fools had the audacity to FORGIVE him as he butchered them.

They were so weak.

They deserved to die.

And die they did. All of them. The ones who weren’t slain by his sword or by the hands of his experiments, died at the lick of the flames powered by a new invention that wasn’t cowed by water.

He found his old masters —the ones that had mocked him, the ones that had stifled him, the ones that had tried to destroy his life work— huddled on the large balcony of Academy that perched on the cliffs by the sea that the Academy had been built on. It was majestic. People from around the world all traveled to see the Academy.

All that was left when he finished his work was that balcony where the blood of the Memory Mages painted the stones.

He visited those ruins decades later. He still saw the faintest traces of blood dyeing the tiles. It was almost as if the stones themselves were holding a grudge against him.

He cared little though.

Those fools had deserved the deaths that he’d brought to them.

Memory Mages that contented themselves with such paltry uses of the magic they shared were below him. They didn’t deserve power. Not like he deserved power. Not like the power that he had taken as when he started playing politics.

It was almost pathetic how easily he’d risen up the ranks. They had heard of his destruction of the Academy, but he had written himself into their memories of the place, he’d made them see a life without ever not knowing his influence.

He had shown them scenes of his former teachers and classmates persecuting him. Shown them how the Academy had been training spies. Spies that had sold their secrets to the highest bidder. Spies that could, with the lightest graze of skin, see their deepest secrets.

He had saved them from a state sponsored company of traitors that worked against their best interests.

It was barely a challenge. He took them over and ruled them. He ruled for a long time. Ruled until he was an old man.

Wait? An old man?

How? Evrain was only fifty five now.

But the reflection he’d caught in the memories was different. What he saw was a man much older, his tan, weathered skin, a holdover from his days spent by the sea as the child of fishermen, had to have been at least ten years older than what he had now.

He looked completely different.

The scene shifted. Something had changed. Aris recognized the city from before, but something was different. No, it wasn’t the destruction that had befallen the city. He somehow knew that was bound to happen. He had known that the city would fall under Emperor Evrain —or whoever the hell he was— hands, but the transition was shocking. The brilliant stone buildings that were bathed in off-white and pastel colors were scored with smoke and blood; the few ones that were left standing that was.

Everything else had been demolished. Half torn down buildings littered the scarred city. The destruction was nearly complete. It looked as if one of the rock giants of the ancient legends had descended upon the city and decided to rip it apart from its foundations.

He’d done this.

Evrain had done this.

He looked over the city with a sense of pride at his handiwork.

That demon delighted in the destruction he’d wrought!

Still, that wasn’t it. That wasn’t what nagged at Aris. There was something there. Something that the Evrain hinted at, tantalized with, but what it was Aris couldn’t see. Aris had known Emperor Evrain for years —or had he?— and knew he wouldn’t destroy without reason.

He always had a reason for what he did. That was part of why Aris had strived to rise up in the ranks of the military so quickly. It was part of what had driven him to be a detective and later earn the generalship that gave him command over Fiell’s city guards.

He know that there was always a plan. He knew that Evrain had patience. He wasn’t one of those men who would rule a nation based on his ever passing whims. He was a man that planned ten, twenty, one hundred years into the future.

It was this; this wonderful, terrible foresight that made him feel like a kindred spirit to the man who’s memories he was now watching. That made him feel like a brother to the man who had had his brother executed. To feel so close to the man he swore to kill.

What was it that was nagging at him though?

No. He needed to dig deeper.

He needed to find out what it was that was bothering him.

Then, as he watched the Emperor walk by a fountain in his memories, he found it.

He found what had been bothering him.

He wore a different face.

Gone were the wrinkles of the old man. Gone was the tan, scraggly skinned scored by a childhood spent under the harsh ocean sun and salty air. Gone were the dark age splotches that, for all the world, seemed to Aris like bloodspots that the monster was unable to ever wash off as he watched Evrain’s memories.

In their place was the face of a young man. A light skinned man. One who’s well muscled body had looked as if it had been a marble statue animated and brought to life. His jawline was chiseled and his brow strong. He looked like the statues one could only find in the hands of the most private of collectors now.

Evrain hadn’t just renewed his youth.

No.

Impossible as it seemed he’d done something else. Something far more impressive and FAR more terrifying.

He had taken a new body.

It should have been impossible. It WAS impossible. How could one do such a thing. There was no way. It was impossible for a man to do.

Yet Evrain had done so.

He had done the impossible.

He had taken a new body. He was still himself. Still held every formative memory. Still remembered the smell of the offal from the fish as he was forced to cut and gut them by his parents until they returned to the land after a day of fishing. He still remembered how his blade sang as it had stolen the life from those who dared to call themselves ‘masters.’ Evrain remembered everything.

He held his mind, his self throughout centuries and dozens of bodies.

The man was a monster.

*****

Aris wasn’t sure how long he stood in front of…whatever Evrain was, but he watched centuries pass through the man’s memories.

Each time it was the same. He would take a new body. He would force himself into politics. He would find a weakness there and exploit the memories of the men wherever he was. He would insert himself into the memories of others. He would make it seem as if they had known him their whole lives only to laugh as they fell to the destruction that inevitably followed in the man’s wake.

What was it about the destruction? Why, in every incarnation, was there destruction?

Certainly if his magic was so powerful that he could take the new host bodies without anyone being non-the-wiser, wouldn’t he do so? Why did desolation seem to follow the man as if it were a dog he had trained from a whelp?

What was is about his presence that brought death?

Aris didn’t know but he knew he needed the answer.

Aris barely restrained himself from asking the man when he broke contact with the seemingly immortal body swapping emperor. He wanted nothing more than to take the man by the neck and scream as he demanded answers from the monster, but he held back. That would get him nowhere. Aris had no way of telling how much the Emperor knew he saw in the man’s memories, but he wasn’t about to let slip if he had seen anything the psychotic man hadn’t wanted him to see.

That would be insanity.

Aris wasn’t insane. He felt more sane than he ever had before. Standing here, in front of Emperor Evrain, knowing exactly what sort of monster the man was, was the clearest Aris’ mind had ever been.

In that moment he knew his life’s purpose. He would kill Emperor Evrain, or whoever the monster was. He would kill him and save the nation of Vealand from another collapse. One that, this time, would finish the job that the first one had begun with the destruction of the coast.

He would protect Vealand. He would keep their capital city of Fiell safe from the destruction that Evrain wished to wreak upon the city in his mad dash to do…something.

“I held true to my word, didn’t I” Evrain asked, a wry smile split his face. It was disgusting.

“You did,” Aris took a step back from the man. He was tempted to disembowel the man where he stood, but he held back. “And what of the girl?” he asked, sudden inspiration dancing in his thoughts.

“Girl?”

Was that fear that shot across the face of the Emperor? Or was it something else? Was it a madness? The madness that Aris had recognized flash across the eyes of the Emperor as he walked through the centuries inside Emperor Evrain’s memories?

“You know, the girl that started all of this,” Aris replied. Pushing the man further. “The one whom, without her, wouldn’t have led me here to your side, in an attempt to assassinate you.”

“Hmm,” was all that Emperor Evrain responded with. Aris looked to press the man further, but an upheld hand stopped him. “That’s enough. You already know that I have you surrounded and you have been from the moment you stepped foot into this room. If you take a step further, you’ll be pierced with a volley of bolts from expert crossbowmen. I will let you live, in fact, I’m feeling gracious right now. I’ll let all of you live if you leave now.”

Despite himself, Aris trusted the man’s words.

He was going to allow Aris to go.

He had seen Evrain’s memories. He wanted a challenge. He wanted Aris to stand against him. It was the only reason that he was still alive.

Evrain wanted to be known. He wanted to be challenged. The opposition actually amused him.

But there was something more to it.

It felt as if the man needed it. He needed to let Aris live. Aris was the face of the resistance. He was the one who led the nobles to even think of rebelling before they had been murdered at the hands of the Emperor.

What was it about him? What was it about Aris that kept him alive? What did Evrain need from him?

It was like he was begging for a fight. Like he was desperate for opposition. He was more desperate than Aris had ever seen when he walked through the labyrinth of the Evrain’s memories.

What could it be?

Aris turned to leave.

Wait.

He was leaving.

He was leaving and Evrain was allowing him to live. He was allowing him to live. Allowing him to fight.

Every memory of every life that Aris had seen from the man had crescendoed in violence. Every single time.

Violence. He needed it. It was like he fed on it. He fed on the bloodshed.

That was it.

It had to be it.

Emperor Evrain, or whatever his real name had once been, fed on desctruction. It was the fuel that burned the fires that enabled his transformation. Without the destruction, without the killing and razing of cities, Evrain had no power. He was little more than an ancient Memory Mage.

The fact the city was a tinderbox, ready to ignite at the slightest spark, was no mere coincidence. No, what seemed like oversight, like foolish, brainless leadership, had been the opposite. It had been orchestrated from the start to lead them right here where they were.

Right to the gates of chaos.

He led them here for fuel. He threw the country into a state of disorder and brought it to the edge of horror to power his transformation.

He wanted Aris to fight.

He wanted the deaths that would ensue from the battles. He needed the violence.

Evrain needed Aris to live because he needed someone to fight him. He needed the battles.

Needed the war.

But why so soon?

Aris’ memory flashed back to that Emperial cabinet meeting. He remembered the tremors that Evrain fought to hide. He remembered how his body had shook in his hands. Remembered how light the man was.

How it felt as if his bones were oddly hollow.

He didn’t have time to feed the chaos and make it grow like he had done when Wallace was a child. He needed it now. His body was failing him.