Chapter 41: Four, Then Five

The fire sizzles, morning dew evaporating from the sticks and logs as the heat picks up.

Thump.

Sparks scatter into the air and sticks shift and crack under the weight of the impact.

Thump.

Yellow tongues of flame rise higher, eagerly devouring the new, dry fuel.

Thump.

Black encroaches upon white, spreading rapidly and eating away at the feast presented to it.

Thump.

Ash tumbles on the wind, borne aloft by the heat of its own inception.

Thump.

Ren’s hands clutch at the binding of one of his research journals. He turns towards the fire with dread, breath catching in his throat. Staring at the cover, his grip shakes as he wrenches his hands from the journal, more dropping it than tossing it into the fire. His gaze lingers on it as its pages start to curl, his eyes filled with sorrow, asking for forgiveness.

The fire pops and he shudders. An arm reaches out hesitantly, instinctively, seeking to rescue his children, the fruit of his life’s work, from the doom he himself brought upon them. His eyes focus on the fire, and his outstretched hand curls shut, clenching into a fist. He closes his eyes and averts his head, blocking out the sight even as his scrabbling fingers grasp the spine of another journal.

Tears flow in unending streams as he throws away years of work, years of careful and thorough research, years of searching for the reason that his parents died.

I stand solemnly, watching. The decision was his own. He knew what the consequences would be, whichever he chose. Even so, I somehow feel a measure of responsibility for this. If I hadn’t said anything, he might have spiralled further into depression. It was all I could think to do. Even so.

Jakin stands nearby, eyes scanning the area despite the fact that we are still within the radius of the town’s monster-repelling powder. He blames himself for my arm, I can tell. When it’s a better time, I’ll tell him it’s not his fault. None of us are used to having a fifth person on our team. All of us knew what our roles were, what to do if any of us were targeted, melee or ranged: Me, Boaz, Jakin, Xiltroth. But not Heather. None of us knew what to do when she was targeted, didn’t even realise that she was. It wasn’t a party of five fighting back in those tunnels. It was a party of four, with another person fighting alongside them. We were simply too used to it just being us. If anything, it was my fault for not realising that there might be a problem.

Boaz is standing next to him, leaning against a tree and watching Ren as he burns his journals. The more I get to know him, the more I realise how different he is from his brother. I’ve known them both for quite a while now, and I think I’m just starting to figure him out. He trains alongside his brother everyday, just as hard, maybe even harder. But it’s not for the power. He doesn’t like to fight, and he certainly doesn’t like to kill – neither of them do. He’s not doing because he feels he has to. He does it just so that he can stand by his brother’s side, and that’s all the motivation he needs.

I don’t think either of them know just how important they are to our party. Jakin and Boaz – the twin pillars that guard us all. If it weren’t for them, holding back all the enemies, I wouldn’t even have dared to venture into those caves. Heather, Xiltroth and I? We were just the fire support. Even if one of us weren’t there, I have a feeling that they still would have been able to push their way through.

Sitting cross-legged by the fire, Xiltroth observes the books burning, reflections of the yellow flames dancing across his crimson eyes. He seems to be contemplating something, though I couldn’t guess what that might be for the life of me. I wonder who he was before he met us, what he did. He was just a clueless young man, lost at the edge of a forest when we came across him. He didn’t know how to cook anything, but he could knock a man twice his weight to the ground.

But then again, I don’t really know anyone’s history, save perhaps Heather – ironic, that, since I’ve known her the shortest amount of time. I know the twins were military, but why they joined, why they left? No clue. None of us have ever brought up the topic, perhaps because none of us want to answer if the same questions were directed back at us. Just four men in the middle of nowhere, running from a past they’d rather forget.

I’ll have to face them, one day. Go back, look my fellow co-workers in the eyes and tell them I am still alive. I look back on what I did now, and it feels almost cruel. It was necessary – they really weren’t taking the situation seriously – but at the end of the day, they think that I died horrifically right in front of them. Especially Greg, he didn’t deserve something like that. But not now. Not when there’s a war going on, when we can’t move through the kingdoms without hiding ourselves as if we’re criminals.

I sigh. We haven’t had any information on the kingdoms, apart from that one dwarf the other day. The war’s still going, but we don’t know any more than that. How long will it go on?

My eyes roam idly, finally coming to rest on Heather. She’s lying down in the grass, quietly whittling at a branch with a flint knife. She seems to have decided on taking up archery. No problem with that, it’s excellent for hunting and the like. But if something sneaks up on you or is fast enough that they manage to dodge your arrows, you need a melee alternative. Something else I need to mention at a better time.

The books keep piling on the fire, one by one. Finally, Ren wipes the tears from his face and tosses the last one into the roaring fire. Letting out a long sigh of pain and relief, he turns and walks back towards his house.

People rarely put much thought into it when they come across the words ‘time stop’ in fiction. As soon as you do, you realise that the problems just keep heaping up. Just consider the equation speed equals distance divided by time. Rearrange that, and you get distance equals speed times time. If time is stopped, that means no matter what the speed is, you can’t travel any distance, because time is always zero.

But, they say, the person who stopped time is exempt. Time moves normally for them.

That would still be a big, fat, ‘no’, on the movement. Consider walking. Move your legs through the air – stop right there. The air. You’re still surrounded by air. Which is frozen in time. You try to move through it, but any force you exert will have no effect, because again, no time is passing, no distance can be covered. Which brings us to another point. You can’t move the air. Therefore, you can’t breathe. You’ll suffocate.

There are a couple of ways around all this, actually. First requirement, obviously, is that you don’t need to breathe, eat, sleep, and so on. Then you could do a spatial exchange with the air, switching yourself with a pocket of air (or other matter) the same shape and size as yourself. Teleportation, by definition, is travelling from point a to point b without passing through the space in between. The distance is technically zero, which means that even though time is also zero, it’s possible. Zero distance equals any speed times zero time, after all.

Or, alternatively, you could be immaterial and have the ability of flight. Then you could move freely through space.

But there’s also another problem. You’d… Kinda be blind. Light would also be stopped in time. No light reaching your eyes, no sight. You would be deaf by the same token. That would require you to have another method of sight, some kind of ability that allows you to sense everything around you, something that doesn’t rely on EMR, magnetic fields or anything else that would be stopped in time.

Even then, what would you do in this stopped time? You wouldn’t be able to interact with anything. You might be able to move around freely, but if you had all those other abilities, you could already do that anyway.

I think the only real use is what I’m using it for now: to give me time to think. Do I need it? Not really. But it makes things simpler. I don’t have to worry about the ‘Aaron’ personality thinking or saying something that could lead to him or others suspecting that there’s more to us that meets the eye. But that’s by the by.

At this point, I think it’s fair to say that I’m a godlike entity. I can’t die unless I want to, and I’m capable of literally anything I can conceive. I can sculpt reality on the scale of galaxies and universes. I can re-write the laws of space, time and dimensions beyond.

I make the rules. I dictate morality.

But… I feel like things are good as they currently are, at least for now.

For all my power, for every new thing I realise that I can do, inconceivably, I just feel ever more human. I have the same questions that I want answered, just like everyone else: What should I do? What do I want to do? What will I be like in ten, a hundred years? Did I make the right decisions? Does it matter? Who am I?

And more importantly than anything else, why me?

Why did the universe pick me to have this power? I’m not perfect, and even with all of my abilities and powers, I can’t make myself perfect, because I don’t know what perfect is. I just know that I’m not it.

Something that is imperfect cannot create perfection. If I create life, it will be flawed. If I create a world, it will be flawed. If I create a society, it will be flawed. Those flaws could be any number of things, and I might be able to fix some of them, improve the design so to speak. But there will always be more.

Who came before, and what were their reasons, that they chose me? There must have been something before. My very existence spits in the face of science. That leaves only the supernatural. Supernatural to create supernatural. Creator to create creator. Perhaps the first creator was the first thing to exist, but not me. I had a beginning. I know it. I remember it. And there were things before. I was created. I was chosen. But how?

But why?

Why me?

We decide to head back. I would have liked to say a few words to Dex, but I can’t have us waiting around here just for that. There are things we have to do back home. Plus, I can tell Heather isn’t comfortable with so many people around.

It’s time for us to head back.

We buy what supplies we need. All the shopkeepers insist on giving us a discount, and why should I deny something like that? I make sure to thank them, but it ends up with them thanking me, instead. I suppose we did save the town.

This time when we pass through the tunnel, our passage is uncontested. Picking up the least damaged set of armour we find, a few of the halberds and the magi’s grimoire – it could be worth something, perhaps - we make our way down the mountains, follow the faded pass, cross the old bridge and follow the river back to our base.

But when we get there, to our surprise, a helmeted face peers down at us from the watchtower. “Back off!” He bellows down at us. “Or we’ll riddle you full of bolts!”

I roll my eyes. If they had a crossbow, he’d be pointing it at us right now. There wouldn’t be a need for him to say anything at all. At this point, I’m honestly just sick of dealing with them, so I just walk toward the gate.

“Hey!” He shouts. “Fuck off! I’ve got twenty lads in full armour behind this gate, just rearing to knock yer heads off!”

“Sure you do.” I call up to him sarcastically, reaching out to the gap in the gate with my good hand. “Xiltroth, make sure he doesn’t do anything tricky.”

“No problem.” He replies while I move some fire mana through the gap in the gate, willing it to not burn anything but a narrow vertical slice of the bar holding the gate in place. Once that’s done, I simply push the gate open, revealing that – surprise, surprise – there’s just a single dwarf waiting for us, practically quaking in his boots.

“L-look,” he stammers, “there be no need for any violence. Why don’t we ju-, just talk it out?”

I sigh. “I don’t suppose you have any books, do you?”

“The fuck would we get a book, out here, in the middle of fucking nowhere?” The other dwarf curses, climbing down the watchtower.

The stammering dwarf shouts fearfully at the other, “Stop pissing them off! Don’t you know we’re screwed if they want to fight?”

The other dwarf grimaces, but doesn’t retort.

“Look.” I sigh. “Just get out of here. I don’t want to see your faces again, and neither do the townsfolk. Go there again and you’re dead.”

“Thank you! Thank you!” The stammering dwarf bows fearfully, and the two of them edge through the gate, around our group and start running away.

After we get everything put away and sorted again, the day starts wearing on. I’m still getting used to doing things with one hand, so Boaz cooks dinner instead.

“It’s not as good as usual.” Heather remarks quietly.

“Aye.” Boaz admits. “Learned to cook in the army. Flavour wasn’t considered important. So long as it was filling, it went in the pot.”

After dinner, I go for a walk around the camp, check that the walls are still in good shape. Not much else I can do with one arm, except keep watch. As I’m going along the wall, Heather walks up to me, and starts walking alongside me.

I nod to her, but she doesn’t say anything, so I shrug internally and keep walking in silence. She seems content to do that for a while. Eventually, when I’m about to complete a circuit of the wall, she stops. Turning to face her, I raise an eyebrow questioningly.

“I just wanted to say… Thank you for saving my life.” She speaks, finally.

“You’re welcome.” I reply. “Sorry Jakin didn’t block the shot. We’re not used to working in a team of five, and he didn’t realise the magi wasn’t aiming at me. I barely did. It’s lucky we got out of that with only a broken arm.”

She winces. “I thought I was about to die for a moment there.”

“Make you regret coming with us?” I ask, curious.

“Almost.” Heather admits. “But when we got back here, I knew I’d made the right choice. I wouldn’t have been able to fight off those dwarves on my own.”

“Lucky you did, then.” I say, eyebrows furrowing. I hadn’t thought about that.

“It made me think.” Heather says, crossing her arms. “It would take more than luck for me to survive on my own, out there. It would take a miracle.”

“Pretty much.” I agree, nodding.

“So,” she continues, watching my face carefully, “I wanted to ask if it would be okay if I were to stay here… As a more permanent addition to the group.”

I blink, a bit surprised. “Are you sure? It’s not like there’s no other alternative. You could live in the gnome town, probably a lot more comfortably than you would out here.”

Heather shakes her head slightly. “I don’t know them as well as I know you, and besides, if I stayed there I would always be the odd one out. Here, everyone’s the odd one out.”

“We’re not exactly what people would call normal, no.” I smile wryly. “To answer your question, I’d be fine with it, but something like this will have to be a group decision. I’ll go around and ask everyone’s opinions of you and see how we go from there.”

“Alright.” She nods, her face slightly tense. “I’ll be in my tent, then.”

“See you later.” I wave as she walks away.

Alright… I suppose I better get talking while the night’s still young.

I head to talk to Xiltroth first. Of all of us, he’s the most likely to answer a question honestly and bluntly. “Out of curiosity, what do you think about Heather? Character-wise, I mean.” I say.

“Hard to say.” Xiltroth shrugs. “She’s not exactly the talkative type. I think… She’s afraid of people, of everyone right now. But she isn’t being mean, or lashing out… I think she’s a nice person. Good with her hands too. She managed to make a bow with just basic tools, so I wonder what else she knows how to make?”

I nod, stroking my beard with my left hand. It feels different. “It’s pretty impressive. Not at all what I was expecting when she asked for that wood. Well, that’s all I wanted to ask. See you in the morning.”

“See you.” Xiltroth nods to me.

Next I go see Jakin, ask him the same question.

“Heather?” He grunts, considering it. “Well, she’s quiet – but that’s to be expected after what happened. Terrible, that. She’s strong, still up and kicking despite it. Good with the bow, too. Even rusty, she managed to pull off some pretty good shots. Anyway, she seems like a good enough person to me. Damn near got her killed, though. Thank God you were thinking straight.”

“Don’t blame yourself.” I reply. “I barely noticed as well. If I had paid more attention, I wouldn’t have had to do something so risky, either. We were just too used to it being just the four of us. We need to make sure we keep it mind next time, so that it doesn’t happen again.”

“Aye, you might be right.” Jakin sighs. “But still, I’m thinking of stepping up my training. Make sure I notice next time. Make sure I can react.”

“No harm in that, either. Best if we’re as strong as possible.” I reply absent-mindedly.

“Hm?” Jakin grunts.

“Anyway, that’s all I wanted to say, for now. See you later.” I say, waving farewell.

I head to Boaz. Things are looking positive for Heather so far, and I don’t expect Boaz to be the one to bear bad news.

“Quiet, polite, determined despite what happened. Hard to say much more. Hasn’t been long since we met her.” Is how he replies when I ask, sure enough.

“True enough. I reply. “Well, there’s something we all need to discuss. Watchtower in five?”

“See you there.” Boaz nods.

I gather up the others, and we all climb up the watchtower.

“So, I’ll get straight to the point.” I start. “Heather wants to join our group. What are your thoughts on it?”

“Ah, so that’s what it was about.” Jakin nods. “I’m fine with it. We could use a ranged fighter, and I’m fairly sure we can trust her at this point. Boaz?”

“I agree.” Boaz says.

“Same.” Xiltroth agrees.

“And so do I, of course.” I say. “Just a few other things to discuss in regards to that, then. Since she’s not just staying temporarily anymore, we’ll need to build her something better than that makeshift tent.”

Jakin strokes his beard. “We can do that. Plenty of room, after all.”

I seem to remember something. “Last time I asked you how you are with women, you had a strange reaction. You sure you’re fine?”

Jakin sighs. “Yeah. Just a bad experience we had because of a woman, once. A bad memory is all it is, it won’t affect how we act around people.”

“Good. Well, as it seems we’re all in agreement, I’ll go down and tell her the good news.” I say. “See you all tomorrow.”