Even though I left Valeri behind to pull at the ludicrously heavy hammer, I wasn’t quite so rushed.

I could probably stick around and laugh at her while she failed to lift the hammer over and over, but that sounded rather sadistic, and I could only endure so much sadism in one day.

Instead, I decided to take it easy. Something I’ve found increasingly difficult to do. Since leaving the little road town, I’ve let my life flutter into a whirlwind of movement and preparation, most of it being as esoteric as could be. I built on the initial plan that I held within my mind, increasing its breadth to match the task I’m trying to undertake.

But I was the lynchpin of it all, and if I didn’t move, no-one else would either. So sure, I could take a solid day’s break, but during that time nothing would happen. Maybe some of the little things that I had already set up would continue, with Valeri now training by herself without Rethi’s guidance, and Alena and Rethi sent to earn the trust of the lower classes with free healing.

But all of that was small potatoes, and most of the actual forward action required my own movement to compliment it.

If I didn’t move, then Lauka would quickly fall back into a scepticism of my idea, and soon enough she would decide against the plan for the sake of self-preservation. I was building a fragile machine, and everything was time sensitive.

Thus, sitting atop a roof and dangling my legs over the walls as I looked down towards the warmly lit streets of Crossroads, with customers of various races, lifestyles, and status, walked among each other with the bubbling excitement a crowd always seemed to possess.

It was hard to sit still, now. Too many things compelled me to continue moving at full steam, to force the plan forward with my unerring gait, but… I needed to sit.

I wasn’t tired. No, in fact, I was the most energised that I’ve ever been. I could just about tackle any task that was thrown at me, even to move a mountain with my bare hands. That wasn’t the point.

It was the quiet dread that laid within me. Too easy to ignore, to pass off as a slight nervousness. But if I had to sleep every night? Lay in the soft sheets with my head resting against the plush pillow, then that quiet dread would become a screaming storm.

It was a dread that I couldn’t do anything about. It simply sat there, reminding me of the things I’ve lost, and all the things I need to gain. The responsibilities on my shoulders now outweighed anything I could have possibly imagined only a year ago, as I lived on Earth, enjoying the strange transitory experience of young adulthood to adulthood.

How old was I now, even; twenty, twenty-one?

I certainly don’t feel twenty. I feel… old. Is that what responsibility does to you? Aging your mind faster than your body has time to keep up?

I focused on the feeling of gentle tugging on my soul, placed so far away from me. I’d never actually been so far away from my Soul Hammer before, and it was almost nerve wracking if I couldn’t make it back to its location in a few moments, courtesy of the Sharah.

I couldn’t even find it funny, for some reason. My mind was resistant to the idea that the practical joke I’d played on Valeri was even worth a smirk. Maybe that was what made me realise just what I was hiding from myself.

Hah. To think that I’d be the one who ended up with repressed emotions. It was so easy to point at someone and tell them that they were a fool for not opening up about their emotions and experiences, something that even I had done a few times after I’d arrived on Virsdis myself. Rethi’s Mother, Alena, even Mayer to some degree.

Yet, here I was, with a searing pain in my heart as I forced my mind away from the world I once lived in.

It was stupid, really. It wasn’t even negative things. I wasn’t exactly involved in any wars, or anything even remotely traumatising to that degree. It was the good things that hurt me so bad. I could touch on generalities for a moment, cars, planes, technology in general…

But not specifics, even if Rethi would have loved nothing more than me expounding upon the inner workings of the mystical ‘computer’ that I’d alluded questions of for months. I’d alluded those questions so often that those who asked them had stopped.

The pain only worsened as I reminisced to the fateful moment that I’d cut ties with my home as a whole.

It felt like millennia ago that I made that choice. And I didn’t regret it, logically. There was nothing to regret. I wasn’t going to be the sole winner of this Champion War bullshit; it just wasn’t going to happen. The best that I could have pulled off would be building a force of Champions and then betraying them last moment, though I’d just as likely be betrayed too.

The moment I was sent here, I was stuck. And unless I can find someone who has the ability to send me home, probably surpassing what the Gods of these worlds can even accomplish, then my fate is sealed.

But that was logically. Emotionally, it was a black pit.

My past was gone, only manifesting itself in my morals and my damned suit. The world I had grown up in, learned in, lived my short life in… it was as good as dead, stuck in a moment of time within my mind.

I didn’t do anything to deserve this. I wasn’t sure that any of the other Champions did either. I wonder if they were faring better, enthralled by the world around them or assuming the stubborn mindset of being the one to return home.

Time rushed by me as I thought, like a stone standing in a stream of water, though far less serene than it might look on the surface. Though, there is nothing quite like the sound of someone climbing the wall right next to you to wake you from your funk.

My mind kicked into gear, giving me the character to play, the social beats to follow, the emotions to illicit, all so easily displayed in front of me like you might expect from the choices right out of a visual novel. It was all so easy, such a simple equation that seemed to grow ever more innate as I closened myself with the Hearth Court, with my own natural empathy, and the people who constantly surrounded me, growing my mind broader…

But I didn’t pick anything. I looked down at the slowly thinning crowd that bustled beneath my feet as the almost silent sound of someone climbing the wall to the roof I sat upon, and I realised something.

I didn’t want to play a character right now. I didn’t want to be someone else, not that any of the masks I wore were inherently false. They were all me, but not genuinely me. And today? I felt like being genuinely me.

The person climbing the walls pulled themselves over the edge agilely, almost like someone flexing a muscle that they’d let go slightly rusty. I didn’t bother to turn to them, simply staying exactly like I was, dangling my legs ever so slightly as I observed those beneath me.

They didn’t notice me, the inherent expectation that there would be no-one atop the roof, overriding their ability to actively perceive the surroundings.

“I came here with a plan, you know.” I spoke from the edge of the roof, a massive spike of adrenalin and heightened senses coming from the roof’s other occupant, “A character I’d play, the right words to say, the motivation that would make you say yes. But I don’t feel like it.” I shrugged my shoulders, not receiving a response from my unwitting companion.

“You were born in Vahla?” I asked gently, letting my morose tone waft through the air and reach the ears of their target. They shifted their stance, unsure whether they wanted to run or not, but I continued onwards.

“Maybe not born, but close to it at least.” I mused, though I let the rooftop go silent—my companion nowhere near comfortable on the dark rooftop. The silence eased the franticness, and after the initial fear of retaliation for any movements they might make, they even did so much as let their form slacken.

“Does it pain you, to have left your life there behind?” I asked the quiet night, and I received a response.

“No.” The simple word came from a light, feminine voice, filled with the slight affectations of Gek speech. I nodded deeply, even if I knew that the answer she’d given wasn’t even close to the truth. Regret, betrayal, fear, heartbreak… all of it brought to the surface by the very mention of her past.

“That’s about as convincing as me saying that I’m just a regular priest of the Hearth, Gehne.” I turned my head to the woman, her form clad in a minimised version of her usual work dress, having removed the dress itself. Underneath was a form fit pair of pants, pure black and melding easily with the night itself.

“What are you doing here, Maximilian?” She said gently, the most she’d outright said to me since I’d involved myself deeper into the burgeoning insurrection.

“Mourning.” I said, only able to bring a little smile to my face to hide the pain that the word served to inflict on my own heart. Gehne was almost taken aback, so thoroughly expecting an ever-charismatic response. She thought I was a snake, and she was right, to some degree. I was coming to realise just how much social power I could exercise. A few days of work, and I could probably crush someone’s life from the inside out, by whispering a few words in the right ears.

“What could you have to mourn?” She accused, though some of her tone held a genuine question. An interest. If I were trying to, I could leverage that right now, twist that interest whichever way I so pleased. But I couldn’t be bothered.

“You know, if we are picking at the disguises we wear, I could take a look at your own, Blue-Finger.”

I ignored the spike of fear, realising that any cover she had has been blown. Of course, the deduction wasn’t as simple as Gehne literally having blue skin. That would be ridiculous. The fact that blue skin was already a niche subset of Gek definitely helped, though the real kicker was the emotions I had pulled from her surface memory with my little mind tricks. It fit with Blue-Finger’s origin too well, and while I wasn’t trusting the information so strictly, too much pointed in one direction for it to be coincidence.

“I have a lot to mourn. Just like you Gehne.” She fought down her anxiety to scoff.

“‘We aren’t so different; you and I?’ Seriously?”

I turned back to her, my mind lighting up with surprise at the familiar phrase. The laugh began softly, then rising in tempo and volume, so much so that the pedestrians below even began looking up in confusion. I ignored them, wiping at my eyes with a sudden wave of tears that bubbled up from somewhere deep within.

“You guys have that trope too?” I giggled though the tears, wiping at them lazily, “Man, I haven’t read a book in so long.” Gehne was confused by the display, not understanding just what had set off the explosively emotional reaction.

“Not books, street plays.” She corrected, moving a few steps closer to me warily. “Families who were starving would create plays and act them out in hopes a few hum would be thrown their way.” I snorted, something that oddly comforted the woman further, letting her close the distance a few more steps.

“I used to read books by the cartload, anything I could get my hands on would be read within the day. Since I came here though…” I shrugged, tapping at the rooftop’s edge between my legs as they dangled in the cooling breeze of nightfall. The crowd below thinned even further, leaving only particular parts of the streets still lit—namely the bars, especially ones that offered ‘night service’.

Gehne stood behind me, broken by indecision, though after a few moments it was almost as if she flipped a mental coin and took a leap of faith—probably a learned trait to stop her from locking up in a serious situation.

She walked over to me softly, her bare feet padding across the roof’s surface and using the strange biology of them to help her move more cleanly than a regular human could, more silently too. She sat down only a metre from me, her blue skin glistening with a slight sheen in the remainder of the light, something that I imagine she solved in much the same way that Lauka did, by wrapping herself in black cloth.

“Where did you come from?”

It was the inevitable question. One that I had passed off a hundred different ways by now. It came in different packages with different intents, but they all sought the same information. Who was I? Where was I from? What was I?

“Would you believe me…” I began slowly, halting my tapping and staring down at my own fingers, “if I said that I came from another world?”

I could almost feel her throat close up, having to swallow heavily to restore her own breath. Her eyes danced across me, and I could feel them over my skin, even though I wasn’t looking at her. The adrenalin flooded back into her system, her emotions flipping over themselves as she realised that she could tell that I wasn’t playing her for a fool.

“Orisis?” She said, almost hopefully. At least then she could explain it within herself, but I snorted weakly—what really amounted to me exhaling out of my nose a little more vigorously than a regular breath.

“No, Gehne.” I said softly, like you might say the words to a child’s lullaby, “Somewhere much further than Orisis.” I looked up at the planet in the sky, its massive mass blocking out the sun for the night, almost wishing that it were my actual home. At least then I could see my goal, much like we of Earth can see the Moon.

“Where?” She asked, bracing herself for the answer before I’d even given it, fearful of the world that I was going to open her mind up to. I turned to her, her shimmering blue skin complementing her sharp eyes as they stared with a restrained existential fear. A weak smile wormed its way into my expression, along with the softest glow of a warm fire in my eyes, radiating in her own large orbs.

“I come from another world, so, so far away. You see, we aren’t very creative there–” I grimaced against the instinctive joke, pushing down the character I was letting slip out to protect myself from the terrible, ripping pain in my chest.

“I come from Earth.” The sadness dripped from my words like an addictively sweet honey, calling you back for more despite the sickness in your stomach, “It was where I was born, where I lived, where I learned to be who I am today… and it’s a place that I can never go back to.”

My lips twitched with the horrifying wave of emotions, betraying any stoicism I might’ve been able to claim. Gehne watched as the veneer, the veil itself, shattered right before her eyes. Her understanding of the worlds, the universe itself even.

But also, me. The man that she’d built up in her mind; the snake, the Peace Bringer of the Hearth, a Blessed even. All of that was dashed, leaving only the commonly dressed man with brown hair and brown eyes, standing a little taller than average, with a slight glow within his eye.

“And you know…” I looked back up to Orisis within the sky, watching as the stars that filled the space around it blinked into existence within the blackness. “Forever is a long time. A really, really long time.”