5.20

“I understand that I have acted in haste, I see my mistakes now and beg for forgiveness.” - Priestess Emilia the Thrice Excommunicated, first recommunicated due to converting three hundred and eighty-two heavily injured men.

Noam walked out of sight of Dustin, before he fell to a knee, breaths heavy and laborious. He quickly stabilised himself, taking deep breaths to calm his heart. It wasn’t the first time he had overexerted himself and it wouldn’t be the last.

Dustin might be an ass but he was right, Noam’s build and stat distribution were all over the place, meaning he had to be doubly careful to beat the bastard. Not to mention he still had 9 SP that he hasn’t spent, couldn’t spend until they got to a wayshard. He was essentially fighting missing two levels against a guy whose build was probably a cheat.

Perhaps if Dustin specially gave him a build to use, he might’ve demolished the myconid with half the time and effort, but where was the fun in that?

“Are you alright?” Tai stopped in front of him and extended a hand which he took, pulling himself back up.

“How bout you?” Noam asked, noting she looked rather freaked out when she drew the mystery sword. He didn’t know High Elvish but the pictograms looked similar enough to the Sino-Tibetan Language Family that he realised the three words were for a name. The two symbols of similarity were likely the surname.

“I’ll live,” she spoke casually, but Noam still noticed how her hand tightened around her sword.

If Tai were another person he might’ve pushed further, but she struck Noam as a largely independent personality, not someone worth poking at without mutual trust and respect.

“You wanna run away now that you know what’s here or do you want to be an idiot and stay?” the tiefling asked.

“You’re staying aren’t you?” Tai replied, voice soft, almost in introspection. “Your friend was genuinely worried about the thing here yet you plan on fighting it regardless. Even if it poses a permanent threat against yourself.”

“We’re all gonna die eventually, might as well live life as stupidly as you can,” he chuckled.

She smiled for a brief moment, “Even Traveller’s die huh…” Her face turned hard, “I need to found out the meaning of the sword, I need to understand who is Kai Gnari.”

“Got a plan for that?”

She blinked back in surprise, clearly not having considered it before she shook her head.

Noam smiled as a figure hobbled out to join them, “Good thing I know a guy.”

“You are a bastard, the worst bastard I have ever met,” I said as the Fix-Up Fungus sprouted between us.

“And you love me for it don’t you?” the tiefling smugly replied, lying lazily on a couch almost like a cat.

We were in an empty house, one that we all knew how it became empty.

The third person looked between the two of us strangely. “Didn’t you two just try to kill each other?” Tai asked.

“Yeap but I won,” Noam replied as healing spores enveloped his body.

I attached my severed arm back onto the stump, letting the spores drift and reconnect the two. “We have a rule that if we disagree we fight and whoever wins is the way we go.”

“And I won,” Noam repeated with a smile. “Unless this is a long con in which he stabs me in the back later.”

“Possibly,” I admitted, “but regardless, if I think the way is lost or hopeless, I will kill you.”

“You really don’t want this thing to kill you huh?” Tai said.

I held a finger to my mouth, the universal gesture for quiet. “Wait.”

Glancing around, I could see no sign that something was with us, still, I held out my hands, “Poison Spores.”

I repeated the spell several times, getting the two to move positions as I made sure to douse the entire room with Poison Spores, before leaving a lingering barrier of the stuff around the walls.

“Cautiousness has never harmed anyone,” I muttered as I sat back down, mana significantly drained. “We have a few minutes, speak in quiet tones and do not raise your voice.”

There were careful nods around me, eyes too looking outward, but likely seeing no more than I did.

“Dustin, Noam,” Tai began, her face grave, “I require you two a favour.”

“What is it?”

“If I’m taken, kill me before I am killed by that thing.”

Oh.

Both of us simply stared at her, a mixture of surprise, disbelief and some respect. For out of the three, she was the only one who was truly risking her life.

“I would rather it not come to that point,” I softly said after a moment.

“We don’t often get to pick what we would rather.”

“I’ll do it.”

I almost berated him when he spoke, but when I turned to Noam, I saw not a hint of doubt or hesitation, only quiet reassurance and resolve.

Tai nodded, content with the answer before they each turned to me and I realised they were both relying on me to get them through this mess, to give them direction so that we may win.

We were fucked if I was the best we’ve got.

But I cannot speak that, cannot think that, for right now the part that believed that was useless. Right now they didn’t need me as a person, they needed me as a logical commander, uncaring of the weaknesses of emotion.

And so, I removed what wasn’t needed and became that.

“Let us continue then,” I spoke, “I have a list of information myself in the past recorded, likely after our first encounter with the entity,”

1. You cannot ***** **.

Fuck.

1. It removes *********** ***** **.

Dammit.

1. If suddenly the silence becomes quiet enough that it feels deafening. Spray all around you. It won’t kill certain ‘things’, but it will deter them.

Remember these questions.

2.Why does Tai carry three swords when she only uses two?

3.Why was the train so empty? Did we really beat back the goblins with only *five?* people and a handful of guards?

4.Why is the town so empty?

And make sure to remember 5

6. Find the boy in the mirror.

7. ***** might still be alive if you act fast enough. He’s durable, he might Survive, but I’m not sure about ****** and ******, it got so many of us. **** is definitely gone. I’m not sure if I even remember all the people it got.

8. Get Noam out if he is still alive. I don’t know if it can harm Matt, but don’t risk it.

I relayed the information, word for word.

“From this, we can draw a few conclusions,” I continued.

“One,” I held up my first finger, “it can somehow remove all information about itself, which explains why we don’t remember anything.”

“Two,” the second finger rose, “some extension of this ability is somehow used to remove the memory of people, judging by the language of point seven, it can be reasonably interpreted that the people forgotten are dead or killed. Not only that, it has perfected the ability to the point we seem to replace memories of people that have passed.”

“Three,” the third finger, “this method is not perfect.” I gestured toward’s Tai’s sword, “Your sword shows that physical traces of people slain still remain. I believe instead of removing the traces, the entity somehow causes us to ignore proof of its existence, including its kills.”

“Four,” the fourth finger, my entire hand opened, “this thing attacks when the silence ‘becomes deafening’ whatever that means.”

“Five,” I raised the first finger of my other hand, “the third and fourth point indicates that this thing has accumulated a massive body count and judging by point three, we were once, at minimum, a group of five people.”

Unintentionally, my eye went to Tai’s third sword. “I suspect the person mentioned in point seven is the person who owned that sword. A close-range fighter with a Path that greatly enhances durability. However, seven seems to mention at least three victims.”

“Six,” second finger on my second hand, “the existence of a ‘boy in the mirror’, which these points place emphasis in locating.”

“Seven,” the second last finger, “this thing is somehow able to make me afraid for Noam’s original self.”

Tai reacted strangely to that information but stayed silent.

“Eight,” the final finger, “that this thing is susceptible to damage and can be deterred, but also that I won’t be able to kill it with just an AOE spray.”

“And finally,” I closed both hands, “that my ability has been compromised, as shown by the numerous redactions and the missing of point five, meaning that the entirety of what I just said could be false or inaccurate. Anything else?”

There was silence after I laid it all bare. For perhaps only now they understood the enemy as I did, to have it put that simply.

Noam scratched his head for a moment, before he asked, “What’s this ‘boy in the mirror’?”

“I don’t know,” I replied, “I only have what I have previously tried to write.”

“Like the boy in the mirror,

I come ever nearer,” he tuned. “That phrase is stuck in my head, like a song. I remember saying it, but did I really?”

I raised an eyebrow, “What do you mean?”

“I remember saying that phrase to someone, but I don’t think I did, why would I speak like that for one? If this can erase memories and make us fill in the gaps ourselves, what happens if it misses and some information is retained but we lost how we got it?”

A memory resurfaced, the bloody corpse of a creature that rammed its head into the shrine of Bundriroc until it bled and died, and from its blood, I saw and remembered a phrase no one else did.

“Fear the deafening silence.”

There was that sense of deja vu again as I spoke it. “I remember that we killed a rampaging beast near the shrine of Bundriroc, when it bled the blood formed a phrase. ‘Fear the deafening silence.’”

“I remember crippling both legs of the thing while Tai delivered her finishing blow,” Noam added.

“And I remembered being tired because using even one Act at a time really tires me out.”

“One Act…” a discrepancy in my memory, fleeting and gone in a moment, but I closed my eye, and traced it back, looking at the first moment Tai had used an Act in front of us.

“Tai, when you use the Adept’s Acts, do you do one slash or two?”

Tai furrowed her brow, “Only a single one, but why would-” she remembered, the first time she used that move in front of us, it left a train cart in three pieces.

“That cart was slashed twice,” Noam breathed. “It was slashed twice!”

Tai’s hands shook as they clenched around her third blade.

“Your style is called the Gnari Family style isn’t it?”

“Yes,” she grimaced, “I know what you’re implying, that the person who owned this blade was my family.”

“It doesn’t help much,” Noam admitted, “the information does little more than say it has killed a person of your fighting style before, but the circumstances are gone.”

“No,” I said, “with three examples we can confirm that the memory erasure is not perfect, that there are clues left behind we can think back to and remember and realise something is missing because of an inaccuracy.”

“We can keep finding clues that way.”

“But we do not know if the clues are of value,” I said, “like you said, the clue of the train cart only says it has killed a person on Tai’s fighting style.”

Noam scratched his head, brows deep in thought, “Dustin, your Analyse thing is from your eye right?”

I nodded.

“Lemme see it.”

I willed the Bracken Polypores to recede, revealing my face under them and the socket I kept the eye in.

“Oh Jesus,” Noam muttered, “look through my eyes, that thing is-”

He paused as he realised what he just said. Something spoken almost completely out of habit, something he didn’t consciously register until after he said it.

“Sight,” he muttered, “you lost a power related to sharing sight.”

I nodded, “I know,” raising my arm, on it were littered numerous eye symbols. “On my arm are observation runes from a spell I crafted myself, but I can’t see through them. The uselessness of the spell and the fact I cast it so much on myself indicates that my past self wanted me to realise what was lost.”

“That must’ve been how the thing got noticed before,” Tai muttered, “if you had some sort of altered sight you might’ve been able to see it.”

“The only question is why the entity didn’t outright kill me,” I added. “Perhaps it has some limitation on killing or the number of people it can make forget.”

“Or…” Noam began, “when we fought it, we dealt so much damage it was forced to retreat.”

He looked at both of us, “In which case, we need to find and kill it as soon as possible before it has a chance to recover.”

“That is if that hypothesis is true,” I noted. “We still have no real idea of its combat capability, we can assume it is powerful given that it has killed at least three combat capable individuals, but we don’t know how.”

“The difference between it killing those three in direct combat versus that of an undetected sneak attack is the difference between victory and defeat,” I continued.

“I would like to lean towards the idea it was a sneak attack,” Noam said, “it greatly fits the abilities we know it has.”

“And I agree with you,” I said, “but we can’t know for sure. It will be a gamble no matter how you put it.”

“A gamble we may be forced to take.”

“Indeed,” I conceded. “But let us examine the threads we haven’t looked at yet.”

“The boy in the mirror.”

I nodded, “Yes.”

“We have nothing other than the weird rhyme I have… Actually…” Noam looked around, “Any of you have a mirror?”

I shook my head and so did Tai.

“Hmm… how clear are your swords Tai?”

She drew one, the one that was hers. It was clean, but I could see stubborn specks of dirt and mud that crusted over.

Noam squinted at the blade before he very quietly turned to me.

“Behind me.”

I stood up, seeing nothing physically behind Noam, but I slowly edged next to him, along with Tai and we saw it.

The reflection of a ragged boy, eyes red with weeping, staring at us from the corner of the room.