The Star 15

Were it not for the small moments of light and bliss sprinkled into his life by Yulian, Claudius would believe that he'd been dropped into an abyss on Amoril. A few weeks earlier, he'd almost lost his brother in a fire on the consulate. Saving him had done little good but there was a small if pitiful hope. The unfortunate merchant who had taken the chance to deliver some much needed goods only to be fleeced and sent back with a promissory note, had taken his brother and two other mortally wounded soldiers back to the mainland with him.

As he once again found himself fighting for his life alongside the remaining soldiers of the consulate, he spared a brief prayer for the life of his little brother. He even managed to squeak out well wishes for the young merchant who's heart was still kind after being practically robbed. As his thoughts turned to the obsidian elf that had given him joy while so many others gave him so much grief, he wondered about the state of his world.

He rallied to the call of his captain. There, he found the other centurion of the unit and that mountain of a man's friend. Thick as thieves and stoutly loyal to each other if no one else, Claudius wasn't surprised to see that they still lived. Further thought was momentarily scrapped as a fireball that was meant to take them all out at once had met some kind of obstruction in the air and burst a little early.

Quickly righting themselves, Hefty threw the unconscious captain over his shoulder and yelled to Mellow who was helping drag Claudius to his feet. "Get his ugly burned a** over here. That little wh*re of yours better not have lied to us, Raisin Face or we're all dead."

Claudius was confused. He had no idea what they were talking about. But while they ducked into the stone shelter that remained over a closed latrine pit, a dome curtain of light fell around them. When it cleared, they were on a suddenly unsteady flat fishing boat.

A startled and slightly panicky old obsidian elf lady said, "Sit your fat armored backsides down before you all throw us into the ocean. There's an old lady and a young pregnant one on board!"

Yulian threw herself into Claudius' arms.

While the man reeled from his barely escaped death and the sudden sinking in knowledge of what the older woman had just shared, Hefty made a rude comment about the questionable parentage of a wh*re's whelp.

The old woman said, "Shut your pie hole, dung pile. Do you think anyone else on this entire island would care about a Centerland man so greatly but the mother of his child? A woman knows most times but I can provide some evidence."

For lack of any other entertainment while the men took turns rowing towards the spot Yulian said help would be, the old hedge witch performed her parentage spell. Even the poor unconscious Captain Nadir's drop of blood got a turn in the bowl. Only Claudius' showed a reaction. It wasn't conclusive but to a bunch of rough soldiers with little better available and the surprisingly generous rescue, it was enough to shut even Calix's foul mouth.

Tired and flagging in spirit, they were overjoyed when the cranky old lady produced some food and a bottle of strong whiskey. Hefty and Mellow had never been that disciplined to begin with and tore through their shares with wild abandon. Claudius was a little more reserved but took a shot in toast to life. When he saw that his companions dropped into slumber suddenly, he looked at the two women in wary distrust as he felt drowsiness settle in far too abruptly to be natural.

"Why have you done this?" he asked.

Yulian tore a scroll and passed out herself to keep from answering the look on the man's face that tightened her heart.

The old woman said, "I know this is all so terribly frightening but you are being saved. The one responsible cannot be known and the methods will be somewhat unpleasant. To sleep through it is a blessing, young man. One these old bones will unfortunately be denied.

"Rest as well as you can. You have a bold new life awaiting you. And, dare I say, one more worth living? Congratulations on your baby boy. Be a good father and husband. That's the only thing your savior and your brother asks of you."

"How is my broth-" Claudius' half formed question would have to wait until he awoke.

A dark figure standing on another flat boat drifted into view.

"What did happen to his brother? You know, a question like that will haunt him if not answered," the old woman posed to Sonny.

"He was called to serve in another realm. If it brings some peace to Claudius, let it be known that his little brother's agreement to serve included some compensations," he said.

With a little effort and some magic, they were all taken to the underwater temple. Applying healing to them, Sonny pulled out the remainder of the second to last bottle of Doc Agave. In a magical world too weak to exert laws of entropy upon it, the bottle maintained it's potency with little issue.

After pouring a shot down each gullet, he handed the last three worth to the old woman. "This will rewind the stone dial's shadow twenty seven years and this bar should give you another nine to twelve. Drink that quickly and eat that slowly over the next twelve hours. I'll need to heal you once halfway through. The rest will have to wait til we can reach it."

Medea cackled. "And what's there to complain about in that? It's enough to put some decent starch in my boot cuffs and that's what matters for now."

While she worked on that, he worked on deep healing lingering issues. Once he was satisfied, the young adept strained to pull his intent around the slumbering Captain Nadir. With a sudden jolt and a wave of dizziness, he pulled the man into his space for the mere moment it took for the man to be spit out in a small wash of black mud.

Sunny quickly collected the small influx of mystical opals and diamonds before looking over his handiwork. Captain Nadir had been a partially formed and loose soul like much of the lower dimension inhabitants. It was a bit evil to simply shove a powerful soul's core into it but in both Nadir's and Oliver's case, they weren't exactly saintly men. The most important point was that they were very similar and compatible spiritually. It was even possible that they shared origins with an ancient splintered soul.

After checking to make sure the supernatural nutrition bar wouldn't overwhelm the old woman, he healed and cleaned her of the impurities she shed. After that, it was a matter of opening and closing the portal til he managed to lure the demon he wanted. With a yank, he pulled Rozchereck thorough and simultaneously destroyed the gate while binding the demon with his true name.

"I'm going to make a trade with you. I want your stick and I'll give you the location of an abyssal will claimed by a nest of barely sentient succu-harpies... Or whatever you want to call them," he said.

Sneering but subdued, the demon said, "My stick is already in your hands. Play with it gently or it might go off. It can be a bit mess-"

Sonny hit him with the polymorph staff in the head nearly hard enough to break it. "Get over to that beacon and go claim your prize, then. I don't have time for your foulness."

The demon's eyes burned with promised retribution. "I'll remember this, mortal."

"Little good it will do you. Be thankful that in all your treachery, someone thought you did something worth rewarding," Sonny said dismissively.

Skirting and testing the magic circle, Rozchereck eventually found himself before the beacon. As he tried to warp it, the young adept didn't give him a chance. With a magical push, the demon found himself in a nest with a dead queen 'succu-harpy and surrounded by a gaggle of little hens pressing at a slowly fading magic circle barrier they couldn't break.

In a last communication before the tenuous tie between beacons closed, the demon said, "Very well. To hold grudges with you would seem to be pointless. The bargain is... good."

Sonny muttered to himself, "For you, maybe. I hope you act stupid and get yourself killed."

Medea asked in a dumbfounded voice, "What good will come of that?"

"You'll have to ask Droya someday. I don't rightly know." Sonny said and shook his head.

Under her disbelieving eyes, the young adept fired the staff at the groggy and recovering Oliver. Before the man could completely demonize, Sonny's over robe sucked the curse off the man, leaving him even more feeble and confused.

Squatting down, he handed Oliver a journal and said, "Read it. Destroy it and remember your interrogation training. Otherwise an old archmage is going to pick you apart. Once you're done with that, enjoy some fame as Captain Nadir, the man who destroyed a demon gate. You'll be like a god among men here. Learn to love it."

He turned to Medea. "That's our curtain call. Let's get out of here before old frost face shows up. I can take him but I'd rather not. He's needed for an important task soon and he's...not that bad."

Escorting her like a gentleman, he did a last spiritual scan of everyone. He wanted to make sure that their little magically hidden package of goodies wouldn't suddenly pop out in the next few days. A week later and they'd all have a pouch of new life funds to enjoy.

Once they appeared in a Centerland glade, he said in a worried tone, "This next part's all on you. Tertius is a man with a good reputation but the reputation of powerful people can be very misleading. Don't hesitate to-"

Ruffling his hair, she said, "As much as I like a good fussing over, I'm about as prepared for this as I can be. Go wait for the good news at your snake den, gopher hole, whatever you call that place of yours down there in the dark with all those huge glowing mushrooms."

A whirlwind of activities took place after that. The young adept nearly ran himself ragged trying to juggle decent outcomes for the joint magic academy raids on the unsanctioned 'Summerland Experiments', Avenar's and his associates' private estates and Duran's progress. The last of which was the most delicate and required Medea's guidance.

The old woman was a dynamo but she had overplayed her hand with the archmages and they became a little too curious about her and her mysterious backer. In a surprise turn, Cray stepped in. The archer might have been unable to deal but it didn't mean he stopped caring.

That didn't mean there weren't repercussions. Despite his best efforts, Sonny had become too 'involved' with Amoril and had to leave before all the smaller and final details were completely resolved. The small weight that tipped the scale was an unforeseen incident involving keeping Baldur and Droya's infant academy from being corrupted by an influx of spies and saboteurs while staving of Highland's attempt to turn it into their own personal equivalent to Frost Fort or the Empyrean Academy.

The Silent Order and Warriors Guild were surprisingly fiercely supportive but because of that, Sonny had come into contact with a good number of their supernatural members at one point or another. That included a certain mischievous lady assassin who grew up in the Marshlands and found herself accidentally added to the people cargo going back with him to wherever he came from. The only clue to how that was possible was a choked and confused whisper of 'Yessamin' by her before she had been 'sucked up' while he was healing a wound she had sustained.

It didn't feel right but he had to let her disappearance slide onto the backs of the many dead infiltrators that were left in the wake of the battle for the future of the new academy's independence. It was a catalyst to intensify the secret war. And, it was that catalyst which started drawing Amoril's will to noticing Sonny in a serious way.

Even after going through the Twisted Lands to a planar shard his instructions called the Plague Barrens, he didn't feel safe. Something at the very center of him was unraveling and being drawn back the way he came. With so many important things left to do and so little personal time, he had no choice but to delegate more onto the backs of Daniel, Duran, Medea and even Cray.

Sonny knew he had conveyed the instructions clearly but his short term memory cut out somewhere along the way. It had all become a matter of trust and he at least felt like he was surrounded by the people he could trust the most. Fortunately, fate was kind enough to leave him with one sweet memory before he was reduced to a person who only lived in the moment in a very terrifying, literal way.

One of the most important tasks on the list, also the last, was insuring the existence of someone called Jammers. Either such a thing was part of accepted fate or the task maker somehow bolstered him but he had a year of blissful time with a beautiful yet somewhat terrifying item spirit called Regen. The only things he could recall after that were intermittent bursts of the most intensely emotional moments of interaction with Jammers, as the boy matured at an insane speed from the perspective of the memory crippled Sonny.

A slew of monumental things happened during that time but they had nothing to do with him. Secrets of the cradle in the maze, the rebirth of a new Kaleidoscope with a different lead personality and countless other important pieces of information were slowly being funneled away from him back to where he came from. At the end, even his first memories after arriving on Amoril and his most precious ones of his first lover and son were siphoned away.

***

In a flood of black mud speckled with gems of condensed, potent and precious essences, Sonny was spat out into the unforgiving and rocky terrain just outside the caldera. As if it were an overwhelming impulse he quickly collected as much of the stuff as he could, along with the other colored stones created in the aftermath of the Enigma Fields eating the escaping essence and converting it to something else. With a feeling of guilt, once the impulse passed, he looked around for Oliver.

The man wasn't to be found but there were three others. He recognized Yessamin and was fairly sure that the man with dangerous vibes that had feline features stamped onto an enviable human physique was Cole. The third, he wasn't at all sure about.

Much like himself, the mystery woman was quickly clad in a powerful suit of supernatural origins upon finding herself awakened naked. Once the disorientation had worn off enough to communicate, Cole volunteered to go with the dark and exotic Yessamin to secure supplies. Without waiting for any further discussion, the feline young man gallantly swooped up Yessamin and headed off under the woman's direction. And if his enjoyment of the intimately compromising situation was a little too 'visible' to everyone else, the woman was amused. So, there was nothing to complain about.

The mystery woman said in a smoky voice that managed to be gentle yet gravelly at the same time, "There is much I would share with you but my time is limited and... there are things I'd much rather spend my last moments fully myself doing."

As quickly as she could while being clear and easily understood she explained. She was Regen, an item spirit who had came with a small handful of others with the person Sonny was the current reincarnation of. During the incident of the collapsing cave system, Sonny had been temporarily sent back to his reality of origin far in the past of where he had first became a figure of power there. He had made use of that to attempt creating better outcomes for those he had cared about.

Part of that process meant, that Sonny couldn't know who he had been while he was there and wouldn't have been allowed to carry that knowledge back with him. His inner self could create a copy of those memories, however. And one day, he would have them returned, if a little faded and lacking the feeling that personal memories had.

"To ensure a greater chance of mutual survival, I opened the hollow part of my soul to house a weak but complete mortal one from a person named Corvinus. While in that reality, as our past selves, we were still two separate people. But here, we are not, having long ago becoming seamlessly one, though we still did not survive.

"You carried a part of us with you and contain a great but poorly understood power you call entanglement. Using that, you were able to draw and give us new life here through the versions of ourselves that existed there... We were... close there. I can tell you no more than that for the safety of one that is precious to us both.

"Through the power of that person, and the kindness of the one who is the other half of myself, I was able to have this moment with you as I am. It was a selfish wish but a granted one. With what little time I can be just myself, even though you know me not here, would you indulge the rest of my selfish wish and hold me once more?"