Portal

When our burning kiss ended, he told me that when the two zeogs destroyed the empire of Emero's greedy mercenaries from top to bottom, and punished the worst offenders by condemning them to contemplate their collapsed empire in a frozen body, one of them turned the saved but shattered nation into an exclusive kingdom that no one else could enter, no one except of course one of their own, the absolute monarchs.

- So that's where we must go if we are to have any chance of finding that cursed blood zeog.

Seiran kissed me on the forehead.

- Yes, we must find a way to cross this sovereign domain, which has been transformed by the fantasy of this extraordinary being into a titanic portal to their formidable universe.

***

I put now my head full of dreams and voluptuousness on his shoulder while tightening me a little more against him.

- I also suppose that you already have more or less an idea of what this way is.

- Of course I do! Who do you think I am?

- So if I understand correctly, that was what you were looking for so frantically from the beginning!

He took me by the shoulders and pushed me back to see my face, probably alerted by the tone of my voice that I wouldn't have been able to define myself, and I don't know if he was satisfied or not with what he saw displayed there, whatever it was, he nodded his haughty head.

- Yes.

- And this way, it must be very dangerous, not to say... deadly, right?

I spoke of this scenario as if it had no importance, and yet it did, so much so that I could already feel the familiar and yet unbearable pain rise up in me and inevitably invade me with all its monstrosity and inexorability.

Does he feel this time again the nature of my emotions? In any case, he caressed my hair and kissed me with an ardour, a kind of despair which blackened my heart. I felt like I was experiencing the inconceivable feeling of a first as well as a last time.

It was just unbearable.

He could by doing this duty so heavy, so unjust and more hateful than all the others, lose his life never to return, and that even all the powers or existence as implausible and tiring of these Zeogian monarchs, could never revive.

He didn't have to tell me that for me to know it too, and this time he didn't.

Once again, there was silence between us and our eyes, so clear and sincere, revealed all that was in our hearts. At least, that's what I forced myself to believe since the first moment and that Seiran, in his so clear mind, wanted to convince himself of it too.

I should have asked him to forgive me for that closed door inside me, sealed by all the existing magic that my human body could contain. But I didn't do it. I preferred to go on like this, and forget her again and again until she disappeared. But it never did. And later, when it opened in all its truth and inevitability, that event ravaged me as nothing ever could or will, and killed me for the first time.

- Seiran, tell me the rest?

- Do you remember Master Charlouse?

I was amazed.

- Yes, Emere's father if I remember correctly.

- That's exactly it. Perhaps you noticed that I was fascinated by him, and that...

- No," I interrupted him immediately. I noticed that you were fascinated by Abios and by no one else.

- If you say so," he conceded, amused but indifferent.

- Well, thank you for that concession," I mocked him in turn. But let's get back to our problematic discussion, why did you ask me that about the mage Charlouse?

- Because he is a being, let's say, fabulous in his own way, his body, his magic, his mind, everything about him is special. As a child, I think I read something about those beings who had the magic not to recognize their own. Very rare and very ironic, by the way, between us.

I nodded with a sympathetic face. Rare or not, I wouldn't have liked to have such a power. No one in their right mind would have wanted it. But I couldn't say the same about this person. Once, at the top of this lost place in the universe, while I was only contemplating him, he had confessed to me that he was not only suffering from the body. The pain that each word he had expressed to me still remained, even now that I was in the irresistible arms of my prince charming whom I loved so much.

I shook my head to put him out of my mind for the umpteenth time.

- I don't get it. So what?

- In fact, this great mage also bears the prestigious name of master nomad. A being capable of witnessing things that do not belong to the common. Unimaginable things like the opening of the portal to the Zeog empire.

I shook my head again, totally lost.

- Uh... what?

- You should also know that when the portal of the absolute monarchs opens, it releases such a mass of magical energy that any living being, individual or animal, even plant, living thousands of kilometers away, immediately, irrevocably sinks into a trance that freezes their whole being and leaves no memory. This gives you a brief glimpse of the extraordinary will and power of these indefinite beings who wish to keep the keys of their inaccessible kingdom as secret.

- I am not surprised.

- But he, Charlouse is different. No magic has the power to alter his vision and even less his memory of things. Only ignorant of his talent, he is not aware of it, and has only by instinct kept all memories, good or bad, important or not, in his mind. It can only be taken away from him if this memory is transposed into a dream. Do you understand now? I am here not to search the past of my father's empire, but to look for a formula that will transport me in a dream. It is a hidden formula attached to this place, even my father does not know.