The Beginning After The End novel Chapter 11

Chapter v11ex2: Vol 11 Extra 2: A Brief Repit

Extra 2 – A Brief Repit

ARTHUR LEYWIN

Repressed memories of another uncertain and drifting life have invaded me, homogenizing with many previous lives in a confused cloud of half-experience.

As I floated in the aftermath of this life, my mind haunting my own child's body as the ghost of an old and restless spirit, I recognized him for the first time: I was tired.

The keystone punished me in a way that I could not have anticipated. Like a candle that falters in the face of a strong opposite wind, I was in danger of turning off. I knew it, but I couldn't do anything about it. I had no opportunity to back down, or give up. But with every life, the possibility of failure was becoming more and more real.

The life of the infant rushed as I languished in this post-mortem cloud. I allowed the memories of my decisions to float, without taking the time to dissect my last attempt to resolve the key as I had done for the previous time. There was a new collection of puzzle pieces that had to fit in one way or another together, but my very human consciousness was tired, and my little infant brain wanted to do nothing but eat, sleep and be clean.

Suddenly, I was a young child again. How many times now? I asked myself, briefly, without succeeding, to align all the lives of the keystone in order, each version of me resembling a little toy man placed on a shelf.

The young voracious version of me was already devouring the library books in my parents' office and was beginning to accumulate mana towards my sternum. It was enough for me to blink for the house to be destroyed when I woke up and so that everything started again.

By sinking completely into my body, I took possession of myself and stopped. I couldn't deal with all this again, not yet. I needed to rest. There was time... it took time.

Standing on my chubby and slightly arcuate legs, I gave up meditation to... play with cubes in my room. They weren't painted in color like the ones we had for the youngest children in the orphanage, but they were expertly carved to form small brick patterns, and I quickly arranged them to form a coarse wall. I indulged in the grey matter of my physical form as a child, and the instinct of a toddler took over. I started playing, effortlessly and without worry.

The day when I should have formed my nucleus and awakened, and Arthur Leywin's worries, Lance and Regent of all Dicathen, were overwhelmed by the desires of a toddler who quickly became a boy. Sometimes I had annoying echoes of memories, like my fourth birthday, when I suddenly thought we should have moved to Xyrus, but they fainted as fast as they had come. After a while, I no longer knew whether they were real or whether they were just half-forgotten little dreams.

I was approaching my thirteenth birthday when I first spoke about these strange memories of my father.

He stopped to ramble the rushes and looked at me with a pensive air. “Few people believe it today, but some ancients still speak of ancient customs. People thought their minds were reborn in a new body when they died. Reincarnation, I think they called it that way. One of the things they were based on was that kind of memories. You know, memories that don't seem to be yours." With a shrug of his shoulders, he returned to raking, pulling the old rods towards the door.

I pushed my own little pile of dirty rushes on the floor without really cleaning anything, my mind being absolutely not occupied with this task. "But sometimes, I remember... the magic."

Dad froze. I stared at him from the corner of my eye, and his face passed by several expressions one after the other. The surprise was quickly overshadowed by the pain, which melted into disappointment before finally being covered with a painful smile. "I don't think that's so strange, Art. All children dream of doing magic."

He sighed and pressed his rake against the wall. I did the same and dropped myself against him. He hugged me and clamp me against him.

"I'm sorry," I muttered into the rough cloth of his shirt.

"What?" he asked, caught off guard. “Why?”

"I know you're disappointed that I didn't wake up." I tried to keep a stable voice talking, copying the tone he used when he and Mom were arguing, but he didn't want to feel like it was.

He clenched and the embrace became troublesome. Slowly, he released me, then placed one hand on each side of my head and forced me to look it in the eye. "Listen to me, Art. You don't disappoint me. No," he added quickly when I tried to look away, unable to believe it. “Listen. I'm sorry if I gave you that impression. He interrupted and let go of me, struggling to keep his calm.

His jaw contracted as he picked up his rake and began cleaning the ground again. After a few seconds of hesitation, I followed his example.

"You have done nothing wrong, Art," he continued, the grater of his voice fading. "If I seemed disappointed, it's not because of you. I... I wanted so much that you were a wise, and maybe I'm disappointed with the situation, but never by you. I know you may not see the nuance now, but it's important that you try. I don't want you to grow up thinking you've disappointed me. On the contrary..." He interrupted himself to raking a large pile of rushes and went aside so that I could do the same.

"I'm afraid it was I who disappointed you," he ended by looking at me with watery eyes.

I wanted to tell him that he had not disappointed me, that I loved him, nor was it his fault. But I couldn't find the words.

He scraped his throat. "Hey, what do we do to melt? Your mother and sister will only come back from the market in a few hours. Why not put down these rakes and fetch the training swords?" His face became lighter, unknowingly, if it was a real excitement or a mere false aspy. “We can finish the chores later.”

I didn't really want to, but I still gotten acquiesced, knowing that he was just trying to help. Dad put an arm around my shoulders to hug me, and then gave me an elbow so that I could get past the front door. By the time I came back with the two training blades in my hand, I was already relaxing, leaving behind the dark thoughts of strange memories and magic to focus on the feeling of the leather-wrapped handle in my hands. When I put his sword back on dad and settled in the center of the courtyard to make us more flexible, I had almost forgotten the whole exchange.

I wasn't afraid to admit that I was good at a lot of things. Almost everything I was trying, actually. I might not have been able to form a nucleus, but I was doing pretty much everything very naturally. Sword fighting was no exception.

Dad had started training very early, and it was so natural for me that I was constantly surprised with my technique. It's at least what he liked to tell me. I didn't remember everything that had happened when I was four or five years old, but I knew I had always felt very comfortable when we were training, especially with swords. It was as if everything else was going in the background and I could focus on what I was doing.