The Weight of Legacy

Within the privacy of her study, Bernadette gaped at the letter in her hands.

The parchment had a brittleness to it.

If she continued to grip it so, she might tear it apart.

To the interloper Bernadette,

While your concern is noted, it is of no value to me. You belong in this search no more than I would in the ruins of your family home, and to act as though finding my sister were some task or duty of yours is laughable at best and disrespectful at worse.

What you do with your time and resources is your business to mind, so return the favor and keep your course clear of my affairs. None wish for her safe return more than I do, and your missives are unwarranted and unwelcome. Should I wish to communicate anything to my family, I can do that myself.

You who have always stood between us and our unity have no right to ask these things of me. For the good of us both, never contact me again.

Bernadette remained at her desk, steadying her breath. She need not dignify this with a reaction.

The parchment was torn apart anyway.

Anselm hadn’t the faintest clue why he awoke feeling worse than usual—he had been beginning to wonder if that was even possible. An insurmountable weight appeared intent on keeping him still, and he couldn’t so much as open his eyebrows or even gasp. Read full story at noᴠelfire.net

It had to be a dream, he reasoned. Not unlike that day. He had caught glimpses then and there of that liminal place of flowing water that howled like air, of flickering stars and cold humidity that seemed to permeate existence itself. Always while asleep, but never for long—fleeting memories of a persistent dream.

Something was different this time. It felt closer to the first time, even if he found himself surprised to see no panic building in his chest. The intangible waves danced harmlessly around him, lapping at rocks just beyond grasp. The wind carried a distant tune, joined by cries belonging to animals he couldn’t recognize.

Not once before had he thought—even considered thinking—of the waves as peaceful, but as he watched them sway, he could not think of any other way to see it. There was a rhythm to it that could not possibly belong anywhere beneath the waves.

It cooled him as cloth might to a fever, while a warmth that hovered the line between pleasant and searing built within his core—a strange balance, but it worked. And it tugged at him, pulling him in some unfathomable direction.

All that frustration stemming from his inability to recall what he had seen the first time around was but an afterthought, yet the desire to try again bloomed in him.

An immeasurable amount of time into the dream, Anselm realized he could look around himself, gaze upon a strange expanse of stars impossible in their brilliance. Rocky keys surrounded him on all sides, a luminous cove to his right. His focus on it seemed to move him closer, calm waters splashing beneath him as though he were walking through them.

There was a nameless beauty to it all, something he could have never attributed to the sea outside of a dream. At least, Anselm hoped it was a dream, not some product of delirium. He wasn’t even sure he believed he’d hallucinated what he saw after taking those tonics anymore. By now, most of what he had experienced seemed genuine in hindsight, with the means of it happening being what remained unclear.

He wondered at what point he’d started to view things this way—perhaps he always had. His instincts were pointedly lacking in self-preservation as far as most aspects of life went, in part driven by what he now recognized as arrogance. Of course things could go wrong, but why would they ever go wrong for him?

Perhaps concern should have been at the forefront of his mind, both then and now, but Anselm found he didn’t particularly care. A preternatural sense of contentment circled him like the beats of a drum, and nothing more complex than superficial thoughts formed.

The scents were pleasant, lacking the stench of rot that usually accompanied the sea’s brine. It made him want to stretch, take in the sights, relax—desires that did not belong anywhere near the waves.

Only once he approached the coast proper did the expected dread and discomfort manifest. Baskets and other—unidentifiable—objects were strewn about the surprisingly light-toned sand, shifting in position every now and then as though in use by people he couldn’t perceive.

Pulses of dread coursed through him, almost like whispers foretelling how he was unwelcome, being watched, but he found he could not stop moving through the space. Shadows encroached on him as he dove into the space sheltered by the cove, almost sunken into darkness as sand shifted to sandstone and into steps.

The hall it led down to was cramped and unlit, almost seeming unfinished, like it had been crudely carved into the ground in centuries past and neglected ever since. It was dry, with piles of sand having collected at every turn—a contrast to that which had preceded it.

Anselm moved past half a dozen doors, barely catching a glimpse of some of them. He wanted to stop, to learn of whatever hid behind those doors, but he found himself all but carried to the last turn, leading into a hall and a single door at its end.

Ceramic tiles sprung from the edges of the door-frame, decorating parts of the wall closest to the ceiling before they simply stopped, as though whoever had placed them never returned to resume the task.

The door creaked open on its own, wood lined with splinters, and Anselm dropped into the room as if pushed, the door slamming shut behind him. Glass rose above him, a mosaic of colors that made the room’s contents appear bathed in a facsimile of magic. He felt it even in the air, for a moment before it struck him that that was exactly what it indeed had to be—the entire room buzzed with it.

Though far from large, the room was heavily furnished, swathed in fabrics and with many seats and cushions available. A small tea table bearing a set of porcelain serveware stood at its center, and a figure lingered on one of its two chairs, both elbows on the table as a perch for its head.

Anselm tried and failed to ignore it within the first second—he couldn’t look away.

Its face bore more than a passing similarity to the porcelain on the table, an inorganic yet fragile-looking visage of off-white and gold. It was unnatural, but humanoid enough—certainly a more palatable sight than the shape the entity had worn the first time around. Nevertheless, he was close enough that he could see its legs were tangled in some imitation of a crouch atop the chair that would have been impossible had it been a human being, given how the rest of its body was positioned above the table.

Were the entity aware of him watching it, it showed no reaction—perhaps he would be beneath its notice. He remained unsure of how he knew it had to be her, the creature at the center of his problems. She appeared to be doing nothing in particular, slow blinks being the only indication of the passage of time.

Waiting for something—anything—was an oddly peaceful endeavor. Anselm would be a fool to deny himself even a distant chance at getting some answers. The passage of time was an uncertain thing, but the deity must have remained in that position for hours. Perhaps that was the way with they who were eternal—what weight did days hold when one’s weren’t numbered?

At some point, awareness that he could move away began to dawn on him. The tether that had shifted his dream in this direction was not an absolute force. Anselm was pulled back the instant he reached that conclusion, and his surroundings began to fray around the edges.

Again, he felt as though he were swimming, but the pressure that descended upon him was considerably gentler than it had been—perhaps he could simply no longer offer any significant resistance. Cold gushed through his head, painting before him a picture. A forest that felt vaguely familiar, for all he knew with certainty that he had never been through it.

The woman was there again, her face hidden by a trick of the light—most of which was golden. It danced around her, around everything, as though its source were moving. It took him a moment to understand he was wrong there—the rustling of leaves above was undeniable, and the light was shifting in tandem to that.

Without warning, the tide came at them from all sides, and the woman turned, her body shielding the point he was watching the events unfold from. He grew disoriented then, before a force far greater than what had dragged him around until now pulled him downwards.

As with the first time, the scene looped around itself. The woman grew distant, then closer, while the sea fell upon them, and rose, all the while the sensation of falling intensified. Cave walls hugged at him as his descent came to an abrupt halt—unrecognizable pictograms adorned them, despite the passage’s narrowness.

Something snapped, and he tumbled once again.

The sight of someone flying caught Anselm’s eye—not within the cavern he crashed into, but elsewhere. Superimposed events, almost too difficult to follow. The cries of a child injured by a daunting fall rose to match the howling of wind as a masked figure soared through open skies.

Sunlight smiled upon them, shimmering enthusiastically on the bangles they wore. The mask was one befitting a celebration, ornate and dainty—it connected to earcuffs that somehow managed to avoid growing entangled with their flowing dark hair.

The individual seemed shrouded in the same energy the woman the sea fell on was, something Anselm was growing certain he could identify yet knew not how to define. It was solemn yet joyous, dreadful yet natural.

At once, both images collapsed, and Anselm found himself floating again. The beauty of it was gone, replaced by a growing discomfort. He remained as stiff and unmoving as he had been throughout the dream, without being afforded any numbness anymore.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from NovelFire. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

The instinct to wheeze and gasp fell short—his body would not obey him at all. Not once before had he been kept from something as crucial as breathing, and while not long ago he had been resigned to the likelihood of dying, he found himself dreading the idea of it being this way.

The warmth in his core intensified—perhaps it had belonged to his heart all along. A jolt went through him, making his entire body twitch, and he shot upwards into a sitting position, finally able to gasp.

As his eyes opened, it struck him that the burning had neither stabilized nor stopped. He gritted his teeth involuntarily as his blood lit up, the distinct sensation of foreign mana burning through it, and he knew he could no more scream than he could have spoken of anything without the blessing lashing out at him.

For a drawn-out minute, Anselm could have sworn he could see the light even through his skin, his heart thundering in his ears as an explosive headache disrupted his ability to focus. As it retreated, he found his heart slowed considerably, until he grew uncomfortably aware of it barely beating at all. He knew instinctively that his blood had returned to the frigid sludge the past months had turned it into.

The moment his body no longer felt locked into place, he collapsed back.

Anselm panted. He felt exhausted in a way separate from his usual lethargy, as though he had exercised far beyond his capacity. Sleep barely helped combat his tiredness most days, but he could not recall ever awaking more drained than he previously had been.

A cursory glance at his panels had him doubting he could even be surprised anymore.