Thirstfall - Memory of a Returnee

The light is still coming down over the Goddess when I turn to the others to see how they're holding up.

Veric is standing near Rhayne, still working out a stance that didn't exist a few hours ago. Undertow is tucked under the arm he has left, heavy, punched through at the center by the laser. Zhang Xi has finished her treatment and keeps her hands folded inside her sleeves, watching the statue in silence. Freya is a little further back, rubbing a small necklace against her chest, letting out faint breaths.

'I think they're ready. As ready as this gets.'

The message stays in the corner of my vision.

[Reveal your name before the Goddess.]

"Now comes the part we came in here for."

My voice comes out lower than I expected, rough from the OXI I spent, from exhaustion, and from things that wouldn't make me weak to say out loud but would hurt.

I point at the small stone basin at the statue's feet and keep going before anyone can step forward.

"Each of you is going to offer a reliquary. Commercial value doesn't matter. It can be a Gold-tier relic or a piece of wood nobody would buy for one Scale. What matters is the weight it carries for you. If you lose it and think you could simply find another one tomorrow, it doesn't count."

Rhayne looks at the basin. Zhang does the same, while Veric keeps his eyes down.

"It has to be something you recognize as part of your own life. Something whose loss can't be replaced by the same object bought somewhere else."

Freya has been watching me for a while. I notice when she comes closer, because her shadow crosses part of the beam of light beside me.

"Are you all right?"

The question hits me harder than it should.

My first impulse is to say yes. It's easy, automatic, and it probably would have ended the subject. But my eyes end up going to Veric, and to the empty space where his arm should be.

"It's going to be all right."

Freya keeps watching me for a few seconds. She doesn't ask whether that means I'm all right now. Maybe because she already knows the answer.

She just nods and steps back.

I look at Zhang Xi.

"You start."

She doesn't look surprised. She reaches inside her tunic and searches for something near her chest, which catches me off guard, since it means she wasn't keeping it in her inventory. When she draws her hand out, there's a small wooden piece between her fingers.

It takes me a moment to understand what it represents.

It's a monk, or a careful attempt at carving one. The head is too big, one shoulder sits higher than the other, and the arms are different lengths. The face was formed with a few crooked cuts, and the folds of the robe look like they were opened into the wood by someone who didn't yet know how a blade was supposed to follow the grain.

It has no artistic value at all.

But it was kept long enough that the edges are smooth from handling.

Zhang closes her hand around the figure and waits.

"Say your name first. Then repeat: 'I offer you my reliquary in exchange for your providence. Let the toll of my anguish be paid.' While you put the object in the basin, think about the Reentry Pearl. You don't have to explain what you want. Just hold it in your head."

She nods and walks to the statue.

The hall is quiet, and her steps spread across the stone until they disappear under the white light falling on the Goddess. From close up, the figure looks even larger. The six arms open around the empty space in front of the chest, and the serene face stays tilted toward whoever arrives at her feet.

Zhang stops in front of the basin and looks at the small figure in her own hand. Her thumb passes over the wood one last time before she lifts her head.

"I am Zhang Xi. I offer you my reliquary in exchange for your providence. Let the toll of my anguish be paid."

She sets the figure inside the basin.

Nothing happens right away.

The silence lasts a few seconds, and Zhang's fingers close at her sides. Then a delicate light appears in the palms of the Goddess's six hands. The luminous lines run into the space between them and start holding up a translucent image with no defined edges, as though a memory had found a way to exist outside the head that carried it, in the form of a stream.

A boy appears.

He must be around fourteen. He's sitting in front of a small wooden house, bent over something he's holding near his knees. The memory preserves the essentials with a strange clarity: the worn boards of the porch, the sun coming through the leaves, a small knife, and the wooden figure still unfinished.

The boy carefully shaves one side of the monk, holds the piece out to look at the result, and winces.

The cut came out crooked.

He tries to correct it.

The shoulder gets worse.

He lets out a sigh, runs a finger over the wood, and keeps working anyway, focused in a way only someone very young can be in front of a small thing he's treating as important.

The image moves ahead a few moments.

Zhang Xi, who had been watching from a distance, now appears in front of him, younger than the woman standing at our side. The boy hides his hands behind his back the second he notices her coming. He seems to reconsider everything for a few seconds, then holds it out.

Zhang Xi takes the gift.

First she looks at the crooked monk, at the uneven arms, at the badly cut face. Then she looks at the boy.

He's clearly waiting for judgment.

Zhang smiles.

She runs a hand over his head and pulls him in.

The boy stays still for two seconds, red to the ears, before escaping the hug and running into the house. He trips on the first step, catches his balance, and disappears through the door without looking back.

The memory holds a moment longer.

Zhang is still outside, holding the little monk in her hands and looking at the doorway the boy vanished through.

Then the image fades.

Nobody asks who he was.

Zhang keeps looking at the space between the statue's arms, and a small smile appears on her face. There's sadness in it, but she doesn't look like she regrets bringing that memory all the way to the end of this dungeon.

The Goddess's voice crosses the hall.

Feminine, serene, and clean, as if it isn't coming from any specific point in the room.

"Your reliquary has weight. Your providence is recognized."

The little monk starts disappearing inside the basin. The wood loses color slowly, dissolving into pale particles that rise a few inches before vanishing into the air. When the last fragment is gone, a new light forms in the same place and starts taking on volume.

A small sphere takes shape.

Pale, smooth, with a faint pearled shine.

It's the Reentry Pearl.

Zhang reaches out and collects it carefully.

Rhayne comes closer and touches her shoulder.

"You did it."

Zhang looks at the pearl in her own palm and nods. Freya and I trade a small smile. Veric just tips his head in acknowledgment.

Nobody celebrates.

The absence of his arm stays present in the hall even when nobody is looking directly at it.

We wait for Zhang to come back to the group before I turn to Freya.

"Did you get the instructions?"

"I got them."

She walks toward the Goddess, and only when she raises a hand to the back of her neck do I realize what she means to offer.

The necklace has been there so many times that I'd practically stopped seeing it, and today, watching her rub it over and over, I knew it would be her offering.

The chain is thin, made of silver already darkened in places by time, and it holds a small oval pendant. At the center there's a pale blue piece, delicate, framed by a simple setting that suggests neither wealth nor any special origin.

Freya opens the clasp.

The chain slides through her fingers.

For a few seconds she only looks at the necklace hanging from her hand, as though she's getting used to the idea that this is the last time she'll hold it.

Then she steps up to the basin.

"I am Freya Gunnulf. I offer you my reliquary in exchange for your providence. Let the toll of my anguish be paid."

She sets the necklace down.

This time the light comes faster.

The stream opens between the six hands, but the perspective confuses me for the first instant. Freya isn't in front of us.

We are Freya.

Two small hands take up the lower part of the memory, a child's, thin, with fingers that haven't yet found the steadiness of the woman I know.

Rector Dean is in front of her.

Younger.

He's still easy to recognize, though there are fewer marks on his face and his posture looks lighter. He crouches down closer to the girl's height and holds something between his fingers.

The necklace.

The silver chain still shines like new.

Dean places the piece into the small hands.

"Welcome to Thirstfall. I'll take care of you, little girl."

The voice is soft.

Almost paternal.

The child's hands close around the pendant.

"That's a gift so you remember who you belong to down here."

The sentence hangs there inside the memory.

There's no face of Freya to watch, only those small hands wrapping around the necklace a little tighter.

Then the image closes.

The silence after it is different from the one that followed Zhang.

Freya lets the air out slowly through her mouth and brings her fingers to the empty place on her neck. The skin under the chain is slightly paler, giving away how long that piece had stayed there.

Nobody comments on what Dean said. After a few seconds, she's the one who does.

"That was my last link to him."

Her eyes stay on the basin.

"I never kept it because of Dean."

We all watch in silence.

Freya touches her neck again before letting her hand drop. She speaks slowly.

"My parents sold me."

The sentence comes out without a tremor.

"And I still loved them both."

Freya keeps going, her voice more tired than bitter.

"I spent a long time trying to understand how those two things could exist together. First I thought it made me an idiot. Then I thought it meant I was weak. In the end that necklace stayed with me because every time I touched it I remembered them, and I remembered that someone could do a thing like that to me without being able to tear out everything I felt."

She looks at the small pendant.

"That's why it always mattered to me. Never because of Dean."

"You don't have to explain, Freya. It's fine," I say.

"I'm just getting it out."

The light in the Goddess's hands grows.

"Your reliquary has weight. Your providence is recognized."

Freya closes her eyes.

The chain starts disappearing link by link, each stretch of silver turning into small luminous particles before it stops existing. The pendant stays alone for a few seconds, reflecting the Goddess's light across the blue surface, until it starts losing shape too.

When it's gone, Freya opens her eyes.

A new Reentry Pearl starts materializing.

She stays still while the sphere forms, as though she's waiting for some reaction inside herself that she doesn't know the name of yet. When the process finishes, she reaches out and collects the pearl.

Her head stays down for a moment. Then Freya comes back.

Passing me, she brings her hand to her neck out of habit. Her fingers find only skin.

She notices the gesture, stays like that for a few seconds, and lets her arm fall.

She doesn't say anything.

Two people walked up to the Goddess carrying objects that had crossed years with them.

Two come back without them.

The Reentry Pearls are in their hands now, but the price didn't disappear just because they got something in return.

I look at Rhayne.

"Your turn."

She takes a breath and steps forward.

Another sound crosses the hall at the same time.

Veric is walking.

Rhayne stops and turns her head.

He passes her without saying anything, carrying Undertow under the one arm he has left. His balance is still strange, and the empty sleeve swings beside his body with every step.

"Veric."

My voice doesn't stop him.

He keeps moving toward the Goddess, eyes fixed on the small basin where two reliquaries have already disappeared and two Reentry Pearls have been born.

Rhayne puts out a hand on reflex, maybe to hold him back, but she doesn't touch him.

I don't stop him either.

After watching Zhang and Freya hand over things they could never get back and receive exactly what they came for, I have a good idea of what Veric is thinking.

And from the way he's walking up to the Goddess, he believes he knows how much he's willing to pay.