Upon a Star: Remembered Eternity, Chapter...

Upon a Star: Remembered Eternity
Chapter ?
By Yurix

The war was over, Lady Xera told herself for the hundredth time, even as she tried once more to sleep, finding her wish for Oerbus’ embrace unanswered. All she could do to find some sort of respite was to listen to the small music box Devathion had purchased for her, or so she was told.

It had been several long days since her last moment of restful sleep. Ever since the new gem rested upon her chest, everything else felt out of place. On moments of loneliness, she thought about elvish cities she had never been to, spent her anger on attacks and movements she did not remember learning, and was beginning to see Devathion in a different light.

Once, walking side-by-side with the dragon in his human form felt somewhat distant, almost unnatural. Now, her mind was confused between moments where he would seem frightening and others where all she could think of was his letters… though she did not remember him being the romantic type.

Looking back at the fan she always kept close, she wondered how she obtained the gilded object. At times, she would remember having received it from an elvish merchant near House Aquamarine’s district, and other times, she remembered Devathion or someone else buying it for her. The worst memories linked to that object – and the reason why she did not wish to hold it – was of her stealing it.

The melody felt melancholic and reminiscent of something, but she could not figure what as her thoughts were a mess. All she could do was let it calm her down and leave her relaxed, even though sleep was not coming to her.

Raising herself from her desk after putting the fan in a drawer to avoid looking at it, Xera let out a yawn, eyes closing just long enough for her to notice that her boudoir mirror was different. Rather, the surface did not show the interior of her room, but rather someone’s office. “Hmm… is someone there?” she mumbled, trying to focus enough to walk over to the music box and shut it off before walking back to the mirror and taking a seat.

On the other side of the mirror, Turalyon’s face appeared, the man looking almost as tired as she was. “Excuse me, your Highness.” The man said as he removed a pair of reading glasses and put them away from his desk. “Is it a bad time to talk?”

“No… I couldn’t sleep.” The woman replied, wiping her eyes to keep awake. “Is something the matter, Sir Tural?”

The man on the other side of the screen cocked an eyebrow quizzically. “Umm… what did you just call me?”

The mousy woman shook her head before running her hands against her closed eyes. “Oh, I’m sorry… Turalyon.” She apologized, doing her best to remember the man’s name. “I don’t know if Oerbus has been chiding me, but I just can’t find much rest.”

“I can see that, but… how come you know my father’s name?” the Mediarch said, not remembering anyone ever knowing his father’s name.

“It might sound strange, but…” Lady Xera hesitated to answer, before mustering enough clarity of mind to do so. “Lately, my thoughts have been stirring in strange directions. I don’t know why, but the moment I saw you, I thought it was him.”

Turalyon ran his hand down his short beard, which he had grown since the end of the war. “I suppose I do look a bit like him now.” He realized, doing his best to quell the misunderstanding. “Only… I wanted to ask you about something, but now, you have been quite intrigued. Did you know him?”

Xera did not know how to properly answer. “Yes… no. Maybe… I don’t know. Maybe it’s just my mind that’s playing tricks on me…”

The battle-mage raised a hand to his chin. “Strange… I don’t remember you speaking so colloquially.” The man noticed, causing Xera to look away for a moment. “Perhaps your bouts of insomnia and those unsteady memories are linked. I might know a way to fix this, but for that, I’ll need to come over. I don’t suppose you have a larger mirror I could fit through?”

Travelling through reflective surfaces was a form of magic Xera had only heard of once before, and only seen a few times when ambassador meetings were called to Citadel. Given that the man was nearly a foot taller than she was, the only other mirror she could think of was the one in the dressing room. “Can your mirror follow me outside?”

“I suppose not…” the man concluded before grabbing the mirror he looked through, the image shaking before being lifted and dragged closer to the man’s face before being placed on another surface. “Just make sure there’s nothing in the way, and step back.”

Xera was finding the view strange. It looked like Turalyon’s boots were at the bottom end of the mirror. ‘Surely he…’ she began to say before letting out a sigh, deciding to move the chair as far back as she could. “I don’t know what you-“

The young empress barely had the time to speak her disapproval of what she believed the man would do as her boudoir’s mirror rippled like water before the Mediarch plunged through the mirror feet first, only to land on his back after reality and gravity resettled around him. “Ow… that wasn’t smart.” The man groaned as he checked his back for anything out of place.

“At least it saved you some time… and you didn’t land on your face.” The woman replied, making a tired smile, which would have eased the situation had she not yawned afterwards.

“I suppose…” the man said as he tried his best to get up, deciding to use the boudoir to lift himself in a sitting position. “Now, how about you tell me what you remember… while I make sure my back is straight. Let’s start with when these bouts of sleeplessness have begun.”

Xera sat down and sighed. “I think they started a few days after the war on Saberbia ended.” She began. “Once everyone returned from Citadel, the Bejemi had their own celebrations. Of course, as an Empress, I had to partake in each of them. Imagine celebrating ten festivities in one day.”

“That does sound a bit…” Turalyon groaned as he straightened his back, his bones creaking back into place. “…harrowing.”

“The day afterwards, some Houses kept on celebrating, so the city was filled with music and noise.” She continued before getting up and opening the room’s window enough to hear the rustle of wind and the pounding of rain against the walls. “It was long, and tiresome. I had little time to properly eat as I took part, taking a bite here and there to keep from starving.”

“Perhaps you should eat, then.” The man hastily concluded. “Lack of nourishment does sometimes lead to lack of sleep.”

“I spent the last four days eating healthy meals and trying to sleep.” The woman corrected him before almost nodding off. “Duty as a leader is hard…”

“Don’t I know it…” Turalyon cringed as he thought back to the last few days. “Everyone at the Order wanted to study the Crystal Flower near Saberbia, and we even had to send troops over to protect it because some idiots wanted to chip pieces off of the base and sell them as souvenirs… I swear, to do such a thing to such a wondrous artefact…”

“Now you understand why people were so intrigued by us Bejemi and by our Houses.” She replied, adding the faintest amount of sarcasm to remind him how much her city suffered in the past because of what happened.

Turalyon took a moment to get up in a slow, painful motion. “I’m starting to see your point.” Was all he could say before walking over to the only other object near Xera’s chair – the bed. “So, you went to a few too many parties and weren’t able to sleep well since?”

“Not just that…” Xera replied, noticing how she was not speaking as formally as she should. “I asked the Houses to provide me with some support. For the past few days, I tried sleeping droughts, concoctions, remedies… enough to make a bear hibernate. They would only work an hour at a time before I awoke, restless as ever. It felt like… well… my mind was left unable to dream.”

This was becoming increasingly intriguing, he thought. “What about nightmares? Have you had any recently?”

He knew he had hit a sensible chord when she began to shiver. “It’s not so much a nightmare as a memory…” she said after a long moment of silence. Walking over to the windows to shut them completely, Xera rubbed her arms. “I remember… dying. Feeling Tiger’s Eye’s claws rip through my body, smashing my gems one by one.”

Turalyon took the time to pull out the woman’s quill and inkwell from her desk before sitting down to write, making sure to capture every single word. “It definitely is a devastating thought.” He replied, before noticing how he should have said ‘debilitating’, referring to her state. “Now, when did you start remembering things that weren’t quite right?”

The woman raised a hand to her lips before letting it limply fall. “Um… a few days ago, I think…” she hesitated anew, straightening herself on her chair. “One of my maids had handed me a music box as a gift and told me that it could help me sleep. But it’s a bit strange: whenever I turned it on and listen to it, I feel like sleeping, but something keeps me from falling completely asleep.”

Turalyon looked around before noticing the object and walking over to it. The box in question was cubic in shape with rounded edges, made of polished redwood and possessed a golden clasp to keep it closed. The moment he opened it to study the object, he noticed a tiny statue inside of painted ivory, representing a polished damsel that spun on its centerpiece. Seeing no wind-up mechanism, he came to the conclusion that the object was mana-powered, and that it sprung to action the moment the lid was flipped up.

Looking at the object, he noticed how the statuette resembled Lady Xera, but was more startled by the song that it played - ‘The Waiting Unknown’ -, the very same one that the Waiting Ones sang out at the end of the Battle of Saberbia before disappearing. Examining the statuette spin for a moment and waiting for the song to begin repeating itself before closing, the man let out a heavy sigh. “Do you mind if I bring it with me? I want to study it further.”

He waited for a moment for an answer before noticing that Xera was not moving from her chair, her eyes half-open. “Milady?” the man spoke before tapping her shoulder with his hand, finding little reaction save for a slurry groan.

Pocketing the object, he studied the empress’ actions – or rather, lack of. Her pulse seemed fine, if a bit slow, but reactions to most bodily stimuli – pinching the skin of her arm, tapping against the back of her hand, even dropping the box on the ground to make as much noise as possible – did nothing. “Hmm… maybe…” he thought to himself before looking straight at her. “Milady, can you hear me?” A slow nod, as if she was a Construct, but no other response. “Milady, do you know who I am?”

“Tural…” the woman droned on for a moment, stretching each phonetic tone as if her mind was bathed in molasses.

The man placed both hands against his lips. Hypnosis, that’s what it was. Whoever had given her that box wanted to hypnotize her. The question now was why. Still, part of him still wanted to know what the young empress knew about his father. “Milady, what can you tell me about Sir Tural?”

The woman resumed talking in a monotone, dragged voice. “Dragon… knight… slayer…”

The last word made Turalyon drop his quill as he froze. “My father… was a dragon slayer?” he let out, before remembering that it was the middle of the knight and other people were sleeping. “I thought he was a member of the Order sent to Bejem to study dragons, not to kill them…” A split second before he realized that studying specimens often meant studying not just their habitat and eating habits, but also their bones and corpses. “Good lord…”

Xera continued her slurred words. “…was after… Devathion… changed…”

The man paused her for a second to think. “So he was after Devathion in an attempt to subdue him, and instead allied himself with him… why?”

“Helped me…” Xera briefly replied. “Dead… not dead… dragon… not dragon…”

Turalyon was finding more questions in the woman’s hypnotized words than answers. “Lady Xera, stop.” He said, breathing in deep as he finished writing what comprehensible words that had sluggishly flown out of the woman’s mouth before walking over to her, making sure to lock gaze with her half-opened eyes. “Listen to me carefully: I want you to write down everything you remember in a diary of some sort, even things that you remember but don’t understand why, and send it to me. Do you understand?” A slow, almost mechanical nod. “Good. Now… the moment I clap my hands three times, you will wake up, remember what happened when you were hypnotized before, and for thereon, you will no longer be hypnotized by the music, nor anything else.”

Another slow nod from Xera before Turalyon quickly clapped his hands three times. The woman’s eyes blinked hard as she gasped for air. “Good grace…” she breathed out, getting up in a panic only to bump into the battle-mage who was still in a half-squat before her, knocking him down, landing on his backside. “Huh…? Turalyon? What are you… wait… did you-“

“It seems that someone was manipulating you in your sleep.” The man said as he decided to remain on the ground, sitting cross-legged. “Do you remember anything?”

The empress took a second to calm herself as she delved into the memories that trickled into her mind from somewhere. “A woman’s voice… and a man’s too. Something about… Gon’an and… a dragon?”

Turalyon frowned, first because he did not remember the legend of a dragon in Bejem, and also because he had sat in the spilled inkwell that had fallen from his hand as she got up. “I’ve heard of the Gonanese weyrs, but nothing about a dragon…”

“There was something else… a beach… and a large shadow.” The woman continued before shaking her head. “I’m sorry. I can’t remember anything else.”

The man’s expression turned grim. Having heard some of Gon’an’s sayings before, the beach referred to the northern shore, which was said to be a place of grim remembrance. According to legends, one of the last great kings of Gon’an, William the Third, had settled what would have been the base of his great city long ago on the northern shore of the island. However, the man was said to have become demented and cursed the Planars, who flooded his lands and drowned his city. The northern shore became a floating cemetery for all who died due to the man’s madness, and some even believed that people could see the fallen ones live on during the last hours of the night.

As for the large shadow… “The beach could mean the northern shore, and the shadow could be a threat…” Turalyon hypothesized before looking at Xera. “Hmm… over the past few days, did you meet or see someone unfamiliar?”

The woman took a few seconds to remember what had happened. “Well… I went to the market early in the morning to ask for new produce, and… hmm… there was this one woman.” She said, stopping to rub her forehead gem with a finger – something Turalyon figured was a way to show that a Bejemi was deep in thought. “She was interested in Devathion’s scales, but what was unusual was that she had odd eyes and hair.”

Turalyon lifted himself from the ground, absent-mindedly putting his hand in the spilled-over ink and cursing himself silently. “What do you mean ‘odd eyes and hair’?” he asked, having trouble showing his irritation as he used his pantaloons to wipe the liquid off.

“Well… once side was gold, and the other was brown.” Xera explained, trailing her hands down each side of her head for each color, before pointing to one eye than the next. “Also, one eye was blue, and the other was green. She even had elf ears, but looked a bit more on the human side.”

“A half-elf woman with different colored eyes…” the man repeated before looking for his notes. “What did she wear? And do you remember what she sounded like?”

“Um… she looked like an adventurer of some sort.” The Bejemi woman added. “Studded… no, a spiked leather armor, a pair of steel gauntlets that looked melded into her skin, and she had… umm… something against of her back. A long steel pole of some sort… maybe an axe?”

The man used some mana-weaving to burn a sketchy image onto the page. “Anything strange about her face?”

“She had… eyes like a cat… or maybe a wolf?” the woman tried to remember, beginning to have doubts. “The strangest thing was that she wore a horribly foul perfume. Almost like that… liquid the maids use to clean bed sheets.”

Turalyon froze at the mention of the last point of description. “She smelled like… bleach?” he asked, already knowing the answer. “If that’s the case… then you better set up a warrant for her arrest.”

“Why? Who is she?” the woman asked as the battle-mage used the boudoir’s mirror to create a portal. “Where are you going?”

“One, I’m going to warn everyone. Two, whatever that stranger is, she might be hunting for dragons… or worse.” Turalyon hurriedly said as he packed the paper he had written and drawn on. “Third… if she really did smell like bleach, then this could be another of Volkram’s homunculi – one we hadn’t heard of before.”

Xera gasped as the mention of Volkram’s name. Before she could ask the man any more questions, Turalyon jumped through the mirror, shutting the portal behind him.

A long sigh escaped her lips once more. “If that madman is still alive… then I’m never going to get a proper night’s sleep...” she groaned before tossing one of her bed sheets on the ground, the fabric sponging up the remaining ink.