Bereft: Foretold

11 | A Tempting Inferno

The mind is an estate of endless doors and countless rooms. Each room is a memory—a moment of life—carefully sealed away, the walls are barriers barring access, and every door is a connection that sparks a remembrance. As time goes on, the estate withers, decays, and breaks down. Repairs are done: doors are oiled, pathways are secured, and walls are rebuilt. 

Sometimes, in the event of a cataclysm, the estate can be shaken to its foundations without hope of it ever being rebuilt, but the mind has a will of its own, and will endeavor on even if the soul is unwilling to do so. Portals will be framed, roofs will be patched, and stairs will be straightened. Broken walls rise anew, and sometimes those walls appear where doorways had once been. Those rooms, those memories, are sealed off. In time, they are forgotten completely.

For a man like me, a man who'd been immortal and had survived for more than a thousand human lifetimes, the estate of my mind is a world of its own creation. It is a manor with pillars drawn to stand in the time of creation, and where there should be a ceiling, there is only a yawning expanse where the cosmos lap upon my thoughts like waves. There are entire wings I hadn't trod through in centuries, their rugs covered in filth and their chandeliers wrapped in veils of cobwebs.

When the mage struck my head, my mind was jarred. Dust was shaken from furniture, all the lights flickered, and in the farthest corridors where the walls were primitive and comprised of stone, cracks appeared in the mortar, and bricks gave way. I stepped over the rubble and winced as a light that hadn't come on in eons burst to life. 

Obscuring fog still clung to the edges of my vision—but I was walking, body locked into the movements of the memory. I was in a garden with low bushes and kept plants, all the leaves an odd mixture of rich green and metallic gold, while the path crossing the beds was made of crushed, alabaster stone. The air swam with the scent of blooming flowers I couldn't recall the names of. 

I wore boots with hard soles, and pants that tucked into the tops where the iron buckles encircled my calves. The coat I wore was created from a thick, fitted material and was belted about the middle, while the collar was flat and rough against the skin of my neck. The hem fell below my waist, but it was slit at my left hip as to not be a hindrance if I were to reach for the sword at my side. It was a long blade of shined metal with a smooth, deadly curve. 

My hands were different. Though no less strong, the bones were thinner and the fingernails had been replaced by honed talons. 

I walked without purpose, swaggering through the gardens despite the weight of the boots and my attire. There were many columns in the gardens rising up toward the canvas of the sky painted in the warms hues of sunset. Each was topped with a thick crescent, and I couldn't remember what they were for or what they meant.

I couldn't even remember where I was.

Wherever this memory occurred, I must have known it well because I moved without true thought and came upon a fountain gushing with bright silver water. I dipped my strange fingers in the gentle current—feeling nothing, because I couldn't remember the texture of it or the temperature.

A voice spoke above. "You look a sight." 

The speaker was seated in one of those lifted crescents, eclipsed by the fog of my mind. He tipped from his perch and—though the drop was more than fifteen feet—landed easily at the fountain's opposing side. Holding a thick scroll under one arm, he used his free hand to toss back a white hood. 

Sethan.

My brother had always been slighter than I was, thinner in proportion with large eyes and a narrower chest, though he was an inch or so taller in height. Robes of white embellished in gold thread fell to his knees, parting in the front to reveal his red tunic and a belt meant to harness bound rolls of parchment, not blades. His ears were tipped with elongated points, as were his teeth.