An Age of Mysterious Memories

B 3 C 6: The Target of My Endless Wrath

It’s pleasant to have Magnus swimming beside me. If one thought his chubbiness might hamper his athleticism, they’d be wrong. His movements are fluid and strong. His tail works as fin, rudder, and flipper. It gives him fantastic control over his propulsion through the water. I’d always been impressed by my otter family’s aquatic maneuverability, but Magnus is easily on par with the best of us, if not even more impressive.

I wonder if perhaps my tail should be a beaver tail when I’m done growing scales and a reptilian tail. I need to stick to the plan of reptilian features for now, so that I can safely broker peace with the naga, and any other potential scalekin, or scalekind, as Dehlia called them. Do all reptiles possess a crystalline heart core like Lil? Dehlia was able to teach Lil a spell that allowed them to retreat into their core, giving up their corporeal form, their physical body. But to know a spell like that, she’d have to have met at least someone else that had such a core to learn it from, right? The way she spoke of her people, it sounded like they were all extremely advanced in the ways of various magics.

I need to break the lock on my max mana and then expand it over eleven hundred again to even begin making decent progress on my own scale-ification again. I’ve sort of stalled out, since I can’t even fully attempt to engage a self evolution tether right now. That’s part of how I can mold my form through self actualization. I partially evolve a form, without fully committing, while imagining the base form I return to as being different than what it was. I then have to drop the tether before I fully assume the secondary evolution form, and voila, minor alterations. A few scales here, a few millimeters of tail there. All in all, it’s exhausting. I suppose if I really wanted to, I could make my base form the same as that thirty odd foot tall monstrosity of my fourth evolutionary form over time. I’m not sure if changing my base form will confer related powers or prowess though.

Magnus and I swim in a corkscrew pattern as we lance through the tunnels that lead out of the dam to the river proper. It’s almost thrilling to have him at my side. He seems to just be enjoying himself so much. It’s been a while since I’ve seen someone jubilant to be doing something I had begun to consider mundane. Don’t get me wrong, my family and I still enjoy taking swims, and fishing, but his glee is on a whole other level.

If I recall correctly, Teuila said the beavers out-water-punned the otters during some lumber collecting mission they were on. I honestly can’t imagine them marching along with us to any new location if water is their ecstasy, their purest bliss. I’m surprised my family of otters was able to handle how much time we had to spend on dry land. I’m even more surprised that they didn’t build their home directly in the river or pond. I guess they got used to our dry, cozy, warm dugouts.

The idea for those dugouts started with just me and Lil, then we used it one time for our quad, and I was certain it was the right choice for safety in the swamps. I think of Lil, Luni, and Teuila as my quad, but I guess a quad has to include me, so I’m part of my quad too, I just seem to be this nebulous entity in my own mind. It’s like, of course I’m there, I’m part of it, but I never list me, even though I count us as a group of four. I guess we’re five now, with Luna. That’s going to take some getting used to. I think Luni was as surprised as anyone. She was possibly even more surprised than anyone, with how that turned out. I know she doesn’t know every single thing about the future, just certain events that need to turn out certain ways.

Argh, I have to stop thinking about it, I could spoil all the effort she has put in. Luni has taken on so much pain to be able to guide us through what I hope is the final, best timeline. The hurt that engraves itself upon her soul for having to keep secrets is palpable. The torture is so substantial that I sometimes worry if it’s even all worth it. The most conflicted she gets also seems to be when it has to do with our individual relationship within our group. The look of terror she wore when she barely nodded an admittance of one aspect of the future, one time, spoke so many volumes. Yet even more is spoken in an underlying tone, the shakiness, the uncertainty of certain phrases, words, pronunciations. She slipped up once, and used a term of endearment in an accent that doesn’t exist in this world. I need to stop thinking about this. My heart aches for Luni’s plight, and for the thoughts I’m not allowed to partake in.

Right, right, get out of my own head. Teuila would admonish me for getting distracted. I’ve been playing around too long underwater with Magnus. We’ve meandered and spiraled during our swim, and I’m nearing my limit. We’ve spent about twenty minutes underwater at this point. My lung capacity grows every time I nearly drown, but I’d like to not have that happen right now. I don’t want Magnus to fret as to whether or not it’s okay to resuscitate me via mouth-to-mouth if I end up passing out.

I sense potent emotions coming from the surface of the river. Someone powerful is upset, and that’s not good. I motion for Magnus to surface cautiously after me. He looks perplexed, but responds with an affirmative nod. Trying to save myself the embarrassment of passing out from drowning right now, I JT propel myself through the last bit of water and out above the surface of the river. As I’m flying through the air to land on the east bank, I’m met with no one in sight. Hm, odd.

It’s a longshot, but I try to telepathically reach out to Lil, Teuila, or Luni. They might be hours of travel to the northwest if they’re trying to dig me out of that hole. Though my friends are strong, the trees are massive. None of my friends have the strength to lift them, not even Teuila with her ludicrous base and enhanced strength. If they tried to chop through any of the trees, they might collapse the whole lot of them down into the tunnel, where they probably worry that I’m lying unconscious.

Magnus fairly jets out of the water to land beside me as I’m pondering whether or not to rush immediately to the site of the earthquake. I pat the ground next to me as I situate myself in lotus position. Magnus sits excitedly and grabs one of my hands. I chuckle but squeeze his pawed hand lightly in response. He’s probably waiting for me to pull out the pencils and paper, but I need a moment to figure out something. There’s a clue I missed.

Just then, a massive stomping can be heard, as of an enormous creature charging across the land on the west bank. Luna emerges into view, ridden by Lu, Lil, and Te. During Luna’s sprint, she doesn’t slow down at the edge of the river, instead, she leaps and soars across to land atop me, bowling me over, squashing me beneath her hindquarters. Magnus lets out a sharp bruxing that sounds terrified as he tries to pry me from beneath my friend’s butt.

The fact that all of us begin laughing seems to clue Magnus in that he can resume a calm nature, for the most part. Magnus appears to calm down, but doesn’t let go of my hand.

Te calls out, “Hey dweebus, who’s this you were holding hands with? New boyfriend?”

I respond, “I uh, I think so actually, yeah, probably.”

Te calls back with only mild surprise at first, giving way to excitement and glee, “Huh. Nifty. Really? That’s awesome!”

Te tackles Magnus into a hug, Lil and Lu follow suit, pinning Magnus to the ground, as they’ve done to me so many times. I give one of Luna’s silky-feathered legs a hug from beneath her squishy bum. Luna huffs like a horse, which is so odd to hear from a creature without lips.

Magnus seems to be bruxing a bit in distress, not sure how to handle the new influx of affection, or something. Hearing this, I ask my friends to cool it a bit, “Hey guys, is Magnus okay? What’s he saying?”

Lu translates telepathically, “He was nervously rambling apologies, I think he thought we were mad that he was holding your hand. It’s cool, Te’s smoothing things out with her usual aplomb.”

Realization sinks in and my face draws up a mortified expression for a moment as I imagine Teuila being the one to smooth out an emotional situation, before I start laughing uproariously into the mental wavelength.

Te sends back across the wavelength, “Hey, I heard that punkbutt. What, you think I can’t be tender with some newbie you’re sweet on?”

I reply to Te, “That’s not it, it’s just how far we’ve come Te. I love you so much. Look at you, back in the swamp, I feared there would be a wedge driven between you and Lil forever. Yet you and Lil are in such a good place. You were the one that convinced me to take the solo journey to bring Lil back. I’m so happy that you’ve chosen me, that you’ve chosen to share our life together. So blissful that I’m the one you honor with your depth, and constant love. I’m so proud that you are you, and that you care so much.”

My eyes wet with tears of joy and pride, which are absorbed by Luna’s feathers in an odd fashion. Te telepathically requests, “Stop, you’re making me blush. Please no, literally, stop, I’m literally blushing when I’m trying to interrogate this guy.”

In distress, I ask, “Interrogate? Wait, hold on!”

Teuila sends an image of her mental avatar blowing a raspberry at me, teasing me. I’m not sure if that means she’s not interrogating Magnus, or if it means she won’t let me stop her from interrogating Magnus. The poor guy.

I’m suddenly treated to the mental interface message “Magnus has joined the Shellcracker party.”

Finally I can understand Magnus’s cries, “Really? This is for real? I can come with you guys? I can support Reggie? And, and, and you too of course, I know they don’t tell the full story at the dam. Reggie’s story always involves you three, but they don’t give you much credit.”

There’s rounds of laughter and affirmations, and plenty of teasing from Teuila. I hope he can weather it. Teuila is the most beloved, precious entity in the world to me. Teuila sends a SFS, a Shellcracker Family Squee of glee across our mental wavelength at my thought. But there’s a but. She sends a pout. The but is that if somebody wasn’t used to the teasing, or didn’t know the emotions that underlie it, or couldn’t tell, they might feel hurt.

Teuila responds to my thoughts, “I know Punkbutt, I know. I’m not gonna chew up and spit out our new friend. Come on, have a little faith, would ya? Faithlessmcbusterpants.”

I chuckle into our bond, thinking only that I have all of the faith in Teuila, all the faith in the world. I adore, cherish, admire, love, treasure, and think the world of Te, My-Wings. Teuila sends an image of her mental avatar blushing so hard her cheeks steam. She then drags me to accelerated thinkspace to drag me into an SFSF, Shellcracker Family Slap Fight. She plops one hand on my face playfully. I chase it away with one hand, her other hand lands on my face, I chase that one away. Her first hand returns, again and again until we’re both rolling around hugging each other, laughing our brains out. We spend about a quarter of an hour goofing off in accelerated thinkspace, barely a second of meatspace time.

It dawns on me that there’s something I actually want to seriously talk about with Teuila, about this situation.

“Te? Magnus kissed me.”

Teuila looks perplexed as she responds, “You like him right? You like me, and I do that all the time, what’s the problem?”

I ponder how to phrase what I’m thinking, “It’s not a problem, it’s more that neither you and I, nor me and Lu, nor me and Lil have ever kissed that way. We’ve always avoided full-on kissing on the lips, unless it was like a life threatening need to share oxygen. We have decades of time spent together in idyll bliss, but it was always cuddles and smooches. I don’t want Magnus to get the wrong impression. I don’t want him to think that I didn’t enjoy his affection. I don’t want him to feel bad about having shared it with me either. I just don’t think I’m comfortable sharing that kind of kiss with anyone right now, except possibly maybe you, Lu, or Lil, and even then, I’m not sure.”

Te playfully slugs my telepathic avatar projection in the shoulder, “And that is why we’ve avoided that, ya goon. Everyone has to be ready and willing when sharing anything that affects someone else’s body. I’m sorry that it sounds like he kissed you without asking first, do you need me to rough him up for you, slug him a few times, say it’s coming from you?”

I blush, trying not to laugh as I formulate my reply, and shake my head, “No, no, please don’t, hah, I can only imagine the mortified look on the poor guy’s face. I guess, uh, yeah, the phrase is something like, respecting bodily autonomy? Or mutual consent, something like that. Yeah. I hope he doesn’t feel too bad about it. It was nice and all, just, not my thing with him, not yet, maybe not ever. But yeah, please don’t beat Magnus up, especially don’t say it’s coming from me if you do slug him, hahah.”

I start to ponder out why I feel the way I do. At first I thought it might have been because I thought of myself as a child for so long, which makes me uncomfortable. I know I’m not a child, but I’m still uncomfortable in a different way. I know gender identities are weird with my memories, but I think romantic identities are even weirder. What’s the word in my broken other-world memories? Orientations, that’s it. I don’t think I’m orientated towards anything. Or, maybe only slightly? Quasi-orientated? Demi-orientated? That sounds a bit right.

Teuila notices me lost in thought and guffaws before bringing me in for a noogie. She then smooches up and down my left ear to the crown of my skull and back as a sort of apology for the roughhousing. I respond by rolling my shoulder and flipping her onto her back and tumbling over her to playfully pin her. We roll around for a while, trading pins, laughing all the while. Teuila leans in to nip my nose and nuzzle me when she has me completely at her mercy. I nuzzle back, sifting my fingers through her fur and her hair.

I notice even Teuila’s mental projection of herself has the white streaks we earned from our times when we were tethered too hard for too long. I’m not sure what they signify. Based on genre savviness, I’d guess it’s a kind of hint of shortening our lifespans, or draining our vitality somehow or another.

I clear my throat, my imaginary, non-phlegm-filled mental projection throat, “Uh, ahem, hm, Te? I, I really don’t want to go back in the dam. Can, can you ask one of two or three of the others to go, please? I. I. I killed again. I need to break down, mostly alone. I, I sort of want to be alone. But, but maybe you or Lil, could stay please. Please. Please.” My request turns into a pleading whimper by the end.

My eyes fill with tears as I leave accelerated thinkspace before Teuila can respond. I hide my tears in the feather-like fur of Luna’s rump as I shake and silently sob. I hear my friends talking for a bit, and the splashes of several bodies leaping into the river shortly after. I finally start to just let myself blubber like a mewling kitten.

Luna is rocked to the side slightly, not by her own muscle motion. Luna doesn’t move however. The rocking happens with greater force, and Luna huffs loudly, that odd horse-lip sound that somehow escapes her beak. Finally, Luna is lifted bodily off of me and I see who was responsible for the rocking. It’s my Teuila of course. No one else is this ridiculously strong.

Teuila grunts, “Come on out of there buggerboo, I can’t hold her like this for long, get a move on, please.”

A soft, barely perceptible laugh escapes me between my sobs as I roll towards Teuila, out from under Luna. Luna makes a harumphing sound and stalks away. A few yards away, she turns around, sits, then glares daggers at the two of us. Heavens we have an incredibly strange relationship with this bear. Teuila and I exchange glances, and I can’t help but to laugh for the moment.

Still, I just want to ride out my remorse. I don’t know how to tell Teuila, that though I love her so much, I feel more and more sins crawling on my back, weighing me down, and I fear one day, I’ll succumb to them and never return to her.

Teuila thinks towards me, “That sounds awful sweettoot, I’m sorry this keeps happening. You’ve got awful luck around this place. And the Fire Biome. And the coasts. And the Swamp. Wow, we really can’t take you anywhere, can we?”

I burst into laughter and end up choking on my own saliva, coughing and crying all at the same time. It’s true though. The notion does impart an idea though.

I bashfully try to request of Te, “Te? Teuila, can uh, I know it’s usually you and Lil, but can you and I train, like you do with Lil? Only, only you use your best form, best attacks, and best defenses. I don’t want Lil to think that I think I’m better than them, I just worry I might hurt you in this form.”

Teuila responds, “No, no, I get it, yeah, your magic is scary powerful, you blast flames as hot as Lil’s, you freeze entire areas now, your inventory space magic was always strong, enough that it’s what we used to beat the gorram serpent, yeah, I wouldn’t want to train with anything less than going all out against you. But, um, the problem with that, is, well, I haven’t been able to transform since the earthquake. See? Watch.”

Teuila wraps herself in a tether, and the creamy gray silhouette overtakes her as she seamlessly transitions into Valkyrie form. I don’t notice any differences, so I scratch my head, perplexed.

Raising an eyebrow, I start to ask, “Uh…”

Teuila interrupts me, “What? But, but how? Did you do this as a joke to prove me wrong? No, no, I don’t feel you that way, not like we used to be. This really isn’t coming from you?”

I start to respond, but Teuila interrupts again, continuing her own thought, “But, but it doesn’t make sense. I’ve never needed to be near you, not since you sacrificed so much for me and Lil. Or, I don’t know, maybe it was something else. Maybe I was just so panicked at seeing you break down at the edge of a cliff that I couldn’t think straight until I saw you again. You really don’t know how much you mean to me. I, I words you.”

Even though I want to break down and wallow in regret of the atrocities I continually commit, I find myself standing and wrapping my arms around the bewildered Valkyrie before me. Teuila needs to be okay. More than anything else in the entire world, anything and everything else, I want Teuila to be okay. I want her to be safe, to be happy, to feel loved, fulfilled, strong.

Thinking about it like that, I guess nothing else matters. I could probably cope with being someone I’m ashamed of, so long as I can keep bringing Teuila joy. Well, her joy requires her to be safe, and alive, in my mind anyway, so those are part of me bringing her joy. Teuila smiles as she pulls away slightly.

She’s the best, the utterly best thing, being, in existence, as far as I’m concerned. And now she’s thrusting a sword my way while I don’t have my danger wraps or any protective equipment on. Starting our training without warning, that’s a bit cheeky, isn’t it? I pivot counterclockwise on my dominant foot to my back foot. I direct her thrust, leading it away with my less dominant hand, while my main hand cuffs her at the inner elbow. I don’t strike hard enough to make her drop her weapon, but now I’m inside her threatened reach, so she’ll have a hard time striking back with her longer sword.

As Teuila tries to recover to a position where she’ll have me at length again, I grip her about the waist with my dominant arm, so she simply leaps us both backwards. I notice Luna leaving the area of the mock fight, even without my danger wrap senses, since it’s in my inventory at the moment. Luna’s just that large, it’s hard to not notice her moving around.

Teuila thinks that my momentary distraction is enough to capitalize on, so she drops her longsword to reach for her dagger. I summon the magisteel cuffs I got from my time in incarceration in the human city, locking her dagger in its scabbard, and her hand to her dagger simultaneously. Teuila gives me a look that says my magic isn’t fair, but I never agreed to not use it. She started off a surprise attack with deadly weapons afterall. She at least has the decency to find some dull sticks to fight against Lil with.

I’m surprised she isn’t offering cheeky mental retorts to my inner monologue, or trying to distract me in thinkspace. She did say she was going to go all out, though I didn’t think that meant deadly weapons while I was still unarmed. But all out should probably capitalize on my mental weakness of distractibility. That would be maximum effort.

Teuila tries to leap back again to distance us, but my right arm is still about her waist, and I’m standing on her feet at the moment. She doubles my gravity in the middle of the leap and I nearly lose my hold on her, but I swing around her back side and wrap my legs around her dominant shoulder. While there, I throw my momentum backwards, aiming Teuila facefirst towards the ground, with my doubled gravity driving her downwards. She has no choice but to let up on the gravity manipulation. When she does, we both float gently down. She lands softly on her face, and then I realize, I gave Teuila inventory magic. She claimed the cuffs during my acrobatic maneuver, freed her right hand, and is cutting a wide slice backwards towards me.

I thrust my offhand at her wrist so that my fingertips touch the pommel of her dagger, and claim it right out of her hand so that her slash completes with nothing but air. I call out, “Okay okay, hold on, time out, maybe we should set down some ground rules? Deadly weapons probably shouldn’t be used, like I’m not going to flash freeze you and shatter you Te.”

Teuila doesn’t respond, but Luna bellows a curious cry and charges towards us. Luna leaps and pins the both of us on the ground. Teuila’s head snaps back and forth from the sudden jolt. I know her ancillary powers protect her from whiplash, but it’s enough that her eyes droop for a second, eyes that have the tiniest mote of red energy in them.

I nearly vomit as fear overtakes me. Luna inhales a massive breath of river water and expels it into Teuila’s face. There’s the tiniest red glow in the water that washes away over Teuila spreading out downstream. The panic that had been about to grip my heart lets up just before a full attack starts.

Frantically I call out, “Te? Te are you okay? Luna, Luna you saved me, thank you! Teuila? Te!”

Wait, was Luna protecting me from the start? She leapt across the lake and landed on me in a way that Teuila couldn’t get to me. She was glaring daggers at us, but Teuila and I were standing right next to each other. What if she was just glaring at Teuila to warn me? My breathing becomes labored panting. My eyes widen, I can feel my mind connecting the dots between Teuila and trauma again. I scream in anguish and beg my brain to not do this to me, not again.

Teuila grumbles, “Get off me featherbutt, I gotta hug my bugaboo quick.” Teuila shoves Luna off the both of us, drops her valkyrie form and quickly scoots close enough to draw me into her embrace.

Teuila coos and shushes me, stroking my cheek. She kisses my forehead repeatedly and sifts through my hair. I can hear her muttering an apology over and over. Te’s grief and remorse are incredibly intense.

Teuila almost inaudibly mumbles, “I, I thought I saw Mat, back at the earthquake, but then, I didn’t think I saw him, I didn’t remember thinking I saw him until Luna hit me with water just then. It’s like, if I saw him, he kept me from remembering it. I, I don’t get it. What does this mean?”

When Teuila finally starts putting the pieces together for me, I come to one conclusion, “It means I have to kill my brother.” The presence who had been projecting strong emotions on the east bank earlier was probably Mataalii.

Luni would probably tell me not to guess about this. I’m almost certain now though. Mataalii destroyed the obelisks, he’s why the red eyes were released into our world to begin with, why they were sent back in time to my beginning. He has some sort of power to implant tiny fragments of their energy, their hostility towards me. He didn’t always have that power, or any power. He gained some kind of power that let him lend himself an ability as far back as the final fight in the swamp. That’s how he got a copy of Gae Buidhe without us being able to notice it. Maybe the power was simply sending one item to himself at a slightly future point in time. Maybe it was a memory related thing like what happened with Teuila just now. He could obfuscate our memory of him even having the spear as we just walked around. I have no idea, it could have been any number of things. It doesn’t matter what his suite of abilities are. My brother’s the reason Lil was almost killed. The reason that even though we saved Lil, it would have taken a quarter century to get Lil back, if I hadn’t begged a phoenix for aid. My brother’s also the reason that when Lil did come back, Lil was partially possessed. I was already almost positive about that, but Luni told me not to guess back then. My primary sin is wrath, and now my wrath has a certain target. I finally know who to aim it at.