30 – Exposition

Vytryat waved his hand frantically, spinning around to point at the large slab of stone that was the entrance to the guild, and to the mirage of desert all around. Despite being deep inside Torchback, it felt like they were on a desertic plateau, surrounded by sand and rocks and the faint distortion of the heated air just above the sand. Occasionally an adventurer would wander close to them, and Edmund would stare at them with predatory eyes. None seemed bothered, or willing to engage in hostilities, however. It was when a B-ranker passed through the door that Vyt realized that Edmund was concealing his gaze from him, making sure the man never knew he was being watched so intently.

“Why did you leave me here like that!” The elf demanded.

“Sorry, forgot about you.” Edmund said, dismissively.

Vyt pouted. “Stop behaving like you don’t care about me!”

“But I don’t.” Edmund said with his arms crossed.

Vyt raised an eyebrow. “Do you really not care?” he said, slowly, as if to tease the other man.

“Yeah, of course.” Edmund said, and began walking towards the exit of the fake desert.

“I don’t think so, you know?” Vyt said after a while.

“Why is that?”

“Why did you even save me? Could have killed me with the others. Just saying.”

Edmund shrugged. “Dunno. Convenience.”

Vyt frowned. “What convenience? You act as if you don’t care. But you do.”

“Oh yeah? Like what?”

“Your friends.”

“I need them.” Edmund replied without much thought.

Vytryat laughed. “No you do not. You could do it all by yourself, whatever it is that you are trying to do. However… You care about them. That’s why you are willing to waste time in hopes to rescue them. The Edmund I knew would never have done that.”

Edmund suddenly stopped walking and turned to face the elf.

“Shut the fuck up. I’m not the Edmund you knew. I am running on fumes, missing a great deal of my brain and memories. I’m dumb as fuck, out of place, confused and right now even under the effect of psychological dampening. And even without counting all that… how can you expect me to be the same person I was before all this? Uh? You think losing everything, realizing it all happened because of my own hubris, and then finding myself powerless wouldn’t have had any repercussions on my psyche? What do you want me to tell you?”

Vyt shook his head. “Nothing. I like you better this way. And let me tell you, I have seen a lot of stuff in my life as well. You’re not the only one who had to change.”

“You haven’t seen shit.” Edmund said.

“I have. I am older than you, you know? Much, much older.”

“Are you though?” Edmund muttered under his breath.

“Yes, of course.” The elf said. “I am thousands of years old.”

“Yeah, as I thought.”

They reached the gate of the city, and passed through without saying a word. Edmund led the way, walking with purpose along one of the edges of the sea of grass. Every now and then he looked into the distance, trying to figure out exactly where he was relative to the city and the other landmarks he remembered.

Eventually Vytryat spoke up. “You’re not going to explain what you meant back there, are you?”

Edmund sighed. “Time travel, dude. Dimensional travel too.”

He looked around one last time. Activating the protective measures both for himself and for his companion, he then stepped foot inside the green sea. The razor blades of swaying green parted before the two set of feet.

“But… you used to say that you would never leave the network. I remember you saying that.” Vyt said.

“I did say it.” Edmund replied. “Has it ever occurred to you that I might have been lying?”

Vyt’s eyes widened. “Even to Janet?”

“Even to her.”

“You trusted her.” Vyt said, almost to himself.

“I did. But I chose not to tell her every little detail of what I did in my free time. Which, turns out, can be quite a long time when you have the ability to change the laws of the world.”

“So you up and left, going where?” he asked.

“Back in time, the only way I could go, of course.” Edmund said.

He stopped walking, and with a sweep of his hand cleared a small patch of grass. The barren soil was of a deep brown, wet and fertile. There was nothing living in it, though, and Vytryat wondered just how it could be this fertile when it was so lifeless.

“You must have seen a lot of things.” He mused.

“Enough that I ran out of space in my brain. In fact, I had to set up a protocol. A temporary one, it was supposed to be. Ended up being permanent. Now I pay the price for it.”

“Uh?”

He waved his companion’s concerns away. “Nothing you should concern yourself about. Just old memories, you know? What does it matter if they are all sealed away and not accessible right now? It was just dimensional tourism after all. I think.”

“Will you be able to recover them?” The elf’s voice was one of concern.

“Not without a better protocol. I would never be able to handle them as I am right now. Would turn me insane.”

“They are that many?”

“More than you are thinking.”

“I am thinking a lot.”

“More.”

“Woah. And what’s the new protocol going to be?”

Edmund materialized a few pieces of wood out of seemingly thin air. He sat on the ground beside them, and organized them into a sort of fireplace.

“It’s uh… instead of archiving them and accessing them like an encyclopedia, I need to restructure my mind to treat them like normal memories, without altering the way the conscious mind thinks. You know, without suddenly behaving like an old man due to too many accumulated experiences. Maybe set them up so that newer memories have priority over the old ones when it comes to my personality. Ugh, why am I even explaining this stuff! I have work to do.”

Edmund stared at the assortment of wood and stones for a while, occasionally adjusting the position of the twigs. When he was satisfied, he reached with his hand out towards empty air, and a small rift opened. It was like the severance of time and space, a window into an endless void. Looking at it, Vytryat thought he could somehow see the distant gazes of the Alterans spying on him. It sent a chill down his spine. He blinked, and all that was left where the edges of reality split was darkness.

Edmund whistled as he rummaged with his arm deep into the spatial rift, until he pulled out a long and thin sword. It was light, made of a long blade of almost white metal and an unornate handle covered in brown leather. Getting up, Edmund plunged the sword in the middle of the pile of wood, and a sea of flames quickly engulfed the firepit and the sword.

Edmund nodded, satisfied, checking his Humes. Bonfire lit, 12kH left.

“You might want to get comfortable,” he said, turning towards the elf who was watching him attentively. “This next part is going to take a while.”