It was not the first time it happened, D’Argen thought that in his other memories he had done it before, yet his new speed surprised him. He was fast enough to run on the shallow water between the islands where the music festival was happening and the mainland. He was fast enough that he felt like he was flying.

He was fast enough that the world faded away.

At first, he thought it was because he was moving so fast that he could not register the details around him. Then those details lost their colours and he panicked. He slid to a stop only to see their dark outlines fill again to become grass, and rocks, and houses in the distance. Then he remembered running fast enough that even those details got lost until he was in a space of just white.

With a look around him to make sure there was nobody he could hurt, he opened his mahee and ran once more. This time, there was no explosion of sound behind him, and he knew he was slower, yet the world still faded away. The thought was terrifying until he remembered how surprised he had been to see his own blue eyes reflected in his sword when he fell.

This time, when he slid to a stop, it was to admire the colours of the world around him.

If he was reliving the past, then it would be another few centuries before he was unable to see those colours again. If he was crazy and those other memories were nothing but an illusion… it would be safer to keep them in mind.

He crouched down and plucked a dandelion from the grass. Yellow was the first colour that faded away.

Even as he wanted to explore and admire it all, commit each shade and hue to a memory that was playing tricks on him, his feet itched and that moved into his blood like he was being stabbed by tiny needles. Or something similar. Something colder.

D’Argen opened his mahee once more to run, leaving a crater behind with his push.

Even though the fading colours terrified him, the whip of the wind as he ran through it shoved the fear away.

The world faded away once more but his mahee still reached for it. As he ran, he felt the rain falling from the sky and soaking the earth under his feet. The faster he was, the more it turned to sharp needles that stabbed him, though their pain quickly faded away.

When it softened, D’Argen thought it was snow. It made him smile and though he would usually shiver and avoid the colder regions, now he was looking forward to basking in the clean air.

That thought had him sliding to a stop once more and closing his eyes as he faced the sky.

The soft flakes that landed on his skin were large and heavy.

And warm.

When he registered the warmth, his eyes opened just in time to see a black flake land on his cheek. He turned away and brushed it off. His hand came away black and grey.

Then he registered the heat was not from the black flakes but from the flames not too far away. From their smoke. From their ashes as they fell on him.

He jogged closer to the flames until he could hear them and the shouting in their din.

Mortals. He opened his mahee, intent on saving those screaming for help. When he slid to a stop though, it was not to see mortals screaming and crying.

A group of them had a rope that they had looped around the statue of one of the gods and yanked hard. The statue trembled but did not shift. A few others chipped away at the stone of its feet. Others still were going around with torches and setting the wooden houses ablaze.

It looked like a raid and D’Argen first thought it was one, until he saw a young child throw something at one of the houses and yell in anger.

This was not mortals fighting mortals.

A resounding crash had him turn back to see the statue had finally been toppled. The mortals cheered and the young child joined in their joy.

Then D’Argen noticed the broken features of the stone statue and the spikes of the sun disk that circled the statue’s neck like a collar.

Abbot.

“What is going on here?” D’Argen called loudly, directing it at anyone who could hear him.

Nobody answered though the child did turn to look at him. The child tugged at a woman’s dresses, pointed at D’Argen, and said something. The woman turned to look at him with a scowl that changed to surprise. She picked the child up and walked up to him.

“What is—”

“You should not be here,” she interrupted him and then immediately raised her chin in the gods’ custom of baring her throat and showing respect. “Most of the crowd are too excited. They will not notice who you are.”

“Who I am?”

“One of the gods. But not that one.” She motioned over her shoulder to the statue that the others were now smashing at with hammers and shovels and axes.

“Abbot. God of Light,” D’Argen said to confirm.

The woman scoffed and rolled her eyes. “If he was the god of light, then I am your queen of the gods.”

“What do you mean? What is happening?” D’Argen knew this happened in his other memories. He remembered hearing about the revolts. He remembered talk of towns and villages that once worshipped Abbot and then were burned to the ground in a single day. He remembered that Abbot’s fall was not until a few centuries after Lilian’s. A millennia after the music festival.

The woman was saying something but D’Argen could not listen to her words.

The clothes she wore looked in a different style than those he saw recently in the area. Her makeup was from a culture that did not exist anymore. Her painted fingers were the custom of a nation thousands of steps away. Her accent was one that did not evolve until the seventh or eighth millennia.

There was so much more wrong with this woman than her words.

D’Argen stumbled a step back and looked around. The others in the town square were much the same as her – an eclectic mix that made no sense. The houses and buildings were much the same – some with stone walls and thatched roofs, others with straw walls and ceramic tiles, arches, and buttresses and—

As he looked at one house, its shape changed before his eyes to match what he remembered. Each new building he looked at turned to wood and stone and mud. When he turned back to the woman, her clothes were of a rougher texture and her makeup was gone. The paint on her hands looked like streaks of soot. She was still speaking and with every word she said, her accent lessened until it disappeared completely.

“Where is he?” D’Argen found himself asking.

The woman frowned and nudged with her chin to the side.

D’Argen turned to see an open road leading out of the town. The buildings on both sides of it were already burned and reduced to rubble.

“He ran away,” she answered him verbally.

D’Argen turned back to her and glared. Behind her, the statue’s head was being hoisted into the air to a round of cheers before it was thrown hard into the ground where its nose snapped off.

She glared right back. After a moment, she bowed her head low and turned to walk away.

D’Argen ignored the others and opened his mahee just a sliver so he could run down the road.

He would find Abbot.

As soon as he was out of the town, he noticed the sky was dark with the smoke from many fires. The first village he came across after the town was just smoking – not a mortal in sight and not a single building standing tall. The next town was as filled as the first though instead of burning the buildings, its inhabitants had created a pyre in the middle of it that burned higher than any roof. The next few villages were in every state in between and their fields of crops and produce were reduced to ashes as well.

By the time D’Argen finally sensed Abbot, the artist’s mahee weak and calling to him from a distance, the runner was covered in soot from head to toe.

The heat of the fires and the fervor of the mortals and his own simmering anger kept him hot as he ran. Yet everything froze and shivers wrecked his body when he finally saw Abbot.

The man was lying in a field that had yet to be touched by angry torches. He was covered in blood and there were scratches and stab wounds all over his dark skin. His golden collar was gone, and his neck was bleeding.

D’Argen did not remember this.

When the revolts happened in his other memories, Abbot was safely tucked away in the stone hall at Evadia, protected by all the gods from the mortals that were angry with him.

D’Argen fell to his knees and realized his hands were trembling only when he reached for the artist’s unmoving body.

D’Argen knew the gods could die. But the first of them to die had been because of… because—

It was not Abbot.

He felt for the artist’s body and though the slick blood was so hot against his fingers, he reached for the man’s neck. His mahee was almost as weak as the pulse that made the blood at his neck gush out in slow bursts. It was bright red and D’Argen once thought it was his favourite colour – it was the reason he always adorned himself in red among the black leather of his usual uniform. But now, he remembered why he had started hating the colour.

Simeal was the God of Healing, without that title, and she had yet to teach him how to use his mahee to slow the bleeding or heal a wound. She could heal simple cuts in moments, could stitch larger ones with precision, and has helped—will help—many mortals with injuries that were invisible to the naked eye.

Yet she was not here now and D’Argen felt completely lost. He had two sets of memories, and one ran longer than the other. Not all of it was there, but he tried to search it to find what Simeal had taught him in that other set. After a moment, he knew what to do, but his hands trembled so much and all he could focus on was Abbot’s still body.

Finally, he pressed down hard on the wound at Abbot’s neck, trying to stop the blood from flowing out. His press, however, made the artist’s breath disappear completely. When D’Argen realized what he was doing, he quickly let go only for even more blood to gush out. It soaked into his skirts where they had fallen around Abbot’s body when he knelt.

Shouting in the distance had D’Argen look up. A crowd of mortals, torches raised high, were nearing the field where D’Argen and Abbot were. One of them spotted him and pointed. The others yelled and raised their torches higher.

Simeal would know what to do.

D’Argen looked down at Abbot’s bleeding form. By the time he had the artist in his arms, half the dried grass of the field was already aflame.

D’Argen opened his mahee as wide as he could with another in his arms, careful to slow down a bit more not to aggravate Abbot’s wounds more, but he knew where to run.

Simeal would be able to help. She could undo all of this in moments. She could re-teach D’Argen how to fix it so that he could do the basics until he reached her. For now, though, Simeal was too far.

D’Argen ran for what felt like hours. His arms were sore, and Abbot’s body was so heavy. He wanted to cry but he made do with slowing his run into a jog and then into a walk and finally stopping.

When he put Abbot’s body down to rest, he realized the man was no longer bleeding.

Nor was he breathing.

D’Argen’s sight narrowed in, and the edges turned black. He felt like there was not enough air around him to take in and his lungs started struggling for it. The lack of air had him dropping to his knees. Simeal had told him about this too. He reached for Abbot even as his vision swam. If only he could remember what she told him. There was no pulse. If only he could use Simeal’s mahee to fix this. No breath. If only Simeal was there. No mahee.

D’Argen’s vision blackened completely, and he fell on something soft and cold.