Azure Dune
by BottledChaos
I waved as we watched my son and his kids get inside the car and drive away. WIth a fond smile still plastered on my face, I lowered my arm, and both of us walked back inside.
“Hmm, I’m surprised you told your family the truth,” she said. “I could have simply hidden out of sight instead.”
I chuckled.
“I’ve always preached honesty. It would have been hypocritical not to tell them.” I shrugged. “Moreover, they all have already read the book I wrote about Alyzean, they just didn’t know it was inspired by real events… until now.”
Xeron hummed. “And yet you didn’t tell them that you’re planning on going there again soon.”
I sighed. “I didn’t want them to worry too much. Once I get back, I’ll tell them all about my second adventure.”
Probably still hypocritical, but I couldn’t help it. Marc loved to worry about me as if he was the parent in our relationship. If I had told him I was planning on going back to Alyzean, he would have likely insisted on coming with me, and there was no way I was bringing my son somewhere dangerous like that.
Perhaps when this was all over.
Unless the connection got severed completely again, we could make some kind of family trip there.
“Mmm. Either way, we should prepare to depart soon. More and more Aether has been filling this world, and that can't be a good sign.”
“Right,” I agreed with a nod.
Part of me still felt like I was too old for this, but I wasn’t about to let the world be destroyed just because I felt too old to save it.
And so we prepared. We had already gone over how to do this before my son’s visit. Now, it was only a matter of doing the deed.
I suppressed the wry smile as we set up the ritual in the middle of my living room, being reminded of Marc’s teenage occult-lover phase. Not that we would be trying to summon demons or speak to dead people, of course.
It took about an hour and a half to finish setting everything up. I had to drag more snow inside, feed it Aether, and turn it into catalysts, all while Xeron took care of the positioning and minute details. The result was the familiar ritual site that I had first seen when I’d arrived in Alyzean for the first time, as well as the last thing I’d seen before leaving that world.
“I hope this works,” I murmured.
Xeron hummed in agreement. “It’s the best we can do from our limited knowledge of cross-dimensional travel. At the very least, it shouldn’t be dangerous for us, even if it doesn’t work.”
“Right.”
I walked over to the nearby closet where I had stashed my backpack filled with supplies and hefted it over my shoulders with a huff, already feeling the strain. This wouldn’t be doing any favors to my back.
Xeron glanced at me before motioning at my pack. “Give it here, I’ll carry it.”
“Hmm…?” I blinked in surprise.
“I’ve heard you complain about your back enough already. It wouldn’t do if you broke your spine before we even got to Alyzean.”
I felt myself smile as I took off the backpack and handed it to Xeron.
I was glad to have gone with my instinct. Xeron was proving herself to be an invaluable ally or dare I even say, a friend.
Also, her continuous denial of her being transgender despite clearly choosing that body shape and pronouns was pretty funny. I couldn’t help but tease her every so often.
“You sure have changed since then,” I said out loud. “Never in my wildest dreams did I think you would turn into a beautiful woman and help me carry a backpack.”
“Are you unhappy with the change, perhaps?” She gave me a hint of a teasing smile. “Moreover, don’t you humans say that people change over time?”
I chuckled. “I suppose you’re just a lot more human than I thought.”
“I blame you. Who do you think I have been stuck with these past few decades?”
Once again, I gave her a wry smile. “Fair enough.”
“Well, anyway. Let’s get started, shall we?” she asked.
I gave a nod before kneeling down inside the magical formation, placing my palms down on the ground and focusing. Xeron knelt across from me and did the same. She then closely guided me through the necessary steps in detail.
It felt strange to be dabbling in magic again after so long. Even stranger to be messing with magic I knew very little about. Regardless, after hours of concentrating, directing our magic, failing, and subsequently rethinking everything again, we finally managed to do it.
The fabric of space tore open right in front of my eyes, similarly as it had done all those years ago. I was about to exclaim my joy when something – no, someone – fell through the crack in spacetime.
My eyes widened and I gasped as the tattered and bloodied body thumped to the ground right next to me.
“What the…?!”
“Oh dear, I think we did it in reverse. Summoned someone here, rather than sending ourselves there. Hmm… This doesn’t look good…”
I quickly shuffled closer to the body and checked it over. It was a man in his fifties with a long beard and dressed in robes. From the Aether I could feel radiating off of him, I could tell that he was a magician.
He also seemed vaguely familiar.
I wasted no time in getting Xeron to help me drag the man over to the couch to lay him down and rush over to my emergency supplies drawer. I grabbed some gauze, antiseptic, and some medical wipes and made my way back to treat the stranger.
My years spent as a nurse paid off as I took off the man’s heavy robes and tended to all the various lacerations covering his body. Xeron watched in interest, handing me the supplies as I asked for them like an assistant.
As I worked I noticed a familiar birthmark on the back of his neck.
“Trevor…” I murmured in mild surprise.
Xeron hummed, her eyes locked onto the man. “He’s one of your old companions, is he not? I thought his Aether seemed familiar.”
I nodded in agreement as my hands continued to work. I tried my best to push aside the bubbling concern for my old friend. I had plenty of experience pushing away the unease to actually work on saving people.
By the time I was done tending to all his wounds, I had a pile of red wipes and towels to the side and the man was covered in gauze. It had been quite the process. I’d had to stitch more than one wound.
Belatedly, I remembered that I could have used my snow to treat him. I could have not only used it as wipes since I could filter it for infection, but I could also just straight up use healing magic through it.
Old habits die hard, I suppose.
I began to cover his wounds in snow to heal him anyway. Better late than ever.
“Will he live…?” Xeron asked, sounding somewhat concerned.
“He will,” I confirmed with a nod. “It looked a lot worse than it was.” I let out a sigh filled with a mixture of exhaustion and relief at my own conclusion.
“I see. That’s good.” She looked back at the ritual site. “Hmm, I suppose we’ll need to adjust the ritual site first before trying again. I’m not entirely sure what we did wrong, however.”
“Me neither… Well, let’s wait for him to wake up first. Trevor was always the expert on inter-dimensional travel, after all. He can probably help us.”
“Mmm, you’re right. Well, in that case, you can stop pretending to be unconscious now,” Xeron said as she turned to the man lying on my couch.
I blinked before turning back to the apparently no longer unconscious man. It was hard to tell, but his Aether suddenly shifted into an aggressive position, as if ready to explode out of him.
His eyes slowly opened and scanned both me and Xeron with sharp eyes from his lying position.
“Hello,” I greeted, remembering just how socially awkward the man always was.
“Greetings… strangers…” he carefully said. “May I ask your names…?”
Ah, he didn’t recognize us. Obviously, he wouldn’t recognize Xeron, but him not recognizing me either was a bit disheartening.
“My name is Azure now… Well, you used to call me Azure Dune, remember me, Trevor?”
His eyes widened.
“Azure…?” he murmured as his eyes scanned me over with a different gleam from before.
I nodded.
“Yes, please call me Azure like you always did,” I said with a smile before gesturing to the other person in the room. “And… this might sound alarming, but this is Xeron, who–”
Aether burst out of the gauzed up man, warping space around him, preparing to lash out.
“Trevor, calm down!” I shouted. “She’s not an enemy!”
Trevor flicked his dead serious eyes at me for a split second before glaring back at Xeron. She simply stood there with a neutral expression without making any sudden moves staring at the man still lying on my couch.
An eternal moment later, Trevor’s Aether finally calmed down and his eyes focused back on me.
“Explain,” he demanded.
