Published at 24th of February 2024 10:31 am

Chapter 11

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“I love you,” I told my father.

He smiled back and said, “I love you too.”

I wondered if he’d still say that ten minutes from now. I hadn’t truly replaced his son, but the difference might be academic to Father. Gravin was practically an infant when I awakened, far too young to have his own thoughts and goals, to be his own person. His love for his family had mixed with me, but that was the only thing he was capable of contributing to our shared existence.

It wasn’t exactly unreasonable to take the stance that I’d stolen Gravin’s life from him in order to extend my own as Keiran. This was why I was supposed to awaken immediately upon being reborn, so that there never would have been another person. As usual, life had failed to cooperate with my plans.

“What happens after we die?” I asked.

That took Father aback, and he spent a long moment thinking before he answered, “No one really knows for sure. We have guesses and theories. Some people claim they know, but there’s no proof. Personally, I think the spirits watch over us in life, and we join their numbers when we pass on. But don’t you worry, none of us are going anywhere for a long time. A little ol’ monster like this would be no problem, even if Lord Noctra hadn’t shown up to take care of it.”

I doubted that, considering the size of the crater Noctra’s fire blast spell had left behind. Either that monster had been a serious threat, or the governor was trying to make some sort of point about his superiority. Maybe he’d considered it an opportunity to make a statement about how powerful his magic was, just to keep any mutinous muttering against him from going any further.

“Doesn’t the afterlife get crowded?”

Father laughed at that. “I imagine they have quite a bit of space to spare. Why the sudden interest though? You’re still little, no need to worry about this anytime soon.”

“What if spirits come back to live new lives? What if it’s just a big cycle of living, dying, and being born to live again?”

Father finally picked up on the change in my tone. I hadn’t been particularly good at talking like a small child to begin with, so it was hard to blame him for not immediately realizing that I’d stopped trying. It was probably the subject matter that had done it. He turned to face me fully and studied me in the moonlight.

“That’s an interesting idea, Gravin. I don’t think I’ve ever heard that before. I think we’d know if that were the case though. Grandpa would have made the effort to come visit again before now.”

“Oh, I don’t think people remember their previous lives. Things would get complicated in a hurry if that was the case.” Then again, if killing someone didn’t permanently remove the threat an enemy represented, maybe people would behave better to begin with. “No, I think the only way to keep your memories would be to be an extremely powerful and knowledgeable archmage who’d spent decades preparing to move onto the next step of the cycle and used a powerful lunar convergence to ensure the soul invocations you created didn’t fail once you passed on.”

I could see the tension in Father’s shoulders now. He didn’t know what to do or say, not that I blamed him. To the best of my knowledge, no one before me had ever managed to accomplish what I’d done at the end of my life. Outside the uppermost echelons of magical society, knowledge of the mechanics through which souls migrated from one life to the next were little more than guesses and superstition. It wasn’t reasonable to expect a dull farmer to know how to handle this.

“I am still your son,” I said gently. “Nothing will ever change that. I am Gravin. But I am more than only Gravin. Everything I was in my previous life is still up here in my mind. I know the answers to questions no one here has ever thought to ask. I could tell you down to the minute how long it would take me to generate enough mana to duplicate the spell your Lord Noctra used that left that crater.”

“I… Gravin… you. What is this?” Father asked, his voice exasperated. “What do you want me to say here?”

“I’m telling you this because I need you to take me seriously,” I said. “Because you are a good father, and no good father would let a normal three-year-old chart the course of his life. That’s absurd. But I am not a normal child. When I tell you that I don’t need anyone’s help to learn magic, you should believe me. When I say that I know best how to use my mana, you should believe me. When I tell you that wherever the mana this entire village tithes every night is going, it’s not powering a barrier, you should believe me.”

“What? That’s ridiculous. Of course the mana powers the barrier. Why else wouldn’t there be any monsters?”

“Good question. I would go ask the Barrier Wardens. I’m sure it would be interesting to hear what they have to say on the subject.”

So far, the conversation was going well. Father hadn’t immediately dismissed me as crazy, nor had he attacked me. He was confused, maybe panicking a little, but nobody could blame him for that. The important part was that he was still listening to me, not just looking at me like a three-year-old who was making up stories.

“Something is wrong with this village,” I said. “The world isn’t like this. Mana should fill the air. It should saturate the ground, so much that you could never use it all. But here, there’s nothing. Every single core is dormant, even the world itself’s. This life you’re living, this isn’t how things are supposed to be. You’re struggling to farm enough food to keep less than two hundred people alive in a barren wasteland. Aren’t you all sick and tired of going to bed exhausted and drained of all your mana every night?”

“That’s how it’s always been, Gravin. This isn’t something new. My father lived here, and so did his father.”

“But it’s not like this elsewhere. This is what my home looked like before I died,” I said. I conjured up a living illusion from my memories of the Night Vale in the air.

Trees with bark tinged a dark, velvety blue filled the vale. Their leaves were shades of cool blue and green, tinged with purple veins. I’d chosen my favorite view on the south end, at the edge of a bluff where the entire valley spread out below in all its splendor. Stars gleamed overhead inside my illusion, adorning the night sky while three moons danced around each other, their steps slow and stately and their images reflected in the stream below.

Father stared at it, slack-jawed and eyes filled with wonder. “It’s… It’s beautiful,” he said.

“I know,” I said, my voice soft. “I worked hard to keep it that way.”

With a tinge of regret, I let the illusion fade away. As much as I enjoyed the view, I had practical concerns and couldn’t afford to exhaust my mana holding onto a memory. It had served its purpose, as far as this conversation was concerned.

“I’m not saying the whole world is as beautiful as my old home was, but it doesn’t look like this.” I gestured towards the dead, barren ground all around us. Even the village’s work to make life grow in the fields had produced scant results. “I don’t know what happened here or how many centuries it’s been this way, but the land here is scarred and dead. This is a wasteland, and it will be the work of generations to bring it back to life. Which leads me to the important question. Why are there people living here at all? Whatever happened here is the kind of event that doesn’t leave survivors, so who came in afterwards, took a look around, and decided this was a good place to stay?”

Father chuckled and shook his head. “Those would be good questions to ask at school, son.”

I rolled my eyes. “Cherok is an idiot.”

“Well, yes, but he knows how to do his job. It sounds to me like it wouldn’t hurt you to get an education after all, at least about some local topics.”

There was some truth to that idea. When it came to the subject of magic, I wasn’t interested in wasting time or mana on children’s exercises. But I’d been reborn in a part of the world I’d never heard of, and it wouldn’t hurt to learn a little about what had made it this way. It might not end up being relevant to my plans, which consisted mostly of advancing my core to stage three and then escaping this mana desert, but then again, I might just learn something useful if I took the time to look.

“You believe me?” I asked. “About everything, I mean.”

Father looked down at me and slowly said, “I don’t know. Are you really Gravin? If you’re not, what happened to my son? If you are, what am I supposed to do next? If you’re really a mage more powerful than Lord Noctra, there’s nothing I can do anyway. So tell me, what do you want?”

“I already told you. I don’t want you to tell anyone. I don’t need instructions. I just need time to rebuild my mana core so that I can use more magic.”

“And… is that going to draw another monster to the village?” Father asked.

“No, not unless we decide to ignite someone else’s core too. Even then, if I didn’t have to do it in secret, I could construct a ritual circle to contain the ambient mana and prevent a mana sniffer from sensing it.”

Father went stone still and cocked his head. “I’m sorry, what does that mean?”

“What, igniting a core?” I asked.

“That. Yes. It sounds like you’re saying you can give blessings to turn someone into a mage.”

I snorted. “It’s hardly a blessing. It used to happen to people by accident in my previous life. But yes, with a little work on your part and a few weeks of effort on mine to generate enough mana, we could ignite your core. Depending on how well you prepared, you’d start generating mana ten to twenty times faster than you do now and I could start teaching you novice ranked spells.”

“Me? A mage?”

I smiled at his expression. “Yes, you and Mother both, if you’d like.”

“What about Senica?” he asked.

I shrugged. “Not right now. When she’s older, maybe. Once a core’s been ignited, you can’t snuff it back out. You only get one chance to do it right. I would hate to cripple her magical potential for the rest of her life because she rushed into it too young and didn’t understand what she’s doing.”

“She’s twice your age,” Father protested. “Ah, but… You’re not really three, are you?”

“Not quite, no.” I took a deep breath and said, “So, that’s the decision. This is who I am, and I need to know if you’ll keep this a secret long enough for me to do what I need to do to regain my magic.”

The silence stretched out between us, but I didn’t push him. He’d need far more time than I could give him to come to terms with all of this, but I wouldn’t begrudge him a minute to collect himself before he answered. Father was not a nobleman or politician, and I could see his emotions plain on his face. He didn’t know the right answer, or even if there was a right answer. He didn’t know what to do or where to turn for help.

“Swear to me on the spirits that you really are my son,” he said.

“I swear,” I told him. “I am your son and have been for my entire life.”

With a heavy sigh, he nodded. “I can’t abandon my own family, now can I? I won’t tell Lord Noctra that you’ve been blessed.” He frowned. “Ignited, I suppose.”

I wrapped an arm around his leg and hugged him. “Thank you,” I whispered. “I love you, Father.”

I hadn’t really thought about how scared the idea of having to leave made me. I knew I’d survive, but I didn’t want to abandon my family. For now at least, I didn’t need to make that choice.

“I know. I love you too. Uh, what do you suppose we should tell your mother though?”

I hiccupped out a little laugh. “I haven’t thought that far ahead,” I told him truthfully.

“I guess we’ll figure that out together. Come on, let’s get on home now.”

I didn’t ride on my father’s shoulders on the way back, which I thought we were both a bit sad about, but things were too different now. Growing up was painful for kids and parents sometimes, and it had happened way too fast for him in my case. Things were going to be a bit awkward for the next few weeks, but I was confident that we’d still be a family when we came out the other side.

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