Chapter 52
Night had fallen, and after a long day of catching up with the family, they all finally retired to bed. Clara had clung to me like glue, but she was the first to conk out on the couch next to me.
One by one, the others followed, though Roland put up a heroic battle against the foe known as sleep. His final words as he slumped over the table were
“How… are… you still… awake?”
That was followed immediately by snoring so loud that I could feel the vibrations running through the table and up my arms.
I sighed as I got to my feet. I intended to continue training in the Crucible, but now that I knew about Clara’s Gift, I had second thoughts. Just because it didn’t seem to work on me, that doesn’t mean I should be careless, especially when the consequences of said carelessness could lead to my youngest sister being dragged into the Crucible with me.
She hadn’t explained the range of her ability either, so even running off to sleep in the forest wouldn’t guarantee her safety.
So… what should I do to kill time until the family awoke?
“Is it over?”
A hushed voice whispered from behind me, causing me to spin around, my guard raised.
“Oh. Felicia. You’re still awake?”
I relaxed upon seeing her face peering down from the top of the staircase. She had retreated up there silently at some point during all the commotion, considering how refreshed she looked, I guessed she had been taking a nap.
“Everyone’s asleep. I was heading out for a walk, wanna join me?”
She nodded emphatically and hurried downstairs. Her feline legs and soft paw pads prevented even the slightest noise arising due to her movements.
We headed outside and into the village, illuminated by the glittering stars and a full moon.
“I didn’t expect your home to be anything like this.”
Felicia commented as we descended the hill that my house sat atop.
“What you expect?”
“Dunno. Something more wild, I guess?”
“What about you, then? Were you raised in a wild animal’s den or something?”
I smirked at her.
“Yeah, pretty much.”
She looked back at me straight-faced.
“It’s how we learn to stay in touch with our primal side. Daddy always said we had to keep a balance, or we would lose our place in the cycle.”
When it came to the Therianthope race, I really didn’t know much about their culture. I knew their history well enough; they tend to stay in tribes that match the animal forms with which they share characteristics. Feline therians stayed with other felines, canines with canines, and so on.
The feline tribes were once a small nation of their own, one that caused the Empire a surprising amount of grief despite their small size. Then… uh… There was a battle, or maybe it was a tournament… Either way, some event occurred, and they joined the Empire themselves 60 years back.
“Stay in touch with your primal side, huh? I thought it would be the other way for you guys.”
I may as well take this time off to get to know my peers. Felicia, being my first contact, was as good a place as any to start.
“Like I said, it’s all about balance. Can’t be wild or we lose ourselves. But if we suppress the beast within too much, we lose our connection altogether.”
“What happens then?”
“We die.”
She stated it so matter-of-factly. This was a detail I had never read about.
“Are you talking figuratively? Like you lose what makes you unique so—”
“No. We actually die.”
“Oh…”
I didn’t know what to say to that. How does being too civilised cause them to die? Would it be insensitive to ask?
“Why are you so surprised? Doesn’t your thing work the same? Y’know, getting stuck as a rabbit or whatever.”
“It’s the complete opposite. I have to maintain a sense of self, no matter what I become. If I drift too far from my regular self, I can’t ever come back. It’s one of the reasons I only shapeshift via fusion. It’s easier when another soul like Tia is helping to keep things distinct.”
“Wait, so can you do it even without a helper?”
“Mmm… one day I might be able to. But that’s dangerous stuff, way beyond my level.”
I took her down to the chapel. I wasn’t really sure why. My feet just took me there, perhaps an old habit. I used to frequent the place in my younger years after all. Ironic for a non-believer, but what can I say? The tranquil atmosphere Father Bernhard cultivated here made it the perfect place to relax.
…Not exactly the most interesting place to take a girl like Felicia, though.
“Why do you guys build these things?”
Felicia, as expected, didn’t seem very impressed.
“If the gods are real, they don’t need some fancy building to look down at us. Waste of time and money.”
“ they’re real?”
It was an odd comment to make in this world. There was tangible proof of their existence after all, and there have even been documented cases of their partial manifestations appearing in the material world.
“Yeah, like, real as in the way this lot describe ‘em.”
She gestured to the chapel.
“In my homeland, we just do our own thing. If the gods want to reward us for it, that’s their choice. Even the Emperor agrees that our way is better, so why do you humans keep building these stupid things?”
“The Emperor agrees? What do you mean?”
“It’s part of the reason our previous warchief agreed to join up. His royal highness liked the way we lived, that’s why the tribelands haven’t changed at all even after officially becoming Black Crown territory.”
“Your people don’t resent losing independence?”
“We never lost anything. Emperor Albrecht has been very good to us. Although…”
She trailed off, giving me an awkward sideways glance.
“What?”
“Nothing. Don’t worry about it.”
“Oh come on, don’t leave me hang—”
“Hey, what’s that?”
She cut me off and ran towards an open area nearby. A fence had been set up in a large rectangle, but nothing was inside except for two carved stone pedestals on either side.
“This brings back memories…”
I chuckled and joined her in leaning over the fence.
“Pillarball. Our national sport, aren’t you familiar?”
“Of course I am! I hear about it all the time, you just beat each other up and throw a ball at the thingy.”
“...You’ve never played, have you?”
“I have! I play all the time!”
Her furry ears flattened against her head. She glared at me, but the angle of her eyebrows showed insecurity, rather than anger.
“With who?”
I returned her defensive declaration with a slight smirk.
“With… y’know… J-joh…anne…ess…”
This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
“Johanness? Johanness who? What class are they in?”
“Shut up!”
She hissed and tried to swipe at my face, but a slight sway back was all it took to nullify the attack.
“Haha, don’t worry about it. I don’t have many friends either.”
“Liar! You’re always surrounded by girls. you’ve got Axel.”
“Urgh, why’d you phrase it like that? You make me sound like that playboy, Lloyd. And I dunno if Axel thinks of me as a friend, it’s true we get along though.”
“Oh, you know the ”
Her attack relented.
“The what?”
“Lloyd, the Sword Saint.”
“That’s what he’s calling himself now? It’s a step up from hero, I guess.”
“He’s incredible, I’ve never seen anyone fight like that before. I can’t believe he’s not first rank already.”
I hadn’t actually seen Lloyd in action since he was a child, but given his Gift and rank, I could imagine his current level.
“How would you measure him against Axel?”
Might as well ask and confirm.
“Hahaha, that’s a dumb question. It reminds me of something my brother used to say. ‘Don’t compare a dragon to a behemoth. ’"
“What’s that meant to mean?”
“A behemoth could beat a dragon… if the dragon couldn’t fly or use magic. It means there’s no point comparing two great powers when their abilities are so different.”
“...Okay, but who’s the dragon in this metaphor?”
“You’re really curious, huh? Why not just challenge him to a duel yourself? You beat Axel after all.”
She really didn’t want to give me a proper answer, did she?
We moved on from the makeshift pillarball field. My impromptu night-time tour eventually took us to the river that flowed a short distance south of the village.
“Oooh, it’s red!”
Felicia scooped up some of the burgundy water and drank it.
“Now you know where the name comes from. Roland took me upstream once and showed me the origin point.”
I pointed to a distant mountain with a flat top.
“That’s Garnet Peak. It looks fairly normal from the outside, but if you go to the top, you’ll see that it's actually hollow. Rainwater fills it up, and it all flows out from small openings. There are actually a lot of communities that were formed around the various channels around it, but ours is the only one with the red water.”
“But why?”
She asked, sticking her face in the stream and blowing bubbles.
“Mana crystals. Mainly, there are only water attribute crystals in Garnet Peak, but you can also find blood crystals that form when animals fall in from the top and drown.”
Felicia yanked her head back out and spat the water out after hearing my explanation.
“Bleh! Urgh! You poisoned me!”
“...I didn’t tell you to drink it.”
I cupped my hands and took a big gulp of the water myself. Even if it were poisoned, I would resist it, but Felicia didn’t know that, so the display still earned her trust.
“Don’t worry, the water flows through the water crystals, which purifies it of contaminants long before it reaches us. The only difference between this and pure rainwater is the colour… for you and me anyway.”
Tiara joined me by the stream and began slurping up the water enthusiastically. As she did, her black coat lit up with a green glowing pattern.
“For creatures with mana, this water can refuel their reserves similar to a mana potion, though it is not as potent.”
I took a seat in the grass and brushed Tiara’s soft fur while she continued to drink.
Felicia got over her initial disgust and tentatively dipped her hand back into the water. After accepting it wasn’t going to harm her, she joined me on the other side of Tiara.
We sat in silence, the tapestry of stars reflected back at us in the water.
“...There’s something I don’t get.”
Felicia broke the silence first.
“Judging by your grades, there are a lot of things you don’t get.”
My amusement was worth the pain in my arm.
“Shut up! I’m getting better!”
She hadn’t. I checked the public data crystal before we left.
“Anyway, it isn’t about that. It’s about what you said to your family, about the Feral Abyss and all that.”
She looked serious. Did she pick up on a lie?
“You said you couldn’t come back until a few months ago. And you didn’t go straight home because you were scared of facing your family?”
“Uh-huh.”
“But your sister, Rose, I mean. She found you last month, right?”
“Mhmm.”
“And even this trip was arranged by her without your knowledge.”
Ah, so that’s where she was going with this. I was starting to get a handle on Felicia’s values.
“You’re wondering why I haven’t been proactive in seeing my family, even after so long apart from them, and even after I was already found out.”
She nodded, expecting an answer.
But what answer could I really give here? The truth?
The truth was that this wasn’t my family. It was a group of people I got along with, but who ultimately did not factor into the world I had chosen to live in. I could enjoy their company, I could share niceties and talk about school with them, but I could not ever truly let them in.
“...What is a family to you, Felicia?”
“Huh?”
“Don’t overthink it. Just tell me what you think it means to be a family.”
She was clearly confused by the reversal, but if she didn’t answer, neither would I.
“...Family is just… I dunno, people who’ve got your back no matter what.”
It was a simple response. Not overly poetic or eloquent, just as I would expect from her.
“Does blood matter? What if you found out your father wasn’t really your father? Would that change anything?”
“No… Well, I would be mad that he lied, I guess… what does this ha—”
“So in the end it's all about trust, right? Family is family because you all trust one another completely.”
I cut her off.
“Y-yeah, I suppose that’s what it comes to in the end.”
She started to squirm, probably uncomfortable with my emotionless gaze.
“So what if that trust is one-sided? What if you can’t bring yourself to reciprocate their feelings? Would you put on a mask and play pretend? Would you let them believe your lies, because it’s easier for everyone that way?”
“No! I’d tell the truth.”
“Why? If it would only hurt them and make you feel guilty, why not just do what makes everybody happy?”
“Because… lying would be…”
She couldn’t finish. ‘Lying would be wrong.’ That’s probably all she had to say. And for most people, that kind of thinking is the ‘correct’ way. A small virtue, but one people find comfort in latching onto.
“Lying is bad. Violence is bad. Selfishness is bad. Greed is bad. They’re all easy things to say, but have you ever thought about those general statements? A lie can spare people from pain. Violence can stop a war. Selfishness can lead to success in life. Greed can help provide for your family. And family doesn’t have to be a part of your life.”
Again, Felicia looked personally offended. Family meant a lot to her, so for me to say I could live just fine without them must leave a sour taste in her mouth.
“Look, it’s not like I don’t care about them, I do. It’s just… to me, the relationships I was born with don’t automatically rank above those I make myself. The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb after all.”
I laid back in the grass, letting the cool breeze glide over me.
“You’re a dumbass.”
Suddenly, it was my face that was in the grass. Felicia had kicked me in the side, rolling me over.
Did she really disagree with me so much on this?
But as I turned over, I saw her standing over me with a triumphant grin.
“You think you’re so much smarter than me, but we’re saying the same thing, and you don’t even know it, idiot!”
“Were we having separate conversations just now? In what world did I agree with you?”
“If you don’t feel a connection to the people you were born with, just treat them like friends. Friendships can grow stronger over time until they practically become family. Just stop running away, and one day you’ll trust them like they trust you.”
“...That simple, huh?”
“Yes! the idiot who’s overthinking and complicating things.”
She yanked me up to my feet with her ever-deceptive strength.
“If you were my family, I’d have kicked your ass for hiding away like that, be glad your parents have been so forgiving! Tomorrow, we’ll all play Pillarball, ok? You’ll teach me how to play, and I’ll teach you how to stop being a dumbass!”
A small smirk played at my lips as she shook me by the shoulders.
“Heh… So you know how to play, then. Imagine lecturing someone about relationships when you only have one friend.”
She paused. Blushed. Then shook me even more violently.
“Sh-shut up! I h-have lots of friends!”
I kept laughing dryly as she stumbled over her words.
The night was still young, and I intended to kill time with some more lighthearted fun than all this talk of familial bonds.
She hadn’t convinced me… but she did give me something to think about.
***
The sun rose, shining down on Felicia and me. We were sitting on a public bench in the centre of town. Felicia had fallen asleep an hour earlier, leaving me to play with Tiara and consider the conversation about family.
In a nutshell, her point was: Be willing to let people in, and one day they could become family.
I closed my eyes, remembering my first life, and how the family dynamic differed from that of my current one. How did Roland act compared to my father?
For one, Roland has never disciplined me. Nor had he raised his voice, lost his temper, or made mistakes in the heat of a moment. Instead, he always treads carefully, treats me like a friend, and measures every word before he speaks. Now that I thought about it, both he and Maria treated me differently from Jasper, Rose, and Clara.
I continued to stroke Tiara’s soft hair, Felicia’s gentle snoring providing a sort of white noise as the background to my contemplations.
At first, I had thought the different treatments were just a result of my emotional maturity. It’s hard to treat a child like a child when he is smarter and more rational than most adults after all.
But what if that wasn’t the reason? What if it was because I had always kept a wall up? Maintaining a pleasant, uncomplicated relationship with all my relatives. Even if they were unaware that it was an intentional action, rather than some kind of social malfunction, they would still feel the silent distance I maintained between us.
A real family bickers, they disagree about stupid things and piss each other off. It is not just positive memories that form the bonds that bind them to one another; it is overcoming the negatives that really test and harden the connection.
I stared up at the sky, moving my fingers and scratching Tiara around the base of her ear.
I understood all of this. But what did it really mean to me? Was I still the kind of person who needed a family to anchor myself in life?
Too much had changed. I no longer an anchor to keep me sane. Relationships were transactional at the end of the day. Nobody would stay friends with someone who did not offer any benefits, whether that be fun conversation, trust, loyalty, or even wealth.
Tiara, Soot, Vek, Ada, Poggy, Arach, and the primordials. These were the relations I had that benefited me the most personally. All others were just for fun.
Sure, there were potential future benefits to getting closer to the chamite members, but if they left my life altogether, I wouldn’t be inconvenienced. The same was true for Rose and the others.
My idle petting came to a stop.
What bothered me wasn’t my mentality. It also wasn’t the fact that I might never be able to form a purely emotional connection if I continued like this.
What worried me was that I bothered by any of this.
When did I start measuring people’s worth like this? Was it a coping mechanism? A side effect of being in the Soul Stream? The consequence of experiencing death too many times? Or maybe I just didn’t truly care about this life, and I was merely going through the motions in the hope that one day it would all feel as real as my first life did.
I let out a sigh. I had let Felicia get into my head. Whether I wanted to change or not, this was who I was, and I neither needed nor desired to change myself.
But, so long as it didn’t harm or inconvenience me in any way, I could do as she suggested and work on letting people in a bit more. Only as much as is practical, of course.
“Reeeeeeeex!”
A distant voice called out. I saw a rapidly approaching, pink-haired girl running towards us.
“Haha, look, Tia, our clingy sister has found us already.”
I continued petting the creature in my lap.
“Meow?”
Tiara popped up from a nearby rooftop, looking down at me quizzically.
“When did you get up there?”
I asked, continued to pet the cat in my lap…
…hm?
“Why’d you stop?”
Felicia was looking up at me, her head resting in my lap with a content expression on her face.
Clara grabbed her and pulled her off before diving in to take her place.
“Me next!”
Her eyes shone expectantly. But in that moment, I remembered Felicia’s earlier accusation, comparing me to an annoying moron who picked up fawning women no matter where he went.
I pushed Clara off and silently walked into the chapel. No rom-com shenanigans would occur in a place of worship after all.
