Chapter 50

Broke “Gaze upon your true past, Nathan.”

The water in front of Karn turned bright blue, then, slowly, other colors emerged. Red, yellow, and white all appeared until the ripples calmed and an image appeared. Karn had seen many astounding sights before, many this very night, but he never imagined that he would gaze into the water like a window into the past.

He recognized himself right away, but not as the soldier he thought he remembered. He was dressed as a common fisherman. His reflection had shorter hair and he was sans both his beard and seemingly a few months of wear.

He watched himself walk a path into a town he could not identify. The buildings looked somewhat familiar, structures made entirely of wood and twine; yet as hard as he tried, Karn could not name this underdeveloped town at the sea’s edge.

Karn watched as the vision of his younger self walked through town. He waved to everyone he passed; he looked happy.

Karn wrung his hands as tiny details—like the feel of the leather-handled fishing rod against his palms, the smell of the caught fish, and the sensation of pride in a good day’s work—returned to him.

Just as Karn became comfortable with the vision of himself, he spotted something that unnerved him: the blond child from the vision he had.

“S-Sabrina?” he whispered to himself.

Karn stared as the beautiful girl ran to his double and embraced him. His eyes filled with tears. As he wiped them away, he saw another person approach his past self: a tall, slender blond woman. My God, it’s her, Karn thought as he laid his eyes on Margeaux.

“I dreamt of her,” Karn breathed, as he watched her kiss him. “This… Is this my dream?”

“Not a dream. This is your past. The sum of fewer months than—”

“I-I was a soldier in Weiden’s Rise’s cavalry until the attack,” Karn interrupted. “I fought…”

“That is what they made you believe. The truth is that you were a simple fisherman with a loving family.”

Her words make no sense… But then, Karn felt the memories he thought were reality begin to wash away. The truth was uncovered. Who am I? He closed his eyes and shook his head. He still had no full sense of a past life. Was I a fisherman? Was this my family?

“The mages cast a very strong spell on you. In fact, it was the very same spell they used on the warlord Naraboo,” Drae’Qu explained. “The spell takes the captured soul of a warlord from long ago and imprints it on the target. All his skills become the target’s, and so does his thirst for blood.”

“This…” Karn opened his eyes and uttered in disbelief, “This cannot be.”

“Later, the mages enchanted you again. They gave you increased strength and further used their corrupt magic to suppress your actual memory. They replaced your true past with one they fabricated.”

“No!” Karn shouted as he stepped into the water in front of him and put an end to the images that rippled atop the water. “How could they have done all this without Opal knowing?”

“Nathan—”

“My name is Karn.”

“Nathan, tell me when you met Opal,” Drae’Qu demanded.

“Opal and I grew up together in Weiden’s Rise…” Karn trailed off a moment. “No, wait, no, Margeaux and I grew up together in a little fishing town called—”

“The village of Werr Nax,” Drae’Qu finished for him.

“Werr Nax,” he echoed solemnly.

“You see, Nathan, the mages needed to keep one of their own close to you at all times. That person would act as a guard and maintain magical control over you to keep your true memories buried deeply. That mage was Opal.”

Opal, he repeated in his head. When he thought about her now, he felt emptiness and distrust. She betrayed me.

“Why would she do this to me?” he whispered. “I thought she—”

“She lied to you. However, yours and Opal’s pasts are indeed intertwined.”

Karn closed his eyes again. He tried to clear his head, make sense of something, anything. “How?”

“From the time you were a young boy, your family and her family did business together, trading goods. Each spring and fall, your fathers would meet. Do you remember your trips with your father?”

“Yes.” Karn pondered his childhood. “I went with him for many seasons before… before he died.”

“It was during one of those trips that you met Opal.”

Karn opened his eyes and smiled. “I do remember one of the men my father traded with bringing his daughter with him during our meetings.” Karn concentrated in an attempt to remember the details. “She was skinny, with long braids.”

“Opal harbored a secret affection for you from the day she first laid eyes on you, Nathan, but you ignored her. Through the many trips, as you helped your father with his trade, you paid no mind to her advances. Sick with dejection and anger, Opal left home.”

Karn rubbed his eyes with frustration. Enough, he thought as he turned and walked back to where Tala stood silently.

“All this?” Karn waved his hands in the air. “Am I to believe all this is because I ignored some shy little girl when I was a child myself?”

“I’m afraid so, Karn.”

He kicked the water and shouted, “I want to remember everything! I want to know what was fucking done to me!”

“Calm yourself. I told you the mages cast powerful magic on you,” Drae’Qu said. “You are fortunate that your soul can be saved.”

“Saved? If this soul spell is so damned powerful, then how did I break free of it?” Karn looked at Tala. “I am free of it, right?”

Tala’s shoulders slumped further, and she averted her eyes. Karn did not like what her body language conveyed.

“Tala—” Drae’Qu began, which confirmed his suspicions.

“Tala,” Karn interrupted. “Did you have something to do with this too?”

“Tala helped me aid in your recovery,” Drae’Qu said.

“Did you?”

The fairy’s birdlike voice rose to a shrill level. “Nathan?”

“What?”

“Look at me. Listen to me,” Drae’Qu said as she pointed at him. “It was known to me that you would travel to the human lands of Kel Tora to seek allies. So, I prepared a solution. I enchanted Tala’s body with a cure, one that would dispel the mages’ domination over you. When she touched you, it removed their enthrallment. Mother Nature’s magic may be slow at times, but soon it will purge you of all the mages’ lies and restore your reality.”

Karn’s thoughts were muddled. He was overwhelmed by everything Drae’Qu had told him. He worked to push all the jumbled thoughts out. Too many thoughts. Dump them to the floor, then start over. Pick up just the things you need. Like you were taught—taught by your father. Your true father.

Father, wife, family—they were words that stuck like thorns in his heart.

“My family… What happened to them?”

Karn tried once more to regain eye contact with Tala and even whispered her name, but she refused to look.

“What happened, Drae’Qu?”

“They were killed,” Drae’Qu said, not a hint of emotion in her voice.

Karn dropped to his knees in the water; he succumbed to lifelessness. He was sad but did not cry. He was angry, but he did not scream.

Tala rustled behind him. Did she know all this and not tell me the truth?

“Damn it. Show me. Show me what happened! Show me their deaths!” Karn demanded.

“The pain you feel… it is dampened by anger. Do not think this is your fault; it is not. It is the mage’s soul spell that muddles your emotions and turns your melancholy to rage.”

“Enough. Show me.”

The fairy fluttered back some. “Very well, but you have my warning.”

The waters of the lake swirled and turned other shades of color again. Slowly, a new image arose from the ripples. Nestled comfortably amongst trees was the small fishing village of Werr Nax. No more than a collection of wooden shacks, the place seemed too simple to be the birth of such violent beginnings.

It was late at night and the village itself was still, draped in pure darkness. Outside a group of six small homes, a magical portal peeled opened. The portal lit the town like the morning sun, but the purple light did not shine for long. After two mages stepped out from the whirlpool of light, it vanished.

Karn recognized the magic—and both mages. One was the old mage he saw defeated weeks ago, a man named Malek. The other, who stood brazenly at his side and wore a dark hooded robe marked with intertwined circles, was Opal.

After a nod at Opal, Malek raised his staff to the wooden door of the cabin, which Karn recognized as his old home. The door crept open and the two entered without hesitation. Moments later, Karn saw himself walk from the back of the room, seemingly half-awake. Surprised by the intruders, he reached for a club kept alongside his fishing gear.

Karn watched himself cross the room toward Malek and Opal, the makeshift weapon held high in the air, but before he could attack, the old mage waved his staff, and Karn fell lifeless into Malek’s thin arms.

This can’t be true. This can’t be happening. As Karn watched the past events, his chest filled with anxiety. If I could transport myself back there, I could fight them. I could protect my family.

Karn fantasized about killing Malek; he imagined his arm around the old man’s frail neck, but before his fantasy could reach a satisfying end, the old mage disappeared in a puff of smoke, absconding with the mirror image of Karn.

“Bastard.”

Although Malek had left, Opal still stood in his home. A sour sensation dropped into Karn’s stomach—he guessed what would happen next. “No, no, no…”

Drae’Qu’s image of Opal stepped into the back room of Karn’s cabin and found Karn’s wife and daughter, huddled together in a corner behind a small bed and clothes trunk. Margeaux opened her mouth in a scream, but the fairy’s mystical image produced no sound. Still, Karn did not have to hear the words to know what was said. He could tell by her hand gestures and the desperate look in her eyes. She’s begging for our daughter’s life.

Karn watched Opal raise her hands to her face, and touch her thumbs and index fingers together in a diamond formation that framed her forehead. Dark red sparkles of light formed around the room and fluttered toward Opal’s hands like tiny fireflies. As the sparkles grew in number, the tiny lights joined together and formed one big one.

Then, with a smooth and practiced move, Opal separated her hands and pushed them toward Margeaux and Sabrina. The red glow shot out in the form of a thick beam of concentrated light, enveloping Karn’s family.

“No!” Karn shouted as he watched the light turn from a dark red to an orange-red.

At first, he could not tell what the spell had done, besides irradiate them in a deep vermilion glow. Perhaps he was wrong; maybe Opal was not there to harm them, but to protect them instead. The red aura… it always ushers healing.

Karn looked at his family and back to Opal. She had stood still since she cast the spell, but she suddenly stirred. She lifted her hands and formed the same diamond shape over her forehead.

Karn watched as Margeaux’s slim body shook with a sudden violent convulsion. Her arms flailed to her sides then up to her head, where they clawed at her own skin. His daughter, Sabrina, suffered from the same seizures and fell face-first onto the hardwood floor.

Margeaux’s hair had begun to change from blond to white, and when her hands dropped from her face, they revealed bloody red claw marks.

“By the gods, what’s she doing to them?” Karn shouted.

Drae’Qu crossed her arms. “Opal is stealing their life force,” she said. “Behold.”

Opal drew her hands back close to her chest and the orange-red glow shot back to her. The motion whipped back the bodies of her victims; it flipped Sabrina onto her back and bent Margeaux over until her spine snapped.

“Stop!” Karn yelled, but nothing could be done.

Opal’s body glowed the same color as her victims had, but unlike them, she reveled in the spell. As Opal basked in the life energy she had stolen from Karn’s family, Margeaux struggled to aid her daughter. She dragged her broken body to the side, just enough to face her daughter.

A murky despair painted Margeaux’s face when she laid eyes on her daughter’s ashen skin and her once-beautiful blond hair—now white and falling out. Sabrina’s cheeks, which had moments before been full and rosy, appeared colorless and sunken in.

Sabrina. Margeaux… He held back his tears. It was obvious to Karn that what little life Margeaux had left had been torn from her body with the realization that their daughter was dead.

Karn watched as Opal ran her hands down the front of her body to straighten her robes. Like a predator, she moved closer and took one last look at her prey. Does she feel any remorse? Any at all?

Karn watched in disbelief as Opal walked out of the cabin as if nothing had happened. Before she closed the door, she snapped her fingers and a minuscule dancing flame popped into existence in her hand.

Opal smiled.

She enjoys this… the killing. She’s sick—but before he could finish the thought, she tossed the bright red fire inside and close the door behind her.

“Enough,” Karn said.

“So be it.”

Karn’s stomach flopped like a fish out of water. He would have vomited had he eaten that day; instead, he dry-heaved for a second.

“She burned the cabin.” Karn’s voice cracked with anger as he moved back and forth.

“Yes, and with it what the mages thought would be any proof of your former life.”

Karn pounded his fists into the wet mud at the water’s edge. “I trusted that lying bitch. Protected her,” he cried. “When I find her, I will shove my blade down her fucking throat until she chokes on her own lifeblood!”

“This war is your priority. You must—”

“You expect me to let the death of my family go unavenged?”

“No, Nathan,” Drae’Qu interrupted. “There are others who seek to destroy her. Her death is their task. She will get what she deserves. I promise.”

“Others?”

Drae’Qu buzzed closer. “Naraboo, like you, has had his life ruined by the mages. Exiled ages ago, he has returned and now marches north to the mages’ home. He has destroyed each kingdom in his way, killed countless families, and if he succeeds in defeating the mages once and for all, there will be scant few left who can stop him from conquering the whole island.”

“I am not like him,” Karn said. “And I will see Opal pay for what she has done to me.”

The fairy shook her head. “Tala, is there anything you need before I retire?”

“No, you’ve done enough,” Tala said with a grumble.

“Very well. I have given you much tonight, Nathan. Return tomorrow if you need more.”

Drae’Qu darted to the center of the quiet water and dove straight into the darkness. Moments later, the glow of her wings illuminated the lake, as they had earlier.

Tala whispered, “My deepest apologies. I-I know all too well how you feel.”

Karn turned to Tala as the look of a stumbling drunkard reshaped his tired face. “Why me?”

“Fate,” Tala said flatly.