Chapter 10: He’s Been Telling Lies
Cold Hearted, Paula Abdul
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It was stupid. And stupid. And Morgyn was stupid. And this was stupid and everything was stupid, stupid, stupid.
Morgyn was angry. Primarily, the blond was angry at no one else but the blond. It turned out, Caleb was right, and Morgyn had messed up, again, and Ezio had said absolutely nothing to the blond that morning. He’d glared, though. Morgyn should be glad for that much, at least Ezio hadn’t completely shut down on the sage, but it still stung. Morgyn meant well. Of course, then Morgyn remembered that often the road to hell was paved in good intentions, or however the saying went. It was true.
With Ezio not speaking to the blond, things felt a little more hopeless than Morgyn knew what to do with. As always the blond did at times like these, when talking to Ezio about it was somehow not possible, Morgyn slipped out of headquarters sometime after nightfall in the other world. Caleb would likely be busy, but hopefully, not too busy to exchange a few words, and maybe offer a proverbial smack upside the head. Sometimes, Morgyn definitely needed one of those.
Wordlessly, Morgyn slipped into line at the stand Caleb was working today. Caleb’s grey eyes glanced at the blond for a moment, but then turned back to the customer he was already speaking with, and Morgyn snorted softly. As the interaction wrapped up, and the other spellcaster shuffled away with their purchases, Morgyn looked up at Caleb. Caleb met Morgyn’s gaze, and then smiled softly.
“You messed up, didn’t you?” he asked.
Morgyn didn’t answer verbally, simply nodded. There was no point trying to pretend otherwise. It was probably written all over Morgyn’s face. Ezio had decided not to speak to Morgyn on more than one occasion by now. The blond was rash, tended to make hasty decisions that maybe weren’t the best decisions, and was intensely defensive of Ezio. The combination tended to end in a lot of trouble for both of the Ember twins, it was no secret to anyone. This kind of thing happened in cycles, it seemed like. There was no fury as intense as that of one of the Embers felt for the other, no storm as intense as one twin raging at the other.
Every time they fought like this, they grew closer together, their bond stronger for it. It was simply figuring out how to weather the storm, because every storm was difficult. It was always Ezio that Morgyn leaned on, of course. Without him, Morgyn didn’t know what to do, who to turn to. Morgyn was going to be completely useless without him, at least for a while.
The blond tried not to think things like that, but it was hard not to. The reminder that Ezio could go at any time was always lingering in the back of Morgyn’s mind. It coloured everything Morgyn did. How could it not?
“Here,” Caleb said, setting something down on the counter with a smile.
Morgyn’s head tilted, eyes glancing up to see what it was. A mug of cocoa sat on the counter, complete with marshmallows. “Thank you,” Morgyn said, reaching up and taking it, holding it like it could fix everything.
“Chocolate’s good for the soul,” Caleb said. “Ey Tanya,” he called, turning around and walking into the back. A few moments later, he came out the side, and walked up to stand beside Morgyn. The blond smiled softly, moving toward one of the benches. Caleb wordlessly followed.
“You were right, you know,” Morgyn said, settling down.
Caleb sat down beside the blond. “Was I?” he asked.
“What you said the last time we talked. Ezio’s not speaking to me right now.”
Caleb didn’t look surprised. “It’s not unsalvageable,” Caleb answered, looking out at the pieces of stone and rock in the sky. “You should apologise, though. And you need to mean it. Interfering with someone’s autonomy isn’t how you help them, and you should know that by now.”
“I can’t help it,” Morgyn mumbled into the cup.
“Yes you can,” Caleb answered. “I know you’ve got no sense when it comes to Ezio, but that’s a temporary condition, not a state of being. You can learn to curb your innate reactions the same as anyone else can. Hey, if a vampire can manage not to rip throats out every night, you can start using your head instead of reacting with your heart. I believe in you.”
Morgyn looked up at him through a sideways glance. Caleb always did believe in the blond. Just like with Ezio, Morgyn never understood why. All the same, it was comforting somehow. Someone believed in the blond. That someone should’ve been Aine, for a long time, but it never was. It didn’t matter. Morgyn had Ezio and Caleb now, and Aine was gone. It was for the best, anyway. Aine was no good for Morgyn. Morgyn was no good for anyone.
“I guess you’re right,” Morgyn said, sighing softly. “It just feels hopeless right now.”
“I’m sure it does,” Caleb answered. “But you know, you and Ezio have been through a lot worse than some stupid boy. Maybe it’s just one stressor too many. Not so much the thing itself as the thing in combination with all the other things. I have a hard time imagining there isn’t some stress in Ezio’s relationship with Jackson, plus whatever he’s dealing with outside of that. Tack on your incidental attacking his choices, and I can see that just being the unfortunate thing that tipped the scales too far the wrong way. Just, something he can’t deal with right now.”
Morgyn glanced at Caleb sideways again, and then released a sigh. He was probably right. “So, I’m stressing him out.”
“Essentially, yes,” Caleb answered. “Everything does, you know? Living is being stressed. Some people have different limits to the amount of stress, and the kinds of stress, they can handle. But you’re a controllable factor, something Ezio has influence over to some extent. He can tell you to fuck off, and it might hurt your feelings a little, but you won’t walk away forever over it. Jackson’s a whole other story, though.”
Morgyn was quiet a moment, drinking some of the cocoa, licking the marshmallow foam off, and thinking. “Apologise, and mean it,” Morgyn said.
“Don’t pull away entirely, like I said,” Caleb said. “Ezio will still need you later, and maybe for other things. And don’t stop watching Jackson, just retreat some. Channel your inner Drake, right? Jackson’s probably on high alert because you’re paying attention anyway. Funny enough, backing away has the added bonus of making him think he’s won. When your opponent thinks his victory is assured, he tends to get arrogant, and make very costly mistakes. You won’t have to explain anything to Ezio by the end. Jackson will have explained it first.”
Morgyn looked at him, making a very bewildered expression.
“What?” Caleb asked.
“I’m just surprised you thought that far,” Morgyn said.
Caleb shrugged one shoulder. “I may not like warfare, but I do know the rules to these kinds of things. Unfortunately, I think it’s safe to say we’re at war with Jackson, in a kind of weird way. He is a threat to Ezio, though. We don’t take well to those round these parts, do we?”
“Not really,” Morgyn said, smiling in amusement. There he went again, making the blond smile even when Morgyn was in a terrible mood.
“Hey,” Caleb said, gently bumping against Morgyn’s shoulder. “We’ll win this one. We have to. But we’re going to have to play smarter than him, and not end up divided. Go tell Ezio you’re sorry, and back out of this outwardly. We’ve got eyes and ears everywhere, mm? We don’t have to make noise. There’s a lot to be said for stealth, Morgyn.”
“I’m not terribly good at it,” Morgyn said.
“It’s okay,” Caleb answered. “There’s time to learn.”
The stack of books around him had been rising over the last few hours. He could feel the slight ache in his back that said he’d been sitting encircled by stacks of books on this floor for far too long, but he remembered why he loved this kind of thing. Sometimes the thrill wasn’t in discovery, but in the journey towards it, the excitement of learning new things and having some sense of purpose to speak of. His life had been far too long by now, and he still struggled with finding a sense of purpose and progress. This was how he did it.
Ezio paused, setting the book in his hand on top of one of the stacks, and then stretching out. His back snapped in several places, but he was getting closer to finding what language his leather-bound enigma was written in, or so it felt like. Perhaps, it was more accurately, so Ezio hoped.
“That is a number of books,” he heard an effeminate voice say, somewhere beyond the stacks.
Ezio sat up, looking a bit like a meerkat as he did so, finding a puff of wavy blond and green eyes. “Yes,” he said, and then ducked back down below the stacks like they were the Great Wall of China and Morgyn was the Huns.
Morgyn was quiet for a moment, and then the blond settled down on the floor, legs tucking under the sage. Morgyn then reached up and set a steaming cup onto one of the stacks wordlessly.
Ezio glanced up at the cup. “What’s this?” he asked.
“Green and mint tea, two sugars, splash of milk,” Morgyn answered.
That was Ezio’s favourite tea. He didn’t drink coffee, it wasn’t good for his heart, but he made up for it with varying teas and tisanes. What would Morgyn bring him tea for? Ezio had been quite clear about them not talking right now. After last night, Ezio wasn’t sure if he could handle more of Morgyn’s bitching about Jackson, anyway, and their conversations always went back to that.
Ezio drew a breath in, reached for it, and then remembered that was his injured wrist, and took the cup with the other hand. “Come to complain some more?” Ezio asked, softly blowing on the tea.
“No,” Morgyn answered, and then drew a breath in. “It’s a peace offering.”
Ezio’s grey eyes peeked over the Great Wall of Books.
“I’m sorry,” Morgyn said. “You’re right. I don’t have any say in your relationship with Jackson, and your decisions are your decisions and I have no right to question them. I don’t mean to be bossy about it, either. I just worry about you, a lot. Ezio, I just don’t like seeing you get hurt, and I don’t want to lose you. Especially not over some stupid boy.”
Grey eyes softened, and Ezio looked back down at the teacup in his hands. He set it down on the wood under him, drew a breath in, and reached over the Great Wall of Books to rest his hand on Morgyn’s hair. “I love you, you idiot,” he said. “You’re not ever going to lose me over a stupid boy.”
Morgyn had to wonder about that. Of course, the blond was afraid to say it, too, so the sage didn’t, reaching up to take Ezio’s hand. It was a little bit awkward, thanks to the Great Wall of Books, and Morgyn’s gaze fell to it. The stacks were arranged in a semi-circle around Ezio, his back to one of the chairs. “Sooo… what’s with the literary wall?” Morgyn asked.
Oh, right. “I’m trying to translate a book,” Ezio said. “The spirits think I need to read it, but I don’t know what language it’s in, so I’ve been searching through all the language books we have.”
Morgyn’s gaze narrowed in concern. “The spirits are talking to you again?” When had that happened? The last time the spirits were talking to him, Ezio had about halfway lost his fucking mind. Some spirits were easier to deal with than others, of course, they weren’t as strong or intense, and what they wanted was simple, but Morgyn had watched one too many psychotic spirit drive Ezio halfway to madness, reduce him to a spluttery mess curled in a ball on the floor, to be entirely happy with the knowledge they were talking to him again.
The spirits in magic realm had been here for generations, far longer than Morgyn and Ezio had been here. Morgyn didn’t know how old they were, just that they were ancient, probably as old as magic realm itself in many cases. They were comfortable in the fact they were dead, and while they’d been interested in Ezio for a while at the start, it wasn’t as overwhelming as the things he’d seen and lived through when they were kids.
Morgyn still had nightmares about the night Ezio discovered he had an affinity for ice magic. He’d frozen everything, half the river, stopped the water wheels for the fact they were coated in an inch of ice out of nowhere, and his eyes… they may as well have been red for all the rage in them. Morgyn didn’t know who he was that night, but that wasn’t Ezio. Every incident even halfway that intense seemed like it took years off his life, and Morgyn couldn’t fight those demons, only pray that Ezio always could.
Ezio was too emotional. He took each one into his heart, held them too closely, and god forbid he fucking lost one.
Still, Caleb was incidentally right about this, too. This wasn’t Morgyn’s place, either. All Morgyn could do was be here, and hope. Hope that it was always enough, because Morgyn had no idea what the blond would do if it wasn’t someday.
“Calm down,” Ezio said, smiling a little bit, lightly squeezing Morgyn’s hand. “I think the book’s calling them, and they’re calling me. It’s kind of a roundabout way of achieving anything, but I’d say it works out.” Morgyn didn’t like it when Ezio talked about spirits and ghosts. He tried not to.
Morgyn would always worry about that. Instead of saying that, though, Morgyn smiled. “Okay,” the blond said softly. “You’ll figure it out. What else have you been doing?” It’d been a while since they’d had an actual conversation, one that didn’t inevitably go back to Jackson.
Maybe it was time they remembered who they were, apart and together, when Jackson didn’t matter.
The Great Wall of Books had shortened somewhat in the time since yesterday. Ezio had tossed a sizeable number of the books back onto the shelves where they belonged, once he was certain that they weren’t going to be of any use to him and his endeavours. It seemed rather hypocritical to complain about others being unable to put their books back onto the shelf, and then fail to do so himself once he was sure he didn’t need them.
His bitching must’ve been circulating, because he was having slightly less issue with it.
Ezio flipped through the book in his hand, comparing the writing in it to the writing in the leather-bound enigma. Like too many of the other systems, the writing in the leather book looked almost like the writing in the book he was comparing, but it still wasn’t quite right. He may be getting close, but he had the feeling he was looking in the wrong place. Short of leaving magic realm to venture out into the wide world for another reason, he had nothing.
He should tell Morgyn and Drake about that. Drake had probably smelled it, even if he didn’t know what it was he was picking up on. Ezio wasn’t ready to explain it, yet. He was still getting used to not having to defend Jackson every ten minutes as it was, and that much had worn him down.
Ezio released a sigh, leaning backward. He bumped against the chair behind him, and unfortunately for him, it had wheels and moved. Ezio hit the floor, loudly, and cursed. As he moved to sit back up, holding his head, a pale hand reached down towards him. Drake, of course it was.
“Thanks,” Ezio said, taking the offered hand, and Drake pulled him back upright.
“Are you alright?” Drake asked, looking concerned.
“I’m fine,” Ezio replied. “Just lost my pride down there somewhere, is all.” His wrist still hurt, but if Drake hadn’t noticed that, Ezio wasn’t going to-Drake glanced at his injured wrist. Drake didn’t say anything, though. Ezio decided to stick to the decision not to volunteer anything. Ezio had a sneaking suspicion that Drake had heard more of that exchange than Ezio would’ve rather he had, but there wasn’t anything for it.
“Well, it’s good you didn’t hit your head too hard,” Drake said.
“Yeah, so it is,” Ezio answered.
“Aside from the fall, how are you doing?”
Ezio tried not to let it show on his face, when embarrassment and vague panic flickered through his mind. Drake had definitely heard everything. Should he say something? He was afraid to. It was kind of pathetic, wasn’t it, how even now Ezio couldn’t deal with his own problems on his own. That was why, wasn’t it? Why Morgyn always nosed into his business. Because Ezio couldn’t deal with his business on his own.
Drake had just asked a question. Ezio shook his head. “I’m fine,” he repeated. “Just kind of caught up in trying to figure out what language this is, that’s all.”
That look Drake got sometimes, when he knew Ezio wasn’t saying something important but didn’t want to call him on it, flickered through his eyes. Like always he didn’t, Drake didn’t say it. “You’ve been at it for a while now,” Drake said. “You’ve not been forgetting to eat or anything, right?”
“I haven’t,” Ezio said. Er, at least he didn’t think he had been. He turned a little to the side, doing the maths, trying to remember the last time he ate was. Morgyn brought tea, but that wasn’t quite the same thing. He glanced up at the clock on the wall.
“You haven’t eaten in too long,” Drake said, his tone firm and final. If Ezio had to do math to figure out when he ate last, that was too long. “Come on,” Drake said, standing. “I’ll make something, you clearly need a break.”
Ezio groaned. “I’m getting close, though!”
“You said that five hours ago.”
Had he? That wasn’t the point. Ezio loosed another grunt, but he stood up, carefully stepping around the Great Wall of Books. As he moved around the side, he kicked something the wrong way, and slipped. Drake reached out and caught him. Ezio loosed an annoyed snort, but he stayed there, resting against Drake for a moment. Okay, maybe he was a little bit dizzy. It didn’t mean anything, especially not that Drake was right and he needed to eat.
Except, that was probably precisely what it meant.
“See, you’re losing your balance,” he said.
“I am not,” Ezio grumbled. He wasn’t in a hurry to stand on his own, though.
Drake looked exasperated. He’d been living with the Embers too long. They were both utter disasters, just in different ways. Still, he was happy like this, too. Sometimes they needed to be mothered, that was all, and as it turned out, Drake was kind of domestic. At least, he was domestic with Embers.
Ezio. He was domestic with Ezio.
“Is your head still spinning?” Drake asked quietly.
Ezio mutely nodded. Drake could tell by the way he was clinging to his arm, and leaning too heavily on him. What was he going to do with him, really? At the moment, getting him to eat something seemed like it was around the top of the list.
“I’m going to pick you up,” he said.
“Okay,” Ezio answered softly.
Drake fluidly moved Ezio around, got his arms under him, and lifted him up. Most likely, he’d need to make something small so that the dizziness stopped, and Ezio could eat without getting nauseous from it. If he ended up getting sick, that wasn’t much help.
“I hate it when you do this,” Drake said, under his breath.
Ezio snorted softly. “I hate it when I do this, too.” He just lost track of time a little too easily. Sometimes, when he felt okay, it was hard to remember that he wasn’t okay, that he still had to be careful what he did, because he could very easily end up on a fast track to being stuck in bed. He hated those times even more. He was still an Ember, and Embers weren’t good at staying still. Admittedly, he’d had so much on his mind recently, this may not entirely be his fault. It might simply be that now things were going to go badly for a while.
They were both quiet, for a moment, Drake shuffling towards the kitchen, probably to set him down in one of the chairs just inside the plant room. At some point, Ezio squeaked, and started to cry. “I hate this,” he whispered.
He wasn’t talking about the dizziness, was he? Of course not. Drake sighed. “I know.” Unfortunately, he couldn’t always make it better. Something Drake could do with his vampiric powers managed to stave off the worst of it, but for how long, Drake wondered. He never wondered aloud, in case the universe took it as a dare.
Ezio had another episode. It wasn’t anything terrible, at least, he just needed to eat and rest, but Morgyn’s nerves were frayed worse than they’d already been, to say the least of it. Normally, by now, the blond would be asleep, but currently Morgyn was moving the Great Wall of Books from the library out of the way, and it was taking some work, even with Drake’s help. He kept going upstairs to check on Ezio. Whatever he was doing with his vampire powers was making these things last less time than they could’ve, but it felt like it wasn’t working as well as it used to.
It was just Morgyn’s paranoia. That had to be it.
Morgyn sat at the breakfast bar in the kitchen, one hand idly stirring the cup of tea sitting on the countertop in front of the blond. Drake was upstairs again, and Morgyn had decided that taking a break was probably for the best. They’d moved half the Great Wall of Books, and Morgyn was wondering how Ezio had built the dang thing in the first place. There were books in there about every language they knew anything about in there, even obscure writing systems and languages from Polynesia. Morgyn thought Polynesia was probably a bit of a stretch, but Ezio hadn’t shown the blond this book he was trying to translate anyway. What did the blond know about it?
It was another thing Ezio was shoving Morgyn out of, but at this point, that was understandable and Morgyn had no room to complain. Ezio didn’t start this. As always, though, he was pretty determined to end it.
As Morgyn stirred the tea, watching the light outside the windows above the stoves, the blond heard something crash out in the courtyard. Then came the very loud laughter. That laughter sounded familiar, though Morgyn couldn’t immediately say why. Morgyn picked up the teacup and stood, shuffling out into the courtyard hallway. Jackson was standing in the entry, having apparently knocked over one of the hallway tables. Some of the glass bits on the wood floor had broken.
Morgyn arched an eyebrow. The blond would never see what Ezio saw in this idiot. Instead of saying that, Morgyn wordlessly waved a hand. The table righted itself, the glass pieces fusing back together and refilling with their contents, the books neatly stacking on the surface.
“Mmmmooooorrrrgynnnn,” Jackson said, like he had to think too hard about it to say it.
“Yes,” Morgyn answered, chin turning up. “That is indeed my name. Don’t wear it out.”
“Haaave I ever told youuuu, that I loooove how sassy you are?” Jackson said.
Morgyn’s eyes narrowed at the slurring he was doing. Was he drunk? To be fair, he could’ve gotten high off blowing up too many potions. Some people did that. “No, you don’t,” Morgyn answered.
“You’re right,” Jackson said, laughing between the words. “It drives me batshit insane, actually. How did you get so mouthy anyway? Aintchoo like… hundred somefin?”
Morgyn raised one brown eyebrow. “You should ask Ezio that question,” Morgyn said. It was, after all, with Ezio’s encouragement that Morgyn had discovered any semblance of a backbone, any kind of freedom. Part of why Morgyn was so defensive of him was because he’d gone to hell and come back, just to show Morgyn what it was like to fly. The blond was coming to understand, through L’s grating emotional management coaching, that this was called guilt. If one asked Morgyn, the blond had no reason to feel that way, but Morgyn was also coming to understand, emotions didn’t follow any kind of logic to speak of, and trying to apply logic to them was merely an exercise in frustration.
“I did!” Jackson squeaked. “Did I? I think I did.”
Morgyn’s raised eyebrow went a little higher.
“Don’judge me,” Jackson said, his tone lowering. “Yoooou don’know what it’s like to deal witchur brother, you have noooo idears, how depressing he is. You you ought to get him a thera… Ther… Thinger. Fuck. Person to talk to. I need a thera… Whatever it is. You know iffff youuus got drunk more offen, I fink you’d be less of a prick.”
Morgyn snorted softly, arms crossing. “You should stay downstairs tonight, in one of the guest rooms,” the blond said evenly. “I don’t want you anywhere near Ezio this drunk, and if you try going that way, I will set you on fire.” Ezio had already had a fairly stressful day, he didn’t need to deal with a drunken Jackson, too.
“PFFFFTtttth,” came Jackson’s response, perhaps what was meant to be blowing raspberries and didn’t quite make it. “I’ll stay wifyou then,” he decided.
“No, you won’t,” Morgyn immediately replied.
“You don’tell me whatta do, mmmmkay?” Jackson said, swaying on his feet slightly as he pointed at the blond. “Is fine. I ain’care nuffin about Ezio anyway, he’s boring, and prudish, an’e likes to talk about dumb stuff, like the stars’er whatever. I want you now. Yeah. Yeah.”
Morgyn wasn’t sure if he was stating this as a fact, or trying to convince himself it was true, because it sounded somewhat like the latter. The blond eyed him for a moment. “Then why not break up with Ezio?”
Surprisingly, Jackson went quiet, his drunken smile fading. And Morgyn, for a fleeting moment, was convinced there was the tell-tale glitter of tears in his eyes before he looked down at the wood floor. “I love him, you know?” Jackson said quietly. “He don’love me, not like I love him, I know that. I thought maybe someday’e could, maybe. I’unno what I’m doin’wrong. Maybe nothin’. Maybe everythin’. I can’do it anymore. I can’watch’im die.”
“He’s not dying,” Morgyn said.
“Oh bull fuckin’ shit, Morgyn,” Jackson said, suddenly looking up, his tone almost a snarl. But there was pain in his eyes, not anger. “Yoooou annat fuggin vampire’a his can say all ya wanna he ain’t dyin but I can see it and I can’t stand it. Ezio is dying and I can’t fix that Morgyn I don’t know how and it hurts! The only thing I can do is run away from it, I don’know what else to fuggin do!” Morgyn stayed quiet. A tear slipped down Jackson’s cheek, and he looked back down at the floor, breathing in. “But you know that already, dontchu.” It wasn’t that Morgyn was stronger than Jackson was. It was that Morgyn couldn’t walk away from Ezio.
Morgyn stared at him. Jackson eventually breathed in again, straightened up.
“I’ll getchu someday,” he said. “You know nobody gets to yooou without goin’ through Ezio anyway. Ya look jus’like’im. Maybe I won’even notice the difference.”
Green eyes narrowed. That wasn’t how that worked. Morgyn almost felt pity for him, and then he went and ruined it. “I think you should go to bed,” Morgyn said.
“Yup, probably,” Jackson said, laughing a bit. “Yanno I wasn’ever good at doin’ what I was supposed to do. But maybe jus’this once.” Jackson reached over to tap Morgyn’s nose with a finger; the blond effortlessly pushed a wrist against his, making him miss. Jackson looked amused. “Cause ya ask so nicely.”
Jackson went around Morgyn, heading for the stairs. Morgyn’s eyes slid closed, the blond taking a breath in. He smelled like vanilla and bourbon.
“How did you not set him on fire?” Drake asked, as he came downstairs. Drake could guess how, by the end, but there were a few points in that discussion that should have set Morgyn off.
“Emotions are to be felt,” Morgyn replied. “Not make your decisions for you.” Green eyes looked up at the vampire, finding him smiling slightly. “What?” the blond asked.
“You’re getting better at that, that’s all,” Drake said.
“Yeah well,” Morgyn said, walking back towards the kitchen. “Don’t write home yet.”
Morgyn and Drake had brought his Great Wall of Books upstairs to his room. For once, Jackson wasn’t complaining about the stacks of books, but then, Jackson wasn’t here, either. Morgyn said he wasn’t feeling well, and had thought better of coming up last night, in case he adversely affected Ezio. It was one of those excuses that looked fine, checked out okay, but felt wrong.
It felt like an excuse that was, perhaps merely coincidentally, fully believable.
Just softly, in the background of the sounds of rushing water and the strange noises the sky made, Ezio could hear the singing. Sometimes, it was louder. Other times, it was barely there. Even other times, it was so loud and strong he could swear he could hear the screeching in it, it made his teeth start hurting and gave him a headache, and there was nothing he could do to possibly block it out. He even heard it outside magic realm, sometimes, louder when he happened to use magic out there.
He had a theory, that it was possible the All was calling to him, like it apparently had called to so many others, but he did have to wonder why. Of course, this wondering led him to considering what the All even was. No one had seen it before. The sages supposedly protected it, by chance, in protecting magic realm in general, but even the sages didn’t know where it was, or what it was. As far as he knew, there was nothing else out there in magic realm that wasn’t inanimate or human. The ancient spellcasters had created magic realm, they should know everything that was here, because presumably it was put there by them.
He hadn’t seen an actual ghost in a long time. They simply whispered, now, to get his attention. Sometimes he could make out what they were saying, but a lot of the time they were completely indecipherable and random sounds. If he could find one, he’d ask them what they thought, if there were things in magic realm that hadn’t been put there by the spellcasters, yet at the same time, he was afraid of the answer. He wasn’t sure he could handle the answer, not right now. He was still fairly weak from his heart acting up again. Drake had done whatever Drake does to make it calm down, but it was a bandaid, a temporary fix for a not so temporary problem.
What happened, anyway, when the not so temporary problem became too great for the temporary fix to handle anymore? No one said it. Everyone was afraid to, pretended that nothing was weird or strange about this, but he could feel it. Every time, he slipped a little more than the last time. Someday, he’d slip too far for Drake to pull him back from.
Ezio wasn’t sure if he was afraid to die. He’d helped a lot of souls over the years, come to terms with their death, finish things that were left unfinished, find some sense of closure and peace. Death wasn’t something to be afraid of, he knew that better than most. It was merely the next step, the next part of one’s journey.
And I’m not certain if it will be Morgyn’s destruction or ours.
No. What Ezio was afraid of, was leaving Morgyn alone. That idiot didn’t do well that way.
Jackson was leaving soon. Ezio released a sigh, shoving the book in his hands out of his lap, and then stood up. If he was careful, he could pace around without too much trouble, and sometimes, the physical movement helped. Other times it hurt, and Ezio didn’t know why it helped sometimes and hurt others. There were many things like that. He’d hoped, by now, he’d have good news to give everyone, but that hadn’t happened yet. Sometimes life felt like a long string of waiting for something; dinner to be done, the coffee pot to finish, the morning, someone to wake up, to find the words for something, for good news, for the pain to stop, for something in life to make some sense. Ezio had been waiting for something for so long, he’d forgotten what all he was waiting for.
Embers weren’t good at waiting.
As he passed by the window, he could see the sparkles of starlight, or at least, whatever passed as starlight in this place, through the glass panes. He paused in his movement, watching them sparkle. They always looked like they knew some secret everyone else didn’t. There were a lot of stories about the stars, myths passed on through time, and Ezio’s favourite was the idea that each star was a soul that had passed on. That up there, in the sparkling diamonds scattered haphazardly across inky blackness, were those that had gone before, watching over everyone else. He knew how death worked, and knew enough about stars, at least enough to know that souls becoming stars was unlikely, but wasn’t it a comforting thought? Ezio liked these kinds of story, because it said a lot about how humans tended toward feeling better, not understanding reality. In its way, that, too, was fascinating to him.
Maybe Ezio was always looking at the stars, because he hoped that, somewhere up there, he’d find out who he was, and who he was meant to be.
Ezio sighed, reaching up and nudging his glasses back up his nose. For some reason, they always slid down the bridge of his nose. Ezio liked glasses, they were nice inventions, and it was great to be able to see again (admittedly, he had no idea how little he was seeing until he could see it again). As he watched the stars glittering in the sky, the maybe-comet-like things falling randomly, his gaze was drawn to a particular set of stars. A small cluster, it looked like, close together, but rather than merely sparkling, the more Ezio watched them, the more convinced he was that they were moving, and they were doing so in concert.
One side of the cluster, towards the top of the vague shape they made, moved slightly differently. Ezio tilted his head, watching the cluster, trying to follow the movements of the shape. What was that? The top part, there were two protrusions it looked like, and Ezio was quite sure they were moving like they were wings. Like the entire cluster surrounded an invisible shape that was flying through the sky. He could think of a few organic things that emitted light, usually in some form of bioluminescence for one reason or another, but he couldn’t think of any advantage a bird would have to emitting light. Unless the point wasn’t the light emissions, but rather the mimicry of the stars. Perhaps it was some kind of camouflage intended to prevent predators from seeing it when it flew at night.
Then, he blinked, and the cluster was gone. Ezio looked around, hoping to find it again, but just like that, it was gone. And Ezio started to wonder if he’d ever even seen it at all.
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