Chapter 68: Eternal
Eternal; Evanescence
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Mortain, France; 1770
That was painful. The only reason why, probably, was because Ezio had gotten in Jean’s way like that. It wasn’t as if Ezio cared too much. The worst, he figured, that happened was, Jean finally killed him, and truth be told, that might be some kind of a blessing. Ezio had nothing left to live for, anyway.
Well, except him.
It was a wonder why he’d even bothered fighting through Ezio’s instinctive snarling at him. Ezio could be a little terrifying, when he chose to be. Then, he was still a half-grown boy back then, and wasn’t terribly skilled at magic, either. And of course, there was always Jean, someone he’d grown up around.
Maybe to Matheo, Ezio wasn’t scary at all.
He certainly didn’t seem afraid of him now, working around varying injuries, binding broken bones, dousing everything in vinegar. It stung like the sun’s fire, but Ezio also understood he had no one to blame for this but himself. He had nothing to do with it. If he’d just kept his head down and stayed quiet for once, he could’ve come out of that one with no trouble at all, but he just had to dive in the way.
Jean could’ve killed that servant girl, though. All she did was mix up which glasses he wanted out for the banquet the next evening, nothing worth killing someone over. She had a family somewhere. She had people that wanted her to come home someday, Ezio imagined.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” Matheo said.
He sounded terse and upset, and Ezio had a hard time imagining why. But the more time went on, the more this sort of thing seemed to bother him. He didn’t have to help, he did know that, right? Eventually, Ezio would bleed out and die, and the world wouldn’t be any different for the loss.
Somehow, he got the feeling saying that wouldn’t go well.
“Jean does this to me all the time,” Ezio said instead. And it was true enough. Ezio had lived through worse than this, somehow. Sometimes, Matheo’s skill at keeping Ezio alive, it was a wonder he wasn’t a doctor or something.
“Not this bad,” Matheo answered, tying a bandage around his arm. There was a stick in it, bracing the arm; it’d broken, of course. It was a miracle Ezio wasn’t half crippled by now for how many times Jean had broken too many of his bones to count.
“Ezio, he probably wouldn’t have even hurt the servant girl that badly,” Matheo said. “You just had to go and make things worse. He’s not beat you this badly in a long time. I’ll have you know when I got to you, you weren’t even conscious.”
That wasn’t surprising. Ezio could’ve figured he wasn’t going to stay conscious for very long after that somewhere amid it happening. He’d started getting a sense for these things. Probably a strange sense to have when you were twenty two, but sometimes things were just like that.
Ezio didn’t fight with his lot in life too much. He’d been here six years now, and he’d long accepted that he was. There was a barrier around this side of the estate, intended to keep him in, and presumably, everyone else out. It moved when Jean came home, and from that point to the rest of the day, Ezio was his, to do with as he pleased.
By now, Ezio had accepted it, stopped fighting Jean as hard as he used to. He was too tired to, anymore, all the fire in him gone cold by now. Maybe that wasn’t too surprising. And when Jean swore, even for a split second of a moment, Ezio almost moved his hips with him, he may not have been imagining it.
He was pathetic.
“I’m not surprised,” Ezio said.
“You shouldn’t have said anything,” Matheo said. “He wasn’t that angry until you said something.”
It wasn’t like Ezio was one of Jean’s lovers. He had a few of those, but he was notably kinder to them than Ezio. Even now, six years after Ezio had lost everything that’d ever mattered to him, Jean was still… well, it wasn’t like Jean really wanted anything. He said he wanted to know where Rosalie was, but it was pretty fucking obvious by now Ezio wasn’t going to say anything on that matter, and Rose wasn’t ever coming back to Mortain, either.
Sometimes, Ezio wished Rose would come back. Come back and save him from this mess, at least, but then he always inevitably hated himself for thinking it. So what if his body didn’t work right because nothing was ever not broken, and he’d gotten so very close to dying far too many times to count by now? Rose was free.
“I couldn’t just sit there and do nothing,” Ezio said. “I wouldn’t wish this on anyone.” He shifted in his seat, a blue upholstered chair that was probably going to have blood stains in it for the rest of forever. Somehow, it was always this chair he ended up in when too many things were broken and bleeding.
“Damn it,” Matheo said, tossing the roll of bandaging onto the table, leaning against it for a moment.
Ah. Now Ezio understood. Though it hurt to do it (one of his legs was broken), Ezio stood up, shuffling the short distance over to Matheo, and gently rested his hand on his shoulder.
“You shouldn’t be standing on that,” Matheo said.
“You looked like you needed me to,” Ezio answered.
“Not that badly,” Matheo said.
Ezio snorted softly, and then laid his head on Matheo’s shoulder. “It’ll heal,” he said softly. “Just like it always does.”
“Someday,” Matheo answered, “you’re going to get yourself hurt so badly I can’t fix it, Ezio.”
Well, as much as Ezio hated to admit it, he was probably right about that much. Ezio didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to.
Matheo turned his head slightly, resting his cheek against Ezio’s hair. “Promise me you won’t do that again,” he said.
Ezio looked up at him. “What?” he asked. “It wasn’t that bad-“
“Yes, it was,” Matheo interrupted. “Please, Ezio, please never do something like that again. You don’t have to fix everything, or save everyone.”
Well, Ezio always figured, if he was going to be alive and waste a bunch of air, he may as well be useful while he did it, right? Ezio raised his head, and started to argue, but something about the way Matheo was looking at him made him change his mind.
He was afraid to think about what that look meant too deeply. Someday, maybe he’d be able to think about it.
It was always Matheo he bent for, wasn’t it? Ezio smiled slightly, glancing down at the floor. Matheo sure was a dangerous person to him, or could be, if he so desired to be.
“Okay,” Ezio said softly. “If that’s what you want, okay.”
“Promise me,” Matheo said.
“I promise.”
I’m sorry. I lied to you, didn’t I? I didn’t mean to.
* * *
Oracle Point Hospital, Newcrest; 2019
Liberty hadn’t said anything about the pot. She just seemed to be keeping half an eye on the brunet, sitting on the stairs at the back of the hospital, smoking a joint. She was a bit further away, in the grass, showing Morgyn what she’d been learning from the Li spell book.
At the end of this one, she shifted her hand slightly, blew at the air, and suddenly it twisted into a small tornado. It unfortunately very rapidly fell apart again, but it was kind of amazing she could get so far to begin with. No one knew how to use air-based magic, not anymore. Apparently it wasn’t part of the spell repertoire the All allowed them.
Morgyn was coming to hate that thing.
“That’s pretty impressive,” Morgyn said, whistling softly as the tornado fell apart.
Liberty snorted. “I can’t seem to get it to hold together,” she said. “I’m sure there’s some kind of science thing I’m missing here, maybe a sort of physics thing.”
“Good thing you’re in physics,” Morgyn said.
“You know, I can’t say I ever figured I’d be using my physics degree for magic,” Liberty said, looking amused.
“Life takes you in strange directions sometimes,” Morgyn answered. It wasn’t like Morgyn ever figured falling in love with a Li was on the table, but here they were all the same. Morgyn wasn’t entirely sure how to broach this mess with Caleb.
It wasn’t like Morgyn could change how the brunet felt. Maybe Morgyn and Liberty wouldn’t stay together, either, maybe it was just that, right now, Morgyn loved her, and right now, Morgyn needed her. Truth be told, if Caleb asked for explanations and reasons why, it wasn’t like Morgyn had them.
Morgyn wasn’t the type of person to consider things like that too hard. Feelings existed for reasons, and for no reason, and some reasons and some not-reasons. And sometimes, for reasons that felt like reasons but weren’t. Those were feelings.
Morgyn’s logical mind hated them. A lot.
All that to say, if Caleb started asking certain questions, Morgyn would have no answer to give him. Maybe it’d be best if the brunet just didn’t say anything. Liberty had gone back to being Morgyn’s friend, instead, like nothing had happened at all. And maybe Morgyn should leave it that way.
“I’d always heard magic is harder outside range of a matching nexus,” Morgyn said. Liberty was learning real magic, not the pop-toy style crap the All had left them with, and Morgyn was curious how it all worked.
Liberty shrugged. “I guess?” she said. “If I was translating the book right, the Li family’s born with a connection to something, I think the best way of translating it is as the sky… I guess the word would be arcana? It’s like the nexus is in our blood, rather than something found externally.”
Well that sure sounded interesting. Morgyn frowned, head tilting to one side. If the Li family had something like that, then it was possible that other lineages did, too. Come to think of it, maybe that was what made the five families so powerful in the first place. That would mean unfortunately, as a side-effect of the deviation from true magic, the families were much weaker than they should be, because they no longer used the arcana.
“That’s odd,” Morgyn said. “The five families being linked to something like that would explain their magical prowess, at least back then, but maybe not so much now, with the All and everything.”
Liberty shook her head. “It’s not something that goes away, I think,” she said. “Unless it bloods out of a lineage, at least. I think, any lineage that practices magic for a certain amount of time eventually can learn to bond with one of the arcana, but I also think which arcana it is that an individual bonds to is a very individual thing. Like, mine seems to mostly bond to the sky arcana, but there have been ancestors that bonded to other ones.”
“So everyone that has magical ancestry should theoretically still be able to link to one of these arcana things?” Morgyn asked.
“I think so,” Liberty said. “It may be part of being a less blooded caster, if that makes any sense, needing to rely on the presence of a nexus, or at least close proximity of a ley line.”
Morgyn raised an eyebrow. “You know, I wonder if maybe we should go back to calling ourselves what we are,” the sage said.
Liberty looked confused. “What’s that?” she asked.
“Witch,” Morgyn answered. “A very long time ago, we were called witch.” All this mess had been caused, Morgyn was getting the idea, from them forgetting who they were. Maybe it was time for them to remember.
Liberty smiled. “I like the sound of it better,” she said.
“Yeah,” Morgyn said. “I always did too.”
“There are boy witches?” Liberty asked. “In stories, they’re called warlocks or something.”
Morgyn snorted. “Like stories told by humans know anything about magic and witches,” the brunet said. “Witches can be male, too. Warlocks more commonly are the not so great kind of male witch. Either that or edgy emo kids.”
“So what’s a wizard?” Liberty asked.
“Wizardry is the fusion of magic and science,” Morgyn answered. “I told you magic has a science, and science is magic, right? Wizards study the relationship between science and magic and learn where they cross. They work to understand the natural flow of the universe and work their magic within it, but a lot of wizards aren’t interested in spell craft so much as learning to use magic without it. I suppose someday you may be better known as a wizard. We don’t have any wizards anymore.” Or at least, none that Morgyn knew about. Maybe there were a few of them.
Liberty thought about it for a moment. “That seems like a lot to remember,” she said.
“Not really,” Morgyn answered. “Wizardry is really a new thing, only cropping up in the last few centuries thanks to advancements in science and mathematics, so most magic practitioners you come across will be witches. Certainly it’s among the older arts, but we could use a good wizard or two. I should think combining the ideologies of witchcraft and wizardry would yield something quite impressive.” Provided, of course, one could manage to do so in the first place.
It was a tricky thing. And with the All’s existence apparently crippling their magic usage in the first place, it was difficult to imagine that anyone alive now could get terribly far in fusing the two. Given long enough, maybe Ezio could do it, but that was debatable. Maybe the only magic Ezio could really use was the All’s, because of his heart.
Well, they’d see if Ezio would be doing much of anything after this soon enough.
“Maybe one of us will find out someday,” Liberty said. “I bet you could.”
Morgyn laughed. “Nah,” Morgyn said. “I don’t do awesome things. I just teach others how to do them instead.”
* * *
“I have to admit, it’s a little weird to have you back,” Caleb said, tilting his head.
Liberty leaned against the wall, and shrugged. “Just wanted to know Morgyn’s okay,” she said. And that did seem to be how it turned out. She slept better now, just like she thought she would. They hadn’t talked about… mostly Liberty was ignoring it. If nothing else, now was the worst possible time to be having a discussion about their feelings for each other, and Liberty was okay with being the outlier anyway.
She always had been.
“I see,” Caleb answered. He glanced over at Cassandra and Drake.
Drake had stopped talking to anyone but her, for the most part. Nobody could say they blamed him, and it was good that he was talking to someone, at least. Liberty hoped things started going better after this, because if it didn’t, it was hard to say how things were going to go.
Morgyn was about on the edge of losing it, it seemed like. L. and Simeon came by from time to time, but it’d been another few days, and Ezio still was not getting better. Liberty was beginning to wonder if he ever would, but then shook that out of her mind.
Someone had to be positive in this situation, and everyone else seemed fresh out of optimism.
“I think I know what happened now,” Caleb said quietly. “While I was gone.”
Liberty glanced over at him, and then looked back at the wall on the other side of the hallway. “I’m not confirming anything,” she said.
“I didn’t expect you do,” Caleb answered. “But you know, I still think you’re in love with Morgyn.”
Liberty snorted, stretching out for a moment. “Doesn’t matter if I am or am not,” she said. “Morgyn’s marrying you and all.”
Caleb arched an eyebrow, wordlessly gesturing a hand at Cassandra and Drake.
Liberty glanced over at them, and then back at Caleb. “I’m sorry,” she said, “are you implying what I think you’re implying?”
“If you think I’m implying we could perhaps make a poly relationship work, yes,” Caleb said. “Look, I don’t understand what exactly Morgyn sees in you. I don’t understand what brought you two together in the first place. But I will tell you Morgyn started whimpering your name in his sleep when you were gone. And maybe I don’t get it, but maybe I don’t have to. I just have to know that for whatever reason, Morgyn needs you too.”
Well, that made two of them. Liberty also had no idea what Morgyn saw in her. And for that matter, no idea what Morgyn saw in him either, but there was a lot there she didn’t understand, and she knew that. Hadn’t Morgyn said the brunet had been in love with him for over a hundred years? There had to be something she was missing, then.
And she wanted to understand that. She wanted to understand this weird Caleb creature, because he was important to Morgyn. Maybe that was what it was with him, too.
Liberty released a breath. “If nothing else,” she said, “now’s not a good time to be thinking about things like that.” With Ezio in the hospital in a coma, it was hard to call Morgyn in the right mind at the moment. Never mind Morgyn likely hadn’t really had a chance to process anything that’d happened before that, with Aine and…
Liberty still didn’t like thinking about it. But Morgyn was getting better, still pushing forward every day, and maybe she couldn’t take the pain away, but she hoped she could make it easier.
“You’re right,” Caleb said. “I just, wanted to tell you this before I forgot about it. I think, we love the same person. Maybe we can understand that much.”
Yeah, maybe. “What do you do with it?” she asked. “When there are hurts in Morgyn that run so deep you can’t tell where they end and Morgyn begins?”
Caleb snorted. “I never mastered that,” he said. “I just try to be there, though. If you listen, Morgyn tells you what he needs, in a way. But uh… you know don’t forget your other friends. They’ll definitely come in handy.”
Sure sounded that way. Liberty started to answer, but the overhead system kicked on.
“Code 60332, third floor, Dr. Williams,” it announced.
Liberty’s blood ran cold. Very faintly, up the stairs, she could hear Morgyn screaming. “Ezio just flat-lined,” she said, grabbing Caleb’s hand and pulling him towards the staircase.
“He what?” Caleb asked.
“Flat-lined,” she answered, “it’s when their heart suddenly stops. For all intents and purposes, Ezio just died.”
* * *
“No, stay right where you are,” Troi’s voice said, and then she was barking orders at her team.
Morgyn sat back down. The brunet was still clinging to Ezio’s hand, but Ezio couldn’t feel it anymore, the heart monitor screaming a single tone around the sound of the team working around Morgyn, like the brunet wasn’t even there.
It was too late for that, Ezio knew. But he’d made the choice he’d made, and he didn’t regret making it, either. Liberty came up behind Morgyn and wrapped her arms around the brunet’s shoulders, and held on. It was difficult to think that Morgyn would be okay. Certainly, it didn’t look that way, not right now.
But, eventually, Morgyn would be okay. Ezio looked up, as Drake and Cassandra shuffled in. They stayed out of the way. Ezio looked back down at Morgyn, and then went over to Drake. And for a long moment, Ezio just watched him.
It was probably for Cassandra’s benefit, but he managed to hold it together. Ezio could see it, though. The pain in his eyes, the worry, the fear. Ezio never wanted him to live through this. Ezio never wanted to leave him.
But life, and death, were full of things one didn’t want.
Ezio’s hand raised, resting gently just off Drake’s cheek. The way his eyes lit up, and began to water slightly, he knew Ezio was there. “Thank you,” Ezio whispered. It didn’t matter what he said, because Drake couldn’t hear it anyway, but he hoped, more than anything, that Drake knew what he meant to him. Did he tell him enough? Did it matter?
Ezio’s hand fell away, and he turned to look at Cassandra. She looked away from him, but he walked around her, to stand in front of her. “Cassie,” he said.
She shook her head. “I can’t,” she said.
“Yes you can,” he answered. “You’re a stronger person than you know. I’ve seen it in you. You’ll be okay.”
She shook her head again, harder, and then her eyes squeezed closed, a sob loosed, and she turned down to the floor.
“You and Drake should go through my side table, later,” Ezio said. “There are a few things in there I want you to have.”
“Not without you,” Cassie answered.
“Hey,” Ezio said, “I can’t be there, I’ve got a train to catch, but you can do it together. Please, Cassie, please stay together, you and Drake. Okay? I think you’ll need each other. This guy,” Ezio said, nodding at Drake, “he was alone before I came along. I don’t want him to be alone again, I don’t want either of you to be alone again, okay?”
Cassandra didn’t answer, a loud sob escaping, her face burying in her hands. Ezio smiled, reaching up and holding his hands close to hers, then stretching up and kissing her forehead.
“Everything will be okay, Cassie,” he said. “Even if it doesn’t feel like it now.”
He wouldn’t ask anything like she tell Drake anything, or Morgyn. Nothing would console that idiot. Ezio glanced over at Morgyn, still clinging to him and blubbering about how Ezio couldn’t go anywhere Morgyn didn’t. Ezio wished it was like that, but that wasn’t how this worked.
He was dying quicker now, Ezio could feel it. He’d messed something up, taking that lightning bolt. But he always knew the risk of doing it, and had done it anyway. And he’d do it again, a thousand more times, if it kept Morgyn safe.
Makana was right. That was how he loved. Because he knew no other way to love.
Ezio took a breath in, and then turned around. Makana stood off to the side of the room, not far from the light. It was ridiculously bright, just a bit brighter than he’d have liked, but he should’t have been surprised by that, either.
He walked over to her. “Is that my train?” he asked.
“I should think so,” Makana answered.
“Sorry you got the wrong guy,” Ezio said. “For the whole convergence of the worlds thing.”
“You did well,” Makana said. “Maybe in your place, Morgyn will keep going.”
Ezio snorted. “Are you joking, Morgyn loves a good mystery,” he said. “I should think something like this would keep the idiot busy for years to come.” On… the other hand, that could also be a very bad thing, because Morgyn also had a notable tendency to hyper-fixate on things.
No. Ezio shook his head. He wasn’t thinking about that. He wasn’t going to change his mind. He’d died, it was what it was, and there was no sense fighting it. Death came for everyone, eventually. Now it was his turn, and he knew enough about the cycle of living and dying to know that trying to fight it was only going to cause him, and everyone that loved him, needless pain.
“I should go catch my train,” Ezio said. And he walked past Makana, towards the light.
“Don’t you want to know?” Makana asked.
Ezio paused, turning back around to face her. “Know what?” he asked.
“What the All is,” Makana answered. “What the chaos is. What these two things have to do with each other, why Morgyn’s involved at all, what happens to magic realm, who the faceless child that dwells in your soul is. You said Morgyn loves a good mystery. It stands to reason, so do you.”
And for a long moment, Ezio thought about it. His eyes cast to the floor.
“Call it.”
“No! DON’T YOU DARE! EZIO! EZIO PLEASE, DON’T LEAVE ME!”
Ezio glanced up at Morgyn, pleading with him to stay. If he had to listen to that for too long, he was never going to leave. He knew how death worked. Ezio shook his head. “I’ll find out,” he said, “when Morgyn finally comes to tell me.”
And with that, he turned back around, and went into the light.
Or he would’ve, if something didn’t suddenly stop him. What was that? Ezio stepped forward again, and then heard the chain rattle. He looked down. There was a chain wrapped around his wrist. He followed it.
It led to Morgyn.
Oh no. Oh no…
“I-” That wasn’t-
“You see,” Makana said, “sometimes things don’t quite go according to plan.”
Ezio rounded on her. “What is this?” Ezio asked.
“The astral chain,” Makana answered. “You know that, silly.”
“That… that makes no sense, why does my chain go to Morgyn?” Ezio demanded. The astral chain bound a person’s soul to their body, and when they died, it temporarily remained. In that small window of time, a person could be restored to their physical form and brought back from death, so long as the chain didn’t sever.
When it did, that was true death, and it always would, given long enough, or when a soul went into the light. This was wrong on two counts; one, Ezio’s astral chain wasn’t tying him to his own body, but to Morgyn. And two, it was actively stopping him from going into the light.
What did Morgyn do.
“You know the answer to that,” Makana replied. “If you think about it long enough. But this works out fine enough. Nothing to stand in your way when your dead. It’s rather nice to be dead.”
Ezio closed his eyes, and breathed out. “I’m not terribly fond of it,” he said. And if he had to spend all of the rest of his unlife listening to Morgyn scream-cry, watching them mourn him and not be able to do anything to help, it was going to drive him bat shit insane.
Ezio turned back around, and moved towards the light again. The chain pulled taut, and then forced him back away from it.
“You should know trying to forcefully break the astral chain doesn’t work,” Makana said. “Particularly ones that have no interest in breaking.”
Ezio looked up at her, glowered, and then stood back up. Alright. So he couldn’t move on. And he was dead. Well if he couldn’t move on then maybe he could manage not to be dead anymore.
“Troi,” he said, turning around and running over to her. The chain disappeared as he went away from the light. “Troi, please, please don’t give up, come on, you can do it, you’re the best damned doctor I’ve ever met, please-“
Troi laid a hand on Ezio’s hair. “10:15,” she said softly.
“No no, come on, I don’t think I can undo cremation, shit,” Ezio waved his hands in the air. “Okay, fine, fine, I’ll do it myself.”
He backed away, raising his arms. As his necromancy flared, the signature green glow spread through all of him, turning his entire incorporeal form that sickly green hue. “Tareirep douq erecaf rutetrever, muilisnoc eratum sitaf,” he spoke the words, the energy flared suddenly, and then it died.
“Damn it,” Ezio cursed, throwing a bolt of ice at the wall. It broke one of the lights and then spread across the ceiling.
Morgyn looked over at it. “Ezio…” the brunet murmured. “Ezio no, damn it, Ezio you know how this works don’t-god, I want you to stay, I really do, but you can’t.”
“I don’t have a choice,” Ezio answered. … Morgyn. Morgyn was a necromancer. “Morgyn, please, Morgyn I know you can see me, I need you to now, please, you’re my only hope, come on.” Ezio moved over and knelt down beside Morgyn.
And for a long moment, Morgyn just stared blankly. Ezio raised his hand, holding it up. And then, Morgyn squinted, and raised a hand to hover against Ezio’s.
“You’re so blurry,” Morgyn said. “… and your hair’s the wrong colour. Ezio, your eyes are green… you look just like me…” The brunet’s eyes squeezed closed, more tears falling. “Ezio you have to go in the light.”
“I can’t,” Ezio answered. “Not without you, I think, Morgyn, you’re a necromancer, you can bring me back.”
“What?” Morgyn asked, eyes opening. “No, that goes against every rule in the necromancer rule book, you taught me that.”
“I can’t move on,” Ezio said. “And I can’t stay like this. You’re a necromancer, and a very strong caster. You can do it.”
“No I can’t,” Morgyn said, “I’m not a necromancer, I just see blurs sometimes.”
“No, when we were kids,” Ezio said. “Do you remember? There was a little girl that’d gotten lost in the woods, and she died, and we found her spirit wandering around the forest. She scared you, and you never saw another ghost clearly again. You’ve shoved it down, but Morgyn, it’s still in you.”
Morgyn frowned, and then the brunet’s head shook. “I can’t,” Morgyn repeated, and then pulled the sage’s hand away from Ezio’s.
“Morgyn, please,” Ezio pleaded, but Morgyn couldn’t hear him anymore. No. Even if Morgyn was strong enough, the sage’s energies were too chaotic right now. It’d be a miracle if Morgyn didn’t destroy everything in the attempt. Fuck. What now?
No. Ezio knew what now. “Ethren,” he whispered, standing up. “Hurry, take me to Ethren!” And just like that, Ezio vanished.
* * *
This was somewhere in the deep woods. That was all Ezio knew, and maybe the semantics of it didn’t matter right now. He needed to figure out where Ethren was, but Ezio was still having trouble with his ghost abilities; he’d just died a few minutes ago, after all, but he did know he needed to hurry up because if he didn’t, then they were going to start doing funeral preparations.
Of course, in Ezio’s case, that would be pulling what organs could be used out of him and then throwing him in a furnace, and that was hm, kind of bad for resurrection purposes.
Since he was on a timer, Ezio decided to skip the pleasantries. “ETHREN!” he screamed, as loudly as he could. “Ethren please!”
Of course, that got a lot of other attention. Other ghosts that were lingering in the shadows. Ezio straightened up, watching some of them slip around in the mists. There were some not nice things in the mists, Ezio knew that. He backed away from it.
And then he sensed Ethren behind him, and turned around.
“Oh, Ezio…” the dusky-skinned man whispered. “You know how this works, why are you here?”
“I can’t move on,” Ezio said. “And I know that normally you’d go in the light but there’s an astral chain stopping me from going into it.”
Ethren looked confused. “I’m sorry, a what?” he asked, red eyes scrunching up.
Ezio held up his arm. And then stepped closer to the light, which apparently had followed him into the forest. The chain suddenly appeared, and pulled taut, stopping him.
Ethren looked down at it. “Where does that go?” he asked.
“To Morgyn,” Ezio answered. “I think I can’t move on without Morgyn.”
“Ezio, there’s no guarantee necromancy will keep you alive,” Ethren said. “If you died because of that heart problem of yours, it could be way more complicated than necromancy’s equipped to handle.”
“I know,” Ezio answered. “But it’s the only other thing I can think of to do, maybe with strong enough necromancy it’ll jump-start my heart long enough for me to figure something else out. Or, I don’t know, maybe it was just a random fluke and I’ll be fine, just, please, put me back, I can’t stay like this. I’m going to go fucking insane! I don’t know about you, but really powerful crazy dead necromancer sounds like a bad thing to me!”
“This really isn’t something we should be discussing,” Ethren said.
“Look,” Ezio said, “I’m an organ donor, we can discuss the morality of this later. And I would move on if I actually could!”
“Alright, fine,” Ethren said, raising a hand to his nose. “Where are you? … body you.”
“Oracle Point Hospital,” Ezio answered. “I’ll meet you there.”
“I’m quite sure,” Ethren answered, but he started casting transportalate, and Ezio disappeared.
“Cassie, I need you to tell them not to,” Ezio said, moving across the room to her. “Please. I know this is hard, I’m so sorry.”
Cassandra stared at him for a moment, and then her jaw set, and she stood up, stopping one of the techs from disconnecting everything else. The heart monitor was already silent.
“Cass-” Morgyn started, blinking.
“Not yet,” she said.
“They have to start on preparations for-“
“I know,” Cassandra said. “But not yet. Just five more minutes, please.”
Amid her talking to Morgyn and the doctors, Ethren had already started. Ezio moved to the side, standing beside his body. Drake tilted his head, watching Ethren’s eyes turn that creepy necromancer green.
“This breaks about a thousand different rules of necromancy,” Makana said, watching him.
“Of course it does,” Ethren said. “Do you have any better ideas? Because from where I’m sitting, the kid’s stuck here anyway, and leaving him like that is going to turn him into something probably worse than just a dead guy.”
“I’ve yet to meet a truly terrible ghost,” Makana said. “They’re not that dangerous.”
“You can thank people like me and him for that,” Ezio said. “We’re the reason ghosts don’t get that dangerous.”
Makana frowned. “They’re not going to like this, I should think.”
“Quit interrupting my necromancer,” Ezio said.
“Well, they always did say you’d be a handful,” Makana murmured, turning around, and disappearing into the wall.
Ethren went back to working, red eyes turning green again.
“What is he arguing with…” Drake mumbled.
“Makana,” Cassandra said. “And Ezio.”
“Tareirep douq erecaf rutetrever,” Ethren murmured, “muilisnoc eratum sitaf.” And this time, the energy flared, broke the remaining ceiling lights, and Ezio fell back into his body.
Cassandra scurried over to Ezio, as he suddenly drew in a deep breath, and quickly plugged the heart monitor back in.
The heart monitor went back to its steady, rhythmic beeping. Like it had never even faltered at all.
