Early morning approached and Dalric welcomed it by the docks. He sat at the end of the longest pier, watching the river rush all around him. He couldn’t tell exactly how much time had passed since he’d almost lost himself, he’d spent most of it in this exact spot, but he knew it counted in the hours.
He was still… adrift.
He had new arms, new legs, new muscles, new eyes, new ears, a new face, a new mission, but he was still Dalric. With his new life he may yet escape the Gods, but he had not escaped himself. His soul did not sport scars. They were still open wounds.
He slipped off the wooden platform’s edge and dropped into the river. The rush of lukewarm water wasn’t quite refreshing, but it did soothe him a bit. He never really liked water before. Being twenty-eight feet tall, well over a tonne, and not particularly buoyant meant that swimming was an exceptionally tedious process for him. Even now, with a body more suited to it, that distaste lingered.
Instead of swimming against the current, he cast a spell to hold himself in place and simply let the water flow across his body. He stared up at the slowly shifting sky while the river did its best to ease his mind.
The sunrise was beautiful, more so than he’d ever seen before. Before the main sun made its full appearance, the smaller second one already breached the horizon. Whether because of its size or maybe distance, its luminance swayed closer to that of a full moon than the sun Dalric knew. That meant that though it already hung fully within his view, the sky was not quite lit. Instead of blue and orange, it colored the sky a lovely shade of purple and brown. He’d never seen the sky take such a hue before. As someone who had spent many decades alone, surrounded by nature he had a great appreciation for sights like this. Unfortunately, for the second time in his second life, he could not admire the beauty that the sky offered him. His mind was elsewhere.
As opposed to the literal contest for his mind, he had no direction for the metaphorical one. What Dalric had seen, what he had experienced, what he had done… how did one move forward from that? In all his fantasizing about freedom, even before he’d fixated on killing himself, he had never thought of what he would do with the weight of what he had lived. Where did he even begin?
Battlefield hysteria and depression were not uncommon sights for his eyes. He’d seen much of both in his life.. lives. The techniques and practices for combating them were equally known to him, they just existed outside his ability to employ.
Against any sort of sound judgement, he revisited his old life. Before he was Dalric the Deathseeker, before he was even The Immortal Giant. He went back to where it all started for him. When a young boy not even as old as the fingers on his right hand was ushered onto a training yard and told to pick a weapon. From that moment, his path had been set out before him. His sole purpose from then on had been to become the greatest soldier ever. Everything else was second to that goal, becoming the Frysta’s finest blade was all he lived for.
He forewent friendships, community, romance, for centuries while he chased such an empty dream. By the time the restrictions faded, so too had any identity beyond warrior. It certainly reaped its dividends, Dalric conquered like no giant before him, but so too did it collect its tax. More than a thousand summers elapsed before Dalric knew companionship, almost two before he went a full year in the presence of more than just steel, blood, and those who traded in both.
He fought tusk and tooth against leaving the mold that had been made for him. The life he lived seemed inescapable then. How could he live any other way? A foolish question. The life he found once he was no longer just a soldier had been the best thing to ever happen to him. He was destined to battle, his blood demanded it and Dalric did find great joy in wielding a weapon, but his destiny held much more than endless war.
Until he ruined it…
Dark, desperate memories rose to the surface. Along with them came a deep guilt and debilitating grief. He had betrayed those closest to him, those who had given his life meaning outside of just what he could achieve on a battlefield. They'd let him escape, let him find new joys and new purpose. Through them, he had the chance to discover who Dalric, son of Magni the Horizon Tamer and Titankin Oddny, truly was. Yet… he squandered it. For all their assistance, he returned to what he was born to be, what his parents had been forced to conceive him to be, a blade unmatched.
You fool!
The current quickened, no longer soothing him but rather clawing at his limbs. He was not welcome anymore. The river had forsaken him, as it rightfully should. Tranquility within its waters was a luxury he did not deserve. He accepted the rejection and braced the wicked stream, but in the face of his resilience they surged even further.
He was not just undeserving of peace.
Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
Rapidly, the waters rose into waves. They crashed into him like canons, beating his body before clinging on and weighing him down. Their weight hung from him like anchors. He coughed as his lungs were suddenly hydrated. He did not get two breaths out, however, before his whole head submerged. His body followed closely behind.
The river battered him, choked him, and now it had dragged him under. He deserved it. He’d done too much, failed too much. A second chance was wasted on him. His nightmares resurfaced as he sank deeper.
Ryne… Tihani… Silva… Adakole… T’Mit… Jhronk…
All dear friends, all betrayed. Alexandria was far too great a city for Dalric to have conquered by himself, but when he came to his senses he saw the chaos he’d caused. Even a league away from the outer walls, the destruction was clear to see. Two of his closest companions had died that night.
More would follow…
All would follow.
After all their sacrifices, all their efforts toward pulling a person out of the shell of a being he had been. After the trips, the laughs, the songs, the drinks shared. After everything, practically all of them died by his hand.
If they were crueler, less warm and less welcoming, then Dalric would have never been drawn to them. He would have never stuck with them. If they hadn’t been so inviting, they would have never been caught in the crossfire. Some of them would still be alive now.
How dare he think he deserved another life?
His back brushed against the river's underbelly as he settled into his slow suffocation. What would freedom grant him anyway? He had no use for it anymore. What did it matter that he woke up to the Dance? The Gods, the Gods that mattered to him at least, were practically extinct already. So what a separate God would rise with the power of a new Wyld? Gods were no strangers to Frysta and neither were calamities. The world had survived Skybreak. They could survive whatever came next. None of it had anything to do with him. The story of the Deathseeker already had its conclusion. Dalric had his conclusion. There was no more.
While death closed in on his second life, the end of his first replayed in his head, reminding him what it had cost just to reach it. He had no business walking Frysta after that. He should have never opened his eyes again. He de... served... nothing...
A voice seemed to burst into his ear. The last voice he had heard. The voice he had spent the worst decades of his life with. The voice that still lifted him now.
‘Be yourself Light.’
Dalric flailed. His body had grown weak and his brain sluggish, but his spirit rapidly rediscovered its strength. He frantically spread his ahjer and took control of the water surrounding him. In less than a blink, a small blob of water with him at the center shot out of the river and flew high past the canopy. As he sailed far above it all, he breached the edge of the blob with his head and took a deep, painful breath. He took another, then another, then another, then he crashed back into the river.
It no longer sought to bury him at the bottom.
Moments after dunking himself once more, he quickly made his way to the closest banking and crawled across its rock-filled formation. When he felt he had created a safe enough distance from the water, he fell on his face. He could have turned around before lying down, but his exhaustion ran too deep. The most he thought to do was expand his ahjer sense to twenty-five fathoms. Otherwise, he laid head first on the smooth rocks and slowly recovered.
Fae.
When he had the strength, that was his first thought. Whether that nightmare or dream or whatever showed that he had a connection to Skybreak and the second sun, it didn’t matter to Dalric. What mattered was that Laekna was watching him. No. Laekna was speaking to him.
‘Everything will be okay Light. Just be you and everything’ll work out.
What that meant, he didn’t know. What he did know was that she was counting on him for something. She had plans that she relied on him for. He’d disregarded the words the first time, but on recollection it was not a hallucination. Twice she had appeared where she should not have and twice she talked to him as if she was in the present. In her second appearance she spoke of Ryku and of his actions at the camp. It could not be coincidence. If not that he’d awoken to shields and Devil Glass, he would have noticed yesterday.
But maybe it was better this way. The thought of his one last friend, even if not of flesh and blood, needing him had broken the hold that death had on him. Whatever he didn't deserve, she did. It was the one ray of light in what was a sea of darkness. He’d given up on all else.
Dalric finally flipped over and raised his eyelids. The sky barely came into view, light clouds and thick branches blocked most of his line of sight. Still, the second sun managed to peek through and shine a light on his eye.
What did anything he did now matter? What did he live for?
Death was an escape. Escape from the Gods, escape from their contract, escape from the atrocities of both. He told himself, rather convincingly, that those were the reasons he desperately chased suicide and while that was not incorrect, they were not all. Death was also an escape from responsibility, from recollection, and from recompense. It was an escape from reality.
His soul craved that escape.
It could not have it, though. What did he live for? Why did he deserve a second chance? What could he do with the weight of what he'd lived? Atonement. He reforged his life once, he could do it again. There was still hope for him, still a future for him to reach. He would never escape his past, he accepted that, but that did not mean he could nothing but remain a victim to it. There was no fixing his mistakes, but there was redemption.
If nothing else, Laekna needed him. He still had business on Frysta.
One of the things holding me back from doing Patreon is the fact I'm far too willing to delay chaps if I feel like they deserve further work. Most of this chap was actually done by Wednesday, but because I didn't like the chap that went up then I took more time working with this one. Ending up condensing it down to ~1800 words.
One of the funny things about being both a writer and reader is that I hate when authors say 'I had to cut x words section because y reason'. Its like... BITCH give me the words. I want all the words! But as a writer you do really need to cut things sometimes because they just end up bloating the scene(s) and devaluing what you're communicating. I think I'm guilty of that too often.
Anyway! Poll Time!
Thanks for reading and see you in the next chapter!
You're drowning! Who is LEAST likely to save you?
