One Last Lesson

Edmund's body slumps to the ground, the old man reaching his final death, his soul no longer powerful enough to put him back together. His sixteenth if I count the one outside of the Underworld. My eyes water at the sight, which has nothing to do with the stinging in my eyes from before or the heaps of blood falling from my wounds. I move close to his dead body as the Gift Of Undeath begins to crack before my very eyes.

Death gave her power to all those who die and drift to the Underworld, allowing them to revive after death, again and again. But it is not without a price. She opens their souls for devouring by other beings by having them shatter again and again during every death. However, I refuse to let Edmund's soul be crushed up into the grinder of some distorted God.

But without much idea of how to do so, I kneel and reach toward his Sigil, an unreal apparition as his true one is still above the surface. It is the only thing I can see from his fading body to grab. The thing is flickering, fading, and upon closer look, badly shattered. It's almost impossible to tell what it even was from before. What I can see when I touch my hand against Edmund's body that is turning translucent and intangible with the Gift fading is a reddening horizon.

It seems as though my sight, improved by Ether, can see that which should not be seen whenever. I ignore my darkening vision from my wounds and the reddening horizon of the God that is likely coming for my old man and instead focus on the Sigil in front of me.

As it breaks away from the body and begins to float upward, I wrap a fist around it, coating it with Leash to hold tightly onto it. It works and holds onto the Sigil, and it gives me a sense of the Sigil, which blows my mind.

Inside the Sigil are not the normal Sigils that make up a higher Sigil like a forest made of many forests; they are all just called one. Instead, I sense emotions, broken thoughts, and the feeling of seeing Edmund's eyes.

This is not a Sigil. This is Edmund's soul.

It might seem like quite a jump in logic, but it makes sense. Souls have power over Sigils and Ether, allowing us to take and manipulate them. Death has powers over souls, right? So, theoretically, she could imbue power into souls and have them act like a Sigil. But the force must not be perfect, for whenever someone dies, damage is caused internally to the soul-Sigil. That, and undead have far less Ether to use at once, most of it being used to keep their bodies intact.

With this thought, I pull Edmund's soul closer to me with Leash and wrap it within my fist, coated with a surge of Ether. But just as I tighten my fingers around the soul visible only to my eyes, unique to a Philosopher, I feel an opposing force fall upon me. Without even meaning to, I look up, my gaze drawn to Basprit, the All Consuming, the Never Ending, my will momentarily taken.

The sky is a canvas of unfathomable writhing serpents innumerable in number, a sickening sight that instantly hits my mind like a sledgehammer. The air is suffused with the stench of decay and the metallic tang of blood from me biting my tongue from the shock. Above, the horizon is marked by an immense maw of jagged, razor-sharp teeth, gnashing and grinding together with a deafening roar that seems to shake the very foundations of the Underworld. I feel my feet shake and tremble at the sound, all my Ether barely managing to even protect me.

From this gaping, hellish maw protrudes countless writhing tongues, slick with blood and dripping with foul, viscous fluids. They squirm and lash about in the air, as if seeking to grasp at something that lies just beyond their reach.

And it reaches out with countless tendrils of darkness, grasping and pulling at the very essence of those who have passed beyond the veil of death. I can feel the soul of Edmund in my palm scream in agony, being pulled toward the maw in the sky. Unwilling to lose him again, I pull with all my might toward the ground. Ether explodes within me at full force as I instantly take another Strugglers Gasp.

My vision shakes, flickers in and out, and explodes with unknowing colors, but through it, I can see that I am the only one affected by this. Dewey is looking at me, confused, as blood streams down my eyes, ears, and nose, and I pull down the sky.

A single thought flashes through my mind as I rear myself to pull again. Only those who see Basprit are affected, and my own imagination brought it to my eyes.

I shift every ounce of my being to help me pull and protect my mind as it feels as though the force of the very world is simultaneously crushing me and pulling me apart. My fingers, newly recovered from their recent loss due to the Bloody Palm's selfish regeneration, are being split apart as the above God demands its sustenance.

There is only one thing that is keeping me alive at this moment, and it is not my Ether or my endurance by any means. It is a simple fact that Baspirt doesn't even notice me. I am just a mere speck to it as it siphons the souls of those who all reach their final deaths. The passive pressure it imposes on all those that can see it is destroying me from within. I can hear Dewey screaming, but the sounds break upon my ears, never genuinely reaching me.

My vision is flickering, so much so that even my Insight is flashing, a sign that what is happening to me is far worse than the mere glimpse before. I was able to distract myself from it before, but this time I cannot. My imagination is unable to fight something without seeing it.

With all this happening to me, I only have one option. Throw everything into this. I know the Bloody Palm is waiting for a chance to strike and will take it if I give it an opportunity, but some things are more important than me or my survival.

Insight, Daydream, and Ironheart all combine to allow a Philosopher to change the world. Instead of using the Ether of Strugglers Gasp to fortify my body by weakening my chains, I push it without care into these three skills. A fiery path of Ether that tears a trench of agony throughout my body and up into my skull where all these skills exist almost knocks me into unconsciousness. I only remain standing by the soul that is being pulled into the sky with my fist.

But as I regain my footing, I feel the Ether enter their places, changing everything.

Ether, a torrent of energy so dense I can see it flow through me with Insight, enters my eyeballs, the origin of the skill. It is the first skill to receive this shot of Ether, and its effect creates an out-of-body experience. Literally, my crumbling vision breaks from my pupils, and I can feel a pair of eyes open in the air several feet from me, giving me a third-person perspective of myself. The Philosopher… only makes sense to see from every perspective, I suppose.

From there, I gain a clear view without any interference of the next change as I'm pulled a few inches into the air, the suction from Basprit so powerful I'm nothing but weight onto the soul it wants. But Ether flows into my pupils, the dark circles in all that elicit imagination and dreams. From there, I begin to see a dream, no, a reality that will come to be, where I rip away from Basprit's pull and take Edmund's soul for myself.

The second my mind shifts to this Daydream, I see myself no longer rising as the passive pull from Basprit evens out with the force of my mind. But it's not the whole force. I have only imagined, not struggled. But no struggle is without suffering; if there is one thing I've learned, it's certainly that.

Ether inundates my mind, the origin of Ironheart. But there is far too much Ether to be safe. Even if I am not going beyond my saturation limit, I'm lucky I was unconscious for a while after that fight and have had some rest since then. There is always a limit on how much can be in a single place. My brain itself begins to burn from all the energy in my mind, causing my hand to shake and my feet to tremble. But with this heat and friction comes power. My heart of iron gives the dream substance.

A strength that only exists in my dreams pierces my hand and gives me the substance to rip the soul of Edmund from the grasp of Baspirt. As I do so, I fall to the ground from the few feet in the air I was pulled to and feel the soul in my hand now infiltrating my hand, the suction from the God no longer preventing it.

For a second, panic rises, but it is quickly pushed down as the soul is warm and welcoming, not dangerous or threatening. However, once again, panic rises as I feel the Bloody Palm finally make its move. The bloodthirsty artifact does not come for Edmund's soul as I would expect at this moment. Instead, it comes for mine.

A torrent of unheard darkness streams toward my mind as the artifact finally wages war against me once more. It picked a perfect time. Truly. Either I try to do something with Edmund's soul, not that I even know what to do with it now that it's in my body, or I fight against it. If I fight it, Edmund's soul might be ripped from me again, which it knows I'm unwilling to let happen. But if I don't fight it, the damn thing will win.

So what do I do? I don't know. I lay here beaten by an invisible force on the ground, only able to see the world from this momentary third-person perspective. My old man or myself? Is that truly the choice I make? It is. Earlier, I had my mind completely set, but now I am unsure as death nearly approaches. The Bloody Palm is tearing its way up to my mind with hatred stored for months, and it is already at my shoulder. Edmund's soul just sits calmly inside the flesh of my palm where the Bloody Palm's antagonism was once stored. I'm running out of time.

A brutal truth dawns upon me very quickly, however. Should the Bloody Palm win, the old man's soul is no longer mine anyway. He would end up devoured either way… Only in this choice I would die as well. I know that is not what he would want, so I make my choice. With gritted teeth and bloody tears, I make the only choice.

A more profound pain than the one that currently burns my brain or from one of the God that I merely looked at shakes my heart, the one that is presently made of flame. But that doesn't make the decision hurt any less as I move my focus, my imagination, and my substance to combat the Bloody Palm.

And as my mind clashes against it, I can feel that this is precisely what it wanted from the whispers and murmurs that run along my mind. The artifact wants me to suffer for the short time it was forced to merge with me. The incomprehensible thinking of an artifact will never make sense, but it found the best way to do so. Not to kill me but to make my life miserable.

It hates being forced against its will to do something so much that it is willing to make my life a living hell for the few minutes that we were merged as one months ago, similarly, by removing my choice. While my mind, fortified by the strength that allowed me to pull Edmund's soul, pushes the Bloody Palm back into its home, I see Edmund's soul get ripped from my hand, leaving fragments of it as it is rapidly pulled skyward without my protection.

I can feel the Bloody Palm snicker and laugh in amusement as these fragments sink into my body. I don't know what these fragments will do, but I don't care. Rage fills me with what the Bloody Palm has done, and the only solace I have is the pain I ripped into it as I forced it back into the corner of my body. My sight returns back to my body from the third person perspective as now that Edmund's soul is gone, I no longer imagine the sight of Basprit and I let the Ether in my body fade before it goes too far, which it is very close to doing so.

After weakness fills my body, I just lay down on the coarse dirt of the Underworld. Dewey is freaking out and trying to get my attention, but I simply don't have it in me to reply to him. The dark snicker and murmur of the Bloody Palm are all I hear as the fragments of Edmund reach my own mind and soul. I can feel the small shards of him touch my mind after flowing through my body.

I don't resist them. It's Edmund, after all. What harm could he possibly do to me? And my openness to his fragile shards of essence allows them to sink into my mind, bringing small bits of the old man's life to my mind. Instantly, I know why Basprit wants to devour souls. With the souls, even if they are broken and fragmented, come memories and knowledge. And I imagine even to a God, knowledge is power. No, especially to a God.

Sadly for me, what I get is a fragment of a fragment. Only a single memory is reconstructed into my mind, almost as if it's my own.

Edmund stands in the open clearing near his cabin in front of an adult man, one who is in his mid-twenties. He looks similar to the old man, only much younger. The same determined eyes, similar dressing with near identical hats, and something that really seals the deal. From Edmund's perspective, I can feel a heavy resonance from the younger man's Sigil. It is nearly identical to Edmund's; the only different thing is the man who wields it. I realize almost instantly that this is the man in that city from the rift in the Crossroads. The Bloodbeast. Edmund's last child.

The younger man yells out to Edmund, anger, frustration, and incomprehension evident on his face. He points at him and takes several rough steps into the dirt of the clearing, small smudges of blood being left in his footprints.

"Why do you just sit here in the middle of the woods doing nothing, wasting away like a senile old man!? The world is burning, people are suffering, and the very people you support are the ones doing it!? Where is my father!? The one who always spoke of righteousness and care!? Compassion and strength?! Where is the Bloodhound!? Where is the greatest teacher in the Frontier!? Where have you been!?"

The memory is so fragmented that I can only see what is happening from Edmund's perspective, and I can't even know the thoughts that he had at the time, only what he said. The old man's voice is rough and tinged with hurt as he speaks up for himself.

"I—I can't, Edward. I—"

Edward, Edmund's only remaining son, cuts him off and gets even closer, his voice rising to a scream.

"No! You won't! You have just sat here for three years now. What have you been doing other than letting things get worse? You're an icon! So many people look up to you, so why, why won't you just help!? Why… Why do you let so many die? The father I used to know would never let that slide. Even if it would kill him."

A deep breath fills Edmund's lungs, and the old man shakes his head sadly, the vision of the memory swinging left and right.

"No, I truly cannot, Edward. I made a promise."

Edward swings his hands to the side and growls in anger.

"Who!? Who or what could a promise to be worth thousands suffering, hundreds dying, and so many living enslaved by those Estates?"

I see Edmund close his eyes for a second as the vision goes black before returning after a short second. Edmund raises his hand to his eyes.

"I am old, Edward. Should I join you, I would likely die soon. It is possible I save many before I do so, but it is inevitable. And before you interrupt, no, I am not afraid of dying. I made a promise to the wife of one of my oldest friends."

Edmund takes out a small locket from his pocket and flips it open. A black and white photo of Ma and me--...Aniwye from over ten years ago is in the frame of the small thing. It's the same photo that we took when we went to a nearby fair. My teeth clench at the sight of my young smile in the image. He knew about me all along.

"I would raise their son should he ever come to me, just as I did for you and your siblings. I am afraid of that child never reaching their potential, not whatever may happen to me. The same went for you and your siblings.."

Edward spits on the grass below and turns around, flipping a middle finger to Edmund as he does so, leaving a curse.

"Of course you would, old man. You care more about long-lost promises that may never come and the potential of some unknown child than the suffering of the now. You're a great teacher and a great fighter, but oh, Devil, are you a terrible father. I still can't believe what possessed you to adopt us instead of just dropping us at some orphanage and training us after. Whatever. Just rot in this forest waiting for that child to come to you since you'd rather raise another person's son than help your own."

As Edward walks away, I see Ether burst in Edmund's hand like a detonation of a firework. He calls out to Edward before he leaves entirely.

"I never said I wouldn't help. I just cannot join your resistance, son. One last lesson, Edward? How about that?"

Edward turns around so fast that it is almost instant, a sarcastic remark already leaving his mouth.

"Uh-huh, and what would you teach me that you already haven't? How to abandon your child and force them to fend for themselves? No, I think I got the jist of how to do that."

Edmund shakes his head and gives a single word that shuts Edward up.

"Shiver."

The second the name of this renowned skill is said, Edward's face lights up, and so does mine as I scour through this memory. But my face quickly twists in sadness and loss as the memory distorts and ends abruptly, just as Edmund raises an arm with a palm full of spiraling Ether.

Once the memory ends, I'm back to the floor of the Underworld, filled with defeat and sadness.