The Butterfly Effect

“Well, Muriel, Prince Tavin came for a visit,” Lustris explained. “I hope we didn’t wake you.”

Muriel completely ignored her. “What are you doing here?”

“Do you remember the old house we went to when we met? I need to go back there,” Tavin replied. “But it seems I won’t be going since Lustris doesn’t want you to leave.”

She glanced back at her caretaker. “I told you not to make decisions for me! I’m my own person, I should be able to do what I want!”

“Muriel—“

“I want to help Tavin. I’m sure it’s incredibly important to him, because otherwise he wouldn’t have made the journey here.” Muriel said it with such confidence that there was no disputing it. Lustris had no choice but to give in, and thankfully that’s what she did.

“Alright, if you’re fine with it… Both of you, get some rest. I’ll prepare what you need by tomorrow morning,” Lustris sighed.

…

She kept her promise. Come morning, they had everything they would need to last them a few weeks—even if he didn’t know if the overpacking was intentional or not. He made sure she knew that it would only take them two days at most, which she seemed to understand but still changed nothing. They left after Lustris went over everything they should and shouldn’t do as if they hadn’t done this before.

“Muriel, slow down!” Tavin called. He’d forgotten how fast she walked; maybe that was part of the reason they made this much progress in an hour, since he’d walked quicker to keep up with her.

“I guess you always were slow,” she remarked with a shrug. She fell back to be just in front of him. After experiencing a bit of the silence that followed, she blurted, “Can I ask you a question?”

“I don’t see a reason why you can’t.”

“How did you get Aunt Lydia’s satchel?”

Despite somewhat expecting it, it caught him by surprise. “Father gave it to me, along with a couple of her other belongings.”

“Edric had hid it,” she mumbled, quickly changing to a darker tone. “I guess he knew what was happening and that you’d want it. At least it’s actually with you instead of collecting dust somewhere. What else do you have that belonged to her?”

“Whatever she left at the castle, so a lot of maps, a few trinkets, her journal… Raisul is holding on to most of the artifacts the Stones collected since they’re arguably dangerous or otherwise of questionable origin.”

“So you don’t really know what’s happening with most of them? Could one of those hard-earned treasures go missing and you not notice?”

“There’s plenty more important things for me to keep track of. I haven’t leisurely sat around in the castle in four years. Of course I’d know if something happens to them, but keeping track of their exact location every moment would just be a waste of time.”

“But you think you’re involved enough to decide what happens to the Estate when we’re both dead?”

He sighed. It must have been something she overheard Lustris talking about, because he knew Imre had suggested they avoid directly speaking about anything to do with it. No matter how she heard it, though, she must not have listened to all of it. “I don’t see any other Stones. We’re both, in one way or another, screwed out of an actual right to it. Adopted children need to be living there for ten years before they can claim it; it’s plenty of time, presuming the child was adopted as an infant or toddler. You, technically, were only Aunt Ellie’s daughter for two years. I, as a bastard child by definition, can’t own any of it either unless the head of the household agrees to it. Grandfather wasn’t exactly prepared to die so there wasn’t any ‘hey, Tavin gets everything if we all die in one night.’ I only have as much say as I do because all of it would’ve otherwise belonged to the king, who’s also my father and could pull a couple of strings.”

“It’s not that part. It’s more about what you plan to do with it.”

“It’s the same thing. Everyone who claimed that lineage was there. You and I are the only two that remain, so after we’re dead, that’s it. Everything they collected would still belong to the throne, and since they knew people had told me to send it up in the redemptive flames. I’d just like to be with them when all those souls are finally put to rest.”

“Don’t you think it would’ve been nice to actually tell someone?”

In a completely casual tone, he mumbled, “I think you might be forgetting who has three of their spirits. I believe their agreement is more important than anyone else’s thoughts on the matter.”

Muriel opened and closed her mouth several times before deciding she had no way to answer. It was good, because he didn’t want to talk about it any more than he had to. He’d somewhat explained his reasoning; to any normal person, that should’ve been enough for them.

The hours that remained of their walk was spent in idle chatter. Well, it was more of a one-sided conversation since only Muriel was talking. She’d proceeded to act like the conversation hadn’t happened, rambling on about some little thing or another about her life in the village. It was nice to know that she was being treated well, but at the same time, it was slightly annoying.

They got there just in time to save the majority of his sanity. Seeing it, hardly appearing as much of a “ruin” as an abandoned house, brought about a certain sense of nostalgia. Now, whether it was a good feeling or not was a completely different matter entirely that he didn’t quite know the answer to.

\.*.*.*.*.*.*.*.*./

Lydia excitedly stood in front of it, letting out a cheerful, “Tadaah! Our destination!”

“It’s an abandoned house…” Elena mumbled. “When you briefly explained to us where we were going, I didn’t think of this. I thought of something more, you know… ruin-y.”

“Why aren’t any of us getting in there?” Lewis walked past his older sister and towards the house. Right after he passed the fence, however, his confident stride was broken when he apparently ran into something—hard, from the looks of it.

“That, Witless,” Lydia remarked with an eye roll. “If you looked up you would’ve seen where the light reflects off the barrier. It’s magic, dumbass.”

“Lydia, there’s kids here,” Elena hissed.

The oldest shrugged. “Tavin’s been around Kiah, it’s fine. He knows he’s not allowed to repeat what he hears until he’s older. Isn’t that right, Tavin?”

Mostly just because he recognized he was being talked to, he nodded.

“But what about the one you’re not responsible for?”

“Eh. That’s your problem.”

“So I’ve got a more important question,” Lewis announced. “Why are we here of all places and what’s so important about it that it gets a magical barrier?”

“It’s some kind of enchanted material that was built into the house itself,” Lydia explained. “I didn’t really think it would still exist since it, you know, hasn’t been maintained in twenty years… but it’s just a little setback. It’s meant to protect the enchanted object that’s in there. But hopefully I don’t need to remind you two what that object is.”

Lewis looked like it took a minute, but Elena clearly remembered something. Tavin, meanwhile, glanced between each of the adults. He tried to ignore the split-second expression Lydia made when their eyes met; something that whispered of a thinly-veiled secret, a hope or regret he didn’t know about that she was painfully aware of.

“What’s the ‘no maintenance in twenty years’ thing about?” Elena, though not surprisingly, was hesitant to ask about it.

“The, uh… original residents were murdered. I learned about this whole thing helping the army track down a serial killer. It piqued my interest so I looked into it more on my own time and realized the family had a couple of enchanted objects with them. Not the reason they were killed, though, so what I’m looking for is probably still there.” Lydia paused. “But to add to the list of enchanted stuff, I think their bodies are frozen in one of the rooms, so we should probably keep an eye on the kids. They’re too young to be mentally scarred for life.”

Elena must have had so many thoughts and questions before she finally settled with, “Why is walking into the house of a murder victim—with the bodies still in there somewhere—not the weirdest thing you’ve done?”

“It’s also not the most illegal,” Lewis pointed out matter-of-factly. “I think that means more than how questionable it is.”

Lydia decided to ignore both of them. “All we need is to figure out how to open it. I don’t know how the guys from the army got past it and I didn’t exactly plan for it to still be up.”

“You dragged us this far away from home and we’ve reached a dead end,” Elena sighed. “You somehow convinced all of us to leave everything we had planned to go with you on a whim, and it ends up bringing us to this.”

“H-hey, ‘I don’t know’ doesn’t mean ‘I’ve given up,’ you know!” Lydia defended. “You should know that I don’t give up that easily, and things usually turn out okay! We just need to figure out how to—“

“I think I might know.” Muriel surprisingly didn’t flinch when all of them looked at her. “I don’t remember why, but… I don’t think this magic… likes me?”

To prove her point, she walked up to the barrier and put her hand out. The barrier apparently disappeared when she did touch it, as proved when Lydia threw a pebble over the fence.

“That’s… definitely something only one of them could do…” Elena mumbled. Actually talking to Muriel, she added, “Great job!” Everyone knew she wanted to motivate the girl, and not saying it because she actually wanted to continue inside.

Lydia led the way to the door in a stride that was both confident and careful. Suffice to say that, while she usually had an abundance of the former, the latter was completely out of place. She looked between Tavin and Muriel and, quiet enough that he didn’t know if he’d actually misheard her or not, muttered, “Imre’s definitely gonna need to hear about this…”