The Butterfly Effect

Tavin wandered right to the room at the end of the hallway, and turned to Muriel. “I think it’s best if you stay out here.”

She shrugged. “I don’t need to know what kind of boring stuff you’re doing anyway.”

He nodded, opening the door just wide enough that he could get in and closing it behind him. He knew what was in front of him if he dared to look up; just the thought of it made him sick, so he kept his eyes on the floor and touched nothing more than the handle for the hatch.

An almost solemn air hung over him as he made his way down the ladder. It was a mix of fear—recalling how Lydia had treated the subject in the past—and curiosity, though no excitement. There was nothing about this that he looked forward to. He’d never been given reason to, after all.

“So… what do I do now?” he mumbled. “You asked me if I’d touched anything. Is… is that what you want me to do?”

He didn’t know what he felt when the voices all seemed to say yes.

“Is this going to feel weird..?”

There was a moment of silence before the response, maybe.

“I guess I’m just going to have to trust you, right, Mother?”

A clearer, more specific voice replied, of course, but you don’t have to be afraid. You’ll be able to see us soon enough.

Without giving himself time to hesitate more, he touched the orb. The voice’s reassurance began to make sense with the familiar, but unpleasant, feeling that followed. It was like the truth magic the Lysha used to look at a person’s spirit; something that, from Dusek’s description, practically pulled those parts of a person away so everyone else could see it. With that definition, it was easy to compare it to feeling like a part of himself was being torn out of him.

After a minute, the four wisps around him had taken form into recognizable figures. Lydia, Elena, and Lewis were all around him. Lucas, once again, was less clear and further away.

“Are you okay?” Elena tried putting her hand on his shoulder. But despite being seemingly real, she was still only an illusion: it went right through him.

“As fine as I’m going to be,” Tavin muttered. “This isn’t exactly the nicest feeling in the world, though, so please hurry it up.”

Lydia sighed. “I hope you can handle it for a while because I don’t know how long this is going to take. I want you to see a couple of things first… That orb can see events in the past. There’s two in particular that I think would be a pretty good place to start…”

“How do I start it, then?” He looked between her and the orb.

“Just give it the date.” She took a deep breath. “The first one should be Onala sixth of the Third Year of Frost… it should know who I’m talking about.”

It didn’t seem to need him to do anything, either. He blinked to a completely different picture; it was somewhere in the mountains and snowfall that was verging on a blizzard. He knew he was still in the room because the orb was still in front of him and his spirits were still around him. When he tried glancing at Lydia for some form of explanation, however, she only avoided his gaze to focus on the man battling against the snow.

Tavin didn’t realize until then that he was… holding something. Or… was it someone? He had something clutched close to his chest, and it sounded like that same thing was crying.

“We’re almost home,” the man assured the crying thing. “Well… my home. But I doubt you have anywhere else to go. You’re lucky I found you… and I think I’m lucky I found you, too. Otherwise you might’ve died here and all my work up to this point would be useless.” After he spoke, it was completely silent. Whatever had been crying earlier had stopped now, though it wasn’t a soothing thing to note.

He soon came to a village, but it still took him a little while to actually stop at a house. The projection accounted for him opening the door to show four kids standing there. At least, they all appeared to be kids; there were two, a boy and a girl, who were clearly related, a goblin whose age was honestly hard to tell, and another young boy (who also looked to be the youngest there).

“Takane, get the fire going and put some tea on. Kiraat, Zenas, please get some blankets,” the man instructed. He glanced at the youngest as he closed the door behind him. “Umber… help Kiraat and Zenas.”

Each of the kids went to their own tasks. The goblin was the only one who stayed in that room, however. “So what’s got you out in the middle of a storm tonight, Haris? I know I don’t really have the place to question you, but… can I get some kind of explanation?”

Haris showed her what he’d kept so close to his chest before. It was a baby, wrapped in nothing more than a simple scarf. “I thought I sensed the fifth of you… the Bear. Following that sense led me straight to her and I don’t doubt it.”

“Okay, but what exactly do you mean by that? You can’t tell me you just walked into someone’s house and—“

“Oh, gods no! She was all on her own. I think… she’s one of them, too. More so than the rest of you are, I mean—that she’s actually a part of the saint’s curse.”

It all faded from there. Tavin gave his mother a confused look. “Is that everything..?”

“We’re not done,” Lydia said. “I didn’t really expect you to get that part anyway. As many times as I talked about how we went to Idale and fought the Minotaur, I didn’t mention the names of the Keys that came before us. I guess Dimas didn’t either, since he’s the only other one who would talk about it. But it’ll make sense at the next one. This one will be Istrigar fourteenth of the Year of Success.”

That just confused him more. “Wait, you would’ve been fifteen…”

She nodded. “Just listen.”

Five familiar figures formed in front of the orb: the younger versions of Lydia, Imre, Dimas, Samone, and Kiah.

Kiah was the first to say something. “Then again, who really knows when they’re involved…”

“They?” Imre repeated.

She gave it a moment of consideration before mumbling, “Ilethera.”

“What do they have to do with any of this?” Dimas asked.

“Minne was an Ilethera,” Kiah explained. “She has the kind of healing abilities of a mage; give her three minutes and, whatever it was, you’ll wonder if it was ever there at all. But she takes on all of it in the process. It’s a wonder she hasn’t gotten herself killed by it, however close she’s gotten…”

Then it faded too. Tavin was once again alone with only his spirits.

“I think past-Kiah pretty much summed it up,” Lydia remarked. “Minne… we’re pretty sure she’s the type of Ilethera who just kind of poofed into existence. It would explain why she didn’t have trackable blood relatives. So as her grandson, you’ve got the blood of an Ilethera.”

“So does Father, technically, but nothing’s become of it,” Tavin pointed out. “He’s still just a normal human.”

“But that blood doesn’t need to be present in every generation. It can skip one, or even seemingly disappear only to come back hundreds of years later.” She sighed. “My point is, even if Imre is normal… you’re not.”

For some reason, he thought he could argue—like she, as his mother, wasn’t confident enough in the fact to be swayed. “I don’t have any kind of power that the Ilethera have! I don’t have a good control over magic or some mental ability or inhuman physical features! I can’t—“

“You know Dreamers aren’t the only non-human creatures that have a connection to the Fos and Skiá, right? They might be the next best thing, since they can control them and all, but they aren’t alone in this. There’s also actual Ilethera who, at the very least, can sense and communicate with them even if they can’t exactly control them.” Lydia looked him dead in the eye as she said, “Ilethera like you. Did you ever stop to notice that no one actually told you your ability to recognize Skiá was because you were around them before?”

He didn’t answer.

“You’d determined all of that on your own. What really happened is that you either didn’t realize that’s what it was or you hadn’t encountered any Skiá beyond that point in time. It’s also why you feel so weird around dreamers. I don’t think Ihu has a particularly normal feeling for you either, but you’ve probably gotten used to that by now…”

So many different thoughts ran through his head, but there was one he decided to settle on. “Why didn’t you tell me all of this sooner?”

“Because we both decided it wasn’t something you needed to know. But I’d always planned on telling you eventually. I thought maybe Imre would’ve after I died, but… maybe he had the same fear about you that he had about Natheniel. So I still had to do it myself.”

“I thought Natheniel was the only one you’d kept things from,” Tavin mumbled.

Lydia frowned. “Tavin…”

He sighed. “It doesn’t matter. Projecting my spirits this long is making me a bit dizzy, if… this is everything, I’m going to go and bring Muriel back home.”

Whatever she was going to say to him was cut off when he took his hand off the orb. Looking at it, he realized there was no purpose to leave it here; he opened the satchel and gently put it inside, promising himself to put it somewhere safe when he returned to the castle.

Tavin climbed up the ladder, closed the hatch once he was up, and carefully came through the door. “I think we’re ready to go now.”

“Finally,” Muriel moaned. “It felt like you took forever. What did you do in there?”

He just shook his head and kept moving.