Chapter 283: Timeline

Olpi and Cerlius encountered no issues as they emerged from Mage's Shadow. Either too tired or too confused to talk, Cerlius wordlessly wandered into his room. "Don't show anyone that robe," she had warned before she shut the door and locked it. Cerlius waited until he could no longer hear her distant footsteps before he plopped down in his bed and put his head in his hand - the injured hand resting at his hip. The pain came in waves, a heartbeat that pumped darkness into his vision.

There he remained for several minutes, simply staring at the circular rug with thoughts running through his throbbing head. He let out a sigh and changed into another robe, being careful around the stitches. Questions had been answered sure, but so many more took their place. Maximus Draken, a legendary figure barely mentioned in Cerlius's studies, the first hero, the creator of most magics, was his father.

A brother named Doevm, a friend named Eric Guildri, a combined-yet-shattered memory, and a past as a Lich, so many pieces haphazardly tossed on a crooked, broken board. Cerlius sat on his bed, longing for just some semblance of rest.

'Maybe I should just be a student. It'd be simpler that way. No more mysteries, no more being afraid, and no more nightmares.' He yawned and unconsciously leaned back on his comfy bed. It would be so easy to close his eyes and go to sleep. It would be so easy to wake up the next day and only worry about magic. It would be so easy to just forget. His back hit the mattress, applying pressure on the many bruises he had received from unjust elbows and shoulder nudges. He could practically see their mocking visages looming over him.

He pushed himself back up. No, he wouldn't lie down, not yet. "No," he said under his breath as he moved over to his desk and took a quill out of his sack of black powder. "No more," he said as if someone was in the room. He dipped the quill into his inkwell and scribbled onto a blank page, tearing it in some places. He cursed, took out another sheet, and slammed it on the desk. "Let me just sit down like another one of the masses, an obedient mutt, and be happy with the misery that someone has forced upon me."

'What are you making?' Larque asked as Cerlius filled out paper after paper with notes, analysis, dates, places, and names.

'A timeline.' Cerlius took out each paper and lined them up to each other. 'Everything stems from two events.' He aligned the papers into two piles: Event 'x' and Founding. 'The first event x: my brother and I became a Lich, losing our minds in the process. From there, everyone who witnessed event x was slaughtered by my newly awakened Lich-self and my father. I can assume that the War Monks, the goddess, and my family are the only ones who would know what happened.'

'Are you sure?' Larque asked. 'I get how you can assume your family was there, but the Watchman only mentioned the War Monks and the goddess. It didn't speak about their involvement.'

'The Watchman proves their involvement,' Cerlius thought. 'My brother was waiting to scare me with it. He would have done so after the War Monks and the goddess visited my father. Since the Watchman was still down there however, I can safely assume that something happened to both me and Doevm right after or during the visit. I'm calling this moment: Event x. This is where everything began.'

'Then,' Cerlius flipped to another sheet of paper. 'That event, either as a result of my father's discovery or some other factor, my brother and I were turned into a Lich. Together with my father, we slaughtered everyone. I lost my mind.'

'But there was a survivor,' Larque interjected. 'Your brother mentioned that you had a childhood friend, Eric Guildri. That's the War Monk who founded the magic Academy. He must have lived. Then he erased Maximus Draken's history.'

'Slow down,' Cerlius crossed out some things. 'We can't assume that Eric tried to erase Maximus Draken from history. I may be able to eliminate myself, my father, and the War Monks as suspects, but that still leaves the goddess.' Cerlius wrote "Founding" at the top of the page. 'But that's it, everything we know.' He took out a blank page and put it to the right of the timeline. 'And now…' In a few breaths' time, he sketched out the door in Mage's Shadow, the only thing stopping him.

'One more thing,' Larque added. 'After you lost your mind, you went out and became a calamity to the world. Your overwhelming hunger for magic brought down entire nations. You committed acts of genocide.' Cerlius's eye twitched. 'Somewhere along the line…' Larque continued. 'That Lich, whoever he was, stopped. He had calmed his rage after learning magic from the Savages. He became the Doevm that I know so well.'

Cerlius recorded the demon's words onto a third stack of paper and leaned back in his chair. "There," he said aloud. "I can work with this." He let out a yawn and rubbed his tired eyes. "but Olpi's right: I don't have to do this in a day." As he reached for his papers, a sudden gust of wind blew them back. He cursed under his breath, crouched under his desk, and froze as another gust of frigid night air brushed against his face.

Under his desk were shards of clear crystal, what was supposed to be his window, a window that was supposedly hard to break. He grabbed the biggest shard he could find and lept back into a perfect stance, where he waited. A silent moment passed as blood trickled down Cerlius's fingers, his tight grip pushing his flesh into the shard's edges. "Hello?" He asked as he inched closer. No response. He stole a glance at his locked door before turning back to the curtain.

He smiled, dropped the shard, and formed several riptide shields spells, better blades than he could ask for. He approached the desk with bated breath and yanked the curtain off its rungs, revealing an arrow stuck in a cracked stone windowsill.

"What a horrible day," he muttered as he peeked outside, finding a small gap among the sea of dark clouds. Through it he couldn't see much, only a glint of silver before the cloudcover filled the gap. "Hello?" He called out. Looking at the other windows, he found that only his was damaged. The winter air caused pain to flare up so he pulled himself back inside.

A ray of moonlight drew Cerlius's focus to a small note tied to the arrow. 'Another stupid mystery,' he thought as he yanked the arrow out of the crack and read the barely-legible handwriting: "Cerlius, Doevm, whichever name you go by, know that your friends are coming to get you. Until then, prepare, for the Acrin Kingdom's destruction is within the year. Jackal is watching."

'Jackal is-' Larque thought as Cerlius tossed the arrow out of the window.

'Prepare?' Cerlius thought as he knelt down. 'I'm breaking out. I'm not going to sit here like a princess in a god damned tower. I found the door to getting my memory back. I know where it is. I know how to get there.'

'Wait!' Larque thought. 'Aren't you curious? Have patience.'

'I thought I was seven years old when I woke up.' Cerlius thought as he crouched below the desk. 'That means I died at seven. I do not have the patience of an ancient being.' He took several deep breaths and removed his bandages

Cerlius gathered the shards of crystal and stuck them into his injured arm. Pain coursed through him, putting him on the very edge of consciousness, but he gritted his teeth and tore through the stitches. Next, he gathered up the paper and stuck it in his spatial ring. 'The only thing that I gleamed from that arrow was that I now have an excuse to be injured. At the same time, I can find out if the windows have some sort of alarm.'

And on que, the door burst open with a clap of thunder. Three Watchmen charged in. Cerlius lost consciousness with a determined expression etched onto his face. Larque frowned as the world darkened. 'Frey, Elero, and Thomas, you three better hurry before this Lich loses it. If he remembers just one wrong thing, just one of the Forbidden One's cataclysmic spells…'