Until This World Ends

Ch14: This Last Knight

Ch14:

The resulting years spiraled into pushing Regis to the limit of his sanity. Grimly holding onto his current name was only a tiny mote of his rage.

The inferno was wrecking his health to wake every random knight he could get a hold of. Passing out didn't last nearly as long. He grew accustomed to the mental toll of shoving lifetimes into brief connections. Various holy orders that used to fight each other over who was more righteous turned towards the menace of their memories.

That much movement of manpower shifting towards Asheradama left other nations confounded. They threatened war over the theft, making similar weaponizations. The fool's errand was trying to keep up with the suddenly-strongest nation's might to assure mutual destruction. By then, he had expanded to several abbesses and nuns, especially those with a militaristic presence. It was relentless work that took Gareth to stop him.

It wasn't often that the high priest of King's Port made his way to King's Cross. Rexius had finally noticed the fanatical state of his decorative son. Gareth had been called to retrieve Regis and bring him back to King's Port. The order? Lock him in that damn brothel until he forgets any of this crusading nonsense.

Not that Gareth would. He could see that some of the king's more selfish concerns were valid from a different angle. His young friend was a menace to himself and others in this state. The number of people who were shaken out of this life's complacencies was growing exponentially. Some of his current choices were unstable, shady, and a danger to themselves. Even worse, those who were worthy, that Regis did not choose to open up like a mental oyster? Many of them felt inadequate in the wake of the awakened.

With that, Gareth spent sparse time in the king's presence and went immediately to the crown prince's suite. Regis was in his bed, sprawled on top of the blankets, disheveled. and passed out. Gareth couldn't tell if it was alcohol or if he turned one too many minds to the greater past.

A trick that had worked over several lifetimes would work. Gareth called for a clean porcelain chamber pot and lead shot from a nearby attendant. The poor maid left to gather the materials while Gareth talked to the comatose man-child.

"Come on, Val. You're really fitting the name Regis right now, aren't you?"

The faint stirrings of a man not wanting to pull out of sleep weren't enough to show he had heard the high priest. "There's icicles on the trees. I've got a maid gathering some to dump around you if you don't get up."

Regis' breath hitched, but soon he went back into his gentle snore.

Gareth could hear the faint steps of the maid returning. It relieved him to have this one-sided conversation come to an end. Still, the need to rile him enough to hear what the old priest would do? That was too much temptation to keep his comments bland. "The Goddess wouldn't approve of the way you've been wasting the talents she's given you."

The crown prince opened a baleful eye and dimly glared before it rolled back in the oblivion of sleep. Regis' breath was still too deep and even.

The maid dipped in and handed a small cloth sack of shot to the priest and the bowl. Gareth set the bowl down on the dresser, tipping the contents of the bag in. It was a musician's makeshift rain instrument.

There. That was the thrashing to wake up that the old man wanted to see. He picked up the piss pot and swirled the lead around, making a grinding sound. "Alright, you young pup, I'm going to throw this whole bowl of ice on you. Get out of bed now!"

Countless years, countless lives, and not too few instances of having a morning icebath shot Regis upright with a snort. "Alright, old man, I'm up! What the depths you want now?"

The priest handed the bowl to the waiting maid and gestured for her to leave. "It's not what I want, young prince, but your father wishes for you to go back to the brothel."

"Why would I go there? I am damn near 28 years old, not a young man of no experience—forget other lifetimes." Regis rubbed his face. He wanted to forget what the experience entailed but could not.

"We have a little over a year before the first breech, and you're running yourself ragged, Val." The priest shuffled over to the foot bench and sat down. "I've been working with my right-arm guardsman, trying to maintain some sort of fighting ability, and here you are, squandering the strength of your youth."

"Squandering..." Regis sighed. "I'm leaving behind the old name. It may have suited me, but it's tied to too many failures. Clinging to what was is the real waste of me."

"Valeria did a number on you when she fled." Gareth showed the strength of his nature. He kept track of variables that Valentine lost. "She's doing well, out in Upswidth, with young Carwen. Your father would be all over her if he knew his grandson was growing up in the barrens."

Regis' head throbbed, much in the way it did in many lives built on failure. "She wants nothing to do with what's coming."

"Aye, she said as much." Gareth agreed. "But do you? Why, of all the knights: men, women, and barely grown, are you avoiding Loric? How many lives has he unlocked the Goddess' blessings for us?"

Regis began pacing, as he didn't like being called out in this way. Who else but Gareth would? "Ashera only used him for the first lives she tried a new power in, not when refining those powers. That, and she would wait until we lost a great battle. He has...a great faith in her. Something neither of us posses."

"Yet you avoid him." The old priest sighed. "My lack of faith always came from her poor preparations. You know that. You even straddle the fence between that boy's enthusiasm and my cynicism in every life. What harm is there in awakening his history?"

Regis paused, not liking what he had been running from. "Something Valeria said to me. When I told her I didn't trust my betrothed, I called Symphora dangerous. Immediately, she threw back at me the taunt that I had my dangerous years as well."

After too long a pause, Gareth crossed his arms. "And this has to do with Loric?"

"Ashera is testing us. Just like you and I find her ways lacking, she finds that we are not enough. It's why we keep ending up like insects in a child's hands. Sometimes..."

Regis bit his lip, remembering what it was like to strangle a person to death, but not in battle. It made his skin feel dirty, crawling with a filth of memories that he didn't dare let go any deeper than hands around a neck. "There was a life where the best of humanity was murderers. I wasn't the best, not by a long shot. I don't remember you in that life. I remember Loric. The man never lost his faith in Ashera, but he saw her as a tool to be used."

"You're speaking rather mildly."

"It's something I don't want to dwell upon." The crown prince started pacing again. "But if I wake in him that innovation, coupled with your need for us to prepare before she is ready to dole out her graces? If I do, we are going to hurt our Goddess."

"She left this much knowledge with you?"

"She meant for us to try." Regis shook his head. "The way she's hidden everything from us for life after life, there's no way she doesn't remember what Loric... what I helped Loric do in that lifetime. Even attempting change the most righteous manner is built on a lifetime of pure sin. I wanted to save him from that."

"And here, I thought you hated him." Gareth stood and started making his way towards the door. "Oh, and if she's made you a vessel for her destruction? Do it swiftly, without hesitation. Perhaps this thing she rarely uses is the thing she's been looking for."

And so Loric became the last knight uplifted into the eternal history of humanity, for good or ill.