Reeling from the image of his mother being murdered by Aennin, Kaleth's attention waned for a few seconds. The mouse was brought back to reality with a start as Aennin groaned loudly.
"I don't believe this!"
"I do!" Volt chimed in with a tone of disdain.
"Aennin, no," Atunis said in firm tone. "What happened wasn't your fault. And it apparently never even happened here, so you shouldn't beat yourself up about it!"
Aennin slammed his hands on the table and snapped. "I'm not talking about me! I'm talking about Kartal! That complete idiot!"
Kaleth jumped at the sudden commotion. The Avatar of Death had never spoken of the boy's father in friendly terms, but Kaleth had never heard Aennin directly insult Kartal before.
"Don't you dare call him that!" Atunis snapped back, in a tone of disgust.
"Yeah, what gives?" Volt added.
"I remember trying to kill Adamora," Aennin said in a low growl. "I know full well Garanda was the one who was responsible for that but Kartal, a man we know has some control over Geos' time power, showed up at the last minute to stop me. Suddenly, when the world is in its most fucked up state, his best friend shows up claiming memories of a world in which I did exactly what I was being pushed into. Think about it!"
The table fell silent leaving a bitter taste in the air for Kaleth. He sneezed, then groomed his face as he pondered the conversation, then his tail. He wasn't in the right mind to fully comprehend what he was hearing yet. The thought of sneaking away to revert to his normal shape so he could process this conversation had barely formed when Atunis broke the silence.
"Gods...I know precisely what happened. How did I not see it?"
"So...Kartal was the one who did this? He's the one who fucked up everything?" Volt mumbled.
It was with an air of irony that Aennin replied, "That or, as I originally thought, Atunis is deluded and everything fucked itself up."
"Let's slow down a bit." Tir said loudly. "We gotta find some way to confirm this."
"It has to be true," Atunis eventually replied, his voice trembling. "That way, we can go back and fix this. We can bring him back. Bring all of them back."
"How do you propose we fix this with him gone?" Aennin asked.
Atunis took a deep breath and replied, "Kartal may be...inaccessible to us, but Geos should not be. He has the ability to choose another avatar."
Aennin lowered his head to the Avatars' table so Kaleth could see his face as he turned to look directly at him. Stricken with bewilderment at having been found, he began to scan the room in a hasty attempt to look like a natural mouse. He scurried further under the table, putting everyone out of sight completely. His eyes found a pair of feet crawling across the ground on the far end of the pub. It was then that Kaleth realized that Aennin must have noticed the effect he was having on the people around him again.
"He might already have," Aennin said.
"So it'll all be okay," Volt said softly, her speech slurring slightly with the effects of her drinks.
"What do you mean?" Tir asked.
Aennin let out one of his impatient sighs. "Well, I was just thinking that either Kartal doesn't need to be replaced or there's a reason his magic is affecting his son."
"I asked Kaleth to attempt to contact Lord Geos when I saw that Kartal's magic was affecting him," Atunis replied. "But there was no answer."
"Oh? You asked an untrained druid boy to pray to a busy God and he didn't respond on the first try? I'm shocked," Aennin replied with a scathing tone of irony.
"We should have Kaleth try again," Tir replied before a brief pause. "Aennin, even if you're not entirely sure that what Atunis says is true, the way time magic is affecting Kaleth, and the lack of guidance from Geos, seems to imply that Geos is involved in this in some way."
"No, I agree," Aennin said. "It's clear that there's something different about the kid. But you'll forgive me if I don't rush to embrace a theory that everything can be fixed by making me kill someone I'm glad I didn't."
Atunis sighed and replied, "I never said that you should kill Adamora, Aennin, There may be some other way."
'That's a great sentiment, but trying to save her is clearly related to what's happening," Aennin said impatiently. "If we go picking and choosing our own history, we'd only be making the same mistake Kartal did."
"I ain't sure it matters at this point, quite frankly," Tir replied. "The timeline is already contaminated. I don't think it's possible to just make it so things happen the way they were meant to happen in the first place."
"Exactly," Atunis added. "If all we do is stop him from saving her, I cannot imagine he would not try again."
Aennin clicked his tongue. "Even if it is futile to try returning things to the way we were, it doesn't mean that we can control what will happen if we mess with time.
"Time has already been tampered with," Atunis insisted. "We may as well try!"
"Keep it down! Somebody's coming!" Aennin suddenly whispered hastily.
A large pair of feet strolled up to the table under which he hid moments later and began to sweep underneath with a mangled broom. He jumped back from the broom's wickers with a squeak.
"Oh no you don't!" An unfamiliar female voice hissed. "Hold still, vermin!"
She jabbed at Kaleth with the end of her broom several times in frustration. His survival instinct kicking in, he darted from under the table into the relative safety of a small hole in the wall. He cowered in the spot for several minutes, only to watch the same woman from before charging in with a small mousetrap. He darted further into the void and wandered around so blindly that he quickly got lost.
When he finally found an exit from the space between walls, he could see the street outside. He stepped out gingerly and hugged the side of the building as he skitter along for a private place to change back to normal. But as he rounded the corner of the pub into an alley, he nearly bounded into the paws of a sleeping, brown husky perched within an overturned box. The boy-mouse froze in fear as the dog's nose and whiskers began to twitch. His eyes opened slowly as he stared at the tiny stranger.With a loud yawn, the beast lumbered to his feet so Kaleth could see his emaciated form.
The dog looked like he hadn't eaten in quite some time and his eyes were set on the small, but not negligible, source of potential nutrition beneath him. Kaleth could defend himself if he could return to normal, but he had been warned not to let any of the locals see his magic. If he wanted to return to his own body, he would have to lose the starving dog.
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