I linked my arm with his as he weeped gently into my shoulder. Whoever Tavi was must have been precious to him which made me just a little jealous but mostly worried. Of all the nights he's stayed over at my shitty apartment, I've never seen him like this before. We sat in relative silence for a while, the only sounds coming from his slowly quieting tears, until he started talking again.
"Okay," he said as he sat straight, still holding my hand, "if I'm going to bring her back, then I need both of your help. To that end, you two should know more about my Respawn Magic."
"Respawn Magic?" Fymner asked.
"It's my term for Clairvoyance Magic," Remi responded, "The Church's official name for the public is inaccurate because it implies that I can see the future, when that's not the whole truth. Respawn is more accurate. It means that when I die, I'm sent back to an exact time and place, which I call a checkpoint. I took both these terms from back home on Earth.
"Earth?" I asked.
"Didn't I tell you about this last night?" he said, looking confused as he turned to me.
"No, last night, you and I were drinking in the living room and we had a very-- pleasant night," I replied, trying not to gross out Fymer, "but you remember something different?"
"Yes. You and I had an argument over Tavi. I handled the conversation poorly, and we raised our voices at each other. I mean not quite yelling, but," he said, pausing as his demeanor changed, and my mind wandered over what the argument could have been about if it involved Tavi.
"How do you two have two completely different memories of the same moment?" Fymer asked.
"Well," I started, being careful with my words, "if we don't know who Tavi is, and we didn't have an argument over her, maybe that means," and I stopped to look at Remi's face, but continued, "look, it's just speculation, but maybe she never existed in this particular 'checkpoint'."
There was a silence in the room, so I inched closer and held his hand again, leaning some of my bodyweight against him to offer my comfort. The silence went on for a little longer until he asked, "Chloe, can I ask, how did we meet?"
"Well, I saw you falling from the sky and rushed over to see if you lived," I replied. "When I found you, your bones were broken, your hand was snapped backwards, and you had scrapes all over your body, so I healed you."
"And then?" he asked softly.
"We caught a ride with a merchant who was on his way back to Locria," I responded.
"His..." he trailed off as he paused to think, "Chloe, that's the exact story of how I met Tavi, beat for beat, except you met both of us in the back of the carriage. Was yours carrying peaches?"
"Yeah," I replied, a little confused.
"And what happened the rest of the day?" he continued with a serious face, one he doesn't wear often.
"I took you to the Church Library, and you wanted to be alone, so I let you go," I replied, speaking a bit slower.
"That's the same. Go on," he replied.
"That night, I checked up on you and offered to bring you to my apartment," I continued, trying not to reminisce in a serious conversation.
"That's different," he said, maintaining his face, "That night, I slept at the library, and in the morning, Tavi took me to a noodleshop and back to her home above it."
"Oh," I said, letting out a disappointed breath from an uncomfortable realization, but I let him continue
"Did we ever do a dungeon subjugation together?" he said next.
"Yeah. Bishop Sirrus asked me to bring you to her office, and she asked me to accompany Fymner to the dungeon. You Mind Linked with him and somehow, you led us through a mostly flawless victory," I continued.
"I see. Only slightly different. In my checkpoints, you happened to be in the dungeon, you were never asked there. And I assume you and Fymner were promoted to Priest since you're both still here," he said, which gave me pause.
"Um, no actually," I said as Fymner gave me a worried look, "You appointed me as a Cabinet member," I replied softly. With that I held his hand a bit tighter.
"In my memories, Tavi was my Cabinet member, and you were just a Priest," he said plainly, as if he couldn't read my discomfort, which I know he can't, and I felt a pit in my stomach.
"In that case," Fymner interjected, "we didn't just forget about Tavi, and she wasn't just erased from this world. From your perspective, the entire history of Aeolia adjusted around her disappearance."
Remi had to take a break to think and I started wondering if I had any right to touch him the way I have been, but it was a painful enough thought to push down, and I continued holding his hand just a bit lighter.
"Okay," Remi said after thinking, and this time he wore a more relaxed face, "It's even more important now that I tell you what I know about Respawn Magic, because you two are missing too much information." Remi went on to explain the his Five Rules of Respawn Magic: Body restoration, world restoration, memory persistence, object erasure, and checkpoint shifting, in that order, but what interested me most, and most pressing to Tavi's discrepancy, was the 4th Rule.
"Remi," I began, "could you explain how you discovered and tested object erasure?"
"Okay. When I fell from the sky, the wind ripped off my scarf and by the next respawn, it was gone. But when I met Tavi... When I met Tavi, I stole a coin from her hand but it didn't respawn with me," he said, slowing down and getting distracted by her name.
"I see," I started, "well, why did you think that happened?"
"I figured it had to do with the concept of ownership. Like, I owned my scarf, but I didn't own her coin," he replied, paused, and continued, "Wait, is there some kind of magical ownership?"
"Not ownership necessarily, but there's the concept of mana-worked objects," I replied, following his train of thought with interest.
"What does mana-worked mean?" he asked.
"It's an object filled with mana," I said, recalling what I learned in Heart and Soul, "Objects don't inherently have mana, but it can be infused with it, like when you and Fymner used the Mind Link page, but the soul naturally works mana into objects in which the body is in contact. Otherwise, out of contact, mana slowly disperses into the environment over time."
"Well, I definitely didn't work any mana into my scarf, otherwise it would have disappeared on the first respawn," he started but Fymner interrupted.
"How do you know mana doesn't work the same way on Earth?" he asked.
"Uh, I don't know. We didn't have magic on Earth. I'm sure we would have had some way to measure mana," Remi replied.
"That's just speculation," Fymner countered.
"I agree," I tagged on, "prose would be that your society never discovered mana, and therefore never developed magic."
"Well okay, what is mana then?" he asked, sounding a little frustrated.
"Mana is the essence of life," I replied, "and can't be created or destroyed. When living things die, they release the mana coursing through their body, and that energy is recycled through reproduction or the soul."
"Then what's the soul?" Remi interjected.
"It's an organ that pumps mana throughout your body through your veins and arteries, formed by a mother's mana during conception. When someome dies, that soul diffuses back into mana to start the cycle all over again," Fymner answered.
"Okay, well humans on Earth don't have the spirit organ," he said, again sounding agitated, "over billions of deaths, we would have seen it."
"Speculation--"
"Bullshit."
"No, seriously," I continued, forgiving his interruption, "the soul is intangible. You can only see it in soulsight, and even then, you can't really see it."
"That means nothing," Remi said flippantly.
"It means everything," Fymner said, backing me up, "the only way people can observe souls is by emitting mana from their terminals-- typically fingertips-- for it to bounce off of other objects and souls, receiving it back within themselves."
"Huh. That sounds a lot like radar. Or lidar," he pondered.
"There really weren't any societies on Earth thar studied anything that sounds like this?" I asked.
"Err," he hesitated but continued, "I mean I guess Pagans and some Eastern religions studied, like, chakras and spirits and stuff, but that's all pseudoscience."
"Okay, so it's entirely possible mana exists on Earth, you just refuse to believe it?" I said, catching myself getting irritated, "Nevermind. The point is, we can speculate that your clothes may have had mana in them from your time on Earth. Prose, however, is that you have a soul here, working mana into your possessions."
"Okay, I'll work with that," Remi said, beginning to calm down, "I just don't understand. If any object without mana disappears when I respawn, wouldn't, like, most things on Aeolia disappear too?"
"Maybe it's only objects that at has your mana worked in it, and is then drained?" I pondered.
"That explains the scarf disappearing, but that seems like a convenient explanation," he said.
"Well, are there any other examples this has happened?" Fymner asked.
"Yeah actually. My Earth clothes," he said, "Chloe, what was I wearing when we met?"
"Hmm. It's hard to remember. Pretty standard Locrian garb, I think," I said.
"Any version of me should have arrived in this world with my Earth clothes on and they're distinctly different than Locrian clothes. You would have noticed," he said, getting more excited, "I lost my clothes after I changed into my robe for the commencement ceremony. Chloe, is it possible to manually drain mana from a mana-worked object?"
"Yeah," I said, "Are you asking me to teach you?"
"Absolutely. Fymner, go get-- go get anything. Anything that doesn't matter. And Chloe, give me a piece of paper," Remi said hurriedly. I reached into my bag and gave him a piece of parchment, and Fymner got up to bring Remi a cup from the dining table. Remi used his magic to write some barely legible words on the parchment and continued, "Chloe, I'm ready."
"Okay Remi," I started, speaking slowly and softly, to calm his excitement and lower the pulse of his heartbeat, "close your eyes, and firmly place your fingertips on outside of the cup and pour your mana into it, like you're pumping the entire glass full of the water in your body. Imagine the glass of the cup, now completely filled with your water, flowing around in swirls, disturbed only by the gentle movement of your hands. Feel your blood pumping throughout your body, arms, hands, and fingertips, returning back to your heart to be recycled. Now, imagine the water from the cup slowly entering back into your fingertips, draining the water, allowing it to return to your heart. And when you're ready, open your eyes."
"Did it work?" Fymner asked.
"Yeah," Remi replied, "I felt it. I definitely felt it. Now, Chloe?"
"Yeah?" I responded.
"Kill me."
"What?" I leaked out, stunned, and I really wasn't sure what to say.
"You need to kill me," he replied with a straight face, like it was a normal request, bending over to roll the glass away from him on the floor and packing the parchment into his robe, "use your Arterial Magic. Sever my aorta. It hurts like hell but I'll be knocked cold in ten seconds."
"Archmagus, sir--"
"Please," he started, "it's a test. It's the only way to test the 4th Rule. The paper will tell me if I can bring things back, and the cup will tell me if I can erase things from the world."
"Remi, I..."
"Chloe, please send me back. I need to test this," he begged, "I need you."
"I just, like-- I don't," I stuttered until I saw his face, "Okay. If you say so."
I woke up on the couch. Which means, my checkpoint changed. But how? Was it a result of the Goddesses or did we somehow trigger an unknown element of the 5th Rule? I can't think about this right now, I need to test the 4th Rule.
I reached into my robe and found exactly what I had hoped and prayed for.
"It worked. It worked!" I said, and the two of them looked at me, "What was the last thing you said-- both of you?-- no, wait, what was the last thing I said?" I stuttered through quickly.
"You asked me to teach you how to drain mana-- why, what happened?" Chloe said.
"You killed me," I said, and saw the shock on her face, "No, I asked you to. I needed to respawn. I ended up here. I expected to respawn right over there," I finished, pointing besides the couch where I was talking to the Archbishop.
"The checkpoint shifted?" Chloe asked.
"Yes, but first, look at this," I said and handed Chloe the paper.
"What is this supposed to say?" Chloe asked as she squinted at my handwriting.
"That's not important. What is important, is that I brought that paper back with me from the future-- a future where you killed me. Now Fymner, where did you get the cup?" I asked, changing the subject.
"Which cup, sir?" he responded.
"Right, you haven't done it yet. Okay, if you were going to grab a cup, where would you get it?" I asked, and he paused for a moment, got up, and headed to the table.
"There's one missing," he said.
I followed him to the table as Chloe followed after, and we took a look at the table setting. Every seat had a plate, silverware, and a glass cup. Every seat, except the closest, the head of the table.
"Holy shit," I said, raising my voice, "it worked! Chloe, Fymner, it worked. It worked!"
"What worked?" Fymner asked, looking at me.
"You erased it. You drained it's mana and erased it," Chloe said, slowly, not as excited as me.
"Yes! Yes. Which means, we can update the 4th Rule. If I drain an object of my mana, then it's erased from the world, as if it never existed," I said, still speaking quickly.
"That's... Sir, that's terrifying. That's awfully terrifying." Fymner said with a look.
"But how does this relate to-- to Tavi," I thought aloud.
"Remi, that's not... nevermind," Chloe said, "They both disappeared in the same way, like they never existed," and, like Fymner she gave me a look, "but Tavi couldn't have been drained of mana because she had a soul."
"No, there's a big difference," I said and I hesitated, "because her body had no soul. No, wait, it's-- she's, Tavi is what Aeolians would call a shapeshifter-- but don't call her a demon. She's not. I call it 'Soulshift Magic', but she... She displaces souls. We were trying to figure out how it works, and then she left Cali-- that's the person she shifted into, well out of, her-- and--"
"She's a shapeshifter?" Fymner leaked out quietly.
"Soulshifter," I corrected and he gave me another look.
"So, if Tavi 'soulshifted' Cali, then what happened to Cali's soul?" Chloe asked seriously.
"We," I said, softly, "we didn't know. We wanted to. We were trying to return her original soul, but the world changed before we could."
"She lost Cali's soul?" Fymner asked with some kind of look and Chloe followed.
They both stared at me for a few seconds too long, so I quickly added, "She-- she didn't know. She really didn't know she was hurting people. Chloe, she shifted into you before Cali, but even then, she didn't know. And when she found out she hurt you, she wailed. She broke down in your arms. She begged for your forgiveness-- or, sorry, not you. The Chloe from our branch, our Chloe. Then Tavi left. She left Cali's body because, I don't know, maybe because she felt guilty, but Cali was left soulless and the Archbishop wanted to kill her for it."
Fymner continued looking at me with a gaze, until Chloe started, "She left Cali. So... she left her with no mana. No mana at all."