IGS #4, Chapter 34 (Bonus!)

Leonis

How did one come back from the dead twice?

Always in this life he’d felt haunted by his past self, the last-dead Leonis, the man who’d fallen to Manticore and been the friend of heroes, the source of Praximar and Dameon’s true fixations. Deep down—and he could admit it now—he’d felt a ghost in this life, walking two steps behind a larger than life figure, the true Golden King.

And now?

Leonis inhaled deeply and kept his gaze locked on his bowl of gruel. They departed today. Would leave the Red Road, would strike north east toward Jova’s Tomb of Sadness. More adventure. More glory. More pain. More death.

But he felt… nothing.

He was doubly dead now. He was present, yes, his bulk took up space, and others saw him, recognized him, spoke to him on occasion.

But he felt… numb. That was a pleasant way to put it. Detached. Disassociated from it all.

He ate mechanically, the spoon small in his grip, the voices of his companions washing over him. Nobody singled him out for conversation. Why would they? Until but days ago he’d been a brash idiot, a melodramatic fool, a perennial victim so insistent on drowning in his own self-pity it was a wonder Scorio had allowed him to even remain.

Chewing with slow deliberation, Leonis raised his gaze to study Scorio where he stood in quiet conference with Jova, Druanna, and the two newcomers, Kuragin and Myla. The rest of their party sat at the table with him, discussing the upcoming trip, their Silverine guide, Lady Krula’s blessings on their departure.

But he might as well have been sitting a million miles away.

Leonis lowered his gaze to his bowl of gruel and resumed eating.

That moment in the caverns, after he’d dealt Scorio that treacherous blow, after he’d uttered that blasphemy. That moment in which his fragile ego had finally cracked and the dark, bilious truth poured out. It had felt… good, in a perverse way. To finally excise a wound, to lance a poisoned boil. He’d felt light, freed of his anger, his nonsensical chagrin, his horrendous pride.

For a few hours, he’d felt washed clean.

But too much of this life had been wrapped up in that hate and anger. Too much of his identity had been cultivated into wounded resentment. Now that he could no longer blame Lianshi or Scorio, now that he’d taken the full brunt of responsibility upon himself, he’d come to realize that… he didn’t even know who he was.

He wasn’t the Leonis of his past life. The Leonis of this current cycle, ripe with hatred and despair, had died.

Who was left?

Leonis stared at his hand. The whorls of his knuckles, the way the lantern light caused the pewter spoon to gleam softly. A strong hand. But it didn’t even feel like his own.

His chewing slowed, stopped.

He felt ponderous, heavy, immobile. A great carved statue, a leaden effigy to the man he’d once been.

Leonis the Golden King.

The words were like ash in his mouth. Not… not because of self-pity. He was glad, at any rate, to be free of that maudlin and bitter sentimentality.

It was as if he’d been a rotted fruit, and in the act of carving away all the bruised and bad parts, had left little more than a small pit at the very center.

He was reduced to… something. This new self. This fragment. This sliver of a man.

Without he desire for vengeance, without the driving force of his pride, he felt adrift.

Power? He knew he should desire it. But the desire to train as he’d once done was gone. The urge to brutalize himself, to flagellate his soul so as to deepen in his resentment was vanished.

Dread Blaze. Wasn’t that what he should desire above all else?

“You all right there, Leonis?”

He blinked and looked up. Kelona had turned to him, was leaning on one elbow, her bowl empty before her. Brows raised, she seemed guileless, her question frank, innocent.

“Sure, yeah.” His voice was a rough rasp, so he cleared his throat and tried again. “Fine. Just… eating my fill before we head out.”

“Smart. Unless Kuragin or Myla are talented cooks, we’ll not be eating this well again.” She studied him for a moment longer, then smiled and turned away.

Leonis’ smile was perfunctory, a grimace, and he held it for a beat before letting it drop and returning his gaze to his gruel.

That had been… nice.

Unnecessary, on her part. But then again, Kelona was indiscriminately nice, wasn’t she? It wasn’t anything personal…

Leonis winced and his grimace deepened. Stop that. Enough with the self-pity. It had been a genuine question. Enough. Just… enough.

He rubbed at his eyes.

How easy it would be to become a ghost in truth. To not speak, to follow this crew into the Unfathom, always there but never taking part in the conversations, the decisions, the camaraderie. To… what? Give up?

Leonis scowled at his gruel.

Why was the simple act of living so hard?

He resisted the urge to sigh and resumed eating.

But he had a choice. He could sense it, hovering before him, a future where he remained a ghost. Where the act of surrendering his grief and anger broke him. Where he became an overlooked shadow and offered weak help to the others until some Silverine slew him.

Wasn’t that just another form of self-pity? Had he cut it free of his soul after all?      The anger was gone. The bitterness. His pride was shattered and ground to dust. But was he actually done playing the victim?

He couldn’t help but smile. Apparently not.

“What’s funny?” asked Xandera as she slipped onto the bench across from him. Her lambent orange hair flowed over her bare dusty-black shoulders, for she’d shaped her grey dress so that it was shoulderless and fit her slender form like a sleeve. Her yellow eyes were bright with curiosity, and Leonis realized as he hesitated, trying to come up with an answer, that he’d never actually had a conversation with her before.

“Nothing much.” He shifted his weight. Already her smile was becoming polite, already she was shifting away to see what Kelona was discussing so animatedly with Nyrix. “Ah. Do you… do you miss your home?”

Xandera gave him her full attention once more. “Do you mean the Fury Spires?”

“Sure. Where you were born, right?”

“Correct. I…” Her brow quirked, and for a long moment she just studied him, unsure. “I do miss my hive. In some ways. In others, not really.”

“It’s complicated, then.”

“Indeed.” She sought the right words. “My return home feels inevitable. One day I shall grow into a full queen, and my instinct to create my own hive will become impossible to deny. As such, I don’t actively miss it now, for this time as a young queen feels precious. But… there are aspects I miss? I experienced them only briefly before petitioning to leave with Scorio, but in the hive, the walls, the floor, the very rocks felt alive, felt… responsive, to my senses. Our history was woven into the rock, and the heat that arose from below was comforting, was correct. The company of my sister-selves was infuriating and delightful and…” She trailed off, looking away, a half-smile on her lips. “I miss them for they were each a mirror to my own self, a variation on my theme. An affirmation? It is hard to put into words.”

Leonis nodded gravely, pretending he understood.

Xandera sighed, then her smile brightened. “But all that awaits me in the Iron Weald. For now? Such excitement! Such… strangeness. You Great Souls are so mercurial. My own kind can be as fierce, if not more so, as dedicated, but our dedication is woven into our very souls. We have no choice in being what we are. The heat forges us. There is comfort in that. In having no choice but being steadfast. You Great Souls though…”

Leonis chuckled softly. “We’re a mess.”

“Such a wonderful, confusing, entertaining, exciting mess, yes!” Xandera sat up straight, beaming. “You have so much scope for self-determination, and at times I think it a curse. Your emotions flow from angry to resentful to delighted to enthused, then sad, then passionate—and all of it within one day. It must be exhausting. Bewildering! You are multitudes in one body. So few of you are guided by absolute certainty in what and who you are and desire to be.”

“Tell me about it,” said Leonis softly.

Xandera peered at him. “You, for example, are very confusing. Am I being too forthright?”

“Not at all.”

“You haven’t been good company. But you have been interesting company. You seemed constant, as if forged from one manner of rock, but then you changed so deeply within the warrens that you seem another entity altogether.”

Leonis took a deep breath. “Yep.”

“And now…?” Xandera’s gaze was bright and inquisitive. “Now you seem very sad. Wait. Are you missing your home?”

“Home.” Leonis rubbed at his bearded jawline. “I last truly saw my home over a thousand years ago. My family, my friends, my foes, the people I’ve seen and interacted with in my Trials—they’re all long turned to dust. The buildings no doubt fallen, the very memory of my country erased or lost in the sands of time.”

“Oh,” said Xandera, voice quiet. “That must be… I hadn’t thought of it that way.”

“It’s all right.” And, he realized, it was. “That home belonged to a different Leonis. The first.”

“Leonis Prime,” said Xandera softly.

“Leonis Prime. I’m Leonis the Hundred and Twenty-First. Whoever that is.”

“Well, that’s… that’s you.”

“Right.” The gulf of uncertainty yawned open at his feet, and he decided to not bother trying to explain it to the blazeborn queen. “Most people… they’re born into a family. A place. They grow up somewhere, then decide to stay or leave, to reject their kind or embrace it. But they get a choice. We Great Souls?” He glanced around the Red Keep’s entry hall, the different Great Souls going about their business. “I think we default to pretending we’re the Prime version of ourselves, but eventually…”

Xandera’s eyes widened. “Eventually you realize you’re not, and that leaves you…?”

“Right. Needing to define who we are, this time round.”

“And who are you, this time?”

Leonis blew out his cheeks then stared down at his gruel. For some reason his eyes began to prickle. “I guess I’m trying to figure that out. I’ve not… I’ve not done a good job of it so far.”

Xandera placed his dry, warm hand over his own. Hers was tiny, little more than a child’s in comparison to his big mitt, but he could sense the strength there, the power. “You are doing a good job.”

Leonis’ throat constricted and he was forced to blink rapidly. He wanted to pull his hand away, to stand, to stalk off into the shadows. His chest expanded, and when he was finally able to exhale it came out all shuddery and sudden.

“You are,” said Xandera, tone low and forceful. “You are doing a good job. Now.”

“Now,” laughed Leonis weakly, desperately hoping nobody was noticing this conversation. “I… I’m trying.”

“That is what matters. We blazeborn don’t get to try. To decide. We simply are. Drudges or titans, bishops or queens, we are born as we are, and live that way till we die. But you? You Great Souls are tormented by choice, but… you get to choose.”

“We get to choose,” said Leonis softly.

“So, choose.” She withdrew her hand and shrugged lightly. “That’s all you have to do.”

Leonis raised his gaze, met her golden one, then laughed. “That’s it?”

She nodded gravely. “That’s it. What kind of Great Soul do you wish to be?”

“Is there a menu?”

“A menu?”

“At certain restaurants, they list what’s available on a piece of card. A menu.”

“Oh.” She considered, then held out an invisible something to him. “Here you go. A menu. On it is every quality and virtue you could desire. Good ones and bad. What do you want to order?”

Leonis studied the young queen, then, having trouble breathing once more, he mimed taking the invisible menu from her hand. Held it before him, and clenched his jaw tight.

Xandera grinned. “I recommend the ‘good person’ meal. It’s very good.”

“The good person meal is good?” repeated Leonis, feeling dazed. “Then… sure. I’ll have a bowl of that.”

Xandera beamed. “Good! What else?”

Leonis dry swallowed and stared at his invisible menu. How ludicrous. How… but no. It wasn’t, was it?

What did he want to order? What did he want to be?

“I’d like… I’d like an order of… generosity.”

“Hmm, very well chosen.” Xandera pretended to scribble on the palm of her hand. “Anything else?”

He thought of Lianshi, the many memories of her face in pain as they’d argued. “I’d like… compassion.”

“Hmm. Very in season. So we have an order for good, for generosity, and compassion.” She leaned forward to peer at him. “But don’t Great Souls always want ambition, power, and… that kind of stuff?”

“Oh, right.” Leonis pretended to turn the menu over. “Here’s all that stuff. Ambition. Strength. Respect. Oh, look here: feared. All the important stuff.”

Xandera waited, hand still cupped as if it were a pad of paper.

“But you know…” Leonis sighed and turned the menu back around. “I think I’ll pass on all that stuff.” His breath shuddered again in his chest, and he forced a smile as he looked over the pretend menu at the blazeborn queen. “I don’t… that stuff doesn’t have much appeal right now.”

“Fair enough,” agreed Xandera. “So. Anything else?”

Leonis stared past her at where Scorio stood, hands on his hips, nodding gravely as he listened to Jova.

“I want… I’ll order a portion of… loyalty.” He barely whispered the words. “Or… dependability.”

“Ooh, that’s good, yes.” She pretend scribbled. “So: goodness, generosity, compassion, and loyalty. Sounds like you’ve figured out your order.”

“Yes.” He wanted to laugh, but kept his face sober as he handed the invisible menu back. “Thank you.”

Xandera mimed taking the menu, then chucked it over her shoulder and beamed. “You’re welcome!”

Could it be that simple? Could he just choose to be… it felt indescribably maudlin and naive to put it so baldly, but could he just decide to be a good… person? Generous, kind, compassionate, and steadfast?

Xandera was smiling at him, inordinately pleased with herself.

And why not? He’d chosen self-pity and anger before. Had chosen to believe the lies of others and his own. If that had been a choice,  and if he was now a blank slate, couldn’t he simply choose… otherwise?

Leonis took a deep, deep breath, held it, then exhaled heavily.

He could.

He could make that choice.

“All right.” He considered, frowned, then gave a sharp little nod. “All right. That’s what I’ve ordered. That’s what I’ll be. From hereon out.”

“Excellent. You’re going to do great. You’ll see. And it’s so much more fun being a nice person than a miserable angry one. My mother-self, Xandera Prime? She told me a little bit about Bravurn, the Great Soul who enslaved us? And he sounded awful. Weird and strange and very unhappy. Who would want to be him?” She made a face. “Much better to be a nice happy person. You’ll see.”

“Sure.” And for the first time, a smile came to Leonis’ lips. “I.. I bet you’re right.”

“Course I am.” Xandera stood up and stared down her nose at him imperiously. “I’m royalty, after all.”