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Memories of Lorelei
So the world did not vanish... To think the future I saw would be rewritten. You have done admirably.
And then there was nothing. Until...
A familiar voice, faint and distant. A melody, calling me to appear before the one who invoked the ancient contract, a promise made long ago, never to be forgotten. Calling us.
Slowly, I opened my eyes. At first, all I saw was darkness speckled with tiny pinpoints of light. Then, as my vision came into focus, I recognized the night sky. Something glowing at the edge of my view caught my attention, and I turned my head toward it. The glow came from a circle of light, bright in contrast to the indigo darkness. After a moment of incomprehension, I remembered its name: Luna, the moon.
Something was pressing against my back. The ground, I realized. I was lying down. Carefully, I sat up and surveyed my surroundings. I was in the middle of a wide field of grass and white flowers, bordered by high, rocky cliffs with a few small waterfalls trickling down them. This place, too, had a name: Tataroo Valley. The white flowers were named selenias. I know this place. This is where the journey began. Down at the end of the valley, the ocean glimmered in the moonlight. A lumpy mass rested on the shore, slowly crumbling: Eldrant, a replica of the fallen island of Hod.
The distant voice was still singing, calling to me. Lei va neu kuroa tue lei lei...
As the last echoes of the song faded, a memory surfaced: the same voice, sobbing, "Come home!"
Yes. He promised he would come home... among other promises we made, before we became one. I must fulfill those promises.
I climbed to my feet and began to walk toward the source of the voice. Voices, actually – more than one, conversing, until one voice rose above the others: "He said he'd be back, so let the others sit around and tell stories at his grave. But I won't be joining them."
Whose grave? I wondered. A grave is where a dead person is buried... but I'm alive.
Another memory returned to me: my body, pierced by three swords, slumping to the floor. And a different memory: my body slowly disintegrating as my other body fell into my arms, just before my arms vanished.
I shook my head to clear away the flickering images as memories of deaths, thousands upon thousands of deaths, came back to me, along with memories of births, even more thousands of births – including the unforeseen birth of a baby boy, tiny and helpless, screaming in pain as his sensitive fon slots encountered the outside world for the first time.
"We should be heading back soon. The valley is dangerous at night."
No! I thought wildly. Wait for me! You said that you'd be waiting, always!
Four people turned away to leave – but the remaining one, the one who had called me, glanced back as she stepped down from the boulder where she had been sitting. I was just barely close enough to see her eyes widen. She drew a sharp breath, trembling with a mix of hope and fear as I approached. Mystearica, descendant of Yulia – Tear for short.
Noticing Tear's hesitation, her four companions paused. Their gazes followed hers, and I could tell by their reactions that they shared her hope and fear: hope of our safe return, fear of...what? Do they already know?
Natalia was wearing a blue dress, one that didn't match any of my memories. Guy, too, was wearing a new outfit. Anise, a little taller now, still wore her pink and white Fon Master Guardian's uniform, but her puppet Tokunaga was missing from its usual place on her shoulders. Jade, however, appeared unchanged: same Malkuth uniform, same glasses, same golden-brown hair and red eyes.
Tear took a few cautious steps toward me, then paused. "Why are...you here...?" she asked hesitantly.
Which question should I answer first? Why, here, or you? The explanation of why was complicated, and I wasn't sure which you Tear meant. That left here.
Stalling, I said slowly, "This place has...a nice view of Hod." That was a stupid thing to say, I thought, as the hope in Tear's expression faded into despair.
A better answer occurred to me, one that was both true and simple. "And also...I promised someone." All right, maybe that was a little too simple.
Tear's eyes shimmered with unshed – heh – tears. Then, unable to contain her feelings any longer, she began to cry.
Anise, Guy, and Natalia all started toward me at once. Jade didn't move, but a careworn expression of mixed relief and sadness overtook his normally-unreadable face. Why the sadness? I wondered.
Natalia halted beside Tear, clasping her hands together as if in prayer. "...Luke?" she asked uncertainly.
"...Yeah," said the part of me that had been the original Luke fon Fabre, "I'm here." Another part of me, the replica Luke, added, "I'm glad to see all of you." All true, all woefully incomplete. I held my breath, waiting to see how everyone would respond.
Anise threw herself at me, wrapping her arms around me in a tight hug. "Luke! It's really you!" she exclaimed.
"It's about time you came back!" Guy said, grinning from ear to ear as he walked up to me and slapped me on the shoulder. "Seriously, what took you so long? You had us all worried, you know."
"Sorry," I apologized. Within me, the replica struggled to turn my eyes toward Tear, while the original fought just as hard to keep them on Natalia.
Natalia put her hands on her hips and leaned toward me. "Is that all you have to say for yourself?!" she demanded. "You were gone for two years, Luke!"
Suddenly abashed, the original stopped trying to look at Natalia. I looked at Tear. "Two years? Why?" I asked softly. Why did you wait so long? Were you afraid that I would not appear when Summoned? That, too, was a promise I had to keep...
Tear stared at me blankly, not understanding what I was asking her. After a long, awkward moment, she said, "Luke, do you know what day it was today?"
"No..." I replied, with a feeling of foreboding.
"This is Lorelei-Decan Forty-Eighth, ND2020," said Jade, stepping forward to join the conversation. "Happy birthday, Luke. You missed your coming-of-age ceremony. It was quite an event." His voice was as sardonic as ever, but his eyes were still full of emotion.
"General Curtiss, that is NOT amusing!" Natalia snapped at him.
"Huh?" I asked, baffled. "What's not amusing?" And when did Jade get promoted?
"Of course, since the ceremony was also your funeral, I suppose it would have been quite awkward to have you there," Jade continued serenely, as if Natalia hadn't interrupted him. "Historically, not many people have attended their own funerals while still alive. If you're looking for amusement, Natalia, imagine what might have happened if he had reappeared in the middle of the ceremony. It would have been such a scandal."
Anise giggled. "Hee hee hee! Oh, that would have been perfect! I can just see the look on all their stupid faces!"
Guy snickered. "Heh heh. Yeah, that sure would have shown them. But Luke, what's so special about your coming-of-age day? What kept you from coming back to us until now?"
"No one called me," I replied.
Tear, Natalia, Guy, and Anise looked perplexed, and I began to feel frustrated. What were they expecting? Is so hard for them to understand?
Jade's eyes lit with comprehension. "Ah, I see... So Tear brought you back to us by singing the Grand Fonic Hymn, is that it?"
I nodded, grateful for Jade's explanation.
"In which case... there's more to you than just Luke and Asch, isn't there," said Jade. It wasn't a question.
"Asch?!" Natalia shrieked. "Asch?!"
"Jade, what the hell?!" Guy demanded, his voice sharp with alarm.
I chuckled ruefully. "No one can keep anything from you, can they, Jade... How did you know?"
Jade adjusted his glasses. "I noticed a few things," he replied. A smug little smile flickered across his face, barely a shadow of his usual smirk. The smile faded, leaving his expression somber. "Lorelei?" he asked quietly.
I nodded again. "Yes." A feeling of relief washed over me, to know that someone understood. But then, Jade had always been extremely intelligent.
Natalia, Guy, Tear, and Anise all stared at me, too astounded to speak.
Anise was the first to recover. "Whaaaaaat?" she exclaimed. "So you're Luke, and Asch, and Lorelei?!"
"It's complicated," I replied. "I am one person now, but with three sets of memories: the original Luke's memories, the replica Luke's memories, and Lorelei's memories." I decided not to mention the internal conflict between two of those three entities, still partially alive within me.
"Interesting," Jade mused. "How, exactly, did that happen?"
I sighed in resignation. How do I put a miracle into human words? I took a deep breath, and began to explain. "When the original Luke fon Fabre, alias Asch the Bloody, died at Eldrant, his fonons left his body and fell into the replica Luke. That was what gave the replica the power of second-order hyperresonance, which he used to defeat the One Who Would Seize Glory, who had imprisoned Lorelei. The replica then used the Key of Lorelei to set Lorelei free. I suppose it's fitting that a Key should open a prison."
Jade nodded. "That much, we already knew. What happened afterward?"
"In the process of freeing Lorelei, the replica Luke descended into the core as Eldrant crumbled around him," I continued. "At that point, he was undergoing fonon separation, fading fast. Then, by chance, the original Luke's corpse fell on top of the disintegrating replica, landing in the replica's outstretched arms. And Lorelei saw an opportunity.
"Lorelei fused together the original's body and the replica's fonons, the latter of which included the original's fonons. Both the original's memories and the replica's memories were retained in the process. But some of Lorelei's fonons were caught up in the fusion, too, and so Lorelei's memories were also retained in the original Luke's revived body. One body, alive, healed by the power of the Seventh Fonon, and three sets of memories. That is how I was...born, created, whatever you wish to call it."
"Logical enough, so far," said Jade, as the other four listeners continued to stare. "But what did you mean when you said that you could not come back because no one called you? Where were you between the time Lorelei created you and now?"
"I... don't know. I remember experiencing the original's death, and the replica's fonon separation. I remember seeing a chance to bring them back to life, and taking it. I remember binding them together, and being a part of that binding. After that...nothing. Until just a little while ago, when Tear sang the Grand Fonic Hymn, and the part of me that was once part of Lorelei responded to that Summoning."
"...Why...?" Tear asked, her voice hoarse. She swallowed hard to clear her throat and said, "I was taught that in order to Summon Lorelei, a descendant of Yulia must use both the Key of Lorelei and the Grand Fonic Hymn. I sang the hymn a little while ago, yes, but I didn't have the Key."
"No, but he has it," Guy said, his voice rising with excitement. He pointed to the Key of Lorelei, which was strapped to my back the same way that the replica had always worn his sword. "There must have been some kind of reaction between the Key and your hymn that brought him back to us!"
"That seems highly probable," said Jade. "Which means... hmmm. Oh dear."
"What?" Natalia, Guy, Tear and Anise all asked simultaneously.
Jade smirked. "If Tear had attended the ceremony and sung the Grand Fonic Hymn as Natalia had requested, this person who resembles Luke would more than likely have reappeared then and there, in front of several hundred people. It would have caused an enormous commotion, not to mention the long-term consequences. I suppose we were fortunate. Still, Tear, I'm curious as to why you didn't sing that hymn at any point during the last two years."
"I couldn't bear to," Tear murmured. "The hymn had too many painful memories attached to it. Some were memories of Luke, and our journey, but most were memories of my brother. But since you all asked me to sing it here tonight, I did."
"Now I understand," I said, feeling a smile spread across my face.
"I'm so sorry," Tear whispered, choking back a sob.
"It's okay," I said gently. "I'm here now. That's what matters most."
Tear sniffled. "Yes. You're right."
"Well, then, shall we return to the Albiore?" Jade suggested. "As I said earlier, this valley is dangerous at night."
"Wait," I said forcefully, holding up a hand in a Stop gesture. "On the topic of commotions, and long-term consequences... there's something you should know, Jade. I guess it's okay to tell the rest of you, too, after everything you learned about the Score during your journey with the replica Luke. But this absolutely must stay between the six of us. No one else must learn of it."
"Oh?" Jade inquired. "Why the need for secrecy?"
"You'll understand once I'm done explaining," I replied. "All right, so. During your journey, Ion read a few parts of the Score to you – parts about the Light of the Sacred Flame, the miner's city, the war, the defeat of Malkuth, the plague... and then at the Absorption Gate, Florian read the ending of the Score. 'Thus shall Auldrant be destroyed by the miasma and turned to dust. This is the end of Auldrant,'" I recited. "The things you did on your journey changed that future. The Score is broken, no longer relevant, and Lorelei's memories of the planet's future beyond ND2018 are nothing more than a bad dream, now.
"But the thing is..." I paused to take another deep breath. "It wasn't the replica Luke who first set the future on a path not written in the Score. It was someone else: you, Jade."
Jade's red eyes widened in shock. After a moment of tense silence, he managed to say, "How? Why?"
I closed my eyes. "The Seventh Fonon remembers itself perfectly. Seventh Fonons form when memory particles are forced to fuse with elemental fonons. A fonon of any element – darkness, earth, wind, water, fire, or light, it doesn't matter which one – can fuse with a memory particle, thereby losing its elemental properties and becoming a Seventh Fonon. When humans invented the Planet Storm, they created... I suppose you could call it a particle collider. Elemental fonons moving at high speed through a concentrated area of memory particles, under the pressure of the planet's core, became Seventh Fonons. The memory particle component of the Seventh Fonon is the reason that the sentience of the Seventh Fonon, Lorelei, was a channel to the planet's memory. I'll explain the exact mechanics of it all some other time, when I can figure out how to put them into human words."
Opening my eyes again, I continued, "Replicas are created using Seventh Fonons, so if anyone but you had invented fomicry – anyone whose birth was foreseen by Lorelei – then the replicas would have been part of the planet's memory, too. But Lorelei never foresaw your existence, Jade."
"Is that the reason...why I am unable to use the Seventh Fonon...?" Jade asked, his voice shaking slightly.
"Yes. Something in your family history, some accident of genetics, gave you no affinity whatsoever with the Seventh Fonon. You're the most powerful fonist ever born on Auldrant, more powerful even than Yulia, because you have the same type of ultra-sensitive fon slots that Yulia had...but Yulia had exceptionally high affinity with the Seventh Fonon, second only to Luke fon Fabre's perfect affinity, and you have absolutely none. On the spectrum of Seventh Fonon affinity, you're at the extreme low end, zero, while both Lukes, with their fonon frequencies identical to Lorelei's, were at the extreme high end. A simple matter of statistics. It had to happen sooner or later, and fortunately for Auldrant, it happened just in time to divert history away from the point of no return on the path to destruction.
"Your sensitive fon slots are the reason why you suffered so much pain when you were a child, every time you came into contact with unfamiliar fonon frequencies... and your absolute lack of Seventh Fonon affinity is why healing artes made that pain worse instead of better. Eventually, your body became accustomed to the pain. You thought pain was normal for healing artes, didn't you? That was why you always preferred gels, and why so many gels mysteriously disappeared from the replica Luke's item bag."
Jade gave me a reproachful look. "Really, now, must you reveal my deepest secrets to the others without my permission?" he asked lightly.
"Heh," I chuckled, relieved to hear Jade's usual sarcasm return. "I could reveal a few more, about your fon slots and your past, but I won't. Anyway, Lorelei never foresaw the replicas because Lorelei never foresaw you. We can keep up the fiction that the replica Luke's creation was what derailed the Score, but... you, at least, should know the truth."
"I see," Jade murmured. "You're right – this must be kept secret. If the world knew..."
"Yes. You'd be hunted down by an angry mob," I agreed. "Even now, there are probably still people who want the Score back. If they found out that your existence changed history, some of them might think that killing you would restore the Score. Humans are irrational that way."
Guy's eyebrows drew down. "You say that like you aren't human. So then, what are you?"
"I... truly do not know," I replied. "I am not Lorelei, certainly; Lorelei has settled in the fon belt as its outermost layer. But... I don't feel like either of the Luke fon Fabres you once knew. I am... someone else, now. My body is human, but..." I trailed off, uncertain of how to describe a messy tangle of two human souls and several thousand years of worldwide memories.
"So if you aren't Luke, what should we call you?" Anise asked plaintively.
"...I'll leave that up to you," I decided.
Tear, Natalia, Guy, Anise, and Jade all looked at me thoughtfully for a moment, then traded glances with each other.
Guy spoke up first. "Well, we'd better not call him Lorelei. If word got out that he has all of Lorelei's memories..."
Natalia nodded. "Nothing good could come of that. We mustn't mention Lorelei at all." She took a deep breath. "Everyone else believes that Asch is dead. He has Asch's memories... but he isn't Asch. He reminds me of... of what Asch was like before he was kidnapped." She swallowed hard. "I want to call him Luke, but..."
"I... keep thinking of him as Luke," Tear confessed. "Even though he isn't the same Luke we traveled with, he has all of our Luke's memories."
"He also looks like Luke – both Lukes," Anise pointed out.
"Calling him Luke fon Fabre might be best, for simplicity," Jade suggested. "He has the memories of both the original Luke – Asch – and the replica Luke who was our friend. If we conceal the information about Lorelei, then the only logical explanation would be that the replica Luke's fonons returned to the original's body, along with the original's fonons previously absorbed into the replica. That would explain why this individual has both sets of memories. We could claim that it was a unique case of the Big Bang effect, rather than a result of Lorelei's intervention." He frowned, then added, "Such a claim might not stand up to close examination, but I can discourage any research into the matter."
"But if we call him Luke fon Fabre, what should we tell Duke Fabre, and the Duchess?" Natalia asked.
"Same story we tell everyone else," Guy said with a shrug. "He's Luke and Asch combined into one person."
"But won't they want to know more?" asked Anise. "Like why he came back now?"
Tear gasped in fright. "Please, don't tell anyone it was my fonic hymn that brought him back!"
"Why not?" asked Natalia, giving Tear a quizzical look.
"Well... I..." Tear began, then shook her head. "I'm sorry. I just..." she trailed off.
"Speaking from experience," Jade said dryly, "having a reputation for reviving the dead is – to put it mildly – a nuisance. Tear would have to deal with people asking her to revive their lost friends and family everywhere she goes, and endure their inevitable disappointment when she tells them that she can't. As for the Duke and Duchess, the first question they're likely to ask her is why she didn't bring Luke back sooner. They would blame her for Luke's long absence, regardless of the fact that none of us expected the Grand Fonic Hymn, of all things, to return him to us. Also, there is the risk that someone might deduce the truth of what happened: the combination of the Hymn and the Key invoked Yulia's pact with Lorelei... which would lead them to suspect Lorelei's presence within Lu— within this person who resembles Luke. In which case, our attempts at secrecy would fail."
"Exactly," said Guy. "All right, then, 'Luke fon Fabre' it is! Welcome back, Luke!"
Natalia nodded. "Welcome back, Luke," she echoed, with only a slight hesitation in her tone of voice. Her eyes shimmered with moisture, but she kept her composure and managed to smile at me.
"Welcome back!" Anise cheered.
"Welcome back, Luke fon Fabre," Jade said serenely.
"Yes... welcome back, Luke," said Tear, choking up with emotion again. She carefully put her arms around me in a tentative hug.
I wrapped my left arm around Tear's shoulders in response, and held out my right arm to invite Natalia into my embrace as well. Natalia accepted the invitation immediately, hugging me tightly, and I wrapped my right arm around her shoulders.
"Hey, I want a hug too!" Anise exclaimed, and promptly claimed a spot between Tear and Natalia, throwing her arms around my waist.
Guy's expression turned mischievous. "Group hug!" he yelled, and seized Jade by the back of his uniform collar to pull him forward. Jade, caught off guard for once, stumbled into Anise, and Guy flung his other arm around Natalia to more-or-less complete the circle.
After a very short moment, Jade disentangled himself from the group. He gave Guy a Look that clearly conveyed, I will get you for this later. Straightening his collar, he said in a tone of affronted dignity, "Really, now. You children will be the death of me." With a dramatic sigh, he added, "Shall we return to the Albiore?"
"Yes," I replied. "Let's go home."
~ Fin ~