The Beginning After The End (Web Novel)
Chapter 517

Before taking that step, I slammed the shutters between Arthur's mind and mine. I couldn't explain the river's pull on me, and I feared what it might do to him if our thoughts were still intertwined when I entered its currents. Suddenly assaulting him with indecipherable input while he was fighting off this creature might be his unmaking. Much like I could not maintain our connection while he was under the influence of King's Gambit, I thought the river's draw might overwhelm him.

Even past my mental defenses, I felt him startle as he caught sight of me standing up to my knees in the swiftly moving current. My consciousness was already being drawn away from me, out into the current. It was not taken, not ripped away to become something else, but...extended. I was a child of time. My experience through it had not been linear, and that insight was written across the surface of my core.

The aetheric waters tugged at my legs, and my feet slipped in the silt, but my body was grounded. It was my mind that roamed, but not just down the river of time but up it, too.

I resisted the urge to follow those currents, instead drawing from the river just as it did from me. I needed to understand it before I could utilize it. But there was no time!

I almost laughed at the irony, then suddenly Arthur was on his back, his attacker breathing harsh words into his face. "Life. Hated, awful life. Must end you. Empty...you." Two thin arms grew out from the thin torso, long-fingered hands reaching for Arthur's throat.

Understanding be damned, I clawed at the water. My power erupted out of me, and time lurched to a stop. But the pull of the river pressed against me, an unnatural dam to its motion. Arthur barely got out of the way, and then suddenly my hold over the aether was ripped away from me.

I saw myself, my life, my choices. Birth and rebirth, victory and defeat, shadowed at all times by the specters of my mother and father, and my grandfather, but buttressed in equal measure by my bond-brother and father, friend and ally, master and servant all at once. As I felt the twisting roots of my existence spread up and down through the river, I also felt just how inextricably connected Arthur's roots were to my own. We truly were bonded, even symbiotic; neither of us existing without the other, a living paradox balanced on a single golden thread.

The thought of him was like a tether back to the present.

Claire stood alone before the aetheric apparition. Arthur was preparing to attack. Look! I thought. And then, as sudden as a guillotine, it was over.

The others began to speak, and though I joined in where I found my thoughts needed, most of my awareness was spread out through the river.

Its waters-not water, not really-enveloped me up to my waist. Despite the speed with which it moved, the surface was glassy, interrupted only by the fine ripples caused by my body disturbing its passage. In those ripples, I saw the metaphor of my presence disturbing the river of time, the way in which I'd reached across it, passed over and through it, changed myself to be a part of it.

In the reflection of the smooth water, I saw myself. I was far beneath the surface, my arms flailing, the current dragging me away...

'What are you seeing?' Arthur's voice asked in my mind.

What does the river feel like to you, Arthur?

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