My cheeks flush, and I clear my throat under the heat of his gaze.
“Each time I woke, there were more and more Bonded, until we knew that time was repeating itself, that the six of us were supposed to walk together. But the timelines never quite lined up. The closest we got was four of us at the same time, the last two missing out by a decade. The Draconis takes longer than anyone else to re-cycle and awaken. It has always been this way.”
The Draconis, the Soothsayer, they have names for themselves, but they’re nothing like the ones we have for each other now.
I turn to look at Gabe for a moment, but he's grimacing as he finishes off the last of the antacid, still looking green around the edges.
“What do you want? From us, I mean?” I say, the words tumbling out of me before I really think them through.
I clear my throat again and try to be clearer. “What is it that you keep coming back for? Or do you have no control over this ‘rebirth cycle’ you're on?”
He leans forward in his chair, the hand on my thigh tightening a little more as it answers me slowly. “We return for the Eternal. We return because it calls out to us. The thought of a lonely existence for my Bonded is unthinkable. While the Eternal returns, so shall we.”
The Eternal.
I meet North's eyes for a moment, watching his flare with interest before I shut my own and check in with my bond.
Is that your name? The Eternal?
What use is a name to a god? But yes, it is what they have called me.
I always hate when it talks in riddles like this, but the fact that it's answering me at all gives me hope.
Why do you keep returning if you've lived hundreds of lives with each of them? Why continue to come back here?
I can feel the itch of irritation on my skin, the emotion not my own, and I'm expecting a full-blown bond tantrum from it. Instead, it floods my mind and takes over my body before I have the chance to fight back.
There's smoke everywhere.
The area around us is burning, a wall of flames devouring the well-established tree as though it’s nothing more than scrub. The ground underneath our feet is blackened by the ash. Even through the makeshift leather shoes on my feet, I can feel how hot the ground is, as though scorched from the sun itself.
Every fiber of my being is exhausted.
There are no more souls left to take, none but our own. And no matter how hard the Corvus pushes me to take his life force into myself to repair the damage done to my body, I will not do it.
I couldn't hurt him any more than I could hurt the rest of them.
The devastation of the battle between us and the other god-bonds is severe. Piles of bodies around us in various stages of damage and decay, hundreds more have been consumed by the shadows with little to show that those Gifted had ever existed in the first place.
Still, it's not enough.
My energy is waning, and once again, we're going to be separated from each other in death, as we always are. I look down at my vessel, and I find that I've already taken significant damage. The Corvus and the Crux are both unable to heal me the way I can heal them. The only one of my Bonded who has that ability isn't with us this time. Even if there were a Healer I found tolerable nearby, I doubt they would be strong enough to fix the mess my stomach is in.
I can see the strain around the Corvus’ eyes as he looks me over as well. I can see the rampant need in him to fix me and wipe away the damage, but I have already started to accept that this lifetime of ours is over. Just another chapter in a book that doesn't seem to have a happy ending… or even just an ending in sight.
I don't know what it is that we had done in a previous life to be cursed in this way, to wake up and find one another, over and over again, but never truly finding happiness. To be hunted by those who should be nothing more than ants beneath our feet. If only we could all wake up together. If only we could complete our Bonds and find peace together.
Instead, we are cursed with nothing but destruction, death, and decay, heartache and loneliness, over the span of a millennia.
This memory hurts my bond.
It tiptoes around it in my mind, fussing with it like a festering and weeping wound, one of a hundred other deaths they had endured at the hands of our enemies because we are separated and weakened without each other.
Without a complete Bonded Group.
The Crux returns to us, blood covering his hands and his face in the shadows as the darkness from the tree coverage bends towards him. The face he wears is different, but the soul inside is still true, still perfect and mine, no matter which vessel he wears. Even though it's nothing more than a memory, I cringe away from it inside, as loyal to my Bonded as my bond is to the other god-bonds. I suppose that's why we work together so well.
My bond agrees.
Even in the memory, I can feel that the strength of my spirit is the strongest my bond has ever felt. I had always believed that my power came from my bond, but being here in this vessel, I can see that's not true. This vessel is different. It’s weaker, the limits to what it can take are much lower than mine. I can see clearly that they’re not a good fit.
Even without the bond, my Gift is more than the other Gifted could ever hope to have.
“We’re not all going to get out of here alive. If you need to take our souls to live, do it. We will return to you again in another cycle,” the Corvus says, but I shake my head.
“There is no use being here unless we're together. There is no me without you.”
He drops down onto his haunches, the shadows that wrap around his legs are obedient to their master as he shakes his head at me. “I can't watch you die again, Eternal. Don't make me watch it all over again.”
The cycling is slowly starting to chip away at us.
This reincarnation of the Corvus is more open with his pain than any others have been before because the vessel might be new, but the soul is tired. The soul has been on a long journey to get to this point, and it’s starting to take its toll.
“We can make it,” the Crux says, looking behind us to the mountain opposite the fire, where the sun is slowly starting to set an orange glow on a blackened sky as the rays of light fight to shine through.
“If we leave now, we can make it.”
The Soothsayer didn't wake up with this cycle, still decades away from his next turn on this earth, but I don't need him here to know that the Crux is lying. He's trying to give his brother something to distract him before our deaths together, something small to get him through the pain of the night, because it's always this way.
It's always standing together and watching the destruction around us as we go forth to our death.
We have a hard choice ahead of us now. Whether we choose to take matters into our own hands here and now, to leave behind these vessels and begin the cycle again on our own terms, or if we continue to fight until our bodies give out. We've made the decision many times before, never truly happy either way.
I do want to fight. I want to leave the small, sheltered area that we're in at the moment and run until I find that god-bond that haunts us. I want to tear it apart with my bare hands, to show it the same callous treatment that it has shown me and mine. But no matter how many times I've killed it, it continues to wake. It wakes and hunts us down.
I’m tired.
More tired than I ever wanted to admit to my Bonded. So tired that I hope I don't wake with the next cycle or maybe ever again. Maybe I need to give up, to know that the small pockets of joy that I have found with my Bonded are all we’ll ever get, to go to my final resting place at peace, to know that at least I got to meet each of them.