Fate’s Pawn

We are stones, our memories carved into our souls. Time may dull their edges but we are scarred all the same.

- Date the Crescent, Master of the third school of the Daishinrin

Raziel was in his bedroom. Not the room he shared with Hoeru at Dominic’s school. The room he still reflexively thought of as his room. The room that had disappeared along with his parents more than five years ago. He sat up and looked around, waiting for Alban to come in disguised as someone from one of his memories. But something was different, something was wrong with the room.

He looked down at his hands, then up to the mirror hung on his bedroom door. They weren’t a child’s hands. He was his normal age. He was what was wrong. The room looked strange to him because it all seemed smaller now that he was bigger. Every time Alban had tried this he’d had to live his way through a memory until Alban changed something. Whatever this was, it was something new.

The only thing that he could guess was that this was a very strange, unusually lucid dream. Maybe something brought on by whatever Alban was doing to his head. He didn’t want to look out his window so he tried the door first. It wasn’t locked. The doorknob just wouldn’t move. No matter how hard Raziel tried to turn it, it wouldn’t move.

Moonlight streamed in through the window, cold and silver. It was enough to see the room. Raziel ran his hands over his old dresser, touched toys he’d nearly forgotten he’d once owned and tried not to let tears fall. If this was some new trick and Alban was watching him somehow, he’d be damned if he’d let the rotten bastard see him cry.

But nothing he touched would move, and it wasn’t long before his vision was blurry.

He’d avoided looking at the window, avoided even stepping into the pool of light that slipped through it. But he knew what he’d see. He knew which night this was. There was only one night it could be.

He stood in the center of the room for a long time, his hands clenched into fists and his head hanging. Eventually he couldn’t stand the silence any longer.

The child Raziel had once been was sleeping on the broad windowsill. He’d been watching the falling snow with glee, anticipating snowball fights with his friends and building a snowman with his parents. He was wrapped in a blanket and held his father’s book like another child might have held a stuffed animal.

Past his sleeping child form, Raziel saw someone in white walk past the window. Raziel’s eyes went wide and his heart lurched. He’d never told anyone why he’d gone out on his roof that night, not even his grandfather. He didn’t know why. He just hadn’t. Maybe explaining the flying city over and over again to people who never believed him was all he could take back then.

The child Raziel stirred at the crunching sound of the footsteps. He opened bleary eyes and looked around confused, still holding onto his father’s book. Azariel had always let him look through it while he was home, letting Raziel find the new notes and pictures. Raziel watched as his younger self’s eyes fell on the footprints in the snow. He could see the flickers of emotion on his own face. First confusion, then curiosity, followed shortly by a brief moment of caution.

A part of Raziel wanted to tell himself to stay inside. So much had hinged on this decision. He couldn’t know the consequences of staying inside. He didn’t know what had happened to his parents. And, honestly, he didn’t dislike the life he’d led without them. But he knew how much going outside would cost.

The child climbed down from the window to search the room for a coat and shoes. Raziel tried to grab the child’s shoulder. It wasn’t a conscious decision. He didn’t know what he’d say if it worked. But his hand passed through the boy like mist. Raziel watched himself helplessly heading for the event that would shape him more than any other.

The child didn’t hesitate when he came back to the window. The decision was already made. Child Raziel just threw open the window and scrambled out into the cold night. The older Raziel followed. He watched as his younger self followed the footprints to the edge of the roof. The child looked around, trying to figure out where the person who’d made the footprints could have gotten to. The footprints ended at the edge of the roof, but there was no one down below, and the snow on the ground was still untouched for the moment. Raziel watched his younger self look around in confusion. Raziel himself couldn’t help wondering what was going on.

“Hello, Raziel,” a quiet voice said. Raziel screamed, jumped and fell, something only made more disorienting by the fact that he did not sink into the snow but only collided with it as though it were perfectly solid stone. Which should have hurt. But then again, he should have been cold too.

A boy was looking down at him, a gentle smile on his lips. Curly white hair sat on his head like a cloud and between that and his white clothes, he looked more like some kind of snow apparition than a human. His eyes only emphasized that. They were a nearly metallic silver grey, but that wasn’t what made them strange: it was their weight.

The boy was just looking at him, and yet Raziel couldn’t move. It wasn’t exactly fear that held Raziel in place, and yet he could feel his hair standing on end. Even his breath seemed caught in his chest.

“Sorry,” the boy muttered, looking away and suddenly Raziel could breathe again.

“Wha- Who are you?”

The boy paused. His eyes struck Raziel again for just a moment before he looked away again. He seemed to come to a decision.

“It’s not important. You wouldn’t believe me anyway.”

“A-alright. What do I call you?” Raziel said, getting to his feet. Instinct kept his eyes on his feet, and he had no idea why. His whole body felt shaky and thin, like paper in a breeze. He hated it.

“Already moving,” the boy said with a shake of his head that Raziel could only see in his peripheral vision. He could hear that small smile in the tone of the boy’s voice. “That’s what I’ve always admired about you.”

Raziel gritted his teeth and willed the tremors out of his body. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, like he would if he was preparing to use magic. Then he set his feet and forced himself to look at the boy’s face.

“I need something to call you.” The words came out steady if a bit stilted. The boy turned his head carefully, as if giving Raziel time to look away. Raziel didn’t. He braced himself and met the boy’s gaze. It took effort and concentration, but he was able to hold his eyes on the boy’s. After a moment, the boy smiled again, wider this time before looking away. Raziel allowed himself a breath of relief.

“I suppose you do.” Raziel thought he heard a hint of approval in the boy’s voice. The boy took a moment to consider. “You can call me Blank.”

“Blank?” Raziel repeated, not sure he’d heard correctly. The boy nodded. Raziel’s heart was pounding in his chest despite his controlled breath. He set his jaw to ask the next question. “How do I know you’re not Alban?”

“Do you think I’m Alban?”

Raziel found that he was bedrock certain that Blank was not Alban. There was nothing of Alban’s condescension in this boy. And Alban’s eyes could never have carried such weight.

“Alright, fair enough. Why are you here, Blank?” Raziel asked through dry lips. Blank’s smile turned rueful.

“The same reason I was there the night you lost your parents. Because the situation is not equal.”

“What do you mean?” Raziel asked. Blank nodded toward the child version of Raziel standing near the edge of the roof.

“What do you see?”

“I see... me?”

Blank let out a short chuckle.

“So direct. What else?”

Raziel looked at his younger self. The child was looking up into the sky, and Raziel knew suddenly what Blank was talking about. Far up in the night sky, something was blotting out the stars. It was hard to catch, but once he found the blank space where the stars should have been, it was impossible to tear his eyes away.

It looked like a great black mountain floating upside down in the sky with jagged edges of rock pointing down at the earth like teeth. The dark stone blended in with the night sky almost perfectly, only noticeable as it passed between Raziel and the stars. But there was something else that took longer to spot. You had to know what you were looking for. There seemed to be stars that moved along with the city as it floated through the sky. But they weren’t stars. They were lights. Lights in the windows of nearly unimaginably tall buildings.

The flying city. The one that his father had searched for for so long. It had come to him in the end.

“Yes. The city,” Blank said, his gaze also locked on the flying city.

“What does it have to do with this? Did you bring it there that night?” Raziel said, heat suddenly flaring in his chest as the thought occurred to him. Blank raised a hand in a placating motion, never taking his eyes from the city.

“I did not. Other hands created that destiny. I was here to give you your fate. As I am now.”

“I don’t understand.”

“No. I’d be very surprised if you did. I can only tell you so much. There are rules that I must abide by.”

“What are you?” Raziel asked interrupting. He hadn’t meant to ask the question, but Blank wasn’t making any sense to him. The question seemed to startle Blank. He glanced at Raziel, and again Raziel was hit with that preternatural weight. But he braced for it and kept his eyes on Blank’s. He could all but feel himself being measured in that moment.

And then Blank let out a real laugh. There was nothing supernatural about the laugh at all. It was just a young boy’s surprised, genuine laugh and while it lasted the weight was gone. The boy put a hand to his mouth and looked away.

“I’m sorry. I wasn’t laughing at you. I was just surprised is all.”

“It’s uh,” Raziel said, groping for words. “It’s alright. But can you answer my question?”

“No. Not even a little bit,” Blank said, still chuckling. Then he turned his gaze back to the flying city. “But I can try to help you understand what’s happening now. Tell me, what happened on the night of this memory?”

“I… lost my home. I lost everything.”

Blank nodded solemnly. Raziel waited, but Blank said no more. So Raziel made the intuitive jump.

“Are you saying I could lose my home again?”

“A great many different outcomes are possible when you wake up.”

“But that’s one of them,” Raziel said, feeling certain of it. “Can I stop it?”

“A great many different outcomes--”

“Yeah, yeah, but can I stop what’s going to happen?”

Blank was silent, his eyes still on the city. It was directly above them now, and so he had to tilt his head back very far to keep his eyes on it. In the corner of his eye, Raziel could see his younger self doing the same, spinning in a slow circle at the edge of the roof to keep the city completely in sight.

Raziel knew was was about to happen. They didn’t have much time left.

“Blank?” he pressed. Blank let his gaze fall from the city to Raziel. And this time Raziel was hit with the full force of those eyes. It was a struggle to breathe, to stand. It was like the weight of the flying city had fallen on him. And with that weight came the brilliant flash of light blasting down from the city.

Blank reached out a hand, offering it to Raziel. There were motes of glowing light swirling just above his palm. In the corner of Raziel’s eye, he saw his younger self falling from the roof and knew he’d hit the ground in a moment. Darkness rose up as the memory drew to a close, swallowing the world, devouring Blank feet first. There was no time to think.

Raziel grabbed Blank’s hand with his own and the world exploded.