The fall (TBATE)

Book I: New Heights

Episode I: Time

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Arthur pov:

Since my arrival in the Kingdom of Elenoir years have passed. I am now eight years old.

There wasn't a single day I didn't train hard. Unfortunately, though, I had little time to learn mana arts and aether manipulation from Regis, since having combination of Initial silver mana core, asura's beast will and aether had taken a great toll on my undeveloped childish body, forcing me to go through the assimilation process first.

Assimilation process took nearly three and half years, though this time wasn't fruitless in the end, seeing as my body had strength and endurance that far surpassed adult human, even if I still looked pretty much like a fragile kid. Aside from this, unfortunately, he couldn't move a lot from the point I was when I arrived in the Kingdom of Elenoir with the exception of theoretical knowledge Regis literally forced into my mind with big or small chunks of information.

And I say it is a really unpleasant experience. Not only was the process painful — and I fainted a lot, even sleeping for days sometimes after it — swallowing received information also was hard. Perhaps it was due to the differences in structure of our consciousnesses. I had to take time to even understand received information, not to mention sorting and understanding.

So, while I had a lot of fruitful theory about aether and initiate/mid mana manipulation in my mind, I had to meditate every day for hours to sort even a small piece of it.

The saddest point was that explaining with tongue would take way, way more time than I lost for sorting and understanding forced information. After all, mental image, feelings, experience, memories are very different and more fruitful than words.

Simply put, while it took a week to learn something new from forced information, it could take years to learn from words, trying to figure myself out. Partially because I wasn't a human anymore and some things I had to learn from nothing.

Still, I did not have enough time, seeing as I planned to go back to my parents before my tenth birthday.

Plus, I still couldn't win in all out combat with Gramps Viron. I mean, He had way more life and fight experience - let alone war he survived, while I mostly had theory and rough power in my disposition. While I could overpower basically anyone in rough power, I couldn't win against the experienced monster of a warrior he was.

So, I had a long, long way to go.

Aside from my studying part there also was a change that I was proposed. Yeah, that's right. VIron quite forwardly suggested me to become fiance of his granddaughter, Tessia Eralith.

The biggest point of his proposal was that he knew I had no desire to connect myself with Asura's world yet. At least not until I was strong enough to survive. And I needed power. Protection. Which his kingdom and me being its royal prince could provide. The problem was that while I had gotten quite close with Tessia over years, I still saw her more like a sister figure. I liked spending time with her. And... I liked to imagine her more mature — both in appearance and character — but I couldn't bring myself to think about her as a future wife just because... it was wrong. I was an adult man in a body of a brat when she was, albeit very mature, smart and sharp, just a child.

It was where Regis revealed to me that I wasn't actually a reincarnation of a Grey.

While it was hard to swallow — since I believed for years that I was actually a King Grey in my past life and had all his memories along with soul — it happened to be that I had not possessed his soul. It was simply another man's memories, for some reason engraved in my mind.

How it happened - Regis didn't know or didn't want to tell me. But all he said to me was that I had promised Sylvia to enjoy my life. And trying to run away from idea of future marriage was just stupid.

And... when I thought about it, it was actually true. It wasn't like I must marry Tessia right away if I become her fiance, and I can simply wait for her to become more mature, adult... but it still didn't solve the problem that I had problems associating myself with memories of a King Grey I possessed.

Though, In the end this problem was solved... but not the way I could ever have supposed it would be.

It was when I actually found courage to talk with Tessia herself about Viron's proposal, and also explained to her that I had memories of another man. Not myself, but someone else, somehow engraved into my mind. What was shocking to me, that she nonchalantly told me that she was in the same situation. But it was slightly different.

Over the years, she had strange visions in which she saw different shards, parts of her... olderself' memories. She sheepishly said then that she did not always understand these visions and they were somehow foggy, shallow. But she, for example, knew of me before meeting me in person. Though she was quite surprised by the presence of Regis or me being an Asura, since she didn't see that in these shallow visions.

She also saw three nations united.

And she saw a great war in which she and I took part, fighting against terrible enemies.

At this point, when she explained everything to me, I wasn't surprised. No, I was just... scared. If some of these visions of her already came true — though weren't always absolutely correct — I would have to become stronger. Way stronger than I was right now.

Because, in the end, I died in her visions. Along with many, many thousands of innocent people. She died herself in these visions, fighting to the last breath, trying to save her people from a terrible enemy.

Though she said that these visions were quite foggy and shallow, it was the first time I saw her scared. Terrified even. She said that she wanted to find right time to share this knowledge with me but couldn't find courage to talk about it until I did.

Hell, It was my first time seeing her... this weak, small, fragile, as she cried in my arms, nose buried in my chest. I always saw her strong, sharp, and smart. Straight forwarded, ambitious, never backing off.

It was when I understood that I wanted to protect her. My family. Everyone else. I wanted to become stronger. And I needed more power than I had right now.

It was also when I understood that we were... similar in some way. I had memories of another — terrible at the time — man that wasn't even me, while she had visions of a terrible future that could actually happen.

And also, I found that I didn't mind waiting for her to grow up. And become part of my family that I wanted to protect the most.

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