AN: This story's written purely for pleasure and I plan on keeping it under 20k words if possible. It should be a light read with less drama than my other fics and a happily ever after (of some sort). In any case, it shouldn't be taken too seriously.
Disclaimer: I don't own KHR, just the plot and this OC.
Nadir
by Neleo
Chapter One
excerpts from the diary of one Archer Kyne
"One is born so one can die."
(the first paragraphs are hardly legible, so heavily they've been crossed out)
Guilt. (the repulsive emotion that society sees as a central marker of morality). Would I ever come across a civilization which won't strive to indoctrinate its people in connecting guilt with the ownership of moral principles? Over time, I've come to hate the word, for how foreign and elusive it is—
Ha! Look at me rambling and being all melodramatic.
I suppose I should stop before this journal devolves into a teenage diary littered with existential angst and dime-store philosophy but in all my lives, I've always somehow fallen embarrassingly low on whatever bizarre scale they'd devised for ranking emotionally healthy individuals. And that truth... it still rankles sometimes.
I know I've loved: I loved my son on Terra, I deeply cared for my lovers on Abeir-Toril and my wife on Earth-616. I've felt happiness and joy, trusted my blood relatives (and the families I eventually found for myself), grieved over each loss and feared over my loved ones' safety. Remorse and guilt though… Over the years, I've put in so much effort in faking these pointless things.
One hundred and eleven years, if you were wondering: thirty one lived on Terra, thirty-eight on Toril, nineteen on Earth-616 and now twenty-three on Terra-R, a slightly more magical Earth than my first. Should this diary be found, some might wonder: 'how could he label this world slightly magical, what with such things as illusions, ghosts and life flames.' How could I not?
I've bypassed the peaceful afterlife (or Hell, more probably) thrice so far - proof that even death can't make someone less of a coward - only to slip into worlds just teeming with magic. Though I suppose it was just my soul/spirit/essence or what have you... At first I'd clung to the dying body of Palla, an abandoned tiefling baby… leading me to spend the next thirty odd years in Zhentil Keep, on Faerun, learning whatever Enchantment spells Master Dvaa-Xi deemed fit to teach me, dazing and charming (or damning and cursing) my teacher's enemies and rivals with symbols and words of power.
When I lost my own life in an ambush (a very clever one... I should salute the scum for using their much vaunted intellect for once), I was drawn to yet another dying child, a little mutant boy. Instead of using spell components, ritual words and ley lines for magic, this body had the power to blend with the environment to a ridiculous extent. It was almost a given that in a poverty stricken country I'd use this to steal from the rich and - as the Divine of Aleroth had said - give it all to my poor self.
I died fighting beside my wife on a heist gone bad (us thieves had been no match for the collector's hired guns) and woken up in the body of seven-year old Kyne Archer, sole surviving child of Reynold and Bridget Archer, wandering British entrepreneurs.
It sounded ominous, didn't it? Sole surviving child… It took me close to five years to figure that my parents' insistence in learning how to use firearms and our near constant travel was more a matter of necessity than eccentricity.
The first time I saw someone trying to kidnap my mother - and how dare they, I hadn't had a loving mother in over fifty years, she was mine - my instinctive reaction was to run (suppressing that felt almost painful)... the second, to stab the nearest man with a sauce-covered carving fork (the only weapon on hand). Of their return shots, two grazed my side... one struck me straight in the stomach.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck!" I remember thinking as I dropped like a stone... "it never gets easier, does it." I'd clenched my teeth and struggled to breathe through the pain. Even if it were the last good deed I'd do before jumping to another body... I couldn't let them… I'd been resolved that the bastards wouldn't be taking any parent of mine.
I wanted, I yearned for my old magic, to be able to shout a word of power, to slither inside their minds, to sew shades and whispers at the edges of their thoughts. Anything!
My gut pulsed with a harsh, pervasive heat and I could feel myself reaching out, slipping around the kidnappers, on their clothes, their hair, their skin... and finally, inside. At that point, I could feel them - like shadowy puppets at the edge of a hazy string dangling loosely from the corners of my imagination. Oh, the possibilities! But I was bleeding, my mother was crying and struggling and there wasn't any time for curiosity.
The orders I gave them were clumsy, harsh - it had been over two decades since I'd dominated anyone's mind and the method was new, unfamiliar… but living beings could only think in so many ways. Where there was mistrust, I made it grow into paranoia... made them doubt each-other, panicked, angry and hateful… and when they shot themselves, I slipped back. Magic wasn't needed anymore, they were beyond any reconciliation. They tore themselves apart and when Bridget broke free and rushed to my side, I finally let myself drift off to the thrilling thought that this life would be beautiful!
There had been no angry talks of herding mutants into camps on the news... No hateful propaganda launched against magic. Whatever this power was, I thought - as mother clutched me tightly while shouting on the phone for an ambulance -, it wasn't feared (or known) by the general populace. At eleven, I hadn't heard any hint of mystic colleges or arcane leaders and yet in my chest something sung, soft and comforting. It seemed as if a filmy sheen had settled over my heart - no, rather a warm vaporous blanket to keep the world away.
My mother was saying something... but it was so hard to focus. Still, I felt like laughing.
KHR
...But I digress. Even when writing it's easy to get lost in memories. I was speaking of ethics, sins and guilt, wasn't I?
Having first studied the mind arts under the tutelage of a particularly immoral individual who was part of an organization almost universally acknowledged as evil (that the Zhentarim were known as evil even across the planes should really be a point of pride… especially as the only books I've come across which were written about Terra Prime were dinosaur tales.), I'd never much cared about the moral implications of playing with someone's mind. Wise, willful or intelligent individuals were nearly always immune to such magic and those who were too stupid or weak-willed to resist deserved to have their freedom of will revoked.
I held myself to only one rule: that I'd never try to influence the minds of those I cared about. Out of pride perhaps, but I wanted their love and affection - if they felt any - to be real, not something I'd conjured up. It felt like a much worthier achievement, to have them care for me out of their own free will. And as for lust… well, lust was ridiculously easy.
I'd grown up a beautiful enough woman - a lithe redhead with light blue eyes. When I wanted them, I didn't lack for partners… True, I'd yet to find someone who could hold my attention for more than a couple of weeks (even when they were equally handsome - and kind or charming as they tended to be - it felt as if something was missing, as though my magic rejected their own magicless souls) but I held onto the hope that this meant that someday, I'd find someone with magic like my own. Till then, I had Bridget and Reynold for affection and a host of forgettable faces for anything else, I'd thought. I should have remembered not to bind my heart to others' quite so tightly, even if they were my parents.
KHR
At twenty-one, the only two people who'd loved me had passed away. Bridget from cancer, Reynold from a stroke.
In the span of four years, I'd found myself alone. Aimless, I drifted from country to country as my parents had done, a jaded and grieving jack-of-all-trades. That a mafia family sought to use my unusual talents should have come as no surprise.
I was in Nîmes, having just finished a sweep job. With magic to hide me and dominate the guards, it had been a piece of cake to acquire the Bonnay family's heirloom. I'd almost stopped caring whether the weak-willed wretches could recover after I was done playing in their minds and while my psychic assaults had become more precise with age and experience, they'd also become more vicious. Sometimes, if I was feeling particularly angry or frustrated, when my magic almost hummed under my skin, the mental invasions would almost leave physical traces, faint bruises or even burns (if the illusion had been elemental in nature as opposed to the usual emotional triggers). It was an interesting effect that I planned to explore further, when time allowed.
I was just waiting for the client to show up when the when the bar exploded with activity... well, the windows and walls just exploded and a trio of burly men in gray suits rushed through the door. Shit!
"See if she survived and plant the letters on the body." I heard one ordering.
I'd jumped behind an upturned table, guns already in my hands and the magic buzzing eagerly under my skin. I grit my teeth. Of course it was a setup. They would've used their own men otherwise... I was just edging past the table to take aim when three pops sounded, one after another and the gangsters, each forehead shot cleanly in the centre, dropped dead.
My heart beat wildly. Whoever had taken them out must have been a professional. An assassin… Slowly, carefully, I urged the magic to reach out and cover me, to hide me from sight… 'no point in looking any further… there's nothing behind the table' it whispered.
Only the assassin, it seemed, could sense the whisper. Instead of having it twine around his mind and lead him away, it made him curious. I saw a shadow drop from the rafters and then he was not ten feet from me, tall and lean, a stylish murderer in a classy black suit and orange banded fedora, scanning the area around around me with a narrowed gaze. Sweat gathered on my brow and I resisted the urge to wipe it off. My fingers were steady around the guns' grips but it took all my will to stop my body from trembling.
I was confident in the strength of my illusions so why was it that the man's mere presence raised the hair on my neck, why did his coiled aggression feel like searing pinpricks all across my skin? I hated it! ...and debated trying to shoot him, probable assassin or not, when a second person jumped down, a pink-haired woman this time.
She cast her eyes around the room, dismissively almost, and said "Are we done here, Reborn? Let me treat you to a drink in some other pub before we report."
My eyes widened and I could feel my jaw drop slightly. Some half-forgotten memory niggled at my mind. That gunman in the suit, he was an actual assassin, wasn't he? And the girl... a poison specialist? I scanned the people in front of me in light of this new information.
"Reborn. Reborn... So I am in that universe…" I thought thought to myself, as the hitman finally nodded to a teenaged Bianchi and left. "...and this likely isn't magic." My fingers rubbed a circle across my heart, where the warm blanket still hovered "...they're flames…"
KHR
Having gained some extra insight into how my magic (flames) worked, even if it was just information from a manga I could barely recall (written in a different realm for the understanding of those people to boot) made working with my psychic power easier than ever before.
It was fun, it was addictive and in under two years I'd developed enough control to hold minor illusions up for hours. Of course, I had no intention of testing my power against this world's powerhouses and top illusionists but normal people - civilians as it were - were pretty toys to play with.
Still… discovering that there were others with my sort of magic who kept a tight reign on their abilities - more powerful individuals even, who didn't flaunt their power… it made me think back on how I'd been using my illusions and reconsider my decision to treat civilians so casually (callously even).
To tell the truth, I don't think I would have changed my approach if seeing Reborn hadn't made me remember how much disdain I'd felt for Rokudo Mukuro's attitude, for Kawahira's high-handedness…
That I'd only ended propagating the idea of the 'evil illusionist' made me feel… uncomfortable. I wondered if perhaps that was what remorse felt like, a niggling itch in the back of one's mind, cousin to shame. If it was, why had I been chasing such feelings?! They were awful!
I immediately set to finding something else to focus on, something which didn't leave a sour taste in my mouth.
I opened a funhouse on the edge of Munich and, for six months a year, I enjoyed the fact that people paid me to practice my illusions on them. In return, I let them experience the wonders of the Forgotten Realms, the thrills of a dystopian Earth-616 and anything else my mind could conjure up… which turned out to be a (satisfying) lot.
And as much as the funhouse was a welcome diversion for the civilian visitors, it was also my refuge when the world's inherent ugliness spilled too close to my daily life.
After the deals in France, I'd become much more aware of the seedy elements of society - which was a great thing for my security but not so much for my peace of mind, especially as the universe conspired to keep throwing a certain individual in my path.
I thought I caught glimpses of him in Menton and Sanremo. A month later, at a party in Genoa, the hitman lounged on a chair near my own gambling table, a glass of whiskey in one hand and the other placed casually near the edge of the suit, within easy reach of one of his weapons, no doubt.
I'd had my fair share of drinks and my judgement must have been seriously impaired because I stopped resisting the impulse to send a tendril of power to brush against him.
"Just a taste," I told myself. "he won't even notice."
He did. He was far too professional to even twitch but his eyes narrowed and I could see him scanning the room. I didn't know whether to be terrified or excited when his gaze reached me ...and stopped. He didn't rise to confront me, nor did he show any aggression aside from that intense look but my heart was in my throat. The burning taste of his hadou and the searing stare worked wonders for dispelling the drunken haze.
I left the party far earlier than I'd first planned, cloaked under the heaviest, most intricate illusion I could raise. What had I been thinking?
I saw him again not two months later. I was in Bergamo, in a cozy little pub where most patrons were young civilian students out for a night in town. I had been daydreaming, musing about time, health, life and a million other issues which I normally brushed aside with nary a thought. My first hint that something was wrong was when the young bartender kept glancing to a spot next to my right elbow with bedroom eyes and an inviting smile.
The manga makes light of Reborn's disguises but where the baby might have looked ridiculous, the adult… well. In casual clothes, with a trendy hat, glasses and a chain necklace which invited a host of inappropriate thoughts, it took me almost a minute to place the handsome man who'd taken the seat right next to mine. The hitman was gorgeous, yes but much too dangerous for me and, in power levels, completely out of my league. I held a faint hope that his presence here was all coincidence… at least until he decided to address me.
"Chaos." he greeted with a lazy wave "You left so soon last time, we didn't even get to talk."
I tried not to clench my jaw in dismay and, rather than answering in my somewhat broken Italian, I switched to English and prayed that my voice sounded as casual as his.
"Had I been interested in talking, I'd have stayed."
"Ohh… and here I thought that you seemed interested in a bit more than talking." The words were spoken in a joking tone but he'd leaned forward and there was there wasn't even the faintest trace of humor in his searching gaze.
Even though it might have been a sign a weakness, I gave into the urge of closing my eyes and rubbing my forehead as I thought. "Fuck, now what?" How did I get myself into these sort of situations? And more importantly, how would I get myself out of it?
