Chapter Text
Somewhere, on another continent entirely, a young man with vibrant red hair lounged in a bathtub filled to the brim with a viscous, dark liquid. He idly lifted one hand and watched as the liquid rolled sluggishly off his fingers and fell back in the tub with a plop.
He dropped his head back against the porcelain and closed his eyes with a sigh.
An image formed in his mind. It was the same one that had been plaguing almost constantly since his little foray to the Western Continent. A child crouched behind his mother as he advanced on them. The heat of flame washed against his back, and the distant sound of battle reached his ears.
His eyes reopened, and the scene faded.
Just what was it about that boy that had caught his attention?
The man once, and occasionally still, known as Cale Barrow scowled and pushed upright, uncaring as the liquid he sat in glopped over the side of the tub and pooled on the marble floor.
He’d lived well over a dozen lives and had nearly a thousand years worth of memories and experience locked away inside him. It wasn’t unusual for that knowledge to manifest itself in a way like this. A trigger without a cause, or an interest without a reason. Even if he didn’t consciously recognize why, something in his subconscious did, and that was more than enough to warrant his concern.
He should have just grabbed the brat right then and there, brought him back and figured out just what it was about him that was triggering…something.
Why hadn’t he?
Suddenly irritated at his past self, he got out of the tub and dragged on a white robe that had been neatly folded and left on a nearby chair. Uncaring of the way the liquid from the bath dripped off his body and saturated the fabric of his robe, he strode into his chambers and flung open the door to his bedchamber. Outside, one of his guards flinched and scrambled to stand to attention from where he’d been lounging against the wall.
“Your Majesty!”
White Star glared, not just at him, but at the faint rings hovering over the man’s chest. He’d traveled all the way across the ocean and risked exposing his organization early based on the rumors of multiple ancient powers gathered in one spot.
And what had he gotten for all that trouble?
One ancient power, and a weak one at that. It was a wood attribute so it was still useful in balancing his plate, but it hadn’t been worth the effort to obtain it. Had he known that was all the reward he could expect he’d have sent in a mercenary group and been done with it.
“Where’s the report on that estate we attacked?”
“Estate?” the man asked blankly. “Report?”
“Yes, estate!” White Star snapped his fingers. “Go find it, unless you want to see what your own entrails look like.”
The man paled. He bowed and, sputtering platitudes, scrambled off down the hallway.
White Star watched him leave, and then returned to his room. Another servant had already set out a table with food and wine on it and he sat down to eat. He’d barely managed a few bites, when a hurried knock sounded on the door.
“Come in,” he ordered.
The guard bustled in and set a pile of paper on the table next to his hand. “The report you requested, Your Majesty.”
White Star gestured for him to stay, and started to scan the pages.
Most of it he already knew.
He was always on the hunt for ancient powers, and one of the best ways to find them was through information.
In other words, books.
Histories, diaries, biographies, anything and everything that mentioned an ancient power even in passing. He’d lost count of the number of times he’d managed to successfully locate an ancient power through some obscure reference by some forgotten nobody in a random book. He’d created an entire guild during one of his earlier lifetimes, and dedicated it to nothing but the accruement of knowledge.
All in an effort to find those damn powers.
It was a tedious process as the books were rare already and rarer still when he took into account the fact that any he found were only useful once.
Still, it wasn’t as if there were a lot of people interested in the collection of information referencing ancient powers. As hard as it was to find the damn things, it had never been an issue to actually acquire them once he did.
Imagine his surprise, then, when someone else had started doing exactly that.
He’d barely noticed initially when he’d sent someone to buy a book only to find out it had been purchased already. It happened from time to time, and he could always track it down later.
But when it happened a second time, and then a third and a fourth?
That had caught his attention.
When he’d discovered it was some random noble he’d never even heard of in an unimportant part of the Western Continent?
Even more intriguing.
His eyes caught on a word in the report and he paused.
“Shit.”
There had been a second brat there, hadn’t there? He only had a vague impression of him, sniveling and hiding behind his mother.
“Twins,” he muttered under his breath. “Just my luck.”
There was no way to know which one had triggered his interest, and which was useless.
They could both be useless for all he knew. His subconscious could be trying to tell him something important, or it could be trying to tell him the brat had a vague resemblance to someone that had once irritated him just enough to warrant being killed in a particularly memorable way.
White Star scowled, and his lips curled in disgust at his own uncertainty.
His plan had taken centuries and now, after all this time, it was nearly ready to be set into motion.
This was not the time for unknown variables, no matter how minor they may, or may not, be.
He snapped his fingers at the guard, still standing nervously nearby. “Summon Sayeru.”
The man jumped, bowed, and then ran out of the room so fast it was a wonder he didn’t trip over his own feet.
It wasn’t long before the door reopened and Sayeru entered. The man’s frail physique betrayed his true nature, though one could catch hints of it from the glint in his eyes.
“What is it?” the man growled, not bothering with an honorific. He was clearly irritated at having been summoned like a common servant, which was exactly why White Star had done it.
“I have a task for you.” White Star picked up the report, folded open to the pertinent page, and tossed it at the man who caught it with ease. “There were two children at that estate we attacked. I want them.”
“Why?” Sayeru asked, blankly. “And why didn’t we just –”
“Because I want them,” White Star snapped in annoyance. He ignored the second question, as he couldn’t really answer it himself. An oversight, and an obnoxious one at that. One that should have been dealt with immediately, and not pushed off until it became a dangling thread whipping about loosely in the back of his head. “Alive, and relatively unharmed.”
“I can take an assault team,” Sayeru started to say, only to stop as White Star cut him off.
“No. One display was enough.” He hesitated for a moment. “Put out a bounty,” he said finally. “Be discreet, and use proxies if you have to. Build in a backstory in case someone prods to close. A power struggle, or some fool with a grievance. Nothing that can be traced back to us.”
“How high?” Sayeru asked, through gritted teeth. White Star was treating him like a basic lackey and it clearly grated. That would teach the bastard to not refer to him by his proper title, White Star thought with a malicious sort of glee.
“High enough to get it done, but not so high that it draws unwanted notice.”
Sayeru looked about ready to pop a blood vessel at the vague description, but he stayed quiet,
White Star waved the man out, and returned to his chair with a grunt. As the door closed behind the leader of the bear tribe, White Star idly tugged a pendant from around his neck and tossed it onto the table.
The illusion faded.
Had anyone had the misfortune of being within eyesight of the leader of Arm, they’d have been treated to an odd sight. The tall, commanding figure slouched in a chair wisped away like smoke on a battlefield leaving a slimmer, far more youthful form in its wake. His robe suddenly hung loose, oversized sleeves falling over his hands and hem puddling loosely on the floor below his seat.
The man…boy once, and still occasionally, known as Cale Barrow sighed in disgust and sank lower in the cushions.
He hated this.
Hated the fact that his ability to reincarnate didn’t simply allow him to pass from one life to the next in an unbroken chain. No, it had to be done the hard way. By evicting some useless soul from its vessel and taking its place.
A child to be precise.
He didn’t know why it had to be that way.
Why it had to be a helpless, small, sniveling whelp that he had to throw on like an ill fitting coat until it grew large enough to fit properly.
Maybe it was part of the curse.
It had been built around him betraying children, so perhaps part of his punishment was having to be reborn as one, over and over and over again.
It was infuriating every time.
Having to start over. To go from a grown man leading thousands to a pathetic, weak brat who barely had the hand eye coordination to wipe his own ass.
His first few lives he’d tried to wait it out.
Be a brat, for a few years at least, until his body could catch up to his mind..
It never worked. His caretakers rarely lived long enough thanks to the curse and, even when they did, it was just so goddamn annoying.
How was he supposed to go from building a mercenary guild to building blocks?
From giving commands that were to be followed without orders, to being told to go clean his room?
From instructing men, to being instructed?
Again?
And again.
And again.
And again.
It was enough to drive anyone insane, and White Star could admit he was close enough to that already.
So, he’d stopped playacting.
He’d start to issue commands, give orders and expect them to be followed almost as soon as he could talk and strike out to regather his forces the second he took his first step.
It hadn’t gone as he’d expected.
To an extent, people understood who and what he was, but it didn’t change how he looked.
Very few people, as it turned out, were willing to take orders from a toddler.
Even fewer were willing to fear one.
The answer had come to him on a sunny afternoon in his fourth life. Some idiot baron or another had mockingly denied him entrance to a ruin he’d built back in his second life, and White Star had reacted accordingly.
As he’d stood over the man’s mangled and bloodied corpse, the answer had simply…come to him.
So simple, and so obvious, he’d nearly laughed out loud at the absurdity of it.
He slid his fingers under the chain and raised it until the pendant dangled several inches above the table’s surface. The pendant was shaped like the head of a wolf, jet black with crimson eyes. Thin tendrils of scarlet light rippled out from the eyes, moving about in twisting, whirling patterns.
The soak in the tub seemed to have properly recharged it, and he sat it back on the table with a clack, studying the glittering eyes with a scowl.
“Twins.”
A pair of twins were the reason he’d been cursed so long ago, though what some might consider a curse he would call a blessing. Eternal life, annoying as it might be to have to constantly re-experience childhood, and all he had to give up were a few useless emotional connections?
Please.
Sheritt had been a fool.
She’d hinged the safety and care of her children on the naive belief that love conquered all. That when given the choice between love and power, everyone would choose love.
The first White Star had understood, and so did he.
Love was a weakness.
The only power ever worth having, was control.
And if, after achieving that, he ever decided he wanted love?
Well, he could simply demand it.
And demand he would.
The board was nearly set.
All that awaited now would be the first move and it would happen soon enough.
Very, very soon.