Immortal Storm

Chapter One - Immortals Have White Hair

I have always noticed that small, strange little detail; that all Immortals have white hair.

Sometimes I’m not sure I would have thought much of it, had I not been so young when I first met my original teacher. It was something that only someone young and naïve would notice so quickly; the unspoken question that I felt I couldn’t ask, but which I soon came to conclusions regarding on my own.

My first teacher, a memory of indestructibility and radiance even now, introduced himself to me as ‘Kazutaka Rei’; a name he had soon informed me was only half his birth name. There was always that strange compulsion with Immortals; something that compels us to keep only our first birth name, in my teacher’s case Kazutaka, and assume a new name to live by.

Despite a near perfect memory, I can never remember what my original last name was. Itsuki once told me that this was to stop us from trying to interfere with the lingering remnants of our family. Feeling more than omniscient compassion or a detached fondness for mortals never ended well, after all. But I’ll leave the explanations of Itsuki until later; I think I’ll need whatever strength I can gain from the beginning of my story for that particular meeting.

My first teacher was a tall man; worryingly thin, but with a strong presence that made the people around him immediately shut up whenever he opened his mouth to speak. To me he seemed a wealth of knowledge and no matter what questions I asked him, he always answered. Whether he answered all of them truthfully, I’m still not sure, but I like to think he was as honest as he thought he should be.

I’m straying from my point.

Rei was the kind of person who liked to sit and stare at nothing. Or rather, he stared at things I couldn’t see. He told me that one day I would be able to see the things that he saw when he seemed to see nothing; that I was too young to understand the simple beauty of what he did during that silent time was obvious.

Truthfully, I think I’m still too young. To a degree, I understand what he meant by what he said; I have been known to do something similar myself. But it has always been mortals who said so, and whether that was because Immortals knew, as Rei did, what my thoughts dwelled on, or if I simply did not show that side of myself except in the presence of mortals or those younger than me, I’m not entirely sure.

Still, about Rei. The very first distinguishing thing that I noticed about him was that his hair was long, and pure snow white. Just like mine.

During my young and innocent years as a mortal, my hair drew a great deal of attention; it was a novelty, something that most people couldn’t achieve until old age. Then again, the colour of an Immortal’s hair doesn’t look like ‘old white’, but more a ‘youthful white’. As you will be able to tell later, these descriptions are not ones I thought up, but ones I have used since Itsuki first said them in front of me. I’ll apologise for having acquired some of his mannerisms in advance.

I was never told anything about the attributes Immortals have in common, since it seemed like one of those ‘it-doesn’t-need-to-be-said’ things; something all of us should know without needing to be told. It was only the hair though; Master Rei’s eyes were forest green, where mine were steel grey, and he was tanned and I fair. By this I could tell that the hair was probably the only thing we all have in common.

Then again, in those days I could have assumed that all Immortals were male. I had not, after all, ever seen a female Immortal and I later learnt that they tended to be more solitary then the male Immortals. But of course, believing that always seemed wrong; it just didn’t fit.

And though female Immortals liked to stay on their own, the males were the ones who like to pair up for centuries at a time before separating and going their own ways.

I was never sure whether I agreed with this in the beginning. It seemed like such an alien concept to me. However, it soon became a part of my life. I paired with many different Immortals during my first couple of centuries, and it no longer seemed so strange when one of us would just one day get up and leave the other.

It didn’t feel like abandonment, as much as it had originally sounded that way to me, on either side of the line, and when we met again it was almost like we’d never been together and then separated; the way we would speak and tell tales and give accounts of whom we’d met and which worlds we had visited… the companionship is comfortable because it’s familiar and that’s not uncommon with partnerships like that.

But as I said, I learned these things later. Most Immortals, when they feel their end approaching (their self imposed end of course; ritual suicide is the only way I know of for an Immortal to end his life without the aid of someone else) they like to search out a new born child in one world or another. A child who they could sense had the powers of one of their own, the gift and curse of immortality, and they would bring the child up themselves, training them in the ways of the Immortals.

Most had lived for thousands of years, so what was another couple of decades?

Time is never the same for Immortals, since they stop aging when they’re around twenty years old. I was nineteen, and will remain that way now forever. I sometimes laugh to think that I will be a teenager forever. I remember how keen I always was to grow up, and now I’ll never become a real ‘adult’.

However, I still felt the years more like a mortal than a true Immortal, and I found it hard to believe that the centuries could move as quickly as those older than me said they did. My ‘first life’, before I awakened, doesn’t really seem all that long ago.

Still, I did not begin my education until I was twelve years old. My powers showed themselves early on; my psychic abilities driving my very religious parents to extreme lengths to rid their child of whatever evil spirit had possessed him. I can’t help but feel sad to think of that now, even though it was so long ago.

My mother killed herself when I was nine. A year later, I came home from school to find my home empty. I never saw either parent again. Now I was the orphaned genius. Genius… let me tell you, being considered a genius by mortals is nothing compared to the intelligence of Those Who Do Not Age, as I found out soon later.

The knowledge you can gain in a normal mortal human lifetime is very limited; a tiny grain of sand in the desert of the Universe, and in the minds of those who can live for an unlimited time.

Rei found me just after my final link to mortal humanity died. He took me in and despite my occasionally foul behaviour, managed to make a reasonable Immortal out of me. He committed ritual suicide, transferring his energies to me, when I turned nineteen and my full powers awakened. Unlike my mother’s unhappy demise, Rei’s passing was not a depressing one and I remember it in each year that passes.

I can remember all of the things my Master taught me; I can remember the fighting, in training and out, the arguments over who would cook and clean on different days, the countless books he presented me with, expecting me to memorise everything within them, even with my very busy schedule.

I stopped going to mortal school when I was sixteen, which was a great relief since I didn’t have to worry about that sort of work at the same time as all of Rei’s teachings and challenges. Those challenges had been the bane of my existence at the time, and had seemed both difficult and baffling. I began to stay prepared at all times, fearing another unexpected ‘visit’ to a place I’d never been.

For instance, he once dropped me off in the middle of an unfamiliar forest and told me to find my way home again. I was thirteen. It took me two months to find my way back into the right country, and a further fortnight to find my house. Those were the lessons that taught you observance as well as survival. You learnt to notice everything around you; to pinpoint exactly where you were, how to get home and what landmarks and stars were helpful in getting where you wanted to be.

Rei took me on a journey around my birth world when I was seventeen; he showed me everything he thought I should see, and everything I thought I wanted to be shown. All the while I was gleaning information from my teacher, absorbing his knowledge like a sponge and becoming all the more curious for it.

I do think he loved me... I’m sure of it. But whether he did or not, I needed to believe it; I had no one else then, after all

Being alone is never quite as noticeable as when you realise that you have untold eons ahead of you. When you finally come to realise that as much as one person might love you, the next might not be so kind. And that’s what it is; an endless stream of people and places, of memories and promises.

Rei told me that this was his birth world. He had returned here, not to educate me, but so that he could die at peace, having travelled a full circle and ‘completed his soul’. I have it in my mind that if I’m not killed, one day I’ll do the same.

Studying alone was different to studying under someone. Not better or worse, just different; I no longer had any source of information for my kind, so I had to practice the things I already knew, and through trial and error discover my powers and strengths on my own. It wasn’t easy in any sense of the word. Eventually I began to start being restless. I would abandon my studies just to take a walk, or travel to a country I had already been to or hadn’t seen a certain side to yet.

This was, I now know, a side effect of the Immortal’s ‘Compass’. To put it in its simplest terms, it is an instinct that rules Those Who Do Not Age and forces them to move on. Basically, Immortals find it difficult to stay in one world for too long; that’s why a good handle on portals and Dimension Jumping is an essential skill.

I was thirty, though my body remained in the guise of a nineteen year old, when I finally had had enough of the world I was in and wanted out. Call it cowardly if you will, because I certainly thought so, but I had never before left my birth world. I had turned opening and closing portals into an art, but I had never had enough courage to actually move through one.

My years with Rei had taught me much about Immortals, and I had learned a lot about the world I was in, but I was interested to see what else I could learn using the powers I had been somehow gifted with. I’d had a good memory for things when I was young, but an Immortal has an unbeatable memory; it didn’t take long for me to drink in all the knowledge the world around me had to offer, and having nothing left to learn I endeavoured to find something else. Something new.

As afraid of change as I was; the allure of new discoveries and knowledge spurred me on, and it only took a few weeks before I had set my affairs in my birth world in order. It was time to move on. Time for a new place, a new time, and a new teacher.

--

Chapter Two - Some Things Are More Frightening

Dimension Jumping for the first time is a terrifying experience.

It’s like being squashed into a box half your physical size; it tickles and itches like being wrapped in wool, but it’s cold, chill. It’s an inexorable pull, like gravity, and somehow like being dragged through water. The feeling is like water, but it’s not wet, and seems like a whirlpool that doesn’t spin. Okay, to be honest it’s practically impossible to describe, but I’m severely understating it by saying that it’s frightening.

Despite Rei’s assurances on the subject, I couldn’t help but become absolutely horrified by the experience. Immediately afterwards I thought I’d never do it again. But of course, an Immortal’s Compass is just something that cannot be fought, no matter how sating that particular urge had to come about.

In the end, I got used to it surprisingly quickly; I began to hardly notice how truly uncontrollable and eerie Dimension Jumping really is.

The first time I Jumped, to my complete and utter embarrassment, I missed my target world completely and ended up in a kind of Limbo world; a world only Immortals could find themselves in. I knew I had missed because some old instinct provoked my senses, and I realised that I hadn’t been concentrating hard enough. I was promptly dumped off in Limbo.

I fell into that world, rather than stepping in as I’d been taught, and landed on my backside, making small sounds of annoyance and pain, and not being completely sure about what had happened.

That world is silent and oddly comfortable. It’s comforting, but it’s also quite strange; it’s limited to a space only the size of a large hall, but seems much larger when you try to walk from one side to another. It’s formed of thoughts and broken fragments of worlds; the walls look like passable shadow, as if there were no boundaries at all. Everything was so unfamiliar, and yet somehow engraved into my mind, and at first it made me feel dizzy. Trying to seem unfazed by the amazing scenery that surrounded me was out of the question. It was dome shaped, or it seemed to be, since it was cloaked in shadows so much that I couldn’t see the walls or ceiling. Scratch that; I couldn’t even see the ground I was walking on.

At the time, examining the strange new world was first priority; so when someone cleared his throat, naturally I was quite startled. I scrambled to my feet and half staggered backwards, my eyes catching on a lone figure standing not so far away from me.

He was tall and lean, wearing old fashioned clothing as white as his hair; a jacket and shirt, even a cravat, and thin boots. His skin was paler than mine, to almost a worrying lack of colour, and his hair cascaded over his shoulders and down his back, ending at his waist. Thin bangs half covered his large violet eyes, which were unnervingly pinned on me; his expression curious and, if I might say, mischievous.

This smooth, flirtatious, ego-bound bastard was the first glimpse I ever had of Itsuki.

He was standing facing me, one arm crossed over to support his other elbow; one of his hand’s fingers were resting on the side of his face. Though I obviously didn’t know it then, this was his characteristic pose; the way he always stood, no matter where he was.

When I failed to say anything, his curiosity transformed on his face openly to a kind of knowledgeable smugness; by this time I had been positive he knew how new to this I really was. I mean, how many practiced Immortals missed their destinations by such a margin, and fell through their own portals in such an embarrassing manner? Bloody few, as far as I knew.

Still, though I had been trained well enough and was the owner of my old Teacher’s energies, I knew how far short I fell; from the feel of the stranger’s aura I knew how much of a difference there was in power, and he also had the advantage in knowledge and experience. If he attacked me, I’d probably be dead within seconds.

My anxiety about being attacked only increased when Itsuki began to advance on me; slowly, tauntingly, like a predator would do with interesting prey. He moved gradually closer, while also circling me, and I automatically turned as he walked, instinctively not wanting to let him out of my sight.

I suppose I should have just Jumped through one of the mirror portals and escaped, but my curiosity about the first Immortal, besides Rei, I had ever met was too strong. The old saying ‘curiosity killed the cat’ certainly felt like it applied to this situation.

He stopped within a few feet of me, tilting his head and shifting his weight from one leg to the other, while his expression became more playful. I remember being able to somehow be annoyed, even in this situation, by how much taller he was than me. I probably looked like a frightened animal; unable to move, and staring up at him with both curiosity and uneasiness.

Itsuki never did give off a very accurate impression of himself; long years of pulling up different facades had taught him many lessons on hiding emotions, and ‘becoming’ a different person. His eyes are like swirling pools of purple; if you don’t keep your mind on something solid, you risk being drawn in and lost. Those were the eyes I couldn’t help but stare up at then; I had, after all, never seen such an eye colour in my birth world. Itsuki’s lip curved slightly.

“You’re being rude you know.” I remember how surprised I had been when he said that. I remember taking a step backwards, once I realised the man had somehow moved obtrusively close to me.

I think that’s a skill of his; he can move without anyone noticing. It’s not that he moves too fast to see, or that he can become invisible or anything; he just knows exactly how to move, and exactly what to do to distract you from it, so it appears that he’s moving… without actually moving.

“R-rude?” I never stuttered, but the way Itsuki’s head dipped down closer when I moved away flustered me beyond coherency. Right from the start, I knew he had no idea of the issues the people around him had concerning ‘personal space’.

“Yes, rude.” He smiled, but it didn’t seem like a normal smile somehow. I’ve never been quite sure how to react to those smiles. At the time I had simply blinked stupidly up at him, trying to keep distance between us and failing miserably. Words can’t describe how idiotic I felt afterwards, or how annoyed he made me.

Though I’m sure he realised it before, he made a point of seeming to realise that I didn’t understand. “Himitsu Itsuki.” One of his fingers poked me once on the nose, and his expression became even more oddly humoured. Luckily I wasn’t completely stupid, and hearing him say his name instilled a little sense in me.

“Ah, Yoko Kizuna.” That was, in truth, the very first time I had ever spoken my name aloud in front of someone. In my mind, I had always known what it was, but for some reason I had never felt that telling someone was something I should do.

In actual fact, all Immortals have these two names; the first name is our ‘façade’ a name we use when we visit worlds and fit ourselves into society, which also happens to be the name we carried through from our birth life, and the other is our ‘true’ name, the name only other Immortals are allowed to hear.

The response I made seemed to please Itsuki; he moved his face another inch or two away, and he nodded in a practically patronising manner. In spite of the fear I’d had before, I found myself unbearably annoyed both at myself and at this strangest of strangers. My irritation probably showed; Itsuki’s amusement increased, and he slowly began to lean closer again, with me stepping backwards, until my back met resistance.

I blinked up at him, unsure of what action to take; his expression, though supposed to be positive, seemed far too suspicious, too calculating, too... there weren’t sufficient words to describe it. And my vocabulary is pretty extensive.

He raised a hand, which I eyed wearily, and slowly extended one finger to brush my cheek, making my brow contract in both surprise and suspicion. I mean, you meet a stranger in a bizarre dimension you’ve never seen before; his eyes are a colour you’ve never seen; he stands unwaveringly close, as if he’s never heard of ‘polite distance’; he moves like a predator and stalks you like prey, and he strokes your face while smiling as if he knew something that you didn’t, and would only tell you if he felt like it… what the hell was I supposed to do?

Then he spoke words I didn’t understand. A soft tongue, purring almost, which reminded me a little of Japanese mixed with French… I remember frowning at the words, not comprehending anything; even his tone had been slightly ambiguous, and I had only known the man for about five minutes, so there was no way I could recognise his mannerisms.

Language was always the most annoying thing to learn as an Immortal; no matter how many languages you learned, all you had to do was get a slight prod from your Compass, and you had another hundred or so languages to struggle through in the new world you arrived in. Some Immortals left spells in the worlds they left, spells that granted each Immortal visiting the world the ability to fluently speak the major language. Rei himself had, while he was teaching me, constructed such a spell.

Itsuki’s smile widened, and he slowly and purposefully moved closer; until I could see nothing but the deep abyss of his violet eyes. They were velvet-like and calm, hot and deep, and I quite simply couldn’t turn my gaze away from them. I felt like the proverbial deer in the headlights. In fact, he came so close that our noses were practically touching and I was blushing hotly.

In only a second he had pulled away until there was a reasonable distance between our faces, though he remained standing with a bewilderingly small amount of space between us. “Cute.” He informed me, smiling his strange smile again. I frowned and he nodded twice. “Very cute.” He gave an exaggerated bow, which I wasn’t sure was entirely sincere, and looked up at me. “I hope you’ll accompany me for a while, kitten. I’m looking forward to making you blush a lot more.”

Well, that was it for me. I sent him a ‘oh-my-god-what-a-pervert-I’ll-get-a-res
training-order-if-I-have-to’ look, then ran and leapt through the nearest mirror portal.

I suppose I was lucky that my desperation to get away from Itsuki was counted as concentration, because this time I actually managed to get to the world I had been originally aiming for.

Despite my (in my mind at the time) reasonable ‘escape’, the feeling remained with me that I would not rid myself of this Immortal just by running away in the manner that I had. His decision to ‘accompany me for a while’ was both curious and unsettling.

Getting used to being propositioned to, and gaining allies, are both difficult things to get used to. With some Immortals, usually the much older ones, good manners were a factor in how long they would put up with you for; if you were rude to them, well... best not to think about that really. But it was important to get used to the Immortals who frequented the same types of world as you. Having an ongoing feud with another Immortal (and believe me, Immortals can hold a grudge for a long time) was not the best idea if you both tended to live in the same worlds. Sometimes it was pretty competitive too.

The world I had actually wanted to reach was a small place similar to my birth world, and Rei had suggested it as my first destination because of that. His instructions were to seek my next teacher, a male Immortal acquaintance of his named Firin. Apparently he would be 'the one to help me move further into my new life'.

I wasn’t really sure what Rei meant, but I was willing to trust him; he hadn’t led me astray so far after all.

--

Chapter Three - The End Will Never Be In Sight

Firin is the most irritating bastard I have ever met.

The number of times I stormed off in a rage because of him is unprecedented. The first thing I realised, when I actually had a proper conversation with him, was that Rei and Firin were not necessarily as friendly as my first teacher had indicated.

To start off my ‘training’ he greeted me upon my first few moments looking around the new world, with the words; “Yo, you’re Rei’s whelp right? I’m going home.”

Needless to say, getting such a reaction from the third Immortal I’d ever met was not very encouraging. He also made it very difficult for me to follow him, by disappearing from my sight before I could even recover enough of my senses to realise it. I never considered leaving him alone; despite such an unwelcome… well, welcome… I trusted Rei’s judgement.

I should have known my teacher wouldn’t make it easy for me.

The world I found myself in was almost identical to my birth world; in fact, the only difference seemed to be time. Looking around I had quickly come to realise that the closest place this resembled was ancient Japan. What with the people walking around with kimonos, topknots, swords and the like. There was no sign of modern technology and it became apparent within minutes how inappropriate my clothing was here.

Another lesson to learn; always form a portal away from public places to allow for changes in clothing, before you scare the natives.

I was reduced to stealing clothes, hiding behind a tree on the outskirts of the closest town to change. I tied my long hair with cord to keep it at least a little under control, and set about exploring the town.

To my unaccountable relief, every person there spoke some strange off shoot of Japanese; I was able to ask questions, which occasionally confused the person I asked, and find myself lodgings (having realised that Firin was nowhere nearby) and food.

After being attacked by thieves on two separate occasions I found myself a sword; though I only knew basic techniques, I decided that the weapon would at least frighten away the weaker assailants. Though I had been able to steal and talk my way into gaining most of the things I wanted up until that point, the thieves had whisked away what little food I had and I was forced to try and find work.

Charm and a quick tongue can only get you so far.

I managed to get employed as an assistant blacksmith, using some of the skills Rei had imparted, and worked exhausting hours for about two weeks before I deemed myself suitably financed. During this time many of the people in the small town seemed to have heard of the ‘handsome young man who lost his memory’.

Naturally I went by ‘Yoko’ during this time, and yes I know the cover story is uninspired, but you’d be surprised how well and often it works.

Finding Firin again was harder, predictably, than I had originally thought it would be.

I spent some time gathering information about the surrounding towns and places of interest (using the excuse that I was trying to remember my past), but I couldn’t work out where I should go next.

Though I have never been able to prove it, I’m almost positive that Firin tampered with my amateur (at best) attempt at a portal exit. I’m sure that he made it so that I landed in an area so far away from his actual house that I would have to travel the entire continent just to get to him. It would have been just like him too.

My second teacher had green eyes. They were what I would have to describe as ‘lazy eyes’; he always looked slightly drunk (and probably was), his movements outside of battle slow and sluggish, and he never stood up for too long if he didn’t have to.

He always looked amused at nothing. Though there had been nothing to amuse him, he would just suddenly smile as if the most amusing incident had just played itself out in front of him. At first I bristled when he did it, since it was mostly when I was asking him questions and I assumed he was making fun of me, but I later thought that it might have been nostalgia. He hadn’t been clueless for over fifteen hundred years after all, he only had memories in that respect.

Firin liked to spend his time sitting on the grass smoking. Whenever I think of him, I remember him sitting beneath one of the Japanese maple trees near his house, smoking his opium pipe. I both loved and hated that pipe.

The smell hung in the air wherever he went. It got to the point where I didn’t even notice it anymore, but early in my years with the man I just wanted to break the damn thing.

I once stole and hid it, to see how long it would take him to notice it was gone. Unfortunately, he seemed to have some kind of sixth sense when it came to his precious article; by the time I came to sit next to him for breakfast, it was between his lips again.

He was mysterious like that.

He liked to make me work while he did nothing. He would sit and read while I trained, his eyes never rising from the page; even when I spoke to him or asked him questions, he feigned disinterest and answered in a monotone. I say he feigned the interest because I don’t think he really was as indifferent as he would have liked me to believe.

From the animated way he used carry on when we had conversations on topics of his interest during meals, or when he sparred with me, I could see this quite clearly. You can’t lie when you fight; you can learn about someone’s personality with each blow, each feint, each movement of their body.

A warrior’s spirit is, as a later teacher told me, incapable of lying.

I had duties while I lived with Firin. His requirements were that I paid for my room and board by doing the housework. I attributed this to laziness on his part.

When I first came to his home, the dust was so thick that I tripped and fell on my face because I misjudged how far to step down when I went inside. The kitchen had no floor and most of the rooms were covered with dirty clothes, dishes and books.

Despite the abnormalities of living with Firin, I came to love the old man. He was about as annoying as I imagined a brother would be, he whined and ordered me about like a father would and nagged like a mother. He was like an entire family rolled into one person.

He was also, contrary to my original opinion, a good teacher. He laced what he taught with accounts from his own life (mostly exaggerated I’m sure) and seemed to find ways of making the information more enthralling than it should have been. He allowed me full access to his extensive library (found when I removed the enormous pile of rubbish and old clothing that had accumulated in front of the sliding doors), and gave me quite a lot of training concerning spells and such.

Spells have always been my strong suit. To be honest, I hate fighting physically and am, in Firin’s words, ‘too weedy to even wield my own fists’. As affronted as I felt when he said it, it’s probably true.

In some worlds, I suppose it would be appropriate to say, you need to speak the words of spells to make them work. Those are usually the worlds where the Art isn’t quite as potent, where it’s used less by the inhabitants. There are two branches of magic; the first one that an Immortal is taught is always the less powerful one, for obvious reasons.

This branch of magic is called the Art. You can use symbols and seals or words to use these kinds of magic, and you can even imbue objects with spells of this type. The possibilities and uses of this branch are practically endless; the Art is incredibly versatile. To use the Art effectively, you need to be both creative and strong willed. And a half-arsed spell has a very large chance of backfiring upon the caster.

The second branch of magic is called Summoning. It’s a skill that only Immortals can use. The Art can be learnt by mortals, if they have the necessary abilities, but Summoning requires a certain type of soul.

A soul that only Immortals possess.

Summoning is the ability to bring forth spirits, ‘Summons’, of your own creation and use their inherent abilities to fight or perform tasks. Creating these Summons takes perhaps a century of constant work (if you’re particularly diligent) and is something you can’t stop in the middle of.

You have to create every spirit cell, construct the soul and allow for personality growth, as well as making the linking chain. It’s a long and laborious process, but more than worth it in the end.

I began creating my first Summon late in my years with Rei, and completed the process while I was with Firin. The procedure is difficult; decades of blood, energy and casting going into it. It’s painful due to the amount of energy and concentration needed, as well as the fact that a strong spirit chain has to be created before you awaken the Summon’s consciousness. A chain that links your soul with the soul of the creature you have created, which is necessary so that your creature can’t move out of your control.

My first Summon was Chaos, a red tiger standing over twice my size that was wreathed in empathetic flame. Chaos… a name he informed me of only at the end of our first meeting, which I immediately didn’t believe. Until the first time I saw him angry I couldn’t even consider the fact that that was his name.

Firin was an especially talented Caster, and his Art knowledge was unrivalled. Though I have since found Immortals with more power or skill, the knowledge was always something that couldn’t be measured with him.

Those who lived in the villages near to Firin’s house assumed that we were related; I can only assume that it was the white hair, or possibly the constant arguments and practical jokes… either way, the place was comfortable during the time we spent there. It soon became apparent that the life span of the inhabitants in worlds Immortals visited was an important factor; after a century had passed with Firin, he moved us to a completely different continent.

That’s right, I spent more time in that world than in my own birthplace. I don’t know whether I feel sad about that or not, but Firin told me that it was probably because it was my birthplace that I spent so little time there.

It always surprised me that I was the one to leave in the end. I had felt sure that he’d be the one to leave me, since not only had he lived in that world longer, but I had also convinced myself that I was a burden. I met him many times after we parted there, and that was the beginning of my understanding regarding temporary partnerships.

I remember how strange it felt that one day I just looked up at him and said, “I’m leaving soon.” I remember how he had looked over his paper, silently assessing my expression for a few moments, before nodding and returning to whatever he had been reading. It was almost as if he expected it. As if something in me, in himself or, hell, in the air, had alerted him to the approaching appearance of my words. I half felt as if I hadn’t thought about the words before I spoke them; it seemed like they just tumbled from my mouth unbidden, but when I came to think about it afterwards I know I understood that that’s what I was going to do.

Persephone, a later teacher, told me that younger Immortals tended to want to move about more than the older ones.

The older ones preferred to settle in a world and watch it progress, like a God, but the younger Immortals had less resistance to the tug of their internal Compass. As a result, it was usually the younger ones encroaching upon the territory of others.

Then again, younger ones were less likely to want to challenge someone else for whatever ground they had claimed anyway.

Oddly enough, leaving Firin was not something unhappy. In mortal life I had always assumed that parting from someone you loved would result in a feeling of loss, of pain. But leaving Firin, and the world I had grown accustomed to, behind was more like leaving one room in a house and entering another. I knew I could return to the room I had left whenever I needed to.

That thought has always been reassuring.

It became a habit, after my first experiences with Dimension Jumping, for me to use Limbo as a midway point every time I left one world for another. The first time I went back there, I moved cautiously to a different mirror, like a child verging on being caught with his hand in the cookie jar by an angry parent.

Luckily for me, there was no sign of any other Immortals.

Eventually I would come to find that the mirror portals, being a permanent travelling means, were different to self-made portals only in that they were slightly more reliable and provided a smoother journey for the one who used it. Consequently, they soon became my favourite way to Jump worlds.

This ‘moving worlds to find teachers’ routine happened many times. There were a lot of occasions however, when I didn’t seek a teacher and simply lived among the inhabitants of the worlds I visited.

As I’ve said before, learning on your own can accomplish just as much as learning with someone else. Learning on your own does however, mean that the things you learn and the things you accomplish are of a different nature. But studying, and gaining knowledge and new skills was just the way I wanted to live. Alone or with someone else. Travelling, meeting new people, seeing new cultures, making alliances and acquaintances, gaining knowledge… it was all ahead of me, and for some reason I couldn’t be happier.

After all, this was in the end, the reason an Immortal lived.

--

Chapter Four - Soon Drifting Feels Like Falling

Something that needs to be understood about Immortals is that they, like most beings, crave attention and companionship. Some more than others, but in general eternity can become very lonely.

As a result, Immortals long ago created a dimension that only other Immortals could enter. Someone had helpfully given it the name ‘Asile’, and it acted as a kind of safe haven. A place for Immortals to find others of their own kind, to learn from the more sociable of the older ones, and to rest in security. Predictably, it was especially useful to the younger ones.

I had only been travelling for about one hundred years after leaving Firin when I found the Asile. It was an accidental finding, but not one I could ever regret.

Luckily, I didn’t bruise my pride further by falling into this world; I actually managed to land on my feet. And considering the fact that there were a good deal of people on the other side, I was inwardly thankful for this. Coincidentally, I needn’t have worried; only moments after I arrived there, another Immortal fell out of the portal archway and onto his backside.

Seeing so many Immortals in one place is a real treat. There had to be three hundred Immortals in just that province alone. Which, of course, brings me onto explaining about the haven.

Asile is divided into four provinces, each named after a season (surprisingly) in English; Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter. Every Immortal who awakens has a house somewhere in the provinces and the location of that house depends upon that Immortal’s personality.

For instance, my house was in the Autumn Province, Firin’s in the Spring and Itsuki’s in the Summer. What kinds of personality traits were attributes of which province I had no idea, and I still don’t. It’s another of those questions that you just don’t ask.

Still, I had a good deal of other questions and even the ones that I couldn’t ask could be answered if I kept my eyes on the other inhabitants of Asile.

Immortals in Asile are as fond of making bets, as they are challenges. Mostly pertaining to the states of favourite worlds, but occasionally about certain mortals in particular. For instance, I once overheard a bet being made about how many ‘World Wars’ the main planet in my home world would have before the populace destroyed itself.

You can probably imagine how less-than-amused I was about this. I don’t make it a regular thing to make bets of this kind.

The first Immortal I managed to befriend in Asile was one I met in the main square, which was where the biggest gathering of people was. He was a man a little taller than myself, with sad honey coloured eyes and short spiky hair. He introduced himself to me as a three hundred year old Immortal, and his name was Mellitus. I spent a lot of time with this Immortal while in Asile. We always seemed to be there at the same time, and for a while I thought that he just wanted the security of the place. Eventually he told me that he could see the future in short visions and therefore knew when I would be around.

Every time I saw Mellitus he was never without an old white bandana tied around his head, his hair hanging over it and partially covering the crimson symbol on the front.

It took a lot of questioning for me to make him tell me anything about it, and I learned when I finally wore him down, that the bandana had belonged to his twin brother. The red symbol on the front was his brother’s name written in their world’s main alphabet.

Though Mellitus was an Immortal, it seemed that such a thing was not decided by blood since his identical twin had been mortal. I can’t describe how sad that made me. He couldn’t do anything to help at all; he could only sit and watch his twin wither and die. It made me somehow glad that I’d had no close family when my powers fully awakened. I don’t know how I would have dealt with it.

There really seems to be something strange about that place; Asile always makes me want to seek out other Immortals, and that’s made very easy to do in that place too.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s ‘good’ and ‘evil’ in the Immortal world as well as the mortal one. I’ve definitely met my share of evil gits. In fact, only a few days after I met Mellitus and we went exploring in the Autumn province, we were attacked by an unfamiliar male Immortal who claimed that we had stolen something from him.

I’m not sure about Mellitus, but I certainly hadn’t done anything, so when the guy jumped us I was perfectly ready to protect myself. That guy’s name was Leisan, and he had a pretty intimidating reputation for his lack of respect for the rules.

I had even been told that he’d taken to tormenting Immortals into suicide, just for the fun of it. Despite the fact that I didn’t know these things at the time he, like some people do, just exuded a kind of dark air. The air of someone you didn’t want to mess around with. He was the type of person who gave you an uneasy feeling just being near to him.

However, neither Mellitus nor myself ever got to lay a hand on him. Despite his impressive build and daunting energy levels, he was unconscious before he even registered that Itsuki was behind him.

“Ah, there you are.” The smile on his face made me want to hit him. “I’ve been looking for you for some time now.” He was wearing the same sort of clothing he had when I first met him, and his hands were in his pockets. For some reason, I found myself wondering what he could have done to Leisan without using his hands.

“Looking for me?” The way he nodded once, his smile widening somewhat, made me fight to keep from backing away. I forgot all about Mellitus until the honey-eyed man was shaking hands with Itsuki and thanking him for taking the time to help out. “What are you doing?” I grabbed the man by the collar and began to drag him away with me, trying not to look at Itsuki as I wondered where on earth I could be going when I was walking in the opposite direction of my house.

“Leaving so soon, kitten?” The slight edge of amusement lacing Itsuki’s tone was the last straw and I fought the impulse to give him the finger. He was infuriating, but not so difficult to deal with when I avoided looking at him.

The strange thing about Itsuki (not that there’s only one) is that he never follows me when I storm off like that. True, he usually turns up soon enough afterwards unless I’ve Jumped dimensions to get away, but he never just follows me. Or if he does, I don’t notice him stalking me. Now that I think about it, that’s probably more likely.

I saw Itsuki a few times during that first visit to Asile. I stayed in the place for quite a while, enjoying my entrance into true Immortal society. The older ones are, needless to say, a great source of curiosity on my part. An Immortal is given the title ‘old one’ when they’ve lived for more than three thousand years. When I first heard that, I almost couldn’t believe it; that seemed like such a long time to me, in fact it still does.

“Itsuki’s an old one?” When I was first told that, I didn’t know what to think. I can remember snorting at Karei, my informant, and responding: “Well, he’s definitely wasted those millennia, hasn’t he?” I suppose I was still sour about his interference earlier, but it certainly rattled me when a familiar voice commented on it.

“And how would you know?” The hand on my shoulder made me jump about three feet in the air, completely unaware that Itsuki was behind me. It suddenly made sense how Leisan hadn’t felt him coming either.

“I-Itsuki?” I squeaked as I span around. I can remember that Itsuki’s voice hadn’t sounded insulted; it was more of a light questioning, another way to tease me I suppose. I think in my panic I just stood there and stared at him for a few moments, trying to work out whether he was going to become angry or not. Instead, the old one smiled and caught my wrist in one hand. Due to my inability to form coherent sentences, I didn’t exactly protest as he pulled me away from Karei and Mellitus.

I soon found myself in an unfamiliar house, in an unfamiliar province, and only when he pushed me into a chair did I regain enough sense to panic.

“How would you know, Kizuna?” Itsuki broke my energetic and panic-ridden thoughts with these words, and I came to realise that he was now sitting in a chair opposite me, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees and his chin resting upon his interlinked fingers.

He still didn’t seem angry, but I was still wary and fully aware that I was in his house. His house, and his territory.

To be honest, my real reasons for saying what I did were mostly childish rage and frustration. To me Itsuki had seemed a powerful airhead. A flirt who obviously spent his countless years bedding anyone and everyone he took a liking to. Needless to say, I didn’t have a very good opinion of him at first. Then again, now that I think about it I wasn’t all that far off in my first deductions; I just judged him too harshly.

“Well?” In my contemplations at the time, I had completely forgotten that he had even asked me a question. Once remembered however, I immediately regretted saying it at all. Itsuki knew that was all he had to say to make me realise it too.

So much for him being an airhead.

“I... I’m sorry.” I managed to make myself say it, but I was unable to meet the scorching purple eyes I could feel boring into my head. Though I could somehow sense he wasn’t angry about it, I knew he wanted the apology and no sooner had I said it than he sat back and regarded me with a cooler gaze.

I felt like a scolded puppy. My own take on the situation was that it was a reminder that all Immortals were mortal once. No matter how different everything around me was, or how long I would live, it all came down to the changes made to a mortal soul.

“Ah, I have missed you and your constant blushing in my presence. We really should meet more often. Look, I believe that blush is returning as I speak.”

I don’t think I need to explain my reaction to Itsuki’s words. After glaring a little and storming from his house, I proceeded to become incredibly lost in the Summer province. The fact that Itsuki had to eventually come and take me back to the Autumn was more than a little embarrassing for me, but he seemed to be enjoying himself greatly. I extricated myself from his clutches in the usual way and decided to leave Asile as soon as possible; I was far too easy to find there.

I believe, despite my temporary anger and desire to pull out my own hair, that this was the meeting that changed my attitude towards Itsuki. It changed my impression of him quite a bit, I think.

He was no longer a ‘mildly’ frustrating pervert at least.

TBC...