Learning From The Past

Chapter Two

Noa's first exposure to her home land, the kingdom of Conkram, had not been a pleasant one. It was all pulsating flesh fused together with living people who had been kept in a state of perpetual agony for years and years. One of the quirks of the Mist was that a person wearing a Seru while within the Mist did not age. With the aid of the giant Sim-Seru that drew nutrients from some unknown method that kept it alive, the people it was attached to (or were they attached to it?) had been in no danger of dying. They would have just remained there, forever, in a living nightmare. Many had already lost their minds. It was worse when Noa found her parents in the same state. The innate psychic abilities of her family had been awakened by the exposure to Seru, and it was those abilities, the will power of King Nebular and Queen Minea, and the fact that they could feel Noa was still alive in the world somewhere that kept the rulers of Conkram sane.

Noa had used an artifact known as the Seru Flame in conjunction with a magical mirror to travel to the past of Conkram with her friends, Vahn and Gala. There they had seen what Conkram was like BEFORE the Mist... And they had been there to witness it being set loose the first time due to a simple mechanical failure in the technology being used. Now here she was again, in Conkram, and this third exposure was worse than the first, worse than the second -- when they had managed to save Conkram in the past only to discover it would be doomed by a different event. She sloshed through knee-deep rot, the decay of the dead Sim-Seru and the corpses of those once fused with the monstrous clam doing their best to make Noa turn back.

She got sick multiple times, until there was simply nothing left to expel from her stomach. No Seru attacked her this time, at least. But that was because there were no more Seru. No living Seru at least. Not, Seru, not Sim-Seru, not Ra-Seru... They were all just dead. Dead like Terra. Noa had to stop to choke back both another wave of sickness and the threat of breaking down here in this dark, awful place. Every instinct she had, all the senses she had heightened during her training with Terra back when the latter was still joined with a wolf, her own tumultous emotions, screamed at her to get out of here. Death was everywhere. This was simply put not a place for the living.

And still she delved deeper into the palace-city, home now only to the dead.

She advanced until she reached the place where her mother and father once were. She had been dreading this part. But in both places, there was only the decayed flesh of the Sim-Seru... The remains of her parents were... Gone. Confusion, and then wild hope, sprang forth from within her. Hope so powerful, so unexpected, that the warmth that flooded her limbs actually forced a laugh of joy from her lips. It echoed in the cavernous chambers, and the sound of her own laughter coming back to her, distorted, twisted, mocking, brought shame to her to dampen her moment of happiness. Laughter, much like the living, had no place here. This was a tomb.

Then she reached the room where the mirror lay. The mirror that had transported Noa and her friends to the past six years ago was still there. And despite the foulness all around, the glass remained unmarred. Noa wondered for a moment... What if her parents had somehow escaped at the moment the Sim-Seru died? What if they fled to the past? Was that the meaning of her mysterious dream? That she would come here and meet them again? Were they truly ALIVE!?

It hurt so much to have such thoughts after her long, unpleasant trip to this one room. It hurt more that she had grown up too much to really believe these possibilities. The crush of being realistic ground her spirits back down. Her dream had not been about her parents. The mirror had been there, but that was all. Still, why were her parents gone? In some ways it was more awful to not find their dead bodies. It meant uncertainty. A lack of resolution. The potential that any hope she had was merely false hope, and that it would be driven out of her by some inevitable, soul-crushing discovery.

But as she stood there, staring at herself in the mirror, her green eyes dripping salty tears, her expression miserable, she saw... Something else in the mirror? No, wait... That was still her. But her view of herself was... Distorted somehow. And... She reaches her hands up to wipe away the tears from her eyes and clear her vision.

And then she stared.

She stared at herself -- Noa -- as of six years ago.

Noa reached out towards the mirror, and despite lacking the Seru Flame that would let her traverse the mirror, the glass rippled at her touch when her slender fingers made contact. Before she knew what she was doing, she was walking through.

Once again, she was in the past. But this time, the place she found herself was not Conkram.