"I died a week later." said the old man whose name Avere now knew to be Alderius, someone who even knew about ehetria, who knew about his home, or rather, knew of Cades home.
And as he said that Avere stepped back, feeling still what had happened within that dream, other than with Ukor who had not even let him have the little time needed to uncover everything that had happened in the end.
It ad all been so sad... so apathetic... so lonely...he had lost all because he listened to himself, to others, he had lost everyone not because he did wrong, but because he held a position of power, because people used him, because people hated him for his title, because people thought he was useless just because he was king, because people thought he was arrogant just because he made a coup, because of so many reasons, his life was so sad, and so apathetic.
"I know what you are imagining." the man said, tried of what must have been repeating for a long time now, at least a few centuries from the state of the arcane engineering and artificing he had seen within the experience, or the dream, or the memories, or whatever the hell that might have been.
"You think that I had just given up, but that could not be further form the truth." he sighed aloud, especially loud, louder than was normal, as if to emphasize his point, and sat down on what seemed to be a bed, not bigger than a footstool, putting his legs, wrinkled and with hanging skin that must have once been covering muscles, over each other, blue veins visible once he looked at it.
"I had not given up, I had yearned to live, yearned to smack that guy's #ss until my last moment, I had just accepted that I would not be able to do so, and I was really just tired from the b#llsh#t told by the people all around me, people that were really just there to kiss my f#cking #ss after all." he said, his face slightly angry, but eerily calm as he uttered more cursed in one sentence than Avere had ever heard, though he had never really been one for cursing a lot.
There was nothing to really talk about when it came to the story, it was sad, but that was it, and both of then knew it, with Adelius really just ready to send him away, the bottle of water, or whatever it was, right within his hand, his right on, dangling from his old leg, covered in spots coming from his age.
It was hard to believe he was only thirty-five years old, but there was something he wanted to ask, that being...
"You knew ehetria?"
"Yes, but not all that well, ehetrians don't really tend to share many of their arts and crafts when it comes to magic, living even longer than some elves in rare cases.... I heard of o ehetrian, a long time ago, without magic, that was able to live over a thousand years..." he said the first part with some boredom, but the second one was filled with interest, though there was also the clear sign he didn't know Cades had been a ehetrian before.
"....I" he said this part slightly unsure, "was ehetrian once, before going to that damned place which strips away even ones own species..."
He perked up, sitting upwards, his sacking skin vanishing slightly and becoming a lot more like a living person, "...would you know anything about four-dimensional displacement and relocation magic?"
"...yes..." he muttered, and really told the truth.
It sounded fancy, but the four-dimensional magic was really just magic used to cross the nothingness of space, and the relocation magic was there for an anchor, it was the basic principle of a warp-train, just like the one he had used to escape for ehetria when it ended, and while he would probably even succeed in using the magic itself, if he used enough mana, he didn't because it would take him a long time to prepare.
"It consists of using enough mana to create a rift in magic, or rather a magical vacuum through which one can be sucked, that part is difficult to explain, and then let yourself be strung somewhere, like on a pipeline, to an anchor you, yourself previously chartered out..." he said, trying to remember the gist of it, though he wasn't too good at it from the get-go, after not having thought about it for so long
Actually, this was also part of the way a lithroß worked, one of those artifacts he had tried to make when he finally got to be in Unulria, an artifact to remove wings temporarily when on other worlds, so he could fit through door and such...
A loud sigh freed him from this train of thoughts just as he was beginning to remember the little child who had been with him in that compartment, together with even his mother, both of which had probably died, just as he would normally have, all the way back on that horrible tree, with those horrible engravings, made with his own hand, made with parts of his own theory he had made for sh#ts and g#ggles.
"I can tell you don't want to remember something to do with this sh#t, to let's just f#cking talk about some other cr#p, okay?" the old man said, still seeming to like cursing very much.
Avere felt relieved as he asked something this time, without even really thinking about it, simply having it spring into his mind just as the entire thing made sense, as he realized he had said something.
"Why do you swear so f#cking much?" he answered, not even realizing that he, himself, had also just cursed.
The old man started laughing, his rough voice, now with a bit more life inside, filled with irony and sarcasm as he readied himself to answer again but had to hold his stomach because of it, even putting the glass bottle onto the floor.