Chapter 2
Tweet, tweet
The clear, bright song of a bird broke open the morning over the Nert ducal estate, and Elliot Nert, roused by that familiar sound, opened his eyes and exhaled a long, heavy breath into the cool air of his chamber.
"Ha."
To the careless ear, it might have passed for the chirping of an ordinary sparrow but the birdsong now filling the air was not the modest sound of any common creature. It rolled across the vast grounds of the ducal estate in sweeping waves, saturating every corner of the property with its resonance, and no ordinary sparrow could have produced anything remotely approaching it.
To think I would hear this sound again.
The creature responsible was Vidofnir.
Legend held that it was the bird of the sun and of life itself, and that if one were to offer up its heart, even the dead could be brought back to the living world and indeed, that heart had once been used to restore a fallen hero to life. Yet at this particular moment in time, Elliot was the only person in the world who knew the bird's true identity with any certainty.
Its identity won't be revealed for another ten years.
To everyone else, it was simply a curious and auspicious animal, remarkable but mysterious, its nature unexplained and its significance unrecognized.
Elliot stretched languidly, pulling himself out of bed with the unhurried ease of a man in no particular rush, and threw on his clothes without ceremony before making his way out to the garden that lay behind the manor. There, wandering among the carefully tended greenery, was a single rooster adorned with feathers of brilliant gold.
"Vidofnir?"
At Elliot's call, the rooster drew near, padding toward him with an air of quiet dignity. Had the butler responsible for the bird's care witnessed this, he would have been struck speechless for this rooster had never once responded to any name that anyone had called it, not in all the time it had resided here. The reason, of course, was that no one knew its true name, and so everyone had simply called it whatever happened to come to mind.
"Ko-ko "
Elliot smiled despite himself.
Just moments ago, it had been singing tweet tweet and now here it was, clucking away like any ordinary rooster. There was something so thoroughly ridiculous about that contradiction that laughter rose in him unbidden. In truth, it was precisely this peculiarity of Vidofnir's that had allowed the bird to end up here in the first place.
From the family's perspective, it was nothing short of fortunate.
The duchess had, on some unremarkable day in the past, chanced upon the golden rooster and been struck by its strangeness, and on a whim she had purchased it and set it loose in this garden. But curiosity, as it so often does, had faded quickly and before long, the duchess had stopped paying the rooster any attention at all, leaving it to its own devices for a very long time.
And yet who could ever have guessed that this rooster of all things would turn out to be a treasure beyond all treasures.
It was well enough known within the household that Vidofnir could cluck as well as chirp the detail had made its small rounds but precious few had actually heard it themselves, because the clucking was never particularly loud. And beyond that, this garden was a restricted space, accessible only to the direct line of the ducal family and those who had been granted special permission, which meant that the number of people who had ever laid eyes on Vidofnir in person could be counted on one hand.
"Here take this."
"Ko-ko!"
Elliot held out a rose leaf that he had secretly set aside for the occasion, and Vidofnir received it with evident enthusiasm. That rose leaves were the bird's favorite delicacy was yet another fact that only Elliot currently knew. He lingered there for a little while, quietly cultivating the bond between them.
Better to get close early.
A legend yet to be uncovered would later reveal that if Vidofnir came to truly recognize someone as its master, that person could receive the gift of an additional life without the heart needing to be removed at all. But this truth would only come to light after the heart had already been taken.
Still, Vidofnir is quite the mouthful.
Perhaps a nickname was in order. One of the surest ways to grow close to someone or something was to call them by a name that carried warmth.
"Would it be all right if I called you Vif?"
"Ko-ko !"
The rooster bobbed its head up and down with unmistakable enthusiasm, and Elliot found himself thinking that yes, this was without question a creature of rare intelligence that understood human speech.
"Stay well. I'll see you again soon."
"Ko-ko-ko-ko!"
Elliot returned to his room, moved to the window, and stood there looking out at the world beyond the glass as another sigh escaped him slowly.
"Huu."
The reason Elliot possessed knowledge that no one else in this world held was simple, if utterly implausible he had returned from the future to the past.
At first, he had not been able to believe it. He had died, clearly and without question, cut down in battle against the demon race by wounds from which there was no possible recovery. Not unless he had somehow come into possession of Vidofnir's heart but the heart of Vidofnir, the only one in existence on the entire continent, had already been spent. And even if it had not, there was no conceivable way to make use of it on a battlefield like that, and even if there had been, he would not have used it on himself when there were others far more deserving of its gift.
So his initial conclusion had been that this was the work of the demon race some cruel trick being played upon him in his final moments, a torment designed to afflict human souls before they passed on. The demons were known for their fondness for such things, their capacity to interfere with the souls of the dead and their taste for using that capacity to cause suffering. It was a well-documented cruelty.
And so Elliot had refused the world. The most straightforward way to escape a demonic illusion was to sever all connection between oneself and the false reality being constructed to withdraw entirely, to deny it any purchase on the self.
And that, of course, was when things became rather chaotic.
Elliot rose from where he sat, a wry smile pulling at the corner of his mouth.
He had been something of a troublemaker in his youth, yes, but he was still the youngest and precious son of a ducal house, and for that son to suddenly cease all activity and seal himself inside his room was alarming enough on its own. Had he simply shut himself away, perhaps it might have been managed but he had refused food as well, and then water, and when he stopped drinking even water, the alarm became impossible to contain.
I never imagined it would turn out to be real. That I had actually returned to the past.
What had finally broken through Elliot's denial was the sensation of sacred power divine energy, unmistakable and real. He had collapsed quickly given that he had stopped drinking, and the ducal household had summoned a priest on his behalf, who had naturally channeled sacred power into him and it was in that moment that Elliot understood.
This is real.
I have truly returned to the past.
Because no demon race, however devoted to the torment of humanity, would ever could ever produce anything resembling genuine sacred power.
Even now, Elliot found it difficult to believe, if he was being honest with himself. No matter how carefully he turned the question over in his mind, he could find no cause, no catalyst, nothing that might explain it. In the stories in novels and in the songs of traveling bards there was always something: an ancient relic, a divine revelation, a moment of cosmic significance. But he had simply died. That was all.
Returning to the past is well, it's something. But what am I supposed to do now?
Once he had accepted the reality of his situation, the future became the problem. The world was going to end in twenty-four years, after all. To be more precise humanity was going to end. The immediate cause would be the invasion of the demon race, whose armies had descended upon a humanity already devastated and fractured by a catastrophic war between nations, delivering what proved to be a fatal blow to a species that had already wounded itself terribly.
Faced with a threat of that magnitude, humanity had united but the limits of that unity had been painfully clear. The wars between nations had stripped humanity of an enormous portion of its strength, and even as the end drew near, the internal conflicts had never fully stopped.
By the time Elliot had died, the total number of surviving humans had been somewhere just above ten thousand and even those ten thousand had been standing on the edge of oblivion. Calling it the end of humanity was, if anything, understating the case. That Elliot had survived as long as he had was purely a matter of luck.
He knew himself clearly. The version of himself that existed in this era reckless, unruly, careening through life without a thought for consequences would have behaved as though he were the hero of some great story, stepping forward to save the world with all the confidence of someone who had not yet learned what the world was actually capable of doing to a person.
But that past self and the Elliot who now inhabited this young body were not the same. The years had given him something he had lacked before a clear-eyed understanding of his own limits, a humility earned through hard experience and he knew, without any illusion on the matter, that he was not and could never be the kind of hero that stories were written about.
Knowing the future is, without question, a powerful thing.
But Elliot lacked confidence. Wealth and personal comfort those, perhaps, were within reach. But saving humanity? Changing the fate of the world?
"That's well beyond anything I'm capable of..."
Even if he dedicated himself to preparing humanity for what was coming, using everything he knew would it be enough to actually prevent the catastrophe? Absolutely not. If he managed to delay it by a few years, that would already be more than he had any right to expect.
One year? Two?
He understood, of course, that he did not need to become a hero to make a difference. If he was being entirely honest, the temptation to simply use his foreknowledge to accumulate a comfortable fortune and live out his days in peaceful obscurity was quite strong. But even so even so if he did not act, if no one did, then the future would simply repeat itself, unaltered, inevitable.
"Ha."
His head ached. No matter how many times he turned the problem over in his mind, no answer presented itself. The sighs came naturally.
If anyone was going to return to the past, why couldn't it have been someone else someone like Queen of Zill, the great hero of humanity someone for whom there might have been at least some small chance of actually changing things?
Knock, knock
Elliot's spiraling thoughts were interrupted by the knock of Leona, his personal maid.
"Young master, are you awake?"
"Ah yes. I'm up."
"I've brought water for washing and a change of clothes."
"Thank you."
Leona's gaze drifted to the rose that had been sitting on the table, and she tilted her head slightly the petals had vanished, leaving nothing behind but the bare stem.
"Young master, did I not bring you a rose just yesterday?"
"I'll be needing one regularly for a while. One stem a day, if you could."
"That..."
"What is it?"
"It's simply that it would be rather difficult for me to keep obtaining them on my own."
Ah of course. In weather this cold, sourcing fresh roses was no small task.
"Use my name. Tell whoever you need to tell that it's absolutely necessary. Say that you don't know the reason, but that I require one stem every single day."
"Understood."
Receiving personal attendance after so many years of doing without felt strange and yet deeply, quietly comfortable at the same time.
After spending the morning at leisure and returning to his room following lunch, Elliot found Leona waiting for him.
"Young master, the duke has given orders for your piano lessons to resume beginning today."
"Piano?"
"Yes did you not say that you intended to prepare a piano piece for your social debut?"
"Ah."
It came back to him then he was sixteen years old in this body, and sixteen was the age at which most young men of noble birth made their entry into society. And it was customary, on the occasion of one's debut, to prepare something artistic as a mark of one's cultivation the unspoken expectation being that any person of noble breeding ought to have devoted themselves to at least one of the arts. For Elliot, that had been the piano.
The piano.
This was still a time of peace, and in such times, martial ability while respected was matched in importance by learning and artistic accomplishment. The Nert ducal house was renowned above all for its swordsmanship, and perhaps for that very reason, its members had always been particularly attentive to the arts, unwilling to be dismissed as uncultured. The current duke was a man of extraordinary skill with a blade but possessed no talent whatsoever for the arts, which made him all the more insistent on the subject.
Ah, right.
Another memory surfaced something he had nearly forgotten entirely. Around this time, the duke had made a declaration: if Elliot distinguished himself artistically at his debut, he would be permitted to call him father even in public, even in formal settings.
That was no small thing. It would have meant official, public recognition of Elliot's place within the family and so Elliot had, in that first life, thrown himself into the piano with an almost desperate intensity, practicing without rest until the debut arrived and the performance was everything it needed to be.
Elliot was a bastard son acknowledged and taken into the household, yes, but not formally recognized, his status within the family still uncertain and unconfirmed.
There was even an assassination attempt afterward, if I remember correctly.
A faint, bitter smile crossed his face as the memory came back to him. Once the head of the family formally acknowledged a bastard son, that son became eligible to inherit and the duchess, unwilling to accept that possibility, had wasted no time in making her opposition felt.
All just memories now.
What had once been frightening and painful and bewildering had, with the passage of so many years, become nothing more than a piece of the past something that stirred, at most, a mild and distant irritation, nothing more.
But this is a problem.
So much time had passed that he would be fortunate to remember even the basic scales. This social debut was shaping up to be a disaster.
When was the last time I actually sat down at a piano?
The long years of war had left no room for such things. There had come a point when all of humanity had simply run out of the luxury required for art, and the piano had been among the first of the casualties.
"Let's go to the piano room for now."
"Yes Professor Laurence is already there waiting for you."
When Elliot arrived at the piano room, it was not Professor Laurence but the butler who was waiting for him.
"Where is the professor?"
"Something came up unexpectedly, and he sends his apologies he will be slightly delayed."
The butler offered a short, precise bow and withdrew without another word.
Hm.
Well it was a fortunate enough turn of events, as things went. The truth was that it had been so long since he had touched a piano that his memories of it had grown genuinely hazy, and some time alone to assess the damage before the professor arrived was, if nothing else, a relief.
"Haaa."
How many sighs had he breathed today? He had lost count. Elliot approached the piano, settled himself on the bench, and placed his fingers on the keys tentatively, as though reacquainting himself with a stranger simply to gauge how much remained of what he had once known.
Hm?
And then, without warning, the memories of the piano came rushing into him not his own memories, but the piano's flooding his consciousness in a warm and overwhelming tide. And alongside them appeared a message, strange and inexplicable, hovering at the edge of his awareness.
[ System activating.]
[Contact with a historical artifact detected.]
[Tutorial will begin automatically.]
In the same instant, his fingers began to move on their own guided by something beyond his conscious will, drawing music from the keys with a fluency and grace that had nothing to do with anything he currently remembered. And Professor Laurence, arriving late to find the room already filled with sound, stood frozen in the doorway, unable to conceal his astonishment.