Chương 41: Book 3 Chapter 1: Hangover

Jim awoke to the feeling of mana hovering above him and jumped up only to immediately slam his head against the wooden top of the bed while screaming. Katniss, for her part, who was standing over him jumped back at this and also started screaming. Jim, for his part, was now screaming out of pain and not out of fear and rolled off the bed to clutch at his now bleeding and indented head.

"Fuuuuccccckkkkkkk!" he shouted angrily as he felt the corner-shaped hole at the top of his skull and the accompanying bloody hair.

"Don't scare me like that!" Katniss shouted with her hood up, clutching her heart and falling to her knees. Then she seemingly noticed what position she'd been caught in and jumped up to run towards the door. Only, she didn't make it as Jim extended one arm and caught her foot while her other one was mid-air. This caused Katniss to come crashing down, slamming her forehead on the doorknob as she went. She yowled as she struck the floor and clutched her head.

"Aaahhhhhhh!" she screamed.

"Fuucckkkkk!" Jim shouted as he got up on all fours and approached the downed girl and grabbed her by the lapels of her coat with his bloodied hands.

"You idiot!" he screamed in her covered face before slapping a hand on her temple and channeling the memory spell. At the same time, Katniss kneed him in a rather unfortunate place, his precious gems, before slumping together and going quiet.

"Fuuccckkkk!" Jim shouted again while cradling his family fortune, pain still radiating from his head at the same time. A banging came from the door.

"Shup up!" Someone screamed outside.

"Both of you!" Jim, shocked at the rudeness, quietened down as he suffered and heard the footsteps drawing away before a door slammed somewhere down the corridor.

"Jim?" Katniss asked weakly from her position covering her face on the floor.

"Leave me alone, you bitch" Jim groaned.

"I'm remembering some weird things," Katniss continued with a voice that didn't seem all that ok.

"It's making my head spin."

"Maybe you'll understand a tenth of the pain I feel then!" Jim exclaimed angrily as he looked at the downed girl. Katniss for her part simply opened her mouth and spewed out a bunch of foul-smelling vomit. Jim quickly abandoned his pain, scrabbling away from the girl.

"Disgusting, disgusting! Get away from me!" he cursed at the approaching puddle of sickness on the ground as it lost height but gained diameter from the swaying motions of the ship. He eventually retreated back to his cot, but not before opening the window to save himself from the half-digested trash the girl had apparently been eating. Was that a chicken bone? Jim suddenly felt nauseous himself, the fresh air not being so quick to enter the cabin as he'd have wished.

He felt something bubbling away from his stomach and he barely managed to stretch his head out over the cot before his own dinner made a daring escape from his stomach. His vomit, much more refined and pure than the peasant's, started spreading itself on the ground, the two puddles eventually starting to mix.

"Fuck!" he shouted again between heaves of acid travelling up his throat. The door to his room suddenly slammed open and a furious looking Ezengerdian stepped halfway inside with his hand raised angrily and mouth open, as if about to shout. Whatever he was about to say remained unsaid as Decorus froze, looking first at the comatose girl clutching her head on the floor, dribbles of vomit still escaping her mouth, and then at the still retching Jim on his cot, one hand down his robe gently massaging his broken balls.

"You fucking disgust me," Decorus eventually said with narrowed and reproachful eyes before closing the door and leaving again. Jim puked up another chunk of half-digested mutton with some red wine sauce. It didn't taste nearly as good going out as it had going in. -/- Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel. A few minutes passed during which the pain slowly subsided for both of the cabin's inhabitants.

"What's, happening?" Katniss eventually managed to force out after she'd gotten up to retreat from the puddle of vomit on the floor into the corner of the cabin where a small wooden board could be unfolded from the wall, attached by two chains. A makeshift chair for a makeshift person.

"It's the servant bond," Jim eventually groaned.

"Whenever a born servant meets their fated master, they are bound together on a metaphysical level. It's a bond that runs so deep that if the master ever travels back in time, the servant comes with," he explained. Katniss stared at him blankly, tilted her head, before pulling out a knife from her boot and standing up, feet squishing in the vomit. She took a step towards him.

"Actually I just made a copy of your memories and brought them back from the future!" Jim hastily exclaimed, at which point Katniss sat back down before suspiciously narrowing her eyes again.

"What?" she eventually asked. Jim sighed, wondering how to phrase the situation in a way that even the uneducated could understand.

"Memories are things that are stored in your head," he started, enunciating as slowly as possible. Katniss pulled out her knife again. Jim stopped and looked away while crossing his arms.

"See if I ever take you with me again," he muttered angrily.

"I remember going to Riche with you, but now we're back on the boat," Katniss muttered to herself.

"Memories, going back, take you with me again…" she continued, before descending into mumbles. After a minute or so she looked up with sharp brown eyes and locked onto Jim's.

"You're telling me you're travelling back in time?" Jim stared at the girl blankly, uncrossed his arms, looked down at his palms. He looked up after a minute of introspection.

"Yes."

"Explain, from the beginning," Katniss said and not having another choice really, Jim did. -/-"And thus all the factions of the kingdom picked out the hero who was most suited, but also most reluctant to heave unto his wide shoulders the burden of the future," Jim finished his tale with a tired sigh. Katniss scratched her chin with narrowed eyes.

"I see… So you accidentally got stuck with the time loop and have been floundering about ever since until someone taught you a spell that can copy other people's memories… Those memories in turn can easily enter the mind of the person who created them in the separate timeline due to the properties of similarity." Jim glared at the girl.

"Do you really believe that I'm stuck in a time loop?" he asked sarcastically, mostly to be a contrarian.

"It's the only reasonable conclusion," Katniss said dismissively.

"In the memories I just received you made magical progress that does not congrue with your known attitude towards learning, or your displayed talents. You had information you shouldn't have about the calamity, when it was coming, what the parties involved were up too… A time loop is an explanation so elegant it almost can't be false." Jim pouted and thought for a few minutes.

"And what if I'm a super powerful mind mage who's making you believe in a false reality. You're just a puppet dancing at the palm of my hand." Katniss seemed to consider this for a second.

"I do know some things about mind magic. I was quite scared of it when I first found out until I learned that stealing memories, altering personality and controlling free will are impossible. I mean, mind mages can't even read thoughts!" She shook her head.

"No, if you were a mage powerful enough to create a false sense of memories and shove them into my head ignoring the principle of similarity, then you'd be too powerful to ever bother with someone like me. Ergo, unlikely."

"What if everything has been a lie since the day you were born," Jim proposed.

"What if all you know about mind magic and reality is false because you've been stuck in an illusion since day one?"

"Well, whoever could do that to me would essentially be a god," Katniss determined.

"At which point I might as well play along with the version of reality I perceive due to the unlikelihood of ever escaping it."

"Bitch," Jim cursed quietly.

"I heard that!"

"You were meant to!"

"Bitch!"

"What did you just call me!"

"Bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch, little Jimmy is a little bitchy bitch," Katniss sing-songed. Jim sighed and raised a hand.

"Alright, let's get serious, we have to discuss the elephant in the room, the ligma of the situation," he said. Katniss nodded and closed her mouth.

"The sugma is unavoidable," she said with a heavy nod.

"What's sugma?" Jim asked with furrowed brows.

"Sugma tits, hahahaha," Katniss screamed shrilly while pointing at him and laughing. Jim ran red in the face and cursed.

"Fuck, you wish!" he exclaimed.

"I do not," Katniss shot back, before raising a hand in the air.

"But you're right, we do have to talk more seriously." Jim sighed and quietened down. Someone finally knew about the situation at hand. It made it feel more… Real, somehow, as if everything before transferring the memories to Katniss had been a fever dream.

"Those Ezengerdian bastards," Katniss eventually said.

"They unleashed the Death Flame."

"They did," Jim said with a nod, unable to come to a different conclusion.

"That's why there were so many contradicting pieces of information as to the tensions between the two nations. Talks of war, but no soldier movements, spies, but no plans for invasion," Katniss analysed slowly.

"They were never planning on invading and fighting it out. They were simply planning on walking in, right over the ashes."

"Calamity from the east, the wall of fire to the west," Jim muttered quietly.

"War to the south," Katniss added, referring to the empires duking it out with Rottoan weapons in the middle of the continent.

"An endless sea to the north," Jim said. The cabin grew quiet, the fumes of the vomit permeating the air going ignored for the moment. The brooding intensified for several minutes, before Katniss eventually looked up to meet Jim's eyes again.

"Run?" she asked. Jim nodded resolutely.

"Run!" he replied. Another pause.

"But," Katniss started hesitantly.

"Run where, exactly?" Jim didn't have an answer to that. He felt that there were many people he needed to consult. The lich. His parents. Harry, potentially, who'd always believed his visions.

"One thing is sure," Katniss eventually said, taking the initiative.

"We won't have anywhere to go unless we can somehow stop the fire."

"That thing, no shield can stand against it," Jim determined.

"There has to be a way. If left unchecked, it will kill everyone in the kingdom, including us."

"Where there's a way there's a will," Jim muttered.

"Do you mean, where there's a will there's a way?" Katniss asked. Jim shook his head.

"No, I said it correctly." He looked down at the vomit covered floor.

"Let's get out of here, your vomit smells disgusting," he eventually proposed. He received a raised eyebrow in return.

"What, you think yours doesn't?" Katniss asked.

"I'm not discussing grossness with someone who ate a chicken bone!"

"I was hungry!"

"Steal some fucking bread then!"

"Ah, so now stealing is fine!?"

"I don't care anymore as long as it's not from me!"

"Alright then!"

"Alright!"

"..."

"..."

"..."

"..."

"Do you need to talk about… the mansion?"

"I- I need some time to think."