Chapter 1231  The Infinite?

The mansion had a back garden, isolated from the world. Arthur and Emma decided to take a stroll and talk for the first time since he left Jerano.

"Everything changed when I heard about your hometown, Kera," Emma said with a sad smile as they walked between branches that cast shadows over the garden. "I knew you were hurting, and I wanted to come to your side, but Caleb imprisoned me ever since."

"Well, Caleb will no longer be a threat," Arthur said, holding back his wrath from showing. "I will handle him."

"Are you going to kill him?" she asked, looking at him with a cautious gaze. Arthur returned the gaze but did not answer. "You"ve changed a lot since we last met."

"And this is what I wanted to tell you," Arthur replied, looking at Emma"s shadow. "Marvi should have already sought you out about this, so you should know – I might be Arthur, but I"m not Alexie."

"Two different ident.i.ties," Emma sighed, her smile fading. "I always had a hunch that Alexie was someone I knew, but now, I guess he isn"t."

"He was," replied Arthur. "The memories of that time are still sealed within me. I think Gaia made sure of that to keep her chosen one sane."

"Does that mean you can restore the memories?" Emma asked hopefully. Arthur again met her gaze with silence, and she understood without his answer. "You can, but you don"t want to."

"I am Arthur Netherborne, The Returning King of Wrath, the G.o.dslayer, the Embodiment of Wrath and Creation," said Arthur, waving his hand. "The list goes on, but at the moment, I have never been more certain about who I am."

"I can never rob you of that certainty," Emma said, stopping in the pathway. "But can I say something without making you feel guilty?"

"I already feel that, so go ahead," Arthur said with a small, wry laugh. It echoed from Emma before turning into a sob. He looked at her, bathed in the sunlight of new beginnings but heartbroken nonetheless.

Emma placed a hand over her chest, her breath rising and falling heavily as she tried to calm herself. Tears fell from her blue eyes as she turned toward Arthur.

"I waited for you. I waited for no one other than you."

"I know you did."

"But no matter how long I wait, you will never look at me, never look for me unless a tyrant wants to kill me. What did I do wrong to lose you, Arthur? Please tell me, please."

Arthur looked at her, a pain greater than any other tearing through his heart. Her blue eyes demanded an answer, the bright sunlight making her blonde hair appear ethereal. He could not bring himself to tell her the harsh reality... but he must.

"You don"t have to do anything wrong to lose something," he said, carefully meeting her shaky eyes, witnessing her trembling, fragile body. "I"m sorry, Emma. I was thrown into another world, alone and weak. I had no room to cling to something that could have been."

Emma cried, brushing the tears from her face as she tried to compose herself. Then, she looked at him, tears still shimmering in her blue eyes.

"But can we start over?"

"Someone else is waiting for me, as I have been waiting for her," Arthur replied, shaking his head. "She waited one hundred fifty years for me, and I have to return to her."

Emma managed a smile as she heard that. She walked far enough away to hide her tears, and whispered to Arthur, "Then you better go."

Arthur watched as she left, walking without any hesitation or weakness in her stride back toward the mansion. He knew that even without meaning to, he had hurt her more than any execution could.

Guilt swelled in his chest, hard and solid, like a tumor that never stopped growing. Arthur stood in the garden, his hand clenching his chest. The voices of wrath threatened to break him.

Black lightning crackled inside the garden, a storm brewing over the recovering Yalenia. Arthur tried to catch his breath but was always a little too late, making his head spin.

As the seal created by the blue dragon shook within his sea of consciousness, the wrath inside his gate almost threatened to swallow him whole. It was the first time anything could make him this agitated, and he didn"t know how to handle it.

"It"s alright," a familiar voice whispered. Arthur snapped his eyes open to find Oriole holding his shoulder. He stood inside the storm of wrath, even as the lightning threatened to hurt him. "Everything will be alright."

"I"ve hurt Emma," Arthur said, his voice hoa.r.s.e. He looked at his hand, which had turned black with wrath. "I think I have cursed her with a fate far worse than death."

"You have to believe in her to move on," Oriole said, stepping closer despite the roaring lightning. "Emma is strong, and she will be fine. You cannot deny who you love."

"I just think that the other Arthur refuses me now," Arthur said, staring at the sky where a storm brewed because of his uncontrolled guilt.

"There was never a different Arthur," Oriole corrected as he stepped even closer. "You were always Arthur Netherborne, in all the infinite timelines that exist."

"What do you mean?" Arthur asked, lowering his head in confusion.

"Do you know why Ragnar chose you to be his successor?" Oriole asked with a smile, the wrath beginning to die down. "Countless others before you carried his blood, and countless others carried his wrath. But there was something that you did that altered the course of history."

"Just tell me, Oriole. My mind cannot follow what you want to say," Arthur answered, shaking his head. His lightning began condensing as he focused on calming down.

"Ragnar chose you as his successor because you made the impossible choice. The moment you erased the timeline, you sacrificed everything to stop the G.o.ds from getting their way. And that was the beginning of the fight against Devaheim."

"Are you saying that I became the King of Wrath because I merged the two timelines?"

"As the world fights against the G.o.ds, more timelines will join hands to stop their cycle of suffering. You began that fight the moment you made a choice that no one could bear to do."

Arthur was silent as he stared at his friend. The source of that knowledge was unimportant; the knowledge itself mattered. If that was the case, then his suffering ended the moment he refused to bow down to this world.

"How is this related to the other Arthur?"

"Arthur Netherborne is one and only across all timelines," Oriole laughed, patting his shoulder. "That is your real ability, and the real reason you could wield both wrath and creation."

A gale blew through the garden as Arthur stared at his friend like he was a madman, but one who made some sense. As his wrath died down into a single flame, he turned his eyes toward Oriole.

"Alright, just take it slow," Arthur said, rubbing his temples. "I don"t understand any of that, but where did you hear these things?"

"I was the one to tell him," a voice answered from behind. The Knight of Courage stood inside the garden in her blue armor, her short hair flowing in the wind. "I came here rushing as soon as I felt the wrath running rampant."

"Sorry about that," Arthur smiled. "It"s good to see you again, Knight of Courage. Do you have a name in this timeline?"

"Maybe later," the knight smiled as she turned to Oriole. "It seems you couldn"t hide the truth for long."

"Why would I hide it?" the alchemist laughed sheepishly. "It was the perfect moment for that revelation, and it worked to distract him!"

"Fine," the knight sighed, turning back to Arthur. "I found an old scripture about a man known as the Infinite, who will lead the timelines to salvation. At the time, I never believed it was you, but meeting Oriole and seeing your new powers of wrath convinced me."

"The scripture describes the Infinite as someone who exists across every timeline and is capable of creating and destroying anything! That is you! You existed in two timelines already!"

"That notion is absurd, Oriole," Arthur said with a laugh, shaking his head. "I know who I am, and I don"t need any more answers."

"You are indeed Arthur Netherborne, and the moment you awakened that name, you became the Infinite. Anyway, ahem, I just wanted to prove that there was never two of you."

"Alright, fine," Arthur said with a sigh, turning toward the knight. "I want to see that scripture. Do you have it?"

"It"s embedded into the biggest mountain in Alka," the knight said with a smile. "You will have to visit my world again."

"There will be no need to visit," Arthur grinned as the two became confused. "There will only be a single world soon enough."