The Knighthood
After his bloody evening, Noah was in no rush to get out of the baths, and the fact that he had the room all to himself was a welcome serenity. Besides, he would soon be back to living on the road, where hot baths were few and far between. It was good to savor it while he could, as well as the feeling of a fresh uniform. He stopped by the mess hall and grabbed some bread and an apple, then returned to his dorm, having spent the last several hours lusting for the softness of his bed like an old flame.
It seemed like as soon as he closed his eyes, they were opened by the sound of knocking. "Noah, are you in there?" It was Alexis. Noah looked to the nearby window and studied the shadows; it was probably noon.
"No, I'm currently elsewhere. I'll be back later after I sleep a few more hours."
"You've slept long enough. Open the door."
"Fine, but I don't have any clothes on. Are you sure you want to see the angle of the dangle?"
There was a pause. "One hour." She said. He heard her walk away, and he closed his eyes, only to once more be stirred by knocking. The shadows had shifted again. "Come on, time to wake up," Alexis said from outside. "And you'd better have clothes on."
"Fine, I'm coming." Noah got dressed and opened the door, finding Alexis and Sophia standing in the hall. "What's so important that you had to wake me up twice?"
"We wanted to make sure you were all right after your shift last night," said Sophia. "No one knew what happened to you after you left the castle with Sir Elyot."
"Some fools came after me, and I took care of them. Nothing to worry about."
"Good, because it's the end of the year, and you have a promise to keep," Alexis said, flashing him a steely gaze.
"I suppose I do. Let me grab a few things, and we'll talk in your room."
They watched him retrieve something from his desk, and then he followed them to Alexis's room. Before doing anything, he pulled out his soundproofing device and activated it, ensuring their conversation was kept secret. He looked around the room, finding it as neat and tidy as always, but he could still pick up the faint scent of sex.
"I'm glad the two of you were able to sort things out. I just hope waking me up wasn't an act of revenge for me interrupting your sapphic seclusion yesterday."
A smile, Noah had never seen Sophia blush with a smile, instead averting her gaze sheepishly, but her lips raised her rosy cheeks, and she even giggled.
"Shush!" Alexis said with reddening ears. "Contrary to the lifestyle you live, intimacy isn't something that should be casually spoken of!"
Noah turned to Sophia. "She is so easy to tease, isn't she?"
"Every now and then, I'll give her a little poke, just because I love seeing her pout like that," Sophia replied while continuing to snicker.
"Can we move on already? It's time to tell us who you really are."
"Very well, both of you sit down." They each sat on the bed while Noah retrieved the chair from Alexis's desk and sat before them. "I don't put much faith in promises, no matter who they come from. Still, I need the two of you to swear you'll never share this with anyone else, understand?"
"You have our word," said Alexis.
"That's right," Sophia added.
Noah took a deep breath. "I'm not the person I appear to be. I am much older than I look, and I come from a world far from this one. This human body is a temporary vessel that I inhabit. For thousands of years, I have died and been reborn, each time on a new world, a new reality. Your planet is just one of the infinite stops in my journey across time and space."
Alexis and Sophia stared at him as though his words had bounced off their foreheads. "You're being serious right now, aren't you?" Alexis asked.
"Completely serious. I told you before, I was alive long before you were born, and I'll be alive long after you die. If you kill this body, my consciousness and memories will move to a new body, that of a baby being born. I came to this academy searching for answers, not just to my magic, but to this reincarnation curse."
"Can you prove this?" Sophia asked.
"I can. Of all the worlds I've traveled to so far, this is the only one with magic, and because that, my current reincarnation was different from usual. I ended up here with the same body I died in, as well as the clothes I was wearing and the stuff in my pockets." Noah revealed a black rectangle with a glass surface. "In worlds without magic, mankind advances through the development of technology and tools. This is called a cell phone. It is a device that lets you communicate with someone in another location and grant you access to whatever information you wanted, as well as plenty of other interesting things, though it's lost those functions since I came to this world. Everyone had one of these, and they would use them almost nonstop."
He removed the back and showed them a silver square inside, where a runic formula had been written. "This right here is called a battery. It contains the energy needed to make my phone function. When I arrived here, I had no means to restore that energy, so it's been mostly useless, but thanks to runecrafting, I've found a way." He turned his phone on and pointed the camera at them. "Both of you, smile."
"Excuse me?" Alexis asked.
"Just smile."
They each gave an awkward smile, and Noah took their picture and then showed it to their mutual shock. "What is this?" Sophia asked, staring closely at the screen.
"My phone has a glass eye that can record what it sees, as well as hears. And speaking of hearing..." He opened the music folder and played 'Could've Been' by Two Steps from Hell. "It also holds music from my world."
The playing of strings filled Alexis's room, causing her and Sophia to lose their breath. The festive noisemakers of the holidays and the folk songs of adventurers and farmers could not compare to the symphony of notes flowing into their ears.
