“I don’t understand why you always want to come here,” Alfheim frowned as he felt the warm sun hit his shoulders upon arrival at his wonder. He hadn’t been since his arrival shortly after his rude awakening, but Zia was an insistent pest who seemed hell bent on getting back here.

“I don’t understand why you don’t!” Honestly, finding out you were part of some sworn bloodline of Earth knights and then going out of his way to avoid it made her want to bash his brains in. She’d kill to be in his place and all he did was whine. She let go of his arm, now that his use as a transportation device was filled.

Awe filled eyes took in the sight of the secluded fortress city, long abandoned and left vacant crumbling stone towers with complex carvings. For Zia it was hope, a solid rooting confirmation that she wasn’t a lost and broken soul. She was a part of this family, she was of Earth, even if she had been victimized by Nehelenia, left broken and in pieces and without a destiny. This was solid and tangible. She was part of this, even if she couldn’t be its champion. She could guide him, though. She could have purpose here, again.

She fished the piece of paper with Aquarius’ alphabet from her pocket and pursed her lips in a frowning thought before she darted off into the stone city.

“Where are you going?” Alfheim shouted at her back. This place wasn’t a beacon of hope to him. It was a heavy burden of strange mysteries he had no will to solve and a key to a heritage, a family, he didn’t want. He had broken ties with his family decades ago, and reconnecting because of the addition of some strange quality like the Alfheim bloodline didn’t exactly make them any more attractive to him. This place filled him with strange senses of just the ever so slightly playing at the feeling of rising dread, he didn’t want her running off on her own into the city walls.

She didn’t answer, though, and his only options seemed to be following her or not going into the creepy, dead city, he opted to flop on his butt in the field and frown.

“Why so glum?”

And there was annoying family member number two, right on time. The spectral figure didn’t help his jumpiness, though, and when she spoke up, he yelled out and jumped to the opposite side as best he could, flailing away in a sitting position. And then he raised one eyebrow at the question. “Asked the ghost of great great grandma outside zombie city.”

Alatriel tilted her head in confusion. “I am actually, very likely, your aunt. I did not have any children,” She said with almost naive seriousness. “What is a zombie and why would it be in Alfheim?”

The page could only look bewildered at the disconnect in understanding. “Nothing, nevermind,” He said with a sigh, just giving up. He wanted to go home, wherever that was from here.

Alatriel had other plans. “Have you been training?” It wasn’t a question, it was a demand for an answer.

“Training for what?”

“For your future ascension to your destined status as a knight of earth!” When Ala’s announcement was met with less than stellar enthusiasm, she lost her regal, serious air and began moving like a worked up teenager. “Have you even practiced with your weapon at all?”

“Practice what? It’s a bottle?” Alfheim shrugged, flopping on his back in the grass. “I have plenty of experience with bottles, but it’s not a thing you fight with.” Well, he could think of some movie bar fights that took exception to that, but he figured that wasn’t what she had in mind.

“I don’t understand how the matriarchy fell so out of practice. Who is running the family? Who’s son are you? Where do you live? Where is your wife? Why hasn’t anyone been trained beforehand? Why are you so old?” The young ghost questioned and rambled and demanded, but Alfheim just stared up the the sky with an annoyed frown.

“I’m not old,” He said defensively. He totally wasn’t! He wasn’t even middle aged yet, and he wasn’t even on par with the middle Connolly brother in terms of suspended adolescence. “I’m not married, either.” He wasn’t even going to touch on family. Ugh.

“Why, is something wrong with you?” The question was asked like a child raised on too many Disney movies, and for the briefest moment, he forgot this was his predecessor and childishly throw his bottle at her like he would toss throw pillows at his nieces. He regretted it instantly, because she wasn’t a child, or his niece, she was a thousand year old ghost who was supposed to be mentoring him.

Alatriel was still offended as the object just flew right through her. Benefits of being less than solid, after all. “No matter. Your duties to your bloodline come after your duties to earth which it sounds like you’ve been equally lacking in.” She stared him down, arms crossed and waiting for some moment of clarity that would lead to his grand apology. He just kind of lazily rolled over.

“Are you even listening to me?” She wailed at an awkward enough pitch her voice cracked.

“Newp.” Alfheim had taken to boredly picking apart one of the alien looking white flowers that dotted the field.

“It’s very important!” She shouted, like higher volume would get through his thick skull.

“Well I don’t see why,” Alfheim page shrugged. “Earth seems pretty well covered without me. And my useless bottle.” He was getting antsy, though, much as he looked like he was about to take a nap in the sun. He felt like he was being harassed outside the mall while his sister took her time shopping.

“Well-- I--” Ala was not taking this well. Their service to earth and it’s prince should’ve been beaten into his head since birth. She would love be released from her post, find his mother, and give her an earful on the traditional values of the Elphame and really woman what the hell were you even doing allowing your son to remain an unmarried bum decades after he should’ve already moved past this sorry state.

Really, a thirty-seven year old page with no wife or daughter, how embarrassing. She was beginning to blame him, though. For goofing around. She was certain she would have a much more viable specimen for her protege if he hadn’t been so lax and gone and started a family fourteen years ago. Or earlier! She was from a different time, being unattached this late in life baffled her.

“It’s not like I haven’t been patrolling, calm down,” Alfheim rolled his eyes, figuring he’d better at least let her know he wasn’t totally ignoring his knighthood, if only to keep her from having an aneurysm. Unfortunately that disconnect of understanding was still there. She didn’t know what patrolling was or how that was relating to their current problem of her ’defective’ page. When he noticed how confused she looked he just flopped head first into the grass with a groan before pushing himself back up to a sitting position with stiff, lazy mannerisms. “Yes, I’ve been training,” He said flatly. He wouldn’t call patrolling training, really, but at the very least it made it sound like he was doing something.

“Oh, excellent. I trust you have allies back home to assist, as well,” She said, sounding notably perky all of the sudden.

“Uh.. yeah, a few,” He shrugged it off. He mostly worked alone, without a solid partner. He crossed paths with other knights, he made friends, and he ran to Camelot whenever he was confused, but he was still finding his place. Which he thought was acceptable, considering how upside down his life had been turned.

Alatriel nodded and seemed to fade off into some awkward thoughts. “Is... is Valhalla one of them?”

Well now Alfheim was frowning. He didn’t really want anything to do with his sister’s know-it-all little buddy, and he certainly wouldn’t train with him if he had a choice, and since so far he had most definitely had a choice he hadn’t seen the knight since his awakening. “No.”

“Okay,” She was willing to drop it, though now that the subject had been broached there was an odd tension in there air, especially as Alfheim was reminded how the ghost had vanished in a flurry after calling out Valhalla’s past life name.

He didn’t want to touch that, though. It was bad enough he was getting to know his dead relative more than anyone should, he didn’t want to tread into the trepidatious territory that was a teenage girl’s relationship to a guy who had been allowed to reincarnate while she stood there dead and tied.

Ugh, why were all the women in his life dead or possessed or mentally fractured somehow?

The awkward silence went on forever.

“What is your name?” Introductions were probably a nice thing to do, since they were begrudgingly accepting they were stuck with each other.

Alfheim page was insulted for a hot minute. He may have been assuming that since he was the center of this whole thing, he may have assumed she knew who he was. “Noah,” And then answering a question she’d asked him twice now, “Uh... Robert’s son?” He figured his father was the connection here. The traits that connected him to his ancestor were traits that showed through in Zia too, and Robert was their blood connection for better or worse.

“Robert is not an Elphame name,” Alatrial frowned. “Neither is Noah.”

“It’s biblical,” He snorted. “You know, the bible? Noah and the flood? My mom was heavy into religious names.” Even though he had actually been saddled with his father’s name, he still scored the theme naming his brothers sported in his middle name. He didn’t want to go through life as Robert jr. anyway.

“What is that?” And Alfheim was reminded they were on starkly different levels again. “Ugh, it’s all so different. Your naming conventions don’t even... I mean... what is your sister’s name?”
“Zia?”

“Latin,” Alatriel’s frown deepened. “Why do you push aside your heritage so readily?” As if they had a choice in their monikers.

Alatriel could talk about pushing aside duties to the bloodline in favor of Earth all she wanted, but the fact was, in light of his woeful ignorance of the dead dynasty he was born from, her focus had shifted starkly. The matriarchy she was born into, that once ran this city, was a source of faulting pride even after death and destruction, it was frustrating to see it’s last remnants be so ignorant at best and purposely dismissive at worst.

She sat down in front of him, prepared entirely for story time. “Well, perhaps finding the point where it all went wrong would be easier if we tracked your genealogy.”

“Uh,” Alfheim looked blank. He’d much prefer knight training before Silver Age Ancestry.com. And he didn’t really want knight training either.

“See, this is a sign of bad breeding,” The ghost declared. Her ability to hop right on that high horse was comparable to Zia’s. “You are not nearly as quick witted as the stock of the Elphame line should be, really. How would you be able to run this city with such slow reflexes?”

Well now that was just stupid, and Alfheim’s expression reflected he thought just that. “Breeding?! I’m not a horse,” He barked, “And this stupid city is dead anyway, it ain’t getting ‘run’ by anyone!” He was trying to get along with her, he really was. But she was such a child with delusions of grandeur when all she did was guard a dead city on a hill.

Alatriel grimaced at the insult. The city was dead, and so was she, and he had made the young little ghost look like she was on the verge of tears. If ghosts could cry, that is. The figure vanished again and Alfheim let his head limply fall his palm. What a baby. All the insults she flung at him and that was all it took to make her run away?

“Hey!” He shouted into the open air. “Hey... Alfheim... lady!” She had asked his name and he hadn’t bothered to reciprocate. ********. “Come on, seriously, you’re going to pout over that?” Ugh, this felt weird. “Come on, it’s not like it was a secret you were dead! Come on! You called me slow, it’s not like--... UGH,” He got to his feet and stretched his legs, pacing back and forth in the field, trying to look casual, but keeping an eye out for any figures on the edge of his vision.

Nope.

“Fine, be that way,” He snarled quietly. He was so sick of the immaturity, it was ridiculous, and he was vying for a time when everyone was nice, and normal, and non-magical and he was the holder of the title ‘most childish Connolly kid’. He vaguely wondered if great aunty ghost-lady got to count now. It was hard when generational gaps conflicted with however one was supposed to reconcile age of death with ghostly forms.

He had his own, living lady to go find, though, so he walked up to what was one the opening gates to the city, took a deep breath, and made his first steps into the confines of his wonder.

(Word Count: 2034, not including intro)