Letter to Hayley VI

Dear Sister,
 
As promised, a letter to let you know that I have arrived back safely at Cairn Fussil.
 
Luckily Amarra was present when I arrived, and I was able to tell her immediately that I was going to pick up my apprenticeship again. She didn’t really say much, except that she expected me to work twice as hard to make up for lost time. I did also warn her that it might be useful to invest in some additional magical defenses for the tower to protect us from incursions by my devil ex-girlfriend, but I don’t think she fully believed me.
 
Somehow in the more than two years since I have been gone, very little has changed at Cairn Fussil. I am still the only apprentice, as I suspect that with all the drama that I have caused her, Amarra must have had serious regrets with her first apprentice.
 
My magic still hasn’t fully recovered after the incident with Seraphine. The lost spells from my spellbook didn’t return as I had hoped, so I do expect I will have to transcribe them again. The good news is that I found the spell scrolls that Amarra gave me all those years ago that I hadn’t used, so that at least is a start. I am still far weaker than I should be, I am pretty sure that even if I had the runes for a simple fireball spell I wouldn’t be able to cast it.
 
I do want to also thank you again with your help with the devil-worshiping cultists. It did end up taking quite a bit longer than expected (although I should have guessed in advance that their leader Hector would know wards against divination magic). But it was fun going on an adventure with the five of us, even if it didn’t end like we had hoped.
 
I am still also not sure what happened to Hector’s body. I have tried several divinations, but they all come up with nothing (again, he was warded against them). I am pretty sure that final strike left him more than dead, and it did release Seraphine’s essence back to her, so I don’t really know what is going on. Let’s hope he doesn’t turn up as an undead or something.
 
As for Seraphine, the more I think about it, the more I believe that you were right. The memories of a few months, had no chance against a life that has experienced millenia. When we freed her essence from Hector, the two lives fused together and the original was restored. While I think we had all hoped that there would have been more left of the Seraphine we had gotten to know, but in retrospect that was a bit foolish of me.
 
I asked her several times, before it all went down, if restoring her essence was what she really wanted. But she always replied that there was no doubt in her mind. She told me that she could always feel the part that was missing. That even though she was happy with all of us, with me, she knew that she wasn’t the person she was supposed to be.
 
I don’t know if she actually knew that who she was, was a terrifying devil that wanted to drag my soul to The Pit. It is quite lucky that you, Zem and Saphira were there in the end. I don’t think I would have been able to banish her if it wasn’t for your help. Even with your help, she managed to drag away quite a bit of my power.
 
As I write all this down in my old room at Cairn Fussil, I can’t help but notice that with my money gone and most of my spell power gone, I am back where I started five years ago when we just arrived in Keralon. (I think I have exactly the same amount of gold, down to the last copper piece as back then.)
 
Looking back now at all these years, I now wonder if I would have done things differently, and honestly I don’t think I would.
 
Despite everything that happened at the end with Emily, I still think back often on the plans we were always making about our future. How we were both going to become powerful wizards, how we were going to have the full grand noble wedding, how we were going to have three children (two boys and one girl). And those dreams are something that I wouldn't trade away for anything in the world.
 
The time I spent with Lyra were honestly the happiest days of my life. They were always full of adventure and excitement (maybe too much excitement sometimes). But even in the quiet moments, when it was just the two of us on the road, there was a sense of belonging like I haven’t really ever experienced before or since.
 
And it may sound strange, but I think I genuinely loved Seraphine, or at least the Seraphine as she was before everything else happened. When I was with her, it felt like she completed a piece that was missing inside of me. Even now that she is gone, it feels like she is still a part of me.
 
I am most reminded of the old idiom ‘It is better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all’. And despite all of the misery and heartbreak, I think I can understand.
 
Give my regards to Zem and Saphira (sorry it didn’t work out between us).
 
I hope you’ll come to visit me soon in Keralon, sis.
 
Your loving, and sometimes foolish, brother,
 
Luke