Back Across the Rubicon: Eight From the Land of No Return II

What if one day, you discovered you had lived a past life as a shapeshifter or magician-or even Merlin! and that you still had all of your powers? And what if you then remembered just a little more than you bargained for? In Part One, the first five of the eight appeared: Adam, the Fate-Weaver; Una, the Spirit of Elements, Gwion, the Shapeshifter, Svetlana, the Chaos Warrior, and Aidin, the Levitator. And now the tale of Karl, the Mind-Chameleon and Ken, the Shadow...

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Prologue: The Curse of the Eight

Long ago, eight of us, eight souls bound together by Fate, or God, I know not which, died together under phenomenal circumstances, far from the planet where we now live. But that initial death as it turned out was only the beginning of a new life, or series of lives...

But now, as I, a powerless soul, am about to take form in this next new life, compelled as I am to do so by powers I do not understand, I wonder if this is the one, the one in which all of the players of an original drama that took place long before the earliest days of human civilization, will be reassembled once more. Will I remember anything about it, though, once I live again? Will the others?

Throughout the unending reincarnations, I have only snatched at flashes of the dream that haunts my existence, the dream of who I really am and once was. But unless we remember, unless all eight of us remember ourselves, each other, and what happened in the past, none of us can ever leave this planet. Earth. We will be trapped in this earthly hell forever, paying for crimes we never even knew we have committed.

From this life to the next crimes must be paid for, even crimes long forgotten by their perpetrators. The tally against us is never forgotten. A cruel game it is, life. Beloved faces of the distant past, of a past far from this reality and space and time... how much longer will I be able to see them, to savor their memory? And how many times have I passed by them on this world without a thought or glance, unable to recognize them for who they were? I know now that I have passed by them; I see where I could have stopped, where I was intrigued by someone but had not the courage to pursue them, where one decision might have altered my fate and brought me to my redemption.

If that is still possible. For as many times as I have passed by the others, just as many times I see that we have met each other in different guises, and then orchestrated the same betrayals, the same foolishness, the same dearly bought sins. So perhaps we truly are doomed; perhaps we shall spend all eternity repeating our lives; perhaps there is no exit from this world.

Perhaps the Earth is hell.

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Karl

I once wondered if human chameleons are born or made. I couldn’t have been any younger than eight years old when I wondered about it, because that was when I became a chameleon myself. That was when I developed a sudden interest in the sly but charming little creatures. I caught one as a pet and called him "Spiegel", and I have to say, he was a remarkable little beast.